Welcome to episode 26 of the Knight and Rose podcast! In this episode, Wintery Knight and Desert Rose continue our 3-part series about how Christianity impacted the world in a number of different areas. 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 26:
Episode Summary:
Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss how Christianity has impacted the world in many different areas. In this episode, we discuss the labor, slavery and education. We start by talking about the beliefs and practices were dominant in pre-Christian society. We then explain what the Bible teaches, and what practices emerged from these beliefs. 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.
OK. So I think it’s safe to say that of all the Christian apologists out there, David Robertson is my least favorite debater. Why? Many reasons, but mostly because he does not bring in evidence, especially scientific evidence. And he seems to make these clever quips like G. K. Chesterton. I like evidence. I would rather that he talk about scientific and historical evidence.
Dina asked me to listen to this debate a while back, between David Robertson and agnostic Matt Dillahunty (he’s not an atheist, he’s just an agnostic). I went in absolutely convinced that Robertson was going to have his ass handed to him by Matt Dillahunty. And I could not have been more wrong.
Here’s the debate posted on YouTube (audio only):
This snarky summary is just a paraphrase from certain parts of the debate, it is not designed for accuracy, but for fun – to make you listen to the debate. Listen to the debate to get the exact words in context.
Summary:
Matt Dillahunty: he’s an agnostic who calls himself an atheist
David Robertson: he’s from Scotland, could we not get someone better?
Robertson opening statement is incredibly weak, as you might expect, he only had two arguments embedded in a long list of nonsense: 1) origin and design of the universe 2) reality of evil requires objective morality
1) Creation/Design:
Robertson: The fact is that matter exists. There are 3 views that could account for this fact: 1) created, 2) eternal, 3) self-generated out of nothing. Option 3) is self-contradictory, 1) requires a Creator, and 2) is falsified by the Big Bang cosmology. So what’s your view?
Dillahunty: You’re trying to get me to say what my view is, but I can just say “I don’t know” and get out of having to take any position on how matter got here. I can say “I don’t know” to all the scientific evidence for the Big Bang cosmology, too!
2) Evil requires objective morality, requires a moral lawgiver:
Robertson: evil exists, e.g. – the Holocaust. If atheism is true, objective morality is impossible. Richard Dawkins agrees. Therefore, theism is the best explanation for the existence of evil.
Dillahunty: In my opinion, morality means doing what helps people have well-being. And I think that the Holocaust is obviously bad, because it hurts the well-being of the victims.
Robertson: The problem is that on your view, different people decide what well-being is to them. If you were raised in the Social Darwinism of the Nazi regime, you would believe that the Holocaust was the best for the well-being of the society as a whole.
Dillahunty: Isn’t it obvious that killing people is bad for their well-being?
Robertson: Is it bad for the well-being of unborn children to kill them?
Dillahunty: Yes
Robertson: So you’re against abortion, then?
Dillahunty: No
Robertson: So you think that killing the child in the womb is against the well-being of the child, but you’re for that?
Dillahunty: I don’t know! I don’t know!
Then Dillahunty tried to claim Hitler was a Christian:
Dillahunty: here is a quote by Hitler saying that secular schools are bad, and religious schools are good – see, he’s a Christian!
Robertson: when was that said and to whom?
Dillahunty: I don’t know, I don’t know!
Robertson: It was said in 1933, during an election campaign, to Catholic authorities – he was a politician, looking for votes from Catholics so he could become Chancellor.
Good and evil on atheism:
Dillahunty: good actions results in states with more well-being, and evil actions result in states with less well-being.
Brierley: but when the Nazis slaughtered all those people, they believed they were increasing well-being
Dillahunty: But you could demonstrate to them that their action is not going to increase well-being. Survival of the fittest is descriptive of what happens, but it’s not prescriptive.
Robertson: Whose well-being will human beings think about most, if not their own? Do you really think that you can stop people like Charles Manson from being evil by sitting down and trying to prove to them that they are not helping their victim’s well-being?
(A BIT LATER)
Robertson (to Dillahunty): Is it a fact that Dachau (a concentration camp) was morally wrong?
Dillahunty: (literally, not a paraphrase) I DON’T KNOW
My thoughts:
When I listened to this debate, the overwhelming conviction that emerges is that Matt Dillahunty is not someone who forms his worldview based on evidence. His rejection of the Big Bang cosmology with “I don’t know” is just atrocious. His comments about slavery in the Bible and Hitler being a Christian show that his investigations of these issues is far below the level of a responsible adult. His dallying with the Jesus-never-existed view just shows him to be fundamentally anti-intellectual, as even atheist historian Bart Ehrman denies that view. His definition of faith has nothing to do with the Bible, or Christian authorities, or Christian scholars – he invented a definition of faith that allows him to mock Christians as morons. That’s just irresponsible – letting the desire to mock others cause you to distort the definition of a word. When asked to state his positions or respond to specific evidence, his response is very often “I don’t know”. It seems to me that atheism, to him, means not pursuing truth with the aim of grasping it. He wants to keep reality at a safe distance – that’s why he says “I don’t know” so often.
