Let's go to this first clip from Paula Gia. He claims to be an ex-Christian. He's now an atheist. We've interacted with some of the material that he's presented before. Quite popular. Here's that first clip. His response to your answer to Kyle. Yesterday, I was out walking my pup and I heard the new episode, I guess we would call it, of the reasonable faith podcast with William Lane Craig. It's one of my regulars that I visit. And yesterday's podcast, William Lane Craig admitted something that I didn't think that any Christian would ever actually openly admit. So I mainly want to share with you something that I think is amazing. So to recap there, the person who has sent in a question to Dr Craig's podcast is currently a Christian, but is saying, Hey, Christianity is a very costly endeavor. And he listed off some things you have to do. I would add in there as someone who has now a former Christian that Christianity demands the focus of your entire life. And given that we know we have one life, we are not guaranteed any more life than that. So to spend the one life you have in full devotion to that set of propositions of truth claims, that is a huge gamble because we will not get a duel. Yeah, this is a description of the negative costs of Christian belief. And again, I so disagree with Paulogia about the character of the Christian life.

That is indescriptive of my Christian life, Kevin. I don't think you are either. The Christian life is a life of abundant joy and meaning and purpose. Yes, it demands total commitment. but then you are given the peace and love and purpose of God that fills your life during this life. So that even if it ended at the grave, you will have had a wonderful life in this world. Now that isn't critical to my argument, or I'm willing to grant that these are negative

costs that need to be subtracted from the great benefit of Christian belief if it's true. Because if Christian belief is true, then you have this infinite gain to be made of eternal life and the love relationship with God that will last forever. And that infinite gain simply swamps these finite costs that Paulogia describes. Here's the next clip from Paulogia, clip number two. But again, this makes sense. He's saying, should we not have a very high epistemic value? Should we not in the words that I prefer to use from Matt Delhunti and others, should we not apportion our belief to the amount of evidence provided? Have a little confidence when there's little evidence and save having a lot of confidence when there's a lot of evidence. This makes good sense. So a great question, Kyle. He is calling out to God, asking God to reveal himself in a very clear, nonambiguous way. It's great that Kyle is recognizing that a lot of the ways that we think we're feeling affirmations potentially can be attributed to our own internal monologue. So he's looking for a way to rule that out even though he's open to the evidence. I love this question. What does William Lane Craig have to say? When I first heard the message of the gospel as a non-Christian high school student, that my sins could be forgiven by God, that God loved me. He loved Bill Craig, and that I could come to know him and experience eternal life with God. I thought to myself, and I'm not kidding, I thought if there is just one chance in a million that this is true, it's worth believing. Holy cow. Alright, so William Lane Craig, master of the calum ontological argument, the man who is almost synonymous with making philosophical arguments for Christianity. When he was in high school,

he basically Pascal wagered himself into Christianity. He thought, hey, if there's a one-and-a-million chance that the sin is true and that Jesus has a way out, I'm all in. One-and-a-million chance. That's a William and Craig just said. All you need to follow Christianity, Pascal's wager this thing forget the the calum, forget the ontological. Are you saying you don't think there's a one in a million chance that the Christian God is true? Okay, here, here you see he champions pure epistemic justification and he denies the pragmatic encroachment on the epistemic. He thinks that all you should consider is the epistemic justification for Christian belief. And as I said Kevin, I'm fine with that. No problem. I will I have defended arguments for the existence of God such as the argument from contingency, the Kalam cosmological argument, the argument from the applicability of mathematics, the fine tuning argument, the moral argument, and so forth as well as Christian evidences for the historicity of Jesus' resurrection. So I am perfectly fine with making our decision to believe purely on epistemic grounds. But then the problem is you don't connect with Kyle and his question because Kyle does believe in the pragmatic encroachment on the epistemic. And I personally believe with Kyle that that is legitimate, that's right. But what these folks don't seem to realize is that this can either lower or raise the epistemic bar, and in the case of Christianity I think it's significantly lowers it. Yeah, you know a lot of young apologists that I've seen on Facebook, Bill, are only familiar with a few of your debates and a read some of your articles. I think they expect you to be a little more of an evidentialist than you are. They've only heard you present the evidence like, they haven't seen some of these other aspects philosophically. Yes. Now, that's the second current that I spoke of that's in this answer in this debate. The first current we've already talked about, namely the relationship between pragmatic justification and epistemic justification. The second, quite different current, is this relationship between the witness of the Holy Spirit and evidence and argument in the epistemic justification of Christianity. And we haven't gotten to that yet. I think probably Paul Logan is going to bring that up and we can address it then. But my point of view is that Christian belief is epistemically justified on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit, even in the absence of argument and evidence for Christianity. Here's clip number three. And so my attitude toward this is just the opposite of Kyle's Far from raising the bar or the epistemic standard that Christianity must meet to be believed I lower it I think that this is a message which is so wonderful so You hear what you just said when you come to Christianity You shouldn't be looking to raise the bar, the God who invented truth, the God who is synonymous with what's real and what's true. Don't raise your epistemic bar for God to meet. You put it on the floor, you lower it. William Lankricht just said he literally lowers the bar as low as he can. And if that's the bar that is omnipotent, omniscient, all powerful God can clear good

