Arguments Against Christianity - Part 2 - Jason Willis

In my last message, we stepped into a time machine to go back to 1997, to speak to the 15-year-old me, to prepare myself to face some arguments against Christianity, even in the case when, in the moment, there was no possibility that I would be able to give an answer.

And you know, this is going to face all of us at different times in our lives, especially young people, where you're going to hear something and you're going to be thinking, "Wait, wait, what? How do I handle that?"

And it's been over two months since that message was given here, so we're just going to do a quick little recap, and I'm also going to work in some new material into the recap as well. So we began with shared humanity, and we looked at four aspects of shared humanity. Number one is we didn't ask to be here. None of us asked to be here. You didn't exist. You just simply woke up one day and you became self-aware. You didn't ask to be here.

Shared humanity number two, we desire to be loved, and it's a big deal. It's no small thing. We need it. We long to be loved. Number three, we suffer. Our parents, they do what they can to protect us from this, but in the end, they simply cannot protect us forever. All of us, our innocence is taken, and the reality of suffering and the reality of utter despair settles into our lives, and we find out that somehow it's possible to be alive on the outside but experience a sort of deadness on the inside. And before that happens to you, you're unaware of the possibility that a state like that even exists.

And then after all of that, we're finally faced with the unsettling reality that in the end, we die. This is our shared humanity. None of this is escapable for anyone in this room. We are all trapped inside of this cycle. And from all of this arises the existential crisis within us, somewhere between existing and longing to be loved and despair and suffering and being faced with the reality of death. Somewhere in there, the question emerges, "What is the point? What is the meaning of this?

If this is life, wouldn't it just be better to not be?" And this question, the meaning of human existence, it is no trivial matter. These things have been the greatest questions, the greatest struggles that mankind has faced for as long as history has been recorded. We live, we long, we suffer, we die.

What's the point? And without exception, these questions always lead us to the past. And we find that every single human that you can find on the face of this planet is in the exact same boat. We see generations coming from generations coming from generations. And as we follow the generations through history, it takes us all the way back to the point where our brains glitch out. We don't know how to process it. Have there been an infinite number of generations through all of eternity? Have generations been coming from generations for an infinity of years? Or was there a first human being?

Now, when we think of that first man, when he asked the question, "What's the meaning of this life?" was there anyone there or anything there to give him an answer? And that question led us to this question. And this question is critical right here. Is there any accurate record that exists that explains the beginning of this thing that we call humanity? Everything actually hinges on that question. And the answer we looked at was very simple. There either is a record of this or there isn't.

But how do we even begin to answer these questions? And all of that led us to a discussion about how purpose is dependent on a mind. If humanity was a fluke, if there was no mind behind creation, then we can find a use for our lives, but there can be no transcendent meaning, no ultimate meaning. If this were the case, if existence was a fluke, then your meaning would be totally wrapped up, 100% dependent on whatever the reason was your parents had for choosing to have you. If they had you for a purpose, then you would have a purpose. But if you were an accident, they didn't actually want you, you just happened, then you would be a purposeless burden.

That's how these things work. So let's think about that first human for just a little bit. Think of that man asking the question, "What is this?" If any answer came, no matter what the answer was, if any answer was given, then it must have come from a mind of some sort.

C.S. Lewis pointed out that there are only two views regarding the nature of reality. There is the materialist view that says that the universe was a mindless fluke, and then there is the religious view.

Let's review the quote we looked at last time. "Ever since man, we're able to think, they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there. And very roughly, two views have been held. First, there is what is called the materialist view. People who take this view think that matter in space just happened to exist and always has existed, and no one knows why.

And that matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened by some sort of fluke to produce creatures like us who are able to think." The other view is the religious view. According to it, what is behind the universe is more like a mind than anything else that we know. So the materialist view says that there is no mind behind it all. The religious view says that there is.

And there either is a record of it or there isn't. If there is an accurate record, then it's possible that we might know these things, but if there's not, then we will all die guessing. But in the end, and pay attention to this, this is new, in the end, faith is required in 100% of the situations. If any record is brought forth claiming to be this record of the beginning, how can we know if it's true or not?

