Christianity Can Anchor Your Life Because It’s True

Summary

Stand to Reason Weekly Podcast

Episode: Christianity Can Anchor Your Life Because It’s True
Date: October 17, 2025
Host: Greg Koukl with co-host Tim Barnett
Objective: To help Christians think more clearly about their faith and to offer an even-handed, incisive, yet gracious defense for classical Christianity.

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Brief Overview

In this episode, Greg Koukl and Tim Barnett revisit and analyze Greg’s recent conversation with atheist Alex O’Connor and spiritual thinker Dr. K from their appearance on the Diary CEO Podcast. They focus on complex questions about the anchoring role of religion, the necessity of truth for meaning, the problem of evil and suffering (especially involving children), the experience and explanation of animal suffering, objective versus subjective morality, and the uniqueness of the Christian perspective on meaning and transformation. Key excerpts from the original dialogue are played and unpacked with thoughtful commentary and explanation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Desire for an "Anchor" and the Question of Truth

• [00:56–02:22] Stephen, the interviewer, expresses longing for a religious "anchor," highlighting how being grounded in a faith might bring happiness or help with suffering. He concedes, “To adopt that view, I need to believe it’s true… people aren’t very good at lying to themselves.”
• Koukl's response: Greg affirms the utilitarian value of religious anchoring but insists, “Notice, though, he didn’t talk about the truth of that thing. And this to me is really critically important—the truth of it… That’s the ultimate test.” ([03:00])
• Nazism and cults used as counterexamples: Anchoring to something false (e.g., a cult or National Socialism) may feel stabilizing but has catastrophic consequences if not true.

Memorable Quote

“I do not believe it’s the case that people have the same kind of experience with Islam becoming Muslim as they do with Christianity… The concept of a relationship with God is not present in Islam… And that makes all the difference for the Christian.”
—Greg Koukl ([05:05])

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The Placebo Analogy: Subjective Benefits and Objective Reality

• [06:47–08:18] Tim brings up the placebo analogy, drawing a comparison between religion and a sugar pill for cancer: it may make you feel better, but that doesn’t mean it’s a genuine cure.
• Koukl’s response: “The question is, are we really sick? And if we’re really sick, we need to get the true antidote… People can go along in false religion in virtue of the order the religion provides… But that doesn’t mean the religion itself is true.”
• Koukl acknowledges that positive life change can be “evidential,” but only part of the picture for truth.

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Evidence and Presuppositions

• [09:13–12:33] Discussion turns to whether subjective evidence (personal change) is reasonable evidence for Christianity.
• Stephen challenges if “increased sense of purpose” counts as evidence; Alex O’Connor suggests it’s presumptive; Koukl clarifies that experiential evidence is only part of a larger case that includes other arguments: universe’s origin, fine-tuning, morality, etc.
• Analogy to forensic detectives: “You’re trying to solve a crime… and you’re looking at all the particulars that point to somebody who’s guilty of the crime. Why is this controversial?” ([11:38])

Notable Quote

“So what needs to be offered is some good arguments. So it would be really fascinating… I’d love to sit down with Stephen… just you and me… and develop them out.”
—Greg Koukl ([13:19])

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Explaining Suffering: Myth vs. History

Dr. K’s Mythological Account

• [14:06–15:37] Dr. K shares a story from Hindu mythology as a potential explanation for suffering, specifically why children get cancer. He openly admits, “I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if that’s moral. I don’t know if it’s mythology, but it’s a potential explanation for why children get cancer.”
  —Dr. K ([15:32])

Koukl's Commentary

• [15:49–19:02] Greg contrasts this with the Christian narrative, stressing that the Bible offers historical accounts, not "once upon a time" stories. Genesis, he argues, is history that explains real-world brokenness and why we have the problems we see.
• Illustration: The difference between a father telling his son a fairy tale about a scar versus telling him the true story about how he got it.

Memorable Quote

“If it’s not true, it’s not an explanation.”
—Greg Koukl ([15:49])

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The Fall, The Problem of Evil, and Existential Comfort

• [20:41–27:56] Alex O’Connor presses: How is telling someone their child died of cancer because of Adam and Eve’s sin comforting? Greg concedes it’s a hard truth, and “I’m not trying to give anybody comfort… it’s meant to explain why the world is broken.” He provides a WWII analogy: the decision of a single leader (e.g., Hitler) leading to mass suffering—clear, real-world consequences from one event. Similarly, Adam’s sin has ripple effects.
• Christian hope: Greg flips the narrative, noting that Christ’s obedience also has universal consequences (Romans 5)—“the second Adam” bringing restoration.

Notable Quotes

“When people do bad, it has consequences for people who are not involved in that decision. That’s just the way it works.”
—Greg Koukl ([26:15])

“What’s the atheist going to say, kneeling at the bed of a dying child? Tough luck. Too bad. That’s the way it goes.”
—Greg Koukl (quoting William Lane Craig; [27:56])

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The Challenge of Animal Suffering and Moral Reasoning

• [32:11–40:39] Alex asks about pre-human and animal suffering: If animals suffered before humans, how does Christianity cope? Greg points out that Alex, as an emotivist, denies objective morality yet smuggles in moral indignation over animal pain, which is inconsistent. Animal suffering can be seen as a result of the “trade-offs” in the design of the world; pain is protective even if it entails suffering.
• Humans vs animals: While we empathize morally when people harm animals (e.g., “stepping on a dog’s tail” example), natural predation is just nature, not an evil.

Memorable Quote

“Why are we responding emotionally? It’s because we think there’s something wrong with that… But [Alex] does not believe as part of the equation.”
—Greg Koukl ([35:08])

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Objective Morality vs Societal Change

• [41:20–47:43] Stephen muses on the evolution of morality, citing Nazi Germany and historical race exclusion as examples of shifting morals.
• Greg distinguishes between societal consensus and objective morality—“Just because folkways… vary… doesn’t mean that the underlying moral truth has changed.” Even if a culture accepted slavery, it was still wrong, and moral reformers like Wilberforce demonstrate that some recognized the objective wrongness even at the time.

Notable Quote

“If you rise up as a so-called moral reformer… you are immoral by definition [under relativism]. Now that seems wrong, I know, because moral reformers just seem to be right… in spite of what everyone else believed.” —Greg Koukl ([45:49])

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Are All Religions Saying the Same Thing?

• [47:43–52:18] Dr. K contends that all spiritual experiences are fundamentally similar (loss of ego, connection to the divine). Greg disputes this as “misleading”—monistic religions (Hinduism, Buddhism) may stress ego loss into the divine, but biblical faiths maintain individuality and personal relationship with God. Christianity is about transforming egotism, not self-annihilation.

Notable Quote

“You were made for great things. We know this—made for God—and we’re not there… What’s the solution? Forgiveness and regeneration to make us new so we can help make the world better. Until God makes the whole thing new.”
—Greg Koukl ([58:41])

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The Search for Meaning

• [53:33–58:41] Stephen locates meaning in personal pursuits (learning, relationships, work). Greg observes that even with success, relationships, and engaging interests, Stephen senses “there’s gotta be more”—echoing the question of Ecclesiastes’ preacher. Koukl affirms that ultimate purpose and meaning aren’t found just in activities, but in relationship to God.

