Blind Faith vs. Biblical Faith? Skepticism, Scientism, and Conspiracy Theories | Juan Valdes

Episode Summary:

Is faith just wishful thinking? How should Christians think about conspiracy theories?

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Juan Valdes to recover a biblical, evidence-based understanding of faith. We explore why faith is not a blind leap but trust in a trustworthy God, why the object of faith matters more than the amount of faith, and how damaging teachings like “you weren’t healed because you lacked faith” distort the gospel.

We also tackle the faith vs. science narrative, exposing the assumptions behind scientism and showing why the deeper conflict is often naturalism vs. theism, not Christianity vs. research. Along the way, we discuss faith and works, skepticism, conspiracy thinking, and how churches can disciple young people being shaped more by school, media, and social platforms than by biblical teaching. 

Who is Disciple Nations Alliance (DNA)? Since 1997, DNA’s mission has been to equip followers of Jesus around the globe with a biblical worldview, empowering them to build flourishing families, communities, and nations. 👉 https://disciplenations.org/

🎙️Featured Speaker: 

Dr. Juan Valdes has always had a curious mind and asked lots of questions growing up. Searching for answers has been his passion and a lifelong journey. He had his first debate in 10th-grade biology class. Juan believes people have good questions and we as Christians need to have good answers. He desires to live out the command in the Bible where we’re told to always be ready to give an answer and to do so with the right attitude (1 Peter 3:15).

Further, Juan feels called to equip young people for the battles they face every day in an increasingly hostile culture. He also desires to equip parents and pastors so that they’re able to engage the youth. Juan loves to see people emboldened when they realize that there are excellent arguments in support of the Truth. Most importantly, he enjoys removing the obstacles that keep people from surrendering to Christ.

When Juan’s not traveling, he is engaged in the pastorate of his bilingual congregation in Miami, FL. When he has down time (which isn’t often) you might find him in a quiet place reading a book or fishing. Juan’s educational background includes graduate work at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and master’s degrees from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and Logos Graduate School. He also has a Doctor of Ministry in Apologetics from Southern Evangelical Seminary.

📌 Recommended Resources: 

     👉 Matching Challenge: Donate - Disciple Nations Alliance 

     👉 Book: 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World by Scott Allen 

     👉 Last Episode with Juan: When Feelings Become Truth

     👉 Book: How to Think–A Crash Course In Critical Thinking (Revised Edition) - T | rforh store

     👉 Recommended Videos: Debunked Videos — DeBunked

     👉 Website: Reasons for Hope - Home

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Episode Webpage

Transcript

Juan Valdes 0:02

Jesus talked about faith the size of a mustard seed because that's the smallest seed he could conceive of at that point, at that moment in that culture for those people. He was trying to make this a point. The point is, look, it's not how much faith you have, it's what your faith is deposited on. That's what makes all the difference in the world. I also think that we're shooting ourselves in the foot as Christians when we're the ones, a lot of times, that are coming up with these conspiracy theories because it makes the evangelism all the hard all the much harder. And so I see a disconnect between youth uh and what's being taught from the pulpit in many, many churches. A lot of the youth sitting in our churches are moral relativists. They've already bought into that. They've already bought into the idea that the Bible is not inerrant. Uh, they bought into the idea that faith is just believing in something and uh in spite of the evidence. Uh, because there's this whole idea that you have to have a lot of faith. And and sometimes when you're not healed, it's because you don't have enough faith. Or when something bad happens to you, well, it's because you didn't have enough faith. You just need a little more faith. And again, that's not scriptural. A hundred years of Nobel Prizes in chemistry, 72.5% of the winners were Christians. In physics, 65.3% of the winners Christians. In medicine, 62%. When somebody says, you know, you you you cannot be a scientist and be a Christian. I'm like, well, if you want to do real good science, you better be a Christian because you have a much better chance of doing good science if you're a believer than if you're not. You're studying the creation and you know the creator.

Show Mission And Season Highlights

Luke Allen 1:41

Hi friends, welcome back to another episode of Ideas Have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. As Christians, we all know that our mission is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. However, our mission, the Great Co-mission, also involves working to transform our cultures so that they increasingly reflect the truth, the goodness, and the beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected the second part of her mission, and today there are many Christians that are having little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to practically disciple the nations and to create Christ-on earning cultures that reflect the character of the living God. Hi, guys, my name is Luke Allen, and I am joined today by my dad and co-host, Scott Allen. Howdy, Dad. How you doing?

Scott Allen 2:24

Hey, Luke. I'm doing great.

Luke Allen 2:26

Well, great. Yeah. We just hopped off a fun uh episode with a good friend of ours, uh, Dr. Juan Valdez, uh, who we will introduce to you in a second. But it was a great discussion. Uh, I'll let you introduce that a little bit more, Dad. But before that, I just want to tell all of you guys listening that we are so thankful for each and every one of you for spending your time with us here on Ideas Have Consequences. This has been a fun year so far. This is uh season three we launched at the beginning of this year, and so far this has been um, as far as listeners, uh, our best season yet by far. So we are so thankful that you guys are listening to the show, sharing the show, and uh yeah, just telling people uh about what we're doing here. We are so thankful for you guys helping us out. A couple episodes that I would like to just highlight today that we have had so far in season three that uh if you haven't had a chance to listen to yet, we would highly recommend that you go back and find those. We've had a bunch of guests on, ranging from Katie Faust to Vishnu Mongawadi to Tim Barnett and Greg Kokel from Stand to Reason. We've had Christaban Trigger from the Center for Biblical Unity, but a couple of the highlight episodes that I'd really recommend if you haven't had a chance to listen to them yet, um, at least as far as numbers go, your favorites who are listening, uh, are the same ideas fueled the holocaust and the sexual revolution. That's an episode we did with Seth Gruber back in February. And then one of your guys' favorite episodes after that was the episode that we did with Jeremy Pryor that came out in on May 5th, which was called What Would a Christian Family Look Like Today? And then just last week, we had the opportunity of having Dr. Jeff Myers join the show and we talked about gender confusion, the woke right, and the search for salvation. You guys uh have showed us in the numbers that those are your favorite episodes so far. So if any of you guys haven't listened to those episodes yet, I just want to highlight those for you guys uh here as well. So as far as today's episode goes, Dad, would you mind giving people a quick little overview of what we talked about?

Scott Allen 4:19

Absolutely. Yeah, we had uh today uh our our our I can call him now a good friend, Juan Valdez, uh the the great apologist, was back on the podcast again. And we thought it would be great to circle back to one of the ten words that uh that I um I focused on in the 10 words to heal our broken world book, the word faith, uh just because uh this is what an apologist does. He defends the faith. And um and we thought it would be great to get Juan's perspective on that, and and we weren't disappointed. Um he shed light on that biblically, culturally, and at the end, very practically, Luke, I thought that was one of the best parts of the podcast.

Luke Allen 4:58

Yeah, I really enjoyed the end as well, just getting into how to actually um share what a biblical understanding of faith is in a world where it is such a confused topic today and so misused by so many. Uh, and that misuse doesn't just intellectually affect us, it affects the way we live our lives. So that practical application at the end was great. And if you guys want to hear my dad and I get in a little bit of a jousting match, uh that also happened at the end of the episode, so stick around for that. You won't you won't want to miss it. Not really. We we pretty much agree on everything, Dad, but uh it's always fun to just wrestle through ideas with you. So anyways, without further ado, let's hop into this episode with Dr. Juan Valdez.

