The Charlie Kirk Show - Is Atheism Dead? LIVE from Freedom Night in America with Eric Metaxas
Aired: 2021-10-24
Duration: 01:26:22


=== Crisscrossing the Country (06:24) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey, everybody.
[00:00:00]  Happy Sunday.
[00:00:01]  My conversation with Eric Metaxas with his new book, Is Atheism Dead?
[00:00:06]  And then I take questions live from our event, Freedom Night in America, from Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona.
[00:00:12]  No advertisers in this episode.
[00:00:14]  So I'm only going to mention a couple things.
[00:00:15]  Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of you that are generously stepping up and supporting our program at charliekirk.com/slash support.
[00:00:22]  I want to thank Sandra from Missouri.
[00:00:24]  Thank you, Sonia from Florida.
[00:00:26]  Thank you, Bruce from Temecula, California.
[00:00:28]  Beverly from Oregon.
[00:00:30]  Thank you, Peggy from Gurney.
[00:00:32]  Thank you, Kim, for being a monthly supporter.
[00:00:34]  Thank you, Mark, for also being a monthly supporter.
[00:00:36]  Thank you.
[00:00:37]  Susan from Lodi, California.
[00:00:39]  Thank you, Kathy from Lakeside, California.
[00:00:41]  Thank you.
[00:00:42]  Sandra from San Angelo, Texas.
[00:00:44]  Thank you.
[00:00:44]  Beverly from Bourbon, Illinois.
[00:00:46]  That's where the Bears used to train.
[00:00:47]  I don't know if they do that anymore.
[00:00:48]  Thank you so much for supporting us.
[00:00:50]  Clinton from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
[00:00:52]  Thank you, David from Bryan, Alabama, and Rhonda from Texas.
[00:00:56]  When you guys support us, you guys keep us cancel-proof.
[00:00:59]  You keep us strong.
[00:01:00]  You allow us to flourish.
[00:01:01]  You allow us to grow.
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[00:01:03]  Thank you for that.
[00:01:03]  CharlieKirk.com/slash support is the way you can get behind our work.
[00:01:08]  Make sure you're coming to AmericaFest, everybody.
[00:01:10]  tpusa.com slash amf December 18, 19, 2021.
[00:01:16]  I'm going to keep on plugging it because I want to see you all there.
[00:01:18]  It is going to be the biggest event of the year.
[00:01:21]  You don't want to miss it.
[00:01:23]  Eric Metaxas is here.
[00:01:25]  Buckle up.
[00:01:25]  Here we go.
[00:01:27]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:01:28]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:01:30]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:01:34]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:01:37]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:01:38]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:01:39]  His spirit, his love of this country.
[00:01:41]  He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:01:48]  We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
[00:01:56]  That's why we are here.
[00:02:00]  Thank you, everybody.
[00:02:01]  Thank you.
[00:02:01]  Thank you.
[00:02:02]  Please sit down.
[00:02:03]  Great to see all of you.
[00:02:04]  It's been a couple weeks.
[00:02:07]  We've been having such success here at Freedom Night in America and Freedom Square, and we're growing it to Freedom Night in America, I should say.
[00:02:14]  We just had another one of these.
[00:02:15]  I want to share the success of how this event is growing.
[00:02:18]  A couple nights ago, we were in Loudoun County, Virginia, where I know some of you are booing because you know what happened recently, right?
[00:02:27]  And we brought Freedom Square, branded as Freedom Night in America to Loudoun County, Virginia, to Gary Hamrick's church at Cornerstone.
[00:02:36]  Eric, you know that church.
[00:02:38]  We had a packed house, 2,700 people there, and all inspired from what we've started here.
[00:02:43]  So this is growing all across the country in a very exciting way.
[00:02:46]  In the last couple days, I woke up this morning.
[00:02:50]  I asked Eric and my wife, I said, where am I exactly?
[00:02:53]  Yesterday we were in Burlington, Vermont.
[00:02:56]  And literally 24 hours ago, I was giving a speech in Burlington, Vermont.
[00:02:59]  Some of you go, what are you doing there?
[00:03:01]  Exactly.
[00:03:02]  We as Christians, conservatives, have to go places that we've never been before, especially the ones where we're not always in the predominant viewpoint.
[00:03:11]  You know what was amazing is that we had a packed room, standing room only, in Burlington, Vermont last night.
[00:03:17]  And you wouldn't even imagine it.
[00:03:19]  Burlington, Vermont.
[00:03:21]  And so we've been crisscrossing the country.
[00:03:23]  And we just, we're doing our campus tour right now.
[00:03:26]  University of Michigan, University of Minnesota.
[00:03:28]  We did Baylor University.
[00:03:30]  And then we're headed to, where are we going?
[00:03:32]  Oh, yeah, we're going to Boise State University, University of Oregon.
[00:03:35]  So pray for us next week.
[00:03:37]  We're going to need some help there.
[00:03:39]  And then we're going to Clemson, Alabama, then the University of Arizona coming up in a couple of weeks, I think in November or so.
[00:03:47]  So I want to share one really good optimistic message.
[00:03:49]  And then I want to get right into our special guest here tonight because we have an American gift.
[00:03:54]  We have a national treasure here tonight.
[00:03:56]  He's a friend of mine.
[00:03:57]  And I'm going to give him a very hard time throughout the entire evening, but it's out of love, Eric.
[00:04:01]  It's love, regardless of his pants selection, which is interesting, and you'll see why.
[00:04:06]  Yep.
[00:04:08]  And so, but Eric has wrote a very special book.
[00:04:11]  I've read Eric's books, unlike some of Eric's relatives, have actually read some of Eric's books.
[00:04:18]  And this is a special book that we're going to get into tonight.
[00:04:22]  And it's a full-on indictment of atheism and godless culture, which is something that has, I think, become kind of the predominant viewpoint on too many college campuses and high schools.
[00:04:35]  And Eric has done such a phenomenal job of going into that.
[00:04:38]  So we're about to get into that.
[00:04:38]  But I want to get to one really positive thing that I believe God gave me in the last month, which I was thinking about whether or not the ruling class and the people in charge, how are they feeling about the direction of the country?
[00:04:53]  And look, we don't do hopium here.
[00:04:54]  We've said this before.
[00:04:55]  Hope and opium mixed together feels good, but it's really bad for you.
[00:04:59]  And but I think the people in charge are starting to get demoralized.
[00:05:04]  And the people that have been punishing us and bullying us.
[00:05:07]  Now, the most important news item in the last six weeks that happened in America is not the wide open border.
[00:05:13]  It's not inflation.
[00:05:14]  It's not the supply chain crisis.
[00:05:16]  It's not what happened with the Taliban of us giving $85 billion of our own weapons to the enemies of America.
[00:05:21]  No, the most important story is to show who they really are actually afraid of.
[00:05:26]  The most important story is when the National School Board Association of America came out with a letter and sent that letter to the Biden White House.
[00:05:34]  And four days later, the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, issued a guidance letter saying that we're going to use the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
[00:05:44]  We are going to use the Patriot Act to go after moms and dads that are showing up to school board meetings across the country.
[00:05:51]  Now, everyone has a different reaction.
[00:05:52]  Some people applaud.
[00:05:53]  Some people leave the room.
[00:05:54]  Some people go and smash their phones because they're afraid they're being spied on.
[00:05:57]  Everyone has a different reaction when I say this, but the truthful reaction is that they are getting frustrated, they being the people in charge, the ruling class, that for whatever reason, after they implemented the current president, that Christians and people of faith, people who understand the founding documents, people who believe in God, that for whatever reason, the more they throw at us, the actually stronger we become.

=== The Anti-Fragile Movement (02:50) ===

[00:06:25]  And they can't quite understand that.
[00:06:29]  They thought that they could go on a campaign of shock and awe, of almost making us want to sue for peace, that after January 20th of this year, we'd say, okay, you know what?
[00:06:39]  Actually, let's go put Liz Cheney in charge of the conservative movement.
[00:06:43]  And instead, here's what happened: Moms and dads started showing up to school board meetings.
[00:06:47]  All of a sudden, we launched this event.
[00:06:49]  We started to see regular, everyday people rise up in numbers we've ever seen before.
[00:06:54]  That in the last 10 months, where we are right now, halfway through October, a little more than halfway through October, all of a sudden they're realizing that the conservative Christian movement, whatever you want to call it, that we are anti-fragile.
[00:07:07]  Now, what does that term mean?
[00:07:09]  Now, there's a great book that was written.
[00:07:10]  You know what that means, Eric.
[00:07:12]  And this is new material for you because you don't listen to my podcast.
[00:07:14]  That's right.
[00:07:15]  And so, unlike this audience, they're hearing this for the second and third time, right?
[00:07:20]  And so, what's the opposite of being fragile?
[00:07:23]  Now, some people might say durable, tough.
[00:07:25]  No, there's another word that was created by an author by the name of Nassim Taleb, where he said there's something where there's a group, an organization that actually goes stronger the more you attack them.
[00:07:35]  And he coined the term anti-fragile.
[00:07:37]  He said, This is rare, but when an organization, a movement, a people, a group find themselves to have the mindset of being anti-fragile, there is nothing that can be thrown at them that will actually harm them.
[00:07:49]  It's actually a blessing.
[00:07:50]  It's a group of people that actually, they rejoice, as it says in Romans, in the suffering, in the persecution, or the stressors.
[00:07:58]  Now, when you think about it, this is the church at its best.
[00:08:02]  The church at its worst is a fragile institution.
[00:08:04]  The church at its worst is one that puts up the LGBT flag in June or the BLM flag to win approval of the world.
[00:08:11]  The church at its best is one that meets at 6 a.m. for a prayer meeting and then gets back together for Freedom Square that very night.
[00:08:21]  So what does it mean to be anti-fragile?
[00:08:23]  Two great examples.
[00:08:24]  The American revolutionaries and the people in Britain during the bombing campaign against the Nazis were anti-fragile.
[00:08:31]  The more they tried to throw at them, the more their resolve strengthened.
[00:08:35]  And the people in charge, the ruling class, Francis Collins who resigned, or Jon Stewart, who's saying, what is wrong with these people?
[00:08:41]  Why won't they go away?
[00:08:42]  They're starting to realize the 60, 70, 80 million faithful out there, the people that believe in God, the people that read their Bible, the people that love this country, that despite their best efforts of writing letters to the GOJ or getting the FBI involved, they're starting to get frustrated because we did the one thing that we as Christians are commanded not to do, which is engage in self-pity.
[00:09:04]  It's very tempting to all of a sudden want people to feel sorry for yourself.
[00:09:08]  Oh, they used Dominion machines.
[00:09:10]  They had ballots all over the place.
[00:09:12]  We weren't allowed to send the stories in the last election.

