The Sean McDowell Show - Responding to Arguments for God (Q&A with Professors)

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

In this live Q&A with professors, we tackle the toughest "deal-breaker" questions for the existence of God, focusing on the problem of divine hiddenness and the reality of religious hypocrisy. Rather than dodging the hard hits, we argue that God provides enough evidence for those who seek Him without being so overwhelming that He destroys human freedom, while also explaining why a church full of "fallen" people actually proves the need for an objective moral savior. From debunking the idea that science and math are "accidental" to revisiting Nietzsche’s warning about the terrifying cost of killing God, this session is a high-speed intellectual autopsy of the six strongest arguments for a creator. *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

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Life Audio. Gansel, philosopher, author, colleague in mind at Talba School of Theology. Good to have you. We had a live video posted on Friday with William and Craig, who probably most people tracking this know has probably been the foremost defender of the Christian faith and the existence of God for the past three decades plus, certainly on an academic level. He has a new volume coming out in June, where he defends six of the archivist. for the existence of God.

And so we walked through those. I tried to throw the toughest objections at him and invited all of you to post your questions. I have a ton that I've received already, which we will take and some live ones here, live from Talibu School Theology. Dr. Greg Gansel, are you ready to rock and roll? I think we are. Yeah.

Good to be here. Now, maybe tell us just really quickly, as people are getting geared up, just give us a quick background, kind of of who you are and what you teach here. Well, I teach philosophy, and my specialties are in the philosophy of religion. So talking about arguments for and against the existence of God. That's mostly what I do.

I have some other interests. I'm interested in Nietzsche, and he's fun to read and love to be part of the team here at Talbot. Fun to read. So you're at Yale for a while, which is amazing. You're in a few remarkable books, one talking about God is the title, I believe. That is one of my – Thinking about God. I'm sorry.

Good correction. Thinking about God is one of my go-to-be. beginning philosophy books for people. So I would just recommend that one is dynamic. And then your book on desires, give me the title again. It's called Our Deepest Desires, How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspiration. Honestly, Greg, I love that book. I think it's profound, and we talked about it.

But with that said, let's jump into some of the questions and objections we have. And I see some already in the chat. So instead of taking one that people have already sent in, Let's take one live that I see right here and get your take on this. So here's one. If God does exist, why wouldn't he make it much more clear that he does? So this is really what's often called the problem of divine hiddenness. So we could spend the whole show on this, but maybe one or two points from your perspective.

Yeah, I find this a difficult problem because it's asking questions about the intention of God, why he does what he does, and we don't have direct access to this. I think some of the most common answers have to do with God has made his existence knowable for people who honestly seek him. But there's a, he steps back in order to make room for a lack of coercion. version. I think that's a good first step on this. Okay, good. This is from Zach Love. And I would say, it's really interesting that this question comes up, and I feel the weight of it. There's a part of me that's like, yeah, God, just give me more signs. God give me more evidence. So I feel the weight of this question,

but I don't know that we always realize if God makes himself more evident in terms of what we want, what also comes along with that? So it's like we want everything to stay the same. and God to make himself more clear. And I want to say it doesn't work that way. If you go back in the Old Testament when God was making himself arguably more clear, there's a different dynamic and relationship that Israel is with, certainly in the desert, relating to God. And I'm not sure I want some of the other things that came along with that.

Yeah, I think that's a good point because what came along with it is a not quite, but almost a lack of agency, right? There was much less of a sense of personal relationship to God. And it was God interacting with the nation more than with individuals. Okay. And I think that's a good thing about this. And by the way, Moses goes up to get the Ten Commandments relate to God, and they start worshiping a golden calf.

Right. So the problem wasn't the history. hiddenness of God. Not at all. It's a, it's a resistance to submission is, is the problem. And there's also take John 11 when Jesus raises Lazarus. They don't say, oh my goodness, this is a clear miracle. Four days it already stink. They don't want to run Jesus out of town and kill Lazarus. So I think God has done sufficient evidence, but he's not going to overwhelm us. I think that's right. That's a beginning of response. Okay. So there were six arguments. that William and Craig defended, and one of them was classically the Kallam cosmological argument.

Now, we got a bunch of questions just on this, but here's one question that response says, okay, so maybe the universe needs a cause, but the cause need not be God. Well, that is an excellent point, and what makes it excellent is it raises an important feature of almost every argument. for God, not literally everyone. These arguments come in two parts. The first part argues from something observable, something in what we might call the natural world, to an explanation or a cause outside the natural world. The second part is arguing from that cause to the characteristics of God.

Now, in philosophy of religion, when you take a philosophy class, we almost only do the first part of the argument. And so a lot of people complain about Thomas Aquinas' five ways where he goes through these arguments in about 400 words, but he spends the next 300 pages doing the second part of the argument, showing that this cause has the features of the God of the Bible. And so the objection is correct as a stance. You need another argument. Now, in the video, Bill gave...

a few words towards this. He did. What kind of cause does the universe need? It's got to be intelligent. It's got to be powerful. It has to be outside of space and time, not part of the universe. And it has to be a personal agent. And this is because this explains why the universe came into being when it did.

And sometimes I tell my students, When I say now, I want you to raise your hand, but don't do it yet. And then I say now, and they all raise their hands. I said, what was the difference? You willed to raise your hand at the point and to initiate in this way. All the conditions are there for the universe, and it took the will of a personal agent to bring it into being. Okay, so one other seemingly adequate explanation for the origin. universe that is timeless and immaterial and spaceless could be things like numbers or laws of logic.