Meet Juan Valdez And The Theme

Scott Allen 5:36

Well, welcome again, everybody. We're uh thrilled to have back with us um for a second time this year, Dr. Juan Valdez. Juan is a powerful voice on apologetics, faith, and culture. Uh Juan is an author, bilingual speaker, full-time apologist with Reasons for Hope. Um, holds his Doctor of Ministry and Apologetics from Southern Evangelical Seminary and has spent over two decades equipping believers to think critically and to defend their faith. Um and when he's not traveling and speaking, which he does a lot, he's serving on the ground as senior pastor of a thriving bilingual congregation in Miami, Florida. He is author of many books, including co-author of the highly acclaimed book Glad You Ask, a series which tackles the toughest questions that teenagers and parents face today. Um, Juan, it's great to have you back, and we're excited to get into our topic today.

Speaker 2 6:32

I'm super excited, man. I love being with you guys. I love what you guys do, and just uh ideas have consequences. That is a life motto uh for for myself as well. So this is this is good. I'm happy to be with you guys.

Juan Valdes 6:45

Oh, thank you, Juan. We wanted to talk, we thought as Luke and I were talking about the podcast today, we thought it'd be really great to have Juan talk to us about the word faith. Um, this is a word that I focused on in my most recent book as well, 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World. It's a uh it's it's a word that is central to uh the Christian faith. We always put it in there when we talk about faith, right? The Christian faith. And you're an apologist, you've spent your uh career helping people to defend their faith. But I also feel like it's a word that we kind of throw around and use a lot, but we we don't think too critically about it. And it's a word that's been highly contested in the culture, and I would argue even redefined uh in the culture, and I think that cultural redefinition has crept into the church as well. Um, I'd like to just start with this question for you, Juan.

Why Culture Calls Faith Irrational

Scott Allen 7:40

When people in our culture, let's just talk about the culture broadly and not not the church, but but the broader culture, when they enter, when they hear the word faith, how do they understand it? And then I guess the follow-up to that would be how does that kind of cultural understanding differ from the biblical definition of faith?

Speaker 2 8:01

I I think that that's a wonderful question. I I think that uh our culture primarily sees faith as uh, you know, that the wishful thinking, that that desire that something be true, even though there's evidence against it, uh even though it's not very likely, even though it's probably not gonna happen or it's not true, but we really want it to be true. You know, it's it's believing in spite of the fact that the evidence is contrary. That's how I see our culture, uh especially when when you look at it from the lens of naturalism or or or uh a naturalist they will say we'll see faith as you know, you know, those religious people that you know they don't understand how the natural world works. And so, in spite of all the evidence we continuously give them, they continue to insist on a God, a creator, or this, uh even though the evidence is contrary. Right. So that that's kind of the idea. And it even trickles down into the movies. I forget, I forget what movie it was. I believe it was Miracle on Something Street, the the baseball uh classic movie, where there's a scene and the the little girl is having a hard time believing something, and the mom defines faith for her and says, Well, honey, you know, that's what faith is. You believe something even uh even uh against the the the the uh against the evidence. Even when the evidence is contrary, and the girl was like, huh? Like she didn't get it. And neither would I if I would be given that explanation, right?

Luke Allen 9:31

Yeah. Is that from the miracle on 34th Street? I believe so, yes. Okay, yeah, that sounds like that's interesting because that's not a new movie.

Juan Valdes 9:38

No, no, that's an oldie.

Scott Allen 9:40

Huh. You know, it it was fascinating to me, Juan, when I did my research for the book. I actually went to the dictionary. I think I went to Oxford English Dictionary. I mean, some really mainstream dictionaries, and they defined faith exactly like you just described. It's it's essentially this idea that it's a belief over and against what the evidence shows based on a you know a desire for something to be true religiously. So it's it's a religious word.

Luke Allen 10:08

I actually have that right in front of me, Dad, the definition of the case. Oh, go ahead, yeah, read that. This is the Oxford Dictionary of the English language. Faith is a strong belief in a God or a doctrine or a religion based on spiritual apprehension rather than on proof.

Scott Allen 10:22

And that that's actually in the dictionary. It's how it's defined in the That doesn't help us here. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? I I just found that to be so fascinating because it's um well for you know, it's it's it's really the opposite in so many ways of what what faith actually means biblically. So let let's go there, Juan. How that that's how faith has been redefined in the culture, you know, this kind of blind leap, you know, based on a hope or a desire that something's true religiously, that there is a God or there's hope for eternity, uh, hope for an afterlife or whatever it is, but there's no evidence for it. But I'm going to exercise faith and believe it anyways. Um how is that different from what we read about this word in the Bible? And I know that this is a word that's all over the scriptures, Old Testament and New Testament. Yeah.

Luke Allen 11:13

And if I could just squeeze in another question there, sorry if I wanted to cut you off. Um, but before we dive into the Bible, I mean, Juan, you're you're traveling, visiting churches non-stop throughout uh North America and South America. So you're real boots on the ground when we're talking about the church, you know. Is do you think this this this miscued understanding of faith is pretty prevalent within within your travels? Within the church, even yeah, within the church you're visit visiting, yeah.

Speaker 2 11:39

I I I think it's it it's not prevalent from the pulpits.

Speaker 7 11:43

Okay.

Juan Valdes 11:43

I think I think we're preaching it right, but I think it's prevalent among the youth because they're not getting their definition from the pulpit. They're getting it from the schools.

Scott Allen 11:54

Right.

Speaker 2 11:54

They're getting it from social media, they're getting it from the culture. Uh and so I see a disconnect between youth uh and what's being taught from the pulpit in many, many churches. Uh, I challenge, I constantly challenge youth pastors. You need to survey, you need to do blind surveys of your youth uh so you get honest results and figure out where they are on these issues because you're gonna be surprised. A lot of the youth sitting in our churches are moral relativists. They've already bought into that. They've already bought into the idea that the Bible is not inerrant, uh, they bought into the idea that faith is just believing in something and uh in spite of the evidence. Uh and so, yeah, they're sitting in our churches, and we may have a huge youth group that shows up once a week for pizza, but uh what do they believe? That that's my experience, and by the way, that's that's in Latin America as much as it is in uh North America. It's a cross-culture, it's a cross-cultural issue.

Scott Allen 12:56

So just to recap, you you feel like the pastors generally speaking are are preaching it straight up, but uh but young people are rig are are still struggling because they get their definition of faith from the culture, from education, and it is this this blind leap without any kind of evidence that backs it up. Um yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 13:17

That's what I observe.

Scott Allen 13:19

Yeah, yeah. Uh yeah, Luca, please jump in and and yeah, I I really your insights on this are really helpful for me as we go through these questions. I I I do want to get into on with you just how this word uh is understood scripturally and biblically. Um you know, how is it and specifically how is it different from this cultural redefinition? Um what what does this word actually mean? Uh if you if you go to the Bible as your source?

