An Ex-Christian Atheist’s Encounter With Christian Apologist Frank Turek

The Journey

I hate driving to Dallas.

I live in Fort Worth, TX, so it took me an hour.  And the drive feels like a trip to the other end of the world, for some reason.  Especially with the traffic of the evening’s 6 o’clock hour, when the residual nightmare of five o’clock hour traffic is occupying the highways.  And I’m making the whole drive in a beat-up 2004 Kia Spectra, so it’s not the smoothest drive in the world, either.  Plus, I got my start at 6:15; I was running late.

But this event at Southern Methodist University on February 10, 2015 was very important to me.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was a fairly devout Christian who occasionally struggled with doubt.  To help me through that struggle, I read the writings of several apologists — the most-worn book of my apologetics collection is a glossy-brown hardback still at my parents’ house (by the front door, in the bookcase on your left coming in) edited by Josh McDowell that is entitled The NEW Evidence That Demands A Verdict.  I found the book fascinating, and it started a long investigation into hermeneutics that eventually led to my having to abandon my faith — it’s hard for me to know whether books like McDowell’s kept me a Christian longer, or whether they fueled my curiosity even more, leading me to ask questions I wouldn’t have otherwise asked and thus ultimately instigating my eventual break with Christianity.

Around the time I was 24 (I’m 31 as I write this) I began to read Frank Turek, and for the next few years his book I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist had a powerful impact on me.  Although I had doubts that there was a Christian God, I was attracted to the book’s title because the world outside of the one with the Christian God was frightening.  I wasn’t sure how I would cope with it, and thought that if I stopped thinking that the Christian God was the answer to morality, purpose, and human worth, I would be left with a lot of uncomfortable questions.  I was afraid, and that fear translated into a faith that drove me to the Christian God.

In many ways, I had come to forget that fear by the time I left Christianity.  Part of the reason is that, by the time I decided to leave Christianity, being a Christian had become an extremely traumatic experience for me; like other former Christians I have heard from, I had literally begun to imagine the sulfur of after-judgment consequences burning my being forever (if I left Christianity) and the eternal, anguished cries within a richly imagined hell, I was horrified at the slaughters in the Old Testament that were commanded by the God I claimed to follow, and I had begun to deeply empathize with people Christians I knew said were going to spend eternity in hell due to a life lived without or squarely against Christ.  In addition, I had seen that the “Christian worldview,” as the apologists put it, was full of holes in history, philosophy, and empathy; it saddened and enraged me to see billions defrauded into giving their lives away to a phantom because of what I saw as a clearly overblown, exaggerated case.

In the first few months after I left Christendom, I became intensely curious as to why so many people stayed within it, in spite of my communication of the (to me) straightforward reasons I left.  And the answers that I seemed to keep hitting against were not very complementary to Christian character — they seemed to indicate a clearly hypocritical pride, closed-mindedness, and lack of empathy that I found disturbing.  Christian apologists often seemed to exemplify these qualities.

But no one seemed to have them on display more than Frank Turek.

In a Facebook comment string shortly before the talk, I had a discussion with a couple friends about what we atheists found so unlikeable about Frank Turek.  One thing we all agreed on is that he is unlikeable because twists the truth, as when he seemed to knowingly mischaracterize Richard Dawkins’s “space alien” answer to a question by Ben Stein in a movie called Expelled — the clip shows Dawkins theorizing that aliens could have brought life to earth, and Turek uses it to show how ridiculous Dawkins’s theories on the origin of life are.  Dawkins revealed in a later inquiry on that question that he was asked by Ben Stein to give intelligent design its best shot — and as Dawkins didn’t believe in intelligent design, he had no choice but to use the alien example (because intelligence requires an embodied mind.).

Another item that made Frank Turek unlikeable is that, in videos on the Internet, he regularly comes across as uncharitable to atheists.  This is by no means unusual, of course; atheists are used to individuals who follow the lead of apologists like William Lane Craig or Sye Ten Bruggencate being uncharitable to atheist views.  But Turek treated atheists almost like criminals, like people who deserved to go to hell.  Now, to be sure, he thought everyone deserved to go to hell who didn’t believe in Christ — but he thought atheists knew they were dependent on God, and were criminally denying it.  In Frank Turek’s view, the problem was not ignorance, so much as it was brazen defiance.  Or, at least, that’s how he came across.

