Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network Podcast. If you would like to learn more about the Truth Network Podcast, please visit us at www.thetruthnetwork.com If you are interested in supporting us in any way, all you have to do is go to karm.org. Hey Matt, I'm actually signing up for some of your classes so I can hopefully help support the ministry. So I just want to say publicly so.

What's that? I said everything helps, yeah. We appreciate that.

Okay, yeah, I want to say it publicly so I'm committed. Okay. My question had to do with rebuking versus resisting. There's a family member of mine who's really kind of into the charismatic stuff and he's a good brother but he's teaching a youth class and we're a little concerned with some of the stuff he's into. He means well but he left a message in our little personal group chat about how we should rebuke the devil and me and some others who lean a little bit more on what the Bible actually says. I don't see that in scripture. If anything, I see resist the devil but I don't see anything about trying to rebuke and like quote unquote take on Satan.

So I just kind of wanted to get some of your advice on how to best address that situation. Right. When people rebuke Satan, what they're doing is talking to him so they will dress him personally which means in their prayers, they're praying to Satan. They're actually praying to him and talking to him and tell him how they're supposed to be.

Don't do that. That's never the case in the scriptures. Whenever Satan is addressed, he's there in person. So in Jude 1.9, Michael the archangel rebuked the devil disputing over the body of Christ. And when Satan and Jesus were there, Jesus rebuked him. This is one to one.

It was in person. Aside from that, basically, to resist Satan is in our prayer to God. We ask him to work. We ask him to rebuke the evil one. We ask him to bind the evil one. And we resist the evil one in our prayers, in our dedication to Christ in various ways. But the only time I would ever address the devil is if somehow, someway, he actually appeared in front of me. Then it's not a prayer to, it's an address. So your friend, by rebuking the devil, is praying to the devil.

And he has to be very careful. Okay. Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. And so, versus resisting the devil, keeping notes. So there are, within the charismatic movement, what they'll often do, and I've heard them do it. They start praying to the devil. They're like, I come before you, I rebuke you, and they're praying to the devil. And I just pointed out, you realize you're praying to Satan? We're addressing him. Yeah, that's what a prayer is. You address God. You're praying to the devil. And they're shocked.

I think that's what you're doing. And you think that's what's biblical? Where does it say that? Where? Ever in the scriptures.

It's not there. So the charismatic movement is full of people who, now I'm charismatic, and I'm a continuationist, but I'm not into this wacko stuff. But a lot of that hyper charismatic stuff, that stupidity, they'll talk to Satan. You've got to sleep with your mouth closed because Satan can get in to your mouth. I mean, you can be demon possessed while you're a Christian.

And they get into some really strange, weird stuff as well. So you've got to watch out for that with your friend or whoever else was saying all that. So in James, where it mentions submitting yourself to God and resist the devil, by submitting ourselves to God, that's through prayer and obedience to what's already written in the word.

That's how I read that. That's our hearts. Prayer, our mind, our hearts, our actions. Yes. And we submit to the Lord and we do what he wants, which can be difficult sometimes.

But that's what it is. So the devil will resist us. I mean, resist us.

They never will flee. That's what the Bible says, James 4-7. Yeah. And also 1 Peter 5, 8-9, you know, be sober-minded and the devil prowls around looking for something to devour. Resist him. You stand firm in your faith. So we were to resist him by focusing on Christ. We're not to rebuke him by focusing on him. Big difference.

All right. And finally, why did Michael even not rebuke the devil? Well, I'll go there. In Jude 9, let me do this right here.

Let me get this green going right there so people can see it. In Jude 9, this is where we see this. It's just Jude 9.

There's no second chapter. But Michael, the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a raring judgment, but said, the Lord rebuke you. This is really interesting because in the presence there, he did not rebuke him of his own accord or authority, but that the Lord himself would be the one who would rebuke him. So he said, then the Lord rebuke you. And what Michael did was give the glory and the power to God.