Final Thoughts

• Greg observes, with a nod to simplicity and accessibility, that the Christian story of meaning, sin, rescue, and hope is comprehensible and direct—one need not master esoterica or technique:

“It’s simple. The truth is straightforward… You were made for great things…”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments with Timestamps

• On anchoring oneself:
  “Notice, though, he didn’t talk about the truth of that thing. And this to me is really critically important—the truth of it…” —Greg Koukl ([03:00])

• On Christianity vs other religions:
  “I do not believe it’s the case that people have the same kind of experience with Islam becoming Muslim as they do with Christianity… The concept of a relationship with God is not present in Islam… And that makes all the difference for the Christian.” —Greg Koukl ([05:05])

• On suffering and explanation:
  “If it’s not true, it’s not an explanation.” —Greg Koukl ([15:49])

• On comfort amidst suffering:
  “What’s the atheist… say, kneeling at the bed of a dying child? Tough luck.” —Greg Koukl (William Lane Craig quote; [27:56])

• On moral reform & relativism:
  “If you rise up as a so-called moral reformer… you are immoral by definition [under relativism]. Now that seems wrong, I know…” —Greg Koukl ([45:49])

• On the core Christian message:
  “You were made for great things… made for God… you’ve rebelled… What’s the solution? Forgiveness and regeneration to make us new so we can help make the world better. Until God makes the whole thing new.” —Greg Koukl ([58:41])

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [00:56] – Stephen on wanting a religious anchor
• [03:00] – Koukl: Anchoring and the importance of truth
• [05:05] – Christianity vs Islam: uniqueness of Christian experience
• [06:47] – Placebo analogy, subjective benefits
• [09:13] – Discussion around what counts as "evidence"
• [14:06] – Dr. K’s mythological explanation for suffering
• [15:49] – “If it’s not true, it’s not an explanation”
• [20:41] – The problem of evil, fallout from the Fall
• [32:11] – Alex O'Connor on animal suffering
• [41:20] – Stephen on evolution of morality and the Nazi example
• [47:43] – Dr. K on all religions leading to ego loss
• [53:33] – Stephen on meaning in actions and passions
• [58:41] – Greg summarizes the Christian story of reality

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Tone, Language, and Style

The episode is rich, thoughtful, and rooted in measured, philosophical reasoning. The tone is conversational but earnest, seeking clarity, fairness, and depth. Tim Barnett and Greg Koukl are careful to be charitable toward interlocutors while defending robust Christian perspectives.

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Conclusion

This episode exemplifies the approach of Stand to Reason: addressing profound questions with depth, clarity, and grace; anchoring subjective experience in the necessity of truth; highlighting the explanatory power and hope found in the Christian story; and emphasizing the unique relationship with God as the true anchor for life. The conversation invites both believers and skeptics to honestly consider what best explains our deepest intuitions about meaning, morality, and the reality of suffering.

Transcript

[Greg Koukl]

Sam.

[Tim Barnett]

Hello, friends, and thanks for tuning in again. We're so excited to have you back on today's episode. Greg Koukl and I are going to finish our analysis on his recent conversation with atheist Alex O' Connor and spiritual thinker Dr. K when they were on the Diary CEO podcast. We'll be breaking down key clips and exploring the big ideas they raised. Let's dive straight in and pick up right where we left off last time.

[Stephen]

I have a question for you on that. It's a personal question more than anything. So I find myself in the same position as Alex, where I think I'd be happier, all things considered, if I had an anchoring in a religion. I think that's, like, subjectively true, that I'd be happier, probably just because it would close a gap of some sort. It would anchor me in some way.

[Greg Koukl]

Answer a question.

[Stephen]

It would answer a question, and then it would give me more of a structure to my decision making.

[Greg Koukl]

Sure.

[Stephen]

And, you know, it would mean that when I have moments of suffering, I'd have a solution to that moment of suffering. So if my parents end up dying someday, which I'm sure they will, I will believe that they are still alive and they are somewhere and they're fine, which will ease my suffering. So I agree with Alex in that regard. The problem I have is in order to adopt that view, I need some kind of. I need to believe it. It's true. Like, people aren't very good at lying to themselves. And also, when you talk about. My friend in Dubai has had this experience. He now feels better. He could have. Well, felt better, I believe, if he had, you know, believed that Islam was true and become a Muslim. So. So it's the feeling itself. People can get in a lot of ways. I know people that actually would tell you that they, they feel better now that they're out of the cult and they're agnostic.

[Greg Koukl]

Sure.

[Stephen]

And the cult. The cult made them feel terrible. Now they're agnostic, they feel better. Does that mean agnosticism is truth?

[Tim Barnett]

Greg? I think this is. This is a question that's sincere, is coming from the heart. He's genuinely wondering. Okay, so does it just. Is it just the experience? How does. How do I know that that experience corresponds to something that's actually real?

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah, Actually, he doesn't ask that second part. Yeah, he, he talks about. Wouldn't it be better subjectively for me? And what's the word he uses? I was anchored to religion. Yeah. Now it's interesting because he's hark. I Don't know if he did this consciously or not, but I started out my comments and this got cut out. But I started out saying that people are unmoved, moored, they are cut free from their mooring and that's why they're adrift. Now he's talking about being anchored to something like religion that provides this content and this form for one to live their life. And in a certain sense, he's absolutely right that people who have some kind of form, something they follow, rather than it just being whatever, whenever, however, and that's the you do you stuff, which is resulting in a lot of anxiety, angst, suicidal ideation, blah, blah, blah. It's much better if somebody has something. So I acknowledge the utilitarian value of that. Notice, though, he didn't talk about the truth of that thing. And this to me is really critically important, the truth of it, because we could anchor ourselves to something and do better than we are if characteristically, than when we're unanchored. And I pause there for a moment because I. I guess it depends on what you're anchoring yourself to. If, if you're anchoring yourself to National Socialism. That's Nazism.

[Tim Barnett]

Well, he mentioned a cult. Right. If someone anchored them, maybe they feel better if they're agnostic or something like that.

[Greg Koukl]

Well, in that. That was a bad experience for them. And I just mentioned National Socialism. That was the. That's the English form of the German word. Nazi.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

You know, and what happened is they were all adrift and they had a leader that pulled them all together in a very powerful way. Now, that didn't work out so well, but it worked out well for the people for a while because it brought order back to the chaos. And so that worked out for a while. But the question is, what is the ultimate, in this case, moral grounding for that or the religious truth grounding? And that's not addressed in his question. And I think that actually matters, that that's. That's the ultimate test. Sure. You could get a little bit more order. He implied, though, that any religion is. This is. Is going to be. Do the same for us. Yeah. Because he said even if his friend who had become a Christian.

[Tim Barnett]

That's right.

