Transcript of No.1 Christianity Expert: The Truth About Christianity! The Case For Jesus (Historian's Proof)

Am I going to hell? Yes.

But here's the thing, everybody is going to hell, and it's not because they don't believe in God. Look, I'm a historian and a theologian, so I study ancient biblical manuscripts. If you truly understand what this book is saying, I don't want you to experience that.

This is not a place I want to go. So what do I do about that?

It's not about trying to earn my way into heaven. It's not about checking off. I read the Bible this many times. I didn't lie, I didn't steal, I didn't cheat. It's none of that. But here's the problem. Unfortunately, we bought the lie that we are the sum of our actions. We're chasing after things that aren't going to give us what we actually need, which is also why we live in a world that is lacking in purpose and meaning.

But the part that I've always struggled with is the answer being religion as an antidote to that feeling because I require a really high standard of evidence because of the way that I am.

Well, I think not only can it provide an antidote, it can provide the antidote. And I'll explain why.

But how can we trust human accounts of these things? And then how do you take people who agree that there's clearly something missing to believe that what's written in the Bible is the thing that should guide my life. But also, do you have any doubt?

Oh, of course, especially when there are times of struggle and pain and suffering. The whole Epstein thing right now, we are seeing examples of true evil. So there are moments where I think, how could there be a good God? However, from my investigation, I'm convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that there's actual evidence for the existence of God, the historical reliability of the Bible, and the philosophical explanations for meaning and purpose.

And what is that?

First, we have That is some of the most persuasive evidence one can receive.

Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. 69% of you that listen to this show frequently haven't yet hit the Follow button. And that Follow button is very smart because it means you won't miss the best episodes. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. When we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know. The simple way for you to know that is to hit that button. But also the fact that I think what 41% of you have chosen to follow the show that listen to it regularly, is the reason why we've been able to improve everything. It's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make the show better. I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much. Wesley, I have this fascinating graph in front of me here. It shows several things that I find to be really interesting.

One of them is that as of 2024, the decline of religion has started to level off and actually increase a little bit. Now, 63% of US adults identify as Christian, which is roughly 160 million people. In 2025, Bible sales hit a 21-year high in the United States with 19 million units sold. Weekly Bible reading amongst US has increased to 42%, which is up 12% since 2024. In 2024, Christian and gospel music streams in the US increased by roughly 20%, according to the Washington Times. Wesley, what is going on in society if we zoom out?

I think we're in a unique bubble where we found ourselves in a time frame where we're connected more than ever. We've come out of a period of time where the new atheism is very, very popular. You had Dawkins, Daniel, Daniel Dennet, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and they made a big impact in the early 2000s.

I think we should probably just give some color to what new atheism is.

Sure, yeah.

I've actually got a graph here, which I'll throw up on the screen, which shows the rise and then the fall of new atheism. I was pulled in by new atheism, and that meant that I... And again, I should probably preface my beliefs because people are going to want to know what my bias is when I'm asking questions. I grew up in a very Christian household up until the age of 18. I then became agnostic/atheist when I start consuming a lot of this stuff from Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and all of these people. And then I find myself at a point now where I'm just open-minded and curious, but I have lots of questions.

Yeah, you had these individuals who are writing these very influential works. But I sometimes wonder whether the new atheism movement worked a lot more effectively in print than it did in actual real life. In terms of the practicality of the application of the things that were being talked about, especially in regards to meaning, if you apply ideas like you being a product of time plus matter plus chance, what does that actually give you in terms of the ultimate identity questions? I think that's true in a lot of circumstances where you have these seeds that are planted and they grow and they produce trees that produce fruit that are hard to digest in their actual application. And along with that, we have world that's very complex. We're more connected than we ever have been. I don't know if we were ever truly meant to know as much information as we do, especially about things that are going on around the world and things that are hard to to comprehend. And so what I think that all adds up to is people asking questions about, okay, I'm here. I'm right now trying to figure out what's going on, How do I actually find out the answers to a lot of these questions that just go beyond the here and the now that I'm experiencing?

This is what individuals like James K Smith call the dynamics of disenchantment, where people are struggling with these transcendent questions, questions that are metaphysical that go beyond just the here and the now in the world. Why is the three pounds of gray matter in my brain able to comprehend the complexities of the universe? How do I come up with a solution to that problem? So I think that's part of it. I think it's moving on in a world that just is probably more messy than it's ever been. A lot of countries, the UK, Europe, Canada, America, all of these Western countries, they were founded on these Judeo-Christian ethics of foundations that come from the Old and the New Testaments, what we call the Bible. A lot of people attempted to divorce the religious aspect from the societies, and societies became less and less overtly religious in those natures. Then a lot of people saw that their parents were no longer going to church, the Bible wasn't part of the household any longer. I talk to a lot of young people who look at that and they say in almost like a rebellion against their parents, they're now interested in that.

Their parents rebelled by dissociating from religion. And now I wonder if there's part of a rebellion in looking back and trying to reclaim some of that religious stuff.

I think in part as well, this younger generation, Gen Zs, and I guess to some extent, also millennials, have been told to live more individualistic lives. And that's really been glamourised, be your own boss. Now we work remotely and stand on your two feet. And we're even seeing people getting into relationships later and later in their lives and having less children. So it appears people are more unankered than they've ever been. And that was to some degree glamourised. But it also appears that when we are unankered, when we don't have responsibilities or we're not part of something, mental health issues are quick to follow. And for this generation, they're suffering the most with those types of mental health issues. And then one would assert that they would therefore be searching more for Answers to some of these existential questions.

Expressive individualism. I think it rose. That's the terminology in the sociological literature that they refer to it. But I think you touched on a good point in that as we've removed God, part of the intellectual enlightenment was that we would move away from the shackles of religiosity and the concept of a creator, and that would lead us into a utopia. I think the more and more we've removed that from society, that hasn't decreased our levels of anxiety and depression and meaning. I think it's increased it.

Yeah, and especially celebrity worship, social media, building a following of your own, low-key narcissism has made us more and more and more and more important. And that seems to correlate with worse and worse and worse mental health when you start to become more individualistic and think more and more about yourself and self-importance versus others and a bigger picture.

I think we are created for community. I think we are, as human beings, a creature that is created for community. Ultimately, by cards on the table as a Christian, because I believe we are created in the image of a God who exists in a set of living, loving relationships. That's what the Trinity is. When we talk about that idea within Christian theology, God exists in Father, Son, and Holy spirit. And so being created in the image God, part of that is you are created for relationship. And so in a society that's continually removing us, you need to be an influencer. You're influencing everybody else. When I think we're not created to be lone wolves or lone rangers. We're created to live amongst community and have that be something that likewise gives us fulfillment. It's not that people who are leaders or rise to the top are wrong by any stretch. But in a society where we're alone together because we are sitting behind computer screens and we're talking to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people in some cases, but we're secluded, I think that that does something to our souls because we were made to be in relationship with other people.

I agree with everything you said as it relates to the crisis of meaning in society, and I also many of your reasons as to why that's occurred. The part that I've always struggled with is then the answer being Christianity or any other religion. Sure. I agree with so many of the things you've said, but then my brain has, I think, especially After the age of 18, when I started reading about all this new atheist stuff and these questions of evil and am I going to hell and all these other things, I've not been able to get there. But I'm having this conversation with you today because I am open-minded. And although I've difficult questions to ask, I'm in pursuit of the truth, not any particular ideology or answer. So how do you take someone like me who agrees that there's clearly something missing, who believes that there's something transcendent? It could be a crazy thing to assume that this is it, I think. How do you take them from this position to believing that what's written in this book in front of me, the Bible, is the thing that should guide my life? Because, again, I'm just going to say this again, that I think I require a really high standard of evidence because of the way that I am.

Yeah. I think there's a historical case for it, which I'm very much invested in because my training formerly is in historiography. I study ancient biblical manuscripts and their reliability and fidelity over the last couple of millennia. So looking at some of those manuscripts that actually can trace back to the actual time frame of Jesus and answering questions like, is what we have now what the original authors wrote back then? So I think there's a historical question to it. And I, in my own personal investigation, genuinely think that the evidence, the publicly available evidence, gets us back to not only the time frame of Jesus, but to early eyewitness testimony that proclaims that this first century Jewish itinerate rabbi who was walking the dusty streets of first century made these claims. And then there is sufficient evidence to say that he predicted his own death and resurrection and did it.

How do I know Jesus Christ was real? And then how do I know what's written in that book is real versus just some guys thousands of years ago made a book?

Yeah. So that is a question of historical reliability. So there are A couple of different ways we could go about it. First, we have four biographical accounts of Jesus's life, which is very unusual. So we call them the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those aren't actually our earliest source material for the life of Jesus. That comes in the person of Paul. Paul is actually writing before the gospel accounts. He is someone who was hostile originally to the Christian message, and he's persecuting Christians. He comes along and he has this radical conversion experience when he's traveling to Damascus, where he says he's literally thrown off a horse. He hears God's voice and it's Jesus, and he says, Paul, why are you persecuting me? And then he writes these things about his experience and then ultimately goes and connects with the individuals who are, we call the disciples, who are this close Jesus community and connects with them. So he's our earliest source. But then you have these gospel accounts, these biographies. And the Gospels are interesting because they fit within the historical framework of ancient Greco-Roman biography. So let me give you an example. The most well-known person in Jesus's day was the Emperor.

His name is Tiberius. Tiberius had has four biographical accounts that are written about him. Velaeus Perturius, Cassio Dio, Suttoneus, and Tacitus. So this is the four guys. And what's interesting in a comparative analysis of Jesus and those people is that They're all writing around the same time period. So the biographies are coming from the first century for Jesus. They're coming in this time period where you have an early eyewitness testimony. For the Emperor, for the The most well-known person in the ancient world, all of the sources except for Velaeus Perturius, are coming from the second century. Velaeus Perturius is coming from the first century. It's very close to the source, but he's a paid propagandist. So even though he's the earliest, he's the least reliable. And for the Gospels, that comes around in the fourth century. So there's a comparison with the source material for someone like Jesus, even though we really shouldn't have about him because he's a nobody from nowhere in terms of the Roman Empire and the grand scheme of things. But we have a phenomenal amount of source information for his life.

I mean, this is one of the things I discovered when I went through that new atheist phase was that really everybody agrees that there was a guy called Jesus from Nazareth and that he was a real historical person. I guess the part in dispute was whether things like his resurrection actually happened or whether he was just a spiritual leader back then, like we have spiritual leaders today. And I think one of the things that I got really stuck on when I was reading about Jesus in the Bible was there appears to be quite a significant gap between his life, his death, and then the writings that go into the Bible. And for me in my head, I was like, well, if something happened in my life 50 years ago, I mean, I'm only 33, but if something happened 50 years ago, I would not be able to recount it. Frankly, I can't recount what happened last week accurately, let alone decades ago. You must have heard this argument before. Yes. How do you square the circle here?

So there are a few things going on. First, we live in a hyper literate culture. We are writing everything down. The ancient world was far less of a literate culture. They were an oral culture. These stories would have been passed in large groups at time frames, especially if we're talking about the biographical material of Jesus is actually written in a closer time frame than the majority of anyone else in the ancient world.

What was that gap?

It's about 40 to 60 years.

I imagine there's some people listening that have I've probably never read the Bible, and I really want to explain to them what this book is in the simplest terms. Can I open your Bible? Yeah, of course. Yeah. So is there chapters in here?

Yeah. So the Bible is, though we now have it in one book, is 66 books written over a period of about 1,600 years on three different continents by close to 40 different authors in three different languages.

So I've just opened your Bible, and there's one section that says the Old Testament. There's another section that says the New Testament. What am I looking at? Is this God's words? Is this a bunch of people's stories that have been compiled together? What is the Old Testament? What's the New Testament? What's the difference?

Yeah, so the Old Testament is the Hebrew scriptures. So that's the scriptures of the Jewish people. Okay. So it starts in what's referred to as the Torah, which are the first five books or the five books of Moses. And then that goes in a time frame all the way up to the period of the Persians.

