The Charlie Kirk Show - Defeating AI's Best Arguments Against God ft. Frank Turek

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

What does AI think the strongest arguments against God's existence are — and what are the counters to them? Lifelong apologist and evangelist Frank Turek joins Charlie to shoot down some of the most common and most formidable attacks on the Christian faith. Frank and Charlie talk about slavery in the Bible, whether the Old Testament simply copies other religions, the historicity of Scripture, and more. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com!    Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here live from thebitcoin.com studio. We have a phenomenal conversation with my friend Frank Turek about atheism, morality, and top objections that people have to giving their life to Jesus. It's a very important conversation. Text it to your friends and email me as always Freedom at Charliekirk.com. That is freedom at Charlie Kirk.com. Buckle up, everybody here. We go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. I want to thank, Charlie, he's an incredible guy, his spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job, building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in, gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with noble gold investments.com. That is noble goldinvestments.com. It's where I buy all of my

gold. Go to noble gold investments.com. Okay, everybody, super excited for this conversation with my friend Frank Turrick. Frank, great to see you, my friend. It's great seeing you, my friend. Frank is one of my mentors and friends and teachers and we've been studying together. Oh, yeah. Here in Phoenix. It's kind of our off season, right? So it's a little different than an NFL player. I have two off seasons a year. So my, it's similar to you. You're on season. What's fall and spring? Yeah, well, I'm doing colleges too. Just not as many as you, man. You're killing it. How many do you do? We try and do anywhere between 15 and 20 a year. You're doing, you're doing 25 a semester. Yeah, we do about 50 to 60 a year. It's crazy. Yeah, the pace is out of control.

But it's great. And so just remind your audience, you do cross-examined. You have the best books out on Christian apologetics. That's what my mom says. Yes. Good. Well, she's right. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist is the big one.

Stealing from God, why atheists need God to make their case. Those are the two biggies on apologetics. And so you go to college campuses and you do similar type vibe that I do, open question, open mic, and your stuff has gone very viral throughout the years. Before we dive into just some of the fun, because I'm going to have you. debate our AI in a second. Let's do it, man. But before we do that, what are some of the changes today, 2025 versus what you've heard from students five years ago and 10 years ago? Well, let's go back 15 years ago in the heyday of the new atheists. We got so many questions

from atheists and we got so much pushback from atheists. But I'm going to schools now, Charlie. And the organizers are saying, hey, when you come and talk about the evidence for Christianity, could you spend more time on the New Testament than whether or not God exists? Because we're having trouble finding a lot of atheists on campus. Okay, atheism is waning, and the idea that there's at least some spiritual force out there is gaining strength, and now Christianity is being looked at from all areas, as you know, because people are now, you know, you know what's driving people to consider Christianity? Evil. There's too much evil in the world. Things are getting worse and worse, and people are going, there's got to be more to life than this. There's got to be some

standard out there. Maybe I ought to look at Christianity again. And the work you're doing on college campuses is making people see Christianity as at least plausible. This guy, Charlie Kirk, is really sharp. And he believes in Christianity. Maybe I ought to look at Christianity again, because you're in the political world. Yes, that's right. Primarily. Yeah. Yeah. And so people are going, Charlie is one of the sharpest speakers I've seen. And he is an evangelical Christian. Maybe he knows something I ought to look into. I do hear that feedback a lot. By the way, the most promising thing that we receive, freedom at charliecourt.com, our emails or message on social media, we probably get a thousand a year. Charlie, I believe in God because of you. I go back to church. And that doesn't

count the comments. Because in the comments, you don't know, they could be trolls or whatever. But we get thousands of comments, Charlie, I'd strengthen my faith in God and Jesus and I'm pro-life because you. And that's awesome because that is a, that's an ultimate purpose to what we do. It's not the sole purpose. I mean, we believe that once we instruct people of the civil law, then that will point people to Christ. But no, it's a very exciting moment. Would you say that? I don't think atheism is dead. My friend Eric Metaxus, I think, gets a little bit ahead of himself. But it seems to be dying. Yeah, it's waning. Yes. And the difference between 15 years ago and now is people used to wonder if Christianity was true. Now they're asking, is Christianity good?

So the top three objections on a college campus that I get, and I think you're getting, too, if you think about it, the top three objections to Christianity are morality, morality, and morality. It's all about morality. It's all about what does this mean to me? They don't really get interested in like ancient text disputes very rarely, but they'll say, a wise slavery in the Bible. Right. How would you respond when someone says, but Frank, the Bible endorses slavery? I would say, first of all, what do you mean by slavery? Do you know what they're? the kind of slavery the Old Testament was talking about because it's not the kind of race-based chattel slavery we had here in America. Which actually is prohibited. Yes. Kidnapping for slavery was in both the Old and New Testaments. It was punishable by death in the Old Testament. Okay. It was

chattel slavery. It was indentured servitude. If you were in debt and you needed to get out of debt and you needed to pay for your family to feed your family, you could put yourself in an indentured servitude position to work for that person, to work off debt, and to provide for your family. And if you were in that situation, it was temporary, it could only go seven years, unless by mutual agreement you wanted to become a bond servant, you could extend that. It wasn't race-based. You could get out of it by running away. You could leave it. This is in Deuteronomy 15, 14 to 16. You're not to chase after your way. Yes, yes. You could, so it's not, not like chattel slavery here. It was not an ideal situation, but you know, there was no welfare