Right. But they don't have power to cause and act in the way that you did. Exactly. So in some ways, we come to God by a process of elimination. And Bill is, Dr. Craig, is willing to say, look, I just can't think of another plausible candidate that can do this than a God. Now, the objection says, and then we'll come back to some of the questions. by the way, if you have a question, put question the word in caps and then list your question as succinctly as you can and we'll get as many as we can take. The cause need not be God.

I would say the cause need not be the Christian God. So a lot of Muslims have defended the cosmological argument and in fact use Bill's arguments interesting enough. I imagine Jews might, deists might. So it doesn't get us to the Trinity. It doesn't get us the deity of Jesus. It's not supposed to. Right. But it points towards a transcendent, immaterial, powerful, and personal because it takes a person with the will to act as the best explanation we have for the origin of the universe.

So I think to me that's a sufficient response to the cause need not be God. All right. You ready for some more? Yep. Okay. We are jumping right in here. Let's go, you know what? That is a comment, not a question.

Okay, here's another one from Mark. This popped to the top. I see some other questions here. It says, actually, this might be the first one from Mark Corbett. It says, in New Testament, miracles and supernatural experience, i.e. visions, sometimes provided evidence that led to faith. Do you think modern day miracles sometimes play a role, play a similar role today? I think, actually, they do. I think modern day miracles, people being healed and reshield.

response to prayer, other things that we might call miracles, or even fortuitous circumstances in response to prayer can help a person come to see maybe God is actively involved. Maybe God is a reality. And what that does is that opens our thinking to be more open to other considerations, to evidence. And we say, wow, maybe God is really. then I read Bill on the Kalam cosmological argument, and I say, oh, my gosh, here's good reason to think he is real. So it can be kind of a first step for many people of kind of opening their thinking to be receptive to the reality of God. And then various other things, evidence, or what have you, the testimony of others, can provide steps towards coming to belief. That's a great response.

When we ask the questions specifically, do you think modern name miracles sometimes play a similar role today? And my answer is yes. I'm convinced they are. And I interviewed, it's maybe even about a month now, a friend of mine, Dr. Sherriott, who has been kind of called the Billy Graham of Iran, left in 1979 during the Iranian Revolution as a Muslim, became a Christian, and for years has been leading some of the top evangelistic ministry in Iran. And I interviewed him about kind of what was going on update us. And he said, sadly, when there's crackdown in protests, we do see people die. It's tragic. And some of the means that the Iranian government uses are just horrific.

But we also see people being disillusioned with Iran. I'm sorry, with Islam, and an increase of people coming to faith. They get floods of emails. I said, are we seeing miracles and visions? and dreams he looked at me go Sean it's so common today sometimes people don't even mention it that's one testimony yes and they're getting droves of emails droves of people who report to them at a cost for this it's not like you and i say and i saw a miracle and write a book about it whatever and people praise us it comes at a cost for them so i have no doubt that this is happening today

not to mention all the work by keener and our colleague j p morrill and his book on miracles that are happening today, I have no doubt that God is working miracles today and drawing people to faith through miracles. But let us not think miracles are coercive. No, not at all. People saw Jesus do miracles and still didn't believe we're back to the point before. But Birch and Russell famously said, what would you do if you died and were standing before God?

He said, I would tell God not enough evidence. Wow. And I think, you know, he might just do that. that because he was so closed off to the possibility of God's existence. And C.S. Lewis made similar comments about certain people are so hardened in their hearts that even a miracle will not dislodge their skepticism. Well, Pharaoh does come to mind. Yes, I digress.

Yes. All right. So, friends, we're here with Greg Gansel at Talbot School Theology, Bial University, to take in your live questions on the six arguments for the existence. of God, presented most recently by William and Craig, and those will be in his forthcoming volume on a systematic philosophical theology. I think you can pre-order it now, but it's not out for a couple months. Let's take one on the moral arguments.

They came in. The objection was, and then we'll come back to those who are posting them live. So if you have a live question, write, question in, and keep it on topic. We're not doing politics here. We're not doing another biblical exegesis here on the existence of God. Here's one on the moral argument. If moral truths are obvious, why is there so much disagreement? Okay.

I think it's helpful to make a distinction between the concept of morality and the content. So the concept of morality has to do with what do we mean by something is morally wrong? And there's deep agreement about what we mean. If something is morally wrong, we don't. don't do it. In fact, we judge people for doing it. We say, no, you have done something wrong, and that's widely shared. Now, the third thing is the theory of morality. So we have the concept, what do we mean? We have the content, which is which things are obligatory and which things are wrong or prohibited, the specifics. And then there's the theory. What is it that makes them right or

wrong. Now, the concept, there's lots of agreement. And this is what's obvious. What's obvious is that there are things that are obligatory. There's something wrong with me if I don't do them. And we have disagreements about our theory, and that's what gives rise to the moral argument. The claim that a theistic picture is a better theory of morality. There is disagreement about some of the content. actually a small percentage of the content. C.S. Lewis wrote about this in his book, The Abolition of Man. He did. In his appendix where he went through all of the traditions, Taoism, Islam, Confucianism,

and the Enlightenment and drew the great commonalities in terms of moral content. Nobody thinks it's okay to torture a three-year-old. to death just for fun. There's no disagreement about that. When life unravels, hope can feel out of reach. But what if God is still weaving something beautiful? I'm Kirby Kelly. And in my new book, The Fabric of Hope, I want to show you that even in seasons of suffering,

waiting, and uncertainty, God is never absent or far away. Through honest stories and encouragement, this book invites you to see where God is at work stitching the broken pieces of your story with purpose. If you're longing for hope that holds, the fabric of hope is for you. Find it wherever books are sold. There might be disagreements about, in Lewis's terms, do you have one wife or four wives? But nobody thinks you can treat women any way you want to. And so I think there is more agreement than disagreement.

