DEBATE: Did Jesus Rise Bodily From the Dead? (with Pinecreek)

In this debate Trent faces off against atheist YouTuber “Pinecreek Doug” over the central tenet of the Christian faith: Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead.

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Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Nathan:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to today’s show, which is going to be a debate between Trent Horn and PineCreek Doug, with the debate topic being, did Jesus rise from the dead in bodily form? Trent is a Catholic, so he’s going to be taking the affirmative position. And, Doug is an atheist, so he’s going to be taking the negative position. Here are two guests tonight. There’s a bit of a structure to the debate. There’s going to be 15 minutes each for an opening statement. Then there’ll be a first rebuttal, a second rebuttal, a cross examination period for each. And then, we’ll have an audience Q and A of about 30 minutes before closing statements.

Nathan:

If you have any questions for our guests or want to put those into super chat form, wait until that period to put those through. I’ll let you know when it’s coming up in the chat as well. Without further ado then, if you want to go first, Trent. I’ll start the timer when you start talking. If you need to share anything as well, let me know, and I can just do that.

Trent Horn:

No, I think that’ll be fine. Let’s get this show on the road. Here we go. All right. Well, I want to thank Nathan for hosting this debate and Doug for taking part in it. I want to remind everyone we’re debating a question. Did Jesus rise from the dead? This means that Doug has the burden to show the answer is no. Not just, I don’t know. And, I need to show the answer is yes.

Trent Horn:

To proceed, let’s follow this principle. Things are as they appear unless evidence suggests otherwise. This keeps us from being irrational skeptics and from believing anything just because we want it to be true. Does Doug have any good reasons to say Jesus did not rise from the dead? He might say, “Well, dead people stay dead. So, we know Jesus didn’t rise from the dead.” But, sometimes the evidence for a specific event overrules a general truth.

Trent Horn:

Prior to 1903, heavier than air vehicles stayed on the ground. People thought that that kind of flight was impossible. But, that didn’t make it irrational to believe anecdotal reports about the Wright brothers. Plus if Jesus’ resurrection was a miracle, it would require dead people to stay dead. Otherwise, Jesus rising from the dead would not be a demonstration of God’s unique power.

Trent Horn:

So, there’s no evidence, like a manuscript, saying the apostles recanted their belief or anything like that, that shows Jesus did not rise from the dead. There’s also no missing evidence that we would expect if Jesus did rise from the dead. For example, it’s true that ancient non-Christian historians didn’t talk about Jesus’ resurrection. But, they also didn’t talk about Christians. And, we know Christians existed in the first century. So, their lack of testimony about the resurrection says nothing about whether the resurrection happened. Instead, we have the evidence we would expect if Jesus rose from the dead and only appeared to his disciples.

Trent Horn:

Now, let’s talk about where we agree. Doug and I agree Jesus existed. He was crucified. And, that his disciples, as well as the later convert named Paul, all at least claim to have seen a resurrected Jesus. We also agree that they were sincere in their belief. I would say this can be shown by their willingness to suffer when preaching the gospel, without any kind of comparable reward in return. But, maybe they were sincerely mistaken. The most common alternative explanation is that the disciples had some kind of socially contagious grief induced hallucination. One person sees risen Jesus as a personal hallucination, and soon other people feel compelled to say the same thing. But, there are seven problems with this explanation.

Trent Horn:

One, we should be skeptical the disciples were grief stricken. It’s equally likely they were angry that they wasted years of their life following yet another failed Messiah. We don’t have evidence that they were all prone to having grief induced hallucinations. Two, Paul and Jesus’ brother James were not grief stricken over Jesus’ death because they weren’t believers when he was crucified. This doesn’t explain their later conversions.

Trent Horn:

Three, studies on grief induced hallucinations show that true hallucinations are not common. Naomi Simon’s 2011 study show that the majority of widowers do not experience grief hallucinations. The [Hazen Ludar 00:04:10] 2013 study only found one case of grief induced hallucination involving a non-family member. Nearly every single case involves family members. And, a 2020 meta review of these studies showed that these cases, they involved feeling the presence of a deceased person, not actually interacting with someone. Only 2% involved hallucinating a tactile experience of the dead, which is the only case that parallels what we have of the prolonged encounters with an embodied Jesus that are described in Luke and John’s gospels, and as well are also described in Paul’s letter when he says that Jesus appeared to the 500 at once.

Trent Horn:

Grief hallucinations also tend to persist for many years after death. But, the claims that Jesus appeared to his disciples stop after just a few weeks after the crucifixion. In addition, Paul, as well as reports in Luke and John’s gospels, tell us that Jesus appeared to groups of people, including, as I said, up to 500 at one time. The closest thing that we have to group hallucinations, or mass hysteria, usually involve people psychosomatically experiencing a similar illness, not individuals claiming to all see the same thing that doesn’t exist.

Trent Horn:

In 2015, Dr. Joseph Bergeron surveyed thousands of cases in the medical literature. He could not find a single case of group grief hallucination comparable to the group appearances described in the New Testament. This means that private, fleeting appearances of the dead that last sometimes for years do not explain the public embodied group appearances that only occurred for a few weeks to the apostles.

Trent Horn:

Four, many people who have grief induced hallucinations eventually come to believe it was just an hallucination. None of them believe that their loved one had risen from the dead or that they weren’t dead anymore. But, this wasn’t the case with the apostles. Five, since ancient Jews believe the resurrection wouldn’t take place until the end of the world, it follows that even if they had these grief induced hallucinations, which doesn’t explain all of them, they would’ve thought they saw Jesus’s soul in heaven, not his glorified body on earth.

Trent Horn:

Only a prolonged encounter with an embodied Jesus explains why the disciples preach Jesus was resurrected rather than preaching that his soul was with God in heaven. Moreover, given their fierce monotheism, we would expect the disciples to hallucinate Jesus as a man caught up to heaven, and not as the creator himself, unless Jesus told them he used divine power to raise himself from the dead. Six, the New Testament authors repeatedly make it clear when someone has a dream or a vision in Greek or [inaudible 00:06:45]. And, when they think they’ve seen a ghost or a spirit. But, none of those words are ever used to describe Jesus’s resurrection body.

Trent Horn:

In fact, the Greek words for resurrection, [foreign language 00:06:55] and [foreign language 00:06:57], are never used in the New Testament to refer to spirits being raised. There’s also no good reason to doubt Luke’s testimony that the apostles sincerely believed Jesus was physically resurrected given Luke’s connection to Paul, his track record of reliably recording details in the book of Acts, and the unanonymity of the authorship of the gospel attributed to him. Seven, since the resurrection was preached in Jerusalem within a few weeks of the crucifixion, the disciples or enemies of the faith could have checked Jesus’ tomb to see if they were hallucinating.

Trent Horn:

To make a comparison, since 2010, the Spanish government thought that Juana Escudero was dead and buried in a certain grave due to a clerical error. So, Escudero had that body dug up in 2017 to prove it was not her. And, that’s a sensible thing to do. If people say a living person is really in a grave, you dig up the grave to prove they’re wrong. Likewise, if Christians say a dead person is not in a grave, like Jesus, you can dig up the grave to prove they are wrong.

Trent Horn:

The word bury, [foreign language 00:08:02] in Greek, is always used in the New Testament to refer to formal burial. It’s never used to describe dumping a body in a pit. The fact that Jesus received a burial has the same amount of independent sources supporting it as other facts about Jesus that nearly all scholars accept. Like that he had 12 disciples, for example. Finally, the evidence suggests the apostles visited the tomb and found it empty. Since the first recorded visitors were women, which wouldn’t make sense to describe if the entire account were fabricated, since women’s testimony was considered unreliable in the ancient world.

Trent Horn:

So, why should we not believe this evidence? Well, Doug’s approach to the resurrection is basically this. Your gut tells you that claims like somebody flew across the Grand Canyon unaided in front of 500 witnesses is false. Therefore, you should follow your gut and apply the same judgment to the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. But, here’s what’s wrong with Doug’s approach. First, our gut is reliable, but it’s not infallible. If I told you that in some parts of the world, fish fall from the sky like rain, your gut might think it was a joke until you look it up online to see that that’s true. There’s a natural explanation, but it does happen. Since our gut feelings can be wrong, we need to use our brains to weigh all the evidence related to a controversial claim.

Trent Horn:

Second, when we do that, we see that our gut rejects the examples that Doug gives because they have less evidence than the resurrection. The most obvious example against a case of a flying man would be the lack of flying man believer communities that could be traced back to sincere witnesses that founded them, which originally included outsiders who were converted. We have that for Christianity, but not the flying man. Moreover, we can dismiss freak occurrences because there’s no cause capable of breaking the laws of nature, in that instance, to make someone fly across the Grand Canyon. And, if Doug says, “Well, the flying man is a miracle,” we can doubt that too, because God does miracles in order to communicate a great truth to humanity and that’s lacking in this case.

Trent Horn:

But, even if Doug’s hypothetical were exactly parallel to the resurrection, who cares? Doug’s argument is like asking, “You say it’s irrational to eat moon rocks, but if the moon were made of cheese, would you eat it?” To which I would say, “If it were, I might. But, it isn’t. So, I won’t.” Likewise, if there were a non-Christian miracle with the same evidence as the resurrection, I might believe in it. But, there isn’t. So, I don’t. I know there isn’t because, if there were, Doug would just cite that miracle and I ask why Christians don’t believe in it and just ignore using hypotheticals entirely.

Trent Horn:

If anything, Doug’s past reliance on hypotheticals like the flying man proves the unique evidential quality of the resurrection. Antony Flew, who was one of the most famous atheists in the Western world, said that quote, “The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity.” Now, in some cases, Doug has offered real counter examples. “If you believe the disciples,” he said, “why don’t you believe Joseph Smith and an angel gave him golden plates to make the book of Mormon?”

Trent Horn:

First, even if the evidence were the same in both cases, a Christian could believe this event happened without accepting a truth of Mormonism. In Galatians 1:8, Paul tells his audience that, quote, if an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preach to you, let him be accursed. In that respect, Smith may have received a false gospel from a malevolent spirit since it contradicts established divine revelation, like when it claims God is a man who lives near a celestial body named Kolob.

Trent Horn:

It also contradicts historical facts, so we know it isn’t divine. For example, even atheistic archeologists can tell you where Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and even tiny villages like Nazareth existed and who lived there in the first century, even if they deny any miracles took place there. But, nobody, Mormon and non-Mormon, can tell you where any of the alleged cities in the book of Mormon are located. Estimates of the location of major cities the size of Jerusalem, like so-called Zarahemla, range from Central America to south east Iowa.

Trent Horn:

The same as not true of the Bible, since Christian and non-Christian scholars agree on many basic facts related to Jesus’ death 2000 years ago, whereas only Mormon scholars believe in facts related to what Jesus allegedly did in the Americas 1,600 years ago. In fact, when we look at the evidence for Christian and Mormon miracle claims, we see significant differences between them. For example, the eight witnesses to the golden plates were all friends and family of Smith, said they saw something that looked like golden plates. But, this could be a natural artifact. It may also be the case they only saw the plates under a cloth and said they saw them with spiritual eyes. When it comes to Smith’s testimony, we have evidence it was not sincere, given that Smith used his status as a prophet to acquire civil power and multiple wives, some of whom were only 14 years old. Also, Smith dying in a shootout in a county jail is nothing like the disciples being willing to die for their belief in Jesus.

Trent Horn:

Finally, when it comes to the three witnesses, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Martin Harris, we have reason to doubt their claim they saw an angel together show them the golden plates in a group setting. What’s weird about this incident is that Smith had the plates in his possession because he was allegedly translating them. But, he refused to show them to the men. Instead, Smith brought them to a wooded area and told them to pray very hard to see the golden plates. This probably primed the men to imagine a vision of an angel. But, there were no such expectations when it came to Jesus’ resurrection. The gospels record the apostles initially not believing the women.

Trent Horn:

And, while there is no evidence showing the resurrection appearances were only subjective visions. There is evidence, as Mormon author Marvin Hill says, that, quote, the three witnesses saw the plates in vision only. One of the witnesses, Martin Harris, later said, “I did not see them as I do that pencil case, yet I saw them with the eye of faith.” Finally, these men all temporarily abandon Mormonism. This stands in contrast to the resurrection since there is no report of the disciples abandoning the church.

Trent Horn:

Maybe you don’t believe God exists though, so you don’t think there’s anything capable of raising Jesus from the dead. Well, let me offer an argument for the existence of God, for you to consider. Here’s an argument from change. Change occurs all the time, when potential things become actual. But, no potential can become actual on its own any more than a train car could move itself on the tracks. Instead, something like a locomotive needs to actualize the potential for change in the object. But, even those actualizers only change because something actualizes their potential for change.

