I interview apologist Jonathan McLatchie (Part 1: see description box for part 2)

I'm seeing a huge "out of sync" issue beyond 55 minutes. I'm hoping it fixes itself. This problem was not happening live. If it persists I may have to try to fix manually and repost. Hopefully, if Yahweh is real, he'll intervene. :)

Great interview with J McLatchie! i like all his talk about hell ...

Jonathan became so uncomfortable when hell was brought up. Watch his body language, the way he stays swaying in his chair, the way his jaws quiver. Fascinating.

Is it just me or does Jonathan seem to he really high on the neediness scale?

Sometimes I wonder if the bible did itself a disservice by combining all of the books into one. It seems like if they were separate we could say there were multiple independent sources.

I've always wondered if jesus died to forgive our sins doesnt that include the sin of not believing in him? So arent you saved no matter what?

Jonathan referred to a single verse in Daniel chapter 12 verse 2 as proof that the concept of hell was described in the Jewish Scriptures. Doug, I know you didn't want to waste time litigating the meaning of the verse. However, just for the record, what Jonathan McLatchie did was an example of proof-texting. The verse is part of a long discourse in Daniel and is not part of a discourse about the existence of hell. The verse was referring to a specific group of people concerning a specific event among the Jews. So Jonathan is wrong. The Jewish scriptures do not describe a concept of hell as be believes. It is very difficult at times to believe that professional apologists like Jonathan are honest in these discussions.

I think I’m going to start an epistemological channel called Pine Jr. to show how I view pine creek.❤️

LOL...apologists talk such utter shite, it's a wonder there are any religious people left..

What is more likely : That someone rose from the dead or this guy has to run a business and will never put that in danger ? :) It would be nice to see an interview with a neutral, real scientist/historian about that topic.

You seem to have abandoned faith by requiring evidence gawd would not be happy .

Resurrection always comes down to this. Evidence, evidence, evidence (instert miracle) resurrection.

😂 The Book of Mormon is almost entirely in fantasy land! Mormons have their evidence for their fantasy just like you do.

For being a highly-educated guy, Jonathan sure does rely a lot on special pleading to explain his beliefs.

I know I'm very late to this conversation, but I have to say, I'm not interested in any god or deity that throws me into hell for not worshiping him. Sounds very needy and codependent. I mean, if I make it to heaven, how many other needs is this deity going to demand of me. The price of eternal salvation sounds like it's followed by a huge debt. I might just be entering into eternal slavery. I must proceed with caution when it comes to this faith!

Sheesh. Another deluded twit.

No Jonathan we don't have extraordinary evidence for the resurrection. In fact we don't have any at all. You're just another mad Christian who claims the Bible is true because the Bible says so.

By the way, even if it were 100% true that Jesus Christ rose from the dead - this doesn't necessarily prove that Yahweh is God and the Bible is the Word of God. He could have been raised by another god, or by technologically advanced aliens, or by humans from the future, or (perhaps even) by something else we (as yet) have no concept of.

I just feel so sorry for intelligent people like this going through life believing in eternal torment...even if they aren't going to suffer it themselves, to believe that so many of their loved ones are going to go through that...how can anyone lead a happy life with that belief?

I'll summarize Jonathan's position: I, Jonathan, have special God goggles that allow me to understand things in a way that people without the goggles simply cannot. These goggles were given to me when I was chosen, purely coincidentally, by the God of my parents. I cannot demonstrate that these goggles exist. Please take my word for it. If you don't have the goggles, you will be in hell forever through no fault of your own. You are simply not special like me. By the way, I am also terrified of hell and this motivates me every day to wear my goggles in every moment. They give me a sense of safety and purpose. They protect me from the wrath and punishment of my eternally loving God that chose me because I'm special. I'm special. Hey, I'm special.

I appreciate the way Johnathan says he values the evidence but which Christianity does he believe to be true? I think we need to talk about the particular Christianity each person believes rather than talk about a god in general. Many of his Christian answers are according to a particular Christian WV. There is not just one Christian WV. His understanding of the Gospel is not Orthodox, Capital O.

I always find it odd that the one bit of evidence that would convince these people that Christianity isn't true is always if the body of Jesus were found. They are convinced that they have a personal relationship with Jesus, so wouldn't they be saying that they have a relationship with someone who possibly doesn't exist? That just makes the relationship a delusion. It's like these people that believe they are in romantic relationships with celebrities whom they have never met.

Always fascinating to see apologists who pretty much reject the concept of faith as defined Hebrews 11:1. And it should not surprise me, given that the common definition of faith leads to a tautology. But I think it shows well the limitations of SE, when the person already rejects the common definition of faith. That doesn't mean you can't go on to talk about the quality of the evidence, but at that point your no longer talking about the underlying epistemology.