=== Courageous Future Stakes (02:43) ===

[00:09:16]  Let's just go home.
[00:09:17]  Instead, we did the opposite.
[00:09:19]  We're organizing, optimistic.
[00:09:21]  We're positive.
[00:09:22]  We're doing real things.
[00:09:23]  We're showing up in record numbers to the Scottsdale Unified School District, and we're doing something about what's actually happening in our local community.
[00:09:31]  And so I just want to say for tonight that the people in charge, they look at these gatherings and say, what's wrong with these people?
[00:09:38]  They say, why can't we get rid of them?
[00:09:41]  And here's the truth of it, is that we understand that we are now in a new era, a new chapter.
[00:09:47]  And that chapter is we understand the stakes of the game, that no matter what you throw at us, no matter how high the stakes are, we're going to keep on gathering, keep on praying, keep on fasting.
[00:09:57]  And we know that what we are up against is only going to be beat by the matter of the will.
[00:10:04]  And here's the question.
[00:10:05]  I'm going to ask you, this is the easiest question.
[00:10:07]  Who's going to win the future?
[00:10:09]  Jesus, that's right.
[00:10:11]  But who's going to win the future for the temporary kind of future of our wonderful nation that we're in?
[00:10:16]  As it says in Jeremiah 29, 7, the theme verse of our gathering, which is to demand the welfare, the peace of the nation that you are in because your welfare is tied to your nation's welfare.
[00:10:26]  Is it the side that gets offended when you use the wrong gender?
[00:10:31]  Or is it the side that's willing to get fired after 30 years at a job because they don't want to take a vaccine?
[00:10:37]  Which side is going to win?
[00:10:42]  I'm going to leave you with two final thoughts and then we'll bring Eric up and we'll have some fun, which is number one, which is there's some good things happening.
[00:10:50]  Delta Airlines and Southwest Airlines has now announced they are retracting the vaccine mandate.
[00:10:58]  Big deal.
[00:11:01]  And I know we're going to get a lot of questions here tonight.
[00:11:04]  I want to say we stand by you if you're being scheduled for termination.
[00:11:08]  You are the most courageous people in the world.
[00:11:10]  For those of you that listen to our podcast and radio show, I had to correct one of my friends, Jack Pasebic.
[00:11:16]  He said, oh, people aren't fighting.
[00:11:17]  That's not true.
[00:11:18]  I see people that are willing to give up everything right now.
[00:11:21]  It might not be on the nightly news.
[00:11:23]  It might not be what you see.
[00:11:24]  I see people say, you know what?
[00:11:26]  You could take my career away.
[00:11:27]  The head coach of the Washington State University football team, God bless this man.
[00:11:32]  Did you see this story?
[00:11:33]  Millions of dollars a year.
[00:11:35]  He said, you know what?
[00:11:36]  I don't care.
[00:11:37]  I'm not going to take the vaccine.
[00:11:38]  And this is not even about the vaccine.
[00:11:39]  It's about how you can force me to do something against my will.
[00:11:42]  And I'm telling you, everybody, that the tide is changing.
[00:11:46]  The sea is turning in our direction.
[00:11:48]  And it takes courage.
[00:11:49]  Takes boldness for us to do that.
[00:11:51]  As it says in Joshua 1-9, be strong and courageous.
[00:11:55]  Okay, one announcement.
[00:11:57]  I want to put it up on screen for something very special.

=== Spirit Filled Believer (03:52) ===

[00:11:59]  We'd love to have a strong Freedom Square presence at our upcoming event, America Fest, December 18, 19, 2021, at the Phoenix Convention Center.
[00:12:11]  And I wanted to show you some of the speakers that we have here.
[00:12:13]  Look at that.
[00:12:14]  We got Tucker Carlson coming, Kaylee McEnamy, Ted Cruz, Jesse Waters, Candace Owens, Jim Jordan, Donald Trump Jr., Madison Cawthorne, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and many others.
[00:12:24]  If you guys use promo code Freedom Square, okay, promo, I think that's what we had it right.
[00:12:30]  Promo code FreedomSquare at tpusa.com/slash AmericaFest.
[00:12:34]  It's right down the street at the Phoenix Convention Center.
[00:12:37]  We're going to be giving Dream City Church a free partnership and sponsorship for that because we want to continue to tell the people that are going to come to that.
[00:12:44]  Hey, there's a great church in the valley to go to.
[00:12:46]  So we are expecting anywhere between 10 to 15,000 people there and discounted tickets for everyone there at tpusa.com/slash AmericaFest.
[00:12:57]  One last housekeeping item.
[00:12:59]  When we are done with the program tonight, Eric will be signing books outside.
[00:13:04]  The books are for any, if you give a donation of any size outside of Turning Point USA, $1 or $100, you guys get a signed book from Eric Metaxas.
[00:13:12]  I also have felt bad that I always have to dash after these things.
[00:13:15]  I'm going to be outside to take pictures with you guys for a little while just to say hi after this because you guys have been so faithful and you've been taking this gathering so seriously.
[00:13:24]  And so we're going to be doing that after we're done here.
[00:13:28]  So I want to tell you about Eric Metaxas.
[00:13:30]  Eric Metaxas wrote one of the most important books, not this book, the book on Bonhoeffer, is one of the most important books I think published in the last 100 years.
[00:13:39]  It is the premier biography and the premier story of a man that stood for truth when it was difficult.
[00:13:46]  His book on miracles is phenomenal.
[00:13:48]  His recent autobiography, Fish Out of Water, is incredible.
[00:13:51]  I consider him a dear friend.
[00:13:53]  And this book, Is Atheism Dead, is one of the most thorough, one of the most detailed pieces of literature done on the idea of how ludicrous it is to believe in atheism.
[00:14:05]  It's good for children.
[00:14:06]  It's good for anyone struggling with your faith.
[00:14:08]  So please join me in welcoming an amazing friend of mine, Eric Metaxas, everybody.
[00:14:15]  What is this?
[00:14:16]  What is this?
[00:14:18]  Who are these people?
[00:14:19]  God bless you.
[00:14:21]  Wow.
[00:14:23]  Oh, God bless you.
[00:14:25]  Charlie, I was going to make a lot of nasty jokes about you, but then I realized you brought your wife.
[00:14:30]  I can't do that with her.
[00:14:31]  You see the pants, everybody?
[00:14:32]  What does he think?
[00:14:34]  I'm dressed, I was told to dress like Tony Curtis and some like it hot.
[00:14:38]  And that's.
[00:14:39]  He looks like he's going to the Kentucky Derby or something.
[00:14:42]  He doesn't like that.
[00:14:43]  It wouldn't kill you to put on a tie.
[00:14:46]  You know, I understand.
[00:14:47]  It's a big effort, though.
[00:14:48]  You're busy.
[00:14:49]  It's a big lift.
[00:14:50]  Is atheism dead, Eric Metaxas?
[00:14:52]  This chair, I'm not just shorter than you.
[00:14:54]  This chair is like 40 inches lower than your chair.
[00:14:57]  Have you noticed this?
[00:14:59]  It's a power dynamic.
[00:15:00]  There you go.
[00:15:02]  Thank you very much.
[00:15:03]  Thank you.
[00:15:04]  You've been a great audience.
[00:15:05]  Good night.
[00:15:07]  We're taking this on the road.
[00:15:09]  Eric, why'd you write this book?
[00:15:11]  Why?
[00:15:14]  At the beginning of COVID, I just got the idea for this book.
[00:15:19]  And it really breaks down this way.
[00:15:23]  I want to say I'm a spirit-filled believer.
[00:15:27]  I believe the Holy Spirit is alive today.
[00:15:33]  And I believe in Bigfoot.
[00:15:36]  And I believe he's going to come to faith before the week is.
[00:15:39]  No.
[00:15:39]  But I'm a spirit-filled believer.
[00:15:41]  And sometimes I don't blow smoke.
[00:15:44]  I don't say that the Lord said this, the Lord said that.
[00:15:47]  There have been times that the Lord has guided me clearly and directed me.

=== Science Meets Faith (03:57) ===

[00:15:52]  And with this book, it wasn't anything like an audible voice or wasn't anything mystical, but it seemed really clear to me right at the beginning of COVID that like the idea for the book came to me.
[00:16:03]  And it was framed around this.
[00:16:06]  I met two people, and it was because I had met these people that I thought I've got to write this book.
[00:16:12]  The two people I'm talking about, I met a guy, a scientist named James Tor.
[00:16:18]  He's probably the top nanoscientist on planet Earth, literally, right?
[00:16:24]  He's such a super genius.
[00:16:27]  And I met him through some friends at a church in Houston, and he starts talking to me about the concept of abiogenesis.
[00:16:36]  Now, does anybody here know what that means?
[00:16:39]  If you know what that means, get out, because I don't want to talk to people that know about this stuff, because then you may catch me in an error.
[00:16:46]  But what he talked about, this is kind of fascinating, right?
[00:16:50]  We all argue about evolution and we have these big conversations about that.
[00:16:55]  But you know what no one ever talks about, ever?
[00:16:59]  It's like, okay, if you say to a scientist, where did life come from?
[00:17:05]  They say, well, life appeared on planet Earth 4 billion years ago.
[00:17:09]  The simplest life is a single cell and it appeared, you know, in the prebiotic soup, it appeared 4 billion years ago, okay?
[00:17:18]  And then from that, it evolved into whatever.
[00:17:20]  And he said, well, forget about the evolution and stuff.
[00:17:21]  Let's forget about that.
[00:17:23]  You're telling me life appeared on planet Earth 4 billion years ago.
[00:17:27]  All scientists know this.
[00:17:31]  But if you ask them, how did that happen?
[00:17:37]  Crickets.
[00:17:40]  In 1952, there was a famous experiment, which it was probably like in your textbook in eighth grade or 11th grade.
[00:17:48]  You had to get this on the test.
[00:17:50]  And it said that Miller and Uri did an experiment at the University of Chicago, and they put some chemicals together that they said was probably on the early Earth from like 19, I'm sorry, in 1952, they did this, figuring out what was on the early Earth 4 billion years ago, and they ran some electricity through it, kind of like lightning, and they figured that might have been the thing that sparked life.
[00:18:11]  And when they did that, they got amino acids.
[00:18:15]  Now, you don't need to be a genius to understand that amino acids are light years away from like a cell, right?
[00:18:25]  It's like saying we got plastic.
[00:18:27]  So we're like, any day now, we'll figure out how to make a flat screen TV.
[00:18:30]  Look, plastic, look, look, look.
[00:18:33]  But they really were so excited about it that they declared, and the whole scientific community declared, we're on our way.
[00:18:41]  And it's only a matter of time before we get the next step and the next step and the next step and the next step.
[00:18:46]  Well, Jim Tour said to me, Eric, I know as much about this as anybody on the planet.
[00:18:53]  You can't fool me.
[00:18:54]  I'm like Mr. Nano scientist, okay?
[00:18:57]  He said, in 70 years, they have not moved the ball forward a millimeter.
[00:19:05]  They have no idea.
[00:19:07]  And think of the irony: the more science you know, the more you know that you know nothing.
[00:19:15]  In other words, the assumption is the more science you know, the more you figure stuff out.
[00:19:20]  But in this case, the more science progressed over 70 years, the more they understood we know nothing about how life came into being.
[00:19:32]  But if you ask somebody, they say, oh, no, no, no, we're working on it.
[00:19:35]  Yeah, you're working on it, and you'll be working on it for 70,000 years because you can't get.
[00:19:40]  The one thing that we know about a cell today is that a single cell, the simplest cell, is like infinitely complex.
[00:19:47]  In 1952, they didn't quite know that, right?