So I was dreading this meeting.  But I was curious, and there was nostalgia, and I wanted to actually confront an apologist who had, for years, made a major impact on my attachment to Christianity face to face, to look him in the eyes and challenge him as I had seen so many other atheists do.

So that’s why, during the 6’o’clock post-rush hour, I was driving to Dallas.

The meeting started at 7pm, and in spite of speeding 5-10 over the whole way there, I still didn’t arrive on the SMU campus until 7:15.  I was lucky enough to easily find a parking spot, and then looked for the building, which, I found upon asking a student, was actually about a third of a mile away from where I thought it was.  Truly late at this point, I sprinted to the building in the 75-80 degree whether, counting it as my workout as I ignored the glances from the students I passed.  Then a dash up stairs, a quick request for directions from an elderly lady near an elevator, a dash up more stairs…and around 7;25, I heard Turek’s voice and followed it into the auditorium, a bit embarrassed by the sweat on my face from the run as I tried to unobtrusively take a seat.

The Presentation

There were mostly college students there (which made sense, as it was on a college campus).  Then there were also parents.  The audience itself reminded me that these events were often very much family affairs — like the Bill Gothard seminars I attended when I was young.  It was about the speaker, but it was also about the sense of togetherness, about family tradition and heritage, and about bonding around a common goal and hope.

What surprised me was how much Frank Turek catered to this space. Although by this time I was about 25 or so minutes late, Turek had not even begun to really introduce his slide show presentation.  He was talking about his family, about his general ministry, and about different trips he had taken.  He spoke like a person trying his hand at stand-up, trying to get laughs.  Some of the jokes appealed to parents, and they murmured.  The college students openly laughed.  Remembering a YouTube video in which he complained about an atheist in the audience who didn’t laugh at his jokes, I made sure that I cracked a few smiles, as well.

Then he began his presentation.  His first discussion was on truth.  He basically spent fifteen minutes saying, in various ways, that the statement that we can’t know truth is self defeating (because, the logic goes, how would we know that was true?).  His comedian side was in full force here, and, to be sure, it is hilarious.  How can someone know that they can’t know anything?  That doesn’t seem to make sense, on the outset.  The college students laughed.

And that moment brought me back to a cause of the laughter.  I remember laughing like that once at apologist meetings, and the laughter wasn’t merely directed at how absurd the apologist could make an argument seem.  Much of it was a relief as the fear that there was no God — a fear that was often heightened in a university environment in which our childhood beliefs clashed with the rigor of academic scholarship — was skillfully assuaged.

As I watched, I began to feel a sense of empathy where I had once felt merely anger.  I still strongly disagreed with what was being stated, but I felt the heart behind the crowd’s reaction, because I had once had that heart to, even if my experience as an atheist had shown me that the fear defining it was unnecessary and based largely on false premises.  And I also could see Frank Turek’s own attraction to that heart, and why he would want to shield it from its vulnerabilities.  I didn’t agree with the man —  I saw him as appealing to the correspondence theory of truth, and, in my view, when I say “I can never know what’s true” I’m saying that, given a concept (created by me) of a reality outside of myself, I can never know that reality, because, by my own definition, it is outside of myself.  I can theorize about what might be outside of myself, and I can, based on experience, say that it seems more likely that position x is more reliable than position y regarding things that I see as being as outside myself, but, by definition, I will not be able to access what is outside of myself.

To be sure, this admittance of uncertainty can lead to anxiety, especially if I care about other people.  I can say or think I’m doing what you want, or need, or what is in your best interests, but ultimately, as far as I can tell, I don’t have access to your mind — only my own.  Understanding, then, seems more difficult, and complete understanding may be impossible.  In the case of concerns like morality, where I may be interested in empathetically negotiating the best ways to work in our mutual interests, things don’t seem clear cut — my perception seems different from your perception, and what may be the right direction to you may not be the right direction to me. Although it seems that we can work together to come closer to a compromise or a win-win situation regarding what we want, the fact remains that a mutual respect of our perceptions  seems in order, as I will never completely know your perspective, and you may never completely know mine.  This sense of a necessary respect can lead to a kind of anxiety, perhaps; it would be much easier if someone who knew all minds said what was best for everyone, so that we could simply follow it instead of trying to figure it out what each other’s perspective (which, again, we don’t have direct access to and, it seems, can never fully understand) is.

