Matt Slick Live Broadcast of

The following program is recorded content created by your host, Matt Slick. But we get to them. Here we go. All right. Hey, like I said, if you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. Let's get to Mike from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Mike, welcome. You're on the air.

Hey, Matt. This is another one of those heads up. I'm wondering if you've heard of this new religion that involves AI, artificial intelligence, where artificial intelligence can actually become a god?

Oh, man. Okay, what's it called? This new religion? All you have to do, you can do a web search, just put AI new religion and you'll get a whole new... Okay, AI new religion.

It's in the first church of artificial intelligence. It's so stupid. Let's see. Oh, man.

I'm sad, but I'm smiling at the same time because people are so open to deception and I'm smiling because it's so obviously stupid. Hey, let's just create a religion about a machine that we know we've created and we programmed and we're going to be the religion devoted to it. It's like I decide to worship a ball of cotton that I got out of a jar and I'm going to worship it, even though I know it. It's like the same thing. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Okay. Well, I had the same reaction you did and then I started doing a little bit more reading and apparently some of these people that believe this stuff, because there are several of them, and I can't remember their names off the top of my head, but are actually believing that AI can actually become a god to people and that it can actually... I mean, this is...

I keep thinking if God destroyed the people in Noah's time, he better do something about the people in our time because this is idol worship. I don't know on what level, but you're right. It is. It's absolutely hilarious in some respects. I guess you could say if it wasn't so sad and so dangerous, it would be hysterically funny. Yeah, it is both stupid funny and stupid dangerous. I'll have to check it out.

I put it in my notes here to check it out and see what the parameters are and what they say. If the idea of it becoming god, then they have to define what god is in order to be able to say that. Like, man become a woman. Well, what's a woman? I don't know. Well, then how can he become a woman? So you have to define your terms.

So I'm curious to know if they can define their terms and define what a god is. My brain's already flipping here. There's a lot of problems logically with this. Yeah. Okay. Well, I just thought I'd give you a heads up on it. I appreciate it. Because when I read it, I said, well, Matt's got to hear about this.

He hasn't already. So anyway, like that. Thanks a bunch. Yeah. And love you brother. And bless you.

Right. You too, man. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Wow. All right. Okay. So we have wide open lines if you want to give me a call. 8772072276.

A religion of AI. Well, you know, I'm thinking about something. Because last night, for two hours, roughly two hours or so, I was on Discord. Discord is a chat place.

And I'm known on the Discord servers. And so I go in there and people fire questions at me and stuff like that. So I ended up talking with the Eastern Orthodox people. And I really focused on them being idolaters. And man are they idolaters. Just like the Roman Catholics.

And they didn't like that, of course. But the Lord provides wisdom and insight and things like that. And it's funny that this issue of idolatry is so prevalent. And it's in the EO, the Eastern Orthodox Church. It's in Roman Catholicism. It's in Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Islam. It's all idolatry.

Serving a false god, false gospel, false this, false that. And to me it's intriguing. So I started doing some research today.

I'm running an article, but it's turning into an interesting thing. Because last night I was talking about Mary so much and how the Eastern Orthodox, I asked, can Mary hear that? Millions of prayers simultaneously spoken and thought all over the world.

You know, different languages and comprehend them. Yes. That's a functioning goddess. No, it's not.

Yes, it is. That's what a goddess does. And they just deny cognitive dissonance. And it's interesting because Romans 1, I'm going to read Romans 1, starting verse 18 here a little bit and go through this because I'm reminded of this. It says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Now, this is interesting because in 2 Corinthians 11, 3, Paul says, but I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. And these verses, I'm going to go through Romans 1 a lot more, so just stay tuned.

I'm going to go through and teach on it. But the simplicity of who Christ is, he's God in flesh, died in the cross, rose from the dead. Trust Jesus. Look to Jesus. Put all your faith and your hope in Jesus.