But the fundamental agreement is on the concept, and that's where we find that morality has to be objective. So the question says if moral truths are obvious, you want to make a distinction or clarification what we mean by truths. Yes. So some of the language I would use is I would say moral principles are obvious and moral principles are transcendent. moral practices is where we see some of the differences. Yes. Which would make sense if people have principles and value them or weigh them a little bit differently as things shift over time. The practice is not the concern.

The question is the principles. Well, you can think of it this way. We have principles widely shared, like show respect to other human beings. There you go. How we do that is varies in some ways by culture. Do you shake hands with a person? Do you bow? There are different cultural practices for showing respect, but there are different ways to fulfill the principle.

There's something analogous here, I think. Good stuff. So I think the bottom line is nothing follows from disagreement. So this is true historically. speaking, there's some disagreement about the Holocaust. There used to be minimal. Now we're actually seeing more and more because of artificial intelligence and because of certain talk shows and other means of technology.

If disagreement, like, grew bigger, that wouldn't mean there wasn't a Holocaust and there wasn't an objective truth about it. Nothing falls from disagreement scientifically. No. The 20th century was a huge battle, so to speak. over the beginning. And there's a new book called Battle of the Beginning. Just had Stephen Meyer in studio, a little plug.

We've got him coming on soon to review this fascinating book. There's huge debate. In fact, in this book, there's 25 different theories about the origin of the universe. And Meyer thinks they all fail and they all assume some kind of information or design to get rid of the origin of the universe, which is the very thing the origin of the universe points towards. So the mere fact that there's disagreement doesn't tell us that there was or wasn't a beginning to the universe. There's still a truth about it, even if we debate it. And this is a very important point, right?

Disagreement does not render a subject matter relativistic or subjective. Good way to put it. It just doesn't happen. That's great. Good stuff. Okay, wow, we've got some other objections here. Let me, or questions here. Let me go to the live ones.

If you have a question for Dr. Gray Gansel or myself, write question in caps. And we'll do our best to tackle it here. Boy, I see some really good questions here. So you've done some work on Nietzsche. And you've written on Nietzsche. You're teaching a class on Nietzsche. Before I come to this question, could you say a little bit, who was Nietzsche? And why is his thinking so important when it comes to questions related to the

existence of God? Well, you know, Nietzsche was a late 19th century thinker. He was trained as a philologist, the study of the history and nature of language. But he really became a philosopher in his writing. And he is provocative because he's an iconoclast. He writes with broad, sweeping, poetic brilliance. And he tackles the value of things that nobody questioned. So in his day, there were a lot of atheists, but he challenged the atheists of his day because he said, you're not taking your atheism seriously enough. You're still clinging to Christian morality when if you're going to give up God, you really need to give up traditional morality. And of course he thought there was no God. He lost his childhood faith when he was in the equivalence of high school.

His father was a Lutheran minister. and I think part of the reason, this is a tangent, he lost his faith, there were several things, but one of them was there were no Christian scholars that were answering the objections he got from his academic work. Really? And I think if there had been some, maybe he would have had an answer. It's not the only thing that was happening. But he took very seriously what he called the death of God. And it's not that God used to be alive and now he's dead, but the very idea of God is preposterous.

And we've given all of that up. But he says the shadow of God lingers, and it lingers in morality. It lingers in this assumption that every human being is entitled to equal dignity. He was a very anti-egalitarian. And so it's very interesting. And he gets co-opted. He gets co-opted by the hard left and the hard right. That's interesting.

So it's a fascinating study. One of the things I appreciate about Nietzsche, unlike the new atheist movement, is it was kind of like, we can get rid of God and we have a wonderful society and go on a life will be better. Nietzsche's like, no, you get rid of the God and human value is gone. Human meaning is gone. like he walks through the cost of what getting rid of God and hence this madman analogy we have madman we have killed God now what's going to follow from that that's what I love about Nietzsche

here's a question this is not where I thought this was going person said Freda Nietzsche said and I believe he said this you can correct us if this is not true I might believe in the redeemer if his followers looked more redeemed if God exists why is there so much hypocrisy in the church. So first off, are you aware of the Nietzsche actually say that or something like that? If not, let's just shift to the hypocrisy question. Well, I don't recall where that is, but it wouldn't surprise me if he said that. He filled his books with little sayings like this. One of them is, it's surprising that if God wrote his book in Greek, he wrote it in such bad Greek, which is kind of a funny sentence. The hypocrisy,

question is fascinating because if Christianity is true, we should expect the church to be filled with hypocrites. And it's because we're all fallen, that's a theological term, we all have this rebellion against God, and that's why we need a Redeemer. And the working out of our redemption is something that takes place over time, and we fail, we mess up, and we're, we're we only imperfectly in this life live into what it means to be a follower of Christ. And so I should expect there to be a lot of failures in the church. On the other hand. Yeah, I was wondering if you're going to balance this one out.

Okay. On the other hand, it's a stereotype that people who are followers of Jesus don't care about the poor, they're selfish. but actually all of the studies that have been done show the opposite is the case. The most involved people are the ones who are followers of Jesus. The people who sacrifice the most, even donate the most blood, are faithful followers of Christ. So it's an easy stereotype to try to put forward, but it has no grounding. in fact. I'd like to ask people, why are all the hospitals named Saint somebody? Well, it's because Christians built the hospitals. It's just a fact of history.