So that's a certain time frame? Yes. And they've gone and collected books from that time frame, with writings from that time frame?

Yeah. So the ancient Jewish people had... And remember, all of these books, they would have circulated as independent writings. Okay. So we start to see things like this happen in the fourth century Prior to that, everything's in independent scrolls. So there's an understanding when even you get them all put in one unit, that would have contained the scriptures, the word of God, more so than this is the word of God.

The reason And you know why I am unapologetic and very open about my total naivety is because often in these conversations, you end up preaching to the choir, if you know what I mean. And there's a huge amount of people, especially younger people, that went through that New Atheist movement, were maybe born in the 2000s that are now 26 years old, but have never read the Bible, have never even opened one, have no idea what it is. They just think it's this book of stories. But you call these books, I was thinking of them like chapters. The first one in the Old Testament is Genesis. Who wrote Genesis? Was that a guy or was that God?

So the idea is in Christianity, the terminology is what's called verbal plenary inspiration. So verbal, it's spoken. Plenary, it's written down and then inspired. So there are human authors to all these books.

Okay, so humans wrote these chapters, but they were inspired by God.

Yes. So the understanding. So in the Bible itself, Peter says that men spoke as they were carried along by the Holy spirit. So there's There's a historical context to all of these, like the history of this period of time of the nation of Israel as they were being led by particular rulers.

And where does Jesus show up?

Jesus is the New Testament.

If someone's never read the Old Testament, what is that about? It's just describing the time?

It's a bunch of different things. There's a whole bunch of genres of literature. So some of it is history, some of it is poetry, some of it is what's called wisdom literature.

And who decided that it looks like there's, I don't know, it looks like there's about 40 books in the Old Testament.

39 books that are in the Old Testament.

Who decided that those were going to be part of the Old Testament? Because I'm sure that there was lots of other writings at the time that could have been included.

Yeah. So by the time that Jesus is around, there's approximately an agreement of what is considered scripture.

By who?

By the Jews themselves.

So the Jews decided which 38 books to put in?

Yes. So you have conversations by individuals like there's a guy named Josephus who is writing at the end of the first century. Part of what he argues is that the Jewish people don't have an innumerable number of religious texts, like the Greeks do. They have a specific number, and he uses this terminology that they were laid up in the temple. So the idea is that these are the books, they're housed in the temple, and they're a set number. And he gives the number of the same number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, 22. So you usually see this 22 or 23 number, but they group them differently. He gives an argument that one of the reasons that we can find a timeline for what the Jews consider a scripture is he says, there's nothing written before Moses and there's nothing written after the time of Ardi Zerxes, which is the Persian Empire. So the Book of Esther in the Bible is that time period. So though there are writings after that, there's this agreement that the voice of God in, say, the prophets, giving a thus sayeth the Lord statement, like communicating messages to the people of Israel, has ceased.

But the Jewish canon, though there's a closing of it. There's a soft closing. There's an idea that there's going to be a new covenant. God's going to make new promises with his people. And so there are going to be more writings.

Okay, so my understanding of that is that he made the case that God is no longer communicating with people to write these books.

At least that there was a stop point at Malachi. So it's sometimes referred to as the 400 Years of Silence for that reason.

From the point of Jesus's death, What book from the New Testament is written last and how big is that gap?

That's a debate.

Okay, what's the debate?

The debate, it's a question if John's gospel is written before 70 AD after 70 AD. And if it's written after 70 AD, it's written in the '90s. So it's written pretty far afterwards.

How many years?

So if Jesus dies in 33.

Okay, so about 60. Yeah. Okay, fine.

Yeah. So at minimum, I think 99% of historians, biblical scholars, classicists, would argue that the 27 books of the New Testament are written in the first century. And so in that sense, they're in the lifetime of the eyewitness to a certain degree. There's evidence even within some of the Gospels where you have these names thrown out, randomly. Part of the thinking of that is that this is like sighting your sources. At one point, when Jesus is carrying the cross to Golgotha, he stumbles and they get another person to carry his cross for a little bit. And that person is Joseph of Aramathia. Well, one of the Gospels names one of Joseph of Aramathia's son by name. And the thinking is that this is probably someone who's well known within the early Jesus community. And the purpose of naming that person randomly is to say he's actually well known. Go ask him.

I mean, logically, there's quite a risk of Chinese whispers to some degree. As you're speaking, I was trying to think about things that I experienced when I was younger, with my grandmother before she passed away. I was trying to accurately recount those memories. I was thinking of going to house. And then I remember one day she gave me some money, but I can't remember what she gave it to me for, and I can't remember how much she gave me. I know she put it in a card, and this was only 20 years ago. Yeah. And so if I was to write about that today, I would be filling in some gaps, especially... This is the other thing that I always struggled with is, especially in a world where we didn't understand science. Now, my grandmother put it in a card, and it was like I opened it. And the way she did it was often as a surprise. So in a world where I didn't understand physics or science, I might have concluded that my mother, my grandmother, did something magical at a time when we didn't understand anything about, really much about the nature of the universe and planets and the solar system and physics.

So is that a risk that some of the things that have been transmuted via God into this book in front of me are prone to Chinese whispers and or just a lack of understanding about the nature of the world, like the resurrection, for example? Yeah.

So this is in my field referred to as mythological drift. So how do we factor in making sure that mythological drift doesn't happen? I think there are a couple of things related to what you said. First off, I think I would be careful in trying to ascribe the ancient world as being pre-scientific and therefore largely, say, ignorant. I mean, even when the angel comes to Mary in the gospel story and says, You're going to be with child, Mary's objection to the angel is a scientific one. I haven't met the minimum requirement of how babies are made, therefore, I can't be pregnant. She's not dumb. She's not just at face value accepting that, Well, I believe in angels, and so this magic thing can happen. She's still objecting scientifically, even though she might not have the terminology to understand the complexities of childbirth and embryology and all of that. I would say this is what the writer C. S. Lewis calls chronological snobbery, that he says, We need to be careful of not to ascribe the ancient world as being more ignorant and stupid than just because we are a product of the enlightenment and we understand scientific things now.

The second thing is, I think the Chinese Whispers or the telephone game or whatever you call it, is a good case study. I think we're at fall short is that if you play the telephone game, if you play Chinese Whispers, there are rules in order to corrupt the message. So you have to whisper, you can only say it once, you have to do it one person to one person. In an oral culture, you would have been hearing these stories constantly. So when some of these stories are told, they're being told within a lifetime where there could have been individuals who say the story of the feeding of the 5,000, that's a lot of people. There's a lot of witnesses to this particular event. If you're writing this down, there's an aspect of there are people out there who could verify what is being said, at least orally, not necessarily, like, literarily. Likewise, what we have in the gospel accounts, particularly after Jesus's death, when the disciples were claiming his resurrection, they go back to Jerusalem, which is the scene of the crime. So they go back to the exact place where Jesus was crucified and start telling people he was risen from the dead.

If there is some aspect of, say, disingenuousness in making up a story, don't go back to the place where everybody could have seen that thing happen to that degree. So In one sense, Chinese whispers is a faulty analogy in that it's less like one person whispering into another's ear and more like 100 people in a room all saying, communicating the thing verbally and then getting the other people to repeat it back to them and then corroborating with the other individuals of what's going on. Now, I think your point in the story of your grandmother and the letter is a good How do we remember things? Do you remember 9/11?

Yes, I do. Yes, and I was in the UK at the time.

Could you tell me a little bit more vividly what you were doing on 9/11 compared to your grandmother and the letter?

Yes, I could, yeah. I remember coming home from school and watching it on the screen and my dad having it on the screen and us just looking at the screen.

Yeah, me too. Whereas I couldn't tell you much of what else happened during an average in that year, I could tell you what happened on September 11th, 2001. That's because of the nature of what was going on. I think when we're talking about the gospel stories in particular, first, you have what I genuinely believe are eyewitness accounts from at least the source information coming from a group who would have heard Jesus be preaching these things multiple times in multiple different settings. It's probably likely, myself as an itinerary, Tinnert. I have given the same talk on a particular subject quite a few times. I joke with my wife that she could give my talk on the historical reliability of the Bible herself. If I'm sick, I'll just send my wife, right? Because she's heard it so many times. I think that's the case that's going on with the disciples. There's an aspect of they would have heard, say the Beatitudes, that Jesus most likely more than once is the case, because that's just the nature of not just Tinnert speaking, but even traveling rabbis in the ancient world. Then you have this event that is earth-shattering in terms of their narrative of who they are.

They've been traveling with this rabbi for three years straight. They've been hearing his teaching. They've been seeing miracles, at least that are recorded in the Gospels. Pretty phenomenal things. Then he gets taken and he's murdered publicly. They think it's over. They think there are other messianic movements in the ancient world, most of which you and I aren't hearing on a regular basis, because when those individuals die, their movement dies with them. And so that's what they think is happening. So they think, Okay, we're done. So the story is they're hiding in this upper room and they're scared. In fact, it's the women who take on the responsibility of going and figuring things out, which in terms of the time period is actually an embarrassing fact because of the cultural dynamics of what's going on. And so you have the disciples who think it's over. What is it that has 11 scared disciples, because one of them, Judas, goes and he kills himself, 11 scared disciples hiding in an upper room thinking, That's it, we're done. We might Well, Peter, James, and John might as well just go back to being fishermen because that's all she wrote, to then having the boldness to go out and actually proclaim this message, ultimately to the level of persecution hardship that they endure for the rest of their lives?

Well, it's that their rabbi then shows up alive again. At minimum, I think what we can say is that this is a pretty drastic event that takes place in their life. It's a comparative to a 9/11 event for them. In terms of the memory imprint that they are experiencing for the murder of their rabbi, of their teacher, and then something happening where they then go for the rest of their lives. The martyrdom stories are a little bit tricky in terms of their historical reliability. I think a few of them, we can say, did happen. A lot of them is up in the air, but at minimum, they suffered persecution.

The story in the Bible is that he was killed on the cross, murdered on the cross, and then he was put into a tomb. Then who saw him come out of the tomb?

Nobody physically sees him come out of the tomb. But the women go to the tomb in the morning and on the third day, and the tomb is empty. There are four accounts. I think it's interesting also that we have four accounts that give different angles on the stories. It's not as if they got together and they corroborated and all gave the same story. The fact is that we have four counts that capitalize on different angles, which the differentiation in detail, I think, actually gives credibility to the reliability of it. Because if they were all telling the same thing, you could argue that they got together and they colluded. They don't do that. In fact, they touch on different aspects of the story.

Are these people saying that they saw him walk out? Are they saying that they just saw it empty? What is the claims being made about his resurrection from these witnesses?

Yeah, so the tomb is empty. The tomb is empty. It's interesting in one of the accounts, Mary's at the tomb, and she actually talks to Jesus, but she confuses him with a gardener. Now, I think it's interesting that she doesn't confuse the gardener with Jesus. She confuses Jesus with the gardener. She thinks that this person she's talking to isn't Jesus. She doesn't recognize him at first. And she asks him, What happened? Why is the tomb opened? Where did the body go? And then there's also an account of an angel appearing saying, Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He's not here. He's risen. Then they go back to the disciples who are hiding in this upper room. Mary says, The tomb is empty. I've met Jesus. Jesus is not in the tomb. He's risen. Some of them don't even believe her. They think she's crazy. Now, we don't have an eyewitness account of the tomb being open. This is actually an embarrassing fact in the ancient world. Some of those other Gospels that I mentioned earlier that are written later on, Gospel of Thomas, Judas, Mary, Peter, there's one of them, the Gospel of Peter, which is actually trying to remedy this fact that women are the first eyewitness to the empty tomb, which is an embarrassing fact in the ancient world.

If that's not true, if they made it up, it seems very unlikely that they would have done that because women are not considered good eyewitnesses. Either Greco-Roman or, unfortunately, Jewish society in this time period. So the gospel of Peter tries to remedy the situation by having all of the right people in the right place at the right time. It has the Jewish and the Roman officials camping out in front of the tomb. When It actually happens. And then has this recounted the story of literally the stone moving, Jesus coming out, all these things. Now, we know it's not historically reliable. We know that because of when it was written. We also know that on the Eve of Passover, the would not be camping out in front of a dead body. It's just historically anachronistic. But it is an account of a literary source later on that is embarrassed by what we find in here about the biographical information of the empty tomb.