In the end, those who believe in that record will believe so by faith, and those who reject it will also reject it by faith. In the end, it boils down to how each one of us chooses to weigh the evidence.

Just like that time when Josiah's car magically turned from an automatic transmission to a stick shift, something wasn't adding up. Questions had to be asked. The evidence had to be looked into. We must look into the evidence and decide each one for themselves, what will you place your faith in as truth? Because in the end, faith will be required. For example, this tweet from Ricky Gervais.

This is said tongue in cheek, "There have been nearly 3,000 gods so far, but only yours actually exist. The others are silly made-up nonsense, but no, no, no, no, no, not yours. Yours is real." I actually found a clip of Ricky using this in an argument. So let's just watch it just to see what it's like in use.

I know that you're an atheist, correct? Yeah. Okay. People have been debating, how is there something? Because you think of God as the prime mover. How is there anything that's not? Well, I don't. This is a ridiculous question. Is there a prime mover? Is there a demiurge that started everything? Well, outside science and nature, I don't believe so. Because the interesting thing is, this is the thing, right? So I'm an agnostic atheist, technically.

Agnostics mean it means no one knows whether there's a God. So everyone's technically agnostic. We don't know. That's true. And an agnostic atheist is someone who doesn't know there's a God or not, as no one does. So you're not convicted of your atheism, I'm sure. Well, I am. No, I am. Because atheism is only rejecting the claim that there is a God. Atheism isn't a belief system.

So this is atheism in a nutshell. You say there's a God. I say, "Can you prove that?" You say, "No." I say, "I don't believe you then." So you believe in one God, I assume. In three persons, but go ahead. Okay. So you believe, okay.

But there are about 3,000 to choose from that have been, you know, people who believe in God. I've done some reading, yeah. Okay. So basically, you believe in, you deny one less God than I do. You don't believe in 2,999 gods, and I don't believe in just one more. Right.

Do you ever have a feeling of great gratitude for existence? Of course. Do you ever have that? I know the chances are billions to one that I am on this planet as me and never will be again. We want to make sense of nature and science. And it's too, and furthermore, that everything in the universe was once crunched into something smaller than atom. But you don't know that.

Well. You're just believing Steve Hawking, and that's a matter of faith in his abilities. You don't know it yourself. You're accepting that because someone told you. Yeah. Well, but science is constantly proved all the time. You see, if we take something like any fiction, and any holy book and any other fiction and destroyed it, okay, in a thousand years' time, that wouldn't come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book, right, and every fact and destroyed them all, in a thousand years, they'd all be back. Because all the same tests would be the same result. That's good.

That's really good. Pretty interesting conversation there. So here we have the claim that there are 3,000 gods or religions to choose from. Now, in my last message, we asked the question, "Where exactly did this argument of 3,000 gods come from?" And we asked the question because we see no one who is using the argument ever stating their source. We see it parroted over and over, but with no source, no source, no source.

So from there, we began to dig into the data that was put out by the Pew Research Center to find out, and we found out that this argument in some ways was deceiving. We found out that in the end, there were only five to seven major world religions, not thousands of them. There are thousands of churches and denominations and religious bodies that are within these major religions, but there are only a few main umbrella religions. And we started to dig into this research put out by the Pew Research Center to see that between these major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, the unaffiliated Hinduism, Buddhism, and folk religion, this constitutes 99.2% of the population, leaving just this sliver right here, 0.8% of the population to contain every other religious option available to us. 50% of these people practice something called Sikhism, leaving us with just 0.4% to cover all the options that we're told that we have.

What does this prove? It didn't prove anything. It's simply evidence. Evidence that those who make such claims as this, they either do not know what they're talking about or they're being intellectually dishonest. Aruga. Aruga. Fallacy alert. Fallacy alert.

Did anyone there notice the fallacy that I just committed? Did you see how I twisted what he said there to make it seem to be saying something that maybe he wasn't even saying? These things are tricky to spot. We need to learn how to spot them regardless of who's speaking.