Trent Horn:

Just as an infinitely long train of box cars would sit motionless without a locomotive, and in even an infinite number of things that must be actualized by something else, it would be changeless unless there was a cause of the series that is just pure actuality itself. So, if there’s a purely actual cause for reality, it would have no potential and it would be changeless. What follows from that? Well, this means this cause couldn’t be made of matter or exist in time since temporal space and material things change. And, as pure actuality, you would have no potentials. So, it could not have limits on its power or its existence. Those would be potentiality. It would also be all good, since evil is a lack of goodness, and a purely actual cause would not lack anything. Finally, the cause must be personal because the only immaterial things that exist are minds or abstract objects like numbers. And, abstract objects can’t cause anything.

Trent Horn:

So, in closing, let’s recall the principle I use for evaluating unusual claims. Things are as they appear, unless evidence suggests otherwise. It certainly appears like Jesus rose from the dead and there’s no evidence it did not happen, nor is there any evidence that conclusively suggests an alternative to the resurrection. Appeals to hallucinations do not account for the evidence because it doesn’t account for things like outsiders being converted, to appearances to groups, and abilities to check the hallucination. And, if there’s a good reason to believe God exists, as I’ve shown, there’s good reason to believe there is a causal power capable of displaying itself through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thank you.

Nathan:

Very good timing there, Trent. So, thanks for that. I’ll start your 15 minutes then, Doug, whenever you start talking. So, you’ve got that time to do your thing.

PineCreek Doug:

Okay. Yeah. I have an assistant named Myron and he did some research on how many times resurrection debates have happened since Jesus’ times. And, it’s about 2 million. In over 2 million years, the resurrection debate has been very similar to each other on how it’s argued. So, I’m going to try something new today. Something I hope is a little more exciting. But, to answer the question directly, I don’t believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead, because I don’t think the evidence comes even close to matching the claim. And, I realize that’s a boring and subjective answer, but I want to appeal to our commonalities. I appreciate Trent when he said that we do have some things in common. I think Trent and I are very much the same. I think that when we see fantastical claims, we doubt them.

PineCreek Doug:

But, I want to start off asking the Catholic viewers right now, who might be fans of Trent, if all you had was the gospel of John and nothing else, which is basically the latest piece of canonical evidence we have for Jesus and his resurrection, would you believe it? Really think about that question. All you have is John. The gospel of John talks about Jesus’ life and ministry. And then, it goes into the resurrection and says that, Jesus, there was a closed house, a closed room with doors shut. And, the resurrected Jesus went through the doors and appeared to the disciples. If that’s all you knew, I know it’s really tough because you have all this background knowledge. You believe God exists and you believe that Paul, what he said, and the gospels. But, all you have here is John. Would you believe it? And, my guess is that we’re all agreed. I bet you anything. We’re all agreed we would not believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead if that’s all we had.

PineCreek Doug:

Now, let’s go to the earliest evidence. Let’s say all we had was Paul’s letters and none of the gospels, none of the epistles, just Paul’s stuff. Really think about this. Would you believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead if that’s all you had? My guess is we’re the same. My guess is that Trent would say no, and I would say no, and all the Catholic viewers right now would say no. So, what’s really interesting is if we’re the same with the latest stuff, and we’re the same with the earliest stuff, there’s something in between where the belief switch goes on.

PineCreek Doug:

And, maybe it has to do with personal experiences. And, maybe the reason why I don’t believe the resurrection of Jesus is because I don’t have the Holy Spirit in me. And, there’s a lot of Christians who believe this. I cannot see the truth unless the Holy Spirit’s in me first and has regenerated me first. And then, I can see the truth. But, I don’t think Trent’s that type of person. So, we’ll move on. What I want to do different here is I want to talk about how Christians think about the resurrection and how many Christians do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus for the reasons that Trent outlined here today.

PineCreek Doug:

I bet you anything, I’m guessing here, but I bet there’s a lot of Catholics listening who believe the resurrection of Jesus because of some personal experience they had probably while partaking in the Eucharist. And, you know what? I respect that more than what Trent said. Because, at least that’s something today. Now, I think there’s a ton of defeaters for that. But, at least it’s some type of evidence that today we can say, “Yes, this is why I believe Jesus Christ rose in the dead. And, it’s not based on text from 2,000 years ago.”

PineCreek Doug:

But, I want to read something from Matt Chandler, who’s a pastor, Christian pastor. Catholics, I think we’re agreed that the claim of Jesus Christ rose from the dead is weird. It’s abnormal. We’re agreed with this. This is not controversial. This is what this pastor, Matt Chandler, says. “There’s a foolishness to what we believe. It’s crazy. If anybody ever says it back to you, you have to know the Holy Spirit has done a work in your life. So, let me get this straight. A virgin gave birth to a guy who was God, but only part of God. But, still completely God. The man also lived perfectly. So, they killed him. They buried him. And then, he came back to life and he floated back into heaven. And then, one day,” and I want to make sure I get all this straight, “One day he’s coming back on a white horse to get us. That’s what you believe, partner? And, what’s the Christian response. Yeah, I do. You want to come with us? You want to go meet him in the air with us?”

PineCreek Doug:

This is a quote from Christian, Matt Chandler. We’re not just talking about any normal claim. Your beliefs are crazy. I respect Christians who own that. Now, the question is, is that crazy belief true? We talked about, or I talked about the earliest evidence, Paul. And, if you agree with me that you wouldn’t believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead just based on Paul, let’s move on to the gospels. Because, we need more.

PineCreek Doug:

This is Mike Licona from Inside 2020, October, 2020. This is on the topic of firsthand accounts, and which leads to the synoptic problem. Quoting Mike Licona, and I tell you, I love Mike Licona. Let’s really listen to this story and you’ll get a sense of why a lot of what you read in the gospels should not be trusted. Let’s say five of us are at a restaurant and we’re having dinner. And, we notice a couple at the table next to us and they’re having an argument. And, we’re watching the argument intensify over the course of 10 minutes. Finally, the couple stands up. They’re yelling at each other. The woman takes a wine bottle and breaks it across the guy’s cheek.

PineCreek Doug:

And then, the paramedics and the police come. They arrest the woman and take her off in cuffs. Their paramedics work on the guy’s face. A police officer comes over and asks the five of us to report and write down independently what we saw and what we heard. The police officer gets those written reports back and he looks and sees there’s virtually verbatim word for word in many of those instances. That police officer going to be suspicious that there’s collusion involved, collaboration. But, there’s more. That couple that we saw arguing, argued in Spanish. Fortunately, us five, we are all fluent in Spanish. But, the police officer is not. The police officer asked us to translate that argument into English.

PineCreek Doug:

And, anyone who’s remotely familiar with another language knows there’s no one to one correspondence in translation. And, even if you do translate something differently, tomorrow it’ll be different than today. But, the police officers get it back and they see there’s still one to one correspondence in many cases, word for word in our translation of what was said and done. The police officer, all the more, is going to be suspicious that we have colluded with one another.

PineCreek Doug:

But, there’s still more, because it’s not just 20 minutes later that we’re writing these translations down. It’s decades later, 30, 40, or more years later that we’re recalling these things word for word translated. Now, the police officer is rightly going to know that we worked with one another on this. This is all Mike Licona. Christian, Mike Licona speaking. With the gospels, you’ve got Jesus mainly speaking in Aramaic. It’s been translated into Greek. It’s almost word for word, and reported at a minimum of 20 years later. Just like Mike Licona gives in this narrative, that one is rightly to be suspicious of the account. We should be suspicious of the account of the gospels.

PineCreek Doug:

Now, I ask you again, if you answered that Paul’s letters alone is not enough. And, we add the gospels in, and you agree with Michael Licona, that one ought to be suspicious of what’s being reported here, I think you’re done. I think you have no good reason to believe this. Now, getting back to Paul, if you answered that you do believe, if you didn’t have the gospels and all you had was Paul and you would still believe in the resurrection, I mean, all you have to do is talk to an Orthodox Jew or even some Muslims. And, I tell you, they view Paul as a shyster, as someone not to be trusted.

PineCreek Doug:

The rabbi Tovia Singer will say that Paul purposely misquoted the Old Testament. Now, I can understand if someone just made a mistake, but if a Christian comes to believe that the apostle Paul purposely did this, I think you’re out at this point. It takes all the credibility off. Now, we get to Christians like Dale Allison. When we’re looking at the gospels and we’re trying to figure out, okay, do we have an accurate portrayal of what happened in the past, we need to know if these people are independent from each other. And, this is Christian, Dale Allison, New Testament historian.

PineCreek Doug:

If you think Mark was written by John, Mark and Luke by Luke, which I think Trent does, they’re all together in Paul’s epistles. They’re hanging together. They’re talking to each other. And, the author of Mark is talking to Paul in the traditional theory. And, as well, Peter and Luke is talking to Paul. They must be sitting around the campfire or the shop, talking about these things off and on. And, if Mark is getting some of his stuff from Peter and you think John is the son of Zebedee, that he wrote John, well, the first few chapters of Acts have Peter and John hanging out together, spending all sorts of time together.

PineCreek Doug:

They’re also together in Galatians. So, if you have a modern trial, what you don’t want from the witnesses is to have post event contact. You want to have truly independent witnesses. As far as I can tell on the traditional theories of authorship, all these people are talking to each other, all the time. So, they’re not truly independent in any way at all. This is Christian, Dale Allison speaking.

PineCreek Doug:

Now, maybe the resurrection is a legend. This is Christian Dale Allison on that. Oh, no. First of all, I want to read about Dale Allison saying, “Okay, let’s pretend Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead.” I know if you’re a Christian Catholic, that’s hard to imagine. But, let’s imagine that’s true. How could we have a physical resurrection in the gospels? This is Dale Allison. But, with regard to the physicality of the appearances, it makes sense to me that even if those things did not happen, it would be expected. We would expect to find them in the text because they serve apologetical elements.

PineCreek Doug:

The gospel of John is related to the first, second and third John. And, there’s some sort of interaction with proto [dosetism 00:28:20]. The importance of Jesus physically coming in the flesh. And, in John’s world and in Luke, this serves as an apologetic motif that Jesus is not a ghost. That’s one of the things people have always said. The disciples saw a ghost or they hallucinated or so on. And, I would expect early Christians to come up with a counter to that at some point. This is Christian, Dale Allison, saying that Jesus could never have risen from the dead. And, we would expect to see this in the gospel saying that he did.

PineCreek Doug:

To me, that’s very reasonable. How much time do I have left? This is Dale Allison saying that if he was a skeptic, this is not me. This is Christian, Dale Allison, saying if he were a skeptic, this is how he would explain the narrative in the New Testament. I wouldn’t deny Jesus was buried because I think the evidence favors that view. And, I wouldn’t deny the tomb was empty. What I would say is this. We do have evidence for tomb antiquity. We have quite a bit of literary evidence. We have epic graphical evidence for this. We know that bodies of people who died by violence, we know that parts of them were actually useful in magical recipes or thought that would be helpful, or so whatever the explanation. We do know that bodies were stolen for use and profit from tombs. So, what I would argue is that the body was stolen.

PineCreek Doug:

This would explain why the tomb was empty. This would explain why it happened at night. This would explain why the stone was rolled away and not put back. Then perhaps a bereavement vision. Mary saw Jesus, one person. She encountered him briefly. Then the reason they said he had been risen from the dead is because Jesus had a near expectation that he lived in a end times universe. He thought the end was coming soon. And, as a first century Jew of a certain sort, he thought that meant the resurrection was soon.

PineCreek Doug:

Things would go bad. The saints would die. They would be persecuted and the end would come and it would involve the resurrection of the dead. So, I would say, Mary, maybe Mary and Peter, two people were expecting the kingdom of God to appear immediately. So, they say, “Oh, the resurrection of the dead has begun, or Jesus has risen from the dead.” And then, what you do is you add social contagion, psychological contagion, one or two people see Jesus and then becomes like one person in your area sees Bigfoot. And, before you know it, other people see Bigfoot too.

PineCreek Doug:

So, the question is, do I know that Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead? I would say yes. In the same way, I know that when I drop this pen, it’s going to fall towards the ground. Could it go up? Yes. Could it hover? Yes. I’m not talking about certainty here.

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:31:04]

PineCreek Doug:

Could it hover? Yes. I’m not talking about certainty here, but we know throughout history that people will collude, that people are sincerely mistaken, that people do hallucinate. Whether even if it’s just one, we do know that people write propaganda to try to support a belief for a better cause, for a greater good. So in the same way we can say we know that Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead because of the pitiful evidence we have for it.