So is it just two women that said they met Jesus in some form after his death, Mary being one of them, which was his mother?

No.

Who's Mary?

Mary, so there are a number of Mary's in the New Testament. This was Mary Magdalene.

Okay.

Yeah. Who was a close associate.

Okay, like a friend. Yeah. Okay. So a friend. And then is it just her that says she saw him?

There was a group of them. A group of them? Yeah, of the women.

Okay. And they were separate when they saw him. They were on their own.

They were together. So one of the gospel only mentions Mary. That leaves the gospel of John. But like I said before, it implies that there are more because she says, We don't know where they put body. Okay. So though that account only has her recounting, it implies that there are others. And then the other Gospels have more women that are going to the tomb.

As a percentage, what degree of certainty do you have that he was resurrected and that he was who he said he was? Because I agree with you that this character clearly existed, like Jesus clearly existed. I personally believe that he was killed, probably on a cross. But then you get to this point of resurrection, which you have to then believe in something supernatural. Yeah. So what's the probability you'd have assigned to it? If it was likely, unlikely, very likely.

They're all likely because I think that what the gospel authors are doing is communicating truth. And I don't ultimately see an overabundance of reason why they would write what they wrote other than actually recounting a story of what took place.

I grew up in a place called Plymouth, in the UK. I was born in Africa. And in my local park, there was this big poster on the wall about the white lady. I'll put it up on the screen. It's like a big legend in our city. It's this park, and everybody says that they see this white lady in the park that was killed. Actually, there's a big board explaining her life. But it's all just accounts of people that say they've seen her. You have things like the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland as well, where there's been 1,500 sightings of this big monster in the river. And even up until recent times, 2025, there was a surge of sightings of the Loch Ness Monster called the Black Mass in the Bay, and that started in 565 AD. So one of the things that I've always struggled with when I think about humans saying they saw something is we still today have sightings of UFOs and Loch Ness Monsters and white ladies in parks that become legend. And actually with the Loch Ness Monster, it's pretty interesting that even today there are sightings all the time of this monster that lives in the river.

Now, I think maybe me and you both agree that there's no monster in the river. But there's something going on. There's something in human nature where we do have a proclivity to engage in supernatural sightings. And then once we've heard it once, we then reinforce that we've seen it, too. And even as a young man, maybe you believe this, but I believe that there was a woman that would stand on the landing of my home and it would wake me up, and I would run and tell my parents that the lady stood on the landing again. With people watching this, I think that was actually a lady. Maybe there was. But you know what I'm getting at It's like, how can we trust human accounts of these things when clearly humans have an ability to make things up that aren't real in some situations? Sure.

Part of the answer to the question is, one of the evidence is for Jesus's resurrection is the fact that you and I, Steven, are still talking about it almost 2,000 years later.

My friend said this to me. I was telling you before about my Christian friend. He was like, why are we still talking about? Well, we can't prove it. It didn't happen. So we're always going to talk about it. There's never going to be... I mean, unless something happens. Right.

The difference is that there there are these other messianic movements that happen in the ancient world. And so like Simon Bargiora. The reason why we're not talking about Simon Bargiora as a messianic figure is because he died and his movement died with him. And his disciples didn't go out and then proclaim his continued message to their own detriment. So I would say a few things. I would say liars make poor martyrs in that you will die for something you believe is true, but the chances of you dying for something you know is not true are less likely. So if we're talking about the disciples, and especially if what they're getting for this particular proclamation is they're being ostracized from their own communities, pagan, Gentile communities, and the Jewish communities. Because remember, there was a persecution on both sides because it was at a certain point in time, continuing to say that Jesus this was the Messiah, and on top of that, that he was God himself, was not very popular within the early Jesus communities. There's a complexity to the fact that people usually lie. You look at cultic figures. Cult leaders usually do things for prominence or money or sex or influence.

The interesting thing about the early disciples is they get none of that. In fact, they almost get the complete opposite of in that Jesus says, you're going to be persecuted. You're going to be put in front of tribunals and you're going to be interrogated. And that's exactly what happens. And they know that there's a danger to this Because we have in the Book of Acts, which is the book after the Gospels, we have a recounting of the first martyr of Stephen.

I think of someone like Martin Luther King or Gandhi as being leaders from history that appeared to be, from what I've understood, very selfless and actually realized that they were all going to die. I'll never forget the speech, actually, where Martin Luther King says, I've been to the mountaintop. He was a very religious man, very Christian man, and says, I've been to the mountaintop. You guys get there, but I don't get there with you. And then from the information I had, he died very shortly thereafter. And as he's saying, I don't get there with you. He's emotional in his face. You see him crying. The video was very persuasive of Christianity, by the way. And then he's pulled off stage, and then he shot thereafter. It feels like a man that knew he wasn't going live much longer, but was willing to put his cause ahead of his own mortality. I guess Jesus was doing the same.

In a certain regard, in terms of the disciples, though, I think if they know this isn't true, if they know There's this this has been mythological drift, if things have been exaggerated, why then, especially experiencing that persecution, seeing their friends die in that setting, do they continue to go on and do it?

I think they definitely believed it was true.

Yes. I think at minimum, whatever is going on, you look at some of these secular historians and they look at the data and they say, whatever is going on, the disciples believe something happened. Yeah, I agree. That they saw something. Of course. And so I just think that the explanations of the alternatives of that actually happening are insufficient insofar as how they actually explain the data.

Do you have any doubt? Oh, of course. Okay. So you have at least even 1% doubt.

Oh, definitely. I think, especially when there are times of things that are far more existential than historical, when times of struggle and pain and suffering, and I look at the world and I look at how messy it is, children who die young, people who are abused, all these things. There are moments where I think, how could there be a good God? I mean, I'm not immune to doubt. The interesting thing that I find about the Bible is that the Bible is very open to the God of the Bible being open to us coming to him with our doubts. Now, one-third of the Book of Psalms, which is like right in the middle of the Bible, this poetic literature, if you want to call it that, are sometimes referred to as the Lament or the Complaint Psalms. It's things like Psalm 22, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from me? I cry out by day and I hear no answer. And I think what's interesting that I find with the Bible is its transparency in saying, We're going to struggle. There's this really great story in the Gospel of John.

Well, it's in a couple of the instances of the Gospels where John the Baptist, who's like, Jesus his cousin and good friend, he's been in prison because he's been speaking out against Herod. He's been being a little bit too verbal politically. And so he gets taken and he's in prison. And though he's the one that baptized Jesus and said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, when he's in prison, he doubts. And he sends his disciples over to Jesus to ask, Are you the Messiah? Are you the one we're waiting for? Or should we be waiting for another? Now, in that interaction, Jesus actually says, John the Baptist is the greatest of all men born of women, which is basically everybody, right? And yet in that very same setting, John the Baptist is doubting that Jesus is who he says he is because he's experiencing pain pain and suffering.

On that point of you seeing horrific things happening in the world and then having doubts, I think for me, that was one of the persuasive arguments of the New Atheist movement that I became a part of when I was 18 years old, which was, I think, Richard Dawkins had said about, if God is all loving, then why would he let a two-year-old kid in Africa have their eyeball eaten out from the inside by a parasite? If I could intervene with that, because the assertion God is omnipotent or powerful and omniscient or present. If I could intervene with that as a human, I would stop that. And so if God is omnipotent, omnipotent, all powerful and omnipresent, knows everything and is everywhere, then why wouldn't he intervene with the baby having its eyeball eating out from the inside.

Yeah, it's a good point. And I think if there is an objection that is truly impactful on Christianity in the atheist corner, it is the problem of evil. It always has been because it's far more of an emotional and existential question than it is an intellectual question. Now, part of the problem with it is that if we're talking about evil with a capital E, we're implying that there's a good with a capital G. I think we You run into an issue when saying that evil exists or implying that good exists, and if we're implying that good exists or implying that there's a moral law to adhere to call the good good and the evil evil. If there's a moral law, then there has to be a moral law giver. And that's where we come into issues with, is this subjective or is this objective?

I think the atheist movement would argue that that moral good is virtue of what helps me to survive. So watching a small child suffer in such a way, if I didn't feel anything bad about that, then I wouldn't have the wiring for survival because I wouldn't have the proclivity to defend a suffering child. If I don't have that, then I probably don't reproduce and I don't pass on my genes, and then I'm selected out of existence. So that pain I feel when I see a child suffering is a function of my evolutionary mechanics that make me more likely to survive. And anyone that didn't have that wouldn't have survived and wouldn't be here now. Sure. So evolution, therefore, is the answer.

I think that might suffice in certain instances. However, it's still smuggling in moral categories into a biological explanation. So part of, I mean, you read Richard Dawkins, you read River Out of Eden, and he has that section where he talks about, We shouldn't expect to see any rhyme or reason, good or bad. Dna neither knows nor cares. Dna just is, and we dance to its music. And there's an aspect of Dawkins himself in that volume, at least at that time when he wrote it, articulating that at the end of it all, there is no such thing as actually, you can't call that parasite in that boy's eye, evil. You could say, I don't like it. But to import this moral category of evil is actually to import an idea. This is actually what Dawkins was criticized by by individuals like John gray, the philosopher who taught at the London School of Economics. He says, you're a really great biologist, but then you want to impart actual intrinsic value to people. If you're looking at a simple selfish DNA perspective, you can't actually ascribe that because your DNA, your selfish DNA, exists to carry on its selfish DNA.

In one sense, that child has no bearing on you. Now, it might have a protective mechanism where you want to figure out why the child got the parasite, and so you try to avoid that in order to not get the parasite yourself. But science can't actually give you an explanation for what the moral implications are in that instance. Let me give you an example.

I think I understand the point there. It's essentially asserting that, why does that child matter to me? Because my DNA should just be trying to take care of itself. I guess in biology, I don't always know who my child is, But also from an evolutionary perspective, if we were raised in communities and tribes, we took care of all of the children in the surroundings. I would take care of my brother's children, and he would take care of mine, therefore. Yeah. And again, that goes back to the point of survival, which means I'm more likely to survive if I take care of my community.

Sort of. You read something like the origin of species, though. Darwin himself, when he's articulating the survival of the fittest, there is an aspect of you shouldn't take care of those people because they're actually bringing the genetic gene pool down. We see even in the eugenics movement, pulling a lot from individuals like Darwin in order to validate the fact that in order to carry on your selfish DNA, this idea of taking care of the marginalized and those on the fringes of society and those who are the lesser thans, is not evolutionary advantageous because survival of the fittest implies that the fittest should survive. And these are obviously not the fittest. It's actually a Judeo-Christian ethic in the understanding of every everybody having equal value that we should be taking care of people because they have intrinsic value, not extrinsic value, that allows us to then even import an idea of taking care of those who are not necessarily specifically related to me and mine. It comes back to, okay, where are we grounding this objectivity in? Because there have been societies that have attempted to do it in a might is right aspect, and you the objectivity of what we say is right in a society that says this is better for the most amount of individuals within a particular community.

I think about Yivel Noah. Yeah, Harari. In his book, Sapiens, where he says that the real defining trait of our species versus other species was our ability to collaborate and basically scratch each other's backs. And that meant that we had evolutionary advantages, because if we could work together in a big group and we could believe in stories and we believe in money and prison and governments, et cetera, we could band together and take on the lion or band together and take on the elephant or whatever. And it's actually that in part, there you have, I need to take care of you, you need to take care of me, and we're going to reciprocate that altruism and increase our survival chances. So again, that might explain why I care about that kid, because the species that didn't, they would never have been able to band together and take on the elephant.