=== Debunking Atheism Claims (11:46) ===

[00:19:50]  So, when he told me this, I thought, no one ever talks about this.
[00:19:55]  Never.
[00:19:56]  Like, the most incredible thing.
[00:19:57]  Like, what wouldn't you think the basic science question would be like, hey, how did life appear on Earth?
[00:20:01]  Because you read any article today and they say, we found water on an exoplanet 40 billion light years away.
[00:20:09]  And if there's water any second, there's going to be life.
[00:20:12]  No, that's complete nonsense.
[00:20:16]  So I thought about that and I thought about all these other arguments for science that I happen to know, but I thought this one is really extraordinary.
[00:20:24]  And then I realized I met another guy in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
[00:20:27]  Skip Heitzig's church is there.
[00:20:29]  And he said, You got to meet this guy, an archaeologist, Stephen Collins.
[00:20:33]  He's discovered biblical sodom.
[00:20:36]  And I said, What?
[00:20:38]  What are you talking about?
[00:20:39]  I mean, I read the papers.
[00:20:40]  I never read about anybody discovering biblical sodom.
[00:20:43]  1700 BC, like they found this.
[00:20:46]  Now, without going on even longer, the bottom line is I looked into this and it is nothing less than astonishing.
[00:20:55]  It is open and shut.
[00:20:57]  He discovered biblical sodom.
[00:21:00]  This is something that happens in the first couple of pages of the Bible.
[00:21:05]  Okay.
[00:21:06]  And I thought, nobody knows about this.
[00:21:08]  This is one of the most extraordinary archaeological finds ever.
[00:21:12]  So at the beginning of COVID, I thought of these two people that I'd met and I thought about how nobody that I know, including intelligent Christians, has heard of either of these things.
[00:21:22]  So I said, I really need to write a book where I put that information in there because Christians need to know the details.
[00:21:29]  Like this is very exciting information, very exciting, open and shut.
[00:21:35]  But there's all this other information that, like the fine-tuned universe and other stuff.
[00:21:40]  And so I said, you know, I'm just going to put this all in a book.
[00:21:44]  And then at the end, I'll write about atheism.
[00:21:47]  And the reason I thought of the title is because in 1966, you'll remember Time Magazine had this famous cover article that said, Is God Dead?
[00:21:58]  Because everybody thought, well, science is proving God doesn't exist.
[00:22:01]  Well, the great irony is that all these years later, the real question is, is atheism dead?
[00:22:08]  Because science, not just what I refer to, but scientific evidence so dramatically points to the existence of God.
[00:22:16]  I said, every believer needs to know this information.
[00:22:20]  So that's the long answer to why I wrote the book.
[00:22:23]  If you prefer the short answer, I can give that later.
[00:22:26]  And Eric, you know, I visit college campuses a lot.
[00:22:29]  And I'd say in Vermont, half the room were probably atheists last night.
[00:22:34]  And it's fashionable.
[00:22:35]  So some people would say, Eric, there is no proof that there is a God.
[00:22:39]  Therefore, I'm an atheist.
[00:22:41]  You embarked on this book to show, hold on a second, it takes more faith to be an atheist than to be a Christian.
[00:22:50]  Okay, that is like the understatement of the millennium.
[00:22:53]  It takes, I mean, I've heard people say that Frank Turek has said that.
[00:22:57]  Trust me, once you read just what's in this book, I mean, there's way more, but it has become, to my mind, if you read just this, you realize that real atheism is preposterous.
[00:23:14]  And I don't just mean people who don't believe in God or idiots or they're wrong.
[00:23:17]  No, no, no.
[00:23:18]  50 years ago, it was tenable.
[00:23:20]  It was something you could say, I've come to the conclusion, whatever.
[00:23:24]  It could make sense.
[00:23:25]  It could be, we would say it's wrong.
[00:23:28]  But 50 years ago, you could say, all right, well, you're an atheist.
[00:23:34]  Today, based on this information, I would say it is not possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist.
[00:23:42]  If you want to be an agnostic, I will take my hat off to you.
[00:23:45]  That's one thing.
[00:23:46]  But to say that I know there's no God based on several things, I simply don't think it's possible.
[00:23:53]  And I think people are going to get angry.
[00:23:55]  And a guy called up, I had the honor of guest hosting Charlie's radio show today because he sleeps late.
[00:24:03]  And hey, he's young.
[00:24:06]  He'll learn.
[00:24:07]  He'll learn.
[00:24:08]  And no, but seriously, he let me guest host the show.
[00:24:10]  And so a guy called up, I did Collins, and he said, I'm an atheist, whatever.
[00:24:16]  And he said, you don't give any hard evidence of God.
[00:24:21]  And I said, this is what happens, I think, when you talk to atheists.
[00:24:25]  They don't really even understand.
[00:24:27]  I'm not trying to be mean, but when you say hard evidence, that's exactly what is in this book.
[00:24:32]  When you talk about the fine-tuned universe, it's kind of like saying to somebody, Proven Adam exists.
[00:24:36]  And you say, well, what do you mean, proven Adam exists?
[00:24:38]  They go, I want hard evidence.
[00:24:39]  Don't just give me theory.
[00:24:41]  And you'd be like, well, we really can't see Adams.
[00:24:44]  They tend to be kind of small.
[00:24:46]  And theory is the only way we can, you know.
[00:24:49]  So when you start talking about this stuff, I think what we find is that people who want to know the truth can have a conversation and can look at it.
[00:24:58]  But they're always going to be people to them, it is like a sports team.
[00:25:03]  They say, I'm an atheist.
[00:25:05]  And no matter what you say, they're just going to make fun of you.
[00:25:08]  I think.
[00:25:08]  So, Eric, in writing this book, and I've learned a lot by just skimming through it so far.
[00:25:13]  What was something you learned in researching this book?
[00:25:15]  Because you're a lifelong Christian.
[00:25:17]  You have an amazing testimony.
[00:25:18]  But what did you learn all of a sudden diving into this that just kind of in a spark notes version that you think most Christians should also know?
[00:25:26]  Yeah.
[00:25:27]  Well, this is true.
[00:25:30]  When I write almost all my books, I learned something.
[00:25:33]  In other words, I'm not like a lifelong scholar that just decides to take my great knowledge and put it in a book.
[00:25:38]  Trust me, I'm not.
[00:25:40]  I get interested in a subject.
[00:25:41]  I know just enough to begin, but I always learn stuff that I'm kind of shocked at.
[00:25:46]  In this book, I learned many things that completely shocked me.
[00:25:53]  The most astonishing, this is like so ridiculous.
[00:25:57]  Well, there's two things.
[00:25:59]  I'll give you the simple one first.
[00:26:01]  Some of you know, if I said to you, who are the most famous atheists of the 20th century?
[00:26:06]  And I don't mean Madeline Murray O'Hare, I don't mean like angry screwballs, okay?
[00:26:12]  No offense.
[00:26:14]  But I mean, I'm talking about like intellectually rigorous atheists.
[00:26:20]  You'd have to say Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, okay?
[00:26:25]  The frogs, the frogs.
[00:26:26]  They're always atheists.
[00:26:27]  Can I say frogs?
[00:26:29]  Frogs.
[00:26:30]  That was a joke, really.
[00:26:31]  That was just me.
[00:26:32]  That was trying to trigger a few people of French extraction here.
[00:26:37]  But in all seriousness, these were great minds and they believed that there was no God.
[00:26:44]  They took atheism very seriously.
[00:26:47]  They weren't flippant.
[00:26:49]  When you look at Christopher Hitchens, you look at Dawkins, they're tremendously flippant.
[00:26:54]  They're intellectually dishonest.
[00:26:56]  It really is ultimately offensive.
[00:26:59]  When I read their stuff, I thought, this is ridiculous.
[00:27:01]  Like nobody should take them seriously.
[00:27:03]  They just wanted to sell books.
[00:27:05]  But I was reading about Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, both of whom they didn't agree on everything, but they were French existentialists who believed we're living in a world without God.
[00:27:18]  And we have to figure out how we can create a morality without God.
[00:27:22]  And basically, it's impossible.
[00:27:23]  But they were really struggling.
[00:27:27]  Both of those men, one in 1960 and the other in 1980, came to faith in God.
[00:27:35]  Now, let me tell you, when I read that, sometimes I discover something.
[00:27:38]  I think this can't be right.
[00:27:40]  Like, this can't be right.
[00:27:41]  And I never heard it either on the show.
[00:27:42]  Eric said it.
[00:27:43]  What did I do?
[00:27:44]  You looked it up.
[00:27:45]  You turned right to the page almost miraculously.
[00:27:48]  But there may be some Baptists that don't believe in the Holy Spirit.
[00:27:51]  You don't want to lose them.
[00:27:52]  You don't want to lose these people.
[00:27:54]  They could be cessationists in the room.
[00:27:56]  They could be here.
[00:27:59]  And I opened up to the page again.
[00:28:01]  Open right to the page.
[00:28:01]  But the reason I say this is that this is kind of my larger thesis of my life, and it's the thesis of the book.
[00:28:08]  We live in a world.
[00:28:09]  You know this.
[00:28:10]  It's true politically.
[00:28:11]  It's true with theology.
[00:28:14]  Most people in the secular media, in the academy, all over, they're pushing a narrative that is basically not true.
[00:28:26]  And so you discover these things and you think, how is it possible?
[00:28:29]  I went to a good college.
[00:28:31]  I read a lot of books.
[00:28:32]  I never heard this.
[00:28:34]  This is big news.
[00:28:35]  If the two biggest atheists of the 20th century came to faith.
[00:28:39]  And so I said, I'm going to put it in the book and it's going to blow people's minds.
[00:28:44]  The other thing that I learned, this is so weird, I almost don't want to bring it up because people are going to, I don't have time to explain it.
[00:28:51]  But when I was writing about biblical Sodom, the details are astonishing, like they're astonishing.
[00:28:58]  So I said, I want to write about other famous biblical archaeological finds.
[00:29:03]  So I started to do my research.
[00:29:05]  I was familiar with some of them.
[00:29:06]  I've read about this over the years, but there were a few that I hadn't, and I learned about them.
[00:29:10]  Some of them are really funny stories.
[00:29:12]  And I think it's important for us to communicate in a way that's appealing and to tell the stories of how these things were discovered is some of them are hilarious stories.
[00:29:21]  So if you just read like the paragraph on why it's important, it's boring and you won't remember it, but they're crazy stories.
[00:29:26]  But so I'm doing kind of general research.
[00:29:29]  And this is what?
[00:29:30]  A year ago, I stumble on something and I said, this has to be, this can't be right.
[00:29:36]  This cannot be right.
[00:29:39]  In Nazareth, they discovered a gigantic church that had been destroyed by the Muslims in the 8th century, built over another church that had been built maybe in the 4th century.
[00:29:58]  And under that was a first century dwelling.
[00:30:04]  And it seems without a doubt, because I've looked into this to be the home of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
[00:30:14]  Now, when I read that, I thought this is not possible.
[00:30:17]  This is like discovering, you know, Santa's workshop at the North Pole.
[00:30:20]  Like, I don't know.
[00:30:23]  But I say this because I really looked into it.
[00:30:28]  And that and other things, you know, I look into them carefully.
[00:30:32]  I believe that things right now are so dark in this country that God is revealing these things for this time.
[00:30:44]  He's blowing people's minds.
[00:30:46]  It's like he said, okay, when you get really, really sophisticated and full of yourselves, when you know more science than you think you're God, I'm going to allow you to use that science to discover me.
[00:31:01]  And it's going to blow your mind.
[00:31:03]  And that's exactly what I believe is happening with archaeology and with science and with discovering this stuff about Albert Camus and all this stuff.
[00:31:12]  God is giving it to us to give us real hope in our time.
[00:31:17]  In the book, it goes through scientific proofs that there is God.
[00:31:22]  Let's talk societally, Eric.
[00:31:24]  How does atheism make the world a worse place to live?
[00:31:28]  I mean, so we talk about the verse of which has really inspired this gathering that we've been doing for a couple of months now, Jeremiah 29, 7.