You know, I resonate somewhat with this objection, because the Bible talks about how we are a new creation in Christ, and we have the Holy Spirit inside of us. And there's so many people who have genuine experiences with self-proclaimed Christians. in which those Christians don't reflect that. Now, it's hard to not say, well, here's just a narrative. It's hard to quantify this. But I get the objection because it's like if this is really true and we're a new creation, there should be a qualitative, noticeable, transcendent difference in the life of Christians that we often don't see.

Now, with that said, I agree with you that, you know, the Bible, will talks about, you know, Romans 3 and Mark chapter 7, how fallen and corrupt the human heart is and how all of us are capable of the most egregious, worse sins imaginable because of human depravity. So in some ways, we shouldn't be surprised when we see hypocrisy because a Christian depiction of human nature is that we're made in God's image and have infinite dignity and value and worth, and yet we have been profoundly and deeply corrupted by sin, and that new creation begins here, but it's not completed until the next life. The other thing I would say is the idea of hypocrisy also assumes an objective moral norm that we

should follow. I had a – it was a friendly debate with a guy – I think it was 2018 – up in Portland, who was on the unbelievable show, and we're talking about the moral argument, and he was a subjectivist. And I said, you know, your whole focus of your, I don't think you used term ministry, but your life is like to find mistakes in hypocrisy,

examples of hypocrisy and Christianity and call him on it and shame it for him. You know, that only makes sense if there's an objective moral code. He goes, I'm not appealing to objective morality. I'm just trying to point out hypocrisy. And I said, because you think that's objectively wrong. Yes, exactly.

And it wasn't meant to be a gotcha moment. The audience kind of laughed because they saw it. And so if you're saying, you know, if you're an atheist or whatever your worldview is and you're criticizing Christians for hypocrisy, part of me says, yeah, we're guilty. We fall short all the time and I mourn when I do myself and others do. But that only makes sense if there's an objective moral code and humans are supposed to live a certain way. which kind of points towards design and objective moral law giver. On top of that, I'd say if you're against hypocrisy, you know the most famous influencer who critiqued hypocrisy was Jesus. So you're in good company with Jesus if you don't like hypocrisy.

All right, keep the questions coming. Let's try – maybe you want to try one on fine-tuning. Sure. So again, we're live taking your questions, objections about arguments for the existence of God. and this is a follow-up from the video I posted interviewing, though one and only William Lane Craig, laying out his six arguments for God's existence. We've done morality. We've done the cosmological argument.

One of the other arguments is the fine-tuning argument, and there's a bunch of arguments that are responses we got here. One is what's called the Anthropic principle. And this is a common one. I get this whenever I speak on college campuses, is that we can only observe a universe consistent with our existence. So we wouldn't see ourselves in the universe that's not fine-tuned. And so the fact that we're in the universe that is fine-tuned,

we shouldn't be surprised because we couldn't find ourselves anywhere else, but in a universe that's actually fine-tuned. Does that explain away the fine-tuning of the laws and constants of physics? Well, I think not, as you're not surprised. I think it's kind of saying, given the fact we exist, we're not surprised that we have a universe that's fine-tuned for life. Well, the question is, how unlikely is it that a universe is fine-tuned for life? We kind of bracket our existence. We kind of have to take ourselves out of our universe and say, look, of all the different ways a universe could have been generated.

it's extremely unlikely that there's one fine-tune for life. But of course, given that we're here having the conversation, we're not surprised we live in this kind of universe, but it does nothing to take away the immense improbability of this happening by chance. So good response. I think there's a confusion here between necessary and sufficient conditions. So for us to exist and observe the universe, it's necessary that we are in a universe that is fine-tuned for life.

But that doesn't explain how we actually got here. It's not sufficient to account for why the universe was fine-tuned in the first place. Exactly. That's the problem of what needs to be explained. And so I think of another example that's calmly thrown out there is the marksman example. I forget the name. someone's going to cite it here that it came from. But if you have 100 marksmen aimed at somebody to assassinate somebody,

he aimed at like their heart, and the person, they all miss, and he goes, oh, my goodness, here I am. Well, this explains why they missed, because if they hadn't missed, I wouldn't be here to be surprised. That's a good example. Yes. And the answer's like, okay, wait a minute. The fact that they all missed, either somebody put blanks in all of them.

Right. Maybe there's an invisible force. field, maybe they told him to miss. The fact that he's here doesn't explain why they missed. That's the same with us in this universe. We still need an explanation why we're here in the laws are fine-tuned, and we need an explanation why this person who's being put to capital punishment is not dead, and all the marksmen missed.

So the explanation goes the other way, right? He's here because they missed. That's part of the explanation. and we could say the same thing. We are here having this conversation because the universe is fine-tuned. Now, that's not the whole. When life unravels, hope can feel out of reach. But what if God is still weaving something beautiful?

I'm Kirby Kelly, and in my new book, The Fabric of Hope, I want to show you that even in seasons of suffering, waiting, and uncertainty, God is never absent or far away. Through honest stories and encouragement, this book invites you to see, where God is at work stitching the broken pieces of your story with purpose. If you're longing for hope that holds, the fabric of hope is for you. Find it wherever books are sold. A fine-tuned universe gives the possibility of life.