state in ancient Israel. There was no way to pay off debt other than put yourself in the employee of somebody else. In fact, it's a version of Old Testament. The Old Testament slavery or indentured servitude was really a kind of bankruptcy law. It allowed you to work off debt and take care of your family. And so it wasn't the kind of slavery we had here. It was indentured servitude. And there's a lot of details on this. My friend Paul Copan, who wrote a great book called Is God a Moral Monster. It's on my list. Paul goes into it in great detail. And I think this is true about the questions we have to deal with Charlie on a college campus. People say, what are the hardest questions to answer? And I think the hardest questions to answer are

none of them they're just hard to answer in two minutes it take time to explain it takes time a lot of time a lot of context but we also must be unafraid to brag on how the teachings in the new testament led to the abolitionist slavery but also mean in philemon like 116 paul writes the philemon you know you should view your slave as you like as an equal basically that's right um if i'm remembering yes yes philemon only has one chapter so philemon 16 yeah yeah yeah so Yeah. And so the, that's very important. But also that slavery has been the norm for almost every civilization. Yes. It is it is what worldview has gotten rid of it, which is noteworthy. Exactly. And also Jesus came to set the captives free. That was his initial inauguration. His inauguration in the ministry is Luke chapter four. One of the things he says is I came to set the captives free. But people will say, well, Why didn't the New Testament tell that culture to eradicate slavery completely right then and there? Let me ask you a question about this, Charlie.

See if you agree with this. Would it make any sense to tell people in California right now, particularly the minority of Christians, to eradicate abortion in California right now? Would I tell them to? Could they do it? No. They couldn't do it, right? What would be a way they could do it? Incrementalism.

incrementally work to change the hearts and minds. This is the least persuasive argument to a college kid. Oh, it totally is. Don't you agree? Incrementalism? They're like, how dare you? Because they're 19 and they're zealots and they're self-righteous. And so I would say that incrementalism, would you agree, is the least persuasive argument?

Oh, it's the least persuasive, but it makes sense because of the political realities at the time. In fact, as you pointed out, it was universal. slavery was everywhere in the ancient world. Now, by the time you got to the Roman period, it wasn't totally indentured servitude, but it wasn't completely chattel slavery either, because in the Roman period, it wasn't race-based, and you could buy your way out of it. Okay? So it wasn't like we had here, but it was still something that was not ideal, quite obviously. And God, the way he got rid of it was through incrementally, first of all, everyone's made in the image of God. Everybody is one in Christ. There are no social, distinctions. Do you know that Pliny the Younger, who was somebody that persecuted Christians, said he tortured two slave women who were deaconesses in the church? How did slave women become deaconesses in the church because the church treated them as equals? What do you say to the argument, and I'm paraphrasing, and I can look it up here, where Paul says you, slaves should submit to their masters? Yes. How do we work through that? Because what

Christians are supposed to do is treat everyone as if they're made in the image of God because they are. It is our way of loving people, even those who don't treat us well. We treat everybody like they're made in the image of God. So if you're in a slave situation, and Paul says try to get out of it if you can. But if you're in a slave situation, he does say that. Yes. You ought to do, you ought to do right by the person you're dealing with. In fact, Peter says this. He says, what good is it if you treat people well who treat you well even the pagans do that he said but you should treat people who don't treat you well well it's better to suffer evil than to do evil so they also say in slavery and then this is a moral pomposity you know kind of they say that

if if the bible is perfect like why didn't it explicitly say we got to get rid of this thing well it did but in a way that wouldn't have crushed it at its initiation. Because if the Christian church had all these commands for the people at the time to overthrow the Roman government, they would have completely crushed the Christian church. So what they said was, you can't kidnap anybody, that everybody, regardless of their social position, isn't equal, that they get a Sabbath. They get a Sabbath. They have rights.

if you hurt a slave, they go free. If you kill a slave, you're going to be punished. So the slaves weren't property, although when you read in the Old Testament, you'll hear them referred to as property. What that meant was they were money. It's equivalent today to say, well, let me ask you this. Can the owner of the Golden State Warriors sell Steph Curry? Yes. Yes, he can, because he owns the basketball services of Steph Curry. That's a good analogy. Yeah. But he can't sell Steph Curry as a person. He can, he can, Steph Curry is under contract, the services. This is the language that was used in the Bible. It wasn't the kind of language that chattel slavery used. It was the kind of language that

we might relate to a sports team, a sports owner. You own the services of Steph Curry, but you don't own him as a person. So on, on the slavery question, then, they would also. say, why are there so many laws that make it seem like it's okay? That doesn't forbid it. Because it's case law, just like we have in the United States, where it'll say in the Old Testament, if a man hits his slave and causes damage, then there'll be a penalty to the man. But that case law isn't prescribing that you hit your slave. It's describing what you should do. If someone hits their slave, much like we have laws today. If somebody breaks into a house and steal something, what should you do to them?

It's not prescribing, breaking into houses and stealing. It's telling you what to do when somebody does evil. Private student loan debt in America totals about $300 billion. Why refi refinances private student loan debt, and they do not care what your credit score is. Many clients aren't even able to make the minimum monthly payment on their private. student loans when they first contact Y-R-R-R-R-E-F-Y.com. Go to Y-ReFi.com. That is Y-R-E-F-Y-F-Y-F-Y. You don't have to ignore that mountain of student loan statements on your kitchen table anymore. So go to Y-R-R-R-E-F-Y dot com. Do you have a co-Borrow? Well, Y-R-R-R-E-F-Y-D-com. Let's face it, if you have distress or defaulted private student loans, there's no better place to go than Y-R-R-R-E-F-I. They provide you with a custom loan payment based on your ability to pay. They're not a debt settlement company.