Nathan:

Okay. Thanks for that, Doug. Let me just get the screen back to normal. Sorry about that. Okay. So we’re got to go into rebuttal rounds here. So we’ve got a couple of rebuttal rounds. The first one is seven minutes, and then the second rebuttal is four minutes each. I’m not actually sure the official order of who would go first in a rebuttal. So [crosstalk 00:32:00] is there a preference?

Trent Horn:

We would alternate speakers.

Nathan:

Okay. So yeah, I was thinking that, but then I was also thinking if it’s more recent in memory, does that confer an advantage? So, but yeah, it probably makes sense to do it that way. So if you want to go first, Trent, with your first seven minutes on the rebuttal. And I’ll start the timer when you’re ready.

Trent Horn:

All right. Well, first notice that Doug’s argument does not show the answer is no. At best, all it could offer is I don’t know. Doug tried to make an analogy to gravity and a pen dropping, but how many experiments has he done with Jesus or with Jesus and those particular circumstances of him rising from the dead. This is about us exploring a unique historical event in the past. All he’s done is cast doubt evidence, not shown that Jesus did not rise from the dead.

Trent Horn:

He asks, “Well, if all you had was John, would you believe it?” Probably not. But if all I had were a few testimonies from astronauts for the moon landing and no televisions, no artifacts on the moon, I might doubt the moon landing. But once again, this is another one of those hypotheticals, that Doug brings up a hypothetical instead of just addressing the actual evidence we have and weighing it for, again, that’s what we should do.

Trent Horn:

What should you do if we only have Paul’s letters? My friend, Justin Bass, has written a book called The Bedrock of Christianity that argues for belief in the resurrection, primarily, if not entirely, on what Paul has given us in the creed in I Corinthians 15. But even there, we have more than that. We have these communities that were established and historical documents that attest to them, to this widespread belief that this creed embodies. This isn’t just something that Paul cooked up.

Trent Horn:

So, as I said, it doesn’t make sense to hypothetically analyze evidence that we don’t have. Look at the evidence that we do have. When it comes to abnormal claims, he says, “There’s so many weird claims there are fantastic, and we doubt them.” Yeah, but the world is full of weird claims. It was a weird claim that there’s objects in the universe from which light could not escape, like black holes. Never experienced anything like that before. It was doubted for a long time until evidence was proposed for it. So our world could be weirder than we imagine. So we have to ask, well, what explains the evidence we do have for these weird cases?

Trent Horn:

But how weird is it really? Doug cited Pastor Griffith and what he was saying how weird Christianity is. I don’t know who that guy is, but I think he needs to go back to seminary saying, “Oh, Jesus is only partly God,” and things like that. He seems to have a very poor grasp of what Christianity is. Rather, what I’m saying is a combination of ordinary and extraordinary claims.

Trent Horn:

The resurrection focuses on three claims. People saw Jesus alive, Jesus died, and then people saw Jesus alive again. The first two, Doug and I agree on the first two. So I would ask, what does it take to substantiate the first claim, people saw Jesus alive before the crucifixion. I would ask Doug, if he believes in that, what substantiates it? Probably the gospels. More the gospels than even Paul’s letters, necessarily. Well, it’s the same claim just after the crucifixion people saw Jesus alive. If we can follow the evidence to substantiate people saw living Jesus before his crucifixion, we can follow that same evidence to explain the Jesus that’s seen after the crucifixion.

Trent Horn:

So what examples did Doug give? He gave us, I guess, the Spanish wine fight example, saying, “Well, look, if the testimonies of people perfectly match up, there’s collusion here.” I find when skeptics do this with the gospels though, it’s a heads I win, tails you lose scenario, that if the gospels disagree from one another, suddenly, oh, well, they contradict each other so they’re not historically reliable. But then if they agree on parts, oh well, there’s collusion and they’re working together. So if they disagree, it’s fake, and if they agree, it’s fake. So this criteria is designed so the gospels can’t possibly win.

Trent Horn:

Rather we see convergence on major details and divergence in minor details, showing the independence of the sources. For example, the use of different names. Luke referring to Peter as Simon, whereas Paul refers to Peter as [inaudible 00:35:57] for example, showing that the sources behind these accounts are different. They’re not all coming from the same place. When it comes to independence, Doug cited Dale Allison. Let me read Dale Allison’s academic work. This is what he writes. “Most scholars, I should note, treat Mark and Luke as independent of Paul’s letters. The reduction of the empty tomb to mark in creativity does not compel,” he says, “because of the independence of Luke 24 and John 20.”

Trent Horn:

Now Doug says, well, the descriptions of embodiment in Luke and John, those are just apologetic motifs, designed to counter Docetism, the idea that Jesus was just a spirit. But if that were the case, why did Luke and John describe Jesus passing through locked doors and appearing and disappearing? If your goal was to try to convince people Jesus is not a ghost, why would you write about Jesus appearing and disappearing and passing through solid objects? So that casts doubt that these narratives are solely based on trying to combat Docetism.

Trent Horn:

Rather, I would say the explanation that makes more sense is that seeing an embodied Jesus was the only thing that motivated the disciples to believe that Jesus had been bodily resurrected. Remember, many people believe that the souls of the righteous could be in the bosom of Abraham. John the Baptist’s followers didn’t think that he was resurrected. Simon [Barkak’s 00:37:15] followers in the second century didn’t think he was resurrected. What would move you to make the unique claim of bodily resurrection? Would have to be some kind of prolonged bodily encounter. So I would say that’s a rational inference. And these narratives in John and Luke preserve what motivated the belief in the first place.

Trent Horn:

And what’s interesting is that Dale Allison also said in his 2005 book, Resurrecting Jesus, about these alternative hypotheses that Doug puts forward, he says, “We have no reason to endorse any of these speculations for which there is not a shred of evidence. They must all be deemed unlikely, yet they are not impossible.” So the problem here is Doug is arguing for, well, these other things could be possible, but without offering any evidence for them or without taking acknowledgement of evidence that contradicts his thesis. So for example, Doug’s alternative explanation, it doesn’t explain why James and Paul converted, for example. They didn’t have grief-induced hallucinations. It wouldn’t explain why entire groups of people, that we see this in the gospel accounts, but also what Paul accounts for in the creed in I Corinthians 15, talking about entire groups of people.

Trent Horn:

And when it comes to independence, scholars also agree, as I said before, that Paul and the gospels independently attest, to example, that Jesus chose 12 disciples. That I would say if it independently attests to that, it also attests that Jesus appeared to the 12 in a group setting that an individual hallucination would not explain.

Trent Horn:

Doug also hasn’t even given us an example of grief-induced hallucinations being contagious in this way. I’d like to have him show a real example where this happens in such a way. So his theory cannot explain the conversions of James and Paul. It doesn’t explain why people believed in bodily resurrection, has to rely on tomb theft, which if there are guards at the tomb would preclude against that. And I think there’s good evidence the guard testimony is historical. If it were fictional and made up, the guard [inaudible 00:39:16] on Friday, rather than Saturday.

Nathan:

Thank for that, Trent. So then, and same goes for you, Doug. If you want to start your rebuttal whenever you’re ready, and I’ll kick off the timer for you when you start talking.

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah. I find it interesting that he mentions the guards at the tomb. This is William… By the way, everything that Trent said that I was saying, I was quoting Christians, what they’re saying, okay? I haven’t even said what I believe yet. Other than that I don’t believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead. But regarding the guards of the tomb, the last thing that Trent mentioned, this is William Lane Craig. Most scholars don’t accept the historicity of the guard story. Matthew was telling the guard story in order to refute the widespread Jewish allegation that the disciples came and stole away the body of Jesus, just like Dale Allison was saying that there’s an apologetic within the gospel of John and other gospels about real, tangible, bodily Jesus, that we’d expect to find that. We’d expect to find a guard story, even though it didn’t happen in history.

PineCreek Doug:

This ought to cause huge doubt on Christians that what they’re reading should be taken at face value. One of the things Trent said, that things are as they appear unless otherwise. That might be one area where we might disagree. I think a lot of times, things are not as they appear, just based on the definition of how our eyes work and how our brain translates it. I could almost say, I think I could say things are never the way they appear because of the fact that we have parallax and blind spots in our eyes, that our minds have to fill in the gaps to actually figure out what reality even is.

PineCreek Doug:

One thing that we’re missing here is that if the historical evidence were so great, why is it that we have no professional historians that had nothing to do with Christianity, and they become PhD historians in any field? They look at the evidence for the resurrection found in the New Testament and they to convert to Christianity. Why don’t we see that? I’ve had this challenge for many, many years. And I asked Gary [Habermast 00:41:51] the other day if he could provide a list of names. And he said, “Yes, I know of people who had nothing to do with Christianity, looked at the evidence for the resurrection, people who know way more than maybe I do and maybe even Trent, and say, ‘No, this is not sufficient.'” Why is that? But yet it wouldn’t take very long at all for Trent to think of a person who did have something to do with Christianity, looked at the evidence for the resurrection and said, “No, I’m out.”

PineCreek Doug:

By the way, I never did get that list from Habermast. If Trent has a list, if there’s people watching right now, I want to interview someone who had nothing to do with Christianity, becomes a PhD historian, and then looks at the evidence of the resurrection and becomes a Christian because of it.

PineCreek Doug:

Trent mentioned James and Paul, why did they convert? There could be many reasons why James and Paul converted. That doesn’t mean that they’re converting based on something true. A very simple reason is maybe one of Paul’s kinsman converted, and that motivated him to maybe to look into it and say, “Oh, I’m going to become a Christian too.” We see this time and time again. How many times do we see a person meet a lovely young lady who’s a Christian, and then a year or two later, they become a Christian as well. I’m not saying Paul saw found a lovely young lady, although it is interesting that he was single apparently, and was a member of the Sanhedrin.

PineCreek Doug:

Groups of people converting. Dale Allison mentions what’s the nature of this group appearance? Now the title of this debate is the bodily resurrection. I tell you, you go to Pentecostal churches today at 11:10 AM in the morning on a Sunday morning, and you’ll find people in there who say Jesus appeared to them that Sunday. If we were to have a sketch artist in the first century, and during that time of where the creed mentions that Jesus appeared to the 500, and we found those 500, plus or minus five people, and asked them to draw what they saw, could we take those 500 drawings and compare them, and they would all pretty much match up to how Jesus looked, the height, the weight, long hair, short hair, brown hair, dark hair, blonde hair? You really think so? My guess is that this appearance to the 500 was some type of Pentecostal charismatic type scenario where people experienced and just felt Jesus’ presence.

PineCreek Doug:

I think we’ll leave it there, and we can move on to the next stage.

Nathan:

Okay. So Trent, you’ve got four minutes then to come back on what Doug said. So again, when you’re ready, I’ll start the time off.

Trent Horn:

All righty. All right. Well, let’s take a look at the evidence that I presented and Doug’s way of interpreting the evidence. First, I find it surprising to overcome the evidence, Doug had to go full-blown skeptic. We can’t really be sure things are as they appear. If that’s how you want to live, that’s fine. But I think most people are able to function and have that most of their beliefs about the world, how they interact, are true. And we can follow the evidence accordingly to reach true conclusions.

Trent Horn:

Let’s see some of the… Looking at the evidence here. I think what you’ll notice, as Doug continues, is he’s going to be trying to explain away the evidence for the resurrection, rather than trying to explain the evidence that we have. He sees it as all being problematic and comes up with different ad hoc ways of trying to just get it out of here. Explain it away. Paul and James converting, maybe Paul had a kinsman motivate him. Is that in Paul’s letters? No. Is that in Acts? No. It’s a pure speculation on Doug’s part to try to explain away that difficult evidence. He doesn’t offer anything for James. He says that the appearance to the 500, maybe this was just a feeling of presence. Well, Paul says that he knew that people were involved. He said some of them are still alive. You can go and talk to them. He says it happened at once. And Paul had a lot of credibility on the line here.

Trent Horn:

In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul talks about super apostles, people who were his enemies, who were trying to discredit him. He had people who were enemies, and he had people in Corinth who were denying the resurrection even happened at all.

Trent Horn:

And he issued a challenge to go and check this out. And in the early Christian community, people were tight-knit, knew one another. Travel was frequent to go to Jerusalem for Passover, for example. So Paul threw down the gauntlet to check these facts. And actually, his technique in doing that mirrors what Josephus does in the antiquities about the historical events of the Jewish war. He says, go, if you don’t believe me. Go and check it out yourself.