And the very intelligent designer that designed the universe also oversees the creation of every human being. But part of the story of why you and I were created by God, is one of the conditions for that is a finely tuned universe. One of the necessary conditions. Necessary conditions. Okay. I see a comment here, and I want to go to you know, I hope I'm reading it in context. There might be a larger conversation that I'm missing.

So let me just read this, and you can weigh in. This individual says, Nietzsche was wrong to say nonbelievers have to give up Christian morals. If there's no God, where does Christian morals? come from humans. Why not listen to other humans, Nietzsche? If I'm reading this correctly, and it's not a part of a larger dialogue, this individual is saying, even if there's no God, we could still have Christian morals because they come from humans, not from God. Well, there's something true about this objection, or it's actually phrased as a question. And we could decide we want to live a certain way. Let's say we become convalued.

convinced, and it's in fact true that there is no God. So what we were calling Christian morals have no transcendent source. It's just an invention of human beings. We could discover that fact, and we could sit around and say, yeah, but, you know, we kind of like those morals and decide to live accordingly. But there would be no obligation. The obligation goes away. And one of the thing Nietzsche is doing is he's asking the question, Are these morals good for human beings?

Are they good for flourishing? And he has a long story about why he thinks they're not. And that by itself, if they're not grounded in something transcended, is reason to reject them. So Nietzsche would differ with like the Harvard Flourishing Project. Yes. That seems to argue things like gratitude and forgiveness and other Christian virtues really lead towards positive mental health, relationships, etc. So that's not a transcendent argument.

No. He's saying on a practical, prudential level, they don't lead to flourishing, so give them up. It's because morality, now I'm speaking for Nietzsche here, morality obligates us to put our own desires down in order to serve the weaker. And so what we're doing is we are turning away from strength and towards weakness. And we've, in a sense, changed our whole vocabulary. We don't call people weak anymore. We call them needy and we have an obligation to help them. And he says, there's no reason to do that.

There are strong people and there are weak people and the strong people should be strong. So I'm going to read this again and clarify it says Nietzsche was wrong. The non-believers have to give up Christian morals. If there's no God, where do Christian morals come from? Humans. Why not listen to other humans, Nietzsche? And the answer could be they're welcome to listen to other humans. You don't have to give up Christian morals if there's no God.

But now the moral project is not about discovering the way the world really is and what our obligations are. it's totally prudential. How do I want to live? Yes, exactly. So it's subjectivist. Now, I can keep Christian morals, or I can take Nietzschean morals, or I can become a utilitarian, or I can become a nihilist. If there is no God, and this is a part of Nietzsche's own reasoning, by the way, then deciding

between moral systems is prudential, is driven by power. It's not by driven what is objectively right or best. better than another way of actually living. Exactly. That's what I think the key is. So you're welcome to live a Christian morals. What you can't say is this is a superior morality than something else or inferior by that same reckoning. Well, not morally superior.

Morally superior. But Nietzsche is going to say it is prudentially, as far as human flourishing is concerned, inferior because it pushes against our design. It pushes against pursuing what we want, and it's against flourishing. It's anti-life. And so that's not a moral judgment. It's kind of a prudential judgment on morality for Nietzsche. Good, good stuff. Okay, friends, if you have a question, right?

Question in caps related to the existence of God, the truth of Christianity. We will weigh in on this. Gosh, I see a few here. Let me see. I see a comment. Okay, here's one. Let me read this one before I read. Oh, one of my students is messing with me. He smiled. I knew it. I knew it. Armand, good to see you, man. That's awesome. He says, if someone acts immorally but still keeps their job well, to what degree should we be skeptical of that person's Tilos for doing their job well from Armin, your student? He's just messing me. In the apologization program, Armand, good to have you. Hey, tell us really quickly, by the way, I've been meaning to write a substack post on what I consider one of the most important skills to develop for apologists, which is to learn to think philosophically. When I did the MA field program here, Greg, it was before you were here. I was a student, obviously before I was teaching. It was transformative to me.

My wife, my first memory with her was in third grade. And she can point to probably three times in my life. She's like, I saw your faith most come alive and it was transformative. I'll save the other two for another time. But one of them was when I studied philosophy here, which some of the philosophical courses will be in the apologetics program. Right. But just kind of quickly tell us, how's that program doing? What would people get if they studied at M.A. feel in person or by distance?

I think one of the great things is clarity of thinking. And clarity of thinking, we're taught this by having to read. read texts, especially texts that are arguing against Christianity, or on all kinds of topics, really closely and clearly what exactly is being claimed and what exactly is the argument. And then to put forward arguments to engage these things, either for or against, but fairly and charitably. And the clarity of thinking that you learn from reading and writing, philosophically is invaluable. So you learn the skill

of listening to someone and saying, okay, I think this is the point. There's an assumption here. And then responding, another skill apologists need is responding gently

and carefully. And I think philosophy can help with that because philosophers tend to disagree all the time and it doesn't bother them. And they're okay with it. They're okay with it. But you also nuance certain things and don't overstate things.

They don't overstate. Exactly. For my audience, a lot of your responses so far, I want them to see how you're like, I understand this. There's something forced about this. There's pause about this. You've given very charitable responses, which I think is wonderful and which is what we try to do here. But I'll never forget this.