Yes. I think it's largely our modern perspective living in a society where we are starting on second base already with our moral perspectives. We have inherited all of these moral categories because of our Judeo-Christian ethic. If you look at basically every society prior to this, or even societies in the East, that's not a given. That's not an assumption, especially in societies that have, say, understandings of karmic cycles, whether that's in Buddhism or Hinduism. The idea of altruism is actually can be categorized as an evil because in the cycle of samsara, of birth, life, death, and rebirth, your lot in this life is due to your wrongdoing in the last life. So in helping someone like that, you are actually inhibiting them from being reincarnated better on the other side. An idea like altruism doesn't exist within that Eastern society. And if you look in the ancient world, let's pick on the Babylonians. The Babylonians, if they were to read Dawkins's River Out of Eden, would basically say, Yeah, exactly. So they have this creation story. It's called the Enuma Alish, and it's this big battle of the gods, and it's an origin story, an attempt to explain why everything is here.

But the conclusion of it is basically, you are a product of a big battle and a mistake. The one God and you, everything around you, the Earth, the sky, it's just the remains of the gods that lost. So meaning, value, purpose, not really, ultimately. You're just the product of time plus night plus chance as well. It's just framed within a religious perspective, whereas Dawkins frames it in a natural materialistic perspective. Where do we get the categories to even say that we We should be taking care of people in communities outside of our specific community? Because in some cultures, they have the ethic of love thy neighbor, but in others, it's eat thy neighbor. And so the question is, which society do you want to pick?

And you're saying that that came from Judeo-Christian values? Yes. I would agree. Yeah, I would agree that. I think I'm trying to understand if it's innate in us from a God, what's good and evil, or whether it's we all subscribe to a culture that was the foundation of that was these Christian values. And yeah, which one is it? Was I born with a good and evil or was 2000 or 3000 years ago when Jesus came to be and we had these books, did that How does that influence them?

Yeah. Well, I think ultimately there's an aspect of our conscience that's imprinted on us that we understand ethics to some degree or another. But the framework to actually find the objectivity of that ethic is found in the revelation of specific revelation in scripture.

Do you believe in evolution?

I don't.

You don't believe it's true? No.

I am open to the fact that I don't think that a belief in evolution undermines Christianity in any way. However, I'm prefacing this by saying I'm not a scientist. I'm an advocate for intelligent design, and I would basically punt the complex conversations of evolutionary biology to individuals who are far more studied than me, like Stephen Meyer and Jonathan McClatchy and John Tors and Douglas Ax and those individuals who studied it. At the exact same time, though, it also depends on what you mean by evolution. So adaptation, genetically, is a thing.

I guess, so I'm saying, do you believe that we evolved from very simple organisms to become the human that you see today? No, I don't. And the argument for that would be, I share 98% of the same DNA as a chimpanzee, and we have these fossil records which seem to show a progression over time. You don't believe that's true?

No, I don't. But at the exact same time, I think there are individuals within the Christian faith, intelligent people who do and have no problem with understanding of a theistic evolutionary model. However, I think in the effort of survival of the fittest, I still think that you're starting a few miles down the road in answering the question of the arrival of the fittest. How do minds come from mindless matter? How does everything come from nothing? How do we answer those questions? I think that's why you can use the evolutionary model as an explanation of how God has actually created the biology of the situation. But I think the bigger question is the cosmological questions. How did this all How did that get going? The big bang, what was the big banger? How did that first ball get rolling? And then why can you and I, Steven, sit here and, like I said before, have the three pounds of gray matter in my head, ruminate over these very complex questions?

I think it was on the Galápagos Islands. I'm probably going to butcher this, but I'll do my very best. The sailors went to an island And they left a bird there. They came back 50 years later. The bird's beak had grown to be very, very long because the prey on that island that it was eating were in hole, so they needed longer beaks. So it shows us that if you leave an animal in an environment, it will adapt and it will select out the short beaked birds for the long beaked birds. And just in that short period of time, you can see that it's becoming a different type of animal. And if you extrapolate that out over a long, long period of time, almost an inconceivable amount of time, maybe hundreds of millions of years, one can understand why me and the chimpanzee, there are similarities in how we look, and there are 98% similarities in my DNA and a chimpanzee's DNA. So one would argue that we have a common ancestor. It's very compelling evidence to me.

Sure. I mean, it's the transitions going from the chimpanzee type thing, right? Because we're obviously not arguing that We were a chimpanzee. That chimpanzee exists today. We have a common ancestor. Yeah, that hominid, whatever that hominid was, what is the transitionary fossil explanation, whatever that goes from the monkey to the human being. I don't really think we have an answer for that in terms of consciousness questions. What makes our ability to reason and think and contemplate different than all of the other species in the animal kingdom? How do we go? If we're arguing that everything comes from single-celled organisms, I guess you could have a If we want to call it a time of the gaps, explanation. Just add millions of years and it solves this issue. I don't know if I am completely satisfied with that answer. Because obviously, there's adaptation. But If you're looking at whether it's the dodo bird example or Darwin's finches, where the beaks are different, you're still getting beaked birds. We've never seen one species turn into a completely different species.

The thing that I filled the gap with is that it's just a matter of time. So with the bird's example, it's for 50 years or something or decades. But when we think about Earth potentially being four, five billion years old, I think it's almost inconceivable what can happen over such a long period of time. It's conceivable that if me and you went to different parts of planet Earth and lived in two completely different environments, and then we came back five billion years later, and there was no medicine and no factors helping us to survive, that we would have gone in two different directions completely. And your ancestors who were living in the jungle might be nine foot. And actually what was useful for survival where I lived in some cave was being two foot tall. And then we wouldn't be able to reproduce, which makes us different species now. I mean, that sounds conceivable for me. Over 4. 5 billion years, it seems conceivable. We both agree on adaptation. Like small adaptations. But then if you expand the time horizon, those small adaptations become massive.

Yeah. I mean, ultimately, no matter which way you want to swing in, I think the adding millions of years as the explanation is a little bit too convenient. But I think at the end of the day, you're still looking at the complexity in nature that points to a design of something that is amazing. And the question of, okay, how do we... Dawkins is famous for saying that it has the illusion of design to it. There's not actually a design to it. It's just the illusion of design. But I think if we actually look at when Darwin was writing, they thought the the smaller you got, the simpler it got. And now we know that the smaller you got, in fact, the more complex you get.

As in the more you zoom into the design, the more you zoom into the brain.

Yeah, our understanding of science has grown exponentially, even from Darwin's day. And there's an aspect of Darwinian evolution that has moved on into what we would now call like neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. And you look at individuals, like I mentioned, Stephen Meyer before, and he even has questioned some of these things about the explanations that are working as givens for evolutionary theory. I still don't think it gets us back to, okay, then why do we have purpose?

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These tests are back by doctors and thousands of hours of research. It's $365 for a yearly membership. Go to functionhealth. Com/ Doac, and use the code DOac25 for $25 off your membership. Where do you think we came from? Where do you think I came from or my ancestors came from? Do you think they were put on Earth as humans? Do you believe in the Adam and Eve story? Do you think there was some evolution? And when do you think this happened?

I know that the world is at least 35 years old. I don't think it's an answer that the Bible is actually attempting to address in terms of the age of the Earth.

Billions of years old?

I don't see any reason not to because I don't think that the creation story in Genesis 1 is necessarily an attempt to reveal the mechanisms of how God did that exactly.

Because this scientific consensus says that it's roughly 4. 5 billion years old, the Earth. And microbes and single-celled organisms are estimated to have appeared 3. 5 to 4 billion years ago, almost as soon as Earth cooled enough to have liquid water. Sure.

Sure. Yeah, and I'm fine with that, actually. I don't think I have to adhere to neo-Darwinian evolution in order to actually believe the world is old. I think I would adhere to an intelligent design thesis, but- We What does that mean? So essentially that the world around us is intelligently designed, not necessarily in that it came through processes of evolution. Once again, I'm not a scientist, I'm a historian. I genuinely do believe that there was a historical Adam and Eve and that those were the first people. Okay. Now, what did they look like? I don't know. I think they probably lived a long, long time ago. And I don't know if the breakdown of Genesis Chapter 1 and the seven days of creation are actually attempting to articulate seven 24-hour days. They could be. I just don't think that's the point.

But you do believe that humans were put here as humans, and you believe that the other animals were put here in some early form? Yes. And then you also believe in adaptation of those species? Yes. Okay, fine.

And going back to talking about trying to explain these things scientifically, I always find we can explore the answer scientifically, but that's only going to get us so far, especially when we're discussing meaning and purpose questions. So let me give you a little bit of a story that a friend of mine, Glenn Scribner, likes to articulate in this parable that he tells that he calls Betty the Botanist. So you have Betty the Botanist, and she's been looking at a plant sample in her lab. She's been spending all weekend looking at this plant sample. She's been investigating it and doing all of these tests on it all weekend. And Gerri, the lab assistant, comes in on Monday. Betty looks at Gerry and says, Gerry, thank you for the botanical specimen that you left me on the weekend. Thank you for this botanical specimen. I've been doing all of these tests. I've been looking at the components of it and the complexity of the biology. There are pharmacological implications that I've extrapolated from its various biological components. We can use these to cure diseases. There's so many things. Thank you so for the botanical specimen. And Jerry says, Betty, it was February 14th on the weekend.

That was a long stem rose. Do you know what I left for you? Do you know what the implication of the botanical specimen, as you're calling it, was for what I was trying to communicate to you? Now, did Betty the Botanist understand the long stem rose? In one way, she understood it more than most because she had done all of the tests and run through all of the different ways that she could extrapolate what that thing was. But what Jerry was trying to actually illustrate was something that went beyond that. It was a love gift. He was trying to communicate something that went beyond this simple biology. Betty could very simply say, Well, I couldn't get that from the data. I couldn't have extrapolated the implications of it being a love gift. In that, so far as it being a parable, we can look at all of the scientific explanations, but there's something that goes beyond the simple data in terms of meaning and purpose and desire identity questions that go far beyond that. I could tell you the different chemical components that make up the page and the ink and the size of the paper and his transparency and all of that.

I could say, Steven, what is this? And you could go into all of this explanation about how paper is made and the pulp and how we extrapolate it and eventually put it together in the binding. And I could say, Okay, yeah, but this is a Bible. This is meant to communicate something to you. What is the explanation for this? One explanation could be the chemical and scientific components that make up the Bible. Another explanation could be, this is a religious text that's actually trying to communicate something to you. And so I think in the scientific data, all of that is obviously important. There's this great quote by C. S. Lewis, where he says that men were scientific because they expected laws in nature, and so they looked for the legislator. You look, you read individuals like Francis Bacon who came up with the scientific method, and they're inherently religious. They almost articulate what they're doing in their scientific endeavor as an act of worship. Because if the exploration of the creative world points to a creator, then that can be an act of understanding who and why we're here. In terms of the scientific questions, I'm very interested in them, especially as a non-scientist.

They fascinate me. But in terms of the meaning questions, I think I would err on the side of caution of attempting to be Betty the Botanist. Sometimes I read individuals like Dawkins, and I'm hearing Betty the Botanist extrapolate and define the botanical specimen.

I think part of the reason why the new atheist movement that I, again, was captured by was not sufficient is because, as you say, it didn't fill some gap. And much of the gap, I think for a lot of people is, okay, so if I believe in the science in that argument, in the atheist argument, or I believe in the Bible, I still need an answer to, Yeah, but so what? What's What's the point of this? Even in the example of evolution, I get, But why am I evolving? Why am I trying to survive? It means to what end? Okay, I'm trying to have more kids, but then why are my kids trying to have more kids? What's the point? And you just keep hitting this wall of like, Okay, but what's the point? What's the point? Am I meant to do something? Is there a mission for me? And I think that question is one that I think about sometimes, which is no matter what I believe, what is the point?

