Welcome to episode 22 of the Knight and Rose podcast! In this episode, Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss quick responses to common atheist objections to Christianity. This is part 2 of a 3 part series. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We would appreciate it if you left us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Podcast description:

Christian apologists Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss apologetics, policy, culture, relationships, and more. Each episode equips you with evidence you can use to boldly engage anyone, anywhere. We train our listeners to become Christian secret agents. Action and adventure guaranteed. 30-45 minutes per episode. New episode every week.

Episode 22:

Episode  Summary:

Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss how to respond to common atheist objections to Christianity, in a minute or two. We cover these topics: eternal punishment, Old Testament conquests, the appropriateness of worship, forcing beliefs on others, hypocrisy in the church, religious wars, and LGBT rights. This is the second of a three-part series.

Speaker biographies

Wintery Knight is a black legal immigrant. He is a senior software engineer by day, and an amateur Christian apologist by night. He has been blogging at winteryknight.com since January of 2009, covering news, policy and Christian worldview issues.

Desert Rose did her undergraduate degree in public policy, and then worked for a conservative Washington lobbyist organization. She also has a graduate degree from a prestigious evangelical seminary. She is active in Christian apologetics as a speaker, author, and teacher.

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Music attribution:

Strength Of The Titans by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5744-strength-of-the-titans
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned earlier this week after a revolt from within the conservative party. I thought it might be a good idea to read something about the new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, because America and the UK have a “special relationship”. We certainly can’t depend on Canada for anything. Anyway, in this post, we’re going to see what the new UK PM is like.

Nile Gardiner writes about her in Fox News: (H/T Carla)

Truss, who previously served as Foreign Secretary and International Trade Secretary, succeeds Boris Johnson, who resigned as Prime Minister following a rebellion among Conservative Members of Parliament. She faces immense challenges, from soaring inflation and a large-scale energy crisis, to the continuing war in Ukraine and growing aggression from the enemies of the free world, including Russia, China and Iran.

Truss is the right leader for Britain at this moment. She models herself on Thatcher’s leadership and is a self-described “Thatcherite,” who believes in cutting taxes, reducing government spending, and shrinking the size of the state.

If she is another Thatcher, then she will be more than enough to face these challengers. And so far, so good:

A born-again Brexiteer (after originally opposing Brexit in the 2016 referendum), she is a strong defender of British national sovereignty and self-determination, and has resolved to stand up to the European Union on vital areas of British national interest, including amending the hugely flawed Northern Ireland Protocol.

Her early actions are promising:

Truss is already off to a flying start, appointing a strongly conservative cabinet, many of whom are on the right of the Conservative Party. It includes rising stars Suella Braverman as the new Home Secretary in charge of securing Britain’s borders and ending illegal migration from France, as well as Kemi Badenoch in the position of International Trade Secretary, overseeing Britain’s drive to secure a trade deal with the United States. Both Braverman and Badenoch have also been at the forefront of Britain’s culture wars, and key figures in combating the left’s nefarious “woke” agenda.

In addition, leading free-marketeers Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg have been appointed to the key positions of Chancellor of the Exchequer and Business Secretary respectively, with vital roles at a time when Britain’s economy is under great duress. Ben Wallace, who has been an outstanding Defence Secretary, remains in his post, and will be a major thorn in the side of Vladimir Putin and Russia’s barbaric efforts to invade Ukraine.

[…]Encouragingly, she has called for an aspiration-based society, one that champions individual freedom over government handouts, and celebrates the free market instead of tying its hands.

Jacob Rees-Mogg is my favorite UK MP, so I’m glad to see him getting promoted. Keep an eye on the UK. It looks like they could be more free, prosperous and secure than they have been.

I’m always very surprised when people accuse religious people of “hate” merely for disagreeing with LGBT activism. If anything, it seems to me like the LGBT activists hate the religious people. Today’s post is interesting because you might have thought that only Christians ever got attacked by the LGBT activists. But actually, Orthodox Jews get attacked, too.

Here’s the story from The Federalist:

This week, New York’s Yeshiva University — an Orthodox Jewish university — filed an emergency application to the U.S. Supreme Court after a state supreme court judge ordered the school to recognize an LGBT student group in violation of its religious beliefs regarding sexual morality. Yeshiva has asked for a stay of the lower court decision’s ruling pending their appeal. In the alternative, it has asked for a petition for writ of certiorari so the high court can order briefing and arguments and consider the full case on its merits.

Yeshiva maintains that the “message of Torah on [the LGBT] issue is nuanced, both accepting each individual with love and affirming its timeless prescriptions.” Accordingly, although Yeshiva admits LGBT students, as it is “wholly committed to and guided by Halacha and Torah values,” it cannot lend its “own name or seal of approval” to clubs that appear “[in]consistent with [its] Torah values.”

I thought the part in bold was interesting:

The plaintiffs argued that Yeshiva had violated the law by refusing to recognize their student group, admitting that in the creation of the group, they sought to alter Yeshiva’s religious environment. Yeshiva countered that it was a “religious corporation incorporated under the education law” as defined in section 8-102 of the human rights law, making it exempt. YU Pride disagreed, and State Supreme Court Justice Lynn Kotler sided with the student group.

I looked up Lynn Kotler and she’s a Democrat, which is hardly surprising.

So you can see that the LGBT students were the aggressors. They wanted to change the university’s religious traditions, even though they could have gone to any of the other universities in the country.

Yeshiva’s motto — “Torah Umadda” — reflects its core mission: the pursuit of rigorous religious and secular studies. All students engage in high-level study of Hebrew scripture, the Talmud, and the vast corpus of Jewish texts. The academic calendar is in harmony with the Jewish calendar, observing the Sabbath and all Jewish holy days. The campuses are sex-segregated in accordance with Jewish law, the food offered is strictly kosher, doorways have mezuzot affixed, and each student has a mashgiach ruchani (spiritual advisor).

This reminds me of the Canadian case where a Christian university wanted to have standards for sexual behavior. The university required students to abstain from sexuality activity of any kind before marriage.

Christian Post reports on what happened to them:

The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday that a Christian University can be denied accreditation because of its opposition to homosexuality.

[…]At specific issue is the university’s community covenant, which requires students and faculty to “voluntarily abstain” from “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”

“The university’s mission, core values, curriculum and community life are formed by a firm commitment to the person and work of Jesus Christ as declared in the Bible,” reads the covenant.

“The community covenant is a solemn pledge in which members place themselves under obligations on the part of the institution to its members, the members to the institution, and the members to one another.”

I think we should have views about LGBT activists that take into account their actions against people who take the Bible seriously. If you try to use the law to force your beliefs on me, that doesn’t seem neutral. No one is forcing students to attend these religious universities. But the LGBT activists are forcing these universities to go against the Bible. Which one is guilty of hate? Seems to me that forcing someone to go against their conscience is hateful.