So check it out right now at yrefi.com. May not be available in all 50 states. Go to yrefi.com. That is y-R-E-F-Y.com. So slavery comes up a lot. The Canaanites. Sure. So how do you answer,

this is part of the work that we were going to do today anyways. This is great. How do you answer when someone says, but the Bible, and I believe I have an answer to this, but you're much crisper than I am. The Bible told the people of Israel at time to wipe out, to kill women maybe, right?

Yeah, women, children, the animals, the whole deal. What kind of a God would tell a people to, I don't want to say genocide, but to wipe out an enemy? Okay, first thing I'm going to ask people who bring up any moral objection is by what moral standard are you using to say this is wrong? Right. Because if they're atheists, they don't have an objective moral standard. But it's a fair question to ask of a Christian.

And you're saying your God is good and he does these. So they would say, they would say, my view, I don't know what I believe, but I want to know how you could be consistent. Sure. Which would actually be a fair question. It's a totally fair question. And it's a good question. It's something that good should give us pause. And I think that skeptics of the Bible bring this up, rightfully so.

You should be able to deal with this issue. Yep. Okay. There are two views on this, two major views on it. One is these were literal commands to wipe everybody out. The second view is that these were hyperbolic commands. This is the way the ancient Near East people spoke. For example, if you go to Egypt, where we just were about six months ago, there's something called a Mernepta Stella.

Pharaoh Mernepta on this stella, this standing stone with all sorts of inscription, says, Israel has been laid waste. Its seed is no more. In other words, it's basically saying, I, Pharaoh Mernepta wiped out Israel off the face of the earth. really how come they're still there it's exaggerated language much like we would say in sports we obliterated we crushed them we annihilated killed them we killed the bears as we always do right okay or that as a gen z would say like i'm dead that's right yeah yeah and why do we think this is the case not only they're parallels in other ancient near east documents if you go to say deuteronomy seven it'll say this wipe everybody out next verse says and then don't intermarry with them and you're going

wait a minute. How could you intermarry with a group of people you had just wiped out? And then, by the way, a couple of chapters later, we see these people still around because it's hyperbolic language. And why is this being used? Why is this being done to begin with? This is judgment. These were people who were sacrificing their children to Molek. They would melt, or they would heat up this molten hot god who would sear the baby on the arms of this molten hot god. In fact, Plutarch, who's not even a biblical writer, he was a Greek writer in the first century says that the village drummers would beat their drums louder to drown out the cries of the kids. So the parents couldn't hear their own kids being sacrificed. Charlie, on every college campus I go to, on every college campus you go to, there's going to be some kid who's going to say, why doesn't God stop all the evil in the world? Well, here's a situation where God does stop the evil by judging these people and the atheists are complaining about it. Like, wait a minute. Do you want God to step in or not? Here he is stepping in. He is crushing these people because of the evil they've done and people are upset about it. And they would say yes, but not the kids and the woman, right? Right. If it's a literal command that he did, they did crush everybody. There's no

evidence is literal. It seems hyperbolic. But if it is literal, then the question is, does God have the right to take people into the next life whenever he wants. Of course. Yes. If Christianity is true, people don't die. They just change location. They go from this life to the next life. And it's up to God when that happens.

And this, if it is true that everyone was killed, this is what happened. The more, I think, proper interpretation, when you look at all the data is these were exaggerated commands to push people out of the land so the promised people could get into the promised land to bring forth the promised Messiah to save the whole world. Remember, God's working with free creatures. He's not going to overpower their free will. He's going to warn them for 400 years. If they don't repent, he's going to judge them so the promised people can get into the land and bring forth Jesus ultimately. It's going to bless the whole world. So there's a lot more on Copan's book on this. I have a little bit more on my book stealing from God on the killing of the Canaan, I so-called killing of the Canaanites. But it's judgment. And Charlie, we don't like judgment in our country.

Right. We want God to be, as C.S. Lewis put it, a benevolent old man who just wanted to look down and see that everybody was having a good time. We want to be nicer than God. Right, right. But God is a God of judge. He's infinitely just and he's infinitely loving. Which is funny because the campus group is very big on justice. That's their big thing. I know. But not really. They say they are. That's why I always ask them, look, there's two things you can have in the afterlife. You can have either justice or grace. Does anybody here want justice in the afterlife? I don't want justice.

I want grace. If I get justice, Charlie, I'm toast. And infinitely just being is going to judge me. He's got, I, I haven't been infinitely just, so I deserve justice. What do you have to say, and this is an AI generated one, but I hear this all the time. This helps me kind of remember about the Bible. And I think I know your answer to this. And I've read a couple books about this, but that all that the story of the Old Testament closely resembles Canaanite and Mesopotamian.

deities, that the Old Testament has like a lot of similarities, such as the story of Moses or the creation story or a flood story. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Well, every ancient, uh, culture has a flood story. Sure. Now, what do you think the reason for that is? Because there was a there's a flood, right? Everybody had some sort of story related to it. But if you look at the story of Moses, for example, you don't find parallels that are that all that close. And if you, do, it doesn't necessarily mean that Moses copied. What's unique about the Israelites is that they are told to be separate from their neighbors. That's one reason they're pushing out the Canaanites. Holy, separate, right? Same word. The last thing they want to do is borrow from the

people that they're trying to separate from. In fact, what happens to them is when they do get too intermingled with the Canaanites, God judges them and continues to say, you're planning. You're in the harlot. You're going with ball. You're going with all these other deities, and you should be worshipping me, so he judges them. And so, without getting into much detail, though, is there