So I can understand the appeal of saying that there is absolute truth that comes from God.  But then again, jumping from uncertainty as to whether I know your perspective into certainty that I know your perspective because an imaginary third party gave it to me is a move that seems to have resulted in many events in our history, that seem clearly morally problematic today.  It seems healthier to listen to individuals as opposed to a “God” who trumps their opinion, because if you buy into a God who trumps human expression, you can be comfortable ascribing to them any viewpoint you want and ignore what they say.  You can say they are not true to themselves for having certain sexual preferences, you can say that they are intentionally “choosing” to spend eternity in hell, and you can even feel justified to commit acts of genocide because you think they are fundamentally evil.  You can do these and many more things without having to think twice about whether or not you are morally right or doubting your understanding of the perspectives of those you may be abusing, so long as you think these viewpoints are held by a mind-reading God.

As I sat there listening to Frank Turek speak, then, I noticed the relief in many eyes around me, the relaxing as they thought they had a right to hold onto something firm regarding morality, and that the relativists who often challenged them didn’t have a leg to stand on.  And even as the nostalgia of the environment I was in allowed me to partially experience that old feeling of relief and assurance I had once experienced when I was a young Christian, I was, simultaneously, angry at the way Christian morality had run roughshod over my own desires and goals and those of many I cared about, due to a frustrating “just so” bully pulpit of “God said it, so that’s just the way it is.”  Sometimes, as an atheist, it seems as if my own voice and experience doesn’t matter at all — that what I say about myself doesn’t matter at all, and that the only thing many Christians seem to care about is what an imaginary being supposedly says to them through a book to me.  It feels much like a trial in which I represent myself with my mouth taped shut, a mask over my face, and my hands tied to my chair — while the prosecution discusses the case freely, claiming that I’ve already declared myself “guilty” of the charges brought before me, no matter how outrageous they are.

After this discussion on truth, Turek went on to argue that the universe’s makeup and history was powerful evidence for God. His first argument was that the universe had a beginning.  The second was that, due to the complexity of the universe, the universe had to have a designer.  These arguments were discussed using interesting details about the complexity and ornate nature of existence, and the auditorium of around 200 people sat there, spellbound, as they looked at the illustrations of how complex, vast, and seemingly intricately designed the universe was.

I was moved.  The complexity and vastness of the universe was spellbinding and drove me to contemplation.  But when Frank Turek said that this was proof that there was a designer, I had some trouble.

The trouble was a manifestation of the age old objection, “who designed the designer?”  Turek tried to get around that argument by saying that God was spaceless, timeless, and immaterial, but I still found the basis of his reasoning behind consciousness unconvincing.  If the complexity necessary for life to operate and for consciousness to perceive its surroundings was so amazing and called out for a designer, it was hard for me to see how a consciousness so advanced that it could create the entire universe did not itself need a designer, especially since consciousness is produced by some of the most complicated physical processes we are aware of.  I carried this thought in the back of my mind as he talked, and bookmarked it as my question for the q and a session.

Turek ended his talk with an argument that morality indicated the existence of a personal God.  He said that if a personal God didn’t exist then (cue a picture of dead bodies piled after the Holocaust)  there was no way to say that atrocities were wrong.  What he did not go over is the fact that the concept of God was precisely what, in many cases, justified the practice of running roughshod over expressed human preferences in some of the very atrocities (like the Holocaust) that he mentioned.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx7irFN2gdI[/youtube]

He also didn’t touch on Euthyphro’s dilemma, though he might have had a ready answer for it if it had come up during the q and a session.  Euthyphro’s dilemma, which dates back to the writings of Plato, concerning the philosophy of Socrates, basically boils down to this question: Is God good “just because,” or is God good because there is some standard outside of God by which his goodness can be measured?  If the response is that God is good because there is some standard outside of God by which goodness can be measured (cf., God is good because he is powerful, knowledgeable, etc.), then the return response is that God is judged by a standard of good, which means he does not determine standards of good…making him unnecessary in ascertaining morality.  If the response is that God is good “just because” of his nature, or because He is named “God” — then “good” doesn’t mean anything; it’s simply a descriptor of what God does.