And the only way he communicated with the devil was because he was right there. There were one-on-one. Now, I don't know if I answered your question, though, because I'm not sure I understood what your question was.

The last one. No, actually, that answers it perfectly. You pretty much said if it's one-on-one. I was trying to make the point to my relative that it's, you know, no offense, but he wasn't that important for, if the devil's not omnipresent.

It seems like he would be after a world leader or someone who has worldwide influence and not you in your bedroom who's not really, you know, talking to anybody. So that's the point I was trying to make. So, yeah, you actually answered your question. So thank you. Okay. Well, praise God, man.

God bless. Good. Anything else? All right.

No, I think you covered all of it. So talk to you next time. Thank you very much. Okay, man. God bless. All right. Well, we have nobody waiting right now.

If you want to give me a call, we have wide open lines, 877-207-2276. And, man, I got a lot of stuff going on here in emails. So I was thinking about getting into some of the emails right now and discuss some of the stuff that was there.

Might as well. I am a Christian but really struggle with the thoughts it's unfair that every human is born into sin when it was Eve who disobeyed God and brought sin into the world, not me. Well, let's go through this.

There's more to the email. So, first of all, it was not Eve who brought sin into the world. It was Adam. Eve sinned first, but the Bible clearly tells us in Romans 5-12 that sin entered the world through one man. And that is Adam. So that's just a theological correction there. And the Christian says that she struggles with the thought that it's unfair, so to speak, that every human is born into sin when it was, you know, now we have just a question. It was Adam who did this.

Okay. Generally when people talk about this, there's a couple ways to tackle it, and one is what do you think about Jesus dying for our sins? Was that unfair? And, you know, yeah, it was unfair, but we received the benefit from it. So I asked him, do you think that is wrong because of that unfairness that was wrong for Jesus to die for us? Well, that gets into some really interesting questions and thoughts we can get into.

To what degree, what kind of wrong, and some things like that. But I say, look, if you want to say that you can accept and trust in what Christ did for us because he represented us, that's what it says. You know, he took our place, Isaiah 53, he bore our sins, 1 Peter 2.24. And so if that's the case, then, and he's called the last Adam in 1 Corinthians 15.45. If he is the last Adam and you accept him representing us, why would you reject the first Adam representing us? Because this is what the Bible is teaching.

All right. So if we were to go, for example, to Romans 5.18, and it says there very clearly, it says, so then as through one transgression, there resulted condemnation to all men. So that means that when Adam sinned, that everybody fell, everybody was. And we know the next verse, Romans 5.19, for as through the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners.

And were made sinners in the Greek. What I'm talking about there is what's called the aorist passive indicative. The aorist passive indicative. What that means is the aorist is past tense. Passive means it happens to them. They didn't do it themselves.

And indicative means it's a fact. So through the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. So that's just how it was. And it says even so through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous. So when we look at this, we see that, there's some really good theology in here. We see that what Adam did resulted in us being made sinners. That's Romans 5.19. But the previous verse, verse 18, so then as through one transgression, there resulted condemnation to all men. And even so through an act of righteousness, there resulted justification of life to all men. So what we're seeing here is that Adam's work resulted in condemnation to everybody.

And Christ's work resulted in justification of life to all men. Now the second all can't be every individual who ever lived. So what Paul does is he uses the word all in verse 18 and the word the many in verse 19 to refer to two different groups. All is the first everybody group. And the second all is a limited group. And then in verse 19, the first the many is everybody. And the second the many is not everybody. That's right there in scripture. I've shown people this. That's interesting. Never saw that before. So anyway, we get back to the email maybe after the break and we can discuss a little bit further.

This is just called biblical theology and a lot of people don't know about it. And we'll talk about it a little bit more. If you want, give me a call, 877-207-2276. We'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Hope you're enjoying it. I love teaching theology. You know, I really do.

