The Eric Metaxas Show - Mark Lanier (Encore)

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

Mark Lanier, one of America's top civil trial lawyers, homes in on a belief system that would not stand up under "legal scrutiny," with ideas explored in a soon-to-be-released book, "Atheism on Trial." (Encore Presentation)

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metaxe. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m. Investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Eric Mettaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey there, folks. I don't know about you, but I'm very, very, very excited about my next guest on this program. How could you be excited? You don't even know who the guest is. Well, now I'm going to tell you. His name is Mark Lanier. And like all of the best people, he's complicated and difficult to sum up. He's on this program today because he's written yet another book. But he's not somebody you would really maybe know as an author. He's written a lot of big deal books.

But he is also kind of a big deal in the world of lawyers. Maybe I can get him to explain to us who he really is. I am really, really excited finally to meet Mark. Lanier. Mark, welcome. Eric, it's such a delight. You, of course, have had a riveting influence in the world, but you've certainly had a riveting influence in my life and in my circle of friends. And so it's an honor to get to be on your show.

Okay, now I know you're lying. And I'm going to tell you that's not going to cut it on this program. We don't blow smoke. A lot of people of faith listen to this program. I will not put up with it. Listen, you really are somebody that a lot of mutual friends have mentioned you and your library there in Houston and stuff. And I thought, I want to cover everything. I want also, obviously, mostly to talk about your new book.

Your book, let me say this out of the gate. It's called Atheism on Trial. A lawyer examines the case for unbelief. So that's the headline, author of atheism on trial. But Mark Lanier, you're not just a lawyer. You've been a very successful lawyer. If you don't mind blowing your own horn, I know you're going to just stick with the facts here. Tell us, if you don't mind, who you are in the world of plaintiff's lawyers, how that works.

Well, by the grace of God, I really believe. I've been given a prominent role. I try the nation's biggest cases. I just finished trying the biggest opioid case, the seminal case, that we won up in Ohio, that was all over the media. I'm the reason of Johnson & Johnson no longer sells baby powder with talcum powder. We upheld the largest verdict in the history of the country related to the asbestos that we found in the baby powder.

If I try cases, I've got over 20 billion in verdicts, which is pretty rare. It's hard to find a lawyer with a billion-dollar verdict, but one who's got more than they can count on one hand, pretty rare. Now, all of that I will only say to say, it's by the grace of God. And it honestly, as Paul would say to the Philippians, is worth rubbish compared to the surpassing value of knowledge of knowing Jesus Christ is my Lord. Well, I have to say, you know, those of my friends who know you know that it's God's grace because they know you're just not that talented. and it's got to be God doing all of this because God can use anyone, including an unprepared rub, I don't know. No, it's kind of funny because we know that it's God.

But also, you know, God creates some people with particular talents. And so it's exciting to get to know you and to know that you're being used by God as a lawyer for very, very many, many important issues and cases. And so it's good to get to know you and people can look you up. L-A-N-I-E-R, Lanier. Yeah. You also, go ahead. Eric, I will say this.

It's fascinating the way God works through all of this, because I get, whether I'm teaching at Harvard, whether I'm teaching at Stanford, wherever I go on a national platform, people ask me, why are you so successful? What is the secret? And I tell all of them the same thing. It's that I believe in a God who has taught us that truth is a bedrocked. foundation of every aspect of life. And I go into a courtroom seeking God's truth. And when you have God's truth on your side and you have a fair jury and a fair judge, you will find success because that's

what our system, our judicial system is supposed to be based on. But having that platform allows me to interact with so many atheists and agnostics, and that's what gave birth to this book. Now, you, as we've been establishing, you are a very, very, very a successful lawyer, but you write books. You teach a very, very well-attended Sunday school class at Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston. So God is at the center of your life, but he's given you a platform where you can tell people about that. And I say this just because one of my central convictions in life is that, you know, we are to live out our families. wherever we are. We don't need to talk about Jesus wherever we go because sometimes, you know,

we're talking about something else, but it doesn't mean that he's not at the heart of what we're doing. And it's just beautiful to know that you're living that out, that you're really living out your faith in these different spheres. Now, writing the books, most people would say, hey, if you're a very successful trial lawyer, when do you have time to write books? Why are you writing books. So what are some of the books you've written? And then I want to talk about your library, which I've heard about it. I've got a retinue of legal books that I've written, either the books or the chapters and all the rest. But that stuff's just an aside. More important to me are the books that I've written related to faith. So IVP,