[Greg Koukl]

Would become Muslim, it would be the same. I do not think that's true. Yeah. And I'm not saying that just because, well, I believe in Christianity because I do think that the Christian experience is, Is unique across the board. We've already talked about this and I think that the Christian friend. Look, there are people who Try all kinds of different religions, and they get involved in these things. And when they become regenerate, born again. That's a miraculous experience in virtue of a true God working through his son, Jesus of Nazareth, to bring new life to us. That changes everything. That changes everything. And Jesus said, you drink from the water I give you will never thirst again. Yeah. Now, it's a pretty bold claim, but I think that is exemplified in the lives of many people who have walked with Christ. Is there attrition rate? Sure, I acknowledge that, but I do not believe it's the case that people have the same kind of experience with Islam becoming Muslim as they do with Christianity. Is there more order there? Oh, yeah, that's very appealing to a lot of people. That doesn't mean it's true. And plus, and I know this talking to Alan Schliemann on our team, who is a specialist, so I don't go deep in Islam, but the concept of a relationship with God is not present in Islam because that would be almost demeaning of God to bring him down to our level. Right. And they don't want to do that at all because of their high view of God. And so the notion of relationship with God is not part of the system. The system is the system, and you can get plugged into the system, but you're not having a relationship with God. And that makes all the difference for the Christian.

[Tim Barnett]

What do you think about. I'm just. As you're talking, I thought of the analogy of like a placebo. Like, there's. Let's say I have cancer or something, and there's this pill that I can take and it will, like, it will, you know, take care of the cancer. There's someone might take a pill that's a placebo, and it may give them some kind of subjective feeling, you know, that they're being. But it's not actually doing anything objective. You know what I'm saying? Like, so, so could. Could there be a. Is this. Is this an appropriate illustration to kind of show. Yes, people from different religions can have different experiences, but there's. There's like an experience that actually corresponds to something that's really doing something. I don't know. Is it?

[Greg Koukl]

I think there's a usefulness to that illustration because remember, like, a placebo is a sugar pill that doesn't cure anything.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

Because your disease isn't real in this illustration. Yeah. And. But you feel you're sick and so the doctor tricks you, you know, so this goes back to, like, Karl Marx, who says the Religion is the opiate of the people.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

This is what people take a drug they take to make them feel better. There's no basis for it in reality. So the question is, are we really sick? Yeah. And if we're really sick, we need to get the true antidote. Yeah. We could look at. I could be dying of cancer and eat hot fudge sundaes all the time. Sure. And I'm fine with me. I don't like chemotherapy. That's a pain. Yeah. I like the hot fudge sundaes, but sooner or later that cancer is going to me because it's not the cure.

[Tim Barnett]

Right.

[Greg Koukl]

And the same thing is true here. People can go along in false religion. And I'm using these words advisedly, not just in a deprecating way, but in a descriptive way. All religions are true. They can't be because they hold to contradictory concepts. So if you go along in a false religion in virtue of the order that the religion provides, you can do better than living a disordered life. I get that. But that doesn't mean the religion itself is true. Now, I do think there is evidential value to the salutary effects of the religion in a person's life regarding the truth claim itself.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

And. And I bring this up, and of course, Alex wants to be very dismissive of that. So I think there's. It plays a role, but only. It's only part of the picture. And you've got to look at a number of different things.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah. So the next clip actually relates to this discussion because Stephen, he asked for evidence for Christianity, and so let's take a look at what he has to say.

[Stephen]

All right, the point there, that it's evidential. That's a presumption.

[Greg Koukl]

What I mean by evidential is that there is information that can be brought to bear that seems to be evidence indicating that the belief system is true.

[Stephen]

Is that a presumption?

[Greg Koukl]

I don't know why you would call.

[Alex O'Connor]

It a presumption, as in the evidence that Christianity is true. From the increased sense of purpose that people get from becoming a Christian, I.

[Greg Koukl]

Think that's one of the evidence. It's a subjective evidence. Yeah.

[Stephen]

So it's evidence.

[Tim Barnett]

All right, so you guys start talking about evidence there.

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah.

[Tim Barnett]

And there's a little bit of confusion about. Okay, what we're talking about here is this like the subjective experience that we're talking about as evidence. Does that count? I think we've talked a little bit about that. But then what I think you're actually talking about, given the Full context is you were referring to other evidences out there too, that need to be brought to bear on the question.

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah. Because we have an array of things we can appeal to. You know, J. Warner Wallace has written a book called God's Crime Scene. Crime Scene, yeah. And he looks at all of these features of reality that can't be explained from inside the room is the way he characterizes it, whether it's the origin of the universe or the, the, the design of the universe or morality or free will. And all this. And, and all of these other explanations are attempts to. To explained ad hoc in this circumstance. We can explain that away by a naturalist. There's all these attempts where Christianity provides a unified explanation for all of these features of reality is this point. It's great. It's a great argument. And that's why I'm. And this is what I'm trying to offer here. I'm being disqualified on some of these by Alex. That doesn't count. But I was confused by this statement that evidences are presumptions. And this is why. Pause. Yeah, I need clarification on that. What do you mean by. And I think he just repeated himself. And then Alex kind of steps in to try to lend some clarity to that and it didn't seem to get cleared up. I don't know why anybody would. I guess a lot. It depends by what the word presumption means. If he's meaning in imprecisely using this word, that if you have this evidence, this creates a connection with the truth claim, then that's what he means by presumption. Well, that's kind of my point. If he's meaning. Well, it's arbitrary that you connect this experience or piece of evidence with the truth claim. Well, that's not my point at all. Why would you. Why would you think it's arbitrary? It's connecting it. One thing leads to another. Forensic. Forensic work. You're trying to solve a crime, a detective, and he's looking at all the particulars that point to somebody who's guilty of the crime. Why is this controversial? Kind of what I was confused by. I don't know. Take anything else from that.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah, I, I honestly, the first time I watched, I thought he was just using, like, are you assuming that there's evidence for Christianity?

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah.

[Tim Barnett]

And I. It could be that Stephen hasn't been offered. I don't know if he's ever sat down with just a Christian apologist and been given the case for Christianity.

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah.

[Tim Barnett]

So I'm wondering if he's thinking that there just isn't a case and that the Christian assumes that their view is true and the Muslim assumes that their view is true. And everyone just kind of has this assumption because there actually isn't any good reason or evidence that's out there. So that's what I was thinking, where he was coming from. And then, you know, and what you're describing is, well, I have an experience. Well, so does the Muslim. So does the Hindu. So do all these different people. And therefore, how do we. How do I, Stephen, Judge? You know, I want to believe. If someone would just give me evidence. In fact, at one point he said, you can't force yourself to believe something. Right.

[Greg Koukl]

That's true, actually.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah. So what needs to be offered is some good arguments. So it would be really fascinating.

[Greg Koukl]

I would love to sit down with Steven. Steven, if you listen, I'm at your service, brother. Let's have a conversation. Let's pretend we're at Starbucks and we just go on for a couple of hours, just you and me, and we'll follow some of these threads and develop them out. That would be a linear discussion, which would actually been easier than the group thing, because you can't control where this is going. And sometimes this just goes off on tangents.

[Tim Barnett]

Okay, I want to turn to a clip from Dr. K. And this was a strange explanation for why children get cancer. He offers this explanation. Now, what I want you to help us understand is at one point he says, and people can see in the clip, that he doesn't even know if his explanation is true. Like, he doesn't even think it's true. And I want you to comment on that.

