Frank Turek hosts an hour-long TV program each week called "I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist." He's the president of CrossExamined.org, an apologetics ministry, as well as the author of four books. Today he talks with us about some of the philosophical breaking points of atheistic arguments, but also times when it's best to not give an answer.
Gary Myers: Hi, my name is Gary Myers.
Joe Fontenot: And I'm Joe Fontenot.
Gary: We're the host of the Answering the Call Podcast.
Joe: This is the podcast where we talk to people who are answering God's call.
Gary: It's a real treat today to have Frank Turek, the Apologist.
Joe: Frank is a nationally-known name. He was one of the speakers at our recent Defend Apologetics Conference so this is the first in a series of podcast that were filmed or recorded rather at the conference. And so he's going to talk about the philosophical breaking point of atheistic arguments.
Gary: He's very good at this, and I caught his lecture at Defend. It was wonderful.
Joe: It was, and I got to sit in on the podcast that Marilyn actually interviewed him, and it was solid.
Gary: Let's hear from Frank.
Joe: Let's do it.
Marilyn Stewart: I'm just kind of go through some of these and see if they're okay with you.
Frank Turek: No, you can just ask them, don't worry about it. Let's just do it.
Marilyn: Okay. Well I really planned on two, but I'm sure we can go... I might interrupt,
Frank: You can interrupt me. Whatever. Just have a conversation.
Marilyn: Alright, sounds great.
Frank: I'm I close enough to this?
Producer: You're good.
Frank: It's Mardi Gras, let's throw beeds.
Marilyn: You can't make me laugh too much-
Frank: Why not?
Marilyn: I was in tears there a couple of times. Okay, are we ready?
Producer: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Marilyn: Frank we are glad to have you on campus with us this week for defend, and you've given us a lot to think about, but I wanted to address atheism for moment, and your book I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist with a Dr.Geisler-
Frank: Dr.Geisler, that's right.
Marilyn: We have heard pretty often that many atheists are atheists because of some trauma or emotion that they emotionally reject Christianity. And you made the statement that many of them are on a happiness quest, not a truth quest.
Marilyn: And you said the only way to find happiness is straight through the truth. I wanted to give you chance to talk about that. I thought that was very interesting, how can we use that as we were talking to atheist?
Frank: Well, I think when you're talking to somebody, if they're not a Christian, you might want to ask them, why are you not a Christian? And a lot of times you're going to hear responses that don't strike at the heart of Christianity. Like for example, they might say, well, there's too much evil in the world. Well, that doesn't mean Christianity is false.
Frank: The entire reason Christianity exists is to resolve the problem of evil. That's why Christ came to take evil upon himself so we could be reconciled to him. Or an atheist might say, "Well, evolution is true." Say for example, even if it's true, it doesn't mean Christianity is false, right?
Marilyn: Right.
Frank: It'll give us problems with biblical inerrancy and the Old Testament but doesn't mean it Christianity's false, doesn't mean God doesn't exist. In fact, even if evolution is true, you need God, why? Because you need a being to create the universe set up the universe, set up the laws of nature that if evolution is true, drive evolution.
Frank: So even if it were true, you don't get rid of the need for Christianity. I very rarely hear people say, "The reason I'm not a Christian, because I think there's a better explanation then the resurrection for the evidence that we have." Whoever says that hardly anybody. I think you should ask them why you're not a Christian first.
Frank: Then I normally ask them and I do this a lot on college campuses where atheists come to I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist presentation, I'll ask them, "If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?" And many of them will be honest and say, "No." They don't want it to be true, they don't want there to be a god. Why? They want to be God, they want to be god of their own lives. Hey, half the time I do too, don't you?
Marilyn: Sure.
Frank: It's natural you don't want God to exist. I don't know if it was Nietzsche or Russell or one of those old atheist who said, "The biggest problem I have with God is I'm not him." Right?
Marilyn: Says it all right there didn't it?
Frank: No, I can't say this is true of all atheists don't get me wrong. I'm just saying, many of the ones I run into they admit it's a volitional problem, It's a moral problem, It's an emotional problem It's not an intellectual problem, It's not like there's not enough evidence out there. And I think God has given us enough evidence to know that Christianity is true, but He's also left enough ambiguity that if you want to go your own way-
Marilyn: You can make that choice.