One more story, and then I'm going to come back to some more questions here. when I was studying an MFA program, we had a professor named Gary Deweese, who was here for years, you know Gary, expert in time. And I asked him, I said, if we don't have certainty about what truth is, how do we know that truth even exists? He looked at me, he said, Sean, is it possible that you're confusing metaphysics and epistemology? That's all he said. And that opened up an entire realm for me. oh my goodness the question is not how do we know right and wrong the question is not can we be

moral that's not an interesting question the question is where does morality come from is it binding is it obligatory does it exist ontologically and metaphysically that unlocked an opening for me today very good so historically if i can't tell a certain fact doesn't mean there's not a truth about it right The lack of knowing or being certain doesn't take away from the existence of truth. And that is a nuance I go to all the time. Like even in questions today, so much of this gender debate, people are like, well, I can't tell with that individual. Is this person male or female doesn't mean the person is not male or female? It doesn't mean there's not a truth.

Maybe it's because of how somebody dresses or acts or whatever the reason is. the fact that I'm not sure about something doesn't mean there's not truth. That was a game-changing thought I could tell many, many more. Well, let me comment on that because it's crucial to recognize that certainty is kind of a subjective confidence. And that goes up and down with how many slices of pizza did I eat last night? My confidence goes up and down for many reasons. And that is not a reliable indicator of the strength of the object of my faith. And so sometimes we're trying to get something out of certainty that really doesn't belong there. And we can say, well, of course I could be wrong about this. But boy, this seems like really good evidence. And I'm holding this view of

whatever the topic is. That's such a good nuance. Certainty is really just about my own psychological confidence. Yep. You can be certain and right. you can be certain and wrong. You can be uncertain and right. You can be uncertain and wrong. Exactly. Certainty is neither necessary nor sufficient for having truth. Exactly.

Well said. In fact, on a lot of things when somebody is certain, including myself, it's actually suspicious that where does that level of confidence come from? Except the claim that burning children alive for fun is right? I am certain that that is wrong. Now, I asked you that because I wanted to shift back towards the moral argument. One that often comes up, and someone has written about this, is called the Youth of Froh dilemma. This has taken us back to the Youth of Froh dialogue with Socrates and Youth of Roe, I don't know, three centuries at least plus before the time of Christ.

Explain what the Youth of Frode dilemma is. And by the way, for those watching, if you haven't heard of this, I know many of my audience, has, this comes up all the time in conversation, and then give your response to it, if you will. Okay, so briefly, Uthafro, Socrates begins asking Uthro for his understanding of holiness or piety. And there's a context for that, which we won't get into. Sure. And one of the responses he gives is what is pious is what all the gods love. And then Socrates asked the question, which is the dilemma.

is it pious because they love it or do they love it because it's pious? And that gets translated into contemporary monotheism by saying, is what's right, right because God commands it, or does he command it because it's right? And it's a dilemma because both horns of the dilemma are supposed to lead us into a problem. If God commands us because it's right, then it seems right and wrong is independent of God. But if it is right because he commands, his commands is what makes it right, then you think he could have commanded anything. It's arbitrary. It's arbitrary. And so that's the dilemma. And the assumption is that the alternative is that it's the command, or you could say the will of God that's doing the

work rather than the nature of God. And so all the way along in the Hebrew scriptures, the New Testament and the Christian tradition, it's who God is that is the ground of what's good. And God commands in accordance with his character. So his commands aren't arbitrary at all. He commands in terms of what his good purposes are. And so some of his commands are very specific, but they're not arbitrary, right? They keep holy the Sabbath. Well, it's not arbitrary because it's consistent with his goodness. And honor your father and your mother.

It's consistent with his goodness. So it's not that, oh, I wish God had commanded me to ignore my father and my mother. And he could, why didn't he do that? Well, so the dilemma goes away pretty fast once we see that goodness is grounded in the nature of God. This is such an interesting dilemma. I think you captured it well that if something, if God commands something because it's wrong, there's a standard outside of God. If something's wrong because God commands it, it's arbitrary. So either there's something above God or morality is arbitrary.

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life. But what if, even here, God is still working to create something beautiful. Through honest stories and encouragement, the fabric of hope invites you to see your story through a new lens, one where your hard seasons have purpose and your waiting isn't empty. If you're longing for hope that will never unravel no matter what comes your way, the fabric of hope is for you. Find it wherever books are sold. The horns of the dilemma, so to speak, and say it's not a-or- be it's actually C exactly and a Christian response has this built into and of course this came three centuries roughly after the time of Plato and Socrates but built into it is that God is good God is just God is holy just like the number two is essentially even and it's an integer

God is essentially good. That's what it means to be God. Exactly. And his commands flow from his decision rooted in his good moral character. Yeah, exactly. So the dilemma is escaped. I actually had on this channel, on Michael Sherron, I don't know, maybe 8, 10, 12 months ago, I sent you the link when it was out.

We did a response to it now that I think about it. And he raised this objection. And I said, here's my response. Tell me what you think. He paused and he goes, yeah, I think that works. And we moved on. Oh, my gosh.

Okay. Please don't bring this up again in another debate. I didn't say that. I wanted to. I was tempted to. But I don't know. If it doesn't work and you're here in the comments, let us know. But I think it at least minimally avoids that dilemma.

Now, here's a great one. On morality, I'll be honestly, one of the arguments that William Lane Craig made was about the applicability of math. Right. That's a little bit above my pay grade to weigh into some of the details. details that haven't spent the time studying that. So let's do one more on morality, then maybe we'll shift to one of the other arguments. Because this one popped up. Tilly Greenwood, 83, he says, why does objective morality have to come from God?