any credence to this idea that the Bible was copied regionally between other River Valley civilization mythologies? I have not necessarily heard that objection, but I can tell you from Bill Maher said that on our show, remember,

you know? Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, here's the problem. if you look at the archaeology so let's just look at the archaeology yeah let's go back to joshua and jericho the evidence from jericho shows that oddly the walls fell down and out there's no other city that has ever been discovered where the walls have fallen straight down and out when you take over a city you go inward you crush the wall you knock it down and the walls go inward here we find in the dirt there in jericho that the walls fell out just like the bible says yeah there's there's a lot of that and and there are when we just did a 22 one hour lesson series on the top archaeological discoveries of the bible charlie um we discovered over a hundred and seven i

think it was 107 people in the bible that have been found in the dirt and about 75 of the them were from the Old Testament. And many of the events of the Old Testament have corroborative data in the dirt. How would somebody writing the Old Testament say a thousand years after Joshua, 1406 BC, know that the walls fell down and out? How would he know that? He wouldn't. In fact, you know how many places are named in the book of Joshua? What is it? 24 chapters in the book of Joshua. There's over 350 named places in the book of Joshua. Just in the book of

Joshua, it works out to something like 13 places a chapter. More than that, even. I can't remember the exact number. But it's crazy how many place locations, and many of these place locations have been discovered. This is not an invented storyline that was put into

writing a thousand years later. Moses and editors later, there are editors that came after Moses, like they put his death in Deuteronomy. They wrote this down at the time. So here's a question of morality. It's the problem of divine command theory. I've heard this question only once. Is something good because God commands it or does God command it because it is good? Euthyphro dilemma from one of Plato's writings, Socrates says this. And it's supposed to put the believer in God in a dilemma. If you're going to say God is the source of morality, does he look up at a standard beyond him and say, oh, that's good. I'll do that. If so,

why you need God, we can do that, right? Yeah, I don't think it's much of a dilemma, though. Maybe I'm overth. I think the answer to both is yes. You are correct. Here's why it's not a dilemma. Yeah. Because God himself is, because essence is good. That's it. Am I right? Yeah, he's the standard. He doesn't have to look up. Exactly. He's not arbitrary. He is the standard. So it's easily answered, and yet atheist online still think this is a good one. What am I missing about that, though? You're not missing anything. It's a false dilemma. A true dilemma is A or non-A.

A false dilemma is A or B. Maybe there's a C. Maybe there's a third option. And in this case, there is. God is the standard. His nature is the moral standard. The buck has to stop somewhere. It stops with God's nature.

So I ask AI, this kind of goes to show how good of a teacher you are, like the best intellectually rigorous questions. And like I can answer most of these, honestly. And I don't do this profession. I mean, I do somewhat of this, but you're like a super professional on this. And so that's what my mom says. I'll read this one.

This is from A.I. If God desires all people to be saved and know the truth, why does he remain hidden or silent to sincere seekers who never experience divine revelation or compelling reason to believe? Everybody experiences divine revelation because God has written two books. Yes, he's written through men, what we call the scriptures, the Bible, but he's also written the book of nature. In other words, we could say God's, God has the book of his words and the book of his works,

and everybody has the book of his works. Everybody knows there's a creator God who's moral because of the creation and the moral law written on the heart. And the way we know God is we know God by his effects. So if there's a creation, that's the effect. We reason back to a cause of creator. If there's design in the universe, that's the effect. reason back to a cause, a designer. If there's a moral law written on the heart, that's the effect. We reason back to a cause, a moral law giver. So there's nobody in the world who doesn't know

that there's a creator God who's moral, and we haven't lived up to that standard. There are people who've never heard of the solution to our moral problem. That's Jesus. But everybody knows that there's a creator, moral God, and the Bible indicates that if you seek, take a step toward that the works that he's provided, he will get you the word so you can be saved. This is the other one. We'd spend a lot of time on this, but let me just repeat it, and I want you to answer it as you would as student. How can we trust Scripture as morally authoritative when it regulates slavery, commands genocidal warfare like 1st Samuel 15, and enforces harsh penalties for non-crimes by modern standards without undermining the

concept of God's moral perfection? I would ask the person, again, by what moral standard are you saying? Yeah, you're appealing to a Christian standard. are. Secondly, we've already dealt with those before on this program that slavery was not the kind of slavery we had. It was a kind of bankruptcy law. Right. It was a kind of bankruptcy law. The genocidal warfare. It wasn't genocide. It was cynocide. Now, why do I say that? Because God wiped out the Israelites for doing the same kind of things. In other words, it wasn't ethnicity God was worried about. It was the ethics. Like after the golden calf after the... Sure. He, he, he was. He was, he was, he was, he wipes them out, right? How many times does God judge Israel for the evil they've done?

Repeatedly. A lot. And our mutual friend Dennis Prager puts it this way. He said one of the reasons I know the Old Testament. The least flattering telling of it. No, it's true. It's the least flattering telling of an ancient people. Yeah, yeah, that's it. You know it. Yeah. They would never invent such an embarrassing history of themselves. They keep getting dope slapped by their own God. And Charlie, you don't see this. Like, if you go to, if you go to Egypt, all of the monuments in Egypt are propaganda monuments to how good the pharaoh is. They don't include any negative behavior. But when you read the Old Testament, this is the history of the Jews.