There's a thing I like to do called theology and sneakers. Haven't done it for a long time. But I like to just get up in front of a group of people and just start teaching and just slowly put things together. And what I'm thinking about doing is working up a PowerPoint slideshow to do all of that, like 50, 70 slides, and then teach it and put it up as a video, among other things. And boy, that reminds me, we need a lot of video editing help and some people who are good at that, who are qualified to do that kind of thing. If you train me, let me know or do it yourself.

We'd love to have that help. All right, so back to this email. And so why is it that we're born in sin nature? The reason Adam was able to represent us is because Jesus was able to represent us. Adam is not the standard of righteousness, but Jesus is. And so in order for Christ to represent us on the cross, this doctrine of federal headship had to be in place. Federal headship is a teaching that the male, not the female, represents a descendant. It's very simple. And I've taught on it many, many, many times.

And so Adam represented us just as Jesus represented us. So if people say it's not fair, I get the sentiment. Well, in a sense, I could say, well, maybe it's not.

But is it? Now, what's really good in this email is that Jennifer here, she says, I'm not the one to say what is fair. Only God. Now, that was brilliant.

That was very good. Because that is the standard of righteousness. Is God not ourselves? He's the standard of fairness. So whatever he does is always right. Now, about God being fair.

He's always fair more or less. Now, what I mean by that is I don't want God to be fair to me. I don't want fairness.

I want grace. I do not want God to treat me with fairness. I'm not interested in that. Because that would mean that I would get treatment, a behavior based on what God thinks is fair and right on me.

That scares me. Because what's fair and what's right for me is to be damned. I don't want that. I don't want that kind of fairness. I want the mercy from God.

I want that grace from God. See, justice, mercy, and grace, they're interesting. So let's listen to governors. Who, where, what? Oh, that's on the hurricane, the state of emergency.

Give me some information while I mention it. So here's an illustration of something. Is that fairness can be illustrated by stealing a bicycle. So let's say a person comes over and steals your bike.

And you catch that person and that person goes to jail. That's justice. Mercy is when the person steals your bike, you catch him, but you don't punish him, you just let him go. Mercy, he does not get what he deserves.

Grace, so he steals your bike, you catch him, you do not punish him, and you also give him money, let's just say, to help him out. That's grace, getting what he doesn't deserve. So justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve, but grace is getting what you don't deserve in a positive way. So where does fairness sit in here? Well, fairness would be with justice. Well, it's fair that I, or the person, that you, whatever, it's fair that you take that person to jail, that you call the cops, they go to jail.

That's fair, right? So is mercy fair? Now, this is an interesting question because if you want fairness, then can we have mercy at the same time? Because if we define fairness as that which is a requirement, as an equal standard among other people, and that everybody gets what's equal and proper, then it would be proper that such a person not receive mercy. So if we want God to be fair, then what we're saying is, we don't really want him to show mercy or grace.

And we don't want that. We want him to be merciful and gracious. That would mean then that there's a sense in which God is not fair. But we don't mean it in a negative way that he's not fair because he treats us badly. No, he's not fair because he treats us well.

He treats us favorably. So some people think that when they accuse God of not being fair, they're accusing him of being wrong. But they don't understand that if they want God to be fair, then they will get judgment. And so, as Jennifer rightly said, she's not the one to say what is fair.

And that's a very good comment, and it's a very good statement. She is not, and nor am I, the one who says what is fair, what's right, what's good, what's bad. And this is one of the things I'll ask atheists when I debate them, discuss things with them. And I'll say God is wrong for doing whatever it is. I'll say what standard do you have by which you judge God? What standard of morality do you have by which you can say what is right and what is wrong and what God ought to do and what he ought not to do? If you don't have a universal standard that you can tell me and convince me or show me or give a rational reason why it is the right standard, then you just don't have any right to complain.

