The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – IS HE OR ISN’T HE? A Response to God’s Not Dead by Cliff Somers

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

IS HE OR ISN’T HE? A Response to God’s Not Dead by Cliff Somers https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGKZBPL9 Cliffsomersmessageman.com The book God’s Not Dead by Pastor Rice Broocks so engaged Cliff’s interest and his disagreement with its content that he undertook to write a response (or rebuttal). This book is it. Dealing with such diverse issues as cosmology, theology, and evolution, as well as an examination of what the Gospels of the Bible really say, this book is argumentative and opinionated. However, Cliff respects the pastor (as he refers to Broocks) and has tried to be respectful in his approach. As the book states early on, Cliff is an atheist but not a proselytizer. You may be interested in the origin of the universe, the idea of the tuned universe, the dogma known as creationism, or that known as intelligent design, the question of the meaning to religion of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, or the actual words of the Gospels. If so, this book will intrigue you no matter which side of the fence you find yourself on. Come on in, the water’s fine. Cliff Somers was born in Portland, Maine, a long time ago and lived there until he was 15 years old. He then moved with his family to Florida, which he has claimed as his home state ever since. Cliff spent three years as an enlisted man in the U.S. Army Special Forces and went to Vietnam on an “A” team. He then received his undergraduate degree in English and a law degree from the University of Florida. Thereafter, he served for four years in the Army as a JAG officer where he served as a prosecutor (trial counsel) and prosecuted a nationally known murder case called U.S. v. MacDonald. That case was the subject of a televised series on FX in 2022, in which Cliff appears. He also served as a military judge. From 1972 until 2014, Cliff worked in Tampa as a civil trial lawyer with cases all over the west coast of Florida. In the practice of law, Cliff became a board-certified civil trial lawyer, and late in his practice, he was also a Florida Supreme Court certified mediator. He was listed during his practice in Who’s Who in the South and Southwest, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in America. Because he was English major, Cliff imagined himself as a famous novelist but discovered he lacked one asset for that task: he couldn’t write dialogue for beans. This small problem led him to write the non-fiction (assuming that politics is not fiction) books and the poetry book shown on this website. Cliff lives with his wife, Jennie, in Citrus Park, a suburb of Tampa.

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Today's featured author is brought to you by Majestic Authors Media, specializing in strategic marketing and publishing to help authors reach their ideal audience and maximize their book's success, turning powerful messages into global impact, one story at a time. Today, an amazing young man on the show, we're going to be talking about his book called

Is He or Isn't He, a response to God's Not Dead by Cliff Summers. We're going to end it with him and find out all the deets there. He is a wonderful gentleman, a young man, joining us today, and we're going to be talking to him about that book. He is a former U.S. Army Special Forces Soldier and Jag Officer who served as a prosecutor and military judge. He later practices a board certified civil trial lawyer and Florida Supreme Court certified mediator in Tampa. He was involved in the nationally known U.S. versus McDonald murder case, which later featured an FX television series. He is now the author

of a nonfiction and poetry books and lives his wife, Jenny, in Citrus Park, Florida. Welcome the show, Cliff. How are you, sir? I am well. Give us your dot-coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? I'm on the web at Cliffs Summers Messageman.com. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your new book? Is he or isn't he? Is as it says a response to the book, God's Not Dead? And that book is subtitled evidence for God in an uncertain age.

And my book is about why there is not a single shred of evidence in that book. and people should not be misled by the title or the approach. All right. And so your summation of what you put in the book basically revolves around, is he or isn't he dead, God being specific? What was the, give us some more depth in this book and what it's about? The author of God's Not Dead is a Protestant minister named Rice Brooks. And Pastor Brooks has set forth in his book a series of arguments that he says amount to evidence supporting the existence of God.

It includes things like going back to the watchmaker approach to things like the tuned universe or irreducible complexity. Those are all arguments that are made regularly. On behalf of the people known very well as creationists or intelligent design folks who take the position that these arguments will support evidence, for God. I'm not trying to prove that there is no God because you can't prove a negative. It's not possible. But it is, in my view, also not possible to prove that there is. And I've always been interested in that proposition.

So I read his book hoping that he would show me some evidence. And because I'm a trial lawyer, the word evidence, attracted me. Because I've read a lot of books on this subject. So I wanted to know what is the evidence that could support the proposition that there is a God, not only a God, but as the pastor would have it, an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, personal God. And that's a load of stuff to have to prove. Yeah, it is a lot of stuff to prove. Now, what research did you do in the book to make this all happen?