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. K]

Going back to your question about if a child with cancer dies at the age of one, is their purpose fulfilled? Arguably, yes, because that could have been their purpose in this life. So their purpose could have been. So there's a really interesting story about many years ago, there were a group of angels. I'm just going to use the Western terminology, Devas, who disturbed Shiva in his meditation. And so he cursed them, and he said, I'm gonna. The curse that you guys are gonna do is y' all are gonna be born on the earth for one lifetime of a human. And then the devas were like, oh, my God, like, this is terrible. Like, we're gonna be cursed to be born on the earth, and the earth is full of suffering and Sisyphus, and there's no meaning with a capital M. So then they go to Shiva's daughter and they ask her, hey, can you help us out? Like, can you please go talk to your dad? Can you please get him to change his sentence? And she says that Shiva's never going to change his sentence. That's impossible to do. He's also kind of this embodiment of karma and things like that. So he says, but I can help you all out. What I can do is I'm going to be born with y'.

[Greg Koukl]

All.

[Dr. K]

And then there's this other story in the Mahabharata where basically she has seven children, and then she drowns them the day after they're born. And so she says, the technical situation is you're going to be born for one lifetime. I can make a lifetime happen in a moment. Now, I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's moral. I don't know if it's mythology, but.

[Alex O'Connor]

A potential explanation for why children get cancer.

[Dr. K]

It's a potential explanation for why children get cancer.

[Tim Barnett]

All right, Dr. K says, I don't know if it's true. It might be mythology. And I think Alex is pointing something out there, but it's an explanation for why children get cancer.

[Greg Koukl]

I'm not sure how sympathetic he was to this explanation, but it was actually a really good point because. And this is what's so curious about this, keep in mind the Upanishads and the Vedas, these are not historical documents. They don't record events that actually happen. They're kind of mythologies or stories about the netherworld and the. You know. And I actually haven't read them, but I know a little bit about it. I know in this case, they're not histories. And that's why he calls them a story. Which, by the way, is why that when we make reference to the gospels and you're training your kids or anyone else, or the Hebrew scriptures, you don't say the story of David and Goliath, the story of Jesus calming the story. They're not stories, they're accounts. These are things that happened, that took place. God intervened. But that's not the case with these other texts. Okay, so now he's offering this kind of odd story, which he says he doesn't know is true. And then Alex is trying to explain the reason you're offering this is to explain why children are suffering. Of course, if it's not true, it's not an explanation. If it's not true, it's not an explanation. And these books don't even purport to be true. They purport to be Giving these larger ideas that we can kind of trade off of how reality works and stuff like that. Now, I liken this to the Book of Genesis, and I got this, this insight from Francis Schaeffer. And his point was, if the book of Genesis, which is the book of beginnings, doesn't tell us what went wrong then in history, if it's just a once upon a time kind of thing, then it doesn't help us at all, because the world is here. Where did it come from? Book of Genesis, the beginning of the world. The world is broken. How did it get broken? Book of Genesis. Man fell, rebelled against God. So it's meant to explain what actually took place. So think of it this way. Let's say there's a young boy, 13 year old boy, you know, and his dad has a scar at his face. Now, let's say he's six years old because it probably is really starting to occur to him. My dad's got a scar?

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

What? Dad, where'd you get that scar? Now, if the father says, well, son, once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, well, the boy's gonna realize he's not gonna have his question answered because he doesn't want to get a fairy tale, he doesn't want mythology, he doesn't want a story. He wants to know how his dad got the scar. What Genesis 3 tells us is how humanity got the scar. This is why. Taking it in a straightforward fashion, the fall of man, the brokenness of the world is really important. Another point that Schaeffer makes is if the world didn't always. If the world wasn't always this way.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

If it was different before and then I got broken, it can be fixed. But if this is the way the world's always been, how's it going to get fixed? Well, of course, the Christian story is it was good, then it got bad, then it gets good.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

And it gets fixed in a very particular way.

[Tim Barnett]

That's right.

[Greg Koukl]

So this is why this is mystifying when Dr. K offers this, because I think that Alex was being kind of polite. So this is an alternate explanation of why children suffer. It's not an explanation of anything if it's just a story. Aesop's Fables don't tell us anything about the condition of human beings, the metaphysics of being human. There might be wisdom in them or whatever, but you don't get that out of stories. You only get that out of history. And this is what scripture is meant to give. Now, you take exception with whether it's History or not. But I just want to note that there are two entirely different kinds of things. Stories don't help us understand what went wrong. Children dying of cancer, that's something amiss. That's brokenness. Don't tell me a story to explain brokenness. Tell me what happened. And that's what Genesis does.

[Tim Barnett]

Okay, this is actually a really good segue to the next clip because we have Alex having an objection to the fall, to the curse.

[Greg Koukl]

Right.

[Tim Barnett]

In fact, you and him went back and forth a little bit.

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah.

[Tim Barnett]

Would you say it got a little contentious at times?

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah, it got contentious. It was interesting. And my feelings would hurt. I was bugged, but I had to manage this. Yeah. I had to really focus because Alex says at one point. I'm not sure how much is on the clip, but I don't mean to interrupt, but of course he'd been interrupting me, and I don't mean to get contentious, but he was being contentious. All right. That's all right. This was a fairly non contentious discussion, but this is where he gets rather pointed.

[Alex O'Connor]

I've been waiting for an opportunity to rewind to the fact that we just brushed over two of what I think are the best available, at least the first that came to mind, explanations as to why children get cancer. And I just wondered, as a question, whether you consider whether your explanation sounds to you as your explanation sounds to you, as I think both of them sound to me. And I don't know how they sound to you, Stephen, but the idea that the thing that we are most fundamentally confronted with, I think on an existential level is suffering. And there's our own suffering, and then there's the suffering of others and the seemingly meaningless suffering of a child who's undergoing cancer and does not survive it. And I'm told that in the face of such existential tragedy, I turn to religion to give us a sort of sense of fulfillment and a sense of explanation. But when asked about the mechanism of how, I'm told it's because at some undisclosed number of years ago, somebody commit a sin against God and that's why your child has now died of cancer. There are millions of people who listen to this show. There will be people listening to this whose children have died of cancer. I wonder if that brings them any kind of consolation.

[Tim Barnett]

All right, so Alex is not trying to be difficult here, but he is asking a question a lot of people ask us during Q and A's and this kind of thing. Why is it that we're facing the consequences of a decision that, yeah, Adam.

[Greg Koukl]

And Eve made this. This needs to be addressed. Obviously. Let me back up and make some observations about. This is the most contentious part of the. Of the entire five hours. Okay. This interaction. And it was longer than this, than what was edited down. But there's this issue and there is Alex. Pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to explain the big picture of why there. Why the world seems to be broken. It doesn't matter where you live or when you live. Everybody knows that something's wrong with the world. That's the problem of evil. And we have a worldview that makes sense of that. Now he has a worldview that does not make sense of that because he doesn't believe in evil. In that sense, morality has no foundation in his worldview. Objective morality, not enough to ground the problem of evil. So he's raising a little bit different kind of question. But I think. I think he's doing it uncharitably because. And he's playing a little bit off the emotions of people. It's clever. And I expect this kind of thing. I just want people to see it. There are millions of people that are watching this thing, that are going through, suffering. This is the human condition. And you want to say that the reason a woman's child is dying of cancer is because two people, some millions or whatever, years ago. Yeah. You know, disobeyed God or whatever.