You just don't like something, and that doesn't mean it's true or false. So this is one of the basics that we as Christians need to understand, that fairness is not something we want. It's not something we want. I want God's grace. I want his mercy.

All right, if you want to give me a call, all I have to do is dial 877-207-2276. We have nobody waiting right now, so let me get to another question. Why does Paul say women can't speak in the churches when Paul says they can prophesy in church? That's a good question.

So the context of not speaking in church with the commentators and researchers that I've read propose as one of the reasons. I believe it's 1 Corinthians 11. Let me get to there. Excuse me. Hold on a cough. There we go. And so he says he does not permit a woman to speak but to remain quiet. Oh, it's 1 Corinthians 14. For women are to keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak but are subject to themselves, are too subject to themselves, just as the law says. So this is a tough one because we don't know exactly what was going on when this was said.

The next verse kind of gives us a clue, though. If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home for it's improper for a woman to speak in church. So, wow, that seems pretty chauvinistic. Women can't even speak in church. They think what was going on was in the culture of the time that when they would have meetings where males and females would be gathered, that in that culture women were not to speak up because if they did, it was in a meeting, let me back it up, in a synagogue, church kind of a meeting in the culture. If a woman were to raise her voice, she was then speaking without her husband and he was not being the mediator or the guard over her because that's how it was back then. Women could get away with a lot of stuff, but they were to be in submission to the family relationship and the heads up of the husband and to speak overly like that was to reject that and to challenge that.

And so it wasn't proper for them to speak and that seems to be the context. Hold on, we'll be right back after these messages. We have nobody waiting, give me a call, 877-207-2276. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. We have nobody waiting. We only had one call today.

It was very unusual. We usually get quite a few. So if you want to call me, like I said, the number is 877. It's toll free, 877-207-2276. And you can also send me an e-mail if you have a comment or a question.

And if you can do that, you can just send it to info at karm.org, info at karm.org and put in the subject line radio comment or radio question. Got a little distracted there. All right, yeah, it's exciting.

Okay, whatever. Man, I've got so many things going on. This is really interesting. People e-mail me interesting stuff.

What about my novel I just re-released? I'm just commenting about that. All right, so I hope I answered this sufficiently. Why at our 1 Corinthians 14, when it talks about a woman, 1 Corinthians 14, a woman not being allowed to speak in the church, but yet they can prophesy. So that's how they seem to harmonize it, the commentators I've read, because it is a tough passage and it does seem to be like that because when the women gained their, so to speak, privilege by the arrival of Christianity, one of the theories is, because women were in the back of the church and the men were in the front, the women would often stand up and speak and address what was going on and that was very improper culturally, very improper.

They're not to do that. And if they want to learn, they need to ask their husbands and not be disruptive and not usurp the teaching and authority position of their husbands. That was the main idea. That's what I leaned towards of that and women can prophesy. Now I just want to say this though, that back in seminary, I graduated in 91, we had a whole week, and I've mentioned this many times before, we had a whole week where the classes were opened up to the public and so anybody outside could just come into the classes if there was room and they could take the same classes that we students were taking. It was fun. I liked it. And one of the deals that they had was they flew in a woman who was very knowledgeable about what women can do in the church.

And I remember this very clearly. I actually was supposed to pick her up at the airport and then forgot and I really apologized profusely to her. She was very gracious, very kind to me.

I apologized so many times. She said, it happens. And so nevertheless, she had this class at the seminary during hours when the students were there, and 95% of the students were male, some women would be there taking a Masters in Theology and they wanted to learn.

That was fine, no problem. But this class where it was for women to be used in the church and what they can do, this class was packed full of women and I was the only male. I was the only man in it. And that really upset me. That taught me something because it taught me that the men aren't interested in really knowing what women can do. They've got to be in their place. And I didn't like that because women are undervalued and underappreciated in the church.