They get the gold medal in sin every time. Ingredients. When I flip a container around and cannot pronounce nor recognize the ingredients, I put it back. That's why you'll find balance of nature, fruits and veggies, supplements on a shelf in my home. Every single ingredient is a fruit or veggie plucked from the soil. No binders, no additives, or artificial colors, no fillers. Just whole fruits and veggies, gluten-free and vegan-friendly. These harvested ingredients are freeze-dried into a fine powder

using an advanced vacuum-cold process to better preserve nutritional value. I can say with absolute confidence that I'm getting 31 ingredients from fruits and veggies every single day with balance of nature. Imagine a platter with 31 different fruits and veggies on it every day. Join me in taking balance of nature. use my discount code Charlie to get 35% off plus free shipping and their money back guarantee. You must use my discount code Charlie.

Call them at 8002468-7-51 and use discount code Charlie or order online at balanceof-nature.com. Use discount code Charlie to get 35% off plus free shipping. Here's one that I think is important. Again, this one is, I can answer this one. Answer it. Thanks to you. Given the discrepancies between gospel resurrection accounts,

And the lack of external corroboration, how do you defend the resurrection as a historical event without begging the question? Well, first of all, the discrepancies are a feature, not a bug. The fact that there are discrepancies means that it's probably true. Because if you were trying to lie, every single account would be exactly the same, right? Exactly. Like, we know this whenever there's, you know, car accident or something in the parking lot here. Or even like, you know, something happens here and there's a little controversy at the turning point campus or an event. I bring three people in and I get a generalized telling.

But I realized, like, oh, okay, got it, was, what mile power do you think they were going? What was this? What was the color of the car? But, you know, eventually you get towards that. So I think it's a feature, not a bug. And then there are a lot of external corroboration. I mean, there's Josephus, right? Yes.

There's other Roman historians. Also, the Talmud talks about Jesus, not the resurrection, but they said that people believed in the resurrection. Correct. I mean, that, that, that, yeah. So how did I do? You did. Excellently. Okay.

Yeah. What else am I missing? Well, let me give another example for our listeners and viewers. It might be this. Do you realize that the eyewitnesses of the Titanic, the survivors, disagreed on how the Titanic sank? Well, I imagine because we actually didn't know how the Titanic sank for quite some time. Right. Because it happened largely below the surface.

That's right. And some said it went down hole. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you meant, okay. No, no. This is a good illustration of what you're saying. Some said it went down hole. Others said it broke in two when it went down.

What should we conclude from that, Charlie? well we should conclude that uh it did go down that's it that's it and that the water was cold that's right no and that everyone agrees it was the resurrection but they also all agreed that they were female witnesses at the resurrection very embarrassing no embarrassing and by the way multi gospel that's right every gospel says it so but then also the discrepancies play against a unigospel central canon what is the right term well the term that there was a shared canon A Q document, they will say. Yes, Q. Yes. Then they all.

Yeah, well, obviously what we're finding in the New Testament, well, maybe not obvious for everybody, is that we have multiple independent sources of certain events. And when you have that, you realize this isn't just one source. This is several sources. And there may be a problem for people who have a Bible under one binding. They go, oh, this is just one book. It's one source. No, it's not. These documents were written down in the New Testament, written down by eight or nine authors, depending upon who wrote Hebrew.

and they were written at different times in different places by people who were not in contact with one another all the time. So I don't think that, I don't, that's a pretty weak one. That's the best AI could do. Yeah. I want to get to evolution in a second.

Okay, let's do that. But let me do this one. I think I could do this one too. If Jesus is fully God and fully man, how do you explain instances where he claims ignorance, not knowing the day or hour? He's not saying that he doesn't know. He's just not telling you.

Well, that's one way of looking at or you can also say that Jesus had two natures. He had a divine nature and a human nature. And Jesus emptied himself of the privileges of his Godhead when he was on Earth. That's Philippians 2. Partially, though. There was still a divine aspect, right? Right.

But whenever you ask a question about Jesus, you have to ask two questions. Did Jesus know when he was coming back? As God, yes, as man know. Okay. Did Jesus get hungry? As God know, as man, yes. Sure. So when Jesus—

The incarnation is a tough. Yes. When Jesus died on the cross, God didn't die. The human nature of Jesus died. So here's the counterargument in AI. They say that's a heresy in the 5th century that centered that Jesus had two separate persons, one human, one divine, rather than one person with two distinct natures. What's the difference?

Does that make sense? Yes, he had one person with two natures. He had a divine nature and a human nature. Let's give an illustration from Nestorianism or something. Nestorianism. Let's give an illustration from movies, not my favorite movie, but you remember Avatar? Yeah, sure. It's very environmental earth worship.

So there's, you know, remember the guy in the wheelchair? And he would get in this device, and then he'd be the avatar on the outside, right? He's one person with two natures. He has a human nature in the space station, in the wheelchair. That's a good analogy. And he has an avatar nature outside this space station. Yeah, okay, got it. That one's not that hard.

Here's one that I wouldn't know how to answer. The evolution one, I'm not as equipped to answer because I don't know how important it is and you could disagree. But some people have dedicated their whole life to it. I've never been that interest in it, actually. I think we're created. That's it. Sure. End of story.

How we're created is the question. If biological evolution is true and Adam and Eve are not literal historical figures, how do you preserve the doctrines of original sin, federal headship, and the need for the second Adam without unraveling the entire redemptive framework of Romans 5? I mean, I think they are real historical. Yeah, the first question I would ask them is, why do you think biological evolution is true? Now, micro-revolution is true. That's adaptation with endotype, but macroevolution from the goo to you via the zoo, is not true. Not only do I think there's not good evidence for it, Charlie, I think there's

evidence against it. Make the case. All right, let me give you an acronym, L-I-F-E, Life. L-I-F-E-L stands for the fact that there is limited genetic capability for change. For example, even intelligent breeders can't break the genus of dogs when they're trying to breed dogs, right? They can get a dog as small as a chihuahua and as large as a Great Dane, but they can't break the genus of dogs. They can't turn a dog into something else. just using that gene pool. If we, using our intelligence, can't break that genus of the genus of dogs, why do we think an unintelligent process can do so?