[Tim Barnett]

And what comfort's that gonna bring?

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah. What comfort that. Yeah. And so we were talking about this earlier. I'm not trying to give anybody comfort.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

This isn't the. The remedy for the anguished person.

[Tim Barnett]

That's right.

[Greg Koukl]

I wouldn't say, well, Adam and Eve. There you go. Too bad. That's. That's the way. And so it makes my view, our view, look really harsh and really foolish almost. Okay. But it's not meant to do that. It's meant to explain why the world is broken. Notice how I pulled back. Tried at 30,000ft here. Let's not fuss about what kind of fruit was it and what did it do? This isn't the point. The point is something that you're going to strain and get a gnat. You're swallowing the camel. I'm trying to give an explanation. Okay. And so here's a. And this is one of those points, Tim, where I missed an opportunity. And in hindsight, I think I wish you would have made this point. Okay. And here's the point I would make again if I could replay this. Right. Hindsight is 20 20. And it was a point that I was trying to do somewhat, but I didn't. This illustration would have been so much better. In 1941, the Japanese bomb Burl harbor, and the United States government, within a day or two, declared war on Japan. Right after that, Hitler did something really stupid. He declared war on the United States. This was dumb. There was no reason to do it. But what he did is he was poking a sleeping giant and he inaugurated the immense power and technical capability and industry of a country that he couldn't touch because it was across the pond from him to attack him and attack him and attack him. And five years later, Germany was leveled. We bombed every city and every burg, and it was absolute mess. Why did all of these Germans suffer? Because of the decision of one man, one person who did something not only stupid, but evil and continued to do evil. And this had the consequence of influencing all these other people. We understand how that works. And so when Alex is trying to show or intimate that there's something ridiculous about this notion that somebody a long time ago can take an action that could have a terrible, tragic.

[Tim Barnett]

That was the word he used, existential tragedy.

[Greg Koukl]

Yes. Yeah. Can have that kind of consequence in our life. This is not unusual. This happens every single day in every person's life. When people do bad, it has consequences for people who are not involved in that decision. That's just the way it works. Okay. Now, in the Christian story, there's a kind of reversal to that because God takes that, that kind of cause, effect element, and he turns it on its head. So Jesus, in his sacrifice, has a consequence, a good consequence, to reverse this and bring forgiveness and ultimately repair to the world that went bad by one person. Paul talks about this in Romans 5. By one person, sin came into the world by one person, the second Adam, as it were. So I only mentioned that because that's the bigger story. You can't just look at this itty bitty thing here and then complain and say, what a trivial explanation. That's no comfort at all. But of course, my response is, as Bill Craig said, we blame Craig the philosopher because there's a famous quote by the British atheistic philosopher Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell, thank you. Who says, how are you going to talk about God when you're kneeling at the bed of a dying child? Yeah. Now that's Alex. He's playing the Bertrand Russell line right there. And that's pretty powerful.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

And then I heard William Blaine Craig's response, and he said, what's the atheist Bertrand Russell gonna say? When he's kneeling at the bed of a dying trial child. Tough luck. Too bad. That's the way it goes. But that's all they're left with, because that's all their worldview provides them. We have lots we can say given our worldview that amounts to comfort and restoration and forgiveness. We can't fix this right now, but it will be fixed. But this is so odd coming from Alex, who's pressing this point, because in Alex's view, there is no fix and there is no fix because there is no problem.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

He's an atheist. There's no teleology to anything. There's no goal. We're not going anywhere.

[Tim Barnett]

There's no. Supposed to be a certain way.

[Greg Koukl]

Exactly right.

[Tim Barnett]

Because there's no exposer, as you like to say.

[Greg Koukl]

That's right.

[Dr. K]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

And so this is where I missed another opportunity. And though I did make this point somewhat, I could have made it better, I think. And I think the better way, more pointed way to make it, is to say, you know, Alex, this, your line of questioning really confuses me because you're pressing back on the suffering of animals. Yeah. And I don't have an adequate explanation for this, as if this is a flaw in my view. And he does talk about suffering of animals and suffering. And I don't know if we're going to get to that or not, but. But then. But on your view, you're emotivist, which means that all, as we discussed, all moral statements are just emotional ejaculations. So to say, oh, you know, yuck, whatever. So you don't think animal suffering has any moral consequence whatsoever, but it gets worse than that. You don't think Hamlin suffering has any moral consequence whatsoever. So how is it you're pressing me on this issue when your view is a whole lot more vacuous of substance than you're making line sound?

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah, well. And I think what he wants to do is say, well, I'm. I'm criticizing your worldview from within. It's an internal critique which, when you understand our worldview, it almost seemed like he trivializes. So what, they just took fruit from a tree? Like, what was the real issue?

[Greg Koukl]

Right.

[Tim Barnett]

Like it was, this is trivial thing. But we're talking about disobeying the absolutely perfect holy good Creator. You know, you're given a command and you disobeyed it. You've rebelled against him. So it's not just this little thing like, oh, no big deal. It was a big deal. And it had, as you pointed out.

[Greg Koukl]

Consequences so this is where, Tim, it's important to see the big picture because we can not only identify what went wrong and everybody knows something went wrong, but we can identify a fix for it, a solution for it. That's the bigger story. It's the story of reality that starts with God. And then man made for friendship with him and everything's good. And then man gets himself in a heap of trouble. And so God has to initiate a rescue plan. And he does this in a unique way by coming down himself Immanuel God with us. And the way he lives his life and the way his life ends on a cross determines what happens to everybody in the final resurrection, either perfect mercy or perfect justice. So there's a wholeness to the story. And what we're trying to explain to people is this is the way reality works. It isn't just this terrible incident right here, your child suffering and dying. It fits into a larger picture. We can explain why the world is that way, but we can also explain how it could fit fixed. And this is where individuals get to participate in the fix, the fix for them personally putting their trust in God's rescuer and then living a life that ends up having a salutary effect on a fallen world. Just think of William Wilberforce, for example. And this is what gets left out in these little kind of surgical strikes at the Christian worldview that someone like Alex is doing. Yeah.

[Alex O'Connor]

The first question that jumps out at me is the question of pre human suffering. We're not the first species to inhabit this planet. And before we existed billions of years. I don't know if you believe that the Earth is four and a half billion years old, but billions of years, hundreds of millions of years at least of animal suffering.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah, like.

[Alex O'Connor]

And that is experienced. And you could say that it somehow is less, like, relevant or doesn't matter as much. But if you saw me right now step on a dog's tail and watch it squeal, you'd tell me to stop. Because you know that absent just the effect that that has on our human situation, that's bad for the dog. That kind of stuff was going on for hundreds of million years before humans were around. That means before the fool.