Frank: He is not compelling you to follow him. In fact, that's what hell is, it's separation from God. He doesn't compel you to follow him, He separates himself from you.
Marilyn: So, we can give the evidence, some may not accepted.
Frank: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Marilyn: But it's a matter of addressing the head as well as the heart.
Frank: Yes.
Marilyn: Unpack that a little bit more about if you're talking to an atheist, and you understand that there's a lot of anger there, a lot of hurt. Do you have any other specific pointers about dealing with that?
Frank: Turn or burn doesn't work.
Marilyn: Right, Yes.
Frank: So that's not going help, no. I think you just got to love the person and maybe not even talk about Christianity at that point because if they have a visceral reaction to it, it's not helpful to bring it up.
Frank: But I can almost guarantee you this, if you love that person enough at some point something's going to happen in that person's life and your phone's going to ring and that person is going to be on the other end because when something happens, they're not going to call they're atheist, buddy-
Marilyn: That's exactly right.
Frank: Atheist buddy is going to say, "Well, these things happen where there's no rhyme or reason, we just dance to our DNA, there's no purpose to life, fuck up." No. You'll be one that can then at that point say, "Well, there's a reason for this and Christ came to ultimately take our pain and suffering away and you can have that taken away and your sins forgiven by trusting in him."
Marilyn: It was a powerful story that you told a few minutes ago, a true story about a Christian who did the unthinkable and at least he claimed to be a Christian and abused a little child. It does just make us angry at this person who did such a thing.
Marilyn: It makes us wonder like they do, why did God allow this one thing to happen? We need help us Christians understanding that one horrible thing to a child and then we also need to help those who are rejecting Christ because of that action. Do you have anything you'd like to say more to that?
Frank: Well, see there's always two answers to the problem of evil. There's the philosophical answer and then there's the pastoral answer and since I'm from New Jersey, I don't have the pastoral answer. There are people way better than me at compassion and reading people well and really comforting them.
Frank: I give the more philosophical answer, I tell people when I ... Yesterday we had a breakout session If God were evil basically. I pointed out that the answers I'm going to give, if you're going through difficulty are probably not going to resonate, they may annoy you.
Frank: But I think the first step toward recovery is to intellectually recognize that while you might not know what the reason for this happening is, God has a reason even if you never figure out what that is, this side of eternity.
Marilyn: Now that's very interesting because yesterday we did a podcast with Gary Habermas, and he deals with a lot of people who have doubt, who are suffering, and he says kind of the same thing.
Frank: I think the way out of suffering is some intellectual muscle that you put your theology to work, that you remind yourself of scripture that God doesn't leave us, He doesn't forsake us, that we can trust him, that He doesn't lie, that He all good.
Marilyn: It's kind of a good reminder, I think to us as Christians that we do have to think properly to understand these really difficult situations and then to help anybody else.
Frank: Right. In fact, Gary does a great job talking about cognitive therapy and Philippians 4, think on these things, the first thing you have to think about is things that are true and that's the first step out of there. But let me just say one other thing about evil Marilyn, that is it doesn't disprove God it actually shows God does exist.
Marilyn: Yes.
Frank: Because none of this would be evil unless there was good and good wouldn't exist unless God exists because God is the standard of good. If evil exists, I know it sounds kind of counterintuitive but if evil exists, God exists because God is the standard of good by which we would even know what evil was.
Frank: You can always ask the question, "Why did God allow this evil to occur?" And there are many answers to that. One of course is free will, If God interfered with us doing evil all the time, we wouldn't be free creatures at all. This wouldn't be a moral universe we'd be robots.
Marilyn: Sure.
Frank: He allows evil to take place because He can get the greater good of love by giving us free will, but He can redeem evil even if we can't see why God would possibly allow say, an awful child abuse or something like that.
Frank: We might not be able to see any good coming from it now, but it could be that ultimately God can recompense that individual, not only here but in eternity. Infact I think the writer of Hebrews talks about a better resurrection, whatever that means, it means something and about enhancing our capacity to enjoy God in heaven.
Frank: But also the idea that there's the ripple effect out there, that one event can ripple forward and does ripple forward to affect trillions of other events.