Interversity Press, has got three books of mine. The first one is Christianity on trial. Or I said, what about the Christian basics of the faith? If I was going to try it, you know, is there a God, what kind of God, the audacity of the resurrection, does this God communicate to us? How would I try those aspects of the faith? Then the second book is this one that's just coming out, and that's atheism on trial. If I were going to try atheism, the third is due out in a year, and my manuscript, in fact, is overdue. And that is one on world religions on trial, especially. the world religion of today in America, which is the nuns, people who say I'm spiritual,

but I'm not religious. And so that book is coming out. I've got a daily devotional on the Psalms that Baylor publishing put out, Psalms for Living. I've got a daily devotional on the Torah appropriate for Jews and Gentiles alike. And a lot of people say, what's a goy like you, doing in a place like the Torah? But it's an appropriate place. And that was also published by Baylor and as a daily devotional text. So those are the main things I've got. I got more in the works, but those are the ones that are out now. Well, I want to talk to you about atheism because, as you know, I've just come out with a book recently called Is Atheism Dead? I've become fascinated with the subject of atheism in a sense. I'd never really looked at it

the way I had in writing this book. So I'm excited to talk to you about your book. But before we talk to you about atheism in your book. Tell us about this theological library of yours. Well, we started with the idea of we wanted an original research facility that would really allow people to pursue truth. So my wife and I are active with the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, getting those published. We're active with a lot of archaeology programs, and we're active with a lot of biblical studies. My undergraduate degrees in Hebrew and Greek, and so we've always had good fascination with those things. So we set up a library. We've got about 106,000 volumes right now. We've got a number of major seminaries that use us as a principal resource. We've got a number of

scholars in residence. We've just opened an extension campus at Oxford, Yarrington Manor. We've purchased over at north of Oxford, still in Oxford Shire. And we're working with Wycliffe Hall, which is part of Oxford University over there, along with Tyndall House, which is up in Cambridge, good friends of ours as well. And so this is our effort to try and speak into the public, but also to have a resource available to train the best scholars that are available worldwide. We bring in lecturers, Eric, we've got to get you in here. I had... You can't afford me. Let me be blunt. You can't afford me, but I'll work with your people. There you go. We had Justice Scalia in. He was a dear friend of mine before he passed. He gave one of our

lectures. It's an incredible story behind that. We've had a number of people, Alasir McGrath, Tom Wright, D.A. Carson, John Piper, Francis Schaefer, son-in-law, Udo Middleman, countless people from across the spectrum, theologically, as well as academically. And it's been a fascinating venture. All of those lectures, by the way, available free for people to download on the Internet. Okay, Lanier Theological Library. Folks, I'm talking to Mark Lanier, and we've just begun, really excited about this conversation. We'll be right back. Hey, folks, I've got to tell you a secret about relief factor that the father, son,

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And when oil prices go up, the cost of transportation and shipping spikes, leading the prices of goods to rise. And when we're already seeing record inflation, that's the last thing we need. Our economy is in trouble, and you need to take steps to protect yourself. If all your money is tied up in stocks, bonds, and traditional markets, you are vulnerable. Gold is one of the best ways to protect your retirement. No matter what happens, you own your gold. It is real, it is physical, it's always been valuable since the dawn of time.

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so you're going to have to stand in line. Mark Lanier, you have a book out about atheism. What prompted you to write a book with a title like atheism on trial? I have so many friends in the legal world who are atheists, and I sit and constantly talk to them about their faith or lack of faith, depending on how you perceive it. And I am amazed that it's not well thought out. And I thought, you know, if they just took the courtroom tools that I used,

every day to try and persuade an unbiased, that's the key to any jury, an unbiased group of people, I don't see how they'd walk away unpersuaded. Because if you think about the American judicial system, and it sets America apart from, I'd say, every country in the world, we have hit the pinnacle of society's ability to best facilitate determining truth. We are so confident that our court's system and its rules will determine truth that will put people to death based upon a jury verdict, that we will change corporate behavior, that we will decide which parent gets a child in a divorce proceeding? I mean, this is the bedrock of truth-finding in America. So I thought, let's take those tools in that approach, and let's use it and put atheism on trial and see where

the jury would stand. Well, it's interesting because I don't get to talk to. many people or anybody who has done in their heads, what I've done in my head over the last couple of years. The same thing. I have been shocked when I wrote my book as atheism dead. I was absolutely shocked. It's almost unbelievable when you look at the evidence and you say, this is open and shut. This is like, let's have a conversation. Did men really land on the moon or was that done in a studio in Texas? Is the earth flat? There's certain things you don't really discuss because it would be ridiculous. The evidence is so, now, we live in a world where people say that about things where the evidence is not settled.