They can do anything a man can do except be in a position of spiritual authority over men, and that can't happen. And that's what it says. And this reminds me of something else. We've got a call coming and we'll get to it in a little bit. But when I was in the Philippines a few years ago, we met with a bunch of pastors and I did some teaching here and there and other pastors that I was with did some preaching and teaching. And pastors from the local areas of the Philippines drove in, rode their motorcycles, walked in.

And we had a big time of fellowship and teaching and Q&A, and it was really a blessing. The women are the ones I noticed the most because the women were the ones in that culture who made the meeting work well. They were the ones who were bringing food and arranging things that were so smooth and so good that everything else worked great. And they cooked, they gave the food to us, they even cleaned up afterwards. And I was watching. I had to speak and others had to speak, but I noticed the women. They just would mingle in and out of the men, not getting in their way, and they would take the food away and they would help them.

And it made everything great. But it bothered me that nobody thanked them and nobody recognized what they were doing. When we were kind of officially done with the meeting, that's when the women were eating after everything was done for the men.

I'm like, oh, man. So I walked back through a door where they were coming in and out of it. I still remember this. They were all sitting down eating, I don't know, eight or nine or ten of them, all sitting down, and one immediately got up and said, in English, because they speak really good English over there, do you need anything? And I said, no, no, no, no, no. I said, I wanted to thank you, each one of you, for what you did and how you made everything so great. And I said, you need to be appreciated and I appreciate you. And they were so thankful that nobody would do that.

Nobody else came in to do that. I guess that's part of their culture. Anyway, it's a concern, and we need to value our women in church. We really do. All right, let's get to Russ from Detroit, Michigan. Russ, excuse me, welcome. You're on the air. Thank you.

And I appreciate you giving me the time here. I was listening to a debate you had, I don't know how long ago it was, with Canadian Atheists. I don't remember. It doesn't ring a bell. You don't remember?

Nah. Okay. There was some, in that debate, it was a really good debate, I thought. And it got to some points that I was always interested in, and it didn't really resolve, because you know how debates go, they wander around, and there were a few questions I'd have asked at a certain point in there. And so, and full disclosure here, I'm an atheist.

I don't know if that's in your call screen thing. Well, wait, wait, now you've got me confused. You said the debate was really good, and you're an atheist, so was it good because he won, or because I did, or you thought it was good all over? I just thought it was good all over because of the way you guys let each other talk, when there was unresolvable things that he couldn't resolve, he just admitted it, when there were things that you couldn't resolve, it's not that you couldn't resolve it, you went right back to, well, that's faith, you know? And I go, well, that's as honest as you can get, you know? And so it was, yeah, there was no yelling going on or anything like that.

Nobody was trying to get one up on one another, you know? It was just really refreshing. Okay, well, that's nice. I'm glad that's the case.

Okay. Yeah, and so I guess my question goes back to the definition of God, and I believe in a necessary metaphysical precondition for all dependent facts. I think that's intuitive. I think there is some kind of singular thing that all distinctions can come from, you know? But I can't be brought to the conclusion that it's a mind with a will, as our experience of minds, in like both their abstract and their concrete manifestations, are dependent on pre-existing distinctions.

And I know this is probably an argument you've heard before because you've been around the block a few times. And so it never really got into resolving that for me because I feel the complex biology of a brain is the concrete, and that's a pre-existing bunch of distinct things coming together. And even the recognition of multiple distinct stimulus to form distinct thoughts, one from another, causes the emergence of a mind, and that's the abstract. I mean, a single stimulus is merely existence, not thought. So how can a God have a mind with a will? Well, there's so many things you've said, and how can a God have a mind with a will by definition?

He could if he could. And then we get into the issue of what's the necessary preconditions for intelligibility. Is it personal or impersonal? And there are problems with your position. I don't know if I went over it in that debate. Can I show you a problem, if I'm understanding you properly, what I think is a problem with your position? Is that okay if I try? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I can tell you how you answered that in the debate to kind of refresh your mind. Alright, go ahead then, tell me.