In any case, Turek did seem to reassure the audience that its morality was safeguarded by the concept of God.  Unlike atheists, who did not have the authority of God behind their moral system, Turek argued, Christians had God’s authority and could therefore be more confidently moral people.

I could somewhat understand the appeal of this argument, as I do want to “do the right thing,” but frequently have difficulty trying to figure out what it is.  Although the God of the Bible advocates several positions that go strongly against my moral instincts, I will readily admit that it would be nice to be confident about what right and wrong is.  I suspect that it is this confidence that may drive people to simply accept that the God of the Bible as a certain denomination interprets it is the end of the question as to what is right and what is wrong.  On the one hand, this desire for comfort is somewhat cruel to people that this “just so” standard seems to oppress; on the other, there is, when seen in a certain light, a certain beauty in what I would call the somewhat naive comfort this “just so” standard gives to people who may not have the time or desire to closely question their morality.

Finally, after Frank Turek graciously thanked those who participated in hosting him, it was question time.  The setup was intimidating.  In the middle aisle of the auditorium there was a microphone, and if I wanted to ask a question, I would have to walk around all the chairs and go up to the mike.  It seemed like a long walk.

I stood up and began to walk, then got cold feet and sat down in the far left corner of the auditorium.  Only one person had briefly asked a question so far, and she had been sitting right next to the mike — she had stood up very briefly, stated her question quickly, and sat down.  After answering her question, Turek pleaded for about another minute for another question, but the auditorium was too nervous. Then, I finally got the courage to stand and went up to the microphone.

And there he was.  It was surreal…here was the larger-than-life apologist right in front of me.  And I was about to challenge him.

 

Dialogue

I started by complimenting the ornate, complex, majesty of the universe he had discussed about a half hour before.  Then, I connected that material complexity to consciousness, and stated that consciousness was according to all we knew, connected to these physical processes.  There did not seem to be any evidence of a disembodied mind — consciousness itself is constructed by complex physical processes.  So it seems contradictory to marvel at what is necessary for consciousness, and then go back and state that this indicates that this ornately constructed consciousness must have been constructed by a consciousness….because that consciousness would have to be ornately constructed itself.  There was no evidence that a disembodied mind was possible — in fact, our fascination with the necessary design of our bodies is based in the thought that the physical processes are necessary for the workings of the brain and, thus, the mind.

His rebuttal was, basically, that the experience of consciousness was immaterial, so consciousness itself was immaterial as well.

My response to that was that what I had to do was use my consciousness to determine whether something else was conscious.  In evaluating the consciousness of another party, I can only see consciousness arising from physical processes.  I do not see, nor have we ever seen, consciousness arising from empty space — although there is some suspicion that quantum fields might.

I also argued that, although (not being a physicist) I had no idea of what happened “before” the universe, or even if that makes sense, that’s only gives myself, and others, the ability to say, “I don’t know,” not “I don’t know, therefore it’s God.”  Furthermore, I argued that the physicist’s claim that the universe probably has a beginning extends to a beginning not just of matter, but of most, if not all, physical processes that require matter to operate, including the process producing consciousness; to take the thought that consciousness designs things and apply that thought to before the beginning of the universe is to smuggle the workings of the universe in an arena that existed before the workings of the universe and thus to run roughshod over the claim that the universe and its principles began ex nihilo, which is the argument Turek was basing the necessity of a conscious God on in the first place.

This was very difficult for me to communicate at the time; hopefully that makes some sense here.