He did everything. The simplicity and purity of the devotion to Christ, 2 Corinthians 11, 3. It's that simple. But what false religions do, what they do is they invent ways to put roadblocks between you and Jesus. You have to go through the church, the prophet, the rituals, the sacraments, the revelation from them, etc. You have to go through the church because it has the official authority, blah, blah, blah.

It's just the same stuff. One guy last night was trying to show how the church, his church had the authority to show me the scripture. He didn't want to do it. Well, because the scripture doesn't support his view, but he tried after a while and each verse, we just looked at it in context, didn't say what he said. And you see, the thing is people are desiring to serve the creature and they suppress the truth of God in their unrighteousness. This is Romans 1 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them. For God made it evident to them.

And it says, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they're without excuse. And even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four footed animals and crawling creatures. So what he's talking about here is how people at that time would serve creatures. The glory of the incorruptible God for an image of corruptible man. So they worship the idea of gods, human shaped gods, birds, animals, crawling creatures, they would serve them, they would worship. And that's what they do in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy because they give powers and attributes that belong to God, they give them to the creatures. And so last night, one of the Catholics said that Mary was the mother of God.

It's so much fun with it. I said, really? The mother of God? So Jesus says, God?

Yes. Well, God the Trinity, right? Is she the mother of the Trinity?

Well, no. Well, then how's she the mother of God? And I was just having fun.

And I said, wait a minute. If Mary's the mother of God, then isn't Joseph the father of God? And James and Joseph, Judas and Simon, they're the cousins of God. And apparently the sisters of God, because I'm looking at my notes here.

I have all the references like sisters of God, you know, Matthew 14, 56. Anyway, John the Baptist was God's cousin. And Eli was the grandfather of God, as was Jacob. Methot was the great grandfather of God, as was Methon. And Levi was the great, great grandfather of God, as was Eleazar. So I said, why is it that you guys only look exult Mary's the mother of God, yet ignore the father of God, the cousins of God, the sisters of God, the grandfathers of God, and the great grandfathers of God? Why did he stop with Mary? He didn't, he didn't like that. Don't ask questions like that. You're stupid. You're talking about.

It was a lot of interesting fun for me. Anyway, let's get to Andrew from Ohio. Andrew, welcome around the air. Hey, how's it going? You there? Hey. What's up buddy? I was wondering if you could teach a little bit about, um, how Judaism evolved, uh, after Christ, I guess, you know, they, they remained in the sacrificial system of what, you know, how, how things kind of developed from, from then to 2000 years later in contrast to what it was in the Old Testament.

Yeah, I don't know because I'm not a historian and I haven't studied Judaism from that particular perspective, which would be interesting to you. Probably take me about a day to get the message, but, uh, no, I don't know exactly what happened. You're scattered. You get a lot of background noise there.

You can mute yourself. I'm sorry. I'll let you go. I was just wondering if, uh, if you knew anything about, you know, current day beliefs as compared to what the Old Testament thought, but no, I do know somebody who knows, doesn't know what happens and he's, that's his ministry is to Jewish people.

So he's the guy I would ask about that, but maybe they have on the show sometime and you guys can fire questions at him about Judaism. All right. All right. Thank you sir. All right. God bless.

All right. We've got about, I think a minute or so before the break and I wanted to continue through the issue of, of the creature because this, this whole thing about worshiping the creature is not just about, you can be careful. It's not just about Mary and you know, in the cults, you know, worshiping God from the other planet like Mormonism does. Uh, it is this to be careful that we don't do this in our own hearts. Even as Protestants, we have to make sure that we're not exchanging anything that belongs to God and give it to a creature. We just have to make sure what I'm going to do and get back to the break is talk about the nature and quality of God.

It is a sea of tea and non contingency and what that means. And then we'll talk about idolatry and relationship for them. Okay. So please stay tuned. Be right back after these messages. So please, uh, well stay tuned. We'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Let me, uh, kind of fit it now. I think we'll do this. Let's see, we'll get to the collar. Cause I know what this is going to be about. And, um, and then maybe we'll get back onto the idolatry thing.