[Tim Barnett]

All right, this is a question that comes up a lot. In fact, Alex raises this challenge quite a bit in different dialogues and debates. So you got the problem of animal suffering, and not just animal suffering after the fall, but even before the fall. So how do we as Christians make sense of all this?

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah. What's going on here? And this is where I actually take him to task on this particular point. And he pushes back very aggressively. Alex is, among other things, is he smuggling in moral notion into the concept of animal suffering? Why is he bringing animal suffering up? Think of all the tomatoes that fell off the vine and rotted for millions of years and nobody ever ate. They just died out there and rotted. Well, who cares about that? There's no moral quality to that. But he's bringing up animal suffering and he gives an illustration of stepping on what's a dog's tail or something like that. And it's meant to evoke an emotional response. And there's nothing wrong with giving illustrations that evoke emotional response. But why are we responding emotionally to this? It's because we think there's something wrong with that that shouldn't happen. That poor dog. This is tragic. Maybe we'd use that language. And the same thing with all this animal suffering before the fall. Now, what I was trying to explain in a previous cut was how there could be suffering after the fall. But he's saying, what about before the fall? Pre human. Whatever. Sometimes it's just safest to beg off on certain things, like the whole pre human evolutionary thing. I wasn't going to get into all that with him. So I just said, you know, I'm going to have worked all that out. Which is true. Who knows? I mean, there's a lot of things. But that's not so relevant. I wanted to focus in on this particular issue itself. All right. And the thing that was most relevant, we're chuckling now because there's a little puppy dog that's walking around here.

[Tim Barnett]

It's so. I don't want timely that there is. We're talking to animal suffering and literally a dog walking in.

[Greg Koukl]

I tell you what, this dog is not suffering. Yeah, okay.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

He is so coddled. He is super happy.

[Dr. K]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

Critter. Okay. We'll make him part of the show.

[Tim Barnett]

That's right.

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah. So. So. And one, he's trading on a moral concept implicitly that he does not believe as part of the equation. And when I point that out to him, he pushes back immediately and he says, I am not saying anything moral about this. This, I think is disingenuous because it's so obvious that the illustration he's offering is powerful because it has implicit moral qualities to it. Right. But there's another angle to this too, and that is. And I make point. And I've just thought of this illustration subsequent. This would have better way to make the point. But and that has to do with pain being a designed feature that accomplishes a certain function that's good, but it also has trade offs. Okay. So on the panel here I have two Brits, right? I've got Alex and I've got Steven. And anybody who's gone to London knows that there's the Tube, the underground, and if you're waiting for the train to come by, there is a, a statement printed on the sidewalk. And everybody who's ever gone on the tube knows what this statement is. Now, it would have asked them, what is it? And you know what it is. Yeah.

[Tim Barnett]

Mind the gap.

[Greg Koukl]

Mind the gap. Mind the gap. Well, the gap is that space between the train and the platform. Yeah. And it's a danger. You don't want to fall in the gap, you want to mind that gap, pay attention to it so you don't trip, step over it. Okay. Now the reason it's there, of course, is because the train needs space to move.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

It's engineered to do something good, but there's a liability. There's a gap between the platform and the train. So you have to be mindful of the gap in order to benefit from the train. Behind the gap there's a trade off. So this is a great illustration, I think, of the idea that virtually everything that is engineered for a pacific, a specific good purpose, there's almost always going to be trade offs. Yeah, right. That's right. So, you know, we have glasses to drink out of, but if we drop the glass, it could break and we step on it and we're injured. Yeah. Okay. So the good thing, you know, has some liabilities. You have to be careful of it. And in this particular case, and this may not be a full throated explanation that satisfies everything. And all in all, Christianity is messy. Yeah. And the reason it's messy is because life is messy. All worldviews are messy. So sometimes we do the best we can with the explanations. And I think this is relevant to his question as he's continuing to press the question about the badness of suffering, for which he has no answer of the badness of suffering. To him, it's benign, which we have already talked about that and I can appeal to this. It's designed for a reason. It's designed by God to protect human beings. By the way, there's all kinds of different pains. You stub your toe, you bump your shin, you have a belly ache, you have a headache, you have a heartache. And I mean here, emotionally, these are all pains and they're all very, very different. And it's really hard for me to imagine how evolution can be responsible for all of those kinds of pains. And by the way, I just bumped my microphone, which you've done on occasion. And see, these are really important, but the liabilities that get in the way of us flapping our wings. Right. So there's a trade off. And I think the same thing is true here. Yeah.

[Tim Barnett]

Do you think that when Alex brings up, you know, we just saw my dog Polly, and he describes Step intentionally stepping on a dog's tail and we would jump in. There's a moral. There's something cruel about a human being using, you know, their abilities to hurt another animal, like just for the fun of it. So there's a moral like he had. Whether he's, you know, affirms that there's morality or not, he smuggled that in.

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah. I, I think that this, even though he was very quick to disown that.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

Anybody watching that, you can't avoid that. This is what's going on. That's why it's, that's why it's animal suffering and not tomatoes. Sure.

[Tim Barnett]

And then, and I'm just thinking like, if we went to. On a safari, you know, you're in Africa, you're on a safari, and you see, you know, the croc, whatever the, the crocodile or maybe the wildebeest or the wildebeest, and just drag it in. And you know what's interesting when you see these videos, people just, they're watching, they don't jump in, they don't jump in the water and no, this is lunch, you know, this is dinner. This is how the ecosystem works. Sometimes the, you know, baby gazelle gets. And there's, it gets eaten. And there's no moral quality to it.

[Greg Koukl]

Right.

[Tim Barnett]

That's just, that's nature.

[Greg Koukl]

That's the way it works. Yeah. Now he would affirm that. But then how do you affirm that and then kind of press this issue on the Christian by this wanton suffering, so to speak. It's the way the animal kingdom works. I acknowledge that. And he can explain that in a naturalistic way. So he's got an explanation for the fact that it works that way. I've got an explanation for the fact that it works that way. But now he's introducing something else.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

The moral quality of the suffering, which his worldview doesn't allow. Allow him to account for. That makes sense of it. But our worldview does. Yeah. Now that may be, in some people's mind, a liability of the Worldview, we sure are just going to have to decide.

[Tim Barnett]

That's right.

[Greg Koukl]

Life is messy and worldviews are messy.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah. So what we're going to do next is we're going to go to a question about morality, actually. Stephen brings up how morality possibly, on his view, evolved. And as an evidence, he cites how. How it's changed. You know, there were different. Different moralities from. That's on his view from maybe 200 years ago to today. So let's see what he has to say, and then I'll get you to respond.

[Stephen]

History's almost shown that even in times where, where we look back and go, that was not the moral thing. Like, you know, Nazis in World War II.

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah.

[Stephen]

They acted in a way that was help them survive in the context they're in. So the Nazi that would go to the concentration camp and come home and be really nice to his family, he thought he was doing the right thing.