Marilyn: I tell you that heartbreaking story as you shared and I thought if nothing else, it should be a reminder to us of how serious our sin is, how that ripple effect that our sin has and that we answer to the Lord.
Marilyn: You did mention this morning that if there is no God, there is no justice because I believe if I heard correctly that she was unable, this victim was unable to really testify on the stand and so as I understand it, the man walked free.
Frank: The man's free and everyone knows he's guilty and he's never going to get justice here on earth if she doesn't testify.
Marilyn: Yes.
Frank: He'll only get justice in the afterlife if there is one.
Marilyn: So without God, there is no justice.
Frank: There is no justice, there's no standard of justice and there's no justice done because there's nobody with the authority and the knowledge and the power to make something just ultimately.
Marilyn: Now that kind of brings me to another question that I jotted down, we have also talked about Islam this week in some podcasts.
Marilyn: My question is why does it have to be a good God that is the basis for our sense morality? That every human feels this deep sense of right and wrong and why can't it be Allah? Why does it have to be a good God that really gives us that sense of morality?
Frank: Because as Muslim scholars will admit that Allah is arbitrary according to them that his nature isn't good, whatever he does is good. Kind of a mild example of that would be in the Gulf War, when the allied forces hit the Iraqis with overwhelming force, some of the Iraqis were surrendering to CNN camera crews why? Because Allah must want us to lose now it's a very fatalistic whatever Allah does is good, not is Allah good?
Frank: Now if Allah isn't good, there must be a standard beyond Allah that is in order to judge what is good and what isn't good and that standard is God's Yahweh's nature. Ultimately you have to arrive at an unchanging source of goodness and justice and righteousness and that standard is what we mean by God.
Frank: In theology, you well know here at New Orleans seminary, you know there's a difference between essentialism and voluntarism, I don't know if our podcasters may have heard this but essentialism is that goodness is grounded in God's nature. Voluntarism is that God is arbitrary and does whatever he wants regardless of any nature. Well, as Christians er are essentialists we believe that God's nature is goodness and that's where the buck stops, so to speak.
Marilyn: Interesting, now on Allah, I wonder if this goes back to the old philosophical dilemma. Is it good because Allah says it is good?
Frank: Yeah. That's called the Euthyphro dilemma that Plato brought up and it's why I should bring that up Marilyn because I get it a lot on college campuses. People will say, "Well, is God good because he does it or does he do it because God's good?"
Frank: And this is supposed to be a dilemma for the Christian who goes, "Well, look, if God does it because he's good, then he must be looking at a standard beyond him and if it's good because God doesn't think Allah is arbitrary, why you need God for good then?" Right "God's not doing anything he's looking at a standard beyond him or he's just arbitrary and making it up"
Frank: And they think it's dilemma, but it's not a dilemma, this is what's called a false dilemma. A true dilemma is A or non A.
Marilyn: Right.
Frank: This is A or B. Well maybe there's a C, In other words, maybe there's a third option here and there is. The third option is not that God is arbitrary or not that God looks at a standard beyond him, the third option is God is the standard, right?
Marilyn: Yes.
Frank: If God has to look at a standard beyond him, then God is not really God. The standard beyond him is and so it's not a dilemma. The Euthyphro dilemma is not a dilemma there's a standard beyond or the standard is God not a standard beyond him.
Marilyn: When I ask you about this question that Christians face quite a bit or this challenge of, don't judge me. You talked about Matthew 7 or where someone will say, "Who are you to judge?" Or "The Bible says judge not."
Marilyn: You mentioned this last night about Matthew 7 and you said, "It's not that we're not to judge, but they were to judge correctly." I wanted to give you a chance to talk about that a little bit.
Frank: First when someone says, "Don't judge." They're actually judging you. It's a self defeating claim to say, don't judge. It's like saying, "I can't speak a word in English." It's doing what you say you should do so Jesus doesn't just stop after he says, "Judge not." he says, "Judge not lest you be judged by the same standard you judge others you'd be judged by that standard, so before you try and take the speck out of your brother's eye, you hypocrite take the log out of your own eye."
Frank: He's not telling you not to judge, he's telling you to take the speck out of your brother's eye, which involves making a judgment. He's simply saying, "Get that problem out of your life so you can better help your brother." So it's not a command not to judge, it's a command on how to judge.