So Ricky Gervais said, he said, "There are 3,000 gods to choose from." And then I repeated his argument, but when I repeated it, I added words to it. So this is what I said. So here we have the claim that there are 3,000 gods or religions to choose from. Or religions. He didn't say that. Very quietly, I just snuck it in there. And then I began to build my entire argument around the fact that there's only a handful of religions that are actually available to us. But it gets even worse than this. The evidence that I used is that 99.6% of the current population believes in just a small handful of religions, leaving all the rest of the options to exist within that 0.4% of the population.

Even though that's true, this is kind of comparing an apple to an orange. First, I changed gods into religion, and then I moved on insinuating that the validity of a religion can be measured by the percentage of population who practice it. But if you really think about it, that's not the best way to go about looking into the data.

It is absolutely possible that the 99.6% of the population are wrong and that the truth does lie somewhere in the 2,993 other religions represented in that 0.4% of the population. Just because only a minuscule portion of the population believe in something is not proof that it's not true.

And that is why I used these words, what does it prove? Nothing. It didn't prove anything. It's just evidence. So this begs the question, if I saw in advance the potential issue with my own argument, then why in the world would I continue to build a case on it?

Well, for one thing, this statement here, these things are evidence, not proof, evidence that those who make such claims either do not know what they're talking about or they are being intellectually dishonest. I stand by this. My personal opinion is that it is the first of these two. They simply do not know what they're talking about. Most people are not intentionally trying to be intellectually dishonest. Most people, they just don't know. These things are so complex and they're so difficult to even think about. And most people, they're actually not seeking the truth. They just want whatever side that they're on to win.

So anything that seems to be the proverbial mic drop in the face of the other side just gets parroted and parroted and parroted. People never even thinking deep enough about it to see if anything meaningful has actually been said.

These things that we are talking about are so massive and so complex, and in the world of TikTok and YouTube Shorts, our attention spans that are needed to seek and actually cite a source have become practically nonexistent. With that said, let me explain why I continue to build on this argument when admittedly, there seems to be some potential disconnects. The first time I heard this argument, 3,000 gods to choose from, my imagination went wild.

Let me explain to you what I imagined. I said, "Okay. So there's a Christian God, and along with that, there's this big, thick holy book, big Bible." And I had had a lot of exposure to this Bible, hours upon hours of listening and teaching and preaching on it. And I knew that even after all of those hours, I'd only begin to scratch the surface. And I also knew that on a very high level, that this book begins all the way in the beginning of time, and it's claiming to tell the story of all the way from the beginning up to about 2,000 years ago, including genealogies, family genealogies, all the way from the very first man all the way to the Son of God coming to earth.

And I also knew that this book is viewed by its followers as the truth, unchangeable, one big, massive, thick truth claim, which lays out in detail its own version of origin, meaning, destiny, and morality. Next, I imagined 3,000 other gods. And I imagined that each one came with a one-to-one ratio. Each one came with its own big, thick book, which also contained its own exhaustive explanation of these things concerning morality and reality. I also imagined that each one had this big, massive following. Now, Ricky Gervais, he didn't say any of that stuff, but that is the picture that was painted in my mind. That's what I had to wrestle with as I dealt with this little snippet of an argument that he provides.

And this is why I'm willing to take this argument of 3,000 gods and then tie it so closely to say 3,000 religions. In the mind of a person who has been indoctrinated that there's one true God and one true religion, it is not a far stretch to say that 3,000 gods in the minds of many is the same as saying 3,000 religions.

You see, the problem with the short gotcha arguments is that they don't provide enough. Most of the time, they're just vague concepts that are difficult for the other side to respond to, and it seems to have silenced the opposition.

Short and vague, and the brain is left to fill in the gaps and the ideas that are being insinuated. That is exactly what my brain did, and that is exactly what every brain is left to do. My brain filled in the gaps with 3,000 different gods, means 3,000 different religions, each one with its own active following, each one with its own scripture, spelling out in detail its own version of origin, meaning, destiny, and morality. That was my imagination.