[Greg Koukl]

This is why one of the reasons I think the evolutionary explanation is inadequate. Okay. Because it seems that there are lots of things that people do that seem to be good for them or for their tribe that characteristically we'll look at and we'll assess it. And the assessment is that that is wrong, it's evil, it's wicked. And I think that our assessments are reliable in that regard. Okay. That we have moral intuitions that us to see things that are real about that, and these things are relatively universal. I mean, it doesn't matter where you live or when you live. People are asking the question about the problem of evil in the world. Okay.

[Stephen]

And I think it's the definition of what evil was seems to change over time. Because me, I mean, I wouldn't be sat at this table many a couple hundred years ago because I'm black. And everybody at the time thought that that was the right thing. They didn't think that was an evil thing at the time.

[Tim Barnett]

So, Greg, what's right and wrong seems to change over time. And so does that mean that morality is, like, evolving over time?

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah, this, this is a. This is a confusion. Yeah. And just because Moray's folkways ethical principles vary from time to time doesn't mean that the underlying moral truth has changed. So we would look back now and say when slavery was popular as an institution here in this country before the Civil War, that there were a lot of people who didn't find it morally objectionable, but there were a lot of people who did, which is why you have the anti slavery movement and slavery. It isn't so the Question is, and I would ask Stephen this. I don't know if I could put it quite that way at. At the time. But the question to ask is, Stephen, if you were not allowed a place at the table a hundred years ago, would that have been right or wrong? Now, I'm not asking you about people's opinions. I'm asking about the thing itself. Good. Would it have been wrong to exclude you for your color?

[Tim Barnett]

Wow.

[Greg Koukl]

And I think he would. He would balk. And the reason is, is because people start thinking, well, it's wrong for me now. But it wasn't wrong for them then. Sure. Now, that's the relativistic way of looking at it. I'm not asking that question. I'm saying, was it wrong? Let's maybe make it more precise. Even though people practiced slavery, thinking it was good, was it right? Yes or no? Well, I think there he'd say, no, it wasn't right. So then the right and wrongness of it didn't change. What changed is people's understanding. Understanding at the time, maybe their opinions. But there were always people who thought that kind of treatment of human beings was wrong.

[Alex O'Connor]

Sure.

[Greg Koukl]

And even if people made some biblical arguments try to defend it, we realize now, looking back, they were making a mistake. And it was, frankly, the Christians who had the same Bible, who are the ones responsible for abolition? Wilberforce. Wilberforce, for example, being guided by John Newton, for example, is one of his spiritual mentors who is the author of Amazing Grace. And he encouraged Wilberforce in that work as a Christian. So it was not the moral consensus at the time. The moral consensus was opposite, but the moral consensus was just wrong. And we see it as we look back now. We don't say, well, it was okay then, meaning not just that people thought it was okay, but it was okay. And now morality has changed. No morality has changed at all. People have just kind of gotten with the project.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

And realized what they were doing in the past was wrong, even if people thought otherwise.

[Tim Barnett]

And Wilberforce was a moral reformer.

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah.

[Tim Barnett]

In a culture that had accepted slavery, that was a consensus view. If you take kind of a societal relativism.

[Greg Koukl]

Right.

[Tim Barnett]

Then that would make Wilberforce evil or wrong in that environment. And that just seems counterintuitive. That seems wrong.

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah, of course. And a lot of people don't think it through like that.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

And this wasn't exactly the point that he was making, though. It was. It seemed to be implicit there. Well, as a culture, we saw some things as wrong. And. And now we think seem differently. If what wants to. If what a person wants to do is, is put the locus of moral legitimacy in the group. Okay, and this is one form of relativism, then whatever the group says is right by definition. And therefore if you rise up as a so called moral reformer, like Wilberforce or like Martin Luther King or Gandhi in their respective cultures to change the standard, the status quo, you are immoral by definition. Now that seems wrong, I know. Yeah. Because moral reformers just seem to be right because of their ideas, in spite of what everyone else believed. This is why the. This view called conventionalism, actually it fails the test of our moral intuitions when we think about it. Now that's not going to work out that way.

[Tim Barnett]

And you actually wrote a book on this?

[Greg Koukl]

I did. With Dr. Frank Beckwith.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

And it's called, it's about relativism and it's titled Relativism make it Easy Subtitle Feet firmly planted in midair. Yeah, but we examine different forms of moral relativism and how it plays out in society. We. And we make the case for moral objectivism, moral realism, contrary to Alex, for example. And many of the things that Alex actually said implicitly trades on moral categories that are objective or else his comments wouldn't have any validity. And that's one of the ways of seeing that moral relativism is false in its many forms.

[Dr. K]

There's this weird collective consciousness, that's the basic unit. I think we can easily call it God, a relationship with that thing. So I'm down here, it's up there. So the key thing is, if we look at psychedelic usage, if we look at dark night of the soul, if we look at these moments of rapture where you go into church and one of two things is happening. Either your psychological defense mechanisms are creating the ultimate cope and you're saying now I'm healed even though you're not, or you actually have a direct experience of God and you are transformed. What is the nature of that transformation? It is the loss of ego that is the most conserved thing. We surrender before God. Before God we are nothing. Right? Doesn't matter which religion you talk to. This is where I think that there's like evidence of truth with a capital T. Because human beings from all over the planet have done these explorations using the technology of our mind and our consciousness. And we arrive at very similar conclusions.

[Tim Barnett]

So do we all arrive at similar conclusions? Loss of ego across the board? Is that what you see?

[Greg Koukl]

This troubles me because I think this is really misleading. I Think what he's saying is that all religions lead to Hinduism. Now that's not the language he uses. And if I probably said that with him here, he might push back, but it is certainly not the case that all of these religions focus on the same thing. Maybe Hinduism, Buddhism with their karmic elements and Nirvana which turns out to be an extension distinction of self where you disappear into the divine essence, which he kind of made reference to. Maybe those have this similarity. But Islam is nothing like this. Judaism is nothing like this. Christianity is nothing like this. Now certainly there is a loss of egotism before God, but egotism is a vice, it's a moral flaw, a character flawless. But not loss of ego. Because loss of ego means the disappearance of yourself. You're gone, you disappear using kind of the Eastern notion of the drop, which is the individual going into the ocean and it disappears. Now I'm not arguing at this point one way who's right and who's wrong. I'm just saying that is not a fair characterization of comparative religion. It is a self serving way of trying to say that all the religions end up where I'm at, which is in this kind of mystical monistic view. God is up there, I'm down here, and that's part of the illusion. But there's God as the unifying force of everything. Now I said during our time, I can't remember whether it made the cut or not, that I agree that God is the ultimate reality. But it's not the only thing. It's not monistic, it's not one thing that is real. God makes the whole rest of the world and it's all real. And the individuation of human beings is important to God. The ego, the selves that are in personal relationship with God forever. In other words, we are restored in that relationship that God made us for. Think of Jesus and the prodigal Son. The Son is gone and then the Son comes home. He doesn't disappear, he is embraced by the Father who's waiting for him to return. And in a sense that's the way the world is. On our view that the Father is waiting for us to return and he's made provision for that return. But we are apart from him following our own egotistical purposes. But he comes back in surrender and humility. Not surrendering his ego, his self, but his egotism. By the way, there's some forms of Christian sanctification, if you will view it that way. All of God, not of me kind of thing. And it's the Complete annihilation of. No. God made you an individual for a purpose and with giftings to accomplish certain things in the world in a productive way.