And I think that's why the Bible is such an amazing explanation for that, because Because in a world that tells you, ultimately, that you're a product of time, place, matter, place, chance, the Bible looks at you, Stephen, and says, You're created with meaning and purpose and intention. You bear the image of God. So there's something that is actually screaming from your biology about who you are that goes beyond the fact that you're not just a physical specimen sitting in front of me. You have a mind, and that mind is maybe your brain, or we're not even sure about that. So what makes Steven, Steven? You're not not your body. And that's why there's this inherent conversation within Christianity about the fact that our hope is not a spiritual one. The end result is the resurrection. The reason why Jesus rose from the dead is scripture calls him the first fruit. So we're all going to be resurrected. There's going to be a new heaven, a new Earth. And that's the promise of of Christianity.

So that's the point? Yes. The point of this life, according to the Bible, is that I get to go to this place called heaven?

No. So it's a both and. So when Jesus' disciples ask him how to pray, he says, it gives them the Lord's prayer, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. That kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So it's not just about, I'm going to die and my spirit is going to go to somewhere else, and that's the whole goal. It's to bring heaven here as well. What we do matters because you are a human being, you're not a human doing. And so what you do here and who you are here actually has an implication.

To who and what?

To everything. So we're put here to be stewards of creation of each other, to be examples of image bearers of God. Like your life has intrinsic meaning.

Internal Internal meaning, yeah.

Internal meaning more than just what you can contribute. So that would be extrinsic, your ability to give back to society, your ability to contribute to the advancement of scientific technological, fill in the gap. You have value that goes beyond that. This is why we fight for people everywhere. And that's, I think, why injustice, something like injustice bothers us so much and why evil bothers us so much.

Do you know the chimpanze that has like 98% the same DNA as me?

Yeah.

Do they have the same intrinsic meaning? Even my dog, I'm like, does my dog have that same intrinsic meaning? And is my dog going to go to heaven?

I think scripture tells us what we need to know, not always what we want to know. There have been individuals throughout church history who have articulated that. St. Francis of Assisi was big on animals going to heaven. C. S. Lewis was big on animals going to heaven. In fact, when he wrote The Last Battle, the last series in his Line, The Witcher and the Wardrobe, books, there are animals in heaven. I mean, if there's a new Earth, I think there are going to be animals. I don't know if they're going to be the same animals that existed on this side. But I also... I have no idea. But I think there's something different because I think you have a soul.

And you think my dog doesn't have a soul?

I don't know, but I don't think he has the same spiritual component that you are endowed with in the same way.

How do we know? How do I know that? You know these chimpanzees? They're pretty smart. I was watching a touch screen the other day and solving problems. And I was thinking, is there not an element of, I don't know, human arrogance to think that these other creatures, like the whales, they're so unbelievably smart. They don't have a soul. They work together in packs. They love, they have kids, they seem to pursue things.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's a testimony to the general reflection of God's good creation. At the same time, we describe when you're just repeating something, we use adjectives like aping. We understand that there's an aspect of like, if you train the monkey to push the button, he's going to push the button. If you give the elephant the paint brush and convince it to paint itself, it's going to paint itself. But if you can train the elephant to paint the Mona Lisa, is it really going to understand what is painted in the same way that Michelangelo understands it? Sorry, Da Vinci, who painted the Mona Lisa? Now I'm getting myself into trouble. Whoever painted the Mona Lisa, Da Vinci, there's something about the value and what is being put in there that is different.

Do you believe that me and you are born with a particular mission and meaning on this planet, or do you think we have to go and find that particular meaning or mission?

That's a great question. I think the chief end of man is to know God and glorify him insofar as Jesus has asked, what is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus uses two examples. He quotes from two different passages in the Old Testament. He says, Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. I mean, ultimately, I think we always want some a grandiose purpose, and we want the calling of Moses. We want to go out in the bush, or We want to go out in the desert and find a burning bush and have that calling on our lives. I don't think that's wrong, but I think ultimately, our purpose is to live a faithful life to who we were created to be in being image bearers of God and being faithful in loving God with everything that we have. So the Jewish phraseology of loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, it's a stand-in for your entire being. With everything you have, love God with that by what you do, by what you say, by how you live. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

That's the golden rule. But if you look at other religions, it's almost always framed in the negative. Don't do unto others what you don't want done to you. There's a difference between not punching someone in the face and building someone in a hospital.

The meaning of our lives is to love our creator at the most fundamental level.

At the basic level and to understand how that expresses in everyday life. So Martin Luther, the German Protestant reformer, he said, The faithful Christian shoemaker, doesn't glorify God by sewing little crosses into the shoes, but by making really good quality shoes. And so there's an aspect of God God has endowed us, we're creating God's image. We create as an aspect of an outpouring of that which we are created to be, and we do that well. The Proverbs says, Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all its might. And the idea is you have the capability to do incredible things. And the reason why you have that capability is because you bear the image of a creator who, like I said before, lives in a set of living, loving relationships. And so that God actually didn't need to create you, me, anything. So God is not better off or worse off if we love him or worship him or believe in him. He really isn't. He has existed in love, in relationship. And yet the story of the Bible is that God chooses to create out of an outpouring of his love, knowing even that we are going to rebel against him, we are going to sin, do wrong against how he has actually created us to be, and still desires to have that relationship.

And if we do sin, if I sin in my life, do I go to hell?

You You don't... I mean, the answer to that is yes and no, but the- Am I going to hell? Are you going to hell? Stephen Bartlet. Is Stephen Bartlet going to hell? This is the clip that they're going to put online. West says, Stephen Bartlet is going to hell. I I mean, here's the thing. Everybody is going to hell. Everybody. Here's how I've said in the past, right? The Bible is very clear, all good people go to heaven. But Jesus said, no one is good but God alone. So if all good people go to heaven, and no one is good but God alone, only God is in heaven.

So do you believe that there is a hell and heaven as we typically understand it? A place that is great to go to after we die and a place that is very hot.

Place that is very hot. I mean, there's a lot of imagery of fire and weeping and ashing of teeth. I think a lot of that is reflective and allegorical more than it's a physical, tangible thing that is... Most of our perceptions of hell are largely shaped by depictions in the Middle Ages of Dante's Inferno and that thing. I think it's more so that you will experience the full weight of the separation from God's goodness. Not necessarily a separation from God, because I think God's punishment and his wrath are going to be felt there. But if we're talking about a good place, bad place, in the Very simplest of terms, yes, but heaven isn't full of good people. Heaven is full of people who understand they are not good enough. And so I mentioned that justice, mercy thing. Justice is fulfilled on Jesus. So because As justice is fulfilled, now, mercy, which is not getting what we do deserve, is able to be given to those who put their trust in Jesus.

So if I don't believe in Jesus, I don't believe in the Bible, but I live a good life. I'm nice to people, I'm charitable, try and be kind wherever I can be, and I don't believe in God. Am I going to hell or heaven as it relates to the scriptures?

Well, I don't think if you're living your life, rejecting God. God is not going to force you into his presence.

So I'm not going to go to heaven then? No. Where am I going to go?

Well, you would go to hell.

So if I don't believe in the Bible, Jesus and God, then I'm going to go to hell?

Yes, insofar as if heaven is a place for those who have submitted their lives to Jesus, who are living the identity of what they're created to be, and said, your will be done, God. Yeah. Hell is a place where God says, You rejected me, your will be done. I'm going to give you what you want in that I'm going to remove my grace and mercy from you, and you are going to experience truly what you desire in being separated from me and my goodness and my grace.

And what is that place like according to the scripture? Give me a depiction in my mind of what hell might be like for me.

Yeah, I mean, it's not a good place. It's not a nice place. It's a place that no matter what's going on, if you are a believer, if you truly understand what this book is saying, seriously, I think it should motivate you to want to desire Steven Bartlet, I desire you to have a personal relationship with your creator because I don't want you to experience whatever hell is. I desire for you to be in perfect relationship with your God, not necessarily because I want you to get a get-out-of-heal free card, but because I actually think that in living how God created you to be, in accepting living out the image that you bear, you're going to find the meaning and purpose that you ultimately have expressed that you have this innate desire for.

I think it's, according to Gallup, it's 18 10% of Americans don't believe in a God. Now, to get into heaven, as it's described in the Bible, do I just need to say I believe in God, or do I have to have some active commitment and evidence in my life that I am living my life in line with God's teachings?

I think ultimately, salvation. Salvation implies you're being saved from something. The good news is good news because the bad news is bad.

And the bad news is very bad. I was looking at what the Bible says about Hell. In revelations, it says it's a lake of fire. In market, it says it's unquenchable fire. In Matthew, it says eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. In Matthew, again, it says, outer darkness where there will be weeping and mashing of teeth.

Yes.

They will be shut out from the presence of the Lord, weeping and mashing of teeth in torment, eternal punishment. The smoke of their torment rises forever. This is not a place I want to go. No, no.

I think the urgency of the Christian message is the bad news is really bad, and that's what makes the good news so good. Jesus has taken on that hell on your behalf, and it goes beyond simply a believing. It's not just about saying the right words. It's not just an incantation. You are not saved by what you do. You're saved by It's just Jesus's. Jesus lived the life you couldn't and made the sacrifice you can't on your behalf in order to establish that right relationship with God. So that's where grace comes into the picture. Justice is getting what you do deserve. Mercy is not getting what you do deserve. Grace is getting what you don't deserve. So insofar as Christ on the cross fulfills the justice, of his holy law. Mercy is enacted and you don't get that punishment. By putting your faith and trust in Jesus as your Lord and your savior, as your creator, you don't get that punishment. And now you get grace, which is not what you're owed, but you are adopted as a child of the Most High.

So of the 18% of people that say they don't believe in a God, they are almost certainly going to tell, according to scripture.

Well, so James, the Book of James in the Bible, who's actually the half brother of Jesus, he writes a book and he says, You believe that God is one? He says, Great. So do the demons. So the point is, if anybody knows and believes in God, it's the demons. It's Satan, right? Okay. So what's the difference there? The difference is there is that there's a relational component of When we, in the Christianese Christian terminology, when I say Jesus is your Lord and your savior, what I mean is that he has rescued you, he saved you from the penalties of sin and death. But then the Lord component is that now You have submitted your life to him in obedience and repentance. Now, repentance is another religious word that maybe is not always fully understood. Repentance is the changing and understanding of the way you live. You understand that the things that you used to do that are wrong are not the things that are either what you should do or are going to give you fulfillment. You stop doing those Not because God is a cosmic kill joint, he doesn't want you to feel the goodness of those things, but because those things are actually harmful to you.

They are hurting you, and they are creating a separation of the relationship with between you and God.

There's going to be a very small number of people that actually live in such a way that are fully repented and have accepted the Lord as their savior, right? I think it was 30% of people actually go to church somewhat frequently, and the other 56% seldom will never go. They're not really, really active in their belief. They probably haven't repented. So it would appear to me that a very small percentage of people are actually qualifying for the Kingdom of Heaven as it's described in the Bible.

The miracle of of this is that your salvation is received, not achieved. And so once again, it's not about like brownie points. It's not about checking off. I read the Bible as many times. I went to church as many times. I didn't lie, I didn't steal. I didn't cheat. Because we still exist in this beautiful yet broken world and because we live in a world that is marred by the brokenness of the fall, of our first parents, Adam and Eve, making that decision to rebel against God, and because of that, now the creation itself has been affected. It's not about trying to earn my way into heaven. So is it a very small percentage of people who are actually repenting? Maybe. But what of that percentage is attempt to fully understand? It's interesting, the word that we translate as repentance is the Greek word metanoia. It means change your mind. There's an aspect of It's not just about the doing. It's an understanding. It's a component of, I don't want to do these things. Even when I do them, I don't want to lie anymore. I see the harm that causes and the brokenness that it creates.

And so even if I'm still breaking the law of God. In the book of James that I mentioned, there's this part where James says, If you break one rule in the law, it's as if you've broken them all. I've sometimes used this illustration of it's like you're hanging off a cliff on a linked chain. If you cut any of those links, you're going to fall. It's no longer holding you. That's the thinking that I think James is getting at when he writes that.

So you reference the original sin, which is Adam and Eve taking the apple. Or fruit. Or the fruit, whatever it might be. God made Adam and Eve, he's omnipotent, omniscient. When he made them, he knew they were going to take the apple, but he made them anyway. So that sounds like a setup.