enough. literally lowers the bar as low as he can. And if that's the bar that is omnipotent, omniscient, all-powerful God can clear good enough for William Lane Creek. Think about that the next time he's spouting off the Kalam Cosmologist commit to you. This is the man who says he sets the bar for God on the floor and he's proud of it. This is wonderful news. Well, here are these two currents that I spoke about beginning to get blended together. On the one hand, I've already said I do believe in Paschalian wagering because I like Kyle believe in the pragmatic encroachment on the epistemic and that pragmatic concerns serve to either raise or lower the epistemic bar required for rational belief. But saying that you can do that is in no way inconsistent with the provision of good arguments and evidence for Christianity. I do think that there are good arguments and evidence that epistemically

justify Christian belief. I just don't think they're necessary. They are sound, they are available, but they're not necessary for Christian belief to be rational. And I think this is just intuitively obvious when you think about it. Consider my belief that I had an omelet with sausage this morning for breakfast. That is a properly basic belief that is grounded in my memory of breakfast this morning. It's a properly basic memory belief. So it's not a belief that is based on evidence. But if you were to ask me for evidence that I had a sausage omelet for breakfast this morning, well, I'll find that would be easy to provide. I could point to eyewitness testimony. My wife, Jan, ate breakfast with me. She saw that I had a sausage omelet for breakfast. We got eye witness testimony. We got physical evidence, the shattered egg shells and the trash can, the scouring that's still in the frying pan where she cooked at the omelet. Those things are still there. In fact, if you wanted to go to extremes, you could assume the omelette by popping out the contents of my stomach to prove that I had a sausage omelette for breakfast. Does that mean, however, that my belief that I had a sausage omelette for breakfast is based on that evidence? No, it's a properly basic memory belief, but that's entirely

consistent with my ability to defend that belief by providing objective evidence for it. And it's exactly the same with Christian belief. There are good arguments and evidences to epistemically justify Christianity, but I would maintain that they're not necessary that Christian belief can be rational by being grounded in the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. And in the absence of some sort of a defeated of that experience, I'm perfectly rational to believe in the gospel on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in a properly basic way. Bill, did you notice that Paulogia said that one of the reasons that he abandoned his Christian faith is that he asked God to reveal himself in a clear nonambiguous way. And it caused me to wonder, well, what are his criteria here? What is clear? What would be clear? What would be non-ambiguous? Yeah, I was very worried by Kyle's demand for an appearance of the Virgin Mary to him or an appearance of Jesus himself to him. And I strongly suspect that even if that happened, he could say something like, man did I have the wildest hallucination last night or something of that sort? The fact is that the evidence and arguments for Christianity are certainly sufficient to epistemically justify that belief, even if it doesn't have the sort of epistemic force that an appearance of Jesus would have. Here's the next clip that if there's any evidence that it's true, then it's worth believing yet. If there's any evidence, it's worth believing it. Does he hear himself? Is there any evidence for Islam? Is there any evidence for Buddhism? Is there any evidence for anything? William L. Craig will be believing in aliens and that Elvis is alive and the Sasquatch and QAnon, he will be believing in everything because all he needs is one piece of evidence. And that's good enough for William L. Craig. Yeah, this is nothing more than just sarcasm, Kevin.

I've already explained the pragmatic encroachment on the epistemic that Kyle himself agrees with, that conserved to raise or lower the epistemic bar required to rational belief. And I've already explained that my belief in pascalion wagering or properly basic belief in Christ is not at all inconsistent with offering arguments for the existence of God and evidences for Christianity. So there is no tension whatsoever between my offering arguments like the Kalam cosmological argument in defense Theism, and my believing that these arguments are not absolutely necessary for rational belief. A couple of more clips, Bill, and here's the next one. Especially when you compare it to the alternatives, like naturalism or atheism or...cial when you compare it to atheism or naturalism?

Are you saying that there isn't any evidence for atheism or naturalism?

First of all, naturalism is merely just saying that we believe that the natural world we

live in is what there is.

There's evidence for it because we are in the natural world.

We don't have to make a single assumption by Occam's razor where we're making zero

assumptions to assume that naturalism is true. Is he appealing to consequences? He doesn't come around to this, but he's especially when you compare it to atheism and naturalism. So these are philosophies that young high school William Lankrag didn't like. He didn't like the consequences that he felt atheism led to, so that's why he turned to Christianity. I think we need to all save this clip. Every

time William Leningrad comes out in a debate from now on. This is the best clip ever. There are a couple of confusions going on here. First, polovia doesn't understand what naturalism is. He thinks that naturalism is just a belief that the natural world exists, and of course that's true because we're in it. But that isn't the distinguishing feature of naturalism, I believe that the natural world exists.