Trent Horn:

What about the other evidence for, against hallucination hypothesis I offered? Well, Doug doesn’t address that. Why did these few individuals, when Jesus’ body is misplaced, come to believe in bodily resurrection? Did anyone else of false Messiah claimants come to believe this? No. Doug hasn’t given us the reason think that they would believe in embodied resurrection rather than just spiritual survival. People believed in all kinds of things about souls going to heaven or going to the bosom of Abraham. Doug hasn’t offered an explanation.

Trent Horn:

Also, as I showed that the New Testament authors are very clear when someone has a dream or a vision. Paul himself, when he has the vision of heaven, says he’s not sure if he was in or out of the body. People knew visions and dreams, but the language used to describe the resurrection of Jesus are seeing and appearances. I Corinthians 9:1, Paul just bluntly says, “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”

Trent Horn:

What about PhD historians? Well, I agree it’s not a purely historical question about whether Jesus rose from the dead. Many historians are methodological naturalists, just like there are many Christian scientists who will study the cosmos and science and say that doesn’t prove God in and of itself, but they believe in God. There’s Christian historians that practice methodological naturalism, and most people who are PhD historians in the New Testament figures in the world, they’ve already reached conclusions about who Jesus is long before they enter their PhD studies.

Trent Horn:

However, there are examples. Pinchas Lapide was a Jewish scholar who came to believe the historical evidence showed that Jesus did rise from the dead, but he did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, but he was convinced by the historical evidence. My friend, Holly Ordway became to believe in Jesus’ resurrection after she had already acquired a PhD in English literature. So she studied documents, literature, genres, things like that.

Trent Horn:

So at the end of the day, I think that what I’ve presented, that Jesus rose from the dead, it perfectly explains all of the evidence that we have. It doesn’t do so in any ad hoc or contrived way, rather what Doug is doing is he’s grasping at straws, trying to explain away evidence because he seems to have a preconception, weird things like the resurrection, it just can’t happen. And he’s approached it from that perspective.

Nathan:

Thanks for that, Trent. So then you’ve got four minutes, Doug, to respond back to Trent, and then we’ll go into the cross examination of each other. So yeah, just begin whenever you’re ready.

PineCreek Doug:

Okay. Yeah. Christians, you need to stop talking that way. You atheist, just it’s in your worldview. You just don’t believe miracles are possible. It just can’t happen. No, stop it. That’s not true. I would be the first one to… I want to see a miracle of that nature. I want to see someone being raised from the dead. I want to see the miracles talked about in Acts. I want to see it. And I think every atheist listening would want to see that, too.

PineCreek Doug:

The thing is, the evidence you have for this bodily resurrection is pathetic. For example, this might shock some Christians listening, some Catholics listening, but did you know there’s no firsthand accounts of a bodily resurrection in the New Testament? Not one. Now let me be clear. Where someone says, “I saw Jesus rise from the dead in bodily form.” It doesn’t have to be exactly that way, but there’s… Except for Paul, you have no one. Did you know that?

PineCreek Doug:

And Paul, when he says he saw Jesus, he admits that it’s in a revelation. The Acts thing, the Damascus road experience, was not written by Paul. So the one case where you have an eyewitness account, meaning I, me, so-and-so saw this, the only example you have is in Paul. And that was after Jesus rose into the clouds and left for heaven. So are we waiting for the third coming of Jesus instead the second coming?

PineCreek Doug:

Now you might say Revelation chapter one is another example, where I think it’s in the first person. But again, that’s clearly a vision. So you are basing, as a Christian, you’re basing this belief that a man rose bodily based on third-hand accounts. Well, but that’s just the way they wrote back then.

PineCreek Doug:

Let me ask you, would you trust a third-hand account that doesn’t state who wrote it, when it was written, where was written, where the sources are, that your spouse or loved one murdered someone else? “Well, how do you know that my loved one murdered someone else?” “Well, I have a piece of paper here. It says that they murdered them.” “Well, who wrote it?” “Well, it doesn’t say on the piece of paper, but legend has it, or we have a chain of custody from 100 years afterwards that…” No, you’re not going to buy that for one second. It’d be thrown out of court.

PineCreek Doug:

Christians, please. I beg of you. You don’t have to stop believing in God, but don’t lower your standards just for Jesus. Don’t do it. Now, I think that if you can somehow show that you have evidence today, then we got something to talk about. And a lot of Catholics saying, “Yeah, right on, Doug. let me tell you what happened to me in mass during the Eucharist.” Okay. Let’s talk about that. But to say that you have people who saw the bodily resurrected Jesus, you notice you don’t have any firsthand accounts of that except for Paul?

PineCreek Doug:

And I dare Trent to disagree with that. He won’t. He’ll say, “Yes, Doug, in the same way with the word trinity is not mentioned in the New Testament. Yeah. We don’t have that.” Well, there you go.

PineCreek Doug:

I think that’s good enough for now. I think that got Trent’s dopamine up.

Nathan:

Okay. So we’re going to go into a cross examination period now. So that means that there’s two 10-minute periods where one person will ask questions to another person who has time to respond. Who wants to go first? Because like I said, I don’t really understand if there’s an official debate format on this, or if it’s just based off of preference. I’m not sure that it’s unfair either way, really.

Trent Horn:

I think we just keep altering. So since Doug spoke, I’ll just go next.

Nathan:

Cool. No problem. So [crosstalk 00:53:31] you mean you asking the questions, Trent? Just to be clear.

Trent Horn:

Yes.

Nathan:

Okay. No problem. I’ll start the timer, then, when you ask your first question.

Trent Horn:

All righty, Doug, let’s take… I got a few questions here. All right. Let’s start with whether we say whether we know something did happen or not. Well, when it comes to resurrection, in order to rationally believe a person rose from the dead, do you have to see the moment they came back to life? Is there a possible hypothetical you could be convinced of a resurrection, even if you didn’t see the moment the person came back to life?

PineCreek Doug:

Yes.

Trent Horn:

Okay. So it’s not essential then that the gospels, they don’t record the moment Jesus came back to life. That’s not necessary for believing in a resurrection.

PineCreek Doug:

No.

Trent Horn:

Okay. When it comes to sources and other things like that, would you agree with the Blackwell companion to the Punic Wars when it says that Polybius did not mention many of his sources, or Richard Carrier who says Xenon, Plutarch, [Satonius 00:54:40] only occasionally mention their sources, that that was not something everyone did in antiquity?

PineCreek Doug:

I agree.

Trent Horn:

Okay. Let’s see here. So you’re talking about Paul, that maybe he had a kinsman who converted and that motivated him. Is that reason… Does Paul or any other writer cite that as a reason for Paul’s conversion?

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah, I think so. I actually do think it’s in the New Testament, but I don’t have it up with me. Someone in the livestream check can… Camille, if you’re here, he knows where it is for sure.

Trent Horn:

Well, Paul does talk about kinsman in Christ before him. I’m talking about the specific detail of Paul converting because of a kinsman where where Paul says, “I looked at what they… they talked to me,” or something like that. Is there anything like that in Paul’s writings or other writings?

PineCreek Doug:

No. No. I think Paul probably had some type of experience and that was the real impetus, but no one converts for just one reason. I think you would agree with that.

Trent Horn:

Okay. So when it comes to… So Paul, you would agree then, Paul had some kind of experience, and then maybe other things happened.

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah.

Trent Horn:

Okay.

PineCreek Doug:

That’s what I would say.

Trent Horn:

So Paul’s experience, is there anywhere in his writings, other writings that say that he was in any state of grief prior to his conversion?

PineCreek Doug:

No.

Trent Horn:

Okay. So, any hypothesis that Paul was grieving Jesus or his persecution, that would just be purely speculative.

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah. And I never said that today.

Trent Horn:

Okay. But would you… Is there any reason you would offer as to why Paul had his particular experience?

PineCreek Doug:

No. I just think that it was not… I think he says it’s through revelation, right?

Trent Horn:

I’m just saying, though, what caused… I’m saying what caused him to think that, and you’re just not offering… No reason or [crosstalk 00:56:36]

PineCreek Doug:

I could speculate.

Trent Horn:

Okay.

PineCreek Doug:

But yeah, I think that if he was actually persecuting Christians, and let’s say I’m right and there’s multifaceted reasons why he became a Christian, one of them being some of his friends became Christians, he might have started feeling guilt. He might have.

Trent Horn:

Okay. But that’s speculation.

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah, of course. A lot of the what’s in the gospels is speculation.

Trent Horn:

Okay. Well, I would disagree with the evidence I’ve put forward, but in any case, let’s go on to my next question. Dr. Joseph Bergeron wrote an article in 2015. He said based on a comprehensive PubMed search of medical literature regarding Jesus’ disciples and related topics over the past 400 years, did not find any psychiatric hypotheses for the disciples’ post-crucifixion appearances of Jesus. He said they’re not found in the peer reviewed medical literature. I have a few questions for you in that regard. Can you cite any peer reviewed medical literature that diagnoses [crosstalk 00:57:35] his disciples having… Okay, no. Can you cite any studies showing groups of people experiencing grief-induced hallucination, like a father and children?

PineCreek Doug:

I probably in the future could, but not right now.

Trent Horn:

Okay. So you’re proposing the idea that group appearances, these things could be grief hallucinations. You’re speculating on that because you can’t offer a concrete example of this.

PineCreek Doug:

And when I say group, I mean two.

Trent Horn:

Sure. Or three or more than one person.

PineCreek Doug:

Not saying 500.

Trent Horn:

Okay. Or even some [crosstalk 00:58:10].

PineCreek Doug:

That’s reasonable, right?

Trent Horn:

Or even more than that. Let’s say 12, 12 people.

PineCreek Doug:

Well, if you think about the percentage of hallucinations, grief hallucinations, I think they say it’s 15%. Is that what you got?

Trent Horn:

Well, there are different studies, and I cited that in my opening statement, but [crosstalk 00:58:29]

PineCreek Doug:

What’s 15% of 12? Isn’t that one or two> and that explains Dale Allison’s Peter and Mary.

Trent Horn:

Well, I’m talking about groups. Can you cite any examples of groups of people having a grief [crosstalk 00:58:41].

PineCreek Doug:

I already said no.

Trent Horn:

Okay. [crosstalk 00:58:43]

PineCreek Doug:

But I could in the future, if you give me time.

Trent Horn:

Okay. Can you cite any studies of grief hallucination among non-family members, where we’re primarily talking about people that are not spouses or children?

PineCreek Doug:

Right now, no.

Trent Horn:

Okay. Can you cite studies showing one person’s grief hallucination, or an example, caused another person to have the same kind of grief hallucination?

PineCreek Doug:

What just happened? Am I supposed to be asking questions now?

Trent Horn:

No [crosstalk 00:59:11].

Nathan:

No, sorry. Sorry. I just clicked the wrong view button. Ignore that.

PineCreek Doug:

Okay.

Trent Horn:

Yeah. Can you cite an example or a study talking about one person’s grief hallucination causing another person to hallucinate the same person, having not seen the person?

PineCreek Doug:

No.

Trent Horn:

Okay. What percentage of people who have grief hallucinations believe the person they saw is not dead anymore?

PineCreek Doug:

Don’t know.

Trent Horn:

Okay. Are you aware of studies that put that at a negligible or 0% value?

PineCreek Doug:

Not aware.

Trent Horn:

Okay. Let’s see here. Can you cite another example of a non-Christian miracle claim involving witnesses who are willing to be martyred, groups of people claiming to see the miracle, and opponents to the belief system converting to [crosstalk 01:00:03]

PineCreek Doug:

No, not in a way that would make you happy, because there’s always going to be but, but buts in there. I could cite… What’s his name? [foreign language 01:00:11] I could cite even the Mormons, but nothing that I could cite is going to satisfy you or Catholics.

Trent Horn:

Okay. Well with, with [foreign language 01:00:22] or Joseph Smith, with [foreign language 01:00:25] could you cite someone who is an opponent of his movement, like a member of the Indian rationalist movement, eventually joining his movement early on, or an enemy of Mormonism becoming one of its leading proponents early on?

PineCreek Doug:

I think I could with Mormonism, but I don’t have that off the top of my head. I would have to get back to you.

Trent Horn:

Okay. Sounds great. Yeah. If you send me a list, I would enjoy looking through that. That would be great.

PineCreek Doug:

Well, by the way, I want you to send me Holly’s number, email.

Trent Horn:

Sure. Yeah. Well, she has a book called Not God’s Type you can go and check out, but yeah, we can get that to you. No problem. Let’s see here. If you sincerely thought someone had risen from the dead, would you check their grave to see if they were still there?

PineCreek Doug:

If I could, yeah.