Biblical Faith As Evidence Based Trust

Speaker 2 13:48

I I think when you go to the scripture, the the message, I mean, cover to cover is pretty pretty uh direct when it comes to issues of faith. I mean, uh from the from the Garden of Eden all the way through to to the new New Jerusalem. Uh the the concept of faith is pretty consistent in scripture. And faith is is believing God for what he has promised us, even though we have yet to receive that promise or see the fulfillment of that promise. But it had there is no element whatsoever of blindness in that faith. None. Because we are to believe a God who has already proven himself over and over again. We have mountains of evidence. We go to scripture and we say, okay, God promised A and God delivered A. God promised B, God delivered B. We're by, you know, God delivered A, B, B, C, C, 3, 1, 4, 4, and he delivered it. You know, I mean, every how many promises has God fulfilled? How many prophecies have been fulfilled? How many predictions have come true? So for us to believe that the ones that are yet to come true are gonna happen is the opposite of blind. It's it's it's a very firm, firm foundation of faith. And the whole concept of contrary evidence, there there is no contrary evidence to what God has promised us. I mean, there I challenge anyone, give me a contrary piece of evidence that that uh give me a piece of evidence that contradicts or goes against or proves that what God has promised uh is not gonna happen or cannot happen.

Scott Allen 15:26

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 15:28

It's not there.

Scott Allen 15:29

Yeah, so you're yeah I re I think you're exactly correct. The the the biblical way that faith is talked about is tr it it's really the word trust. It's trust specifically in God and it's trust in his promises. Um so for example, the beginning of the great faith chapter in Hebrews talks about faith exactly in that way. You know, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, right? Um which is which is specifically the promises of God. You know, the we we are assured, we we have complete trust in those promises because of the past trustworthiness, you know, the the evidence for God's trustworthiness, so we can have complete trust.

Speaker 2 16:13

And then and then it's followed up by a list of examples, right? Of real live examples of people that exercise this faith and saw God come through. And it's like, listen, you're you're not this is not blind here. You're when you when you trust God, you're in the same list of where that that you find, you know, Noah and Moses and Abraham and all of these heroes of the faith. You're you you're part of that list now because they they did it too. And and and how did it go for them?

Speaker 7 16:42

Yes.

Speaker 2 16:43

I mean, uh it it it it's so patently clear in scripture.

Scott Allen 16:48

Yeah, yeah. I I think for me, another thing that I I found helpful in my own research on this was that you know, people we think of faith um in religious terms culturally. You know, it's defined religiously. Faith is what religious people exercise. But but people that aren't religious, you know, skeptics and secularists and scientists or whatever, they don't exercise faith, right? You know, they they they they're hard rationalists, you know, you know, they so so it it gets put into this religious box. But in my own research, I thought that's not that's not the way but the Bible defines faith. It is not defined religiously in a sense, it's just defined as, in a sense, trust based on evidence, in this case, specifically evidence of God's faithfulness to his promises. But if you define faith as trust based on evidence, and that's that's actually the New Testament word episodes is evidence, actually. It's it's so interesting, isn't it? Absolutely. You know, it it then it's something that we all act, everybody, every single human being has to exercise faith just to live, right? So this isn't a religious word in that sense.

Luke Allen 17:55

Yeah, and just and just to push back a little bit though, Dad, it's it's it's not exactly synonymous with trust, because trust you can have all the evidence and it's conclusive. But with faith, you can have a mountain of evidence, but then there's that one piece of gravel you put on top, that one last rock, and that one you don't exactly know, but you have an entire mountain base beneath it, and then you put that last rock on, and that one is a step of faith, because you don't you don't have perfect evidence for that one, at least yet. That's the hope element that we're talking about. Is that fair? I'd like to hear your thoughts on that one, yeah.

Speaker 2 18:31

I if we if if if we don't have anything to trust in or exercise faith in because we already have it all, then we don't it's not faith. It's just right. We don't need faith if we have everything in front of us. Yeah, it the the hope element is the element of of that that one promise or that one scenario or that situation that has yet to occur. But we're trusting God for it. I I think a side note is very important here, and I think that even within the churches, sometimes there's a there's bad definitions of faith, or at least bad applications, I should say, of faith. You know, that there's there's a lot of uh there's a lot of misunderstanding, or or I I I want to give people the benefit of the doubt and say that I don't I don't want to say people are manipulating using this word. I'll say that they they just don't understand it well.

When Faith Becomes A Blame Game

Speaker 2 19:21

Uh because there's this whole idea that you have to have a lot of faith. And and and sometimes when you're not healed, it's because you don't have enough faith. Or when something bad happens to you, well, it's because you didn't have enough faith. You just need a little more faith. And and and that is, again, that's not scriptural. That's not scriptural. Jesus talked about faith the size of a mustard seed, because that's the smallest seed he could conceive of at that point, at that moment in that culture for those people. He was trying to make this a point. The point is: look, it's not how much faith you have, it's what your faith is deposited on. That's what makes all the difference in the world.

Matching Challenge

Luke Allen 20:01

Hi, friends. I wanted to invite you to help the Disciple Nations Alliance meet our $50,000 summer matching challenge. Many of you are listening to this podcast because you care about a biblical worldview, about discipling the nations, and helping Christians live faithfully in every area of life. And that's exactly what the DNA exists to do. Last year, an independent impact study confirmed what we have been hearing again and again from people around the world. The DNA's training is helping Christians break free from a compartmentalized faith to applying biblical truths to their family, work, church, community, and culture. When Christians embrace a biblical worldview, they live differently. And when believers live differently, that transformation ripples outward. Now through August 15th, your gift can help us meet this $50,000 challenge and multiply this impact. To give, just tap the link in the show notes that says matching challenge. And thank you so much for standing with us here at the Disciple Nations Alliance. And now for a word from our friends over at the Center for Biblical Unity.

Speaker 21:11

Can one person really make a difference and push back against the darkness? At the Center for Biblical Unity, we're passionate about equipping Christians to tackle today's cultural challenges through a distinctly biblical worldview. That is why we are launching the Ambassadors for Biblical Justice cohort. This nine-month mentoring program will walk you through the vital and practical tools you need to make a real difference in your community. Maybe you're a mother of a special needs child who has a heart to reach out to other special needs children in your local church. Or maybe you're a pastor who wants to more effectively address poverty in your community. Or maybe you're a businessman who wants to connect the dots between your vocal and your worldview. Whoever you are, if you have a heart for Justice and want to explore how it aligns with the historic Christian faith. This program is for you. We are now accepting applications for our inaugural 2026 cohort. You will be mentored by seasoned Christian leaders who will help you apply biblical principles to real world issues of justice, poverty, and cultural renewal. For more information, please visit Center for Biblical Unity.com backslash ambassador. Come be a part of our effort to change the world one life at a time.

The Object Of Faith Matters Most

Scott Allen 22:33

Yes. There's always faith in something. There's always an object to your faith. And what I hear you saying, Juan, is that there's this kind of religious view, at least in some circles of the church, where faith, it's kind of an end in itself. It doesn't really have an object other than faith, right? It's like if you just believe enough, right? And there's that um famous um movie um The Prince of Egypt, you know, that came out many years ago. Um and there's a great song at the end of it, you know, there can be miracles if you believe. And it was, and I thought, if you believe in what, you know, that what never got answered. It was just, you know, it was just just believe, right? If you believe, then there can be miracles. And if there aren't miracles, it's because you didn't believe enough, right? Absolutely. So you're you're correct about that. I I it's missing the object, right? A faith always has an object. Or, you know, this this is a weird idea that somehow has crept into the church that faith is it's it in and itself, it's just like this thing that you've got to grunt out and exercise my faith. I just gotta believe it.