=== Scientific Proofs of God (14:16) ===

[00:31:36]  Demand the welfare of the nation and the city of which I've sent you in because your welfare is tied to the nation's welfare.
[00:31:42]  What does atheism do to a country?
[00:31:43]  What does it do to a people?
[00:31:45]  Yeah, it's actually funny because I've been struggling for days to write an op-ed that answers this question.
[00:31:51]  I'm really bad at writing op-eds.
[00:31:56]  Part of what I write about at the end of the book, I say, okay, let's look at the record of atheism, right?
[00:32:01]  There is no question.
[00:32:03]  I wrote a book called If You Can Keep It, where I show what I only learned recently, right?
[00:32:08]  That there is zero question that faith and virtue are central to self-government and liberty.
[00:32:19]  So, you know, if you want to be a libertarian or whatever you want to be, all I'm telling you is that every single one of the founders knew that without a virtuous population, generally speaking, you cannot have self-government.
[00:32:36]  And they knew that practically speaking, you cannot have a sufficiently virtuous population unless there is faith.
[00:32:44]  They knew that.
[00:32:45]  Now, you can know that like a sociologist.
[00:32:47]  You don't need to believe in the faith.
[00:32:48]  Franklin's theology was a little screwy, and Jefferson's theology was a little screwy.
[00:32:54]  Nonetheless, they both knew that without a religious and moral populace, and they all mentioned this, it's not just the famous Adams quote, you cannot have self-government.
[00:33:04]  People govern themselves and they're free.
[00:33:07]  And they don't need somebody to govern them with a gun.
[00:33:09]  You don't need a bureaucracy, a deep state, a tyrant.
[00:33:13]  You govern yourself.
[00:33:15]  Well, the opposite of that, of course, is that when you find states that they don't believe in freedom, what is the first thing that they want to crush, that they must crush, that they find more threatening than anything?
[00:33:29]  And that is people of faith.
[00:33:31]  Because people of faith are, and I'll coin this term, you can use it, anti-fragile.
[00:33:38]  I just coined that term tonight and I said, Charlie, go ahead and use it.
[00:33:42]  I don't care.
[00:33:42]  Where'd you get that from, Eric?
[00:33:44]  What Ronald Reagan said, if you don't care, you know, who gets credit, you can accomplish a lot.
[00:33:49]  So if you want to take that term anti-fragile, you go ahead.
[00:33:52]  Hey, hey, Eric, is atheism dead?
[00:33:55]  So, well, the answer to that is yes and no, right?
[00:33:59]  Because that's the issue is that I would say practically speaking, based on just the evidence in the book, and it's not like there's anything magical about the book, but I've just kind of amassed some scientific stuff that I think it's going to blow your mind.
[00:34:12]  You're going to say, wow, I'm really glad I know this.
[00:34:17]  I think based on that and based on my discussion of atheism at the end and what atheism tends to, because you said what happens in a culture, what happens always happens the same.
[00:34:29]  An atheist does not ultimately believe in anything.
[00:34:34]  They don't believe in meaning.
[00:34:36]  Now, if you talk to an atheist, they pretend that they argue about that.
[00:34:40]  Sam Harris and the others, they try to concoct some way.
[00:34:42]  It's nonsense.
[00:34:43]  If there is no God, there's no good, there's no evil, there's no transcendence, there's no love, there's no good.
[00:34:48]  Therefore, there's only power.
[00:34:50]  And therefore, you are not a special creature creating God's image who the government should protect.
[00:34:57]  You're nothing.
[00:34:58]  You're nothing.
[00:35:00]  And so if I can crush you or murder you for the good of the state or for the good of me and my party, why shouldn't I do it?
[00:35:10]  Now, unfortunately, that is a simple truth.
[00:35:13]  And atheists never deal with that.
[00:35:15]  So I deal with that in the book because I said, look, you can say all you want, but you've got to deal with your history.
[00:35:21]  Atheist regimes have been unspeakably brutal, unspeakably brutal, and that's just history.
[00:35:29]  But the question whether atheism is dead, so I would say intellectually it is, but there are going to be people who have this tribal affinity who say, I'm an atheist.
[00:35:41]  And, you know.
[00:35:42]  Let's talk about just not the, there's an even worse part of this, which is trying to become God yourself.
[00:35:50]  And we've seen this in the last 18 months.
[00:35:52]  The best example of this is Mr. Fauci, who should be in jail, by the way.
[00:35:58]  He should be put in prison for what he's done to our country.
[00:36:01]  And Eric, when you don't believe in God, is there a tendency to then want to become God?
[00:36:10]  There's no doubt about it.
[00:36:11]  That's the whole point, right?
[00:36:12]  Is that if you look, you can go to the first pages, the first chapters of Genesis.
[00:36:19]  And of course, you know this.
[00:36:22]  What is the first temptation?
[00:36:24]  This is as basic as it gets.
[00:36:27]  Human nature.
[00:36:29]  We either submit to worship the God who invented the universe.
[00:36:34]  And by the way, even in reading this book, you'll be in awe.
[00:36:38]  Like we think, wow, God's amazing.
[00:36:40]  When you understand a fraction of what he did in creating this world, it is so astonishing.
[00:36:49]  It's so breathtaking.
[00:36:50]  It's almost frightening when you realize who he is and what he did in creating this world.
[00:36:55]  And so we have a choice either to submit to reality and worship him or to do exactly what Satan did and say, no, thank you.
[00:37:05]  I would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.
[00:37:09]  And even if you don't do that explicitly, on some level, you're doing it.
[00:37:13]  And so that's exactly what the serpent says in Eden.
[00:37:17]  He says, you will be as gods.
[00:37:19]  It's always the temptation.
[00:37:21]  And it's actually very sad because no matter what happens, we will never be as gods.
[00:37:27]  There's only one God.
[00:37:28]  But the irony is, if we submit to God, we do become like God, don't we?
[00:37:37]  We become more and more like him, and we will become more and more like him in eternity.
[00:37:43]  So this is the great irony.
[00:37:45]  Satan says, here's the cheap plastic neon, you know, juke joint version.
[00:37:53]  How would you like to have a good time?
[00:37:55]  And God says, how would you like to have eternal joy?
[00:37:59]  That's ultimately the choice.
[00:38:02]  And somebody who says, I want to be God, I want to use technology or power or transhumanism.
[00:38:08]  I mean, look, we know that anybody who doesn't believe in the biblical order believes everything's malleable.
[00:38:14]  Okay.
[00:38:14]  They think that a frog can evolve into a giraffe, which can evolve into a whale, and you can evolve into a raccoon or a monkey.
[00:38:25]  And it's all malleable, right?
[00:38:27]  Therefore, therefore, it only follows that we can manage our own evolution upward into something godlike.
[00:38:39]  And that's what transhumanism is.
[00:38:42]  They think there's no reason I shouldn't live forever.
[00:38:44]  There's no reason I shouldn't be able to destroy disease.
[00:38:47]  So a lot of them actually believe this.
[00:38:50]  And I think they're going to be in for a rough lifetime.
[00:38:52]  So one of the reasons why some people say they become atheists is the biggest challenge Christians have in evangelism, which is the pain problem.
[00:39:03]  How do you explain pain away in the world?
[00:39:06]  Natural disasters, famine, starvation.
[00:39:09]  Do you get into that in the book and you talk about that?
[00:39:11]  Because that's a tactic that's used by Dawkins and Hitchens.
[00:39:14]  I don't.
[00:39:15]  And the reason I don't, I actually took a strange tack in this book.
[00:39:18]  I said to myself, why do I need to get into that stuff?
[00:39:20]  Like, all I'm trying to explain is that atheism is utterly impossible.
[00:39:25]  Okay.
[00:39:26]  It's like multiplying by zero.
[00:39:27]  Let me explain it to you.
[00:39:28]  You get it?
[00:39:29]  I'm done.
[00:39:30]  I don't need to get into that.
[00:39:32]  In other words, I think sometimes we allow ourselves to get all tangled up and we're effectively casting pearls before swine, having an argument with some atheist who isn't really interested in the truth.
[00:39:43]  They just want to have an argument.
[00:39:45]  The pain problem, let me answer that really simply.
[00:39:48]  It's called a mystery.
[00:39:50]  There are a lot of foolish evangelical questions who think I can just pull some index cards out of my pocket and I've got the answers to all these things.
[00:39:57]  Anybody who has an easy answer to pain and suffering and death and evil is foolish.
[00:40:05]  We understand that part of that is not something we can understand on this side of the veil.
[00:40:11]  We should be honest about that.
[00:40:13]  It doesn't mean we have nothing to say.
[00:40:15]  I mean, I've written about this in other books, but in this book, I didn't get into that just because I thought I am not playing the game of I'm going to prove God.
[00:40:27]  I'm just going to put some things in a book that are going to make it obvious that there is literally zero chance that the world and the universe and you and me arose randomly.
[00:40:38]  There is zero question that some intelligent creator made us.
[00:40:44]  And when you look at atheism, it is incontrovertible that it is preposterous on a number of levels.
[00:40:53]  And that's, I set a low bar for myself in writing this book.
[00:40:56]  The question is: is atheism dead?
[00:40:59]  I didn't say, can I convince everybody that God exists?
[00:41:02]  So I want to get to some questions here in a minute.
[00:41:04]  But, Eric, unfortunately, America is becoming less religious and more people are identifying with this viewpoint.
[00:41:11]  Is there something attractive of wanting to believe that there is no God?
[00:41:15]  Does it give people a license to do it?
[00:41:17]  Well, of course.
[00:41:17]  But this is what's so funny: you have people like Hitchens and Dawkins.
[00:41:21]  And honestly, I lost any modicum of respect I had for them.
[00:41:24]  When you start reading, it's kind of like when Freud wrote Moses and monotheism.
[00:41:29]  You know, you have these people that they've got their field that they're really brilliant in, and then they decide, like, hey, I'm a genius.
[00:41:35]  I'll write about something else.
[00:41:37]  And they show that they're foolish in that field.
[00:41:40]  When Dawkins and Hitchens write about this stuff, a fourth grader could refute it.
[00:41:46]  They're just very clever and very nasty in debate.
[00:41:51]  But honestly, they don't have much of a point.
[00:41:55]  And I think what they do is they appeal to the reason I bring them up is because you get the impression.
[00:42:01]  There's a quote in the book from Hitchens.
[00:42:04]  I mean, the irony of this is like you want to horse laugh, like it's so crazy.
[00:42:09]  He says, he finds the idea of a God watching every move I make just offensive, right?
[00:42:16]  And you think to yourself, okay, so like you're really in love with the idea of being free, so there's no God watching you.
[00:42:22]  But in every atheist state in the world, you have all the technology available.
[00:42:28]  Thank you, Google and other people, watching people and every Move they make.
[00:42:34]  So, like, where's the utopia?
[00:42:35]  Where's the atheist utopia?
[00:42:37]  Your atheist utopia ends in something infinitely worse than whatever you imagine.
[00:42:43]  This mean policeman god watching you is is doing, but they do present it as though hey, there's no god, i'm free.
[00:42:51]  Anyone like Sart, Camus and others.
[00:42:54]  I mentioned the poet Dylan Thomas, I mentioned Woody Allen, I mentioned Inmar Brickman.
[00:42:58]  There are people who don't believe there's a god, but you can see that they are troubled by it.
[00:43:04]  In other words, they've really looked at it.
[00:43:06]  Anybody who kicks up his heels and says hey, there's no god, so I can party and can sleep with my grad student awesome, like nobody.
[00:43:13]  You know, that is so shallow and childish, it's self-refuting, and so I honestly think the atheist movement is filled with those kind of people.
[00:43:22]  They're kind of angry, uh.
[00:43:24]  They want some kind of an identity.
[00:43:26]  They think that you know we're moralists uh, and and I think we, we just have to be honest that in America you can, you can be that way, but don't expect me to respect your philosophy.
[00:43:37]  And I I want to just say for the young people out there and the people you know the, the parents that have students that are going to be going to college soon.
[00:43:45]  On some college campuses not all of them the Atheists evangelize with more fervor than Christians do on those campuses.
[00:43:52]  And so Eric, what do you think the reason for that is?
[00:43:55]  It seems that atheists are not comfortable being alone, and this is always.
[00:44:00]  I've always tried to challenge them.
[00:44:01]  I say, if there's no, if you don't believe in an eternal life or a creator, you only got so much time left, like you, better live it up, right.
[00:44:09]  What are you doing?
[00:44:09]  Trying to convince people for that?
[00:44:11]  By the way, just a reminder, I got a couple of these.
[00:44:13]  You could steal these Eric, because you don't.
[00:44:14]  You're big on that, right?
[00:44:16]  Um is, without god, there would be no atheists.
[00:44:20]  Remember that.
[00:44:21]  So, and you got to think about that for a second without god, there would be no atheists.
[00:44:25]  I'm pretty sure that's Cs Lewis or Chesterton.
[00:44:27]  That's Chesterton.
[00:44:28]  You can't fool me, go ahead, it's.
[00:44:31]  It was actually my UBER driver, Eric.
[00:44:33]  Okay, that's so I.
[00:44:37]  I watched the video where you got that from the guy who gets his joke from the UBER driver.
[00:44:42]  That was Chris.
[00:44:42]  That was the the, the guy who just passed away, you know.
[00:44:46]  You know, i'm talking about Norm Mcdonald.
[00:44:48]  Oh yeah yeah, from Snow, he told a story.
[00:44:51]  Okay, never mind, let's continue.
[00:44:53]  Um, i'm looking up the chapter.
[00:44:55]  That answers the question you're asking me, but keep going.
[00:44:59]  The most important question when it comes to dealing with an atheist and we all know we all have atheists in our lives which is, do you hope you're wrong?
[00:45:05]  It's the most important question yeah, which is, if you ask someone who believes in atheism, do you hope you're wrong?
[00:45:11]  Because if you're dealing with an honest person, no atheist actually hopes to believe in nothing.
[00:45:18]  You, you actually want to believe.
[00:45:19]  There is no love, there is no justice, there is no eternal life, and so if an atheist says, you know what I do hope i'm wrong, then you're dealing with an honest broker.
[00:45:28]  But if someone says, you know what, I want to be right more than what could possibly be good, then that that right.
[00:45:34]  There is a completely different conversation that you're having at a very fundamental level.
[00:45:38]  Even every single atheist should want to be proven wrong, every single.
[00:45:43]  I don't know where I I heard that, but I know it's not original with you um, but seriously no, but the point is that that's exactly true.