Catholic. true because we're in it. But that isn't the distinguishing feature of naturalism. I believe that the natural world exists. Catholics believe that the natural world exists, but that doesn't make Catholics naturalists. Rather, what the naturalist believes is that there are no supernatural realities. Indeed, most naturalists are physicalists. They don't even believe in the reality of the human soul or self. And therefore are physical determinists. So he hasn't correctly characterized naturalism. Naturalism is a radical worldview that denies that God or any sort of transcendent spiritual realities exist. And that requires good epistemic justification, I think. Now, when I compare naturalism to Christianity, I'm obviously not comparing their epistemic status. I was comparing the cost-benefit analysis of believing in these. We're talking about pragmatic justification. And here, as I said, the cost-benefit analysis of clearly favors Christian belief, over atheistic belief. On naturalism you are left with a meaningless, ultimately purposeless, ultimately valueless, finite existence, and then everything is ended at the grave. Whereas on Christianity of Christianity is true, then you have infinite gain.

So the comparison here is not epistemically, the comparison is pragmatically in terms of the pragmatic justification of Christianity versus naturalism. I can't think of any pragmatic arguments in favor of naturalism. Now when it does come to epistemic

justification I can't think of any pragmatic arguments in favor of naturalism. Now, when it does come to epistemic justification, well then you need to go to one of those debates when I come to your campus. And here, the epistemic justification for the existence of God and the historicity of Jesus. And can trust that with the epistemic justification that the atheist offers for naturalism. And I think when you make that comparison again, a fair-minded observer will say that the case for Christianity is superior. And this next clip, if Kyle really knows what it's like to experience the love of God and to have this hope in eternal life and forgiveness of sins, then it seems to me that he will gravitate toward that alternative. So if Kyle has the good feelings that come from Christianity, a sense of hope, which of course you can generate your internally, a sense of love, which again, of course, you can generate internally, then you just hold on to that. William McCrick has no outside or test of faith going here at all because burning up a bosom with the Mormons, for example, like they have all the good feelings and that's supposed to be good enough evidence that it's true. Come on. Now, here, Paul is addressing that issue of the proper basicality of Christian belief. And the fact is that a great many of our beliefs cannot be proved by argument and evidence, rather they are properly basic beliefs grounded in experience. For example, the belief in the reality of the external world cannot be proved because any evidence you would give for it would be based upon the veritic calitive, your sense perceptions of the external world. The reality of the past cannot be proved because you could never prove that the appearances of age around you are not merely that mere appearances. So our lives are characterized by properly basic beliefs that we all hold in the absence of argument and evidence, but they are grounded in experience. And the argument here is that the Christian's experience of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit grounds his properly basic belief in Christ and in God. And in the absence of a defeated of that, he's perfectly rational to go on believing in that just as you are rational to believe in the reality of the past or the reality of the external world. Now, what about the Mormon who claims to have a burning in the bosom or someone who else who has a non-Christian experience? I think that there are good defeaters for those that suggest that those experiences are not veretical. But I do not know of any such defeaters for the veredicality of the Christian experience. And so in the absence of those defeaters, I am perfectly rational to believe in the truth of the gospel in a properly basic way. I already addressed the so-called many gods' objection where I think there's a negligible probability of some of these alternatives that can safely be ignored and then in the case of Islam or Mormonism or visits from exotrist to real life we have really good defeaters of those beliefs. Whereas in the case of Christianity, I don't think we have those kind of defeaters of Christian belief. So to believe on pragmatic grounds is I think quite acceptable, quite appropriate. Bill, it's difficult to know how to wrap this up because as you said, there are a lot of cross-currence, I do want to encourage some of the younger apologists and people who are new to the reasonable faith. Go back and read and get a copy of the book, Reasonable Faith, if you don't. Third edition, and go through some of your early chapters, Bill, where you talk about the difference between knowing Christianity is true and showing Christianity is true and when you're in a pastoral situation and when you're in an academic debate, there are two different approaches. And then, of course, all the cross-currence that you've mentioned today. But let's see if we can kind of draw all some of the threads together. Yeah, let me try to recap here, Kevin. It seems to me that there are two broad issues here that need to be discussed. One is the relationship between pragmatic justification and epistemic justification. And I think it's very clear from the comments of these non-theist interlocutors that they don't have any understanding whatsoever of that relationship. And so they are offended at the idea that the pragmatic might encroach upon the epistemic. The other issue then is the proper basicality of Christian belief, grounded in the witness of the Holy Spirit, and that that is not inconsistent with also being able to provide good arguments and evidence to epistemically justify Christianity. So I want to say to our viewers today, especially to those who are not believers, to be very skeptical of these overly easy dismissals that you see on the internet from these popular atheistic bloggers. Typically they are skating on the surface and don't understand the deep philosophical questions that are often involved in sorting through these issues. And this I think is one that really illustrates that fact. Thank you.