Speaker 2 23:37

And and and it's it's look, there's an there's an old uh uh illustration that is used. I I believe I read it for the first time in in one of Strobel's books way back, but but I it caught my mind. I said, you know what, this is this is powerful. It it illustrates the difference between the amount of faith and the object of faith. And and it's the idea that in in the northern part of the United States, uh in the winter, lakes freeze. And so people go skating on the lakes, people go drive their cars onto the lake, in some cases to go fishing on the lake. Uh and you know what? It it the ice holds them up because it's it's a foot you know deep of ice, right? Uh solid ice rock. Um but but the the the illustration is if you're at the at the edge of that lake and you're not sure if that's gonna hold you or not, and you don't have a lot of faith, you really don't. But but you know what? Somebody says, come on, come on, you can do it. And they they they convince you and you get on that ice, guess what? If that ice is a foot thick, it's gonna hold you. It it it wasn't how much faith you had, it was your your decision to take a step and say, you know what, I'm gonna trust that this is gonna hold me up. And and based on evidence, you know, based on evidence, but but on the same token, if that ice is thinned out because the summer is almost here and there's still ice, but it's a quarter of an inch thick, you can have all the faith in the world that it's gonna hold you up and leap into the ice blindly believing that it's gonna hold you up, and guess what? It's not, it's gonna break. Yeah, because the object of your faith at that point was not deserving of your faith.

Scott Allen 25:16

It wasn't based on evidence and this idea that, oh, you know, uh, it's just a matter of belief. I I know people in the church that have been really he hurt by this, uh, what we're talking about. So this is serious. I I remember hearing a story actually, a friend of mine who um, you know, somebody kind of prophesied over her that she was single, that you will be married, you know, and you're gonna be married um, you know, within this next year or something like that. And it didn't happen. And um the person's response to my friend was, well, it's because you didn't believe enough. You know, it wasn't it wasn't my prophecy that was to blame here, it was your lack of faith. And that really messed her up. That really harmed her, you know. And it it is this false definition of faith that we're talking about. It's kind of like if you don't have enough, then you know, bad things are gonna happen to you.

Speaker 2 26:07

Um you're trusting in something that God never offered to give you or never promised to give you, and so you have misplaced trust.

Scott Allen 26:13

Right, right.

Speaker 2 26:17

There's a lot of that going on. There's a lot of that.

Scott Allen 26:19

That's so that that's correct. That's that's that's definitely out there in the church, not helpful and not biblical. Faith biblically is always this trust in a person, God, uh, or an object based on an object like ice, let's say, based on evidence. And I think the ice is a good illustration. I often use the um illustration of of airplane travel, jet airplane travel, right? You know, um you know, there's let's say you've never flown and you have doubts about whether you're gonna get there safely if you fly in a jet, but you start researching and you find, you know, you look at statistics and evidence and you you do your homework and you find out that, yeah, it looks looks pretty likely that I'm going to get there safely. The the in a sense you're right, Luke. The the faith comes though in not just doing the research and and kind of kind of coming to the conclusion that I'm going to get there safely. The faith kind of does require that final step of actually getting on the plane, or or in your example, one, going out on the ice, but it's based on the evidence. And then, of course, if you go out and you fly many times and you you're you you have safe flights, uh, then it's evidence plus personal experience. Um that doesn't mean that every single time you, you know, you you get on that plane, you're gonna be guaranteed 100% that you know or you know so there you're right, there's always that last bit. We we can't know everything, but the Bible says you can know enough uh and have confidence enough. And by the way, this is the way everybody functions all the time. Like you literally can't sit in a chair without exercising faith like this, like we're talking about. Absolutely. In the sense that that chair is gonna hold you up. There's no guarantee, right? But you can have a lot of evidence that it's probably gonna hold you up, you know.

Speaker 2 28:08

So I tell my audiences sometimes I spent a lot of time on a plane. I said, you know, imagine the pilot comes on and says, Hey, well, welcome to flight so-and-so. We're heading to so-and-so. You know, I'm working I'm working remotely today from my home today, so I'll be flying your plane from my computer. And uh how would you feel about that? You know, would you would you trust that the flight is still gonna get you there? I think I would get off the plane.

Scott Allen 28:29

Right. So, yeah. I just as we're exploring the the truth about faith, let's say, and again, just to recap, we're not saying that faith against the cultural understanding, we're not saying in any way faith is opposed to evidence, it's based on evidence. Um, and trust, it's trust in something based on the evidence for it uh requires careful thinking, critical thinking. And this is where your work as an apologist comes in so vitally, Juan. Um, you know, there's still the element of right, we're we're not omnipresent, omnipotent, but you know, there's still a kind of like the final step of faith, if you will, getting on the plane, getting out on the ice. Um again, that's not religious, that's something everybody does all the time. Uh the Bible is this is the way the Bible's speaking about faith. I do want to just explore one more

Faith Alone And Faith That Works

Scott Allen 29:21

thing. Um, but it's that I think when a lot of evangelicals uh think of faith, we um I I know I'm one of them, right? We put it within the framework of the Reformation, solo fide, right? It's by faith alone, right? It it we immediately go there in our thinking, right? Um what is that, Juan? You know, that that aspect of faith that that Paul, let's say, speaks about so much in books the book of Romans.

Speaker 2 29:47

I think I think in the book of Romans, what Paul does is he juxtaposes faith and works. Yes. It's it's uh it he his emphasis is on on the Christian, uh his his his Roman audience that's receiving this letter, is an audience that uh wants to earn their salvation. They want to work hard enough to earn it. They they they they want to be worthy of it. They want to and and Paul is telling them, especially in this letter to the Ephesians, but also in Romans, is like this is not by works. This is by faith and faith alone. In the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, that's the object here, right? Absolutely. So in that sense, it the definition is not it doesn't really, I don't see the definition coming into play as much as the the the contrast between faith and works. Uh whereas James is talking to an audience that uh feels because they have faith, they don't need to do anything.

Speaker 7 30:44

Right.

Speaker 2 30:45

Uh and and James is saying, look, yeah, you have faith, but you your faith is going to be evidenced by the work, good works that you do. So you do need works, but they're they're not gonna save you, but they're evidenced that you are saved. There's no conflict between Paul and James. They're addressing two different perspectives within Christianity. The I don't need any works because I'm saved, or I don't need faith because I I have good works.

Scott Allen 31:10

Really helpful, Juan. So we're talking specifically when people when Christians think about faith, they often put it within this framework or context. And it's helpful just to step back and say the context here is about salvation. Okay, we're talking about salvation specifically.

Speaker 2 31:24

Yep.

Scott Allen 31:25

And you know, the uh issue of how are we saved? Are we saved based on our good works? That's what Jewish people believed, right? You know, by obedience to the law. And Paul came along and said, uh, no, you cannot be saved that way because we're fallen sinners and nobody can be obedient to that law. Only Christ could. He was perfectly obedient, um, and he's the only one, and it's through faith in him that we are saved, and based on his obedience to the law, not our own. Uh so it's all correct. It's but you know, the object of the faith, we're still speaking of faith, but the object of the faith is the the understanding in scripture that Christ is the Son of God, came to earth and lived a perfect life, and it's on that basis that we're saved and no other. And and then, of course, the opposite side of that coin is that once you believe that, then yeah, that's going to be evidenced by a different life, right? Like, you know, that it's got to be evidenced by good works that you're doing, but those works aren't to save you. So, anyways, all that to say, I just think that has to come into this discussion on faith because that's the way most of us or many of us kind of we frame and the faith is is the key. Yes.