Trent Horn:

Okay. So if the disciples sincerely believe that Jesus rose from the dead, then it would make sense that they would do something similar, if they could locate where Jesus’ body is.

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah. But notice that’s at least three days after.

Trent Horn:

Can you still identify a body that’s been dead, it’s been buried for three days?

PineCreek Doug:

Depends on the temperature, but probably, but it would still be… It’d be tougher than if it was three hours.

Trent Horn:

Could you be able to show that it had things like crucifixion nails in it?

PineCreek Doug:

Oh yes, definitely.

Trent Horn:

Okay.

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah.

Trent Horn:

Let’s see here, does the new… So sounds you didn’t really… Let’s see. Do-

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [01:02:04]

Trent Horn:

Do the witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, either in Paul or any of the New Testament documents, do they ever describe the risen Jesus, His body, as being only like a ghost, spirit, or only a vision?

PineCreek Doug:

No. No, of course not.

Trent Horn:

Okay. All right. Well, I think…

PineCreek Doug:

See how I did that? I answered directly.

Trent Horn:

Well, that’s very helpful.

PineCreek Doug:

I hope you do the same for me.

Trent Horn:

I will answer to the best of my ability. Since I have one more minute, I had a question I thought about asking earlier on, but… Well, I got a minute left, so I’ll ask it.

PineCreek Doug:

Might as well.

Trent Horn:

You say you want to believe, and I think that’s good. Okay. So you don’t believe miracles are impossible.

PineCreek Doug:

Right.

Trent Horn:

Here’s my concern. Under what circumstances would you believe a miracle occurred because isn’t it possible there’s always an unknown natural explanation you haven’t discovered yet so how would you be able to definitively remove unknown natural experiences?

PineCreek Doug:

I don’t need certainty. I don’t need a hundred percent certainty. All I’m saying is that it would move me.

Trent Horn:

So it’d be rational for you to believe in a miracle if your gut tells you?

PineCreek Doug:

No, no, I could still be wrong, and it could… This whole thing, “would it be rational,” to me, that’s more of a feelings thing of I don’t want to be called stupid and so I really don’t care about that, but I do think that if me and some other people who have different biases are in the same place and we see something like a water-soaked napkin light on fire, I tell you, my worldview would change instantly.

PineCreek Doug:

Now the causation of it and what exactly it was, I can just tell you the truth. I really do think I would believe in the supernatural realm at that point. Now a lot of people might not believe that, but to that I say, let’s try it and see, and then you have my permission to say, “I told you,” if I still come up with a naturalistic explanation. Okay, my turn?

Nathan:

Yeah, you’ve got your 10 minutes now, Doug. Yeah, just whenever you want feel free to start.

PineCreek Doug:

So, Trent, just, I’m going to ask a favor ahead of time and please answer the question I ask and not anything else. Okay? So when I ask you something like, “Do you believe?” I’m not asking why you believe, I’m just asking do you believe?

Trent Horn:

Well, I’ll answer the question, but sometimes people ask leading questions that can’t be answered like when did you stop [crosstalk 01:04:39].

PineCreek Doug:

That’s okay. I’m asking you to walk into a trap that I’m going to set for you because you have the truth on your side and you got to nothing to worry about.

Trent Horn:

Okay.

PineCreek Doug:

Okay. But I’m probably not going to be as bad as you think I’m going to be. But anyhow-

Trent Horn:

That’s what my dentist says too.

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah. I think you and I are the same and here’s an example. If you and I were walking along the street and we see someone on the ground seized up, convulsing, froth coming out of their mouth and we overhear some people talk and one guy says, “Oh man, that person’s demon possessed.” Another person says, “That person is having an epileptic seizure.” My bet is you and I would both go with the epileptic seizure. Am I right or wrong?

Trent Horn:

I would go with things are as they appear, unless evidence suggests otherwise and I would say that this appears to be an epileptic seizure. The evidence can be accounted for with that. Though there could be other cases where that would not account for it, like if the person had supernatural strength or spoken a language, they didn’t previously know.

PineCreek Doug:

Okay. But right now all we’re seeing is someone lying on the ground, and so you and I are the same. We would go with an epileptic seizure, which I think if we had to put a label on it’s naturalistic. So you gave a naturalistic explanation right there for something that others might say is a supernatural explanation. And I think that the fact that you and I agree on that can be applied to every individual claim found within the New Testament.

PineCreek Doug:

I asked some questions in my intro about the gospel of John and I’m just curious, I asked the audience listening, but I’m curious to know your answers. If we removed the gospel of John and we had everything else in the New Testament, would you still believe that Jesus Christ rose bodily?

Trent Horn:

You’re telling me if we did not have John’s gospel?

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah. The same as-

Trent Horn:

But we had everything else.

PineCreek Doug:

We had everything else. Would you still believe that Jesus rose from the dead?

Trent Horn:

Yeah, I would say so.

PineCreek Doug:

How about if we took away Luke?

Trent Horn:

I think my… You’re telling Luke Acts or just Luke?

PineCreek Doug:

Just Luke.

Trent Horn:

Mm, my confidence might start to be diminished a little bit because I think Luke preserves embodied resurrection appearances, but I still think there’s strong evidence for early resurrection belief in Paul’s writings, in his preservation of the creed in I Corinthians 14.

PineCreek Doug:

Okay. Very good. Now let’s do the opposite. Let’s say remove all the gospels. We just have Paul’s letters. Would you believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead bodily?

Trent Horn:

I don’t know. I might, but without the gospels, I would have a difficult time understanding the nature of Jesus’ ministry. So I might not believe, but I would say that it’s irrelevant because we do have that evidence.

PineCreek Doug:

Well, I know, but this is hypothetical and hypotheticals are great things to learn about ourselves and why we believe things. Can you see that chart?

Trent Horn:

Yes. NB-N-B?

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah. Okay. So you got 2020 vision. That stands for not believing, believing, and in the middle is neutral. You see the colors, we’ve got red, yellow, light, green and dark green? You see that?

Trent Horn:

Yes.

PineCreek Doug:

Okay. So many Christians struggle with this and Habermas totally struggled with this when I asked him this question, but I have faith in you that you’ll do much, much better. And this is a thought experiment to see, not to make an argument, but to see that we are the same. And if we are different, where are we different?

PineCreek Doug:

So it’s really hard with Jesus’ body resurrection, to know where exactly to start. You can go to the Old Testament and the context and everything, but let’s start with what we actually have in the New Testament and that’s Paul’s letters. If I talk about my ancestor who could fly and say that he just ran across the grand, or he ran towards the edge and he started flying unaided, what color are you on this chart? Do you not believe?

Trent Horn:

Of you saying you had an ancestor who flew across the Grand Canyon?

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah. Yep.

Trent Horn:

I would not believe that.

PineCreek Doug:

Okay. And what if I said it happened 2000 years ago, would you believe it now?

Trent Horn:

And the only evidence is still your claim about what happened 2000 years ago? [crosstalk 01:09:09].

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah. So as I go on, the only evidence is what I’m presenting and we’re adding on.

Trent Horn:

Yeah. I would say there is insufficient evidence for super, for that… Sorry. It’s not supernatural. Non-natural explanation. There’s enough background evidence that you’re telling a joke or things like that?

PineCreek Doug:

Would you believe it?

Trent Horn:

No.

PineCreek Doug:

Okay. So 2000 years ago doesn’t make a difference. The fact that we have the claim doesn’t make difference. What if I told you that he flew in front of 512 of his friends and finally to an author of the letter who’s writing this creed? Would you believe it now?

Trent Horn:

Writing a creed. Okay. So you’re making this claim and saying there were these witnesses 2000 years ago?

PineCreek Doug:

So we’re holding a piece of paper that said my ancestor flew in front of 500 and flew in front of 12 of his friends and finally to the author of the person writing this down.

Trent Horn:

Okay. And all I know is that you’re here holding a paper that says that?

PineCreek Doug:

Yep.

Trent Horn:

Okay. No, because I have insufficient evidence that the testimony goes back-

PineCreek Doug:

I’m not asking because. Just say no one and you’re fine.

Trent Horn:

Sure. No.

PineCreek Doug:

So, you’re still in the red, right?

Trent Horn:

Yeah.

PineCreek Doug:

Guess what I am too. I wouldn’t believe it. You and I are the same. Okay. Let’s say now that it’s in the context of a bunch of pagans who believe in many different gods and there is even prophecies that this man would fly written, it’s on paper written hundreds of years prior. Do you believe it now that my ancestor actually flew across the Grand Canyon?

Trent Horn:

No. Well, I guess yeah, you don’t want me to explain, which is fine, I suppose.

PineCreek Doug:

No, no, I’m just, yeah. I’m showing we’re agreed. You and I both-

Trent Horn:

Yeah. I wouldn’t agree and the evidence for what you’ve presented still doesn’t reach the level of the evidence for the resurrection, so that’s still consistent on my part.

PineCreek Doug:

Okay. And let’s say there were two people who were antagonistic to the man flying. They never liked the guy and they came to believe that my ancestor flew. Do you believe my ancestor actually flew now?

Trent Horn:

Well, I would be more open to it, but I still think we don’t have evidence that any of these people believe any of that, because I just have you here with sheets of paper and nobody else vouching for it.

PineCreek Doug:

No, no. We actually have texts. Let’s pretend in this experiment I can present you documents that say these things. Do you believe it now? All the things I mentioned?

Trent Horn:

It’s possible. I might also be open to maybe they saw something and misinterpreted what they saw. Maybe he had an ancient glider-

PineCreek Doug:

My question is, do you believe it? Are you moving into the yellow stage or are you still in red here?

Trent Horn:

I still don’t believe he violated laws of nature because the story does not include a causal power capable of doing that.

PineCreek Doug:

Okay. Okay. So let’s say this person, let’s say my flying ancestor, there was diaries written about him by four of his friends. And the first diary says something like that he claimed to be God and he even predicted that he would fly across the Grand Canyon beforehand. Do you believe it now?

Trent Horn:

No. This still seems like a freak occurrence. If this is supposed to be… Is this saying that a miracle was done to get him to fly across the Grand Canyon?

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah. A miracle was done. He was God. And it was to show that he is God.

Trent Horn:

Okay. If you had someone who could vouch for the divine power they have with sufficient evidence involved well then I might believe, but that-

PineCreek Doug:

Okay yeah, we do have that. Okay. So you’re still not believing

Trent Horn:

Well, Doug, I’ll just cut to the chase. If your flying man had the same evidence as Christianity I would believe it, but-

PineCreek Doug:

No, no, I don’t want to do that.

Trent Horn:

… it doesn’t.

PineCreek Doug:

I don’t want to do that because I already know your answer is if the flying man had the exact same evidence as we have for Christianity, you would believe in the flying man. I get that. But my point is with this thought experience see where do we diverge? And so far, you and I are the same and I’m very curious to know when you actually, your belief switch turns on. So are you still in the red?

Trent Horn:

That he flew?

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah.

Trent Horn:

That we have different people that are involved, but I’m trying to understand you haven’t included everything with it. It might be easier if you just started with all the Christian evidence and take away something from it cause I don’t know-

PineCreek Doug:

We could have done that, but we already started this. We’re almost, I think we’re almost done. So let’s say now we have a second diary that outlines the miracles that my ancestor did before he flew.

Trent Horn:

Okay, fine. Then I would say if these are genuine miracle claims, is it in continuity with established miracle claims? I already have good evidence for Christianity and its resurrections claims. There are claims of Catholic saints that have flown like St. Joseph Cupertino. I’m open to that. Not entirely convinced, but open to it. So if-

PineCreek Doug:

But, let’s say my-

Trent Horn:

… it’s in continuity.

PineCreek Doug:

I understand. But let’s say my ancestor flew before Christianity, so you can’t compare to Christianity.

Trent Horn:

Was he Jewish? Are you Jewish, Doug?

PineCreek Doug:

So would you believe? So you have nothing to compare it against. Would you believe that we have a second diary and the first diary mentions that he claims to be God, he claims to do these miracles. He actually walked on water and flew. He multiplied loaves and fishes. He turned water into wine and it says this, these diaries were written decades later. They’re not signed and dated, of course-

Trent Horn:

I need a clarification. Are there people who were willing to be persecuted, martyred and an enduring system as continued to the present day?

PineCreek Doug:

Yes, you’re cutting right to the end here.

Trent Horn:

Okay, Then I’m very, I would say I’m very, very interested-

PineCreek Doug:

Well, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Trent Horn:

… But since it’s hypothetical I still don’t have to worry about it.