You know, when you're talking about a climate change, when you're talking about Darwin and evolution, although, but there's certain things where, you know, you can have a conversation, but there are people telling you, shut up, shit up, it's settled. You want to get on the right side of history. There's nothing to discuss. But, there's certain things where, you know, you can have a conversation. But there's that is genuinely true on this issue. And when I realized it, I just almost find myself sputtering because I cannot believe the only way you could be an atheist today is to not look at the evidence. If you look at the evidence, you're dead. You're going to have to become an agnostic. And I know that's roughly where you're coming from, but you're a real lawyer who does this. And so talk

Talk us through this. You work with juries. You work with evidence. And you're telling us, when you put atheism on trial, it's not looking so good. You know, Eric, you have hit it on the head. Atheism itself on trial, I make pretty short shrift of that in the book. It actually is a chapter or two and it's gone. Because anybody who's seriously thinking about it has to shift from atheism to at least agnosticism of, I don't know, maybe, maybe not, et cetera. So then that's the preponderance of the book. I then put agnosticism onto trial. And I do it with the principle that we do with a jury every day.

And that is put the evidence in each side, the evidence for and the evidence against, put it in the scales and at the end of the day, make a fair assessment, where is the greater weight of credible evidence? Is it more likely than not one way or the other way? And I think one of the problems that we have is science, we all had to take science and we all had to take math in school. And it's beguiled us into thinking that proof is always something that's done on a chalkboard or in a laboratory. And that is proof for science or math,

but I can't prove that I loved my wife with chalk and a chalkboard. I can't prove who ran a red light without looking at other pieces of evidence and then making a decision what's more likely than not. And that's actually proof. That's called in court a burden of proof. So it's not something where we're asked to say beyond any conceivable doubt, this is absolutely two plus two equals four. It's basically, no, here's the evidence, and what's more likely than not? And when you do that, even agnosticism crumbles under the weight of the awesome evidence. Well, what I find interesting is that I always say this because, you know, I'm in the business of communication and media and so on and so forth. And oftentimes, something is open and shut.

But if everyone doesn't know that it's open and shut, that it's been decided, it almost doesn't. matter, right? In other words, you know and I know that the case for atheism, there is no longer any case. Let's be honest, okay? In 1859, you can make a good case. Sure, you can make a case. In 1966, you can make a case, and that's why Time Magazine comes out with is God dead. But in this day and age, given what we know from science, only from science, you can no longer really make a case. But it doesn't prevent people from blowing smoke, from pretending that they can make a case, or pretending that if you're even talking about it, you're not being rational. In other is, they've conflated rationality with being somehow hostile to faith or with some kind of

scientific way of thinking. I don't know if you talk about that in the book. Yeah, that's the final section in the book is how do we, are faith in science at opposite ends of the spectrum, or are they two books that God has produced that don't contradict each other? You know, the book of science is just as true as the book of faith, and they complement each other quite well. And I look at it not simply from a scientific perspective, but I look at it from a scriptural perspective as well. And that's the final third of the book. It's important because Christians need to understand the Bible does say certain things, but the Bible doesn't say everything. The Bible is God's communication to us about critical things he wanted us to say, and it's in the manner in which he chose to say it.

But you take Moses on Mount Sinai, and Moses gets a dispensation from God. God wasn't as concerned about fixing Moses's science as he was fixing Moses's theology. And so what God presents to Moses is something that theologically is mind-blowing to anybody raised in pharaoh's household with the wisdom of the pharaohs being taught to him. It's mind-blowing. But we lose track of that when we just read it as 21st century people. And as a result, we start pitting science and faith against each other where they don't belong against each other. Well, and again, we have to be really clear. This is a recent development.