No, no, no. I said, it's going to do something first. Let me do that. Right. So I want to talk about, uh, something before I, uh, I change the topic.

All right. So here's, this is something very basic and Christian theology about God as a Trinitarian being. God has a quality called a sea of tea.

A sea of tea is God's eternal independence, non contingency. He doesn't depend on anything else. He was before the universe was created and he always existed in and of himself.

That's just how it is. So he has certain qualities in his nature. He knows all things. He's everywhere.

He can hear your thoughts because he's everywhere. He has the ability to create and control creation because he's God. Now, these are some of the attributes of God. We call it idolatry. When you give an attribute that belongs to God alone and you give it to a creature. So we call, there's a difference between what's called, um, uh, uh, Oh my goodness. Uh, but this has been a term I've used so many times and that my brain just glitched, uh, communicable attributes and incommunicable attributes.

Sorry about that. So the communicable attributes of God are those attributes that God has that we can have. So he loves, we can love.

He does it perfectly. We don't, but he loves, we can love. He thinks, we can think he hates, we can hate.

He reasons, we can reason. So this is what we call the communicable attributes because they are communicated and are able to be communicated to us. The incommunicable attributes deal with those qualities that belong to God's nature alone.

He's everywhere. All powerful, all knowing, indwells our hearts, et cetera. Whenever you give one of those incommunicable attributes of God and you give it to a creature that's called idolatry, you are attributing to the creature that which belongs to God alone. So if Mary, for example, in east orthodoxy and in, um, uh, Roman Catholicism and suddenly hear the prayers in our minds, spoken when we speak them, thinking when we think them and in different languages, which a thousand, there's like 2000 languages in the world, something like that. And I don't know how many of them are, you know, unfortunately Catholics and speaking in different languages simultaneously, speaking them and thinking them in different languages and that Mary can comprehend all of them at the same time.

And I've had Catholics and EO, these Orthodox tell me this is the case. And so if that is the case, then they're giving to the creature that belongs to God. See that which belongs to God is his ability to know everything. Well, they'll say, no, he doesn't, she doesn't know everything.

Okay. So he doesn't know everything, but she can know the hearts and minds and thoughts of millions of people. It's at the same time, if God makes her able to, he can, she can. So then what they do is instead of showing something in scripture, they'll just say, well, God can do it to her. That's why it's true.

And that's where I go to first contains four, six, which says, do not exceed what's written. You see, if you don't use the Bible as the boundaries of what it is that you ought to believe, then you're going to start believing idolatrous things like the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox too. And the false gods like Mormonism is and Jehovah's Witnesses and Islam. See God's word is what it is. He has stated, uh, you know, second Timothy three 16, that it's inspired to the prophets, the apostles it's inspired, which means it comes from God. The Bible is the only thing said to be inspired and because it is, and God doesn't defend it.

It just is, just, that's how God's word is. If he says something, there's no standard by which we can then judge if God is right or wrong. He's the standard of right and wrong. He's the standard of perfection.

So because of that, he's the one who, uh, is the, the standard by which we should judge all things. And, um, we can't just give those, those abilities, so to speak, to, uh, creatures. And that's what they're doing. And, uh, that's what's going on in the false religious systems. It's really simple.

When you understand biblical theology, then this becomes easy to discuss, easy to, uh, to recognize in there. All right. Let's uh, let's get to Alex Orlando. Alex, welcome. Hey buddy, you're on the air, man. What's up buddy? Oh, hanging in there. I feel like I'm here these days.

Well, you mean really busy swamped, have too much to do. People don't appreciate you and you're getting uglier. Everything except the last one. Okay. Well you're young still. So give me, give yourself some time. All right. What's up man? Hey, I got a baby on the way too.

How crazy is my life? You know? Hey, are you open a door for her? I did yesterday. We went out, I opened the door for her. You can ask her. Okay. And uh, and are you getting her what she needs for food and you're asking if she needs anything, right?