Why not a result of evolution? Now, I have some thoughts on this. Do you want to weigh in or do you want me to lead? You tell me what you think. Well, I'll say a few things, and then I want to hear thoughts. So the evolutionary theory of morality goes something like this, that, that, over the along the developmental scheme. Now, we're talking about evolution with a capital E, no guidance, unguided evolution. So some kind of neo-Darwinian naturalistic story that accounts for all the

complexity and diversity without God. That's not what's always meant by evolution, but presumably that's here. Because otherwise, if you have a theistic evolution, it wouldn't be an objection to God being the author of reality. So, and then what happens in the development is, is certain communities of what you might call proto-humans, which I don't know what that means, but it's a cool word. So you should always use it, right? Learned how to cooperate together, and those communities survived better.

And so the survivability was not a function of individuals, but communities partially in virtue of their cooperation. So an instinct to cooperate was selected, for and gets passed down. And so we had this deep hunch to cooperate and treat others with respect. Now, the problem with the evolutionary explanation of morality is it doesn't explain morality. It explains why we might have developed into the kind of people that had moral feelings. But it says nothing about real morality, objective morality.

All it says is this is how we became the kind of people that thought sharing was better than being selfish. Cooperating was better than being a radical individual. And but there's no grounding for objective morality. So you could get a prudential value system out of it. Look, it's good for the human race to survive if we cooperate. Now, one of the other problems,

with it is the human race has survived pretty well. We don't need those rules anymore to survive, right? Nothing you do or I do is going to damage the survival prospects of the human race. So the purpose is no longer germane to the story. So that's kind of a quick take on it, but I'll love to hear what you think. That's great. So I want to read the question carefully, and I have the advantage of having it in front of me. It says, why does objectorality have to come from God. My answer is not that it has to, but God offers the best explanation for objective morality. Now, what do we mean by objective morality? We mean by objective morality that there are certain moral truths embedded in the world in a real way that are not mind dependent. So that Greg

Gansel is a certain age, has a certain way. You don't have to. You don't have to. to tell us either of those. They're both larger than they should be. Well, we'll leave it there. There's a mind-independent truth about that. History, there's a mind-independent truth. Math, there's a mind-independent truth. Objective morality says there's mind-independent moral truths.

Exactly. And so if you and I say, we're going to agree that 2 plus 2 equals 5, we're objectively wrong because there's a truth outside of us in the object, not the same. subject. Well, if everybody agreed that the Holocaust was right, it would still be wrong, objectively speaking. That's what we mean by objective morality. It's a feature of the world as opposed to a feature of subjects. Or maybe a feature of reality. A feature of reality. The world makes it seem like it's a physical thing. Yeah. And I would I would say, yeah, fair enough. We can leave it at that. I agree, I agree with that. Okay, so what other candidate can ground, for example,

free will that we have choice? Morality assumes that we can make choice. When I say you should do this and not do that, as Kant said, ought implies can. What else grounds human value? What else gives us moral obligations to behave a certain way? Moral obligations come from an adequate authority. So let's back up and try to explain those three things by evolution. How exactly does evolution give us free will? Now, we can spin a story that once you have free will, it gives you an evolutionary advantage. But now we're back to the anthropic principle of basically saying, well, I shouldn't be surprised that I'm here because I couldn't exist, the universe for which is not fine-tuned, it doesn't actually explain it.

There's no, and I'll be dogmatic about this, there's no adequate evolutionary explanation to explain how material beings can become free. And this is why Michael Schumer's like, it kind of pops into existence. It's an emergent phenomenon, and we debated that, people can listen to it. What about human value?

Where does human value come from on evolution? I don't know how some physical process generates something immaterial like value. And third, obligations. Where does that come from? Now, on evolution at best, we could feel like we have free will. Right. We could feel like we have value. We could feel like we have obligation.

But all those are tricks being played on us to get us to survive and don't actually ground objective morality. By the way, Darwin said, I don't have the quote in front of me, I have to find it, but he kind of made a reference about the beehives. Like if, you know, if we had evolved differently, we would act more like bees the way they treat other hives than way we consider inhumane. In other words, saying evolution is an accidental process. And if we were around the clock, we might have very different moral prescriptions about what we think is right and wrong, which tells us that evolution by its nature, is subjective and it's whim to change and it's not actually objective. Well, the morality that you might derive from it is going to be subjective.

I mean, evolution is a theory about what an objective phenomenon. I'm just doing a vocabulary thing. You're a philosopher. You're nuanced. Yeah, it's about an objective phenomena. But the question is grounding objective morality. Yes, that's what it can't do. That's what it cannot do by definition.

All right, good questions there. Oh, my goodness. We might have spent a little longer on that one than we should have. That's on me. All right, I'm skipping down to the bottom to see if there's more specific questions here. Somebody said, Sean McDow, Kenham, Hugh Ross, and others all had a debate that you should be able to find on YouTube. Someone brought this out of thing. It was like 15 or 20 years ago.

I think Eric Hoven was on that debate. I think John Bloom, our colleague, was on that debate. I think maybe Ray Comfort was there on TV. BN. This is bringing back memories. That was really interesting, like 20 years ago. Somebody says, I'm a young earth. I'm in the earth camp with Ken Hamann answers in Genesis. Thanks for watching. Would you be willing to invite Camham on the podcast for a spawn debate William Lane Craig or you? I'm not interested in debating anybody on the age of the earth. That's not a topic that I spent a lot of time weighing into. I doubt William Lane Craig would want to have that debate with anybody.

on the age of the earth. I've had William Lane Craig on. I've had two other shows with the Young Earth Creationist you can find, who laid out his critique of William Lane Craig. So my only point is I probably won't host that debate, but I have had both sides represented on my program. I've had William Lane Craig more because he's a colleague and I love his work, but I distinctly have had Young Earth Creationists on to make their case

and offer a critique and a different perspective, Dan William and Craig holds just for the sake of dialogue. So I'm not sure I do it in the future again if I want to focus there, but have done that certainly in the past. Let me see here. Oh, this is another mark. You got a ton of questions here, my man. These are good.