But upon a deeper look, that is not what there was by any stretch of the imagination. So far from that. It is so far from a one-to-one ratio. For example, someone who pulls this 3,000 god argument out, they clearly have no clue about Hinduism. Hinduism alone boasts of tens of millions of gods.

So my argument is being built on the picture created in my mind based on what is being insinuated in the arguments, not solely on the specific words that were being used. Now, regarding this comparison of apples to oranges, measuring the validity of a religion by its numbers of followers or the percentage of the population, here are my thoughts on this.

Again, these things are not trivial matters. The meaning of life, the purpose of existence, these things have been the greatest questions and struggles forever. It is possible. The possibility exists that the truth once existed with some people, and they're all dead now. And they actually took the truth with them to the grave.

I mean, it's a possibility. It is also possible that the truth exists within one of these obscure religions that exist within that 0.4% of the populations, maybe with a couple hundred, a couple thousand followers. That's also possible. Two thoughts about that, though.

Large numbers of people believing in something is evidence that there might be something behind it. Not proof. It's just another piece of evidence. It would be a fallacy to say that many people, because many people believe in something, that it must be true, but that's not what I'm saying. I am saying that large numbers of people believing in something is actually evidence that there could be something there to look into. The numbers give a pretty good common sense system of which direction to begin studying these things out when you're starting from ground zero. And if you think about it, if you can take five or six religions and understand what five or six religions and understand what 99.6% of the population believes in, start there.

That's a good that makes sense. It's a good place to start. And then, if you are left unsatisfied and you have the time and resources to find out what these obscure religions have to offer, and you want to fly there and learn what they have to offer, then I applaud you.

And when I say fly there, where you need to fly, because you will find that when you look into these religions, most many, I won't say most, many, many of these obscure religions to this date, they are undocumented. We are aware that they exist, but they are entirely passed down by oral tradition. Many of these religions in the 0.4%, if you cannot find someone who practices that religion and who is willing to teach you about it, and if you cannot find a translator to make the conversation happen, then there is no possibility that you will ever know what that religion teaches.

The truth might be there, but what I just described is your only hope of getting to it. We must all play with the cards that are actually in our hands. So this brings us to the question, how do we measure this? How do we test this? How can we know when any of these religions are actually the truth? Or how can we figure out if all of them are lies? And the answer to this question was inspired by this apologist whose, unfortunately, his name was cut out of the video, who explained that all religions can be grouped into one of three different categories. Either only the universe exists, or only God exists, or both God and the universe exists.

He pointed out that all religions can be grouped into one of these categories and then tested. And they are tested by looking at each religion and asking the question, how does this religion answer the questions of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny? Origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. And he said that for all of these questions, they must pass two tests, the test of correspondence and the test of coherence. He said that every answer to these four questions has to correspond to truth either through empirical forms of measurement or through the logical reasoning process. That means that where it can be tested, does it match up with what we know to be reality? Does it correspond to truth?

Does it hold together through the logical reasoning process? And then finally, the end of the recap here, we looked at how origin, meaning, and morality, they all take us back to the beginning of time. Origin, obviously, because it means the beginning.

Meaning, because purpose is dependent on a mind, and the question at hand is, is there a mind, or was there a mind behind humanity or not?

And morality also takes us back to the beginning because the debate on morality is whether or not morality is objective or subjective. In its most simple terms, that is to say, is morality subject by and determined by the mind of man, or is it solely subject to and determined by the mind of God?

And that is why all three of these, origin, meaning, and morality, take us back to the beginning. And this further illustrates how critical the question is, is there any preserved record that exists that tells us what in the world took place right there in the beginning?

So that's where we left off last time. Today, we will be digging in deeper into some of these religions, and we will see how each of these religions answers these questions of origin, meaning, destiny, and morality. And we will look at how each one is categorized, which ones believe that only the universe exists, which ones believe only God exists, and which ones believe that both the universe and God exist. We are also going to look at each one's sacred text or scripture to see what they are and what role they play in their religion.