That doesn't make any sense. Okay, the I stands for information. The information we find in every one of our 40 trillion cells is equivalent to a message 3.2 billion letters long. And to use an analogy, if you're walking along the beach and you see Charlie loves Erica in the sand, you don't assume the waves did that or crabs came out of the water and made that message you would say that's evidence of an intelligent being right well if charlie loves erika requires intelligence why doesn't a message 3.2 billion letters long require intelligence because the software program in any one of our every one of ourselves our genome DNA is a one-to-one correspondence with digital code and we know that codes always come from coders we know that Programs always come from programmers. We know that messages always come from minds.

The longest message we've ever discovered is in every one of our 40 trillion cells. That requires intelligence. Now, it's a key point here we need to make is people will say that's a God of the Gaps argument. You're plugging God into the gap of your knowledge. No, we're not. We're not arguing from what we don't know. We're arguing from what we do know. When you see Charlie loves Erica in the sand, you don't just lack a natural

explanation for that. You have positive empirically verifiable evidence for an intelligent being when you see that in the sand. Right. So is that the I or the F? That's the information. Keep going information. The F is the fossil record. The fossil record is a complete embarrassment to evolutionists, and even Richard Dawkins has noted this, that if you go back to the Cambrian explosion, according to their dating, 523 million BC or 523 million years ago, somewhere in that range, 500 million years ago, you see all, most of the major body plans just in the fossil record without fossil precursors. It's as if they were just created there. You don't see this tree of life. Sure.

You see if someone put a botanical illustration in place, it would be more like an orchard. You would just see these body plans with some diversification at the top, but the body plans just come out of nowhere. Ex-Nihilo. Yeah. Do you then, so is the age of the earth interesting to you, or is that you're more open-minded on? I'm absolutely convinced the universe is at least 63 years old. Okay. I'm going to throw my mom in there.

I like that. I like that. Perfect. Okay. I think the better evidence is old, and we can talk about that in a minute. Let me finish the acronym. I'm sorry. So the F is the fossil record.

The E is what's known as epigenetic information. Scientists have discovered in recent decades that you can mutate DNA from Nautil Doomsday. You'll never get a new body plan. Why? Because DNA alone will not give you a new body plan. You need the structure of the cell and the structure of the organism to change, and you can't mutate that by DNA. you would need to go into the embryotic stage of a creature and change its gene regulatory network at the embryonic level

in order to get a new body plan. If you did that, 100% of the time we've tried that, the organism has died. So to get a new body plan, you just can't mutate DNA. And this is why, Charlie, even the Royal Society, probably the biggest scientific affiliation or the most august scientific affiliation in the world out of London, once headed by Isaac Newton, called a meeting way back in 2016 to point out that we need a new theory of evolution because the current theory has too many problems, and this is one of them. You can't mutate DNA and get a new body plan. You need epigenetic information.

An analogy would be that whereas the DNA might be the software for a particular, say, architecture program, the epigenetic information would be the hardware you need to build the house. You can mutate the software all day. You'll never get the hardware to build a house. So those four, and there's other reasons, but those four issues, limited genetic change, information, fossil record and epigenetic information shows that macroevolution does not appear plausible. So then is macroevolution at odds with an older universe theory? No, it would require an older universe theory but the no no i'm saying creation i'm sorry creation if you are if you believe we're created which is a belief i have sure does that mean that you believe the universe is only six

thousand years old no okay so work through that oh let's look at it biblically what is the first verse of the bible say in the beginning god created the heavens in the earth okay when was the beginning when god said it was we don't know it doesn't say right next verse says and the earth was formless and void wait a minute wait wait we've gone from god creating the whole universe in verse one to now we're talking about the earth how long did that take it doesn't say you say what about the days the days don't begin until verse three so well yeah and so the day is yome yeah but also a day is only possible as long as the sun exists yeah and that comes in day four i believe right exactly so this is Dennis Prager's argument, which is that you don't. So the literalist would say, well, it's seven literal

days. Could be. I mean, it says young. Sure. But using its own textual evidence on a day is only a revolution of the sun, the earth around the sun, right? So if there's no sun, then what do we mean by day? Exactly. And not only that, and this is John Lennox's argument, that when you look at the first few verses of Genesis, as we just did, the Bible leaves the age of the earth in determining. it because it's saying that the universe is created before the days ever begin. In fact, we talked about this earlier, but for your audience, remember, the Bible is not written to you, it's written for you. Now, who was Genesis written to? It was written to people who just spent 400 years under slavery in Egypt. They're not asking the questions you and I are asking in 2025, Charlie. They're not

walking through the desert going, I wonder how old this place is. Right. You know, that's not their question. Their question is, is Yahweh the true God or the gods of Egypt the true gods? And scholars have looked at Genesis 1 and some of them are saying, you know what Genesis 1 is? It's a polemic. It's a corrective to the Egyptian creation story. Exactly right. Because if you look at the Egyptian creation story, these pre-existing superhero gods, they're not explained, they just happen to exist already, have to fight one of another to bring order to chaos. That's the creation process. Moses comes along and he says, no, Yahweh's outside the universe. He just speaks. And he brings order to chaos. And God is not

in nature. He's outside of nature. God is personal. He's not abstract. Hey, everybody. Charlie Kirk here, a close friend of mine just saved tens of thousands of dollars on his Medicare. And I want you to know how. Medicare enrollment is a maze of misinformation and it's no accident. The more confused you are, the easy it is for big insurance to steer you to overpriced plans that make them more money. Trump's Department of Justice sued three of the biggest brokers in America for allegedly doing just that. Fortunately, there is a way to fight back.