In response, he asked the question as to whether my will was determined or free, and connected that question to Daniel Dennett’s compatibilism (basically, the thought that decisions are constructed by physical processes, but that we can treat them as free, partially because of the complexity and lack of knowledge of all these physical processes, and partly because of the experience of making a choice).  The argument Turek was driving towards seemed to be that, if I had free will, there was a part of me that was not determined by physical processes and, thus, was not subject to the rules and restrictions of physical processes.  The other horn was for me to say that my decisions were due to completely material processes, at which point he could say that my thoughts were completely pointless and meaningless, an argument famously popularized by CS Lewis.

My response was that it didn’t matter whether my thoughts were material or based in free will; the same results happened either way.  My perception was that I made choices — even if those choices were produced purely by physical processes, that did not mean the choices had no weight on my experience or that they had no ability to positively or negatively impact it.  The question of whether they were produced by physical processes also had no effect on whether or not I was right.

(Later, I thought of another argument — if we truly have free will, then how do we make choices?  If our choices are, at some point, completely divorced from material processes, then what are the choices based on?  Wouldn’t they be produced by random chance?  Wouldn’t that make them MORE, not less, unreliable?)

After going back and forth on this vein for a couple minutes, another person behind me came up behind me to ask a question, so Turek had to end his dialogue with me to get to him. He said we could talk after the event, because this back and forth could go on for awhile.  But then, he had one last comment, “So you’re saying that all your thought processes are material?”

I shook my head and repeated, “I’m saying it doesn’t matter,” as I prepared to leave.  I had been steeling glances behind me somewhat nervously the entire time I had been talking to see if someone was waiting, and now that someone was, I felt I was overstaying my welcome.

He called me back to the mike, “What do you mean, ‘It doesn’t matter?’”

I had to answer off the cuff, and it had to be short, and so I said something like, “I’m saying all that matters is my perception.”  What I would have said if I had had more time is that if I perceived I had choice, and that these choices had a positive or negative impact on my life, then it didn’t matter if the choices were determined or not insofar as they had the ability to positively or negatively affect my life, or to make me right or wrong about outcomes that occurred within the arena of my perception.

As I walked away from the mike, I wished I could have walked right back up (I couldn’t because another person was there now), because the next thing out of his mouth was that by saying that it didn’t matter that my choice was determined my material processes, I couldn’t really validly say I loved somebody — all I could say is that materialistic processes got me to feel certain emotions.  This is, of course, insulting — the emotions are real, whether they are determined by material processes or not.  In fact, if they are determined by circumstance and material attraction, that grounds my love in a basis that is more a compliment to the person they are attached to, arguably, than if they were attached to the person by pure chance, void of any of that person’s qualities.

The question and answer portion proceeded.  Two exchanges stood out to me.

One was when a person challenged a statement Turek had made early in his talk about the importance of Christian political involvement. The questioner (who was a Christian) had a strong point, I thought, that in the Bible Jesus was in, not of, the world, and that there was no mandate in the Bible for Christians to be involved in politics.  I half expected Turek to go to Romans 13 (where Paul says the government has the responsibility to punish the evildoer) to justify the Christian’s role in politics, but he did not.  After a back and forth of about a couple minutes, in which Turek said that good political principles were necessary to preserve religious freedom (a seemingly week argument — the argument that Jesus never called Christians to be part of the political sphere stood), Turek put on the screen a picture of North Korea and South Korea that looked like this:

North Korea is the one on top with no lights; South Korea is the one on the bottom with lights.  He then said that the atheistic Communist country of North Korea is obviously less developed than the much more developed country of South Korea…so if we didn’t want to turn into North Korea, we should make sure Christians were in politics and that religious freedoms were protected.

This was a terrible argument, partly because there are Christian countries that are fairly poor and war torn in places such as the Congo, and partly because South Korea itself is a bit over 70% non-Christian, as of last count, and partly because the stats show that the most religious countries tend to be the poorest.

After a back and forth for a more minutes (the person asking the question didn’t buy Turek’s Korea argument) on this vein, the line was getting longer, and Turek finally gave the person a dismissal similar to the one he gave me — that they could talk more later.

The other memorable question was from a young college student — she asked how she could bring an atheist to Christ.