Now, originally, I was going to cover the unaffiliated, that's agnosticism and atheism, and I was also going to cover Hinduism and Buddhism. I put all that on a PowerPoint, and I realized, whoa, it's a long sermon. So out of my mercy and love for all of you, I've split it into two.

Today, we're just going to look at agnosticism and atheism. And that made a little bit of extra time. So with the extra time, I'm not going to let you completely off the hook. We're going to look at some lessons that I want to teach the 15-year-old me on how not to engage with the atheist.

I've learned some things not to do through the course of my 41 years. Some of the ways that are popular for the theist to converse with and debate with the naturalist are, in my opinion, not only ineffective, but rather obnoxious.

And these are things that I used to do. So hopefully, we'll be able to teach myself how to avoid these mistakes. So let's begin by looking at the category as a whole, non-religious/unaffiliated. This represents 16.3% of the population according to this Pew Research survey.

This 16.3% does not solely consist of just agnostics and atheists. You might think that it would, but it doesn't. According to the Pew Research Center, this category also includes people who hold to some religious beliefs, but they don't identify with any particular religion. For example, of the Americans that are in that 16.3%, 68% of them believe in a God or a higher power, and 27% of them go to church at least once per year. This means that this group includes the priests, those who go to church just on Christmas, maybe Easter, for whatever reason, but they don't actually identify with any particular sect one way or another.

At the same time, this 16.3% does include the agnostics. So let's dig into agnosticism just a little bit. The word agnostic refers to a person who neither believes nor disbelieves in God or religious doctrine. Many agnostics assert that it is impossible to know how the universe was created and whether or not there are divine beings. I would explain it to the 15-year-old me this way.

The agnostic is the closest thing that exists to the faithless. They do not have faith in the existence of God, nor do they have faith in the non-existence of God. Their position is that the answer cannot be known, or at least the jury is out in their own particular case. As a result, there's not a whole lot that they offer regarding these topics of origin, meaning, destiny, and morality, but we'll look at it anyway.

Category, unknown or unknowable. Origin, unknown or unknowable. Ultimate meaning, unknown or unknowable. Maybe there was a mind behind creation. Maybe there wasn't a mind behind creation. Can't know. Useful meaning, self-determined. It is up to each individual. Each person can find his own useful purpose for his life.

Morality, maybe it's objective, maybe it's subjective. All men have morality. It's an error to think differently. And the agnostic is no different. The agnostic's position says that it isn't or cannot be known if morality is objective or subjective. That's a unique thing about the agnostic. He does not know if his own morality is something that he created or if it's something that's being pushed on him from the outside.

Destiny is unknowable or unknown. Sacred text is none. And the relationship between morality and the sacred text is obviously none. Generally speaking, people don't turn to agnosticism for answers, as you can see why. It is a place where people go who don't care enough to seek the answers or don't want to be pinned down to any particular one thing versus another. Or it is people who or it is where people go when they have looked at the evidence, but they walked away unwilling to place their faith in any one particular view over another.

Because remember, faith is required. It's not completely faithless. They end up with faith that they can't know. So that's agnosticism. Now let's move on to naturalism/ateism. For the purpose of this, whether I say the naturalist or the atheist, I mean the same thing.

The belief is that there is nothing beyond the natural realm. So that obviously leads to the category that only the universe exists. Only the universe exists. In naturalism, that is the premise. That is the foundation. All explanations must land within these boundaries. Another way to say this would be to say that there is no supernatural. Everything must have a natural explanation. If a man were to say, "I have supernatural powers, and I'll prove it," and he calls fireballs down from the sky and it starts raining fire, or he tells a dead man to get up, and the dead man gets up and starts walking.

To the naturalist, there must always be a natural explanation to these things. The supernatural doesn't exist because only the universe exists. Next, let's look at their sacred text. The sacred texts of the naturalist are the science textbooks and data compiled from scientific experiments, research, and studies. It might sound a little bit weird to refer to textbooks as sacred texts or scriptures because the concept of scripture in the minds of many carries with it the idea of the divine or the supernatural, which doesn't exist to those whose premise is that only the universe exists.