Would you like me to do that? Sure. You said something along the lines of mind and not form from anything else than a mind, kind of a like begets like argument. Right.

But for me, that's the mind you're talking about is a disembodied mind, it's a pure abstract alone because I don't think anybody claims that God has biology except when he manifested, you know, in Jesus. Right. And so I just think that kind of like begets like, if I understood your answer, is just a fallacy, a causal fallacy, it's a hasty generalization and appeal to probability. Well, man, I'd like talking to you.

What? Because you know stuff. I really don't have much more to add on to that, so you go. Well, we could have some good conversations, you know, maybe we should exchange emails and some stuff like that because I can tell you know some stuff. Sure.

Love this. So then, okay, are you a materialist or what? I am kind of a materialist, but I believe in abstract emergence.

I believe the material came together kind of like molecules, H2O comes together to make wet. Hold on, we've got to break. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but we've got to break, okay? I've got to put you on pause here.

Sorry. Hold on. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned and hopefully you'll get interesting and I'll show you some stuff, hopefully. 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's get back on with Russ from Detroit. Russ, you still there? Yes, I am still there. You know, I only have about five more minutes. I'm doing dinner tonight, but we can get as far as we can and I can call back later, too. Sure, no problem.

Tomorrow or something. All right, so if you're a materialist, then the presupposition that you would have, and I think you've already stated, is that there is a unifying and originating principle of the universe, but that unifying and originating principle would have to be impersonal, correct? That's my belief, yes. Okay. Which then means or seems to necessitate that you affirm materialism or naturalism, that all things operate under the requirements of physics, chemistry, all those laws, including the ones we don't know about yet, right?

Not quite. I would say the majority of it, but I do believe in that thing called emergence, which is very slippery to physics right now. Yeah, emergent properties are things that are concomitant with essential properties. You have an essence that has essential properties, and without it, it can't be that essence. And emergent properties, accidental properties, yeah. And thus my protest that a mind seems to be one of those things. Well, it's certainly possible. It's called an emergent property, but there's a problem because what you're saying then is that the physical brain is restricted to the laws of chemistry. It cannot operate outside of them. You know, in chemistry, motion, matter, physics, all that stuff, that combination of stuff, represented by, let's say, chemistry, which means then that you're... Kind of, kind of.

Well, it... Well, go ahead, go ahead. Unless you want to say that the physical brain operates in a means that is not restricted to neurochemistry, if you say that, then you have a problem. I believe it gets stimuluses that are abstract that result in biochemistry, so it's kind of a feeding mechanism, you know. Well, if you say there's an abstract, you talk about abstract entities, abstract entities are conceptual because of a transcendental necessity, like a transcendental obtriness or charness. These are abstractions that occur only in the mind.

They're not properties of the physical universe. That's not the abstraction I'm talking about, though. Okay.

You're talking about the abstract of thought, in that like a thought, which is an abstract, non-concrete, it can affect the mind. Absolutely. So I believe there is a connection. Okay. Absolutely.

We agree. It occurs both in the theories called substance dualism and property dualism. All right, so the issue here is, if the principle of the universe is unifying and immaterial, I don't want to say that, if it's just impersonal, just leave it there for now, if it's impersonal, then it's restricted to the natural laws of the physical universe.

And you're saying there's an ultimate, which is a natural ultimate, whatever that is. But this implies also that the physical brain can't exceed what that is. The physical brain is operating under the laws of chemistry, et cetera. The question and the problem here is severe with this problem, because if one chemical state necessarily leads to another chemical state in the brain, how does it produce proper logical inference? That's a question.

How does one chemical state produce this? And if you were to say, this is my debate with Dillahunty, that he couldn't answer this question, this challenge, because no matter what he said, or I'm being very polite with you and you're a nice guy, I like you, but I could say, no matter what you say now, I could just say, your brain chemicals are making you say that. It doesn't mean it's true.