Scientism And The Faith Science Myth

Luke Allen 32:35

Uh absolutely how do you respond when you come across people that um really fell for kind of the hubris of the enlightenment, the idea that science can prove everything? You know, I only believe it if it can be perfectly proven. What's the name for that actually? Is that scientistism? Scientism. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, I mean, how do you respond to that? That's that's on the opposite side here. There's they're trying to go no blind at all. It's just pure evidence.

Speaker 2 33:00

I'm reminded of of Esqueleto in in uh in uh Nacho Libre.

Scott Allen 33:06

I love that movie.

Speaker 2 33:08

They're getting ready to to fight, you know, against Satan's kid or something as the opponent. And he says, Have you been baptized? And he says, No, and I don't know why you always have to be judging me because I only believe in science. And uh it's this idea of it right, and and it's and and then he goes on to be baptized in a not very uh not a very good way, but uh anyway, uh that that always reminds me this conversation of that scene. Uh I I think that you that the the whole concept of of faith and science is is uh is is ludicrous. The idea of putting them against each other, of pinning them in some kind of battle or some kind of uh choice that you have to make, it to me is it's the fallacy of bifurcation. It's the fallacy of you look, here are your two choices, choose one or the other. Well, you know what? There's another alternative. How about both? Uh because faith and science have no conflict whatsoever. Um and and I I try to teach through the apologetics, I try to teach young people specially, that that's what the data shows. The data shows that there's no conflict between faith and science. And you can back that up. That thanks to the work of a Jewish scholar, Baruch Abba Shalef, uh, in 2005, he published a book called Uh 100 Years of the Nobel Prize. A phenomenal little booklet, a phenomenal study. You can actually get the study online for free as a PDF, and it has all the margins of errors, and you know, it has all the questions, the methodology, everything is on there. And what he found through that study is that a hundred years, from 1900 to 2000, he found that the the Nobel Prize is offered in science in three categories: chemistry, physics, and medicine. Those are the only categories they offer a Nobel Prize in Science. And it's also important to understand that to win a Nobel Prize in Science, you have to be doing, you know, the most cutting-edge, most advanced, most incredibly promising science in your field. Everybody who competes for these prizes are PhDs, and they're all at the top of their game, PhDs. A lot of the people that compete are teams of two or three scientists working on one area of investigation, of research. Uh, and so it's not a small thing to win this. If you win it, it's because you are at the top of your game. Uh and so when when somebody says, you know, you you have to choose between faith and science. If you're gonna be a scientist, and young people are conflicted by this, I get this question all the time. You know, I want to go into science, but I don't know if I should because, you know, I it it conflicts with faith. I and I'm a Christian, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, slow down, slow down. Let me give you some statistics here, okay? A hundred years of Nobel Prizes in chemistry, 72.5% of the winners were Christians. Not theist, Christians. 72.5. We're talking about three out of four scientists in a hundred years of prizes in chemistry have been believers. And by the way, the other 27 and a half are not atheists. That accounts for Hindus and uh you know Muslims and people of other faiths. Uh, atheists account for 8% of the winners of the Nobel Prizes in the 100 years. Across the board, 8% is the average in all of the prizes. So three out of four are Christian. In physics, 65.3% of the winners Christians. That's still an overwhelming majority. Two out of three are Christians. And in in medicine, 62%. Again, almost two out of three. Overwhelming majority. So when somebody says, you know, you you you cannot be a scientist and be a Christian, I'm like, well, if you want to do real good science, you better be a Christian because you have a much better chance of doing good science if you're a believer than if you're not. And that's what the statistics show. And when you have the data to back it up, when you're able to tell young people, you see them light up, you see them, you know, wow, I this is amazing because I I love science. And I encourage young people, go into science. We need Christian biologists, physicists, we need Christians in every field of science.

Scott Allen 37:21

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 37:21

Because you don't have to leave God at the door, you don't have to check your brain at the door, you don't have to all of a sudden, you know, be no. You're studying the creation and you know the creator. There's no difference here, there's no separation. These are two categories of thought, two totally different categories. When you're talking about God, you're talking about the agent, the category of agency, and when you're talking about science, you're talking about the category of law and mechanism. So I can study the law and mechanism all day long, whether I know there's an agent or not, whether I believe in an agent or not, whether I do I can determine who the agent is. It's I'm studying law and mechanism. But when you know who the agent is, and he has given you insight in how he created and why he created, now all of a sudden, you know what to look for in the law and the mechanism. And that you're you're now you're thinking outside the box of naturalism, and that's why you're winning these Nobel Prizes, because you're finding things that the others are not looking for because they don't know who the agent is. And to the atheist, forget it. To the atheists is like you don't know you don't have a leg to stand on. You're telling me that that that that there's this incredible work of of fine-tuning and intelligent design, but there's no designer. You know, you're you're you're you're looking at a at the Sistine Chapel and you're looking at at the fine the most incredible painting, you know, uh in the Sistine Chapel, and you're telling me that it happened because it was an explosion at a paint factory. You know, come on. You don't have a leg to stand on. Uh and so I I I think this is powerful. When you understand faith and science are not enemies, they're not antagonists to each other. They're you know, they they're not they're not on a different page. They one deals with the agent and the other with the law and the mechanism designed by the agent. You know, uh Pasteur, uh Kepler, uh Maxwell. Um I mean, the list is endless, almost isolated.

Scott Allen 39:25

Copernicus, Newton, yeah, no, it goes on and on. Yeah.

Speaker 2 39:28

Uh of all of these, the founders of all the modern schools of science were believers.

Scott Allen 39:32

Yeah. I I remember when I first uh kind of thought about this, uh Nancy Pearcy's book, The Soul of Science, helped me so much. And she was so fascinating on this subject, Juan, that you're talking about, because she said there's a reason why modern science uh and the scientific revolution that happened during the you know post-Enhabin, there's a reason why that happened in Christian countries shaped by Christianity in the Bible and nowhere else. And she said the reason for that is that uh Christian the science itself, the scientific method, is a fruit of biblical thinking in the sense of biblical presuppositions, right? And she she listed three of them. Uh I'm trying to remember all three, but there's two of them I can think of right now. One is you uh you have to believe that first of all, you know, that that uh the material world that you're studying in science that you're digging around into and studying uh itself isn't God, right? And and of course, what Western people of course go, no, yeah, right, it's not God. But a lot of people around the world, you know, believe that the natural world is God, right? It's the you know, if you believe in animism, you know, uh you can't you can't have science because if you start digging into the ground, you're gonna disturb the gods, right? If you cut down the tree, you're gonna make the gods angry, right? So you have to have this separation between creation and the creator, right? That you know, we can, you know, it's it it's God's handiwork, but it's not God, so it's fine to start digging around in it. Uh secondly, you have to believe that um, right, there's an order to it. There's kind of a repeatable order, there's laws to it, right? You know, it's not just random or chaotic. And I think the third one was, and of course that that's what the Bible says, right? This, you know, God created an orderly universe, right? There's a lot of worldviews that don't believe that, you know, uh secularism, naturalism itself doesn't have any basis for order. Why what you know, it's just matter, you know, colliding with each other in a kind of a random, haphazard way, right?

Speaker 3 41:29

Yep.