You could read it as a setup. I think more so what's going on. I think what strikes me as more amazing is that God did it anyways, and he didn't hit the restart button.

And then he knew that when he made them, that it would result in this thousands and thousands of years of people worshiping him. I think you'd think I was a bad person. If I made something knowing that it was going to make a mistake, and that mistake would result in people worshiping me for the next forever. Sure. You would say, I did this to get you to worship me. Sure. And to basically make you live in guilt that I. Logically, that's holds. What's wrong with that, logically?

Well, I think you could read it like that. I think ultimately, and this might sound like a cop-out to some, but maybe God knows something we don't.

Maybe, yeah.

And that he has reasons for allowing evil that maybe we don't understand and can't comprehend because he is God. There's an interesting thing in both the Book of Revelation and in one of the letters of Peter where it basically says, from before the foundation of the world was laid, the Lamb was slain. So Jesus was crucified. That the cross, that whole Bringing back people in unity in relationship with God via this act of the only innocent person who ever lived being murdered on a cross, a great act of evil accomplishing a lot of good. Once again, not the way I do it if I was God. There's all sorts of things that we think, if I was God, I do it like this. Thank goodness I'm not God. I would get a whole lot of things wrong. You wouldn't want to live in that world. But I think what's interesting is that the cross was not a contingency plan. The cross was the plan all the way along. And so God is glorified in that act. And I think part of it is what I was saying before. If God is love, if love is the greatest ethic, and the greatest ethic is expressed in the greatest example, which is self-sacrifice, then God is actually communicating the greatest ethic in the greatest possible way in what we see in the gospel message of how he accomplishes the unification with his people for the goodness and glory of who he is.

Do I understand all the complexities and mysteries that go in conjunction with that? No. But I I'm convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the historical and the philosophical case for the existence of God, and then that God, specifically being the God that is articulated in the Bible, is true. And on that basis, I am willing to submit my life because of both the evidence and because I've actually seen my own life change radically. So you're a friend, right? You say you've seen an actual experiential change in that person's life.

Oh, yeah. So my friend, I talked about him anonymously on here, but he then clipped it, posted it on his Instagram and said, Steven's talking about me. Okay. And he's doing some interviews and stuff now. So I feel more comfortable talking about him more publicly. But my friend who was going through a little bit of a crisis of meaning in his life was living in Dubai in this penthouse apartment, single, alone, remote working, all those kinds of very individualistic lifestyle, successful in a material sense, all of a sudden turned to Christianity, flew to America, got baptized, and is now Christian. And would I say he is happier than before? A hundred %. Would I say, I am very glad he became Christian? One hundred %. Would I say that I believe his future is going to be better because he's now Christian? One hundred %.

That's a lot of a hundred %.

No, but it's true. It's objectively true. I even spoke to... We've been friends for decades and all of us feel the same way. We don't even have to agree with what he believes to think actually it's helped him.

Well, and in that, I think there's an objectivity to the actual evidence that I evaluate in terms of the historical reliability of the Bible and the philosophical explanations for meaning and purpose and morality, how we ground those, the scientific data of a universe that looks like it's finetuned and has intelligence designed into it. But the subjectivity of how I understand my life and have seen it change radically, and what you see in your friend is not inconsequential.

No, it's not.

I agree. And it testifies to something. It testifies to a hope that even in scripture, in 1 Peter 3, Peter, writing to the dispersed church in the ancient world, has this in the context of persecution, says, But in your hearts, revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have, but do with gentleness and respect to keeping a clear conscience so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ will be ashamed of their slander. And there's this implication that always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you for an argument for the existence of God. No, that's not what he says. He says, To give the reason for the hope that you have, your friend is communicating a hope that you took notice of. I think that is literally the word to give an answer that we translate as to give an answer, defense, or reason in many English Bible translations, is the Greek word apologia, to give an apologetic, to give a defense. And scripturally, scripture does call us to love the Lord our God with all of our mind.

And I think there's an aspect of God. If my friend Tim Barnet actually Stand to Reason, which is Greg Cokel's organization, you had Greg in your panel discussion recently. My friend Tim says, If you want to know the mind of God, you better start by using your own. And so in that way, I think we can worship God through that. There's a component of God has endowed us with intelligence, and we can use that to speak to the things that he has actually created and the evidence for that. But at the exact same time, the hope of the life changed, to use Jesus's own language in John 3, being born again, I think also communicates something that is genuinely really profound.

I agree. I would assert that maybe if he had converted to pretty much any of the major religions, he would have experienced the same transformative upside. When you look at people that do invert to other religions outside of Christianity, they do experience a greater sense of meaning and community and all the things that come with it that gives them that sense of belonging and maybe calms their anxieties and their worries and their nihilism to a point where they can live a bit more of a content life. So is that evidence of Christianity or is that just evidence that we're all in search of meaning in a world that's increasingly nihilistic and individualistic and says that there's nothing other than, as you say, like time, space, matter, et cetera?

No, that's a great point. I don't think it's arbitrary. I think there's an aspect of religiosity that is always going to be a net positive for society, no matter what that religion is, because I think it's going to give an aspect of purpose and identity to people. At the exact same time, I don't think it's just the subjective point of view. This is why I think it's very dangerous when I go out. I used to work for a minister organization that worked on university campuses. And we would go and we would talk with students. And I too many times to count, would hear a student ask another student, Why do you believe in Christianity? And they would then proceed in articulating how they became a Christian. But that's not the answer. That's not actually the question they asked. They asked, Why do you believe it's true? And you answered with how you got into this group. If they had ran into a Buddhist, they said, Why do you believe Buddhism is true? And you said, Well, I just met these really great people on campus, and they invited me over for karma discussions in pizza.

It's radically changed my life. And I follow the noble truths and the path of the Buddha, and it's changed my life. When you give them that story, now, I don't want people to hear me that giving your testimony is not a good thing to do. I just think there's a time and a place where it could have been any situation. It sounds convenient. You could have run into a Muslim or a Roman or a Buddhist or a Hindu and just stumbled into those conversations. That's where I think answering why I believe it's true is more than just that. It's no less than that, but it's more than that. Because I believe that the multivalent argument for the truthfulness with the capital T of Christianity has a historical backing and a philosophical backing, a scientific backing, and psychological backing, and all of those things. I bet your friend would say it, too.

Oh, yeah.

I bet he would. Yeah. And in one sense, my goal is to adhere to truth of the capital T, even above my allegiance to Jesus. Now, I believe Jesus is the truth of the capital T, so I don't think that there's a conflict of interest there. But I want to follow what's true, because even if it's a convenient lie, it's still a lie, and I don't want to live my life for a lie.

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And you can get yours at thediary. Com. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below. On that point, one of the things that really convinced me when I was going through my little atheism phase was this geography argument, which I'm sure you've heard a million times. Sometimes. If I'd been born in Saudi Arabia, I'd probably be a Muslim. If I'd been born in India, I'd probably be Hindu. So it seems like the religion you believe entirely depends on where you were born, not on necessarily what is true. And therefore, if we go back to this point about hell, I remember thinking at 19 years old, oh, my God. Actually, where you're born is determining whether you go to this fiery eternal suffering or not. And that's not fair. So this must all be not true.

Yeah. I mean, I was born in Pakistan. So I was born in a majority I'm a Muslim country, and I'm not a Muslim. You could argue my parents weren't Muslims, but I know tons of people who were. My colleague Steve, who is our Alberta Director at Apologetics Canada, he was born in Korea and went to a school setting that was Buddhist.

But the numbers are the numbers. You're like 95 %. I don't know what the numbers are, but I know it's over 90 % likely to be the religion of that territory if you take on a religion at all just by where you were born. And that doesn't fit. I remember thinking very clearly at 19 years old, this doesn't feel fair as a way to determine who gets into hell or heaven, which is like my parents and why they conceived me or whatever.

Sure. I mean, in one sense, you don't want fair because fair is you going to hell. And the gospel message is not fair. So the actual gospel message is not about fairness because fairness is I get the just penalty for what I do. And that's where the whole concept of mercy and grace, they're so central to the Christian message. Is Buddhism and Hinduism are based on fairness, solely based on fairness. The cycle of samsara, of life, death, birth, and rebirth, the karmic cycles, that's fair. In one sense, what God does when he intervenes in humanity, when he incarnates, becomes flesh, steps into humanity, and actually experiences pain and hurt and suffering and death in a way that makes the God of the Bible unique and actually to what you and I go through when we have those struggles and doubts. He then takes on the punishment that we deserve, and the fairness is not actually what is then given. Because the fairness is West Huff getting what he actually deserves for the weight and the penalty of his cosmic rebellion in choosing a life that is against and away from God.

I'm unclear. Okay. If I had Moroccan parents, my probability of being Muslim is 99%, and if I was born in Morocco, that would set me up to go to hell, theoretically.

Yes, insofar as you're either you're taking on your sin, and that's the punishment, or Christ is taking on your sin, and then you are then covered in his intercession. But it's not about believing or not believing.

Yeah, which you explained earlier, which was useful for me because that gave me a new understanding that I didn't have previously. The other thing I think a lot about, I thought a lot about, was prayer. So this was really compelling to me when I was younger, which was I would hear these stories of horrific things that had happened in the world. When you think about what happened in Nazi Germany, and I'd hear that the people there were very religious in praying, and it didn't seem to change the odds of their fate. And when you look hospital stats of Christians versus non Christians, generally, praying doesn't seem to be impacting outcome. So therefore, I concluded as a 19-year-old that maybe prayer doesn't work. And why are people doing it when it doesn't seem to historically have worked? What is your perspective? Does praying work? If my child is sick and I start praying, is that going to help?

I mean, it also begs the question of what we think prayer is. Is prayer Are there incantations to placate God? What does that mean? Like, is God a genie? I say the right prayers and he gives me what I want. Now, there are some religious systems that that is what prayer is. That's all the agricultural deities of the ancient New East. You say the right things and you give the right sacrifices. The hope is that the gods would accept that and then in the reciprocal nature of that. They give you good crops. I think prayer in Christianity is a give and take in that it's a relational thing. It's God desiring to have communication with you. If you read the Psalms, a lot of which are prayers, even I mentioned the Lament Psalms. It's David or whoever, the Psalmist, coming to God and saying, I don't get it. I'm hurting. I'm broken. I'm alone. I don't feel you. There's an aspect of the relational component of prayer. Now, prayer is not just that. Prayer is asking, is supplications, is committing your desires to God because you believe that God can actually work in the universe and do things.

And that's what the Bible says. It says, Pour out your hearts to him, call him and call him to me, and I will answer you in Jeremiah. And it also says, Ask, and it will be given to you in Matthew.

Yeah, seeking you will find. And after the door will be opened unto you. I mean, part of those is that there's a little bit of a trickiness in quote mining because the context could mean prayer, the context could mean the salvific act of God, knock the door shall be opened unto you. If you're actually seeking God, and you're doing that with an open heart and an open mind, God is going to say, Yes, I'm entering into your life. I'm doing, I'm revealing myself to you. Now, God can answer yes, God can answer no, and God can answer Wait. Those are all answers to prayer.

Do you think God answers prayers?

Yes.

And is there a certain type of prayer he might answer? Because if I lose my keys, please help me find my keys. I assume he might not answer that one. But is there a certain type of prayer you think God answers?

I don't think it's a magical formula.

Okay.

I think the thing that we see within Christianity is that prayer is a relational aspect. When the disciples I mentioned earlier, they asked Jesus, How should we pray? And he gives the Lord's prayer. In some ways, that's less of a prescription, say these words in the right way. Because even Jesus says, Don't babble like the pagans do. But there's an aspect of our Father who art in heaven, like a recognition of who God is. Holy be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this this day our daily bread. Give us the provision that we need. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our our truspasses, our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. That's an interesting one because We're asking God to forgive us like we forgive others, which can be dangerous sometimes. Maybe I don't want to pray that all the time. For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. In some ways, is that God telling us, is that Jesus telling us how to pray exactly? I don't think that's not a part of it, but I also think there's an aspect of it.