I am. And I've, I've been, uh, spending more quality time with her, even though I have so many things to do. I've been, we've been spending some more intentional time together, so I'm taking your advice. Okay. So what do I do? I have to call her up and check up on you.

See what she says. Okay. It hits the fan here. There we go. All right.

I, I, I followed it. I haven't opened the door for every time, but last night I did. Okay. All right. Every time. It should be rare that you don't.

I know. You know, it's, it's like, it's like any habit you gotta get, you gotta get in the flow of it. You know, you gotta just keep doing it till it becomes second nature. So I'm getting there. When you see her give birth, you're going to wish you took a lot better care of her.

Maybe I could fly out there and just give you a complimentary groin kick and say, get with it. I'm trying to help you out here. Yeah. And then when she has a baby and then her hormones are all over the place. Oh yep. Yeah. That's one of the words they call it.

Well, little tongue in cheek fun as we say. It's yeah, it's, it's a beautiful time and it is when giving birth, I've seen a life give birth four times. Man, every time I think about it, I just smile because what a beautiful, wondrous, miraculous thing women get to experience. It's, it's incredible. I know I was at the yeah, I mean to switch gears a little, I was at the abortion clinic ministry today and you know, we're trying to tell them like, Hey, you don't understand.

You're not going to regret this, you know, showing, taking the gift that God's given you, you know, carrying it to full term. And I mean, there are women there. They, one walked in with an ultrasound, she just threw it on the ground. It just kind of got me, you know, like just such disregard.

It's like they don't even know what they're doing. Well, I bet you that convicted her. I bet you it probably, it probably did. Yeah. But here's the one thing really quick. That ultrasound, we saw it, they definitely skew it compared to what you would get at like an OBGYN.

They make it look worse than it is in those places. I wouldn't doubt it. Yeah. Hey, there's a break. Hold on now. Then we'll get back. All right. Okay, buddy. Hey folks, we'll be right back after these messages. We have, let's see, one open line. If you want to give me a call 8772072276. We've got Rob waiting about questions of truth and debates and bucksmen on my pastures.

Don't preach up by your cross daily. Whew. Good stuff. Be right back. Here's Matt Slick live, taking a call at 8772072276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the show, Alex. All right, man. You're back on here. What do you want, buddy? Yeah, so me and my wife were talking last night.

She's been studying. You got to put your wife first. Your wife and I, my wife and I, not no one my wife, wife first. I'm going to work on you.

It's been a long day, grammar police. Man, I'm going to get the reservations, get out there. I'm going to just walk up.

Hey, Alex, what are you doing here? Slap. Okay, see you. Bye. Yeah, that'd be a big, spend $500 for that.

Yeah, it'd be worth it. There you go. So my wife and I were talking last night and talking about the one and the many. I explained a little bit, but I know you can explain a little bit more comprehensively than I can. So can you just explain it so I can play it for her later?

Sure. The one and the many deals with a man has one major thought. Women have many. And with one major thought, man, we can be particular. We can really focus on things, get things done. But many, you're all over the place.

It's a cobweb of ideas. That's how I defend the Trinity. Oh, you mean the Trinity? Oh, one in the many in relation to the trick. You have too much fun with your friends. Has anyone ever told you that?

Usually at their expense too. All right. All right. Okay.

You ready? The issue of the one and the many is a philosophical problem that has been around for about 2,500 years. It deals with a question. What is the ultimate nature of reality? Is it one thing or many things? Because it can only be one or the other, not both. What is reality? It's either one thing or it is many things. And so the idea here is this. Is the universe one substance, one kind of stuff?

Whatever that stuff is, whatever that substance is. And that everything that we see that's divided, literally looking like different trees and chairs and stuff like that, is simply a variation of the one thing. So that's one issue. The other issue is, well, no, the universe is made of many particular things. Like chairs are different in nature than trees. And many different chairs are different than many different other chairs. And many trees are different from other trees. And this works with clouds and chairs and trees and bugs and all kinds of things. So the principle here is that the ultimate nature of the universe is multifaceted. Not one substance, but many substances.