=== Secular Society Risks (16:02) ===

[00:45:52]  But the other thing and you just asked me this question and I want to answer this it's in the book.
[00:45:56]  I couldn't find it, but if you believe there's no god okay, it follows logically, and this is the problem.
[00:46:05]  People don't want to deal with this.
[00:46:06]  They just want to say there's no god and I can do what I want.
[00:46:09]  No no, no.
[00:46:10]  If there is no god, there is absolutely no measure of good or evil.
[00:46:18]  There's literally no meaning in the universe.
[00:46:20]  Yes you, your life is no different than the life of a gnat, And if that's true, that life is utterly meaningless.
[00:46:31]  The bleakness of that is numbing if you can face it, which most of them don't even begin to face it.
[00:46:37]  But if you believed it, why would you spend a minute trying to convince someone else that it's true?
[00:46:46]  We are all just like candle flames.
[00:46:48]  We're going to go out in a moment.
[00:46:50]  Who cares about anything?
[00:46:52]  Why do you feel compulsion to share what you think is true with strangers?
[00:46:57]  It makes no sense that an atheist would be evangelistic for atheism.
[00:47:02]  It makes absolutely no sense.
[00:47:03]  It's self-refuting.
[00:47:05]  Kind of proves that for them, it's just like, you know, it's their sports team.
[00:47:08]  They want to get you on their team.
[00:47:10]  They want you to, you know, to join their club, basically.
[00:47:14]  And I believe a lot of the issues young people are facing right now can be attributed to the hypersecular, atheistic type temptation that's out there.
[00:47:23]  And when you believe there's no reason for existence, you don't believe there's no God, there will be other kind of troubles that go alongside with that.
[00:47:30]  Let's get a couple lines for questions and let's give it up for Eric, by the way.
[00:47:34]  He's done such a great job with this book.
[00:47:36]  Thank you.
[00:47:40]  And students get priority, as always.
[00:47:43]  And we're going to go for 20 minutes, 25, because then we're going to be keeping Eric up.
[00:47:48]  I'm happy to do this as long as I can remain conscious.
[00:47:52]  And I do want to say, if you don't mind, I only will take questions from people who've been vaccinated.
[00:47:57]  Yeah.
[00:48:00]  Yeah.
[00:48:01]  Yeah, please.
[00:48:02]  Please.
[00:48:04]  Okay, I'm thinking about the children.
[00:48:06]  I want us all to be vaccinated, if you don't mind, yeah.
[00:48:10]  And I prefer true or false questions also.
[00:48:14]  Want to keep it moving, you know?
[00:48:16]  All right, we'll start over here.
[00:48:18]  Yeah.
[00:48:21]  Hi.
[00:48:22]  So for a long time, there's been this thought that religion and politics should be separate.
[00:48:28]  And we have operated under the assumption as a society that we should strive to have a pluralistic, can't say that word, political sphere, which has gradually just served to push Christianity out and move secular humanism in instead.
[00:48:44]  So do you see pluralism starting to crumble under its own weight?
[00:48:48]  And what should we as Christians do about that?
[00:48:52]  I'm sorry, could you repeat that?
[00:48:56]  That one, I write about that in my book, If You Can Keep It.
[00:49:00]  And I literally answered that question in a speech 24 hours ago in Wichita, Kansas.
[00:49:08]  So he was in Burlington.
[00:49:09]  I was in Wichita.
[00:49:10]  And that's the Wichita group.
[00:49:16]  But it's simple.
[00:49:19]  The founders knew that faith was central to everything we believe in.
[00:49:27]  There's no way around that.
[00:49:29]  But they also knew that for many reasons, faith must be free.
[00:49:34]  It cannot be coerced.
[00:49:36]  So the government cannot establish a religion.
[00:49:39]  Now, they were thinking it's going to be Congregationalism or the Church of England or Baptist or whatever.
[00:49:45]  But the basic concept is true.
[00:49:48]  This is why those of us who have faith need to exercise our faith like crazy.
[00:49:56]  We need to live out our faith in every single sphere of existence.
[00:50:01]  When somebody tells you, shut up about that, you say, excuse me, I'm an American.
[00:50:06]  And in America, I can be a Satanist.
[00:50:09]  I can be an atheist.
[00:50:10]  I can be a Christian.
[00:50:11]  I can be anything I want.
[00:50:13]  And not just on Sunday mornings, but 24-7, I can live it out in every place that I go.
[00:50:23]  And the idea that that's going to make people who aren't Christians feel marginalized is garbage.
[00:50:28]  That's absolute nonsense.
[00:50:30]  It's like, you know, if I believe in quantum physics, I'm going to be triggering people who don't believe in quantum physics.
[00:50:36]  We can play that game all day long.
[00:50:38]  People are playing a game when they say that.
[00:50:41]  The Constitution is clear.
[00:50:43]  Our history is clear.
[00:50:45]  If people are like, you know, beating up Jews in the streets, I would be the first one as a Christian to say we shouldn't do that.
[00:50:54]  But when people bring that up, it's complete nonsense.
[00:50:56]  I mean, I think we really have to push back against that.
[00:50:59]  So thank you.
[00:51:00]  Yeah, and I'll just add to that slightly, which is the problem is that we as Christians, we've abdicated our role as counselor to the king.
[00:51:09]  And so we have allowed secular humanism to fill the void of where the church always should be.
[00:51:15]  And so, you know, all throughout the Old Testament, Esther, Nehemiah, Mordecai, Jeremiah, Joseph, and many others, Daniel, were counselors to secular government for God's purpose.
[00:51:27]  So pluralism, or a government that acknowledges the laws of nature and nature is God, that acknowledges the blessings of liberty to secure the blessings of liberty, but does not have people that actually believe in blessings or liberty, then it will fold upon itself.
[00:51:43]  And this goes to show because too many churches, not this church, which is a phenomenal church and is an exception to the rule, obviously, and have just decided to kind of not play in that arena.
[00:51:56]  And John Adams said it best where he said the Constitution was written solely for a moral and religious people.
[00:52:02]  It's wholly inadequate for the people of any other.
[00:52:04]  And this kind of goes to kind of one of the things Eric and I were talking about, which around atheism, which is the more secular society becomes, the less free it becomes.
[00:52:14]  And I'm going to cite this one.
[00:52:16]  This comes from Dennis Prager.
[00:52:17]  You're welcome, Eric.
[00:52:19]  Thanks.
[00:52:20]  Which is, unless you're Plato, you're stealing from somebody at all times, right?
[00:52:25]  Plato or Moses or Paul is religion makes America a better place.
[00:52:32]  Any country that you go in that's more religious is better, and I'll prove it to you.
[00:52:37]  And if anyone has a different answer to this question, they're lying.
[00:52:40]  And I don't say that lightly, which is if you go, if you're in a dark alley in New York City at 2 o'clock in the morning and five men are approaching you and you have a choice, those five men either came from Bible study or from the bar, which would you choose?
[00:52:54]  Every American would choose Bible study.
[00:52:57]  Even the atheist would choose Bible study.
[00:53:01]  And if they say the bar, they're lying.
[00:53:03]  Actually, they would.
[00:53:04]  They are lying.
[00:53:04]  Because they know deep down, those five people were actually reading the Bible.
[00:53:08]  They'd be far less likely to do something they should not do.
[00:53:13]  And so, look, it's very simple.
[00:53:15]  Atheism, if a society becomes atheistic, the government gets bigger.
[00:53:19]  Every single country, this is the case.
[00:53:22]  When you destroy the church, the government gets bigger and freedom and liberty goes away because liberty and freedom is impossible for a citizenry that does not have virtue and does not have faith as a center.
[00:53:32]  Eric said that exact same thing.
[00:53:34]  And I'll just say this a little bit differently, which for young people out there, this might resonate even more.
[00:53:41]  You'll live in a generation that is less happy and that is a more dangerous society and is a less pleasant place to live.
[00:53:51]  That religion makes us more decent to one another and atheism makes us less trustful of one another.
[00:53:57]  It makes private charity go away.
[00:53:59]  The idea of sacrificing for your neighbor.
[00:54:01]  And so happy to go through that.
[00:54:03]  But the reason why a lot of people are saying, well, pluralism might be a mistake is because pluralism can only work if Christians take their rightful role in impacting that pluralistic secular government.
[00:54:15]  So thanks for being here tonight.
[00:54:17]  And so to say that Christians have a profound obligation to live out our faith in every sphere.
[00:54:26]  And if you don't do that, we will be filled with bad secular ideas, just as Charlie said.
[00:54:33]  And it is shame on the church that we bought the lie that we're not supposed to be involved in politics.
[00:54:38]  That is preposterous.
[00:54:39]  William Wilberforce was a politician who abolished the slave trade because of his Christian faith.
[00:54:45]  Now, do we think that the blacks in the holes of those slave ships wished that he had kept his politics or his religion out of politics?
[00:54:53]  We all know it's preposterous.
[00:54:54]  Live out your faith.
[00:54:57]  That's the coolest outfit I've seen, Eric.
[00:55:00]  I know.
[00:55:02]  Hello there.
[00:55:04]  Hi, I'm Tyrrell Che.
[00:55:06]  I am seven years old.
[00:55:08]  I am in second grade.
[00:55:11]  I just saw Hamilton.
[00:55:13]  I just saw Hamilton.
[00:55:15]  I wanted to know who your favorite founding father was.
[00:55:19]  I wanted to know who your favorite character was.
[00:55:22]  In what?
[00:55:23]  I didn't hear that.
[00:55:24]  Hamilton.
[00:55:26]  In Hamilton.
[00:55:27]  Yeah.
[00:55:28]  King George III.
[00:55:33]  I'm a sucker for gay stereotypes.
[00:55:38]  My favorite character in Hamilton?
[00:55:41]  Aaron Burr was fine.
[00:55:43]  Hamilton was obviously great.
[00:55:45]  I actually, I just know the story of Hamilton.
[00:55:47]  I've actually never seen the play.
[00:55:48]  I know that.
[00:55:48]  And also Wench number two.
[00:55:51]  Huh?
[00:55:52]  I just, she was really a standout.
[00:55:56]  He said something he shouldn't have said.
[00:55:58]  Okay, next question.
[00:56:02]  First of all, Eric, I really enjoyed your biography on Diedrich Bonhoeffer.
[00:56:06]  It was brilliantly written.
[00:56:07]  But my question to both of you guys, it stems from the unfortunate reality that both of my parents are either agnostic or atheist.
[00:56:14]  They're the type of atheists that Charlie was mentioning, the ones that hope they're wrong.
[00:56:17]  They do love the fact that I have my faith, but they're really well versed.
[00:56:22]  They've studied the Quran, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, et cetera, every religious text out there.
[00:56:28]  And the only reason why they have no faith is that, or they don't have a religion or a relationship with Christ is that they have no faith.
[00:56:35]  So my question to you guys is, how would you approach a conversation about religion to people who want faith, but just don't know how to get it?
[00:56:45]  This is a great question.
[00:56:46]  I'm sure a lot of people in this room, this might resonate with you, right?
[00:56:49]  And so I'll give my take and then Eric, you can go to yours.
[00:56:52]  You have to know the type of atheist you're dealing with, and you're already kind of on that path.
[00:56:56]  Some atheists will be convinced by Eric's scientific reason-based arguments.
[00:57:01]  They want to try to see the argument for the unmoved mover or the fine-tuning argument or for how in the beginning was the big bang, therefore there must be someone who actually executed the big bang.
[00:57:13]  These are rather reasonable arguments that I think are rather convincing, but not every atheist is convinced of that.
[00:57:19]  Other atheists, though, and you have to know kind of what you're dealing with, they are atheists because they've been hardened by the world.
[00:57:25]  This is very important.
[00:57:27]  And facts, logic, apologetics, reason, science, that's not going to move them.
[00:57:32]  Instead, they need a transformation and they need either prayer, experience.
[00:57:36]  They need to be brought to church to see something that is beyond just reasonable type arguments.
[00:57:42]  Now, for me, I'm more in the direction where I want to know the teleological answer for existence.
[00:57:48]  And I'm moved by the more apologetics type perspective.
[00:57:51]  But Christianity is so much more than that.
[00:57:55]  We are given reason as a gift, as it says in Isaiah 1, let us reason together by God to make sense of the natural world.
[00:58:03]  But the reason we have faith in Jesus Christ is not solely based on that.
[00:58:07]  It's faith and it's experience.
[00:58:10]  We have a renewing of our mind, it says in the New Testament in the scriptures.
[00:58:14]  And I could say that I have seen people that say, no matter what you say, Charlie, I'm not going to give my life to Christ.
[00:58:20]  I don't believe in God.
[00:58:21]  And for whatever reason, God plans a collision course in their life.
[00:58:25]  And the best thing you can do, in my personal opinion, is tell them, keep your eyes open for God every single day.
[00:58:34]  You'll start to see him.
[00:58:38]  That's a perfect answer.
[00:58:39]  It's exactly what I would have hoped to say.
[00:58:42]  The only thing I would add to it is that I think sometimes Christians can be too cerebral.
[00:58:48]  And this book is cerebral.
[00:58:51]  But I will tell you: prayer is real.
[00:58:55]  And you need to know that prayer is real.
[00:58:59]  Don't hope that it's real.
[00:59:02]  Hoping that prayer is real is stupid.
[00:59:04]  Prayer is real.
[00:59:06]  God hears your prayers.
[00:59:07]  That is a fact.
[00:59:09]  We need to understand that God can do things supernaturally that are utterly impossible in the natural, and by definition, obviously.
[00:59:18]  But I mean, I got saved in a dream because a guy was praying for me.
[00:59:24]  And the dream changed my life overnight.
[00:59:29]  What changed intellectually?
[00:59:31]  The intellectual stuff had been there, but suddenly the Holy Spirit came in.
[00:59:37]  And I think that when we see revival in America, that's going to be a big part of it.
[00:59:42]  It's going to be the Holy Spirit.
[00:59:44]  And people are going to say, I don't know why.
[00:59:46]  I don't know what happened.
[00:59:48]  C.S. Lewis famously said that he took a ride in the sidecar of his brother Warney's motorcycle and they went to the Whipsnade Zoo.
[00:59:58]  And all he knows is that when he got in the sidecar, he didn't believe Jesus was the Son of God.
[01:00:03]  And when he arrived at the Whipsnade Zoo, he did.
[01:00:07]  And it's an amazing thing that God works on us in mysterious ways.
[01:00:12]  We need to know that.
[01:00:13]  So if your parents are really open, just pray for them, show them the love of Jesus.
[01:00:18]  It's not up to you to save them.
[01:00:19]  It's up to God.
[01:00:20]  And this doesn't work with everybody.
[01:00:22]  This is a small percentage, but I always need to say this because I think people don't know this.
[01:00:27]  But some people say there's no such thing as the supernatural or metaphysics.
[01:00:31]  Go meet.
[01:00:31]  And this, again, this is very, this is a select crowd.
[01:00:34]  Go meet with someone who's dealt with legitimate demonic possession.
[01:00:37]  Sometimes true testimonies of evil spirits can move people to believe that there's a spiritual domain.
[01:00:44]  Some people are moved when they actually meet someone who's dealt with real exorcisms and real deliverance.
[01:00:49]  Again, it's not for some people, they're like, that's not for me.
[01:00:52]  That's a very real thing, though, Eric.
[01:00:53]  I think you would agree.
[01:00:54]  No, no, no.
[01:00:55]  That's actually my story.
[01:00:56]  I read a book by M. Scott Peck called People of the Lie.
[01:01:00]  And at the end of it, he talks about exorcism and stuff.
[01:01:02]  And I realized I would have been happy to see the devil because I realized then I would know there's something beyond this world and I would choose God.
[01:01:10]  And I do believe exactly what Charlie said.
[01:01:12]  We need to start understanding that the spiritual reality is reality.
[01:01:17]  And even seeing the dark side, for some people, it is that that will make them understand.
[01:01:23]  Oh, okay.
[01:01:25]  And it's not for everybody, again, but some people say there's nothing out there.
[01:01:28]  Like, really?
[01:01:29]  I want you to go meet with someone who's done real deliverance sessions of people that have lost full autonomy of that.
[01:01:35]  And it's powerful.
[01:01:36]  It's profound.
[01:01:37]  And sometimes Christians kind of don't talk about that.
[01:01:40]  They act as if, you know, that doesn't exist.
[01:01:43]  And I mean, I have seen videos, read books that are so beyond convincing that there is a supernatural domain out there.
[01:01:54]  I've had people like this on my radio shows.