I read his book several times. I handed him to his book. I read several books by both pro and con, the creationist point of view. Particularly, I read a book by a fellow named Bart Airman, who's a professor of religion at the University of North Carolina. And I read several books of the Bible several times, and I read the gospels, which I comment on in the book. Oh, really? And so you fall in line with what he written as a book, or do you feel it's different? I fall in line with the attitude that there is no way to prove that there is a God, and those things which the pastor sets forth, which I mentioned before, simply don't support the argument. Much of his book is preaching. And so would you term yourself as an atheist, or how would

you describe your faith in what you believe in? Until I got started on this project, I called myself an agnostic. When I got to the point of having to get down to these arguments, it was pretty clear than I'm an atheist. Ah. An atheist. Just like me. So now, were you always an atheist? Was it pretty much this book that inspired you to want to write about this subject? Not at all. When I was five years old, my mother, for reasons I don't remember, was explaining to me that God created the world, which at that time the world was everything, which led me to ask her immediately then who created God? Ah, where's the...

And the response was, he's always existed. That had the effect of a clang. That sounds like the same... sense them. It seems like the same journey I went through, where I was like, this doesn't make any sense, logically, or physics-wise, or science-wise. Yeah.

You get to the argument that the universe is big, complex, incredible, so it must have had a creator. Yeah. And my response is then that this God must be bigger, more complex, and more incredible. Where did he come from? Exactly.

And that leads to an infinite regress. I didn't click on that at five, but it's come to me later. Yeah, I had the same problem. I took a look at what was in the Old Testament, the New Testament. And you look around this world and you see the detail of physics, science, and everything else. And what sort of level of being of intelligence, and development would have to be to create this whole world, this whole universe, really. It almost seems infinite. We don't know the edges of it. But, and then that sort of mastermind

of Einstein times 3, 10 billion, whatever, right, mindset. But somehow he's really like a spoiled brat child in the Old Testament, has a bipolar disorder, always is broke, needs money and he's always killing followers and wiping people off the on earth but he loves you he's kind of needy guy he's kind of needy he's got some he's really got some he needs to see a therapist you think you can afford one he needs to be worshipped yeah he needs to be worshipped all the time and he thinks he's always right and but you think and the other thing too is he's really hyper-focused on whether i you i or you you use a swear word today on the podcast or anywhere for that matter.

And he's really hyper-focused that makes sure that 8 billion people on this planet don't use a swear word or don't do a sin. And you're like, that seemed really anal for someone who would operate at that level. And number two, if they operate at that level of building the universe and maintaining it, where do you get the time? You're like, oh, wait, hold on. I'm getting Bob, Bob here swore. Yeah, Bob and Gold.

Guatemala. All right. Put him on the going to hell list because we love him, but fuck him. He's going to go burning hell forever. But we still love him, I think, or whatever. Just the nonsensical nature of it in illogical aspect is beyond reason. A question that I have is, if God created the universe for the purposes of humanity, why did it take him 14 billion years to get around to it? He was busy, man. He had to stop at the Sizzler Steakhouse and get a meal and stuff. I always love how, I don't know if you dress this in your book,

but one of the other quandaries when we talk about what sort of being this might be, assuming there is a being, okay? Assuming there is a being. And he's at this super IQ level where he can just, I know, flick a wand and, Yeah, lakes. And there's some snakes and 50 million variations of snakes. He's got the magic hands or something. Wasn't that a heart song? Anyway, but this being is evidently has a gambling addiction because he's always broke. You always need your money. And you got to pay him money if you want to get to heaven. And the whole thing just makes no sense. It's funny when I hear a lot of religious people talk. I just go, do you sit down and listen to yourself? Because you really should. And it's what you say, they just babble, repeat, parrot the same lines that they hear everywhere else that mean absolutely nothing. You can hear some people in religion tell you something. You're like, you've talked for half an hour and you've said absolutely nothing of fact, science or reality that's possible in any way, shape, or form.

You're just bat-shitting, parroting these tombs of, but he loves everyone. But you're going to hell and you're going to burn and suffer and miserable for eternity. hellfire, but he loves you. Yeah. That's a kind of weird father figure there going on, man. There's a passage in the Bible that says that all the names were written in the book before the earth was ever created. So the game was rigged before you started.

But a lot of this book is spent by the pastor. arguing that there must be a God because he created us in his image, and we are special. We humans, we are special. We have a supernatural characteristic, and we are not another animal. He can't stand the idea that humans are not special. and that's part of his argument. Don't take that into court. Yeah, don't take that into court.

