Christian Apologetics Just Got Challenged By Rhett and Alex

alex Okconor recently interviewed Rhett McLaclin and it raised a lot of points that Christians need to consider I think especially Christian apologists which would uh be someone like me well you were pretty pretty knowledgeable right like you would be able to talk to people and convert people i mean presumably that doesn't go away like you've still got the still got the knowledge right uh yeah you've still got it in inside of you that the the evangelical Christian uh part of my brain will never go away is always there uh judging the deconstructed uh Los Angeles YouTuber you know I I I think so I I whenever I see somebody talk about me and I try I try not to do that very often like I know just being on your podcast and talking about it like we get you know you know this game very well you give the you you give the material you provide the material for all the Christian reaction channels and whenever I respond to people I've responded to Alex several times uh Rhett once or twice maybe it's because I respect them relate to what they're saying think they're saying something worthwhile we need to think through and so forth and also just the issues they're addressing are so important and how they affect people who watch these conversations maybe a metaphor can help explain why I feel this like fire in my bones wanting to speak into conversations where where you see a conversation that is shaping the public perception of Christianity and you're watching this and you might want to speak out imagine here's the metaphor imagine you love democracy and sincerely believe that it's a form of government that tends toward human flourishing as I do and most of you probably do and if you see a conversation happening that is shaping the public perception of democracy maybe more negatively you might want to speak up and say hey democracy is really good and here's why and so forth and this is how I feel about Christianity I think it is good and true take the feeling that you get in your heart at the end of a movie when good triumphs over evil think of that feeling like in a favorite movie of yours uh that feeling of hope and goodness that is how Christianity feels to me i'm not making any arguments right now just a personal statement here christianity is like this for me at a personal level it's like oxygen you know and I feel that personally but also just for society as a whole i even think that much of what makes the modern world a better place has a Christian influence behind it like individual human rights which I'll come back to at the end of this video and even the origin stories of particular hospitals and universities and orphanages and so on and so forth but there's a point that is raised in this discussion between Rhett and Alex that's totally it's a fair point to consider precisely because Christianity is so important to me that can become a form of bias and they bring up several concerns about how Christian apologetics is done too little curiosity too much certainty and inconsistency these are the three things I took the most actually um and I think we need to hear these not to challenge what Rhett says here but more to ourselves as Christians be challenged by it uh and then I want to address the creation evolution debate and then I'll at the end of this video state my question for Rhett there's a type of answer that someone gives when their allegiance is to the truth that they need to be true and there's a type of answer that people who are actually interested in the truth give and what I kept finding is that Christian apologetics you know really consists of people who are like well the truth cannot be questioned the truth we've predetermined that this is true and now we've got to find a way to buttress that truth and there's a there's a tenor to those arguments that they don't hold up very well under scrutiny when you get the answer to the answer to the answer to the answer you just keep finding like it just seems like this these people seem to be interested in what actually happened and these people seem to be interested in the truth that they hoped that happened one person seems to be like the critical scholars actually seem to be like interested in what happened like why did these people write this where why is it like this where did this idea come from and then the Christian apologists seem to be like well we know it's God's word so how do we prove it so one of the concerns here is assuming that Christianity must be true and therefore failing to have a genuine curiosity about alternative possibilities at one point Rhett references his prior mentality in a Christian context as full confidence and no curiosity and I have to say that I think we see this a lot uh Mike Graham and Jim Davis wrote this really great book called The Great Durching and it's talking all about how um some why so many people have left the church though of course we're seeing that that trend slow down more more recently um it is not because Christians lack good enough arguments far more commonly it's because we lack curiosity and kindness and calmness in the way we relate to other people that is what the data indicates uh Christians especially those of us who are doing apologetics we found ourselves drawn into this we really need to take this to heart because we can fall into a kind of dogmatic mindset that lacks humility lacks curiosity and just isn't openheartedly listening to the other side now to be fair I think that all perspectives fall into this okay this is a human condition we're very tribal in how we function and I don't think this is inherent to apologetics so again take my working metaphor of if you believe in democracy and people are critiquing democracy you can allow yourself to be drawn into democracy apologetics there's a place for defending what you believe to be true giving arguments but you can become so focused on defending democracy that you