The sense in which I am saying that the scientific research is the sacred text of the naturalist is in the sense that it is viewed as the authoritative source of truth. When you ask a Christian about morality or about any topic on the Bible, what do they say? They say, "Well, according to the Bible," fill in the blank.

This is because the Christian views the Bible as the authority. At the same time, the naturalist has their own equivalent to this. Instead of saying, "According to the Bible," what do they say? They say, "Well, according to science." You see, both are appealing to what they consider to be the ultimate authority on things concerning reality.

So that is the sense in which I say that the scientific research and textbooks are the naturalist scriptures, not that they are divine in origin, but that they are looked to as the authority.

So sacred text is so science provides that which is sacred. What about origin? In my last message, we discussed how there are only two theories on the table regarding origin, either God or the Big Bang. So naturally, it follows that the naturalist subscribed to the Big Bang theory.

Now, we've all heard that a thousand times, the Big Bang, the Big Bang. But what exactly is the Big Bang? What is that? Let me explain it the best that I can. And I'm going to try to make this as simple as possible for the 15-year-old me because it is kind of a complicated theory.

Modern science has observed that the universe is expanding from a center point in all directions. When we look into space that way or that way or that way or that way, it doesn't matter which direction we look, we see the universe is expanding.

And this was discovered in 1929 by Edwin Hubble. He provided the first observational evidence for the universe having a finite age. To say that the universe has a finite age is another way of saying that the universe has a beginning. One implies the other. And he did this by using the largest telescope of his time. He discovered that the further away a galaxy is from us, the faster it seems to be receding into space away from us.

And he was able to tell this through a phenomenon called the Doppler shift. Here's a quick video that explains very quickly what the Doppler shift is.

We know the rate at which the universe is expanding. Stars, for example, yellow light from stars is stretched because they're moving away from us, and they turn reddish as a consequence. That's called the Doppler shift. When a car moves toward you, for example, the frequency is high. When a car moves away from you, the frequency is stretched or lowered. It sounds like this.

Now, you've heard that all your life. But what is that? That's a Doppler effect. It also works for light beams. When yellow light comes toward you, it's bluish. When yellow light moves away from you, it's reddish. The redder it is, the faster it moves. So it's trivial to calculate the expansion of the universe. You simply look at the night sky and see how much the light is red-shifted.

So space is expanding from a center point, and we know this because in every direction that we look, the yellow light that's emitting from the galaxies is reddened, which means, according to the Doppler effect, that everything is moving away from us. Question, how exactly is the universe expanding evidence that the universe has a finite age? How are these dots being connected here?

Another way to say that is, how is the observed expansion of the universe? How is that evidence that the universe had a beginning? The word finite means having bounds or limits. So a finite age means it has limits. It means it's not eternal. And if it's not eternal, then it had to have a beginning.

So how do we arrive at this conclusion by the observance of the universe expanding? And here's the answer. The universe is expanding, which means it's getting larger. If it's getting larger in size, then there must be some finite edges, some finite edges that measure its current size to know that it's getting bigger.

To say that something is expanding but has no edges doesn't make any sense. All of the yellow light that we see from space is reddish, telling us that it's all moving away from us. Everything moving away from us points to the expansion of the universe. The fact that it's expanding suggests that there are edges, and it is expanding as we do what? As we move forward in time.

So if the universe is expanding outward, as we move forward in time, what happens when you pause it and then start to rewind time? The universe starts getting smaller. Are you following me here? Eventually, we would go back long enough, and the universe gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, and eventually, it gets so small that it collapses into a little bitty atom.

Smaller than the size of an atom, they say, which has become referred to as the singularity. And you heard Mr. Gervais talk about that in his clip earlier. So now that we have rewound time all the way back to the beginning, the question becomes, what caused that singularity to explode and start expanding outward? And this is where we get the term the Big Bang.

The Big Bang are the words that naturalists use to describe the beginning of this time, space, and matter. Though they have a term to describe it, they do not provide an explanation to the cause. According to science, they haven't been able to figure it out yet.