It doesn't mean it's false. Yeah, I'm fizzing. I'm aware of the argument, like from Saikin and Ruge. I'm brain fizz.

Yeah, I know Saikin. The thing about it is, I don't see how that follows from the fact that I believe in an ordered universe, which means that my brain came together in a certain, it didn't come together in a chaotic way. It came together in an ordered way, and it intrinsically has order, and so it will intrinsically project order in the way that it views things. It's like my projections of my brain came together for kind of a survival, and so I will attract the things and I will repel things, and that goes right down to the atomic, and so it just seems like it's a more complex mechanism of attraction and repulsion for survival.

It seems intrinsic, not fizz. It seems ordered. Your brain chemistry made you say all that.

It's just chemical reactions. I know, I know, but my brain chemistry is ordered from that original thing. You don't know if it's ordered, because it's just brain chemistry saying it's ordered.

You don't know if it is. The problem with your position... Well, I have to... No, no. We both have to... Nope.

I'm sorry. No, we don't have, both have to. From your position, from that position, it's self-refuting, and the reason is is because that position casts doubt on your own ability to justify reason or to be reasonable, because it means it's nothing more than, ultimately nothing more than brain chemistry, but you can't... No atheist I've ever talked to, and there doesn't seem to be any explanation on how brain chemistry, necessary chemical reactions, produce proper logical inference or rationality or various things like this, and the only way to verify truth values is to get into the transcendentals, which are surpassing our minds, and then cross into categories, which is a really interesting topic, and get into different people, but you can't justify that from just mere brain chemistry, because no matter what you say, I just say, hey, your brain made you say that. That doesn't mean it's true or false. You see the problem now?

Yeah. No, I do see your point, but I don't see the problem, because it derails for me back when you said I don't have justification for the order that I see or anything like that. I do have justification.

You're the justification. The people I talk to are the justification, and my success in navigating the world is justification, and it's not circular either. Well, it's circular, but it seems virtuously circular because it's working.

You see, that's called, you've delved into argument about populum and argument about the consequence. So if it works, I know it's good, because it works. That's what's good is what works.

Well, what works, that's what's good. It's circular, and it means nothing. So the problem here is that if you're going to assume a naturalist worldview, and it goes upon your physical brain, then your physical brain is just making you say things, but it has no bearing on truth, which means the idea of what you're arguing from itself is nothing more than chemical process, and you don't know if it's true. Therefore, that position refutes itself because it undermines itself, which is why you shouldn't hold to it. And then to get into the issue of transcendentals, which you can't justify from your perspective in a materialistic worldview of the brain.

I mean, I agree that I can't justify it. I don't feel that I need to, but I think you said something wrong there, in that my brain is making me say this. It's just not my brain that's making me do this. It's the stimulus that's coming into my brain and the way my brain was organized from time continuum, you know, in the past, to recognize for survival. So it's not just brain fizz. It's very ordered and purposeful brain fizz. Of course it's ordered. It's ordered. It's right. Your senses cause...

Try it again. Your senses cause chemical reactions in the brain. The chemical reactions are necessary according to whatever stimulus comes in. It's just mechanics. It's just chemical mechanics.

That's all it is. So it means then that the senses... How does that make sense? Because it refutes itself, because even your senses cause your chemical reactions. I'm talking about the chemical reactions themselves. Sure, our senses induce certain chemical necessities and reactions in our brain, or at the beginning of the process. But that means then they just are necessary reactions.

Necessary chemical reactions. Do they produce truth? Do they produce universals? Do they?

I don't... Sometimes maybe... I mean, no, it's a crapshoot what they produce, except that it's pretty consistent and it produces navigable beings on the Earth. But that's irrelevant to whether or not it produces truth or the view is correct, because you can't say that consequently... The view doesn't matter.

No. But the truth in the view then doesn't matter. That's what your position leads to. Okay. Then maybe that's where it ends.