And it is, you know, I do have to be clear. It's complete garbage. It's a lie from the pit of hell that faith is at odds with science. People need to understand that it is preposterous, stupid, really offensive when you know anything to say or to accept this assumption, which seems baked into the culture at this point, that somehow faith is at odds with science. It's ridiculous. Science, as we know it, modern science genuinely comes out of Christian faith.

You never hear that. It's an historical truth. You don't need to be a Christian. You know, non-Christians have written about it. But that's, you know, you can understand why I'm so excited that you've written this book because I think we have to make this case over and over and over, and we have to shut down the idea that atheism can be the product of being rational. In this day and age, you can no longer go there.

It seems no longer to be an option. Yeah, I would suggest that biblically the teaching is that science, and the Bible does talk about science, but science is a tool that God has given us to combat this fallen world. And so we have tools to help fight disease, and that's a godly venture that we should be out there doing. We have tools to understand the DNA code, and that's a godly thing. Now, like everything that's godly, it can be abused and be sinful. You know, sex within marriage is a godly, wonderful thing. Sex outside of marriage is something that's destructive and harmful, in my opinion.

And so, but I think that's a biblical teaching in the same way. Science used right can unlock wonders to help us in a fallen world. Used wrong, it can create a nuclear holocaust that can ruin the planet as we know it. You know, it's, but it's, it's a tool that Christians should be trumpeting, not fleeing. Well, it's fascinating to me as well that, you know, and I write about it in my book, but I only discovered it in the course of writing my book. And it really is so clear that science comes out of a Christian understanding of the universe, that what I often say when I do public speaking is I say that those of us who are people of faith,

many of us have bought into this secular way of thinking, even without meaning to. We've bought some of it. We're carrying it around, and we need to purge ourselves of these. It's kind of like lingering falsehoods. There's so much in the culture that even though we are people of faith, we sort of think that there's some problem between faith and science. We sort of have bought into that. Folks, I'm talking to the author of Atheism on trial.

A lawyer examines the case for unbelief. Mark Lanier will be right back. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis, and they have no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have skyrocketed, and when oil prices go up, the cost of transportation and shipping spikes, leading the prices of goods to rise. And when we're already seeing record inflation, that's the last thing we need. Our economy is in trouble, and you need to take steps to protect yourself.

If all your money is tied up in stocks, bonds, and traditional markets, you are vulnerable. Gold is one of the best ways to protect your retirement. No matter what happens, you own your gold. It is real. It is physical. It's always been valuable since the dawn of time. Legacy precious metals is the company I trust for investing in gold. They can help you roll your retirement account into a gold-backed IRA where you still own the physical gold.

They can also ship gold and precious metals safely and securely to your house. Call Legacy at 866-5281903 or visit them online at Legacypminvestments.com. Hey, folks, if you could make money off of abortion or pornography, would you do it? I hope the answer is no. I want to tell you, Robert Netsley, the founder of Inspire Insight.com, he was the president of his local pro-life pregnancy center when he discovered that he owned investments in three companies manufacturing abortion drugs. Well, God helped him to see that he was making money from abortion, pornography, LGBT activism, and the list goes on. And that's why he created InspireInsight.com.

Inspireinsight.com gives you instant access to biblical values data on over 23,000 stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs so you can invest to the glory of God. You need to go to InspireInsight.com today and screen your 401k's IRAs and other investment accounts. I did and I was shocked. Now I'm able to clean out the junk and invest in companies actually doing good things. Go to inspireinsight.com today and register for free. That's inspireinsight.com. Go there. Folks, I'm talking to Mark Lanier.

He's the author of Atheism on Trial. A lawyer examines the case for unbelief. And Mark is, of course, as we've established, a lawyer. Mark, talk to us. You were just sharing with me on the break how right in the beginning of Genesis, there is a passage there that you were sort of exegeting for us. I hate using that as a verb, but I couldn't think of a better one. Go ahead.

Yeah, so it's Genesis 215. And in it, God tells Adam to work and keep the garden or the earth. Now work is Evad in the Hebrew, and it just means to work it, to till it, to tend to the great vines, et cetera. But keep is a Hebrew verb, Shamar. And it's a fascinating Hebrew verb because it means to look at something carefully and determine whether it's useful, not useful, what to do with it, etc. It's the word that's used for a watchman on the watchtower gates

because somebody comes up and they've got to assess, gee, is it safe to open this or not? Who is this? Enemy, friend, et cetera. And that is the biblical charge of science. That is the scientific method. You observe, you form a hypothesis, and then you work to see whether or not it's true.