=== Beyond Reasonable Arguments (02:43) ===

[01:01:56]  A dear friend of mine, Ken Fish, I have him on my radio program all the time.
[01:01:59]  He experiences this stuff all the time.
[01:02:01]  It is utterly real.
[01:02:04]  All right.
[01:02:04]  We'll pray for your parents.
[01:02:05]  Thank you for being here.
[01:02:06]  Yes, thank you.
[01:02:06]  Great question.
[01:02:11]  Hi, my name is Micah, and I have two questions.
[01:02:14]  The first one is: if God was in the beginning, when was the beginning?
[01:02:22]  Well, we don't know exactly, but we do know it was on a Tuesday.
[01:02:26]  You have to just be very clear.
[01:02:28]  There's no doubt about that.
[01:02:30]  He's joking around me.
[01:02:31]  I'm joking.
[01:02:31]  He knows I'm joking.
[01:02:35]  Actually, you say if God was in the beginning, when was the beginnings out, you said?
[01:02:41]  Yes, like if he was there, it doesn't.
[01:02:48]  Okay, let me, I'll save the time.
[01:02:50]  God is outside of time.
[01:02:54]  Time and space, I believe, were created 13.8 billion years ago in the Big Bang, okay?
[01:03:00]  And science says that that's what happened.
[01:03:02]  That space itself, not everything in space, but space itself and everything that occupies space and time were created 13.8 billion years ago.
[01:03:14]  So you realize you can't go before that.
[01:03:16]  And that when we go to heaven, people say it's going to be eternity.
[01:03:19]  It's going to be a long time.
[01:03:20]  It's not going to be a long time.
[01:03:22]  It's going to be outside of time.
[01:03:25]  We were not made for time.
[01:03:26]  We were made for eternity.
[01:03:28]  And eternity is like an eternal present.
[01:03:31]  It's something that's very hard for us to comprehend.
[01:03:34]  But the idea of like we're just going to be out there for billions of years sounds boring.
[01:03:39]  And God is in eternity.
[01:03:42]  He is outside of time.
[01:03:44]  And he created time and space from that place.
[01:03:48]  So there's another mystery.
[01:03:50]  Some very brilliant physicists can talk about different dimensions of time, but I'm not one of them.
[01:03:57]  What's your second question?
[01:04:00]  And my second question is: if we're spending money to give to other countries, how much money do we have for ourselves in America?
[01:04:15]  Yes.
[01:04:16]  That's a topic panel.
[01:04:17]  I'm pretty sure that's a racist question.
[01:04:20]  I'm pretty sure.
[01:04:21]  You don't like brown people, do you?
[01:04:23]  I'm joking again.
[01:04:23]  Eric, you're so vicious.
[01:04:27]  He knows I'm joking.
[01:04:28]  No, he doesn't.
[01:04:29]  Yes, he does.
[01:04:33]  We spend far too much money on foreign aid and shipping money all overseas.
[01:04:37]  We're trillions of dollars into debt.