I trust Chapter. They're honest and they're independent. Chapters licensed advisors search every single Medicare option to find what is best for you. My friend made one simple 30-minute phone call and now he's saving tens of thousands going forward and is fully covered. The call is 100% free, no pressure, just real honest help. people are relieved when they speak with chapter i trust chapter they're honest and they're

independent so if you're turning 65 or already on medicare called chapter today dial pound 250 and say charlie to speak with a trusted medicare advisor that's pound 250 and say charlie it could save you thousands okay let me go to some of the other hard questions here um this is a good one i've gotten this one before god describes himself as jealous and exodus 34 but jealousy is a vice in human terms, born of insecurity and possessiveness. How can a perfect self-sufficient being experienced jealousy without compromising his nature? I had this question from a student at the University of California at Fresno. Common or not common? In 2010, it happened two or three times. Yeah, it's very, I've gotten it once. Okay. And I asked him this question. I said,

are you married? He said, no. I said, let's suppose for the sake of argument you were married. If your wife decided that she was going to start dating to other people, should you be jealous of that? Of course you should. Why? In fact, she belongs to you and you belong to her and if you're not jealous of that relationship, there's

something wrong with you. She has broken the covenant and you want what's best for her and that is for her to stay in the covenant with you and that's what Yahweh does for the Israelites. us he's jealous of us because he knows that what's best for us is for us to stay in relationship

with him and if you're not jealous over your loved one there's something wrong with you so jealousy in that regard is a good thing jealousy when it comes to pettiness that's not a good thing or things that you shouldn't possess anyway right but it is good for people who you are in a relationship with in a covenant with, you ought to guard that relationship. That's a good thing. If light was created on day one, but the sun not until day four, what is the nature of light then? What is the nature of light? Yeah, what light was, I think this is just curious. What light are they talking about? Well, the light of God pre-existed prior to the light of the sun. Right. But I think, let me see here. I'm just looking at this now. So God said, let there be light, and there was light. And he called

the light day in the darkness night but that was before he created the sun yes well he has the ability to create light right from his own nature quite obviously uh and uh the sun is just one body in the universe that creates light there are other suns there other stars obviously in fact i've seen different estimates but the number of stars in the universe are equivalent to the number of sand grains on all the beaches on all the earth times 10,000. And when you think about that, that should evoke in us a sense of awe, the heavens declare the glory of God,

that you have stars equivalent to sand grains on 100,000 earths. So God may have not created our sun until a certain point. That doesn't mean other sources of light weren't created. Makes sense. All right, we have time for a couple more then I've got to get in front of our turning point staff here. Let me see this one.

This is a simple yet deep, but you get it all the time, but I think our audience would really appreciate it. Okay. How can an all good, all powerful God coexist with the gratuitous, horrendous suffering of innocent children, natural disasters, and systemic injustice, especially when no greater good is apparent or accessible to the victims? Okay. You get it all the time?

I get it all the time. But it blesses our audience, if you do that. Yes, yes. First of all, there are so many assumptions in that, question that would need to be challenged. First of all, how do you know it's gratuitous? How do you know it's not going to bring forth good later? Sure, if life ends at the grave and there's no afterlife, there's a lot of injustices that occur. But injustice only occurs if there's a standard of justice, and the standard of justice is God's nature. If God doesn't exist, nothing's just or

unjust. So you can point that out. You can also point out the fact that only if God exists to human beings have any objective value. Totally. And if they don't have objective value, there's nothing wrong with you. So that whole question is a Christian question. Sure it is. So if it's a Christian asking it, then let's say, hey, Frank, I believe in God, I struggle to think he's good. I agree. Yeah. That's a better question, right? I'm a Christian. I believe in God. I have a trouble believing that he's all good when a tsunami wipes out 100,000 people. Yeah, agreed. Okay. That's a toughie. That is a great question. And I told you on our walk last night, that's the hardest question i get totally the natural disaster is the hardest and here's here's the answer that

has helped me because i've studied this and it bothered me and if evil doesn't bother you you're probably haven't thought about it enough you're supposed to hate evil in psalm 97 10 that's right we're actually commanded as christians that's right that's right love doesn't mean approval correct okay so this is what unlocked it for me charlie um if you ask me why to say why do babies die I can give you a general answer. I know why babies die because we live in a fallen world, okay? But if you ask me why did this particular baby die, I can't tell you why, but I can tell you why I don't know why, because I'm finite, I'm inside a time, and I don't know how

all this is going to turn out ultimately. But if there's a being outside of time that can trace all of the ripples, this is called the ripple effect, that every event in this world ripples, forward to affect trillions of other events and potentially billions of people. We can't trace all those ripples. Maybe a baby dying today ripples forward through free creatures to bring forth a great evangelist 500 years from now who saves millions of people. Can I trace all those ripples? I can't, but a God outside of time can. And so the ripple effect, while it doesn't give us a specific answer, it helps us to understand that there is an answer, even if we don't know.