Now, I want you to take note of something here. Just because they do not offer an explanation as to the cause, they are willing to go as far as to say what they know didn't cause it. Because remember, to the naturalist, only the universe exists. That is their premise. That is where they start from. To them, only the universe exists. Therefore, there was no mind causing the Big Bang. They don't know what caused it. They just know that it wasn't God. Because God would be outside of the natural, or that God would be supernatural. And within the framework with which they operate, that is not an acceptable answer. There must always be a natural explanation when only the universe exists.

So only the universe exists. Modern science provides that which is sacred, and origin is the Big Bang. Next, we're going to look at ultimate meaning. But before we do, we're going to sidestep. There are some things that I would like to teach the young me before we move on regarding the authority of the Bible versus the authority of science, more so about how not to engage with the naturalist. And it's not that I've got this whole thing figured out. This is just what I would be telling my own self after my own experience in my own life. I would say, "Jason, the argument of because the Bible says so is worthless."

The argument of because the Bible says so is worthless to someone who believes that the Bible has zero authority. Just think about it. When it comes to something that the Bible is crystal clear about, you know what the Bible says about this, and it's not even vague. When the naturalist comes to you and says, "Well, according to science, blah, blah, blah, fill in the blank," that doesn't go anywhere with you.

When the Bible is crystal clear about something, so why would appealing to the Bible be any different for them? I would give the 15-year-old me six different principles to master in order for the young me to avoid some of the mistakes that I've made in my life. Principle number one, you must be able to articulate how and why you have come to this conclusion that it is both reasonable and wise to submit yourself to the authority of the Bible. It is not enough to know what you believe about such things. You must be able to articulate and defend why you believe what you believe.

Principle number two, in your relationships with those of the secular world, your goal is not for your argument to beat theirs. It's not your goal. Your goal is to position yourself so that you have the ability to speak into that person's life, for them to actually hear you, for them to receive something that you say. Listen, if they have zero trust in you and you have zero credibility in their eyes, then how in the world is anything that you're going to say going to penetrate into their hearts? It's not going to. Zero trust and zero credibility makes you nothing to them. And that brings us to principle number three, be quick to listen and slow to speak.

You know what you believe. You know why you believe what you believe. It's up to you to find out where they're coming from. What is the authority in their life? Don't just assume that you've got this other person all figured out. Don't paint them all with some big broad brush. Everyone is different and unique.

Do they even know what authority they submit to? You will find that a lot of people, they don't know. They've never even verbalized how they've come to these conclusions that they come to. Can they articulate it? You need to find that out before you go blabbering some half-baked generic argument that you found off of a YouTube video.

Learn how to ask probing questions that compel your neighbor of another worldview to articulate the answers to these questions for themselves. Figure it out. Dig into their lives. And there's no need to do this in a combative manner. You see, people like themselves. People like to talk about themselves if you listen.

Talk to them and listen carefully. Principle number four, practice being genuinely interested in understanding what makes them tick. Continue to ask them questions, moving them towards them saying with their own words, with their own mouths, what they think about this reality. And listen, here's why.

It helps you to know at what level to approach the conversation. If you're debating with one of your Christian brothers or sisters about any topic or one way or another, quote the scriptures all day long. The Bible says this. The Bible says that. You shared and agreed upon authority. But when engaging in a conversation where there is no shared authority, don't do that. The argument from authority makes no sense in this case. There's a loss of logic.

In a conversation where both sides argue from authority and the authority is not shared, the conversation goes nowhere 100 miles ahead, 100 miles an hour ahead. For example, let's say there's a Ukrainian soldier and a Russian soldier. They meet on a battlefield. The two of them decide, "Look, I'm tired. Let's see if we can settle this here.

Let's talk it out peacefully." The Ukrainian soldier says, "Well, my commander says this here is our land and to kill you if you won't leave." And the Russian says, "Well, Putin, my authority, says this ain't your land no more. They kill you if you don't leave." "No, no, no, wait. I think you misunderstood me. According to my commander, you got to go. Now, don't you get it?"

Next, if the Russian does the same thing, "Oh, no, no, no, no. I see the confusion. I'm sorry. You just don't get it. Let me help you. According to Putin, you got to go. You get it now, right?"