Frank: Everybody makes judgments, atheists make judgments, they judge there's no God, the Bible is wrong, you're wrong if you're a Christian, all these things, they're judgments. The question isn't whether or not you can make judgments, the question is, are your judgments true?
Frank: In fact, the next verse after that, I think if I remember correctly, Jesus either says don't throw your pearls before swine Or it says something about dogs. He's making a judgment about certain things, so everybody's making judgments. The only question is, are your judgments true?
Marilyn: I think that's a real important point for Christians who are trying to share with other people to understand and you went through quite a few challenges last night and you said, "Turn these on their head, turn it back." Give us a couple of examples.
Frank: Turn the claim on itself, this is the most important thinking skill you can have. In the book, I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist we call it the road runner tactic. It reminds us of Wile Coyote and Road Runner like Road Runner stops short in the cliff and Wile Coyote goes over the cliff and he's hanging in mid air until he realizes there's no ground to stand on well, that's exactly what you do when you turn a claim on itself.
Frank: Somebody says there's no truth you say, "Is that true?" You're claiming it's true, there's no truth. Somebody says, "Don't judge." Then why are you judging me for judging? Somebody says, "There are no absolutes, are you absolutely sure?" Someone says, "All truth comes from science."
Frank: You say, "Does that truth come from science?" No, it doesn't. You should doubt everything, "Should I doubt that?" I mean, you can't know anything, "How do you know you can't know?" These are relativism and postmodernism or just they're intellectually vacuous. It's logically self defeating.
Frank: Once you get good at turning a claim on itself, you can avoid a lot of error and that's important because if you start believing error, reality will hit you in the face ultimately you're going to get hurt.
Marilyn: And it's a great skill for every Christian learn just if nothing else, it puts a back on them, gifts that Christian a moment to kind of collect themselves and make them answer the question. You may not have a snickers bar, but if you learn this skill, that gives you just a moment to kind of back up and not be on the defense all the time.
Marilyn: All right, let's see. You said so many good things but I loved what you said this morning about miracles, that sign of the great king. You talked about that when a king wanted to send a message, he would send a messenger that, when he signed a document, he did it with a seal of a ring. Tell me about how miracles are really a sign of a great God that we serve?
Frank: The purpose of miracles in the scriptures anyway is to show that somebody speaks for God. The great periods of miracles in the Bible and there aren't many of them actually, people think miracles are occurring all the time in the Bible, they are not actually occurring very often. They are occurring about on average, once every eight years.
Marilyn: I believe he said 230, 250 something-
Frank: 250 over so to make the math easier, just check it from Abraham to Jesus and that's 2000 years, it's one miracle every eight years. And they're there to say, "Listen to this person." God is going to pour out miracles on Moses so the Israelites listened to Moses and Pharaoh listens to Moses.
Frank: God's going to pour out miracles on Elijah and Elijah goes there trying to prevent Israel from going into apostasy. God is going to pour out miracles on Jesus and the apostles because they have a new message that people need to understand and know that this is from God that's why miracles are done.
Frank: They're never done to entertain, they're never even done for the personal benefit of the miracle worker. For example, Paul says, "Pray for Timothy" Or pray for so and so. Timothy, take a little wine for your stomach because, well, look, if Timothy has a problem why don't you just heal him?
Frank: It's never done for the personal benefit, God can heal him directly don't get me wrong. I'm just saying when the apostles and others in the scriptures are doing miracles, they're doing miracles to show everybody that they speak for God and that's why we ought to believe in what they say.
Frank: This new revelation needs new confirmation, this new sermon needs a new sign, it's kind of like a miracle is like a seal from the king who sends you a message that seal says, "This is from the king."
Marilyn: I think that's a great picture, I think that really communicated the message very well. Now, you asked this question and in my mind I got it wrong. You asked, "What was the greatest miracle?" And I was thinking resurrection.
Frank: Yes.
Marilyn: But you said, "No, it's in Genesis 1:1." That's interesting, I'm going to have to give that some more thought but tell me-
Frank: Let me say technically you're correct.
Marilyn: True.