what it is. And there is a teaching. John McArthur would say this, that that children do go to heaven. And would you agree with that? Yes. Because it says God will gather the children to him. Would you agree with that? Yes. And I would go to the Old Testament too when David loses his son. He says, I will not, or the son will not return to me. I will go to him. The baby died. That's right. So yes, I think God is going to bring people to heaven. But I would also say this, that the effect explains so much the ripple effect you see in the story of joseph in the old testament his his brothers do evil they sell them into slavery yep and then they you know he he goes to all sorts of evil in egypt but he somehow rises to power and he puts a whole bunch of grain aside he's like the number

two guy in egypt and then his brothers flee israel to escape a famine and as soon as joseph sees him what does he say he says you dirty rats you're going to pay for what you did to me no he doesn't that. He said, what you meant for evil, God meant for good. Genesis 50, 20. The saving of many lives. Exactly. The evil they did rippled forward to help them later. Most of the time we don't see the ripple effect. In this case, we do. You know, there was a Roman Catholic priest in Notre Dame in Paris 150 years ago who said this. This is one of the best quotes, I think, on this topic. He said, if you were to give me God's power for 24 hours, you would see how many changes I would make in this world. But if he gave me his wisdom to, I would leave things as they are.

Because God is working. We're to fight evil because we don't know where it's going to wind up. But God can even allow evil that gets through to bring good later to those that love him and are called according to his purpose. And by the way, one last thing on this. Any God who is big enough for you and me to be mad at is big enough to have reasons we don't know about. Yeah, that's right. Right? the great quote from Dennis he got it from a rabbi is that we as theists have to explain child suffering

natural disasters and atheists have to explain everything else everything else existence that's right love mercy joy forgiveness so we have our challenge in front of us right all right let me do one more here but can i say one other thing on that evil doesn't disprove god it actually shows god does exist yep he keep going because there'd be no such thing as evil unless there was good and there'd be no such thing is good unless God existed. Because evil is not a thing in itself. It's a lack in a good thing. It's like cancer. If you take all the cancer out of a good body, you've got a better body. If you take all the body out of the cancer, you've got nothing. Or it's like rust in a car. If you take all the rust out of a car, you've got a better car. If you take all the car out of the

rust, you got a pinto. Now, you got nothing, right? It doesn't exist on its own. So evil is a lack in a good thing, but good in an objective sense only exists if God exists. If God doesn't exist, nothing's good or bad. Things are just different, and evil doesn't exist. So evil doesn't disprove God. It may prove there's a devil out there, but it doesn't disprove God. Okay, here's the last one. How can an absolutely perfect, changeless, timeless, necessary being, who lacks nothing, create a contingent temporal change-filled the universe without undergoing change or acquiring a new will? Well, there are theologians like William Lane Craig, who would argue that when God created, he entered time. I don't agree with that, but that's a view that some Christians take. Yeah, my answer would be like it's God,

he'd whatever he wants. Yeah, right. Anything, everything he wants, it's not logically impossible. Like, he can't create a square circle or a one-ed-edded stick. But no, but he created the rules of reason, though. Well, he is the rules of reason. So he didn't, I don't think he created them. I think they're, their, his nature, just like his moral nature. So then how would you answer this question the one the one i just said oh how could a timeless necessary being who lacks nothing create a contingent temporal change filled universe i don't i don't see why that would be a problem i don't i don't understand why that would be an issue they say they say that this let me say what's the what's the paradox how can a being that doesn't change or do anything new suddenly do

something like create a world who's who's to say mean when we say god doesn't change it doesn't act what it means is his nature doesn't change yeah i agree with that his nature doesn't change He's always good. He's always moral. He's always just. He's always loving. It doesn't mean he can't do things. It means that his nature doesn't change. Yeah. So then they'd also say there's a dilemma of God did not freely choose to create, which is not true. The universe is co-eternal with God. We don't believe. No, no, no, not co-enture. Or that God changes. We say that God acts, not changes. His nature is eternal. Yes. His nature doesn't change. He is the standard of goodness, the standard of rightness, the standard of love. That's really interesting what you're saying. So you're saying

geometry, math, that's all the language of God. Yes. The physics, chemistry. Physics can be different because they're not based on his nature, but morality can't be different because it is based on nature. But is like math and geometry based on his nature? Yes. Because why would geometry be yes and physics be no? Because, well, if in all possible worlds, two plus two equals four, but not in all possible worlds does gravity have to be the strength that it is sure right but and so then in all possible worlds a square circle can never exist yeah because it's a logical contradiction got it right we make since it's a political show we'll i always say does force always have to equal mass times acceleration i don't know if god could create a different universe where that was reversed this is what we always say

that god can't he can't create can't create can't do impossible things he can't create a square circle he can't create a one-ended stick. He can't create a married bachelor. He can't create an honest politician. There's some things that are just too hard for God. Yes. And so, so then does that undermine the idea that God can do everything? When we say God is all powerful, we don't mean he can do everything. What we mean is he can do everything consistent with his nature. So he couldn't make two plus two equals five because his nature is such that his nature is logic, is true. Is truth. He could create a different universe because that's within his power, but he can't create a universe that has square circles in it because it's not possible, given his nature. So when we say

God is all powerful, it doesn't mean he can do everything. He can do everything that's not logically impossible or that contradicts with his nature. Got it. Frank Turek, how do people find out more? Crossexamine.org. Plus, we have a podcast twice a week. I don't don't have enough faith to be an atheist podcast. We have a TV show. Go to cross-examine.org. There's so much on there. We've got a YouTube channel, obviously, cross-examine.

We have Facebook. We have Instagram, TikTok, the whole deal. Got it. Thanks so much, Frank. God bless you, sir. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening. Everybody, email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

Thanks so much for listening, and God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.