I would say I was where Jonathan was for several years, feeling that faith as I'd defined it (Hebrews 11:1) my entire life was an invalid form of arriving at knowledge. Where I differed was that the cumulative case just kept getting weaker and weaker once I no longer had that common definition of faith to fall back on.

Still only 30 mins in, looking forward to the rest after work. :)

I think one question that I get out of this, that might be helpful is, "Did you learn these criteria before or after you accepted Christianity is true?" "Did these criteria change your mind about something? If so, what are they?"

It gets kind of frustrating when people acquire their criteria of truth by looking at what best supports their view, rather than vice versa -- have the criteria first, judge what's truth later.

I think your strict SE is a bit lacking in the first 10 min Doug. I thought of plenty of questions that cut directly to the heart of their epistemology. :P

Why is it that so many apologists get all “Kuhnsian”, almost “Foucaultish” in some situations but emphatically not in others?

When asked why people of different faith come to different conclusions and when Doug stressed the usefulness of applying some sort of scientific method that tries to be as value neutral as possible, Jonathan immediately started talking about how science is not done in a vacuum and thus moved towards ideas of the socially constructed truth, post modernism and the rejection of the falsficationist position. For some apologists it seems very natural to bring up the ideological component behind a paradigm shift. For some reason that applies especially to areas like “Big Bang cosmology”, evolutionary science and other things that might interfere with scientific claims found in the bible. In other words, when empirical findings outside of the bible might be able falsify some of it’s claims, they reject the idea of empiricism, talk about the dangers of scientism and are happy to show you examples of how bias have clouded the judgment of scientists.

But when it comes to reading the actual texts in the bible and examining their evidentiary value, they are much more straightforward in their approach. The evidence for the miracles, fulfilled prophecies and especially the resurrection seem not to pose questions of any underlying structure that might influence their evaluation of the evidence. People who are not convinced by the evidence – atheists, agnostics and believers in other religions - are ill informed, unreasonable or simply mistaken. They might bring up bias as something that other people have against the bible claims, but not as something that applies equally across the board. The apologists have just looked at the texts and other types of evidence and landed at the only reasonable conclusion, with or without bias.

So different standards apply.

And that might sometimes be reasonable.

But wouldn’t it then be the other way round? Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to use the post modern, interpretation-is-relative-to-a-person-situated in-time-and-space kind of stance when you read ancients texts and try to understand history? A method that has an inherent factor of uncertainty built into it. And isn’t the more straightforward approach, where you try to eliminate as much bias as possible a rather successful method in the natural sciences, where the scope for interpretation gets smaller? Somehow, many apologists of the 100-to-99-percent-certain variety seem to argue that the opposite is more reasonable.
And to me at least, that seems counter intuitive.

History has shown that a person's willingness to die for a belief has no foundation upon truth!

Sad waste of quite an intelligent mind!

"ID getting more and more evidentiary support"? "We have sufficient evidence to support Jesus raised from the dead"? The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one. By this logic, we also have tons of evidence for Bigfoot, Loch Ness, Aliens, Spiderman, and vaccines causing autism. What a joke.

He seemed very hesitant (and dishonest) when comparing Theology to Science. The problem isn't "consensus", Jon, it's the fact that Science is verifiable. Measurable. Tangible. You know...the whole "don't believe me? measure it yourself!" thing. Theology doesn't have that. It has people that sit around (reading the same old documents) and postulating on what these old, dead people meant when they wrote it. What's even sadder is that most Theologians don't even stay up to date on the latest discoveries and translations of documents, letters, and manuscripts. They just don't care. That isn't intellectual rigor and it certainly isn't Science.

I liken people like Jonathan to black holes in society. They've achieved an informational density that collapses back into its initial premise. Incongruent facts and ideas are rejected as Hawking radiation. Like black holes, these people are best avoided.

Something I find both sides seem to overlook when discussing conflicting religious beliefs, is not what each other believe, but the psychological actuality of why they believe. If a Christian admits a Mormon truly believes what they believe, then it is an admission the human brain is capable of believing false things. That vulnerability can only be overcome if the Christian can demonstrate they have access to independent truth of the belief. Claiming is one thing, demonstrating it is another.

Using the bible to learn Christianity and then using the bible to justify Christianity is, by definition fallacious.

This dude scares the hell out of me. Like someone raised Spock in a room full of bibles and nobody to play with.

Wait...I get the joke now. Doug is Conan Obrian and this guy is Jordan Schlansky.

if there is no judgement for sin, then there is no purpose for Jesus dying on the cross...spicy.

Interesting question posed by @pinecreek, is the historical evidence along with many other factual reason the root of why you confidence in your belief? Or is it just a more defensible position?