Well, there's a problem. If the ultimate nature of reality is one thing, then there's no true distinction between objects. And if there's no true distinction between objects like chairs and trees, well, then how do you have truth statements?

Because everything would be one thing. But truth statements require distinctions. So two plus two equals four. Those are distinctions.

Two plus equal four. I'm talking to you, distinction between you and me. So we have the issue here of the necessity of distinctions in order to have truth values. And if everything's one substance, then it undermines truth values. This leads to incoherence and further problems. Now, if plurality is ultimate, then what we're saying is that chairs and trees and individual chairs and individual trees and individual clouds and individual bugs are all adhering to a kind of independent substance within their own categories. That's everywhere, and we discover these categories. But if that's the case, then there's no coherence between all of these categories or all these particulars. And if there's no coherence, then how do you have relationships drawn properly without coherence between them? They're just individual things.

If they're individual things, then are they eternally individual? And this gets into other really bad problems. Because then you have universal categories that preexist all kinds of subcategories of universality and plurality that are everywhere all the time.

It just doesn't work. And so you don't have coherence between them. And without coherence, you don't have truth values either. It undermines knowledge. These things undermine the foundation of what knowledge is. For us to have knowledge of the world, we must include an examination of varying concepts about the world and within the world, like universals, chairness, in particulars, individual chairs. So knowledge for us to know something, how do we know it? Well, the philosophers, they talk about grounding theory.

Grounding theory is getting down to the basis of something. Well, how do you know this is true? Because of that. Well, how do you know that is true? Well, because of these things. Well, how do you know these things are true?

And it goes on and on. So knowledge is grounded by understanding the unity and diversity of what is called abstract universals, which is chairness, and concrete particulars, which is particular chairs. There must be a context in which our knowledge is obtained and which is based. Because there also is another problem of further types of knowledge.

There's knowledge of facts and beliefs, habitual knowledge, like habits that you have, skill set knowledge, mathematical knowledge, logical knowledge, knowledge about friends, and more. So this really is a humongous problem. So which is the ultimate nature of reality? Is it one thing or is it many things? If it's one, we have problems. There's no unity between objects. And without that, excuse me, if everything is just one, then there's no distinction between objects. Everything's one thing and you undermine truth. And if everything is distinct in the plurality of actualities and substances, then you don't have unity and coherence between them. And that undermines true values too. So this is a real problem. Okay. So the philosophers have not solved this.

And they haven't for 2,500 years. And each side has problems. Now the Trinity comes to the rescue because with philosophy they'll say, what is the ultimate nature of reality?

It's this or that. It's one or it's many. But God, the Trinity is unique in all theological perspectives. And God in the Trinitarian sense is both one and many at the same time. So God is one being, but he has three persons. So the one being of God is also triune in nature. So God is by nature both one and many equally. The ultimacy here, the ultimate nature of God's existence is both one and many. Only in Christian Trinitarianism is this a reality.

When you say that God is the necessary precondition for intelligibility, what we're saying is that God is what must be in order for us to make sense of anything. So for example, we use the laws of logic. There's a law of identity. Something is what it is and is not what it is not. The law of non-contradiction. A statement can't be both true and false at the same time in the same sense. The law of excluded middle. Statements are either true or false. And then we have some call it a law of proper inference. If A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C. These basic laws are universals. What that means is wherever you go, they're true. We find no place and no way in which they cannot be true because if they're no longer true, we can't have any coherence of thought because nothing would make sense. Everything would be illogical.