stop listening there are particular temptations to which we are subject when we're doing apologetics and so I find personally I come back to this great poem by CS Lewis a great deal i I come back to it repeatedly i sort of always live trembling before it i'll just read you the first half of it it's called an apologist evening prayer the second half is even better from all my lame defeats and oh much more from all the victories that I seemed to score from cleverness shot forth on thy behalf at which while angels weep the audience laugh from all my proofs of thy divinity thou who would give no sign deliver me do you hear what he's saying there first of all he's saying I need God more when I win than when I lose second of all he's saying sometimes the audience might be laughing but the angels might be weeping and third of all he's saying we can be more ambitious than God we can try to give proofs and arguments where God himself hasn't and there's so much we could reflect about all of that but for now we can just at least say this much that Christians should be humble and we should be good listeners and sometimes we fall so short of this and it's a real issue you know to genuinely try to see the world through someone else's eyes and make a genuine effort to understand and to consider and to listen that is not compromise in fact there's no way to have integrity in the way we commend our views without that and so this is something to really really now I think that's always true but I think that's especially true right now in 2025 moving into the 21st century i would love to be a part of a new era of Christian apologetics in which we first of all have more curiosity but second of all here's another thing we can consider even if it did happen it doesn't feel like a really penetrating investigation into the historical circumstances is what's going to like oh make it click and be like oh it did happen i I looked under the last rock of history and I found the resurrection like it doesn't seem like God intended for that to be the way if that's right it this is clearly some sort of this is a revelation i just find it so interesting the way that some of these apologists go so hard on trying to prove it so do you really think that that's going to be the that's going to be the the thing that changes somebody's mind yeah i mean it's not like it's what Jesus was doing no verily I say unto you premise one yeah he wasn't doing apologetics it doesn't work like that it's It's clearly like not what it's all about right and apologetics can only take you so far apologetics only can take you so far i think that's roughly something what Alex said there that I think is that seems right to me those of us who do apologetics should be the first to acknowledge this to the extent that we ever give the impression that arguments can get someone to faith or that arguments completely cement you into certainty or something like this we're doing a disservice to people generally speaking I think we we can and should acknowledge that arguments are not what causes someone to believe sometimes arguments I the thing is we can go too far with that because arguments sometimes really help people they can have a role but usually other factors like social emotional psychological factors are very part of the process for whatever we choose to believe now again this is not just true about Christian apologetics this is true for every worldview and it's true for those who reject faith as well so you know secular people shouldn't act as though they've risen above this human dynamic but I think apologists will do well to sort of put out you know you think of it like this at the same time you're saying "Here's my argument and at the same time let me tell you the modest purpose for which I give this argument. " So in in my approach and I know there's different views among Christians about this but I think most of us can can recognize it's possible to overrely on arguments and just have too much dogmatic certainty that's just not human it's not realistic you know everybody has doubts and struggles and so forth sometimes Christian apologists we don't even uh acknowledge how much doubt is a part of Christian experience like it was for the disciples uh not just Thomas in my approach arguments generally are useful to show that a belief is rational even if they don't decisively proof it prove it they can show it's plausible uh maybe even probable at times um maybe they can even get close to certainty in particular situations but they're not going to get you all the way into the kind of existential commitment of faith and often arguments are useful defensively to undercut an overconfident critique against us because that same lack of curiosity uh can come against us at times but the arguments aren't usually why we believe so for example if somebody says "Oh you believe in God you know there's no proof for that you might as well believe in Santa Claus. " We can give arguments to respond to this overstatement and we can you know the contingency argument and the fine-tuning argument you go to those two arguments and you can say no look theism is rational and the contempt for theism as though it's got nothing behind it is not warranted but then we can also make clear I don't believe in God because of the fine-tuning and contingency arguments there's a lot more pieces that are involved in something like personal faith now I will say that those arguments help me uh they've helped me many times i find them nourishing i find them kind of fun you know I I I do think they are really suggestive but they don't get you into the existential commitment of faith there the reason I believe is a complicated host of different reasons some of which I don't even understand and all of which are deeply personal and apologists should just put this out there and just recognize this is a human dynamic and do apologetics in light of this human dynamic at least that's how it