Frank Turek’s answer literally widened my eye sockets and made my mouth gape.  He said that she should continue being the atheist’s friend, and wait for the atheist to experience a tragedy.  And when that happened, the atheist might call her for help, and that’s when she could share with the atheist her own faith.  He went on to say that many atheists are more open when they are going through a crisis than when life as usual was happening.

At first my reaction was pure disgust.  The thought of a Christian trying to be close enough so they can be there when you go through a crisis so they can convert you seemed sick.  I don’t want my friends to wait for me to fail; I want them to encourage me.

But afterwards, while fuming about that on the drive home, I thought about how many Christians were probably converted by that very tactic — when they had very little hope, someone offered them Christ, and that hope of a heaven in which they would be forever may have given them the courage to keep going.  So, in their minds, they may be thinking that people who aren’t going through a hard time don’t need God — but if that person goes through a hard time like they do, they may be comforted that, in their view, they have something to offer that person.

After the talk was over, and after mingling with others there, Frank Turek greeted me on his way out.

 

How I Left

“Thanks for your questions!” he said.

“Thanks for the talk!  I used to be a fan of yours when I was a Christian.  Read some of your writings.”  The whole time I was talking to him, it was difficult to believe that I was speaking to him, in the flesh.  It was strange. It wasn’t like I was talking to an enemy — at least, not just.  Even though I had never met him before, I felt like we had gone on a bit of a journey together; for about seven years he had been very important in my life and helped me hang on to a hope I thought I needed.  After the talk, even though I disagreed with him, I somewhat sympathized with what he was trying to do.

So when he said with a slight look of regret, masked by a smile and a confident voice, something along the lines of, “And you didn’t find them convincing — you veered away, eh?”

I couldn’t help but politely return with a smile and laugh, “I dunno.  I didn’t read all your writings.  Maybe if I had read more, I would still be a Christian, haha!”

We had walked together outside of the auditorium; almost everyone had left save the organizers.  The newest book Frank Turek had written (which his talk was meant to promote), Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God To Make Their Case, and his other book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist was being taken off the display tables and put back in the boxes — the title was obviously fairly rude and incorrect, and I had complained about it previously on Facebook and fumed about it privately.

“Hold up,” Frank Turek said.  “I want to give Peter a free book.”

The person at the counter reached for I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist, Turek’s 2004 book that I already owned — presumably because I was an atheist, so the book was more suitable for me than Stealing from God, which was written more for Christians.

“No, not that one,” Frank Turek said, remembering me saying that I had read his work before. “Get the newest book.” He turned to me.  “You haven’t read that one, have you?”

For some reason, I found myself struggling to hold back a smile. “Um, no.”

He took it, opened it, and signed it.

“Peter, I hope you find this encouraging.  Blessings, Frank Turek.”

At the time, it struck me as odd…but later, I remembered how he told the college student who asked him about how to convert an atheist that she should wait until the atheist friend she had was going through a hard time and use the hope she had for her friend’s encouragement.  I thought that, perhaps, Frank Turek had at times found encouragement in his writing, and insulation from realizing his perceived fears, in his own moments.  That may sound patronizing, but one thing meeting and seeing Frank Turek taught me is that he came across as a man — an apologist who has what I think are unhealthy views, but someone who, like all of us, is trying to make it through this life.  He has found something that keeps him going through dark times, and he wanted to pass that on to me — perhaps so that, if I experience dark times in the future and turn in desperation to his book, this militant atheist will find it encouraging.

Or at least, that’s what makes the most sense to me now.

I had expected to leave that auditorium fuming, but, although several things about the presentation deeply bothered me, I found myself fighting a smile as I walked the third of a mile back to my car, signed book in hand — trying to ignore, again, the glances from passing college students.

At the same time, this experience made things harder.  Maybe I’m getting a little too sermonic here…but it felt like existence reminding me that most things are not just bad or just good; life is multifaceted, so that even those you most despise may, when looked at from a certain angle, give you a glance of beauty that brings tears to your eyes.

And while that makes things indeterminate, and complex, and sometimes bewildering — in some contradictory, paradoxical way it also makes the experience of life encouraging.

As I started up my car, I found that I was grateful for the long drive back home.  It would give me some much-needed time to think.