PineCreek Doug:

Wait a minute. With the flying man what we have here is about, I don’t know, a hundred years later there’s reports at least decades later there’s reports of people dying for their belief in the flying man, but we don’t have reports that they actually could have recanted and they would still have lived. And some theologians like Cheryl McDowell says that we really can only be confident about two of them. Do you believe now?

Trent Horn:

I think I’ll let us go to audience Q&A, but no, it’s [crosstalk 01:15:16].

PineCreek Doug:

That was fun. I really do thank you for participating. You did much better than have Habermas.

Nathan:

So yeah, I know we went over time a little bit there and I hope you don’t feel unfairly done to, Trent-

Trent Horn:

Oh, no. It was fine.

Nathan:

So we’re going to go into audience Q&A now at this point. So there were a few questions that people put earlier, so we’ll try and dig those out of the chat. But if you have them now is the time to put them in the chat as well and we’ll come to them, but otherwise I’ve got about 500 comments to scroll up through to get to the first one of these.

PineCreek Doug:

500 questions?

Nathan:

A lot of comments. There are 625 people watching at the minute. So, and it’s been around there [crosstalk 01:15:55].

Trent Horn:

Over 500 people saw us at once.

PineCreek Doug:

By the way, did Matt Fred actually offer me a thousand dollars to do it on his channel? Trent, do you know if that’s true? Because I’ve been saying that’s true, but is it true?

Trent Horn:

Yes, he did so Doug, if you want to do this again for the money, we could always talk.

PineCreek Doug:

I do it for the love, not for the money. My reward’s in, you know.

Trent Horn:

Store up other treasures for yourself. That’s great.

Nathan:

So, here’s a first question then from Joshua Phillip it’s, “Doug, what’s your main motivation for devoting a considerable amount of time to counter-apologetics rather than open-minded worldview investigation like Joe Schmidt does maybe?”

PineCreek Doug:

Because I want to make Christians cry. Number one, I’m being sarcastic here. I love Christians. My wife is a Christian. My family are Christians. I find that’s fun. Most atheists on planet Earth don’t even care about Christianity. I mean, what we’re talking about now would bore them to death.

PineCreek Doug:

The reason why I’m interested in it is because I used to believe this stuff and this considerable amount of time, I don’t spend a considerable amount of time. People who know me and know my channel know that I go live within minutes. I never tell people, give them a days notice that I’m going live. I rarely spend more than half an hour prep time. Yeah. Half my brain tied behind my back and that’s fun. [crosstalk 01:17:22].

Nathan:

If there’s anything you want to say in response to this, by the way Trent, you can do, if not, I’ll keep searching up.

Trent Horn:

No, I can’t speak to why Doug does. I can’t speak to why anybody does what they do including Doug.

PineCreek Doug:

But is this fun, right, Trent?

Trent Horn:

Well, I find pursuing the truth to be fun. I find having reasonable disagreements with people and sorting arguments to also be fun because truth is a good thing. We should pursue it.

PineCreek Doug:

Yep. I agree.

Nathan:

So I know right at the start, someone paid about $25 for a super chat you see and-

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah. You got to go just to find it.

Nathan:

… find it. If you’re still around, if you could… Yeah. So if that person’s still around, if you put it in the chat somewhere and I will ask it, otherwise, we’ll go to this question. So Uber [inaudible 01:18:13] asks for Trent. “If, if, if you were tasked to create apologetics to support the stories of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, do you think you could offer good arguments that would support the claims of these books to be true?”

Trent Horn:

No. I wouldn’t be able to do that because there is abundant evidence against these books being historical works. The authors themselves, we know who the authors are and the authors have said that they’re fiction. They describe fantasy worlds that we have never observed. And if the worlds did exist, we would observe them, we muggles and others in the Shire or things like that.

Trent Horn:

I think questions like this really betray a kind of ignorance about historical scholarship. I think if someone asks this and thinks that Jesus is as unhistorical as Harry Potter, that person needs to read a book. I would recommend Did Jesus Exist by Bart Ehrman where he says, “It’s the view of virtually every expert on the planet Jesus did exist. It’s uncontested that he died by crucifixion. His followers claim to see him bodily rise from the dead. And the challenge is how do we explain these historical facts, everybody Christian and non-Christian agrees with?” And I think this debate shows the resurrection explanation does a good job explaining it and others only try to explain away the data.

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah, I completely understand why a question like this would bother Christians, Catholics, but Trent just said something interesting. That Harry Potter, you wouldn’t come up with apologetics for Harry Potter, because it’s clearly fiction. But here’s the question on the table? How do we distinguish between fiction and history? Trent said that Harry Potter mentions fantasy worlds we haven’t observed. You notice he’s describing heaven and hell? That’s the same as Harry Potter, but yet he believes in heaven and hell.

Nathan:

Okay. So if there’s nothing you want to say in response to that, I do want to keep it kind of short on each of these questions.

Trent Horn:

Well, I think in the issue of fairness, we should just keep two minute reply, one minute counter-reply.

Nathan:

Sure.

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah. Yeah, and we’ll try to be less than that.

Nathan:

That sounds good. Okay. So Oscar says for Trent, “I would want you to do the entire flying man at some point. It feels like the bell rang before we got to anything interesting.” I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that?

Trent Horn:

Oh, I guess he means Doug and I going back and forth. I imagine going back and forth and otherwise it sounds like he wants me to do some kind of dance, like the flying man, right? Whatever. Do the flying man, whatever that might be.

Trent Horn:

I mean, I suppose. What I find interesting here is that Doug has to rely on a hypothetical and ask would you believe or not believe, rather than just, I think it really does show the unique evidence for the resurrection and that we can’t just find a dime a dozen claims that are just like that in the ancient world. I think it really vindicates what I’ve said.

Trent Horn:

And that when you have a hypothetical, it doesn’t matter because it’s hypothetical. You could change flying man. You could change it to flying people, the Wright brothers, for example. You can make anything sound however you want. I think we should just look at the evidence that really does exist and seek what is the most logical explanation for it. And the flying man only exists as a hypothetical. Christianity exists as a historical event and I think I’ve provided a sound explanation for the evidence we have for it.

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah. And I would say the resurrection narratives are stories, maybe not hypotheticals, but they’re fiction, a lot of it, meaning that it didn’t actually happen in the past. But the flying man that we just did was very, very constructive because it showed that Trent and I are not different. He never went out of the red.

PineCreek Doug:

Now he proposed something at the very end about martyrdom, which I think for a lot of Christians is very, very powerful, but notice Trent basically admitted through the flying man thought experiment that Paul’s not good enough for him to believe. And that even once we get into a gospel that we’re still maybe getting closer, but still not good enough.

PineCreek Doug:

This is the problem with Christianity and Christians when they’re trying to defend their faith. They are bombarded with thoughts like philosophical and historical and personal experiences and they all come in at once and what the flying men does, it says, “Slow your mind down. Let’s calm down and think about this and go through it one by one.” And I think it’s brilliant and it shows, it brings us together really to show that we’re not that different.

Nathan:

Okay. So the next question from iheartdogs, great name. “As to mass hallucinations, does Trent believe in the miracle of Fatima?”

Trent Horn:

Yes. So this is the claim that the Virgin Mary appeared to a group of witnesses in Fatima, Portugal, claiming that they saw the sun moving in the sky, appearing to dance. I don’t believe the sun or Earth changed their normal rotation, but I think it’s very possible that God caused an optical effect to occur, to make it appear what normally you would not have naturally seen that they saw that.

Trent Horn:

I also think that we have, and what’s interesting here is we actually have better evidence for Fatima than for even the resurrection because we have contemporary newspaper reports describing the event right the day after that it purportedly happened. We Have contemporary accounts talking about puddles drying up and multiple witnesses describing it. So I do think there’s very strong evidence for that. I’m aware of explanations, natural explanations offered for it, but I think there’s very strong evidence.

Trent Horn:

And I actually, there’s a lot of Catholic Saint miracles, hagiography that I don’t believe that I think are historical legends that happened, that were written centuries later and so a lot of Catholics get mad, I’ll say, “Yeah, that Saint didn’t do that. That Saint didn’t do that. That’s a legend. That’s a legend.” Here, I think we’ve got a very short time span, multiple witnesses. So I think there’s good evidence that it did happen. Yes. That it’s not a hallucination, that it was an event caused by divine power. A miracle occurred and witnesses saw it more than just a vision. There were other physical effects in the world.

PineCreek Doug:

The quote of the day here in this live stream is that we have better evidence for Fatima than the resurrection. I can’t believe Trent said that.

Trent Horn:

In some respects, yeah.

PineCreek Doug:

I mean, that’s amazing. To think that actually happened in history that there was that, I mean that’s not even close. Here’s a good example that I think people would resonate because you mentioned actual newspaper reports, right, Trent? We have better evidence for the life and ministry of Ravi Zacharias than we do for Jesus. I’m sure you agree with that.

PineCreek Doug:

We have video, we have newspaper, we have books written by him and guess what? We were all wrong about the character of Ravi Zacharias and yet you know Jesus Christ was perfect based on something that’s way less of evidence than what we have for Ravi Zacharias. I’ll leave it at that.

Nathan:

Okay. So Dustin Eleve asks, or Elevee, sorry if I pronounced that wrong. “Worshipers of other gods were martyred in the Old Testament?” I’m guessing that this is more for you, Trent, but I mean, if there’s anything you want to say in it, Doug, as well, feel free.

Trent Horn:

Yeah. I’m going to have to make an assumption on the question because it’s incomplete. It could just be a factual question. Were there people who worshiped other gods who were martyred in the Old Testament? It would depend on your definition of martyr. There were religious conflicts that took place between Israel and other pagan nations, whether you would call that martyrdom or not. I would call that more religious violence or conflict.

Trent Horn:

But I would say that there are people who there are many non-Christian martyrs. Absolutely. There are many non-Christian martyrs. Martyrdom does not prove the truth of one’s faith. I believe it’s very strong evidence for the sincerity of one’s faith. The problem is many of these other non-Christian religions, whether it’s ancient pagans, Muslims, they’re very sincere, but they’re not in a position to know if their belief is true or false. They’re too far removed from the origin of their faith, but the apostles are different.

Trent Horn:

So I think they’re martyrdom or at least their willingness to suffer. And I do believe there’s strong evidence they’re martyred as well, at least Peter, Paul, James, the brother of Jesus, that there’s evidence that they were sincere and they could have known of what they believed was false or not.

PineCreek Doug:

Trent says there a lot of these martyrdom stories, they were not in a position to know it is true or false. I would say the same thing for the new Testament characters because of what I said earlier that I think Trent agrees with. We don’t have firsthand eyewitness accounts that they even saw what they apparently died for. We have decades later anonymous authors, which a chain of custody, Eusebeia says, that Papia says, that John says, that Mark says, that Peter says that Jesus said. We have that, but we don’t have actually, “Hey everybody, my name’s John and I saw Jesus rise from the dead and I could have recanted and lived, but I didn’t.” We don’t have any of that.

Nathan:

Cecil Roxy asks, “If all your friends and family and people said they saw a flying turtle, would you believe them?” So I think that this is one maybe for both of you.

PineCreek Doug:

I’ll start with this one. If all my friends and family said they saw a flying turtle, would you believe them? All my friends and family? No. There we go. How about you, Trent?

Trent Horn:

I would believe that they saw something.

PineCreek Doug:

Me too.

Trent Horn:

Perhaps it was an unfortunate turtle that got into a kid’s potato gun. I’m not sure. So, I mean that would be a flying turtle. I think that what’s interesting here is that we do have cases of unusual things. I’ll give you an example.

Trent Horn:

In the middle ages, there were a group of monks in Canterbury who claimed that they saw the moon explode and it’s like, “Well, do you believe that?” It’d be easy for people to say, “No, I don’t believe that,” but actually many astronomers say there’s no reason to doubt their testimony. And what probably happened was these monks saw a meteor impact in the sky in their line of sight with the moon and made it appear that it exploded.

Trent Horn:

So I think that in many cases, when someone says they saw something weird or, or strange, it could mean the world is different than I understand and I have to adjust my world. It could mean they thought they saw something, but they didn’t. But I wouldn’t say that’s the case in the resurrection that people mistakenly thought they saw the risen Jesus, because their conviction and resurrection belief would only be motivated by an authentic resurrection, not just some kind of case of mistaken identity, because we’re dealing with like Doug brought up Bigfoot before. Well, people they’re, it’s not Harry and the Hendersons. They’re not friends with Bigfoot, know him, hang out with him. These are people who knew Jesus. Similar with Elvis sightings. They know him and they know if it is Jesus risen or not, so I don’t think it’s parallel.

Nathan:

Awesome. So Oscar asks for Pine Creek. “How did it feel to do a formal debate? Felt like watching Michael Jordan play baseball.”