[Tim Barnett]

So when scripture says deny yourself, it's not like dissolve into the one. There's still. Or it's all about transformation. Not like annihilation. So where God comes and transforms us as individuals.

[Greg Koukl]

That's right.

[Tim Barnett]

As ourselves. But not to become just one with the universe or something.

[Greg Koukl]

Correct. Think of the deny yourself. There's more there. Deny yourself, Pick up your cross and follow me now. Now we know what he means by deny yourself. Pick up your cross. Okay. It's an individual that's carrying a cross to follow Jesus. It isn't the annihilation of the self. It is an act of. Of faithful discipleship. Yeah.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah. Today you'll be with me in paradise. It's not like we're going to become one. It's like, you're still going to be you. I'm still going to be me. You know this kind of relational.

[Greg Koukl]

Well, and Paul talks about that in 1st Corinthians 4 when he. He talks about, do not grieve at those who have fallen asleep that has died as those who have no hope.

[Alex O'Connor]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

Because there is going to be a reunion of individual selves with each other. Sure. In the.

[Tim Barnett]

And a final resurrection. Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

That's the individual self. That's right. Well, actually, the individual self is sustained. The self, the ego, the center of identity, sustained through the soul. To absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. But then the bodies are reunited in the resurrection. So we become one again, body and soul, the way God intended. Yeah.

[Stephen]

So meaning for me is something that I create by the decisions that I take. And this might go down to what you were saying about having certain tendencies. I have certain tendencies. I have nature and nurture acting against me to make certain things feel meaningful to me. And one of those things is this pursuit of more information. I do it when you go and I get some free time. Tonight I'll be on YouTube learning about humanoid robots. Or I might stumble across a video, one of your videos, which I've watched many times. And I've watched your videos many times. And I've watched your videos many times.

[Tim Barnett]

So he seems like he's finding meaning in just decisions that he's making, whether it's, you know, watching a video about robots or something on YouTube at night. I'm just curious what you would say to Stephen, who clearly is searching for purpose and meaning.

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah, I guess I would say two things. And this first thing harks back to a comment I made very early in the conversation, and that is, it's possible to experience a meaningful life. Even if you don't, you're not in touch. Maybe purposeful is a better word in this case, but he uses the word meaningful. Even if you're not in touch with the God who gives you meaning, if you are operating within the purposes that he has designed human beings to operate, which is particular things so that you flourish, and if you operate certain ways, you can experience flourishing in a certain measure. So I think that that's part of what he's pointing at now. Bereft of God, strictly speaking, he's just kind of doing whatever feels right, feels good. And I'm saying, well, it feels good because you're tapping into something objectively significant, not just subjectively significant. However, I. I think I hinted at this point earlier, there's something else going on here because Stephen is responsible for one of the most popular podcasts in the world. It's really, really successful. And he can't be at want financially. He can't be at want for meaningful activity, interesting occupations, meaningful relationship that he already has. I can't remember if he has a girlfriend. Yeah, yeah, he's had a girlfriend. I don't know if they have children or not, but he's got all of these things in place. He's. He's Kohelet. He's the preacher of Ecclesiastes who's tasting it all.

[Tim Barnett]

Yeah.

[Greg Koukl]

And what is he doing here on this show? He's saying, there's got to be more. Let's see if we can figure out what that is. Yeah. And I admire him for his authenticity and being candid about the fact that he is operating in ways that are very satisfying for him, but also at the same time wondering, what is it that's missing? And it's not just finding a religion. We already talked about that. It's finding the truth about reality. And this is something. Maybe it's a good point to kind of bring it all together here, Tim, is that Amy pointed out when we were knocking this around as a team and as she watched the entire presentation, which goes for three and a half hours almost, and of course, Dr. K has a lot to say that's somewhat complicated. And some of our viewers may, or listeners may have watched the whole thing. And so there's lots that Dr. K is saying about these fairly sophisticated techniques and things. And this is something ultimately you have to do on your own. You're by yourself, you know. And then even Alex is speculating from a worldview that provides very little. It provides some explanation, but it's ultimately nihilistic. It's empty, it's nothing ism. Because that's all the worldview holds. It's just molecules in motion ultimately, and struggling to find. Maybe there's panpsychism and what the heck is that? You know? And Amy's point was so great because what she's saying is it's not that hard. You don't have to spend eight years in an ashram trying to get enlightened. As a Buddhist, you don't need all these kinds of techniques. You don't need these. What did Alex said? Read a book on the mind, body problem and consciousness. What? That's not going to give anybody a sense of meaning? Because I've read a bunch of them, but it's not there. All right? It's a lot of work. It's simple. The truth is straightforward. In the last letter that Paul wrote, second Timothy, he challenges Timothy not only to guard the truth, but to pass it on. And it's interesting the way he puts it. His famous passage, 2nd Timothy 2. 2. The things that you have heard from me or learned from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. So we've got a discipleship pattern. Four generations. Paul, Timothy, those faithful witnesses teach others. Okay? But he says in the presence of many witnesses, he's making the point that the secret isn't a secret. It's not some esoteric thing that you need to learn. That's Gnosticism, second century heresy. And that comes up in the conversation. It's not that you don't have to get this inside info. It's straightforward, it's simple. You were made for great things. We know this made for God, and we're not there. We know this intuitively. Why? Because you've rebelled against God. We have all simple little word, sin. What's the solution? Forgiveness and then regeneration to make us new so we can help make the world better. Until God makes the whole thing new. That's not hard to understand. That is the story of reality. It's the reason I wrote the book Mount Pitch. I'll make the picture right at the end. Because when you get the big picture, it's not only clear, but you see the elegance of it. You see the beauty of it. And I think in the elegance and the beauty of it, there is a persuasive power. It just makes sense. It resonates with the deepest intuitions that we have about the nature of the world and what it means to be human. So maybe that's a good note to end on. Do you have a final thought, Tim?

[Tim Barnett]

No, I just appreciate you taking the time to sit down, fly to my house here in Toronto. It's been, yeah, a great discussion. A lot of clarity, I think, on some of the things that were said in the interview. And I think this will be a real help to people who are watching.

[Greg Koukl]

Yeah, I hope so. And by the way, people who are viewing or listening, there is a complimentary chapter of the Story of Reality that's available and we've got a little sign somewhere in the screen. Or you could just go to our website and see where we're talking about this and I think it's posted [e-mail] str.org and I think if you read that and it piques your curiosity, get the book. And I think it's going to help you as a Christian, a follower of Jesus. And if you're just a tire kicker or if you're a skeptic, this is something that will at least make clear how it all fits together. And that itself, I think, has tremendous persuasive force. Thanks so much, Tim, for opening your home to me and even sharing your little animal with us. Arrived right on, right on cue. And I'm glad that you guys joined us as well. Tim Barnett, Greg Coco For Stan to reason Give them heaven, friends. Bye bye Sa.