I see some other ones popping up here. He better be an apologetic student or he should apply. He might. Let me see this phone. I want to ask. Oh, here's an interesting question. Okay. I'm going to ask you this one.

And I'm going to weigh in here, too. This is really interesting. By the way, thanks for the person who's young earth creationist and who's watching. Hope you find value here. Okay. The parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 is a model of morality. If it is, why does God not follow it? God is like the priest and the Levi.

right. God does leave injured people to die by the roadside today. I can weigh in with some thoughts here again. I don't want to throw all these on you, but if you want to jump in, you decide I'm happy to go first. Well, let me hear your thoughts, and then I'll weigh in. Okay, so the parable of the Good Samaritan is a parable for people to follow, namely followers of Jesus of what it means and looks like to love your neighbor. For us, how we navigate our relationships, we have duties that come from God's commands. These same duties don't apply to the God of the universe who set everything up, sees the beginning from the end, sees every choice, doesn't have somebody giving him duties how he is supposed to behave.

So there are many times where we can say, well, what is God like? We'll say, well, a parent will help us understand God. So we can take some truths from our life and our example and we're lame to God, but they only go so far because we're finite. God is infinite. We don't know everything. God knows everything. You know the infinite differences between the two of us.

So I don't think, in fact, if God stopped everybody, from ever suffering, the world would quite literally end. We couldn't have free will and life and follow him. We'd also lose what it means for us to grow and mature and develop as human beings and express his love because God is doing all of that for us. That's a few things that come up in mind. I've never heard the question phrase like this, but agree to disagree, what would you add, tweak?

I think what you're saying is absolutely right. I think there are a couple of things. One, in the story, which is a parable, right? That's true. The priest and the Levite have one chance to help, and the Samaritan has one chance to help. But in the story of God's dealing with the world, a person in need story is not over with one chance. Furthermore, our stories are not over when this life ends. and there is promise for followers of Jesus that we will be healed and we will be restored

in the new heavens and the new earth. But this winds up being a subset of the problem of evil question. So why does God step in here and not here? The fundamental answer is, in a particular case, I don't know why. but does that by itself constitute good evidence that God isn't good or God doesn't exist? And there's been a ton of work done on the problem of evil. Yeah, I remember the – oh, sorry, did I cut you off? Go for it.

I remember the first time when I was in college, I did this thing called a communication seminar. I was a sophomore, maybe junior here at Biola, and it was six weeks with crew. And they'd set us on this panel, and then the crew staff would grill us to get us used to. answering tough questions. And I hadn't even graduated undergrad, let alone Talbot, I think, at this point. And I remember one of the professors is like, you have a duty to stop somebody who's drowning. And if you don't, we think you're morally bankrupt. God watches people drown every single day and does nothing. Are you better than God? And I sat there, Greg, and was like, uh, next. I'm pretty sure I'm not better than God. I had. I had.

no response and it kind of haunted me yeah and and i think it's a fair question the problem of evil is the most emotion filled and fair logical challenge to god's existence that we have to concede there's a lot of things we don't know an answer to and this would take us aside but part of my response is need a daily spark of hope and direction let the daily bible app from salem media be that spark this free android app delivers an uplifting verse each morning plus reading plans, devotions and trusted podcasts from leaders like Joyce Meyer and Rick Warren. Prefer to listen instead? The Daily Bible app reads verses, reading plans and chapters allowed, handy for the headphones moment of your day. Choose from versions like ESV, NIV, NIV, KJV, and more,

and bookmark favorites to revisit later. Share inspiring messages with loved ones right from the app. Feel God's presence in every notification. Search for Daily Bible app on Google Play and begin your day with hope, purpose, and peace. It's very different for human beings who live in this world to have an obligation to care for one another, where God wants us to learn how to love and become more like his son, and God deciding, every time somebody's suffering, I'm going to step in and stop this. That would completely change the world. And in fact, I would lose free will every time I use free will to even do something not loving.

So it's a fair question. I don't always know why God heals this person, doesn't heal that person, saves this person, doesn't save that person. But we can't have life anywhere like we do if God were stepping in all the time and stopping things. So clearly God thought it was worth it for there to be the kind of life that we have. which includes giving us commands that he himself operates differently for the larger collective good. You can think of it this way in the creation story. We're given a task, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. And so that task is to build culture, to explore and build.

But we can only do that if the world is stable. And if God intervened miraculously is what we're talking about, in in rapid motion, the world would be chaos and that purpose would be lost. They'd be impossible for us to have meaningful action in the world. Well said, Greg, you're a great guest. Friends, we got a surprise coming Friday. I'm not going to tell you what it is, but when you see it, I think you're going to go, oh, this looks like a fun conversation, did not see this one coming with Sean.

But if you enjoy these Tuesdays, I mean bringing to you live. from Talbot School Theology. Talbot faculty calling it Talbot Tuesday, trying to take your live questions. Let me know. Comment below. You can send in your questions for this to questions at Sean McDowell.org. Make sure you hit subscribe, gives us the thumbs up, make a comment, and share this with a friend. Great Gansel, colleague friend from Talbot. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you, Sean. that follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet, and it makes a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more people and build community. And please consider leaving

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