PineCreek Doug:

Well, Michael Jordan was pretty good at baseball too. No, this was fun. I think I got to do more of these.

Trent Horn:

Yeah. I liked having a debate with you, Doug, because I think what makes it is we can cover a lot of different arguments and for people to consider.

Trent Horn:

My policy when it comes to debates, by the way, I know you do a lot of critique of debates and you watch debates. I don’t think debates are the way to resolve a disputed question necessarily. I think there are ways to get people to begin their own investigation and maybe offer people different insights, different arguments and motivate them to pursue the different cases that are presented. So I’m interested in people to pursue more of the case that you’ve presented, people present more of the case I presented. It’s fun and yeah, maybe we’ll do another one sometime.

Nathan:

So streetsdisciple, and I think that this is in response to a particular person that you mentioned asks, “Who is Cheryl McDowell’s father?”

PineCreek Doug:

Jake. Jake McDowell yeah. Famous. Famous father-son team, or father-daughter team.

Nathan:

Let me just get down in the chat to the next question. Okay. Jepfer’s daughter asks Trent, “Did you believe Jesus rose from the dead before or after you spent time looking at the proposed evidence?” And says, “Thanks for your time.”

Trent Horn:

After. So my conversion story, if you will. I used to believe, well I don’t know if I believe in the resurrection because I only believed in very basic Bible stories when I was like seven years old, like Noah and the ark. I didn’t even believe, I didn’t understand Jesus was God or anything like that. I really only watched the Hannah Barbera Bible cartoons and I just knew about Noah and the ark and Sampson.

Trent Horn:

Hannah Barbera Bible cartoons, by the way, are the bomb. Please go check them out on YouTube. They’re pretty good. Ed Asner is Joshua. Does a great job. So I didn’t have a belief in the resurrection even as a little kid then, and I became a deist I believe there was a God out there that made the universe, but that was it. So I believed in a God, but not religion or anything like that.

Trent Horn:

I met some Catholics and Protestants. They introduced me to their belief system and then I went, this is like back in 2002, 2001. So no YouTube, but I went online. I went to the secular web infidels.org, downloaded debates on MP3 files on a real slow computer. And then I looked at the evidence for and against and I thought that was actually really good evidence that the Christian explanation regarding Jesus was the best one, so that was kind of the path that I ended up taking. It’s not the path everybody takes, but it was one that I took.

Nathan:

Awesome.

PineCreek Doug:

And yet the evidence wasn’t good enough for the flying man, when we did the big picture stuff. But anyhow.

Trent Horn:

Maybe after more debates. You never know.

Nathan:

So we’ve got about 14 minutes left of this section, by the way just if you guys are concerned about time.

PineCreek Doug:

I can stay [crosstalk 01:32:35] returns.

Nathan:

One of the missed super chats from earlier was, “What does Trent think about Laura Robinson saying Paul and hearsay in the New Testament, isn’t enough to establish Jesus was lefthanded historically let alone resurrected.” And if you don’t, Laura Robinson’s Duke University, PhD. Yeah.

Trent Horn:

Yeah. I’m familiar with a little bit with Laura Robinson’s scholarship and I do appreciate it. I watched actually part of the interview. Doug had her on his channel and I thought-

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:33:04]

Trent Horn:

Actually, part of the interview, Doug had her on his channel and I thought she gave some really valuable insights there. Like saying, for example, it’s easy to come up with the idea that Jesus, the 12 disciples, or Elijah is just ripped off from the Old Testament, but she was very firm. We have independent sources to show that this is historical. So, she too believes that there are independent sources behind the Gospels, Paul’s letters, things like that. Now, she is very skeptical of being able to historically demonstrate the resurrection and I don’t see this argument having a lot of force for me. I don’t have if Abraham… I don’t have a lot of evidence that Pontius Pilate was left-handed or right-handed, but I do know that he was the procurator over Judaea during the time of Jesus. There might not be evidence to understand certain trivial facts about certain people, but the point that I have been making is that the evidence put forward… Resurrection explains all of the facts that I have put forward. Every other hypothesis leaves things unexplained or has to include speculative ad hoc elements that are not in the evidence. That seem to kind of have to explain things away. So, I’m not convinced by Robinson’s argument that, just because I didn’t know if Jesus was a southpaw, whether he rose from the dead.

PineCreek Doug:

That whole mantra of the resurrection explains all the evidence, when you’re talking about stories… Like, if I believe the narrative in Matthew… about Jesus casting the demons out of pigs. Where’s that again? [crosstalk 01:34:36] If I believe that narrative is a story, it never actually took place in history, about Jesus casting the demons out and putting them into pigs and then going… Do I have to explain how the pigs actually flew over a cliff? No, you don’t need to explain all the data if you’re saying that it’s a story to begin with.

Nathan:

[Cesar Roxy 01:35:04] asks for Doug, “If Christianity were true, would you convert back to Christianity?”

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah, it depends on which-

Nathan:

“If so, why? If so, why not?”

PineCreek Doug:

It depends on which version of Christianity. It depends. I got a lot of flack from when I went on… What’s his name? Hayden’s channel. Hayden Clark. What’s his name? Hayden Clark. He asked me that question.

Nathan:

Yeah, I think that’s right.

PineCreek Doug:

He was a guy, a Christian, who believed that we are all annihilated. I said there’s a difference between believing something’s true and then following it, right? And so I was saying I would believe it’s true, but I would purposely reject what I needed to reject so I don’t live forever. In case you didn’t know, I don’t want to live forever. Heaven’s not appealing to me. So, if I became convinced that Christianity was true and I would now ask, okay, what’s the end times? Am I going to heaven forever? I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to go to hell either. If ECT is true, I don’t want that. So, I’d have to figure out what version of Christianity is true. I’ve said that I’d become a Pete Enns type of Christian, who basically… He’s sort of like a Marcionite who rejects a lot of the Bible. He’ll come out and say that Paul… Yes, he purposely changed Old Testament quotations and most of the stuff in the Old Testament didn’t happen the past.

Trent Horn:

I know this might step on the rules a little, but I really am dying to Doug a question. Doug, when it comes to heaven… If heaven were the case that, every day you would be happier than the previous day, would you want to have endless life in heaven?

PineCreek Doug:

If every day was… I think happiness is overrated. I actually do think… No. I noticed you’re smiling here, but I do think you need a little bit of suffering. Not gratuitous suffering, but you need goal-setting and suffering in order to be happy. If you’re saying that heaven is a place where you set goals and overcome it and you actually experience a little bit of suffering, which I think is [inaudible 01:37:02]’s view and I appreciate it, then yeah. Maybe. Yeah. But the picture I get is that there’s no suffering in heaven. In fact, the text says that. And so… I want to feel my muscles sore a little bit. That tells me that I’m working out, right? I get this picture that we’re all avatars in heaven, but I don’t think anybody… not even you, Trent… knows exactly what heaven’s all about. I think it’s one of those things. If it does exist, the scriptures are not that detailed on it.

PineCreek Doug:

I can’t hear you.

Nathan:

Space monkey asks Trent, “If the evidence for better…” Okay, how about now? Can you hear me now?

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah, you’re good.

Nathan:

Can you hear me?

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah.

Nathan:

Okay. Sorry. Yeah. If the evidence for… “If the evidence for Christianity was better, if we had more evidence that the apostle Paul visited the brothel twice a week, would you still be in the green on the resurrection of Jesus? Thanks.”

Trent Horn:

Well, he says if the evidence or Christianity was better. I think he means if we had more data surrounding the origin of the Christian faith and that data was against it… and I showed in the debate that Doug hasn’t presented any evidence that this did not happen. He’s just casting doubt on the evidence that it did happen. If there was evidence that it did not happen, that would lower my confidence possibly to the point where I would no longer believe it. So, I guess the analogy be like, if it was evidence comparable to why I don’t believe in Mormonism, the same problems we have in the book… the exact same problems with the Book of Mormon are in the Bible… that you have witnesses that are recanting from it, that the founder of the religion seems to be using it for fraudulent purposes or for his own personal gain… That would cause me to doubt and maybe to not believe.

Trent Horn:

This particular example. The apostle Paul. The only thing is, oh, Paul visited prostitutes. Well, I don’t know if that would cause me to doubt that his testimony is true. It just may be the case that he’s weak-willed. It’d be like if you found a very famous health guru and it turns out they go to In-N-Out out twice a week and gorge on a quadruple quadruple. That just shows they might be a hypocrite, but it doesn’t mean everything they taught about good health is false or that they don’t sincerely believe it. They just have a weak will. So, that particular example… I don’t know. It would make me really cast out on a few things for sure. It may not tip me over. More things like recanting of the apostles, bone box, Jesus’s name on it. That could push me back into not believing. But as it is with hypotheticals, these things don’t exist, so I don’t have to worry about them. It’d be similar with the Moon landing. If it turns out we had hypothetical evidence against it, would I not believe it? Maybe not, but we don’t so it’s just an intellectual exercise.

PineCreek Doug:

Trent said a few times that, “Doug has not presented any evidence that it has not happened.” I know I’m not going to change Trent’s mind on this, but if there’s Christians listening, please consider this. That is a horrible way to live your life. That’s a horrible, rotten, and as Charles Barkley would say, terrible way to have an epistemology. That if you can’t prove it didn’t happen, then we’re justified to believe it based on this type of evidence. This gets back to my… Trent and I are walking. We’re holding hands and Trent and I are walking down the street and we see this guy seizing up on the road. We both say, yeah, it’s probably an epileptic seizure. And then the guy says to us, well, you haven’t proven this is not demon possession. I mean, this is ridiculous. You would end up having to believe so many things based on that standard. Anyhow.

Nathan:

Cesar Roxy say, “Does Trent believe the devil exists? And if The Exorcist was true, would you believe, Doug?”

Trent Horn:

Yes, I do believe that there is a malevolent spirit, who we call the devil, who acts for evil purposes. Yes.

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah. I thinks that… Even though Christians like Trent believe in angels and devils and that… They truly believe there’s a spiritual warfare. On a day-to-day life, like when Trent goes to the grocery store, he’s not thinking that way. I’m sure of it. If he trips on a grapefruit in the produce aisle, he’s not saying that’s the devil of grapefruits. He lives his life like a nationalist like I do. And this is what I was trying to get at with the flying man and other examples. That we have so much in common, but it comes to the New Testament and spiritual things or if you’re at church or mass or whatever, then all of a sudden these devils and angels start to play a part.

Trent Horn:

Maybe a dragon fruit. They’re weird. They’re weird fruits.

Nathan:

What about the second part of the question, Doug? If the Exorcist was true, would you believe?

PineCreek Doug:

That’s a stupid question, but I’ll say yes.

Trent Horn:

A stupid hypothetical?

PineCreek Doug:

No, no, it wasn’t… It was just…

Nathan:

Original win productions says, “If Doug saw a man beheaded by a state hostile to him, then he saw him alive the next day, and the man attributed it to God, would Doug believe him?”

PineCreek Doug:

Sure. Yeah. If Doug saw a man beheaded and then the next day, would Doug believe him? I would say I would give him the benefit of the doubt. And then I realize that plays right into the New Testament narrative, but let’s see the beheaded man walk towards me first. Let’s see resurrections first. And then we’ll know for sure whether or not I believe it or not.

Trent Horn:

I would have to see… Well, here, I might have to… If I could see or had reliable witnesses that could tell me that this person had evidence that their head came back on, like scars or things like that, that would help more because it’s possible… In this very, very isolated case, maybe this person has a twin, for example. Now, I don’t think that the twin hypothesis explains the resurrection, though it might do better than other hypotheses.

PineCreek Doug:

That’s a good point. Didn’t think about that. Maybe there’s a twin.

Trent Horn:

You got to be careful, Doug. You don’t want to [crosstalk 01:43:38]

PineCreek Doug:

I just want to give people what they want. But yeah. That’s more probable than someone coming back from a beheading, right? A twin.

Nathan:

So, Jeff asks for Trent, “If you were shown two Eucharists and were told only one is consecrated, how could you tell which is which?”

Trent Horn:

I would ask the person, is it the one on the left, and based on micro-movements in their face, I would be able to tell if they’re lying or not because I’m just that good. No, I’m just kidding. I would not be able to tell by sight alone a spiritual change in the Eucharist because that change occurs in the substance. Not in the things that are perceived with the senses.

Nathan:

So, Jim Bob asks for you, Doug, “If the standard by which you determine what isn’t possible regularity slash physics is by your own admission a miracle, how will you know if you experience a miracle?”