Recognize who God is, recognize who you are. Do ask for provision. Do ask for things that you need and even that you want. And recognize that we want this reality on Earth as it is in heaven. There's components of what Jesus is saying that go beyond simply a rote prayer. In some incantation or list of, you see the right things in the right way, and then God is going to... That's what ancient cracker Roman paganism was like.

And prayer, even if you aren't religious, has a basis in neuroscience that says it's really good for our wellbeing. Neuroscience research shows that prayer activates brain networks for attention, emotional regulation, and social connection while reducing stress. And when they do brain ECG scans, they find people are more calm and focused when they're in states of prayer and they have greater resilience over time, which is, I mean, reason enough to have some form of active prayer regardless of that. I'm really interested in how you think about everything that's going on with technology at the moment. We're living in a very interesting time. It's like we're trying to sum in the gods ourselves. We're creating this form of intelligence that people are developing a relationship with and are speaking to every day. And we've made it on silicon chips and using these things called GPUs, and it's called Artificial Intelligence. Are you concerned by the direction of travel in this direction that we're now seeking guidance and comfort and all of these things from AI instead of this book in front of us?

I think there's aspects where I have concerns. I mean, my colleagues, Andy Steiger and Steve Kim, are more invested in these questions, I think, than I am. My colleague Andy, he did his PhD at Aberdeen in the question of philosophical Anthropology. What does it mean to be human? He investigated a lot into the questions of things like AI, and my colleague Steve is looking into things that relate to transhumanism. I mean, these are relevant questions to who we are. I'm not convinced that the intelligence part of AI outweighs the artificial. I don't see AI thinking. I see there being an aspect of the coding that AI will regurgitate, but I'm not convinced that AI will ever, say, become conscious. I think it will fake the Turing test in that it will attempt to convince us that it is cognizant of its own existence. But I don't know if that's actually possible. I think there's something about the innateness of of consciousness that we don't really know. We don't really know what consciousness is. There's all sorts of weird explanations of why... Is your brain who you are? Not really. It's not not. We don't really have, I think, entirely sufficient answers to these questions.

But at the exact same time, I think it makes sense that if we are creating God's image, there's an aspect of we want to create in our image. And there's going to be that outpouring of the creation of something new and amazing and advancing in our understanding and knowledge.

This sets people up for this whole simulation theory argument where they say that if you imagine any rate of improvement on our current reality, people are already making virtual reality worlds. If you can go on so many different programs now and type in, I want to go to the top of Mount Everest and there's a village there. And then you can experience that in three dimensions. You can put on a headset and go to the top of Mount Everest, and there's this rendered village there. If you imagine any rate of improvement, even 1% a year in this technology, eventually, whether it's in 500 years or 10,000 years, you get to a point where it's almost indistinguishable from this experience that me and you are having today in the real world. And so the simulation theory posits that, again, you just think about how long technology has been here. It's like 50 years ago, we didn't have computers We didn't even have the iPhone or phones. That's just 50 years. Imagine billions of years and a rate of improvement, you get to something indistinguishable from this. And it's conceivable that me and you with computers will run simulations.

We'll make things like the Sims and video games and GTA 6, whether that's taking forever. And with an improvement of technology at any rate, those worlds will feel real theoretically to the characters within them. So simulation theory posits that actually this is what our lives are. There was a civilization at some point in the cosmic universe that got to that point of technological sophistication. They ran a bunch of different simulations on a computer or whatever their technology was. And this is one such world we're living in right now. And that is actually our God. It could be some four-year-old alien that had a laptop 10 gazillion years ago. And the Big Bang was the day that he started the simulation.

Yeah. Almost like it was intelligently designed, right?

Yeah. Actually, I I think there probably is some God. I just don't know what it is. Sure. So I don't know whether it's the one in the book that you have in front of me here, whether it's the one that they believe in the Muslim religion, or whether it's like a four-year-old kid on his laptop that was messing around in a technologically sophisticated universe 10 billion years ago. But I think there's something bigger than I am.

And I think the simulation theory, I don't think, really solves the issue because it just punts the can down the road. In that it still avoids the question of what is that? How did we get here? And what is the ultimate explanation for everything? So probabilistically, is in the world around us, in what we see with our relational characteristics and everything, is it possible that we live in a simulation? I think it, yes, it is. I think probabilistically, though, with how the description of creation and the human condition and what we see within history, I think, personally, the God of the Bible is the most reasonable explanation, especially when we're comparing it to other religious worldviews. I think the simulation theory is an interesting one, or the string theory, multiple universes. I just think that those are almost like we're walking around the question. We're circling around the question, and it's not actually answering. We still need a God.

Yeah. And then even in the example I gave of the four-year-old messing around in his laptop 10 billion years ago in a technologically advanced civilization. I then, my brain, a few seconds later, asked, well, what was the point of his life?

Yeah. And who created him?

And I could say the same about God, I guess. Like the God of the Christian Bible. Who is this God? Who created this God? Did someone create this God or has he always been there?

Right. I mean, philosophically, it's a category error because all things that have a beginning have a creator. And philosophically, the God of the Bible is an entity that ontologically didn't have a beginning. So if we're talking about an unmoved mover in the Aristotelian categories of philosophy, God didn't have a creator because God is the author of creation.

Okay.

It's like asking, what does blue smell like?

And God, I should think of as in the Bible, well, not in the Bible, but in depictions of God, it's like a guy with a beard. Yeah.

No.

Or it's like some mystical force that's like a white light. Right.

No, I think those are attempts, probably inadequately to express aspects of how we would visually communicate who God is. I think that probably misses the mark more than it actually gets at what and who God is. I don't know if there's a proper way that could give a physical attribution and description of God other than Jesus, who is God incarnate. Could you think of a more powerful, a more amazing example of a God than one who actually enters into his creation? I don't know.

My fiancee says that God is love. She says that a lot. My fiancee tends to be right as well. Nice. So I tend to... In the first time she says something that I don't believe, I tend to assume it's not true for a while. But then it tends to be proven to be true within a year. So when she said to me that God is love, I really thought deeply about it. I thought, maybe she's right. Maybe love is God.

I mean, that's from the Bible. God is love. The thing grammatically that's interesting about that when John writes that in his epistle is grammatically in the Greek, It's phrased in a way that God is love, but love is not God. So you can't deify what love is. When you love your fiancé, that isn't God. That's an inefficient description of what we know God to be. So God is love, but love is not God. And in that sense, going back to what I was saying, said a few times now, what the Bible is saying when it says God is love is that that is the ultimate character of who God is in that love is this highest value. It is that which we hold as the example ethic of what we want. We want to be loved. To be loved and not known is very insufficient. To be known but not loved is what we all fear. But I think what we find in the Bible is a God who both loves and knows us. I think that's where the God who is love, who creates us and calls us to love Of him with all of our soul, all of our mind, all of our strength, that properly fulfills what I think we mean when we say God is love.

There is a deep crisis of meaning in the world, especially in the Western world. Three and five American adults between 18 and 25 years old said that their life lacked meaning and purpose, with 50% of the same group saying, Their poor mental health was linked to not knowing what to do with my life. A lack of purpose is significantly associated with many of the mental health and illnesses like depression and anxiety. As of April 2025, the overall prevalence of depression in US teenagers and adults has increased by 60% over the last decade, according to the CDC. And tragically, globally, more than almost a million people die due to suicide every year. And it's the third leading cause of death among 15 to 29-year-olds, according to the World Health Organization. What are we getting wrong?

I think we're We're looking for our purpose and our meaning and things that are ultimately not going to give the value that those things actually require. So it's not a matter of if we worship, it's a matter of what we worship. Worship, if worship is giving our all to something, I think there's a lot of things within society that are going to tell us that our identity is going to be fulfilled in money, or it's going to be fulfilled in relationships, or accolades, or all of these aspects are ultimately going to fall short in giving us actual purpose and meaning. If they're not grounded in actually giving us value. Your friend, as far as I understand, is a good example of that. We can achieve all of these things. You hear athletes and actors and famous people talk about all the wealth, all the celebrity status they could possibly desire and could be completely empty, be completely fulfilled-less. I think that's because we're chasing after things that aren't going to give us what we actually need. There are facsimiles and cheap reproductions of what actually can give us meaning and purpose. And that's because We are created to be in relationship with our God.

And that is where we will find our true identity. That's what's going to give us the motivation to actually get up in the morning. Like your friend, you saying you couldn't get up in the morning. He finds not just a motivational value in the Christian faith. He finds actually meaning and purpose in the Christian faith that getting up in the morning has a purpose that goes beyond the here and the now. And that can affect all of the people around him. Now he can pursue his entrepreneurial activities or his relationships or even his finances for the glory of God. And then that gives it an ontological meaning that goes beyond the simple basics of what secular materialism has to offer.

Young men in particular are struggling in their own unique ways. And is that in part in your view because they are worshiping the wrong role models in life?

I I think it could be. I think men often find... We find our identity in the things that we do. We hear about this in that, unfortunately, we bought the lie that we are the sum of our actions. This is when people lose their jobs, when they get let go of their careers. They have identity crises. Because if we believe that we are the sum of our actions, we can put a lot of stock in something that is ultimately going to lead us empty. Same thing with relationships. You watch any rom-com, what is it almost always about? Lonely guy, lonely girl. They meet each other, they fall in love. At the end, everything works out, and now their identity is fulfilled. Well, I mean, all you have to do is to get married to know that that's not going to fulfill every desire and need you have. I love my wife. I love my marriage. It's one of the best things that I've ever done. But if I put all of my eggs in that basket, it It could very well and almost certainly will lead me astray, especially if that falls apart, especially when there are times of hardship and struggle.

I think you are more than the sum of your actions. Because you have value that goes beyond that. It's actually living out that value that can give you the meaning and the purpose that you're finding. But men in particular, we find value in what we do. I think women, although I don't want to speak too broadly, I think, speaking in generalities, women find a lot of identity in relational values, in the relationships that they have with their friends or their significant others. Men often find value in what they're able to contribute to physically. And so especially in a world where economic crisis is a thing or work complications with things like technology removing a lot of occupations, I think that can be a genuine hardship.

Yeah, I was just looking at some research on Pubmed, and it says exactly that. It says in a recent qualitative analysis in the United States of Other side notes, a majority male sample, the authors identified themes that differed by gender, such as men more often referring to financial hardship, et cetera, which can imply feelings of failure and worthlessness tied to traditional roles. In contrast, women's notes were more about lowered self-worth and interpersonal relationships. So if that does hold, and we're implying there that sometimes it's to do with a feeling of worthlessness for men, are you saying that Christianity can provide something that is an antidote to that feeling?

I think not only can it provide an antidote, it can provide the antidote.

What would you say to anyone that's listening right now that feels a little bit lost in their life?

I would say that you have purpose purpose, and you have meaning more than what society tells you is going to give you that meaning and purpose, and that there's a God who loves you, and he loves you so much that he stepped out of eternity and into humanity, and he lived the perfect life that you couldn't in order to establish and create the union of the relationship with God that you're actually seeking.

What would you tell them step one would be to go in that direction?

Well, I would say, push into something like read the Bible. I would say, open the gospel of Matthew, open the gospel of John. And start reading and find out who this Jesus guy is. Investigate that question, why that is significant, why that matters. Because the person in character of Jesus goes beyond simply an historical character. I think Jesus was a genuine historical character. He's no less than that, but he's also so much more than that. And in discovering who he is in relation to who you are, that's going to change your life.

Are you noticing that people are asking you certain questions about Christianity or religion or any of the adjacent subjects more now than they were 10 years ago? Are there certain themes or topics that are more front of mind for people these days?