I'm good with that. Well, okay. And then that's often where it ends, and what you said was interesting, I don't want to make a conversation, but you said that you don't need to justify why or how it is the case that your rationality can produce transcendental necessities that are not restricted to mere chemical reactions. And when I get an atheist to this place where they say I don't need to justify it, this happens a lot, and what I'm doing is showing them that their worldview cannot answer the difficult questions. And so they said, I don't need to answer it.

Okay. They don't need to answer it, but what they're doing is admitting their worldview is insufficient and that as a Christian I can go further than you can, and I can discuss why these things are necessary. But I think that you're assuming there's a difficult question to answer.

Of course there are difficult questions. Why do I need to assume your assumption? Well, we both make assumptions. This is one of the basics of argument and worldview. You have a worldview, you have a worldview. And so each worldview proponent, you and me, will presuppose certain values that we can't prove. For example, the universality of the laws of logic.

You presuppose them, I presuppose them. We can't use logic to show logic works without begging the question, which is a ref, you know, it doesn't work. So we have to beg the question ultimately. There's gotta be ground axioms, yeah. And what must be the condition by which axioms can have their actuality and universal application because these are abstractions. Abstractions need minds.

If you have a universal truth principle, they need a mind. Are you familiar with the one in the many problem by any chance? I think I have heard of it before. It's a long time. You could refresh me, but you know what, man? I'd love to talk further. I gotta go do some dinner. Go do dinner. What are you making? What's for dinner? I'm just curious. Tonight's gonna be easy.

It's gonna be BLTs and everybody's excited about them. Okay. Well, hey, if you're ever out here in Boise, Idaho, you let me know and we'll grab a cup of coffee or something together. Tell you what, I'd love to and I will call you back on this and I'll remind you of who I was and stuff like this and we can go deeper into it because I really enjoyed this. Thank you. Okay.

Bone up on the one in the many and you'll see why it's a very serious issue from an atheist perspective, okay? All right. I'll do that. Thank you. All right, man. Talk to you later. Bye. All right.

All right. Now, that's the kind of atheist I like talking to. He's not obstreperous.

He's not antagonistic, not accusatory. That's a wonderful conversation. I love talking to atheists like that. Let's get to Janet from Raleigh, North Carolina. Janet, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt. I know that was a great conversation I was listening to.

It was above my head, but I still listen to it. It's okay. I only got like two and a half minutes. I don't know. How do I ask a question really quickly?

I don't know how to do that. Less than a minute. We have less than a minute.

Now, sorry. Go ahead. All I can do is ask how you're doing, man. Well, I'm doing okay. I love those kind of conversations.

I don't get to do that on the radio very often because I lose people, but these are the kinds of conversations I really enjoy the most, getting into stuff like that. Yeah, I thought it was good. I was lost, but I thought it was good anyway.

I still thought it was good, but I was lost. I could teach a class on it. I'd love to teach a class little by little and introduce Christians to concepts that are just out there to people. That people have no idea exist. It's like, what? Yeah, that's the truth. Oh, yeah. Well, you can always do that. I argue them pretty regularly.

It's a class on your website. Yeah. I'm sorry. You could probably do that sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I'm going to catch you at another time because I know you got to go, but it's just more church stuff.

You know me. I'm always calling about stuff about church, so. That's right.

That's right. Call back tomorrow. Call back tomorrow. I'm going out of town this weekend so I might not be able to call this weekend, but maybe I'll call next week or something. All right.

Sounds good. And I want to tell you real quickly, the Bible Museum is in Washington, D.C. It's awesome. If you ever get a chance to go there, you got to go. I'll try. All right. There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Appreciate it. Okay. God bless. Hey, everybody. We're out of time. There's the music. I'm out of here. May the Lord bless you by His grace. Back on there tomorrow. I'll talk to you then. Another program powered by the Truth Network.