seems to me sauron Kerkagard famously taught that the only access we have to truth is in a way that involves personal existential relation because we are finite temporal subjects and that is how I experience faith i would say faith is more like falling in love than being convinced by an argument you know when you fall in love that's not an irrational experience you could give an argument for that experience and say you know here's an argument to show you that I love this person but the argument doesn't produce the experience and apologetics should be done with that in mind and we can just acknowledge our experiences inevitably affect us you know just like if you're arguing for democracy to come back to this uh metaphor you can admit you know look I've I've grown up in a democracy i've had a great experience living in a democracy that surely influences me and I admit that now here's my arguments you know here's the third thing we can learn from this discussion the level of scrutiny they apply to criticizing Mormonism if they would just for a moment turn that level of scrutiny on their own story you' be like "Guys come on do you see what you're doing?

" Or like and if you if you had been born in a Muslim country and you were of the Muslim faith and you and you didn't believe that Jesus actually raised from the dead what would your what would your Muslim apologetic about the resurrection be like do you really think these arguments are as strong or is it just you need them to be true yeah it's so foundational to who you are you need this to be true it is true that Christians are sometimes inconsistent because we argue against another religion more strictly than we argue against our own now again in fairness I think this can work against Christians as well sometimes a secular perspective can be inconsistent because it's arguing against Christianity with greater strictness than it argues against certain beliefs that it might even try to retain from Christianity and I'll come back to that talking about human equality and individual human rights in just a moment make a case for that but all of us can fall into this we need to be mindful of this i'm going to try I'm actually going to try to learn more about Mormonism uh this year uh Rhett and Alex were talking a lot about Mormonism and I was thinking you know I've gotten kind of pulled into apologetics not really the main thing I set out to do with YouTube but I kind of enjoy it it's I it's and if you do it in the way you can actually hopefully build friends along the way but I realized you know it actually is a fair point that I'm pretty ignorant about Mormonism and so I'm going to do a dialogue with a uh Mormon not really about I don't want to do a dialogue about something I'm ignorant about so we're going to just talk about the Trinity because I can do that so So you know but the point is I want to start learning more because I think this a fair concern that you need to be able to do these kind of comparative evaluations of evaluating different religions consistently but I would also say that it's perfectly fair to think that ultimately uh even when you're being equally strict the arguments for the resurrection of Jesus are superior to arguments for the truth of another religion just like an agnostic can say "My arguments for agnosticism my reasons for holding to that are superior they rise above other religious claims. " I'll return to that in a moment with my question for Red but first let's talk about evolution i I didn't really buy into the progressive creationism thing but I was so sure that evolution didn't happen i was like when you when you're raised in the Christian faith and the only exposure to the idea of evolution you've ever had has come through the filter of a Christian scientist telling you why it's not legitimate you know somebody comes into your church and they're like the evolution expert and they're like they make it seem so impossible that you walk out of that with a full affirmation of the idea that evolution definitely didn't happen and it's a horrible explanation it will be debunked by the scientists themselves within our lifetime like that's the kind of stuff that we told ourselves right right and we firmly believed it this issue of evolution played a key role in Rhett's deconstruction he talks a lot about this that this was a great deal of the time of their discussion go watch their whole discussion i'll put a link in the video description it's fascinating and I think this is an area the Christians need to really work at uh I want us to understand and I'm speaking to Christians here please hear me i really believe this i know a lot of you disagree with me but just please consider this i want us to to feel the psychological and social effects that it has when we make the issue of evolution a kind of Christianity versus unbelief issue and that happens a lot within evangelical culture this was the seismic shift and I think a lot of people that I tell this story to are like "What do you mean? " But there's all these Christians that believe in evolution like I I can't believe that this was so significant for you but I think the reason it was is because at that point I realized how wrong I could be about something so fundamental and I never ever considered that I might be wrong about something so fundamental and then not only was I wrong but all of these Christian apologists who were so sure about their critiques of evolution they had missed the boat so significantly on this that suddenly I was like can I can I trust anything else they've got to say about this so that was the first big domino yeah it's significant like you say i mean you might think well there are Christians who believe in evolution but depends which way you come at it i mean if you're somebody who's like a a scientifically minded person who comes to faith in Jesus you're not going to abandon evolution but you might think "Okay I can I can make this all work.