Scott Allen 41:29

Um, and then the third one is I think yeah, the third one was um uh yeah, this rational mind. So if you where why is it that we can think rationally and critically about things, right? If you believe in Darwinian evolution, uh, you know, we're just blobs of evolved matter. Why should I trust your brain to know anything about the truth, right? If you're just a blob of evolved matter. But if I believe that we're you know image bearers of God with with this capacity to be reasoning and rational and creative, then yeah, it makes sense. And so she said without those three, you wouldn't even have science. And of course, scientists take all three of those for granted, but they can't be taken for granted. They came from a biblical cosmology, a biblical view of the universe, right? Exactly. Yeah, there's no conflict. I think the conflict was actually a narrative, a false narrative that got drawn up way back when in the Enlightenment days, because there was this desire, this kind of hubreus on the part of scientists or enlightenment thinkers that we can know everything and we don't need to appeal to God or the Bible. We can just appeal to science. And I don't want to, you know, I want to be the the be-all and the end all, the answer to all the questions as a scientist, and I don't want to have you know God's foot in the door. So we're going to make uh your religion the enemy of science. And they created this false narrative that, but boy, it's had incredible staying power. It's still it's still believed today.

Luke Allen 42:58

Yeah, I mean, it was a straw man argument. I mean, the Voltaire makes that argument non-stop. Is he's like, the the the this is the opi of the masses, you know. This you guys don't have any reason. The clergy are the reason that we've we've been in this many years of the dark ages and whatnot. Dark ages. The enlightenment is what's going to bring us out of that. We need to push that all. And yeah, we kind of fell for it. That's a straw man.

Speaker 2 43:20

Uh it seems like, and it's still one one more, one more of the of the uh of the falls of the of the humanism. You know, it's the the we're not the the the end all. We're not we're not we're not all that we thought we were. But absolutely, I I think you're your your spot on Nancy's book is phenomenal on that issue. Uh science and faith. You you can't do science without a God. There would be no science. That's right. Now there is a conflict. The conflict, but the conflict doesn't lie between faith and science. The conflict is a worldview conflict.

Scott Allen 43:54

Right.

Speaker 2 43:54

That's where the conflict really lies. You have scientists who start with the worldview that there is no God, and then you have scientists that Start from a worldview that there is a God. And you know what? They're gonna see things differently. There is gonna be a conflict there.

Scott Allen 44:05

That's right. That's right.

Reclaiming The Word Faith Carefully

Scott Allen 44:08

Yeah, you know, I was uh I had a little pet peeve here recently. I love your thoughts on it, Juan. Uh uh you may know. Do you know Frank Turek? I mean, he's another famous apologist, yeah. And uh believe me, I have great respect for him. Uh but um he was looking at the um you know, all the new evidence, scientific evidence uh that make it really difficult to believe that that that there is no God, you know, for example, the fine-tuning of the universe. I mean, there's just incredible new evidence that's coming out all the time scientifically that point to a creator, right? And and not just a chaotic random universe, right? Yeah. And you know, it's great. It's really exciting, exciting time to be living in in that respect. Um but then he made a comment, and I've heard many Christians make this comment. He said, You see, I just don't have enough faith to be an atheist. And this gets us back to the word faith. But I thought, you know, he's using it again in this in this kind of redefined way, you know, that faith is just this blind leap, right? And he's he's applying that to atheists. Atheists have to make a blind leap now to believe in their atheism. But I'm like, okay, that's not helping us because we're still using the word faith in a wrong way here.

Luke Allen 45:24

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, that's his that's his famous book. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. And I the thing is, he would agree with what everything everything we're saying right now. It's just it's just he's trying to meet people where they're at and use that definition that most people believe. But yeah, it isn't helpful because we're trying to reclaim this word, trying to redeem it.

Speaker 2 45:41

And and that that is the title of the book, and and in the book, he gives you all of the evidence of why we can believe. And he lays out a phenomenal case uh in 12 points, which actually uh he learned from Norman Geisler, which is uh taught both of us. We both graduated from the same seminary, Southern Evangelical, that was founded by Norman Geisler. Um, that 12-step process was Norman Nor Norman Geisler's invention design. It's it's a logical progression through the evidence, showing you that when it comes to trusting in God for salvation and Christ for what he did on the cross, you have this whole background of evidence to support it. Logically reasonable evidence all the way through. And so his whole point in the book is he has another book called Stealing from God, you know, and where he takes the atheist and says, okay, when an atheist says he's he's more he's he lives a moral life, well, where is he getting his morality from? He's got to steal it from God's morality because in an atheism there is no moral code. When an atheist believes that, you know, that there is intelligent design, well, he's gotta steal that from God too, because in a in a in a world of random, unguided processes, you're not gonna find design. Uh and so it's also a very interesting book. I think that the titles are meant to catch. But you have a point. You have a point. The title miscommunicates the the meaning of the word.

Scott Allen 46:56

Uh yeah, I wanna I just want to be careful about that because I don't, yeah, it's so uh in embedded, I think, in in so much of our thinking, even as Christians, that faith is a blind leap, you know, and it it runs counter to the evidence. And I just want I so much want to kind of recover the biblical understanding of it's based on trust in something that's trust that's shown itself to be trustworthy, God, God's promises, or whatever it may be, the you know, an airplane that flies, you know, many, many times safely and lands safely. So um, anyways, I just think it's uh uh Luke. I want to kind of pass it over to you a little bit because I do Luke and I were talking before the podcast won about just our desire to move this discussion on faith beyond just kind of um an understanding of the truthfulness of what this word means biblically, but some of the practical ways that this this needs to be lived out daily by Christians. So, Luke, what questions do you have that are going to move us in that direction? Okay.

Conspiracies, Skepticism, And Truth Seeking

Luke Allen 48:00

Um yeah, as far as uh today, as far as practical application of this faith, we've already talked about the um the prosperity gospels kind of if you have enough faith, then you'll be rich and wealthy and happy. Um, or the um, I would say some of these heretical kind of healing uh mega pastors that are telling people if you have more faith, you know, God will help you, you know, walk again and whatnot. And that one's obviously rampant and harmful because anytime what they say doesn't happen, they just can have the ultimate and get out of jail free card. Well, you didn't have enough faith. It's not that I was wrong, so you were wrong. Um, but in my circles, what I see now uh is this a few years ago during COVID, a lot of people became very good at testing all things, which is what Christians are called to do. Question everything, be skeptical, like the Bereans, test all things, right? Wrestle with God. It's it's a good thing the Bible commands us to do. Uh, but in culture, there was a lot of weird things going on with COVID, with kind of the rise of wokeism. And we decided to question those things, and we were proven right. And the evidence lined up. At first, it was, you know, with COVID, especially. Oh, it if you said this came from a lab in China, everyone would say, You're crazy, you're a conspiracy theorist, you're you're you're blind faith, wack-a-doodle. But then, you know, a few years later, that's exactly what happened. Um, so everyone was kind of like, oh, okay, interesting. What else can I question? What else can I be skeptical of? And what I've seen is people, I think, swing too far in the direction of that to a point of being so skeptical that they're no longer looking for evidence, they're just kind of tearing down everything through this mad dash for questioning things. And in the Bible, it doesn't tell us to do that. It does tell us to question things, but it tells us to look for the truth. There should be a goal in that. There should be an endpoint. And if you can't do that, if you can't find that endpoint, you probably shouldn't be doing that. Uh, because that can be a downward spiral. Uh Juan, I'm just curious, how much do you run into this and how do you respond to this?