So you've got the scientific method right there in the original Hebrew, of Genesis 215. So God doesn't have to give Moses and the Israelites a big science textbook. He tells them their responsibility is to go learn the science as he fixes their theology. Why do you think atheists or, you know, self-proclaimed atheists talk about being atheists given what to you and to me is clearly an open and shut case? In other words, you don't have to look very hard to see that atheism is no longer tenable. Why do you suppose we live in a culture, which supposedly we prize truth? We have a court system that you described, a legal system.

And yet, somehow we still have many people seeming to think it's a good thing to say, or it's a possibility that they can float it out there and that they're not going to be attacked. I think there's different groups of people on this. So you can take some of the prominent atheists, you take someone like Bart Ehrman, who seems to exist at this point in his life to denigrate and destroy people who do have faith in Scripture and in God. Bart is someone that, based on my understanding of him, is basically hurt by God. Something bad happened early in his life to one of his loved ones, and he didn't understand why God could do it, and he's punishing God. It's a psychological thing with him that's at play, and he's got to say, I'm not going to admit there's a God because of, dot, dot, dot, fill in the blank.

And maybe I'm wrong in my assessment of Bart, but I know a lot of people who are atheists because they're really just angry at God, because God didn't come through the way they wanted him to in the clutch. And so I think it's an emotional thing with some. With others, I think it's a popularity thing. Christopher Hitchens is no longer with us, but you look at it. at the other horsemen of his apocalypse, and you would see that those new atheists, as they called themselves, were making a boatload of money off of their books and off of the popularity, and it just seemed to be something that with their witty personality and their ready audience, they were able to sell, for lack of a better way of saying it.

But if you try to dig into what they're selling, it doesn't hold water. Whether you're looking at Dawkins or whether you're looking at Hitchens or whether you're looking at Deney or any of them, it just doesn't hold what. In a courtroom, I would destroy it. But in a popular it works. But that's actually the point. In other words, I've been increasingly vocal on this, and I'm sort of encouraging people to be increasingly vocal. Ladies and gentlemen, it's not even close. It's not even close.

The idea that there is no God, that everything emerged randomly, whether the universe, this extraordinary planet, life, it is now open and shut. We know, and we can say that we know that it didn't happen that way, that there had to be an intelligent designer and creator. We can say we know that, but it doesn't stop people from effectively sticking their head in the sand and saying, I don't know that, or coming up with really, really laughable things like the multiverse theory, almost, you know, just writhing away from what is obvious, doing anything or constructing a Rube Goldberg device rather than going with what's right in front of them, just doing anything they can in a sense to escape.

You know, Eric, your listeners and viewers can Google the concept of confirmation bias. It's one of the most well-known biases in our head. It's something I have to deal with in courtrooms all the time and deal with myself. It says that instead of listening to evidence and being fair about it, we have a filter in our brain that filters the evidence to confirm what we already believe. And so you've got a world of atheists and agnostics who have already staked their territory on not believing, and they've got a filter in their brain that will keep them from fairly assessing the evidence unless they purposefully set that filter aside and deliberately engage their brain in a thinking process. Their knee-jerk reaction will always be to filter out evidence against their position. I think a lot of people who say that their atheists are actually scared to death to put that aside and to look at the facts.

And they should be scared. I mean, we know that they really shouldn't be scared, but they have this boogeyman, this idea of what it is to be a person of faith, and it scares them to death. And they don't dare open their minds to it. and they have to be firmly against it. Not a good place to be, but we're going to continue the conversation, folks. I'm talking to Mark Lanier. The book is Atheism on Trial. Hey, folks, if you listen to this program, of course, you've heard me talk at infinitum about my pillow and my friend Mike Lindell.

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And use the promo code, Eric. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Mark Lanier, who's the author of an important book, Atheism on Trial. A lawyer examines the case for unbelief. Mark, one of the things that fascinated me when I was writing my book was this idea that okay, let's say you want to be an atheist. If you follow the dots, it leads to a view of things that is so agonizingly bleak that no one would consciously be able to do that. In other words, I think you have to hold the reality of it at bay and say, oh, I'm an atheist and I'm a happy atheist.