" But if you've come from the background you've come from it's like yeah it's like going up to your wife and saying you know I just think maybe we should uh I just think maybe we should like live in separate houses or something people some people do that some married couples they sort of they live apart it's like yeah but what it represents to move from where we are now and the way we were living to having this kind of question or this kind of desire indicates a direction of thought yeah even though I get called a liberal for these kinds of issues which is not fair that you know historically as as both Rhett and Alex talk about the historic Christian posture wasn't like that that only the liberals embrace something like evolution but even though I sometimes feel these reactions against me I just am going to keep urging triage on this issue of how God created i do think there's some parameters to that nonetheless I think a lack of triaging this issue which is recognizing not everything hangs or falls on this one question of evolution causes many people to stumble in their faith now I'm not suggesting that everyone needs to accept evolution or have any one particular opinion about it you know I've been thinking about this issue for about 22 years now i've been deep dive studying it it's maybe one of my It's actually more so than Protestantism or anything else this has been the thing in my own journey that I've thought about the most and I've written on it and thought about it and so forth and it's complicated you know after all these years I'm like man this is really there's so many questions I don't know the answer to in terms of these fine- grained discussions between the intelligent design folks and the evolutionary creationist folks and so on and so forth i'm not saying you have to have an opinion i'm saying let's not hang Christianity on this issue let's have the debate rumble forward but recognize you know this is not a reason to accept or reject Christianity as such and let's have more humility in the discussion if I may say if you trust me enough to receive this to think about this my Christian audience to say there is real damage that happens when Christians speak with arrogance and unwarranted confidence outside of their expertise and they just repeat something that maybe they haven't studied and maybe a appeal I can make is to say let's just go back to St augustine and read what his mentality was about science faith issues um I know we have evangelicals we have our guard up in these conversations but we trust Augustine so he's someone you might be able to learn from i have a creation playlist you could work through uh put up on the screen some examples of these kinds of videos that may be of interest cuz I talk a lot about Augustine how his approach can help us on the science faith conversations today i also just more recently put up this video on the Galileo affair which may be of interest you know a lot of this comes out of my book on Augustine which uh may be may be helpful to some if they want to look into this more but just saying this whole area we need to be careful we can really damage people when we're not careful something we got to keep working at let me finish by articulating the question that watching this video left me with it's less of a I guess it's less of a question for Rhett and more just um the question that watching this sort of leaves me with and that is what do you do if you submit yourself to this open-minded pursuit of truth as best you can you know you you take this criticism that sometimes we can be undercurious and too dogmatic all the other things we've talked about here you take that fully you incorporate that criticism fully and you say "Okay yeah I want to seek the truth that's how I feel i swear I want to seek the truth. " You know if I ever start thinking that things are different if I my beliefs ever change I will be honest okay one thing I'm never going to do is be a liar i can promise you that so what do you do if you incorporate this concern you're you're open-mindedly considering the alternatives and you're looking at the truth but you ultimately just think "Yeah I still think Christianity is true.