PineCreek Doug:

Because it’s wow wow instead of wow. Jim Bob and I have a history and he… I admitted to him, Trent, that I believe in one miracle and that’s our existence. As a naturalist, I’ll even say that. But within the confines of our natural everyday experience, we can see even greater miracles. I call that wow wow. The fact that we’re here is wow. But if this pen levitates if I let go, that would be a wow wow. So, what’s the standard? Compare it to the standard of the first miracle.

Trent Horn:

Didn’t follow that. We’ll have to chat more.

PineCreek Doug:

Well, there’s a history between us, so don’t worry about it.

Trent Horn:

That’s wowza. I say that’s wowza to me.

Nathan:

There’s about a minute left, but I’ll try and get through as many [crosstalk 01:45:35].

Trent Horn:

That’s my Owen Wilson. I’d say our world is wow. Wow.

PineCreek Doug:

So Jesus’ resurrection was a wow wow. The fact that there’s any existence is a wow. That’s where we’re getting that, Trent.

Trent Horn:

Okay.

Nathan:

So, there’s not long. I’ll try and get through as many of these as possible. So, Trent, hypothetically speaking, is it fact that God would allow some to witness miracles, including the resurrection, when I’ve seen nothing? Are we all judged by the same standards of evidence?

Trent Horn:

So, there’s two questions here. Is it fair for God to give more evidence to some and less to others? I don’t think that that’s fair or unfair. God is allowed to reveal himself to whoever he chooses. I do believe that God has given sufficient evidence for anyone to… at least by the light of reason to come to know that God exists and to see that there is a very strong impetus behind the historical hypothesis, Jesus rose from the dead. I wouldn’t say the evidence I’ve presented is irrefutable or incontrovertible, but I think God has given sufficient evidence. And so… Oh, that must have been for the whole thing. In any case. So, I believe he’s given sufficient… He can give more or less to whoever he wants. He’s given sufficient. And I do believe that he will judge people based on what they have been given. So, somebody like me, he’s going to judge me more because I’ve been given a lot. For someone who might have been given a poor example of Christianity or a poor argument for it, they’ll be less culpable and judged based on what they have received.

PineCreek Doug:

J and W, that’s a good question, but I think even better question would be, would you expect that God to show miracles to everybody of a certain sort? And I say yeah. Especially if you believe God doesn’t want anyone to perish. If you believe in eternal conscious torment and there’s a lot at stake, heaven and hell, and knowing the truth and living life to its full, I would expect God to give everyone as much as he could. And they still have free will to reject. Look at the devil. Look at Satan. He has way more than we do. He used to live with God up in heaven, apparently. And yet he still rejected. So yeah, God… I would expect a God who doesn’t want people to perish to give them everything he could to show that the evidence is there. Not what we have with the New Testament.

Nathan:

If we can do a quick last question for this super chat, which is, “Doug, is there any amount of outside testimony that would make it rational for a secluded tribe to believe that there is a long flying metal tube that carries hundreds of people halfway around the globe?”

PineCreek Doug:

Yes.

Nathan:

Very, very quick. There we go. So, yeah. Thank you, everyone, for your super chats. I’m sorry I’ve not got through all the questions there, but unfortunately we’ve run out of time. To finish up, then, there’s going to be five minutes each to make any closing remarks that you want to make. So, Trent, if you want to go first with that and then I’ll start the timer, and then you can go make your closing remarks, Doug.

Trent Horn:

All right. Well, let me summarize a little bit everything that kind of happened in this debate. Remember, we’re trying to answer the question, did Jesus rise from the dead? Doug’s job was to show the answer is no. Mine was to show that it’s yes. Now, Doug has claimed I haven’t shown that he hasn’t proven no, but that is the case. Even if there were no evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, at best, you might say, well, though you weren’t convinced by the evidence, you could say, I don’t know. Since it seems to point in that direction. Just like even if there weren’t evidence for aliens in the universe, you couldn’t say, well, no, there are no aliens. You would say I don’t know. Doug did not show that, if Jesus rose from the dead, there would be evidence we do not have. He didn’t show any of that. And he didn’t present counter-evidence like I did with Mormonism and things like that. Showing the apostles recanted or things like that. He basically said, well, it’s not what we experience. Like dropping a pen or something like that.

Trent Horn:

But what about the evidence I showed? Remember, I said that particular evidence can overcome general truths. Like with the Wright Brothers and flying a plane. That had been impossible before that. Rather, what about the evidence that is presented? Remember, things are as they appear unless evidence suggests otherwise. Doug said, “Well, Trent, you think there are natural explanations all the time.” Yeah, that’s right. Because miracles are rare. Just because I believe in miracles doesn’t mean I think they happen at the grocery store every weekend. I’m going to need evidence to show that it points beyond a merely natural explanation. So, with an epileptic seizure, I would say yeah. That all the evidence points towards epilepsy. But there are testimonial accounts of people who have superhuman strength, who speak a language they’ve never spoken before, and that could point to a supernatural element.

Trent Horn:

Doug also said, well, who cares about explaining the data? The demons going into the pigs. How do you explain that? Well, I say that it’s all a legend. You could do that. But the problem is you can’t do that with the basic facts of the resurrection because I or Bart Ehrman or other atheistic scholars agree Jesus was crucified, agree that his disciples came to believe that he rose from the dead, and so you need to provide an explanation for that. You can’t just say it never happened because we all agree the basic facts it did happen and it stands in need of explanation. And as I showed, the explanation that I offered, Doug didn’t show that it’s problematic. He never addressed my argument for the existence of God, so there is a causal power that is capable of raising Jesus from the dead. And so we have a world view where miracles can be possible.

Trent Horn:

And then, as I said, the resurrection explains the willingness of the disciples. Go back to the evidence I presented against the hallucination hypothesis here. Ask yourself from which of us who is just applying one explanation that covers everything and who’s trying to explain away bits and pieces? My explanation explains why Paul and James converted. Grief-induced hallucinations cannot do that. It explains why groups of people saw Jesus. Doug just tries to say there were no such group embodied appearances. And I show we have evidence for that both in Paul’s letters and in the reliability of things like Luke’s gospel.

Trent Horn:

Doug tried to say, oh, well we can’t trust this is Luke’s gospel, but he didn’t present an argument for that. By ancient historical standards, you have people like Richard Carrier who say that Luke wrote in accord with the standards of ancient history. Carrier even calls him a better than average historian. We know from Acts that Luke was a firsthand travel companion with Paul. He gets an insane amount of historical details correct. And the gospel of Luke, we can attribute to Luke because, if it were truly anonymous, we would expect ancient Christians to provide lots of different proposed authors for Luke yet they all center on one person, which is not what we would expect if it was truly anonymous.

Trent Horn:

So, I showed that when it comes to this, that we do not… We have this evidence that is helpful and I think that it really does point in this direction. Sorry, I lost my part here. One more thing I wanted to add. All right. Less than a minute. I think ultimately… Look, our world is a pretty weird place. It’s weirder than we realize. We should have open minds. And I would say take the evidence, follow it where it leads and try not to explain it away and look at all of it together. And I would add that, look, you may not be convinced… If you’re not Christian, you may not be convinced by my arguments to the resurrection. That’s okay. I hope it will convince you that the resurrection is a question worth taking seriously. How do you explain the genesis of Christianity and all of the different facts that I put forward in this debate? I hope you’ll take it seriously. Look at the evidence for and against each side because God made the world and he wanted you to exist. You are not an accident. I hope you’ll investigate the resurrection to come to discover and learn about eternal life with God and to have eternal life with that which is truth, beauty, and goodness itself. The resurrection is a foretaste of that which God promises and there’s good evidence for that. So, I hope you look into it.

Nathan:

Awesome. Thanks for that, Trent. So, the same place for you, Doug. You can make your closing remarks and you’ve got five minutes to do so.

PineCreek Doug:

Well, yeah. This was my first formal debate and I loved it. It was fun. I like Trent. I know maybe there was some differences between us before this debate because I’ve done some videos on him. The topic was did Jesus Christ rise from the dead? I would say I know that he didn’t. I know it because I can use things like induction and say this is not how the world works. In order to overcome this, you need a ton of evidence. It’s a big claim. It’s a crazy claim, as that one pastor said. You’ve got to own your beliefs, Christians. It’s a big, crazy claim and you don’t have big evidence. Trent did not show that my ancestor did not fly across the Grand Canyon. He never showed that when I did the flying man thought experiment. And yet this is the same type of question he’s asking me. Prove that it didn’t happen. Show that it didn’t happen. Give evidence that it didn’t happen. Yet with the flying man, when we went step by step, I could say the same thing to him. He didn’t believe it. But you need to demonstrate. You need to give evidence that it didn’t happen. This is silliness.

PineCreek Doug:

For those of you living in the United States of America, you and I are the same. If you’re a Catholic listening, you and I are same. We buy groceries the same. We drive around town the same. We don’t see these supernatural-type things happening in our day-to day-life. Maybe you see it in church when there’s a music playing and there’s other believers around you or maybe when you’re really, really sad and you’re feeling desperate. I bet you anything the closest you felt to Jesus in your life is the time you were hurting the most. Am I wrong? Psychology can explain that.When we talk about the basic facts that Trent brought up, all of it, the basic ones, the core ones, some would say the minimal facts, all of it can be explained naturalistically. All of it. Easily.

PineCreek Doug:

Now, [inaudible 01:56:18] has three. Sometimes he has five. Sometimes has seven. I agree with the three minimal facts, and I think even up to six minimal facts, but it can all… As Dale Ellison said, all of it can be explained naturalistically. And isn’t it more probable that those naturalistic explanations are more probable than that a man actually roses from the dead? I think a lot of Christians say, yeah, it is more probable these naturalistic explanations, but Doug, you don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t know what I’ve seen. And I get that and I respect that. And that’s why I thank something today… If this God is real and he wants to show himself through Jesus, it will take something today to convince people to believe in him. Not something it from 2000 years ago.

PineCreek Doug:

I have a lot of atheist friends and, when I first started my YouTube channel, they started watching it and guess what? They got bored. They got bored hearing about Jesus and New Testament stuff and Old Testament stuff. They hated it. And I asked them why. They said that’s not relevant. Who cares? Christians, you have to come to the… I think you already know this, but you have to come to the realization that most people on planet Earth do not care about what you believe. And talking… Like what Trent said, the evidence he presented, you might judge them as being silly or whatever, but they don’t care. But I’ll tell you what would convince them and would make them care. Start being like the church in Acts. Start raising people from the dead in the name of Jesus. Then, you’ll get your churches lined up around the block.

PineCreek Doug:

You don’t need fancy music in the church. You don’t need to appeal to the young people. This is what you need to do. You don’t need to talk about Paul and the authors of the gospels. It says in the New Testament that believers will do even greater things than Jesus did through the power of the Holy Spirit. Well, start doing it then. Start going into hospitals and give people their limbs back in the name of Jesus. Until then, you have nothing, really. You have stories. You have a way to give yourself hope, meaning, and purpose, but here’s your out. I always like to give a safe retreat. Still believe in God. Still use that belief in God to give you explanation of why we’re here. But to believe that Christianity is true… No, you need to let that go.

Nathan:

Thanks for that, Doug. So, if I put us back where we were, that is it then for everything that we’ve agreed to for today’s show. Do either of you guys want to plug after shows or anything that you’re going to be doing or your channels, where people can follow up on this afterwards?

Trent Horn:

People can check out my channel, the Counsel of Trent. C-O-U-N-S-E-L. If you’re Catholic, you get the pun. That’s available on YouTube. They can go and check that out. I post usually a few videos a week.

Nathan:

Doug?

PineCreek Doug:

Yeah, I’ll probably have an after show. I’ll use the latrine. Maybe take the dog out. I don’t know. Maybe half an hour? Trent, you’re welcome to come.

Trent Horn:

Oh, I got to take my kids to… I do boxing and they do wrestling, so perhaps another time.

PineCreek Doug:

You know Jesus said turn the other cheek, right?

Trent Horn:

That’s a great way to pin your opponent. Once they’ve turned the other cheek, then you get around and you’ve gone.

Nathan:

It’s also a great way to get spinal stenosis in your twenties, but yeah. Thank you everyone for watching. Sorry about those super chats that I didn’t get around to, but hopefully-

PineCreek Doug:

Well, you know what, Nathan? If you have those copied and pasted, you can bring them… the ones for me, I can answer on my channel.

Nathan:

That’s true. I’ll try and do that. I was going to say I could refund people in Russian rubles, but that’s-

PineCreek Doug:

Too soon.

Nathan:

Yeah, too soon. Yeah. So, thanks everyone. And yeah, I’ll see you around some time. Bye.

 

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