But I always want to say, well, but have you thought about the implications? of your worldview. They are truly horrific. How do people get around that? In other words, if somebody says, oh, I'm an atheist, I'm a happy atheist, what do they say to keep themselves from thinking about the bleakness of a world without God? Because people like Sart and Camus ultimately realized this is horrifying, this can't make sense. But, you know, people tend not to go there. They just tend to say, like Christopher Hitchens, I'm thrilled that there's no God in the guy watching me. I'm free. That's as far as they go. Yeah, that's garbage. You'll get a more honest assessment from Michael Ruse, another atheist who wrote in The Guardian and other places

about, look, there is no morality, there is no truth. This whole thing is fake and fictitious. However, it gives an illusion of meaning to life. So we might as well embrace it, because without an illusion of meaning, truly, we do become so bleak. In a courtroom, one of the things before I can put scientific evidence in front of a jury, one of the things I have to do is get past the gatekeeper of the judge, and their criteria for any scientific opinion to keep junk science out of the courtroom, and those criteria I have to address in front of the judge, you know, has this been peer-reviewed, has this been published, is there an epidemiological support, et cetera, et cetera. In the same way, For a worldview or a view of reality, maybe that's a better way to say it, I think that there are

certain tests that you should apply before you embrace a view of reality. And one of the tests that I propose is, is it livable? Is this a view of the world that I can live or you can live? and I dare say the non-existence of God creates a paradigm, a world, that no one can live. It's not livable. It can't be valid, and our own lives betray its inaccuracy

because we can't live it. We can't live in the reality of that world. It's not possible. Well, when I think of people like Dawkins, I mean, Dawkins is obviously a scientist. When a scientist like Dawkins does philosophy, he really stinks. He's very, very bad at it. But because scientists have, in this culture, been elevated to a kind of secular priesthood,

people tend not to hold them responsible. You saw the same thing with Freud when he wrote his book Moses and monotheism. It's terrible. But because he's Sigmund Freud, people say, oh, Freud, he's an expert. He's a general expert. He's a smart guy. But when I read what Dawkins wrote, my jaw, it's almost still hanging open from the preposterousness

of how he holds, on the one hand, he says there's no God. And then on the other hand, he says, Shakespeare is great, and Christopher Wren's architecture is beautiful. And I thought, what are you saying? You're talking about beauty. You're talking about being moved by things. don't you know that you're just an agglomeration of atoms and that your sense of what is beautiful is meaningless?

But he doesn't seem, it's kind of shocking that somebody as bright as he is, is that bad at philosophy, or maybe he has so many fans that nobody is holding his feet to the fire. Yeah, I think there's a general idea that if someone's an expert in one area, they must be an expert in every area. And our son took his doctorate, as D. Phil, in philosophy, at Oxford University, has his master's from there as well.

And while he was over there and then taught at Oxford, while he was over there, I got to know a lot of his friends and a lot of his people, and I would probe them on this issue because some of them are atheists, some of them are agnostics, and I would say, you know, how do you all accept the fact that you've got somebody who's saying this, who's good in science, but whose philosophy is just terrible? And they laugh, and some of them have said, yeah, he's an absolute hack when it comes to philosophy. But people don't believe that because they don't even challenge it. They just say, oh, that's Dawkins. He's a big scientist and he's at Oxford and they don't realize. But people in the philosophy department consider him a hack. That's just not his area.

Yeah. I mean, and a hack is putting it kindly. I mean, kids in junior high can think more clear. I mean, it's actually an extraordinary thing to see how the world works, how information travels, how ideas are spread and how somebody like Hitchens and Dawkins and I think of them most prominently in this regard, they got away with murder. I mean, it is just, it's nothing less than amazing to see how sloppy their philosophy is, how many holes there are, but nobody seemed to call them on it, including a lot of the people that debated them or people who gave them platforms, you know, to speak. They weren't, seemed not to be called on it very often.

You know, I know we're out of time, but I'll tell you that there's a... So I was trying a benzene poisoning case where benzene had infiltrated the drinking water, and it was 10,000 times the legal limit, and it had caused leukemia in this little boy and a host of other problems in the subdivision, medical problems. So I had it on trial. The oil company that had polluted the aquifer with the benzene put an expert on the stand. And the expert said, you can have benzene water. 10,000 times the legal limit, and it's fine.