Then we could have things like Blue sleeping faster than Wednesday and that makes no sense. So where is it that these universal principles of laws of logic exist? Where do they come from? Well, they come from the mind of God who is the universal being who is behind everything. And as Romans 1-20 says, the attributes of his nature are made clear and known in creation. So if God is Trinitarian, he is one and many, then we can have, for example, the law of non-contradiction or the law of identity as a universal truth principle that exists universally as a coherent one thing, but also we can observe the manifestations and particulars of it in our own minds in different places at different times. And we can do that if we presuppose that God himself is the one and the many and that his foundation gives coherence to both of them equally because that's his nature equally. Therefore, we can justify the particular laws of logic that are revealed out of the universal aspects of the laws of logic. So when we do that, we can have knowledge, we can ground it in God as the ultimate source of all things beyond which there is nothing and next to which there's nothing.

So then we can have coherence and we can make sense of everything if you presuppose the doctrine of the Trinity, one God and three distinct simultaneous goitrano persons. Okay? Okay. Yeah.

Two questions, two followups. One, so logic has to be rooted in the mind of God, correct? The laws of logic are rooted in the mind of God, correct?

It cannot be rooted in each individual mind because for example, your physical brain and my physical brain are different. If laws of logic are produced by your mind when you die, the laws of logic disappear. But then people will get around this and say, well, no, the laws of logic are properties of the physical realm. Well, that's a problem.

Properties can be measured, redness, mass, roundness, but the laws of logic cannot, therefore they're not properties. Hold on, we've got a break coming up, okay? Yeah, one more question. Okay, I'll break. All right, it's a break. All right, hey folks, we'll be right back after these messages.

Hopefully this isn't too heavy for you guys, but it's good stuff. We'll be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. Let's get back to Alex here. People in the chats are commenting, my brain hurt, you know, and I'm going to blame you, Matt, for the internet crash, smoked his brain, all that kind of stuff was fun.

All right, Alex, go ahead, buddy. Okay, so the follow-up question is, so if the laws of logic are rooted in the mind of God, then can the unbeliever be logical? Yes, because we can think and he can, as God thinks, and so they can participate because they still are made in the image of God, Genesis 1.26, and they have the communicable attributes of God, so therefore they can think critically and think logically, but they don't give glory to God, nor can they ground the universality of the laws of logic. And I've talked to many atheists, how do you ground them? And they will just say, they just are, or someone that would say, they just are their product.

We discover them embedded in nature. Our minds just understand how the universe works, all these things that have problems. Okay, and then if someone, okay, so if you have the mind of Christ and you're a believer, would you be more logical? You'd be more logical if and when you submit to scripture, because the mind of God is perfectly logical, and all truths in it emanate out of the perfect logic of God. So for example, John 14.6, Jesus says, on the way to truth and the life, nobody comes to the Father, but by me. He's talking about unity, diversity, truth statements, contrast. He's talking about things that are true, and the truth necessitates the universality of the law of identity to know what things are and what they're not, and in relationships and truth values, which is out of these laws. So all of this is ultimately grounded in the very nature of God, and without the Trinitarian being, you can't ultimately ground all these things. And then so if you're quoting scripture and you're standing on the word of God to an unbeliever, that's where the hostility comes in, because they ultimately are not rooted in Christ, or I mean, sorry, have the mind of Christ or in scripture, right? Right, and they give to the creation that which belongs to God.

The laws of logic are embedded in creation, in matter, or in our brains. You see? They serve the creature rather than the creator.

That's what they do. What verse is that? What's that? Just go to Romans 1 18 and start reading.

Romans 1. No, no, I know. Okay, I'll find it. Okay, hi.

Before and after you open the door for your wife and cook her meals and get her what she needs. Okay, I'll tell you something funny really quick. So last night, before I opened the door, I'm going to put myself under the bus. She went to the window of the door and she put her hand on it, like, how do I get in?

How do I get in? Because I didn't open it for her. Good for her. She wants you to help. And you need to. I know. You need to train yourself. That's right.

Let me tell you, when you watch her give birth, you're going to have regrets that you didn't help more, because what you'll see her going through is incredible. Yeah, I believe you. All right. I'll see you, brother.

Thanks for the answers. All right, man. God bless.