Frank: The resurrection is the greatest-
Marilyn: Good, I like to be right.
Frank: Because when we think of miracles, we think of acts of God inside the universe technically, the creation of the universe is an act of God, but it wasn't inside the universe it was the creation of the universe.
Frank: If you want to be technical but in terms of the amount of power that it would take to create the universe that appears to be greater than say to resurrect Jesus from the dead.
Marilyn: True. One of the things that I wondered about that might be helpful as we're talking to people is that that is accepted across the board in scientists that there was a big bang, that there was a moment when everything came into existence and that, that might even be helpful as we're sharing that here we had the greatest miracle ever right here at the beginning. Science sees that from there, everything else is easier to accept perhaps.
Frank: That's right. If Genesis 1:1 is true and the atheists are admitting the data for Genesis 1:1 they don't think it was God, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that a space matter in time had a beginning, whatever created space matter in time can't be made a space matter of time.
Frank: The cosmos must be spaceless timeless was in a material, powerful, intelligent, personal to create the universe out of nothing those are the attributes of God. It's hard to avoid that conclusion and if God does really exist, then obviously miracles are possible.
Frank: I see as Lewis said, if God exists ... How did he put it? He said, if God exists, must we believe in miracles? Indeed, you have no security against it, that is the bargain.
Marilyn: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Frank: If God exists, he can intervene in the universe anytime he wants. And the question is why does he intervene? It appears when it comes to the Old Testament, he's intervening to show people that these people speak for me, listen up.
Marilyn: I don't know if we can underestimate just how powerful the big bang is for our case because and by the way, you pointed out just how old I am and Bob and everybody else when he had us raise our hands this morning. Yes, I do remember the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Frank: Yes I raised my hand too, but I was only two.
Marilyn: But as we talk about the big bang, I remember when I started I taught school many years ago and taught science and those textbooks back in the 80s were still saying that many scientists believe that the universe was eternal.
Frank: Really in the 80s?
Marilyn: Yes.
Frank: Wow, it takes-
Marilyn: It takes a long time for textbooks to change over and-
Frank: Wake up. Einstein knew it through the theory of general relativity, he knew that the universe and time, that space time and matter are co relative, he knew that back in like 1916.
Marilyn: Oh yes. It takes a long time, especially in schools, but they were still talking about universe eternal maybe expanding contracting universe and I could see it right there. So I would point it out to the kids. I said, "But here's an option, and they're talking about it, it has significance."
Frank: Well, you can even lay the science aside. Because I was actually with a Muslim philosopher many years ago who came up with what some call the column cosmological arguments that time had to have a beginning in other words, today never would have gotten here.
Frank: Regardless of the Big Bang, regardless of science and all this, we know time had to have a beginning. If time didn't have the beginning today, wouldn't have never arrived because you'd always have to live another day before you got to today because there's an infinite number of days before today.
Frank: Now, whatever created time must be timeless, and if you're timeless, you don't have a beginning, which means whatever created time is eternal, I.e God is eternal. So you could lay all the scientists aside and still arrive at the beginning of the Genesis 1:1.
Marilyn: Sure. You mentioned that last night, and this is one of the reasons everybody loves your talks. We are out of time, I do appreciate it very much-
Frank: We are out of time? I thought we had infinite time.
Marilyn: We have infinite time, we're not even yet to today's.
Frank: All right.
Marilyn: But thank you so much for all you do and for being with us today.
Frank: My pleasure. And if people want to know more about this Marilyn, they can go to our website, crossexamined.org and we're on YouTube @crossexamined.org and we have Facebook, cross examined.org
Frank: And we do a lot on the college campus so people can watch the Q and A or the entire presentation including the Q and A from our college campus if they feel like our Facebook pages because we stream it on Facebook and we stream it on our website as well. When is this podcast coming out?
Marilyn: Joe will have to be the one to answer that and we'll let you know and we'll send you the link because we want others too and we want you back for defend. I'm sure you will be.
Frank: Oh, sure.
Marilyn: And we'll do some more podcasts how about that?
Frank: Absolutely. Well, if this comes out at the end of January, at Ohio state, people can watch it. And then we're at Winthrop university and several others, so they can check our calendar, crossexamined.org and see those.
Marilyn: All right. Thanks so much.