=== Funding Global Aid (07:23) ===

[01:04:38]  How old are you?
[01:04:40]  10.
[01:04:40]  So you're 10 years old.
[01:04:42]  The rest of your life, you're going to be paying off the debt that your parents and grandparents gave you.
[01:04:46]  And the $27 trillion will soon be $35 trillion and soon be $50 trillion.
[01:04:50]  By the time you can vote, in eight years, you will be in a political circumstance that you did not earn that you were born into because of intergenerational theft.
[01:04:59]  Now, don't complain about it.
[01:05:01]  Don't make any qualms about it.
[01:05:03]  It's just a set of circumstances.
[01:05:05]  But your general question is: why don't we take care of our own citizens?
[01:05:08]  You're very wise.
[01:05:09]  You just asked two very wise questions.
[01:05:11]  Actually, the question: Have you ever heard on a plane when they say when the masks drop down, they say to the adults, put the mask on yourself first before you help the children next to you, right?
[01:05:24]  That's not because they don't care about children.
[01:05:26]  It's because that if you don't take care of yourself first, you will be in no position to help other people.
[01:05:32]  And so I would say, I wish America would thrive so extraordinarily that we could give away so much money that we could give away, we could open up our borders and we could feed the world.
[01:05:46]  We all would want that.
[01:05:48]  But if you want to help other people, you have to make sure your own house is in order.
[01:05:55]  And so that's a great question.
[01:05:56]  God bless you.
[01:05:57]  Thanks for being here tonight.
[01:05:58]  God bless you.
[01:06:02]  Hi, I'm Emery.
[01:06:04]  And my question is, how can a kid like me tell people that COVID-19 is not the biggest thing to worry about in this world?
[01:06:18]  How old are you?
[01:06:20]  I'm 11.
[01:06:21]  11.
[01:06:22]  Do you have classmates and friends that believe it's the biggest thing to worry about?
[01:06:27]  I'm actually homeschooled.
[01:06:29]  Well, there you go.
[01:06:31]  Right on.
[01:06:36]  So, obviously, it doesn't pertain to your friends then or your teachers who are probably right behind you.
[01:06:43]  Which is it's been a massive disservice what we've done to young people in so many different capacities, the masking the vaccines.
[01:06:52]  But also, there are students that truly believe that the greatest threat to their existence is this virus.
[01:07:00]  And so, Dr. Macquerie, I'll give you a little statistic.
[01:07:03]  If you go home and look up Dr. Macri in the Wall Street Journal, he did a study of 42,000 children that were all infected with the Fauci virus and went through and he found that zero died from the virus.
[01:07:18]  The only ones that did die had underlying very serious comorbidities or underlying health issues.
[01:07:25]  Did you ride in a car on the way to the event here?
[01:07:29]  Yeah.
[01:07:31]  You were in much more danger as a passenger in that car, almost 10 to 20 times greater chance of dying in the car ride over than from getting the virus.
[01:07:42]  So drive very carefully on the way home, is what I'm trying to tell you.
[01:07:46]  That's true.
[01:07:47]  Yeah, especially if it was a 72 El Camino, they're the worst.
[01:07:54]  By the way, it's pronounced the doctor is McCary, you said Matt, or whatever, but he's a friend of mine, and he is, you know, there are doctors speaking the truth, and we need to make sure we do everything we can to get the word.
[01:08:10]  We also, we have to say this: we know we're living in crazy times, right?
[01:08:13]  I mean, madness has been unleashed.
[01:08:16]  We have to know that and remind each other that God didn't change reality a few months ago.
[01:08:24]  And we're going to stay the course.
[01:08:25]  We're going to keep our eyes on him.
[01:08:26]  And I believe by his grace, we will get through this.
[01:08:30]  Amen.
[01:08:31]  Thank you so much for being here tonight.
[01:08:33]  God bless you.
[01:08:35]  Hi there.
[01:08:36]  My name's Heather, and I work in the Deer Valley Unified School District.
[01:08:40]  How old are you, Heather?
[01:08:43]  I identify as a 21-year-old.
[01:08:47]  That was good.
[01:08:48]  That was good.
[01:08:51]  I just have a couple things.
[01:08:52]  The first thing is, I want to keep encouraging the parents to speak up.
[01:08:56]  Your voices are being heard.
[01:08:58]  I work in the school.
[01:08:59]  I hear it firsthand.
[01:09:01]  They're scared of you.
[01:09:02]  That is.
[01:09:03]  Yeah.
[01:09:06]  Isn't that wonderful?
[01:09:07]  Isn't that wonderful?
[01:09:09]  And that's a fact.
[01:09:10]  It is.
[01:09:12]  And if you have a student in the Deer Valley School District, you need to question the Panorama Education Survey that they are trying to give your children.
[01:09:20]  Do not let them do it.
[01:09:22]  If you signed the form, request it back.
[01:09:25]  They are pushing it.
[01:09:26]  And Panorama is the Garland family.
[01:09:28]  That is the company that is run by Merrick Garland's son-in-law.
[01:09:32]  Yes.
[01:09:34]  And the only way we found out about it as staff members is because a parent brought it to our attention.
[01:09:38]  So parents keep speaking up.
[01:09:40]  My main thing is my husband is a pilot for Southwest Airlines.
[01:09:47]  And I know you said the company has rescinded the vaccine mandate.
[01:09:51]  However, that is not true.
[01:09:53]  We still have to jump through hoops and we have to fill out a two and a half page survey on religious beliefs to get a religious exemption from this.
[01:10:04]  And it guarantees nothing.
[01:10:05]  So what is our next step?
[01:10:07]  I mean, we fill out the paperwork.
[01:10:09]  They can still say no.
[01:10:10]  We reveal everything about our beliefs.
[01:10:14]  Yeah, well, first of all, then Southwest Airlines is lying because they sent out the press release today saying that they were not going to mandate the vaccine.
[01:10:21]  I've had it with all these airlines, to be perfectly honest with you.
[01:10:24]  And they know they have you because they're going to be like, what?
[01:10:27]  What are you going to do differently, right?
[01:10:29]  They know that they have you kind of over the barrel.
[01:10:33]  I still think they're going to collapse.
[01:10:37]  And I know you have to be careful the way you answer this, but the more sick days your husband and his co-workers might take in the coming weeks will make Southwest Airlines come to a grinding halt and sue for peace.
[01:10:52]  You cannot.
[01:10:55]  I know you have to be careful in acknowledging that, but when pilots stop showing up and flight attendants stop showing up, they'll realize that the specialized workers they have for their airlines cannot and should not be abused.
[01:11:08]  By the way, for a vaccine that is now being shown to be 3% effective, the Johnson  ⁇ Johnson vaccine is being shown to be 3% effective in this month.
[01:11:18]  76% of all deaths in the United Kingdom are now people that are fully vaccinated.
[01:11:23]  What they're trying to do, they're trying to destroy people's careers.
[01:11:26]  Why?
[01:11:26]  Because they don't take the medicine that they like.
[01:11:29]  So what can you do?
[01:11:30]  It's going to be a fight.
[01:11:31]  You're going to have to organize.
[01:11:33]  You're going to have to find other workers.
[01:11:34]  You're going to have to stay with them.
[01:11:36]  But I will say this, that Southwest Airlines, in particular, changed the rules of the game when all of a sudden their workers started to use their sick days and their ability to show their collective power.
[01:11:48]  The only thing I would add is when somebody tells you to fill out a form like that, that is garbage.
[01:11:54]  I would never fill out a form like that.
[01:11:56]  That is invasive.
[01:11:57]  It's just wrong.
[01:11:58]  I would absolutely refuse.
[01:12:00]  I'm sorry.
[01:12:01]  All right.