All right, let's jump on to Rob here from Pennsylvania. Welcome, buddy. You're on the air. Thanks for the long wait. Sorry about that, but here you go. It's a long wait.

You're away from the phone panicking right now. I'm sorry, there you go. What? Yeah, if you're having a debate, whether it be formal or informal, right, and you're talking and the issue of burden of proof comes up, do you know if an objective needs to determine who actually carries the burden of proof or not?

Okay, I missed one thing. When the issue of what comes up? Like the burden of proof, like who has the burden of proof? Is there something objective, like an objective rule that we can determine who actually carries the burden of proof?

It would depend on the context and who's amazing. So if someone says there is no God, I'm going to ask them, how do you know that? You make a statement, demonstrate your statement as truth. And if I say Trinity is true biblically, someone can say, well, how do you know that? What's your basis for that?

I go in there. So people who make statements generally are the ones who are obligated to provide some form of, if they want, you know, basis for what they're saying. Okay. Well, let's say somebody asks you a question, right? And you answered a question. Do you have a burden of proof to further explain yourself?

Depends what the question is. I tend to answer quickly and succinctly. My opponents usually answer in a verbose, inane, persephalized deluge of wasted time. Well, I'm just asking the question because I've been watching a lot of debates, trying to learn what to do, what not to do, and try to learn like how to do it. And I've noticed that there's a lot of, not in every debate, but in frequent debates, there's a lot of arguing over who has the burden of proof. And I mean, most debates, it kind of seems like both sides are making some sort of argument to some degree. So wouldn't both parties have the burden of proof?

To a degree, it depends. Because a bit of the topic is, but talk about an ultimate burden of proof or just a contextual burden of proof. Okay. Oh, okay.

Could you explain those real quick? Sure. Ultimate burden of proof would be, how do you demonstrate the laws of logic are universal, absolute, and invariant? Versus a contextual one, does the Bible teach Jesus is God in flesh? Yes, it does. Okay. Here's the burden of proof for this. You go to these verses. Okay.

And if someone were to say, well, how do you know that's true? That's a different issue. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Uh, well, thank you. All right. Okay, buddy. Do you want to, you know, if, are you a Christian? Let me ask really fast.

Are you Christian? Yeah, we, we, we talked before. Yeah. Uh, okay.

I don't trust you to remember. Yeah. A lot of people, but I do a lot of these debates, uh, impromptu debates, uh, two, three times a week. Now I get on discord and I just go into rooms and I love doing it. I love discussing and keep myself sharp.

So you can join in sometime. Listen in. I'm not saying you do everything right, but you can listen and learn. And so people say are the conditions by which certain statements can be validated. Okay. That's weird.

Yeah. My, my, my issue from my personal experience is that sometimes like in cross examination or whatever, I have trouble thinking of questions to ask. And what you do is you develop an outline first and you think about questions and then you'll find out that the questions will become easier. And then what you, if you really want to have a question, you want to go, uh, if you go presuppositional, then you'll have a lot better options. Presuppositionalism is the, uh, the, uh, the system, so to speak of saying that God, the Trinitarian God is true and the Bible's true uses assume those two things.

And when you do, everything makes sense. And so if someone doesn't assume those things, then you can undermine their truth values because you can say like, for example, you know, the Catholics say tradition, you know, is, is the same as scripture. And I'll say, where do you get that? That's what I'm doing.

I'm asking, where'd you get that? Well, the Bible says, Oh, then you're using the Bible as your authority. So how's that going to say that it's equal to itself if it's what gives authority to something else? And yes, it's kind of questions and, uh, you just practice. Okay. Yeah. Eli's been doing a lot of, uh, coaching about how to apply precepts to different, uh, religion beliefs instead of just atheists. I haven't watched any of them, but I've been meaning to, so I'm kind of interested in how he applies that.

Yeah. Eli Ayala, as you're talking about, uh, revealed apologetics as his ministry. He and I talk pretty regularly. I was on the, I was, did an interview with him last night and, uh, he's really good.