So you wrote this as an alternative response to his book, correct? I spent a lot of my life as a defense lawyer, criminal and civil. So I spent a lot of time deconstructing arguments. And that's what I did here. And I don't, I'm not trying to convince people out of their religion, but if for people who are maybe on the fence or just curious and pick up this book, I don't think they should be misled into believing that anything in it is evident. With each of the arguments, the watchmaker argument or the two universe argument, I spend time in the book deconstructing those arguments. And so you break them down. What are some of your favorite arguments that you broke down in the book?

The tuned universe argument is the one that some atheists have said they have a certain amount of difficulty responding to. They shouldn't. Because the tuned universe argument is that the universe is full of things like the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force and the weight of the neutron and so forth. that if they hadn't come out exactly this way, the universe couldn't have existed. And there's a couple of things wrong with that, even if you grant that argument, and the universe was tuned,

then it shouldn't have taken 14 billion years to create us. Not only that, we've got 2 trillion galaxies, and who knows how many planets in it, what did you all that for to create us? The other thing is, if you go back to the issue of the Big Bang, which he accepts, by the way, if you go back to the issue of the Big Bang,

the question has to arrive, what came before? Okay, that's a difficult question in the sense that time is a feature of the universe. Would it have existed before? But for whatever preceded the Big Bang, who knows what kind of constraints existed at that time. So both ways the tuned universe does not bother it. And so that's a valid argument in and of itself and what's going on there.

So when did you think Pastor Rice Brooks, is it Brooks, was going on about in his book, God's not dead. Do you think the whole thing was wholesale just wrong, incorrect, or poor, arguments or how would you how would you characterize it there are arguments for theologians there are arguments for people of the cloth they are arguments in his case straight out of the bible and straight out of the new testament and straight out of the gospels he's preaching okay that's all very well but don't quote to me from the bible because i don't believe a word of it and i don't and i don't see any evidence to support any of it now i will say this barb airman whom i have a great deal of respect for does believe that christ actually his name was jesus christ is a

a word for Savior or Messiah, that he does believe that Jesus was a historical figure. He does not believe in the resurrection and he does not believe in the church, which is interesting because he came up as a Baptist and went to his school for an evangelical education and then quit believing him. My point is he believes that Christ was a historical figure, but doesn't buy the rest of it. I have trouble, frankly, with the concept that Christ is a historical figure, because it's based on three or four fragments of writing by other people who existed within a couple hundred years of Christ, but none of them lived at that time.

And if you look at the authors who did live at the time of Jesus, you won't find a word about him. You won't find a word about all the miracles that he did for three years. Not a word. Not a word. It's a pretty interesting conversation you brought in. Do you hear back from those folks? Did you send the preacher pastor your response to his thing? I'm not heard from the pastor.

At one time, I had a I had a website that's a lot better than one I've got now, and I had some back and forth with folks who I loved it. They wanted to argue with me things like the entropy concept and other natural laws, if you will, to which my response always was

those laws can't possibly, apply to the creation of the universe because they are entities within the universe. So I have a number of arguments with folks like that. I loved it because they're thinking, and they're giving me stuff that is worth coming back on. It's not worth my time to deal with the issue of whether humans are special. And if you think that's the cynic that's the cynic Cinequinone for believing in this creator God.

Go for it, but I think you're badly mistaken. Roundabout with the book, give people your final pitch out. Tell them where they can pick up the book and your dot com. And we'll wrap up the show. Well, the book can be picked up on Amazon. It's in several different editions. I just have republished it under my name as a publisher. It will be showing up on Amazon.

In that version, with my name Clifford Summers on the front of it, that's the most recent version. It's also going up on, oh boy, Barnes & Noble, you name it. All right. All right. And it'll come up with my other books at the same time. It's been wonderful to have you on. Very insightful and very good arguments. for atheists out there and and some things that people who believe in God should think about,

you know, because these questions are really valid. It has to logically make sense. If there really was, as far as I'm concerned, if there really was a true God, he would show up. He would be like, ah, right here. Yeah, just mind your manners, be good to each other. I'll come down there and kick your ass. All right. Now, be good to each other. And then that would be it. It wouldn't be this weird game that makes no sense. And the only reason it makes. sense is because it's a game. And that's my belief. But everyone's free to believe what they want and all that good stuff. So have fun with that. Just don't share it if you're not right. Thank you very much for coming the show. We really appreciate it, sir. My apologies for the electronic problems,

but I've enjoyed talking to you. It's been a pleasure to have you, Cliff. And I enjoy your sense of humor. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I enjoy you nailing down these details and asking people the hard questions they need to answer. His book is entitled, Is he or isn't he, a response to God's Not Dead by Cliff Summers, and you can pick that up. There'll be linked for it on the Chris Voss show. Anyway, guys, be sure to support the show. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortresschusch, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, and all those crazy places in it. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your

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