Yeah, I think we've gone through a shift where when I started in this endeavor of what I'm doing now, this crescendoed in the last year and a bit, when I started out, I think people were asking a lot more, is God real and is this true? And I think now people are asking, is God good? And I think it's because it's part and parcel of this meeting crisis thing. I also think that there have been some major moral issues. I mean, the whole Epstein thing right now, I think, is a testament to that. We are seeing examples of true evil, and I think that bothers people. And in a world where we can rationalize subjectivizing evil, we understand that is heinous. And if that is evil with a capital E, where's the good with a capital G? C. S. Lewis, I've got it a few times. He said in his The Problem of Pain and Suffering in that book that he wrote, that one of his objections to God was that there was so much evil and chaos in this world. He said, But what was I comparing that to? A man does not call a line crooked unless he knows what a straight line looks like.

The reason you understand that there's rot is because you understand what something that's healthy is. There's an objective standard that needs to be weighed by these things. I think more than ever, we're seeing things that really speak to the the justice questions in terms of the meaning questions. And that has really interested me as someone who is a... I'm a historian, right? So I'm interested in the questions about... I do things like read Greek and Coptic most of the time, right? But I've been challenged to think more about the philosophical questions because I think we live in an age where I'm really encouraged by people looking at injustice. There's a lump in our throat, and I think there's a lump in our throat because Jesus put it there.

I think AI is going to have a big impact on your work. Yeah. And in ways that might not be super obvious. I think one of the ways is that if all these CEOs are true, when they say that AI is going to cause massive job displacement, and even the CEOs that are building the technology have sat here and told me that there's going to be massive job displacement. There's going to be a crisis of meaning. People get a huge amount of work from the things that they do in their lives, and they're not going to be able to do those things in the same way necessarily. And about 60 % of Americans say they're worried that AI will take away the thing that gives them their meaning. I think we're just at the footsteps of the crisis of meaning in this regard.

Yeah.

And that's going to mean that a lot of people are going to struggle a lot. And that concerns me.

I mean, I think That's what I'm more worried about with AI. I'm not worried about AI taking over the world. I'm not worried about AI replacing us or something like that. If I'm worried about AI, it's that. It's the pain and suffering that it can cause people who have bought into the lie that the sum of their identity is in what they can contribute and do and how the Christian worldview speaks into that. How can I think Christianly about a society where there could very well be mass identity crises because of unemployment or because... Years ago, we were telling truck drivers, learn to code. Well, now coders are being replaced by AI systems, right? Ai can code better than the coders.

Spotify said yesterday that none of their engineers have written a line of code since December. I thought, wow, fucking hell. And my car drives itself here in America. I sat here the other day with the CEO of Uber, and he said to me, they have nine million drivers careers, and within X number of years, they will have none. He said the unique thing is the speed of the change is going to cause the problems. Because we had the industrial revolution, we had time to transfer to other lines of employment, et cetera. But the speed in which there's going to be a displacement is going to cause the issues. And I wonder what's going to happen. I mean, a lot of people are. They're going to be in search of meaning. And I guess that will push some people towards Christianity and other religions, but not everybody. Because as you say, when our identities are pulled away from us in such a way, some people turn to the bottle or causes mental health situations.

I mean, humanity has a very unique knack to pivot and figure things out. Now, is there going to be a loo period in between when that job crisis happens? Maybe. But I think humanity will figure things out. I just don't know if that will be before all of it hits the fan.

What was the The first domino that fell for you that made you go on this journey of becoming... Is it the term Christian apologist? Yeah. Becoming... What does that even mean, Christian apologist?

So I mentioned 1 Peter 3: 15, right? But in your hearts, your dear Christ as Lord, always be prepared to give an answer. So that is that apologia. So we take the Greek word apologia and we stick an English suffix on the end, and we have this field, this study, this discipline apologetics.

What does that mean? You're explaining the Bible.

Giving reasons, yeah. Giving answers. So apologetics is as complicated as arguments philosophically and scientifically for the existence of God and the historical reliability of the Bible, and as simple as if someone asked me why Jesus? That's an apologetic question. Insofar as far as it's giving an answer.

I was looking at some of these photos of you as a young man. I wondered how much the situation in these photos had an impact on who you came to be and what you came to believe. I'll put these photos on the screen for anybody. But this is a young boy in a wheelchair and in a hospital bed that looks to be paralyzed.

When I was 11 years old, I was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition that left me paralyzed from the waist down.

At 10, you were fine, you were normal? Yeah. And at 11, suddenly you were paralyzed from the waist down?

Yes. I had the flu, and my body's immune system, instead of attacking the flu, attacked the nerve endings at the base of my spinal cord. So the myelin sheath and caused inflammation, cutting off the communication communication from my brain to my legs.

And a lot of people that get that disease never walk again.

It's complicated. So it's called acute transverse myelitis. Although I've been told recently that there's a change in the name of the diagnosis. But essentially transverse myelitis is not all that rare, but acute, that acute in terms of the quickness of it, I had fallen asleep, a nap for probably no more than 30 minutes. When I woke up, I was paralyzed. It was the quickness of the actual damage that was done to my spinal cord that was the catalyst in the diagnosis saying that the chances of me walking again were very low.

But within a month, you were walking again.

Yeah, one month to the day. In fact, the 23-year anniversary was recently because it was in February eighth. I woke up on a Saturday morning, got out of bed, and walked over to my wheelchair.

Did Did this change your perspective on God, Christianity, religion?

It did in some ways. I don't know how it couldn't. It definitely, to have medical professionals tell me, You're probably going to be a paraplegia for the rest of your life. This is what you need to accept and get used to, to the exact same medical professionals, the pediatric neurologists saying, We don't know why you're walking. That had to have an impact me in that I truly believe I was healed in that it was the doctors who used the word miracle because they said that they couldn't medically explain why there was no more damage on my spinal cord, why I was walking with not even any atrophy or anything. However, I still needed to figure some of the more intellectual questions out of my head when I was a teenager. So it wasn't just that this happened and explained a lot because I was open to the possibility of this being a fluke, of there being a completely randomness to this. And so when I was a teenager, I investigated a lot to the best of my ability as a 17-year-old in trying to answer some of the more meaning questions about I know what my parents raised me to believe.

But if I believe it simply because they told me to, it's not the worst reason, but it's also not the best reason. That is the first time that I read the Quran cover to cover. I was looking into things like the Book of Norman and the Book of a Gita. I was just curious. That's when reading Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, not in any type of faith crisis way, but I was investigating.

So you believe in the supernatural? Mm-hmm. Do you believe that we can speak to the dead?

No.

You don't believe that?

No. Well, I should preface that. It depends what you mean by speaking to the dead. I think I think it's possible. We have examples of it in the Bible. Saul gets a medium to call up the spirit of Samuel.

So do you believe mediums are telling the truth when they say that they're contacting people in the afterlife?

I think that there's a possibility of engaging the supernatural world, which is dangerous. I think there's a very fuzzy line between mediums who are con artists and people who are actually engaged in something that is stabbling in the supernatural.

I say this in part because I've heard people say that their partner has passed away and then they've seen signs. Their partner has left them signs. Do you believe in this thing?

I don't think so. Not in those ways. I think when people are dead, they're dead. But I think there are aspects of the supernatural world and a world that's going on behind the scenes that's articulated within scripture that have an impact on this world in a way that if people can be distracted and misled to think that they are contacting dead relatives, then that is otherwise going to prevent them from pursuing what they should be as image bearers of God.

So you think it's demonic in some capacity?

I think it can be. I don't think it's always. I think in emotionally vulnerable states, we are willing to adhere to all sorts of things. And there's a sensitivity that I want to communicate around that because I think people, especially in the periods of the deaths of loved ones, and want to look for validation in their past away loved ones, leaving something or communicating.

And also we want to believe when we lose people we love, that they are somewhere better, that they are in a good place. And this is one of the things that I struggled with earlier when we're talking about hell, which is if such a small percentage of people are making it to hell by whatever measure of acceptance one believes, then that would mean that my grandmother, who wasn't necessarily a devout religious person or a Christian or hadn't repented, is currently in hell. And that's a hard thought to take that she is in such an awful place now. Yeah. And this would obviously make people not want to experience that dissonance and therefore, reject religion and say, Well, no. If I accept the Bible, then I have to accept my grandmother's currently burning in hell. And so I'm going to reject the Bible. It's much easier than accepting that my grandmother's suffering right now.

Right. I mean, ultimately, that's a, I wouldn't do it that way, therefore it's not true.

Sorry, what do you mean?

Well, I don't think that God should send my grandmother to hell. Yeah. Therefore, I'm going to conclude that it's not true based on that type of... Now, at the end of the day, does God communicate with people in ways that go beyond my understanding? I've talked to enough Muslims in the Muslim world who have had dreams about Jesus to know that something goes on. I don't understand sometimes what happens on the deathbed between an individual and their maker. It's not my place to say that they in hell or whatever the descriptive language you want to use, because it's between them and God. At the exact same time, apart from the saving work of Christ, I'm going to hell. I genuinely believe that, is that apart from the in-breaking of God into my life, in part and parcel by things like this, but also by showing me and allowing me to investigate these things and wrestle through questions and putting people in places in my life that have which formed me and shaped me and allowed me to look at the evidence and have conversations and be honest and transparent. Those are the things that have led me down the road to say, I'm convinced.

I'm convinced that this is true, experientially, that it is intellectually robust and that it is experientially profound for me and for so many other people, your friend included.

What's the most important thing that we talked about that we should have talked about, Wesley, for the people that are listening? I would assume they're very curious people. Some of them are religious, some of them aren't. What is the most important thing that we should close on in your view?

Part of my academic study is that I do what's called Papperology and paleography. So I make facsimiles of ancient manuscripts, particularly biblical manuscript. So this is a biblical manuscript, P 46. It's a late second or third century page from a collection of Paul's epistles. Paul from the Bible? Paul from the Bible. He wrote this? Well, so he wrote that and then a scribe in the second century copied it down. I made this. So this is genuine interest from a pyrus. I'm only writing on one side so you could see how the papyrus is put together. Then I got you a nice Bible. But I have put a bookmark in the page where that passage is.

Why did you pick that particular passage?

Well, why don't you open it up and read it? It's on the little inscription note that I have there, Romans 12. So you can see on the bottom there, there's the title.

Oh, yeah, 12, 11, 12. So it says, Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, 'venge Vengence is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing, you will heat burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

So hopefully that's a good passage to-Beautiful. Remember, think about. And then that's the box for it.

Thank you so much. This is so beautiful. Wesley, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves the question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is, what is one risk that you should be taking in your life but aren't currently?

Where I am in my life, I feel like so many things have happened so quickly that there's an aspect of unpredictable. And I'm just a little bit... My wife and I were talking last night and it was like, we need to embrace what's happening right now. But a year from now, if it's all gone, That's totally okay. And we're fine with that, whether that's financially or with social media or opportunity. And maybe the risk is pushing into that and saying, maybe there's an aspect of that. Yes, I think it's wise to keep that in calibration and understand that if this goes away tomorrow, I'm content because this is beyond what I have. I'm in a room sitting with Steven Bartlet I'm in a room sat with you. So there's an aspect of that which is completely mind-blowing to me, especially Westhoff from a year ago. But maybe not selling myself short and thinking that these opportunities are opportunities to invest in others in ways that people have invested in me over this last year.

What do you mean by that? You mean...

With some of the things that I've been very graciously able to experience and in giving other people opportunity to maybe push into trying to make an impact in their space.

Oh, okay.

Encouraging them.

Pulling people up the ladder. Yeah. You've been able to climb. Yeah. Paying it forward, paying it downward, I guess. Yeah. This is so, so cool.

Well, I'm very thankful for you willing to have me on. So thank you.

No, thank you. You're such a great communicator, and You're so finely balanced in your ability to deeply understand everything you're talking about from a historical perspective, to be in the pursuit of truth, as you said, irrespective of where that might lead somebody. But then you have the gift of Yeah. The gift of communication. Incredibly engaging person, good intentions, good man. So I was very, very glad we had this conversation and very much looking forward to it for a very long time. So I'm glad you said yes. I was asking my team for maybe nine months to get in contact with you.

Well, I apologize because I had no a few times.

No, it's okay. But I'm really appreciative of it, Wesley, and I hope to have this conversation again sometime soon. Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you. Youtube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior. And the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check this video out. I bet you you might love it.