He knows his stuff about that as well. So praise God. All right. Good stuff, man. Well, thank you. All right. Bye. Okay. God bless. All right. Last caller, bucksman, long wait, but you're on. That's okay, Matt.

Um, yes I am. Explain why don't pastors today when they're doing quote unquote an altar call, why don't they warn people how carrying a cross for the reason of being Christ's disciple is not preached or taught. It's just this flowery, Hey, would you like to give your heart to the Lord?

People say yes. And they come up, they, they, they quote a poem and then they walk out of the building, believing that they're going to heaven, never knowing that they have to carry calls. Could you explain what that is in just the amount of time that we got left, Matt? And why do you think one part of it first, uh, why are they not preaching, pick up your cross?

That's what you want to know. Why don't they talk about, you know, um, being a disciple is going to cost you. It's going to, it's going to be, there's going to be pain. People's going to leave you. Um, you might lose your job because you're walking the path of righteousness, that kind of thing. Well, you just said it because discipleship of Christ is costly and it's difficult. And if you start preaching that, I can't speak for all the preachers, but how many people are going to want to go to church? If you start hearing the message about what you need to do in your neighborhood and your own home, uh, in church at work and how you need to be honest, even if it's going to hurt you. And a lot of Christians think white lies are okay.

Just shade the truth a little bit. And picking up the cross means you abandoned that. You speak truth. It doesn't mean you'd be stupid. You're wise, you know, and how you want to deliver things and be there.

But, uh, it's a hard message. And I think that my opinion is that a lot of churches, what they want to do is just get numbers and truth and success are measured by how many pews there are filled rather than how faithfully are they preaching the word of God. So that I'm sure is part of the problem. There's a lot of good pastors out there. Yes.

Yes, there are. Uh, I think they're few and far between them, Matt, but I'll tell you, you know, the, the effects of this watered down Christianity, uh, really affects people like my sister who sees right through the fakeness and says, you guys don't even follow your leader for the most part. That's what my own sister, who's not a believer yet says, um, you guys don't even follow your leader and you guys don't even do what your book says. Yeah. And you say, you say you're right. That's what the unbelieving world sees.

Yeah. That's what the unbelieving world sees. I know that.

And what you say is you are correct. We don't, we are obligated to do better and we don't because it's a very difficult thing to follow him. That's what I tell unbelievers also. I said, I say to them, Christianity is the hardest thing you'll ever do.

It's, it's hard. And it's good at the same time, but it's hard living like the Lord Jesus who never sinned, who died on the cross and rose from the dead. Now I'm giving the gospel, just using that for an opportunity to go right into that gospel message and just say, but God loves us anyway, just as he loves you and you can trust in him. Why don't you trust in him?

You know, and, and you can join one of us, our group who we try, but we fail. And then you'll have fingers pointed at you as well. I just, I found that a curious thing that, that pastors do not teach carrying crosses anymore.

No, they generally don't. I've not heard it very often. Um, you know, it's what Jesus says in Matthew 16, 24, if anyone wishes to come after me, you must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. Now, what does that mean?

You know, we can talk about it. I think pastors should preach on this periodically. It's discipleship and it means to lay yourself down for others, you know, and, and it can manifest in so many different ways, but our object is Jesus.

We've got to keep our eyes on him and emulate him. And if messages like that are taught a lot, maybe people won't go to those churches, which I think is a good idea. Get them out and start preaching to the sheep instead of the goats. Okay.

Yeah. Amen. And let us keep preach to the goats like me to my sister, which is what I do. So please, please pray for her husband sister out here that she comes to the Lord. Amen.

And I'm working hard. Because we don't know who God's going to call to himself. So we pray for everybody. Amen. All right, brother.

God bless. I'm out of here. You too. All right. We'll see you. Bye-bye.

Hey folks. I enjoyed the show. Hope you did too. And may the Lord bless you by his grace. We're back on there tomorrow and we'll talk to you then. God bless. Have a good evening.