=== Defeating Death Through Sacrifice (08:27) ===

[01:12:02]  We're going to do one or two more.
[01:12:03]  And we also, I think we have a special guest that just walked in.
[01:12:06]  We are a 501c3, so is the church not endorsing at all.
[01:12:10]  I think that's Carrie Lake, if I'm not mistaken, who just walked in.
[01:12:27]  So you guys will be able to say hi to her after that.
[01:12:29]  Okay, one or two more questions.
[01:12:30]  Hi, Charlie and Eric.
[01:12:32]  My name is Kalena, and I'm a student at Greg Canyon University.
[01:12:35]  And wanted to start by thanking you for having a great program like this and how inspirational it is to students like me who see you speaking out about all these societal issues.
[01:12:45]  I was at a golf event at the GCU golf course a few weeks ago and I'd heard about the Dream Center and all these young girls and boys that are getting human trafficked every day.
[01:12:53]  I was also looking on the Turning Point USA website a few months back, inquiring about a job, and had the thought of how we can maybe help these girls through Turning Point USA if there was some kind of chapter that maybe could be started or something.
[01:13:07]  I know Ms. Barnett had mentioned earlier that the Biden admin has also defunded this program and I just wanted to know what more we could do to help these innocent people.
[01:13:16]  Well, I mean, yeah, the best thing you can do is to support this church and to support what Angel and they're doing here at Dream City Church.
[01:13:24]  I mean that.
[01:13:25]  And my wife and I will continue to be supportive of what's happening here.
[01:13:30]  And everyone has a gift.
[01:13:31]  And what Angel has done and what Luke and the Barnett family have done in this space is profound and it's real.
[01:13:38]  And if you go up, if you ever want to take a road trip and you want to serve, go up to Colorado City and you'll see what they've done up there from The former polygamist colony now to a place of hope and a place of salvation.
[01:13:54]  And so we at Turning Point will do everything we possibly can.
[01:13:57]  And it really kind of comes down to this, you know, this issue of we're all made in the image of God and human dignity.
[01:14:03]  And this church believes that.
[01:14:04]  You want to talk about what the church should be.
[01:14:06]  Dream City Church has prayer meetings at 6 a.m.
[01:14:09]  They have Freedom Square around what's happening in the community at night.
[01:14:12]  They're doing midweek services.
[01:14:14]  They have amazing worship and praise.
[01:14:15]  They have the sex trafficking recovery programs.
[01:14:19]  That's a church that is being salt and light in every single way possible and imaginable.
[01:14:25]  So thank you so much.
[01:14:26]  I appreciate that.
[01:14:28]  We'll try to get to one or two more.
[01:14:29]  I feel bad always cutting it off.
[01:14:30]  Yes.
[01:14:31]  Hey, Charlie, I just want to thank you.
[01:14:32]  I've got a son that's starting at ASU right now.
[01:14:35]  He's a first-year freshman.
[01:14:37]  And he's come to many of these meetings and he's given him a good foundation.
[01:14:42]  Second of all, I'm going to let you off the hook here, Eric, because I'm not going to ask you a question.
[01:14:48]  And I do want to make a correction with the response on the Southwest Airlines.
[01:14:52]  They haven't repealed the mandate.
[01:14:54]  They have delayed it until after December.
[01:14:58]  And then they'll decide whether they're going to defer, accept, or defer the religious exemptions.
[01:15:05]  So I'm a pilot at one of the two major airlines in this town.
[01:15:09]  I'm not going to say which, but it's tough to guess.
[01:15:12]  Southwest Airlines.
[01:15:14]  Charlie, I believe you're meeting with us next week with Josh Yoder.
[01:15:19]  I represent U.S. Freedom Flyers and Airline Professionals for Justice.
[01:15:28]  We're currently 80,000 members strong, and I'm going to go out on a limb here.
[01:15:32]  And I'm going to ask everyone in the audience that is related to or knows anyone in the airline industry, a gate agent, a ramper, a pilot, or a flight attendant, or anyone in the industry.
[01:15:43]  They're coming after you and they're coming after me because we have until the 28th of this month to decide whether we're going to succumb to a vaccine that is made with aborted fetuses.
[01:15:56]  Yes.
[01:15:57]  I've got 21 years at this company.
[01:15:59]  I've been a trusted employee for 21 years.
[01:16:02]  I'm also a retired colonel, United States Air Force with 24 years.
[01:16:10]  And I am not going to get the man.
[01:16:12]  I am not going to get this vaccine.
[01:16:14]  I'm going to throw my career away because I'm not going to succumb to this unlawful mandate.
[01:16:19]  Well, so my question is to all the folks in here.
[01:16:25]  Where do you stand?
[01:16:26]  Are you proud of where you stand?
[01:16:28]  I'm going to ask you to do three things.
[01:16:31]  I'm going to ask for you to engage your representatives.
[01:16:33]  I spent a half hour on the phone today with a Zoom conference with U.S. Freedom Flyers or Airline Pilots for Justice, speaking with Congressman Schweikert.
[01:16:44]  And we're meeting with you, Charlie, next week.
[01:16:47]  Josh Yoder is.
[01:16:48]  And I'm going to ask you to engage with your politicians, call them up.
[01:16:52]  I'm going to ask you to not get frustrated with the gate agents if you're traveling during the Thanksgiving period because many of us are unfortunately going to be sick and not be able to fly.
[01:17:08]  I have a sequence that I won't be flying.
[01:17:11]  So don't get irritated with the flight attendants and the gate agents.
[01:17:14]  It's not their fault.
[01:17:16]  So last thing, what else can we do to help?
[01:17:19]  Because I just want to say you served our country in the military, and then you have to then be treated as if you're a living like science experiment.
[01:17:29]  I mean, it's disgusting.
[01:17:30]  What can people do to help?
[01:17:31]  Because people are saying, okay, we get it.
[01:17:33]  Yeah, well, but by the way, I just want to say, contacting representatives, like they don't listen to us.
[01:17:38]  You know that.
[01:17:39]  Yeah, but Congress isn't going to do anything.
[01:17:42]  The best thing you could do is be sick for a very long time.
[01:17:45]  Like, I know that sound, the only thing that gets their attention is if they can't run the airline.
[01:17:50]  And we have Peter Duke working on that.
[01:17:52]  You probably know who he is.
[01:17:52]  Yeah.
[01:17:53]  Well, what can you do?
[01:17:54]  You can go to U.S. Freedom Flyers and research what they're doing.
[01:17:59]  There's 80,000 of us right now.
[01:18:01]  We need your money.
[01:18:02]  On behalf of everyone that's a military or a government contractor, we are filing lawsuit in your defense.
[01:18:09]  So we just need you to support and provide your donations.
[01:18:13]  Thank you.
[01:18:14]  God bless you.
[01:18:15]  Thank you.
[01:18:16]  We'll do two more.
[01:18:16]  We'll go here, then here.
[01:18:17]  Yes, because that shirt is just so awesome.
[01:18:21]  Hello, my name is Brodie Goodson.
[01:18:23]  I'm 14 years old.
[01:18:25]  And my question to you is that what do you say to the people that are afraid to speak out about their beliefs, Republican or Christian?
[01:18:34]  And because I know people that didn't want to come here because they're worried that they might get judged for it.
[01:18:39]  Yeah.
[01:18:40]  Friends, like high school friends?
[01:18:42]  I'm homeschooled.
[01:18:44]  Well, that's again.
[01:18:46]  There you go.
[01:18:50]  So, yeah, you have to make a decision.
[01:18:52]  And at a young age, you know, at age 14, you're going to have to make a decision.
[01:18:55]  Do you want to be the same person in public that you are in private?
[01:18:59]  And the sooner you make that decision, the more free you will be.
[01:19:03]  And I hope, you know, everyone out here is listening.
[01:19:07]  You see a common through line.
[01:19:08]  We get this question at least once a month.
[01:19:10]  Charlie, what do you say about this?
[01:19:11]  Yeah, it's going to cost you something.
[01:19:12]  You're going to lose friends, maybe lose your job.
[01:19:14]  You're going to sacrifice, but you'll be free.
[01:19:17]  And that is the greatest gift that you can have.
[01:19:20]  And I tell people, do not allow somebody else to micromanage your decisions or your viewpoints or your beliefs.
[01:19:27]  Eric.
[01:19:28]  And I disagree with everything Charlie just said.
[01:19:30]  How ridiculous.
[01:19:32]  No, of course I agree with everything you just said.
[01:19:34]  And I would say this.
[01:19:36]  We have to be serious about our faith.
[01:19:41]  I have lost friends, and it really, at times, it really hurts.
[01:19:45]  But I rejoice that I can do what I think the Lord has called me to do.
[01:19:52]  And there's just no greater joy, no greater freedom.
[01:19:57]  It's a beautiful thing.
[01:19:59]  And I think, you know, we don't need to be looking for trouble.
[01:20:02]  We don't need to be looking for arguments and asking people that we meet, you know, where do you stand on this and this and this.
[01:20:07]  It's great to have friends that you disagree with on everything.
[01:20:11]  But there are times when you have to count the cost.
[01:20:14]  But you got to remember one thing.
[01:20:16]  God has your back.
[01:20:17]  You have to know that.
[01:20:19]  Again, don't hope that.
[01:20:20]  Know that.
[01:20:21]  God has your back.
[01:20:23]  And Bonhoeffer went to his death.
[01:20:26]  He didn't say, if I speak up, will I get in trouble?

=== Standing Against Crime (05:53) ===

[01:20:29]  Will I be killed?
[01:20:30]  He believed in a God who defeated death on the cross.
[01:20:36]  If we believe in a God who defeated death on the cross, doesn't that change whether we're afraid?
[01:20:43]  And I think we have to ask ourselves, do you really believe he defeated death on the cross?
[01:20:47]  Do you really believe he's real?
[01:20:49]  You have to know that these things are true.
[01:20:51]  And sometimes the Lord allows us to go through tea to test our faith, to say, what do you really believe?
[01:20:57]  So God bless you.
[01:20:59]  And get involved with Turning Point USA.
[01:21:01]  So God bless you.
[01:21:02]  This will be the last question with my favorite shirt.
[01:21:04]  You guys remember when AOC wore that dress that said tax the rich?
[01:21:09]  Well, we now came out with a shirt that says, be the rich.
[01:21:12]  I love it.
[01:21:12]  So yes, that's Turning Point USA.
[01:21:17]  This will be our last question, and we'll do book signing outside, everybody.
[01:21:20]  Okay, this was the only shirt that went with my faux pearls, and I wanted to dress up tonight.
[01:21:26]  So first I want to say thank you for suggesting the free online Hillsdale classes.
[01:21:31]  Our family's been doing it now for more than a month, more than a month, and really enjoying it.
[01:21:36]  I work with a lot of teenagers, so I've been sharing what I've been learning on the Constitution 101 and saying, did you learn this in school?
[01:21:46]  Surprisingly, they haven't.
[01:21:48]  So we talk a lot about it.
[01:21:50]  But my question is, there's a statistic that I've heard for more than a decade on TV, on radio, and it's a police officer is 18 times more likely to get shot by a black male.
[01:22:06]  So my husband and I talked about this often.
[01:22:09]  That statistic has not seemed to change over more than 10 years.
[01:22:15]  So we tried looking it up.
[01:22:17]  Where does it come from?
[01:22:18]  I studied statistics in school, and I've never seen something where it never goes up, it never goes down.
[01:22:25]  So do you know where that statistic comes from?
[01:22:28]  Yeah, it comes.
[01:22:28]  So Heather McDonald from the Manhattan Institute did a massive study with the Wall Street Journal.
[01:22:35]  And so she said that statistic like three years ago.
[01:22:38]  In fact, I'd love to have Heather McDonald as one of our guests here because she is the premier expert on crime in America.
[01:22:45]  And so I could follow up with you on that.
[01:22:47]  But I think this is an important point too, though, that, you know, as we kind of talk about crime, by the way, crime is up dramatically in our country.
[01:22:53]  It's up 30%.
[01:22:55]  And just in Scottsdale, they're arresting people for crimes that they have not arrested people for crimes in a while.
[01:23:01]  And we can get into that at a different time, but not to kind of deviate or scare people, but read your local news, everybody.
[01:23:09]  There's things happening here that would never happen in Scottsdale before.
[01:23:13]  The guy, they just arrested a guy at a trailhead with a baseball bat smashing people's skulls in who are going hiking and smashing cars.
[01:23:20]  And you're like, that's Scottsdale.
[01:23:22]  And so crime is up 30%.
[01:23:24]  Murders are up 25%.
[01:23:26]  But to your, I'm happy to follow up with you on that.
[01:23:28]  But this, we need to know the true facts around crime in America because there's a war on police.
[01:23:35]  And the war on police has made America a much more dangerous place to live.
[01:23:40]  That the more we have criminalized our police officers and we try to go after them and defunding police or get or abolish police, we are now seeing anarchy.
[01:23:48]  And especially in cities like Seattle and San Francisco, New York, Minneapolis, it's kind of the Ferguson effect where police officers just completely and totally withdraw.
[01:23:58]  And so I want to thank you for wearing that shirt and God bless you.
[01:24:00]  Happy to follow up with you on that.
[01:24:01]  So thank you.
[01:24:02]  And also, which was mentioned, the Hillsdale online courses that we partnered with, charlieforhillsdale.com.
[01:24:10]  If you guys want to take online courses with your children, charlieforhillsdale.com.
[01:24:14]  Two things, everybody.
[01:24:16]  Number one, we're winning.
[01:24:17]  I know it might not feel like it.
[01:24:18]  The country's falling apart in a lot of different ways, but our movement is growing.
[01:24:22]  You just heard somebody who served in the military who's willing to organize fellow pilots to stand up against the mandates.
[01:24:28]  You understand this is the only country that's happening.
[01:24:31]  Yeah, I know they're doing stuff in UK and France.
[01:24:33]  It's weak compared to what's happening in America.
[01:24:36]  It still gives me hope that we have a percentage of people that are willing to stand and say, you could take my income, you could take my paycheck, you could take my career.
[01:24:43]  I'm going to stand for truth.
[01:24:45]  I'm going to stand for righteousness.
[01:24:46]  And it's amazing.
[01:24:48]  And so, Joe, when's our next date for this?
[01:24:51]  The 30th, right?
[01:24:53]  So our last Freedom Night in America, Freedom Square will be, because we're not doing one in December because it's, you know, December is such a crazy month with all the amazing Christmas Christmas services here.
[01:25:04]  By the way, you want to talk about the best Christmas service in Phoenix?
[01:25:07]  You guys have got to come to the Christmas service here.
[01:25:09]  It's amazing.
[01:25:10]  November 30th, we'll be having the last Freedom Square in America for 2021.
[01:25:16]  Boy, we're going to, I kind of, I'm glad to get this year out of the way in some ways, but in some ways, it's been the best year of my life because I got married in this year.
[01:25:23]  And so, but I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for showing up to school board meetings, showing up here, staying engaged, staying involved.
[01:25:30]  More they throw at us, the stronger we are, everybody.
[01:25:34]  For the young people that are here, get involved with Turning Point, for the adults out here to say, What can we do?
[01:25:39]  How can we get involved?
[01:25:40]  Go mentor the young people out here, give them some sort of advice or give them some sort of support.
[01:25:45]  I want to thank this amazing church again for a donation of any amount.
[01:25:49]  You guys can get a signed copy of Eric's book outside.
[01:25:52]  I'll be out there taking pictures.
[01:25:54]  Let's go through as many as we can, everybody.
[01:25:57]  And I want to say thank you again to our amazing host, Dream City Church.
[01:26:00]  God bless you guys.
[01:26:00]  We'll see you again on November 30th.
[01:26:02]  Thank you.
[01:26:03]  And give it up for Eric from Texas, everybody.
[01:26:05]  Thank you guys.
[01:26:09]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
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