Speaker 2 50:07

I I think I think it's very common. Unfortunately, it's very common. Uh I I think just by default, if if you thinking rationally through this, if you're a skeptical, if you're skeptical about everything, if you're skeptical about everything, you lose the right to be skeptical about anything because you have to be skeptical about your own skepticism. I mean, at the end of the day, there is such a thing as being too skeptical about things. And and I think what we have with this conspiracy conspiracy theories is just people that are questioning beyond what is questionable. There are things that are questionable, no doubt. But then there's things that are not. They're beyond beyond questionable being questionable. Um, I'll give you the classic example. My my first encounter with this, I thought it was a joke. I thought somebody was playing a joke on me. I finish a conference on intelligent design, and the first guy to raise his hand tells me, Man, I love your conference, but the the only thing that you you should have emphasized or talked a little bit more about is the fact that the earth is flat.

Luke Allen 51:16

Did you laugh? Did you laugh?

Speaker 2 51:18

I chuckled. Yeah. Okay, but no, what's your question? And he was not smile, and he didn't smile back. I said, wait a minute, this guy is serious. And it was this in I mean, you start, it's okay to question things that you don't understand, but when you start to question the things that are understandable, that's when you start getting into trouble. And I'm like, look, I could I could argue with you all day here. At the end of the day, we have evidence that the earth is not flat. There's literally thousands of satellites shooting back images of the earth, the spaceships that have gone into space shooting back images of Earth and videotapes of Earth. The the space station astronauts send back videos of an Earth. The pilots get on airplanes and they fly east and they end up on the east. How do they do that? Because the earth is not flat. I mean, there's and and and to everything I said, all of that is pretty beyond pretty much beyond question. Okay. I mean, it's not reasonable to question a videotape when when when you have the same videotape by many different sources coming and showing the same thing. It's beyond a reasonable doubt. Uh the question is, well, it's a conspiracy. They they all those videos are fake. Uh the pilots, they all know, but they're sworn to secrecy and they can't tell the truth because they will lose their jobs. So they all know the truth that the earth is flat, but they they have to, they they're sworn, they have to sign a paper that that says that the earth is is is not flat, uh, and and and and that they're not gonna reveal you know the truth because and or else they're gonna lose their jobs. And and I'm like, seriously? I mean, you can't get two people to keep a secret. And you're telling me that these thousands upon thousands of pilots are all keeping this secret? Even the disgruntled ones that get fired? I mean, come on. And that's where you start verging on the ludicrous, and that's when you start, these people, in their mind, they're exercising faith. And we're the ones that don't have any faith. And and that's where you that's where it all gets twisted. So you're definitely on to something there.

Scott Allen 53:36

It's just this conspiratorial mindset that you're talking about. Yeah, go ahead, Luke. Yeah.

Luke Allen 53:40

Well, I just see it in so many things now, you know, and it seems like in the last six years it's just been the wild west of questioning everything, which I'm fine with, but we need to land on facts and conclusions. I mean, this is why Candace Owens is in the news so much, is she keeps throwing out accusations right now. I mean, this is really hitting home. She she's throwing out accusations. This person did this, this person's a man, this person, you know, and it's like fine, but prove it. And if you can't prove it, be very careful with what you're saying because it's it's not helping anybody. And if you can't prove it right now, at least show me that you're really, you know, diligently working towards finding proof and that you're not going to move on until you do that. Because otherwise you're just left in this mess of confusion and uh I mean, Satan loves confusion and lies, so it just doesn't seem like it's helping us in any kind of cause. We're supposed to bring light into this world, not gray, misty darkness. So, so find the truth.

Scott Allen 54:37

I I think here's where my brain is going, Luke, though. I think we live in a time where it's just maybe maybe it's postmodernism, but it you know, there's just such a battle for truth right now. So you've got the side there that you're talking about, or Juan, the the flat earth person, that everything is, you know, you can't believe anything. It's all a conspiracy, you know, regardless of the evidence. But there's another side to it. Like I'm just thinking, for example, about um the election that that just happened in California, the primary election. Um, you know, it uh the mayoral race in Los Angeles in sp in particular, um, there's just all of this evidence right now that this was rigged, um, you know, in the sense that the outcome um is statistically impossible, you know, according to statisticians. So there's a lot of evidence that that elections are being rigged. But if you raise that kind of objection, Luke, this is where you know it maybe pushes back against what you're saying. People are saying, oh, you're a conspiracy theorist. Uh the you know, uh, you know, you've got to prove it. You've got to prove it. And I'm like, well, on uh what you know, there's a lot of kind of gaslighting. Okay. What what what counts as proof here? Does is it have to be video evidence of some guy in a like black cape, you know, you know, what at what point does do do, you know, is there enough evidence to say no, this was a fraudulent election? Um Juan, what are your thoughts on that? Because I know you think a lot about these things too. Yeah.

Speaker 2 56:13

I think I think that uh again, you you're absolutely right. Uh there's definitely there there's enough there when when when the evidence is there, uh, like we have seen in this issue, then there's nothing really to question anymore. I think when we continue to question beyond the evidence we already have in these issues, that's where we get into dangerous waters. I also think that we're shooting ourselves in the foot as Christians when we're the ones a lot of times that are coming up with these conspiracy theories, because it makes the evangelism all the hard all the much harder. When you're trying to talk to rational people about a rational faith, because our faith is definitely a rational faith, what are what are they thinking? Oh, you're one of those, you're one of those flat earthers, you're one of those, and I'm like, no, yeah, but they're Christians. It just makes our our our our our life so much harder. And in the political issues on the election, then then the conspiracy becomes political, a weapon that's wielded by both sides. Nothing good comes out of that. And and I think Luke is is is onto something when he says, look, can we land on the truth? Can we we have to land at some point? Just some some people don't want to land at certain conclusions, and so it it's it's a mute point. I I stopped arguing with conspiracy theories because there's no way to win. Every answer you give, there's a conspiratorial explanation for it. And the explanations get more elaborate and more complex and more hard to believe, and and and that's where you know philosophy comes in, and my lot my logic brain says, okay, I can use Occam's razor here to figure out that Occam's razor basically says that when you have competing answers to what may be the answer you're looking for, usually the simpler the answer, the more accurate. Now it isn't always true, but if you have to come up with all kinds of elaborate explanations about built upon layers, upon layers of uh to come up with an explanation for something, and then at the other end of it, there's a simple explanation for it. The simple explanation usually is the right one. You know, if if we look at the statistics and it's impossible statistically for the results to be what they you say they are, that's a much simpler explanation. Than jumping through 50 hoops to try to explain why it is that way.

Scott Allen 58:43

Yeah.

Luke Allen 58:44

Yeah, there's uh sorry, I just don't think it's helpful that our media world today moves at such a lightning fast pace. And you can question one thing one day and the next day it's no longer relevant. And I'm like, okay, if you're gonna question this, if you're really gonna dive into this, do it. Go ahead. Dive into it if you think it's worth questioning. But but don't get distracted the next day and go after something else. Like, like put in the work, find the answers, you know. Otherwise, be careful. Yep. Um sorry, Dad, go ahead.

Scott Allen 59:16

No, I was just gonna say, i i I think too, it's you know, I think Luke, you can push too far maybe in the direction that you're wanting to push and saying there's gotta be perfect proof.

Speaker 6 59:26

I'm not sure.

Scott Allen 59:26

And I don't think there well, I know, but I just don't think uh, you know, the rarely in life is there such a thing. You know, it's it's it's the preponderance of the evidence, you know, even um, you know, evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, you know, is kind of the threshold in court cases, you know. And it has to be. Right, exactly. So to yeah, speak to that Juan a little bit.