That legal limit sets so low, it won't hurt you. And I pulled out a jar, a mason jar that I had had prepared by a chemistry department with benzene 10,000 times the legal limit in it, sealed and certified, and I challenged the expert to drink the water in front of the jury. I said, let's see if you really believe this stuff, or if you're just saying it

because you're getting paid $750 an hour to do so. And he said, well, I'm not going to drink that water. And I said, yeah, I'm sure you won't. And the jury knew immediately the guy was a fraud. I wish sometimes we had an ability to put these people in a courtroom under oath, because what happens would not withstand cross-examination. See, that's exactly the point, is that their only hope is to avoid being confronted

by the facts and or reality. That's their only hope. and we live in a culture that allows them to wriggle free, but not on this program and not in your, not on a courtroom where you're a lawyer. We'll be right back talking to Mark Lanier. Folks, I'm talking to the author of Atheism on trial. A lawyer examines the case for unbelief. That lawyer is Mark Lanier. Mark, just a few minutes left.

Any stories of people maybe who came to faith that you want to share? You know, I was having, I was at a dinner party, not party, it was a seminar. I'd done the keynote speech. I'd seated for the dinner afterwards. And there was an atheist to my right, a lawyer out of Ohio, his name's Mike. And Mike and I were talking and Mike said to me, says, you know, I'm a golden rule atheist. I said, what on earth is a golden rule atheist? And he says, well, I believe in the golden rule to treat others the way you'd like to be treated, but I don't think there's a God. I said, then you're a fool, Mike. And he said, what do you mean?

I said, have you tried the golden rule? Do you think it exists among sharks in the ocean? Well, I won't eat you lest I be eaten myself. I said, the golden rule is only the product of a God who cares about humanity and sees the value in every human being. And so we started this dialogue there. And it progressed and progressed and progressed until finally he had to recognize. He had to totally abdicate everything he'd ever believed and stood for, including the concept of justice.

Or he had to accept that there was a God who gave those true values meaning. And those are the success stories we live for, or right for, I should say. You should punctuate your points, though. You say, and the scripture says, I can drink poison and it won't kill me, 10,000 times. the legal level of benzene. Watch and drink it. Nothing happens. I rest my case. Yeah, Mark 16. Mark 16, verse 16, I believe. Right. But that's not in some of the earlier manuscripts. I want to be very, very clear. Neither is the story of the woman at the well, which really blows my mind, but we don't have time to talk about this. Listen, I want to talk to you forever,

and we're just about out of time. It's crazy. The book is atheism on trial. You have a lot of original manuscript, speaking of which in your theological library in Houston, do you not? Yes, we do. We actually have authentic Dead Sea Scrolls. Oh, man. I know what you mean. I know what you mean. But it's, it is exciting that we who believe in Jesus and the scripture, we live in a world of evidence. We believe in reason. We believe in rationality. We believe in evidence, we believe in these kinds of things, and don't let anybody tell you we don't. They're just blowing smoke, folks. Mark, I hope you're as excited about this as I am.

When I heard that you had come out with a book putting atheism on trial, because I really think we're at a tipping point in the culture, an inflection point. I don't think atheism will be regarded very much longer as, you know, you know, you know, as possible. If you want to say I hate God, you can say that. But to say there is no God, I just, I really think that atheism as we have known it is on the ropes, thanks to science and writers like you. And you, my friend, I can't wait to read your book. And I urge, I mean, I've read so much of your stuff before. So I'm excited to read your book on atheism. And thank you for including me on your show. I'm deeply appreciative.

Well, listen, as I said earlier, we have a number of friends and comments. and we're doing similar things differently, but I'm thrilled to know that you're out there. And I've got to tell my producer, Albin, remind me never to go up against Mark Lanier in a court of law. I got to tell you, man, you scare me. We'll be on the same side. That's another story.

But it really, it's a joy to get to know you. And I'm thrilled to get to introduce you to my audience. That's a big part of why I have this platform is there are folks like you. Everybody needs to know who you are, doing and that you've written these books, atheism on trial, the most recent one. So Mark Lanier, God bless you, and to be continued. Blessings on you, too. Thank you, Eric.