On morality, it’s even worse. It’s not surprising to me that he is pro-abortion and has no opinion about concentration camps being objectively evil. Most atheists are pro-abortion, by the way. When it comes to morality, Dillahunty only has his own personal opinions, and they refer to nothing outside his own mind. (His opinion of morality as related to well-being is utilitarianism – a very problematic view – but moreover, it is his subjective view – he isn’t offering it as any sort of objective moral system that would be prescriptive instead of descriptive. Without an after-life, there is no reason for anyone to care about the moral point of view when it goes against their self-interest, anyway. Atheists use moral language, but their statements are not referring to any objective, prescriptive moral reality. Atheism is materialistic and therefore deterministic – it does not even ground the free will that is needed to make moral choices. Their view is Darwinian survival of the fittest, that’s what emerges from their origins story – and it does not rationally ground morality. The strong kill the weak, if they can. I’ve written before about how difficult it is for atheists to rationally condemn things like slavery, and nothing in Dillahunty’s presentation led me to believe that he had solved that problem.
Anybody can be an intellectually-satisfied atheist with an empty head – it’s knowledgethat causes people to conform their beliefs to reality. If one strives to keep one’s head as empty as possible, then of course one can believe anything one wants. I’m glad, speaking as a Christian theist, that I get to follow the evidence wherever it leads. It seems to me that we should do that, rather than decide how we want to live first, and then invent a worldview to justify our desires.
I wrote about Hunter Biden’s business dealings with the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma a few times. But there actually some more revelations about it, from a well-respected fact-checker called “Just Facts”. I watched the lead investigator do an interview on the Eric Metaxas show, and I also found an article on the Just Facts web site. Let’s take a look at it.
Here’s what it says:
Newly discovered emails prove beyond all doubt that the “true purpose” of Hunter Biden’s lucrative deal with a Ukrainian energy company was for Hunter to get “high-ranking US officials” to visit Ukraine and persuade the nation’s leaders to “close down” all criminal “cases/pursuits against” the firm’s primary owner, a notoriously corrupt oligarch with ties to Russia.
Documentation of this illegal scheme begins with a widely overlooked email on Hunter’s laptop in which a top executive of the Ukrainian firm describes the plan. Now, emails uncovered by Just Facts prove that Hunter and his partners:
explicitly agreed to this deal.
concealed the names of top U.S. officials to “be on the safe and cautious side.”
affirmed that only Hunter could credibly promise to get those officials to shield the oligarch from criminal charges.
Just one month later, then-Vice President Joe Biden did exactly what those emails specified by visiting Ukraine and threatening to withhold U.S. aid unless the prosecutor investigating Hunter’s cash cow was fired. Moreover, Biden did this by going after two “key targets” identified in the emails: the “President of Ukraine” and the “Prosecutor General.”
The funny thing about Biden withholding U.S. aid is that this is the exact “quid-pro-quo” situation that Trump was accused of. This is using the power and wealth of the American people to help people who are helping your own family.
The article explains:
how Hunter was being paid
how much Hunter was being paid
what the Ukrainian oligarch expected Hunter to do
This is the part about Joe Biden:
One month after the emails above were exchanged, Joe Biden did exactly what they specified.
In December 2015, Biden visited Ukraine and later recounted on video that he told Ukraine’s president and its prime minister on that trip that he would withhold a U.S. government “billion-dollar loan guarantee” unless they fired the “state prosecutor.” “If the prosecutor is not fired,” warned Biden, “you’re not getting the money.” Biden then added, “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.”
[…]Just two weeks after the court’s seizure order, the president of Ukraine forced the prosecutor to resign. White House phone logs show that Joe Biden talked to the president of Ukraine at least three times in the week surrounding the firing. The phone log for the last of these calls states, “The Vice President also commended President Poroshenko’s decision to replace Prosecutor General Shokin, which paves the way for needed reform of the prosecutorial service.”
And finally:
Two months later in May 2016, Ukraine’s parliament approved the president’s appointee for a new chief prosecutor, who Biden described as “solid.”
[…]Six months after Biden’s “solid” prosecutor was appointed, he dropped all criminal charges against the oligarch. The prosecutor also applauded the settlement as a “success” because the oligarch paid $7.46 million in back taxes and penalties. Far from being a prosecutorial victory, the oligarch praised these outcomes and stated that they would allow his corporation to increase production and “attract international companies to Ukraine.”
What about Joe Biden?
Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter’s illicit business deals is also evidenced by a 2017 encrypted What’s App message uncovered by the New York Post. In it, one of Hunter’s business partners wrote to another partner while discussing Joe Biden, “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u are face to face, I know u know that but they are paranoid.”
What’s interesting is his list of the news organizations and tech companies that covered up for Joe Biden.
Here are a few that are documented by Just Facts:
In October 2020, Twitter locked the New York Post’s account for reporting on Hunter’s laptop and pinned a post to the top of Twitter’s home page claiming that Joe Biden “played no role in pressuring Ukraine officials into firing the prosecutor,” a statement flatly disproven by the words of Biden himself.
In October 2020, NPR managing editor Terence Samuels Public Editor wrote that NPR is not reporting on the NY Post’s expose of Hunter Biden’s laptop because “we don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
In October 2020, Facebook executive Andy Stone wrote, “While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”
I really recommend reading the full article, so you can understand the full scope of how the mainstream news media and the Big Tech companies interfered in the 2020 election on the side of the Democrats.
In November, we have another chance to vote about what Joe Biden did, and about how the mainstream media treated the story. I would imagine that the Democrats think that the American people are too stupid to be following the facts of this case. If the Democrats lose the House and the Senate in November, maybe they will understand that the American people don’t rely on traditional sources of news anymore. We do our own investigating now.
WINTERY KNIGHT 