Speaker 2 59:46

It has to be. If somebody wonders, okay, is Juan in his office today? Okay, and and you haven't seen Juan in his office, but Juan's car is in the parking lot, uh, the lights in the office are on, you get you put your ear to the door and you hear Juan talking inside. Uh chances are Juan is in his office. Now, can you explain all of that away? Yes, you can. You know, so he left his car, somebody picked him up, he forgot to turn the lights off. What you're hearing is a recording of Juan. And you can go on and on about all these, but what's again, what's the simplest explanation? He's there. He's there. And and and that's that's what I appreciate about the Bible so much and about scripture. Scripture gives us enough explicit evidence for us to believe without having to question what it establishes as truth. I mean, when the Bible says that man's heart is desperately wicked, do we have to do a study on that to figure out if it's true or not? No, just turn on the news for half an hour and you get all the evidence you want about just how wicked the human heart can be. So when the Bible says that, you know, that Ecclesiastes, I mean, just page after page, chapter, the Bible gives us so much truth with with re with with that corresponds with reality that there's what what are we questioning? What are we questioning? And that takes us back to faith, our definition of faith at the beginning.

Scott Allen 1:01:25

That's right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:01:26

We we trust God because there's a reason to trust him.

Scott Allen 1:01:31

That's right. And I think it's important maybe at this point too to just talk about the the humility that's required. There is this hubris, this human hubris in our fallen heart, yep, to to be God and to want all answers, to want to know all truth. But that's never going to happen, you know, just based on the fact that we are not God and that God has given us truth, you know. Not, you know, if we we again we don't have the capacity to know everything, but he's given us enough truth and he's given us reasoning, logical minds as well to know truth, you know, and that's a desire that we have. But but um but he's given us enough truth to live fruitfully, you know, and and uh to you know, to to live lives, flourishing lives that he desires for us. But but but again, you have to kind of give up or or lay aside this idea that we can know everything, we can have perfect, you know, somehow perfect knowledge, perfect evidence, everything perfect. It's not gonna happen.

Luke Allen 1:02:26

What I say when I meet someone like that is you better not ever get married because you're not gonna have perfect evidence before you put that ring on. Right. Nope. Right. Nope. Absolutely. But you can still get a lot of evidence. You can test, you know, get to know them, get to know their values, get to know their family. That's all good stuff. That's building the evidence, but you'll never know if you got 50 years ahead of you or not.

Scott Allen 1:02:46

So it's a good good illustration, Luke, because you you know, now as somebody who's been married for, you know, thirty thirty-eight years, you know, it's it's something that you're still getting to know somebody, right? There, you know. Yep, yeah. You're not reaching the end of it even after you get married. You know, it continues. Um, and you know, that's we're talking about another human being, much, much less God or his creation, you

Discipling Youth Beyond Sunday Sermons

Scott Allen 1:03:11

know.

Luke Allen 1:03:11

Um, we're we're we're really running low on time here, but I have one question I just really want to ask you, Juan, before we wrap up. So you're going around to churches all the time preaching at them, and you were saying that most pastors that you meet are preaching faithfully and accurately on this understanding of faith as we presented it today, a biblical understanding of faith, I think, uh is fair enough to say. Um, and yet most young people are still operating from this false understanding of blind faith. And yeah, I guess it sounds like the world is discipling them more than their churches are, even though their churches are doing the right thing, they're still not persuading the young people. I was just at a pro-life conference a couple days ago, and everyone there, when they heard I work in churches, was like, oh man, we need more churches to preach on pro-life. We need preach churches to preach on pro-life, which I completely agree with. But as we're seeing in today's world, you can be preaching on all the right things. But it's not exactly gonna disciple the youth because the world, the influences on media, all of that is is it's forming them in a really powerful way. So how can how can churches and pastors who are listening to this disciple disciple their youth in a way that they will change their understanding of faith um in a way that's I don't know, more impactful, that that cuts deeper? Like, how do we do this?

Speaker 2 1:04:32

I think I think you're on to something there. I mean, a wonderful question. Uh the fact that something is being preached correctly doesn't always translate to good discipleship. You you could have excellent sermons on Sundays, biblically sound, solid sermons on Sundays, that doesn't translate into discipleship. We we have to understand that the public school system have our teenagers, you know, 30 plus hours a week, we get them two hours on Sunday. If they come on Wednesday night, we get them four hours. Four hours against 30 hours, we're behind, we're behind. We we're this is not this is this is rough competition. And so we have to be very intentional. How can we be more effective? I think we first need to gauge and find out where our youth is. We can't assume that the fact that they're sitting there on Sunday morning means that they understand and agree with what the scripture teaches. I think the first step is being intentional. Survey, you know, whether it's a worldview survey, uh, whether it's it's a simple, you know, 10 question survey on the basic issues, or just a one-question survey on the one issue you want to deal with this next month. Okay, we're gonna talk about faith. Do do my young people know what faith is? Okay, here's a blind survey. Uh here's a blind a blind survey, true or false. You know, faith is believing in something in spite of the evidence against it. You believe that's true or false? Let's see what they say.

Speaker 7 1:06:01

Right.

Speaker 2 1:06:01

And and and then you can gauge where the need is, and then you have to be intentional to engage them on as personal as a level as possible on these truths. So, what do you think about this, Joey? And Mary, what do you think about this? Do you think faith is a blind faith? Why? I mean, there has to be that one-on-one confrontation with these issues. And the same goes for, you know, ethical questions, uh, you know, moral relativism, the same goes for the ineresy of scripture. The same, in all of the areas where our culture is confusing our young people, we need to take what we preach on Sundays and then we need to disciple them with content as personalized as possible, as small group as possible, so that nobody can slip between the cracks and get away with without having been confronted on this issue. You know, you you're you're not forcing people to believe something, but you are confronting them with what they believe and giving them arguments for to question uh and and show them that they they made what they believe is not sustainable biblically because of this and this and this. That requires intentionality, and that intentionality only happens when we know and we become aware of the fact that they're not on the same page that we are.

Scott Allen 1:07:19

Yeah, well, yeah, great answer. And and yeah, I you're bringing up a whole new topic. That would be fun to have you back on, you know, just how why why is that kind of formation, at least at the level that we're talking about, not happening as much as we want it to happen, you know, I think is a is is a really, really good question. Because you're right. It's it's um it's not that preaching on Sunday mornings isn't discipleship, it's just not enough. You know, it's it's like you say, it's not, it's just it's it it it doesn't have the power of the formation that that to to form in a in a way that like a public school does, let's say, or or the media.

Speaker 2 1:07:57

Especially because we're using the same terms. So I'm the pastor and I'm talking about faith.

unknown 1:08:02

Right.

Speaker 2 1:08:03

You're sitting there and you're hearing about faith, but we have different definitions. Yeah.

Scott Allen 1:08:07

But we're talking past each other. Yeah, we never get down to that uh understanding, yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Final Thanks And Closing

Scott Allen 1:08:14

Well, listen, it's been really a joy to have you back on, Juan. We'd be just fun to keep talking, but I know that uh we've got to get on to other things, and we're just so grateful, Juan, for your time today and uh and just for your ministry. And uh look forward to to the next time we get a chance to come back and and uh I love being with you guys, thank you.

Speaker 2 1:08:32

I love being with you guys, thank you. Whenever you need, whenever you want.

Scott Allen 1:08:36

You're so kind, and I so appreciate that. Yeah, God bless you, Juan.

Speaker 2 1:08:40

God bless you guys. Thank you. Take care.