Two different authorities coming from two different—it doesn't go anywhere. If neither of these men take the conversation to a deeper level, it's not going to go anywhere. And to take this to a deeper level, at least one of them has to shut his mouth and listen and comprehend where this enemy is coming from. Listen, neither one of them has the power to change their mind of the authority. Putin's going to think what Putin's going to think regardless of what the guy on the front line thinks. This means that to move forward, one of two things has to happen.

Both of these men have to be willing to abandon their authority, the authority that they're under, or one of them has to come to the conclusion, "You know what? I think I may be on the wrong team." And notice something here in this example.

In this conversation between the Russian and the Ukrainian, if it's going to go anywhere, at least one of them has to become a traitor to the authority that he submits to. So it's not a matter of one authority beating the other. It's a matter of bringing to the light in the conversation that there are two authorities at hand here, and your hope is that somehow and some way you can present your life and the authority in your life in some way that the other guy says, "You know what? Maybe I'm on the wrong team.

How do I change allegiance in this situation?" And that brings us to principle number five, be as wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove, because some belief systems harmonize with each other while others are in direct opposition to one another.

Don't forget that your neighbor of this other worldview, he has submitted to an authority, whether he recognizes it or not. And in most cases, in all cases, I believe, when it comes to Christianity, the changing of the allegiance, that's another way of saying that person's conversion. For someone to convert to Christianity, it's a change of allegiance. That will make them a traitor to the side that they're currently on. It could affect their jobs. It could affect their livelihood. It can affect their relationships.

So be wise and gentle, for you are hoping and asking for an awful lot of this other person. And finally, principle number six, the path to the good soil is relationship plus credibility plus wisdom plus gentleness. Remember the last time we spoke, we talked about the parable of the soil.

You got the rocky soil, the shallow soil, and you got the good soil. It is through relationships and credibility and being both wise and gentle that this other brother is going to be willing to give you access to what little good soil they have in their life.

Trying to beat him down with your arguments, trying to drop the mic in his face, blabbering some gotcha argument that you got from the internet without gentleness and credibility, if any seeds actually do land, they're probably going to land on the rocky soil.

And I don't know if this is really true or not, but I think it's very possible that if you go at it too hard or if you go at it in the wrong way, you might kick up some of the rocks in the rocky soil, and it's going to land in the little good soil they have, making it more difficult. They get a little bit more jaded. They get a little bit more hardened, making it even harder to find any good soil in the future. So be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves. I don't know why I was kind of talking at you harsh, but remember I'm talking to the 15-year-old me because I went the wrong direction in a lot of conversations in life.

Probably did some more harm than good in some situations. So only the universe exists. Science provides that which is sacred, and ultimate meaning is none. There is no mind behind creation to give meaning. Remember, if there is no mind behind creation, there's no ultimate. There's no transcendent. There's no predetermined meaning. And that brings us to useful meaning.

Listen, atheists do not live utterly meaningless lives. I hear people make that argument. They'll say, "Well, you're an atheist, so you have a meaningless life." And though there is some truth to that statement in some senses, if you don't make it the right way, you're just going to come off as offensive, again, losing your ability to speak into that person's life. They do not live meaningless lives, but the meaning and purpose in their life is limited to what they prescribe to themselves.

It's a useful meaning, not a transcendent one. And it's unfortunate that the same word, meaning and purpose, are used for both. And I see this happening all the time in debate. The theist debates using the word meaning and purpose in a transcendent sense, while the naturalist is using the same word in the same conversation, but he's using it in a totally different sense. He's talking about a useful meaning, a useful purpose for his life.

Tom Shivers, a journalist for BuzzFeed, he published an article where he asked atheists the following question, "How do you find meaning in a purposeless universe?" We're going to look at just a few answers that atheists gave. The way that I find meaning is the way most people find meaning, even religious ones, which is to get pleasure and significance from your job, from your loved ones, from your advocation, art, literature, music. People like me don't worry about what it's about in a cosmic sense because we know it isn't about anything.