Frank Turek vs Paulogia: Do Star Wars & Superheroes point to Jesus? 

Only Frank Turek could write a book about how closely the bible resembles fiction and think it lends credibility to it.

Everyone needs to notice how often apologists quote people. They rely more on words and beliefs than facts and provable, logical ideas.

I’m 4 minutes in and it’s funny that Frank doesn’t recognize that stories have similar themes and the Bible is no different.

This is the nerdiest religious debate I’ve ever seen

Equating the similarities between mythology and superhero stories does not support the validity of the former the way Turek thinks it does. It's like saying unicorns and minotaurs exist because of Bigfoot stories.

I feel that Frank Turek's soccer example was a huge self own. Paul's interpretation aligns much more closely with how the game works and how it relates to our system of morality.

Frank Turek on the difference between Captain America and Jesus: "Jesus never annoyed anyone." 🤔 Lol

Gotta love how Turek argues against points Paul didn't make and ignores questions he asks. Then, when challenged on his own arguments, just refuses to substantiate them because "it's just one argument out of many", almost like he knows they are crap. I've seen loads of flat-Earth creationists use the same strategy. Come to think of it, the similarities don't end there... *edit: oh good grief, not the _appeal to Ehrman's authority but it's also a lie_ argument again...

Leaving some ❤️ for Paulagia! :)

This was a good conversation but the differences between the approaches really gets highlighted when Paul brings up the "Mary Sue" concept

So many people today love their super silly supernatural stories, I mean look at all these movies. But 2000 years ago people only liked their silly supernatural stories if they were real🙄🙄🙄 Sure Frank.

Did Frank Turek honestly just say what I think he said? ''we know God by his effects, his effects is creation'' now surely this is circular reasoning and Frank knows better than that!

I recently went and compared the gospels side by side for the first time. I highly recommend anyone that's interested in Christianity or is a Christian or just curious go and try that. It's fascinating.

Tbh, I’m a Christian but I think Paulogia has this one in the bag. Frank Turek isn’t one of the best apologist I have seen and his superhero argument seems like a very week one (there where heroic people before Jesus as well) but 6 days before is way too early to come to a conclusion so I look forward to listening to them both and seeing if I am wrong

Paul is so excited in this video and I love it! We need to make him combine counter-apologetics and Star Wars more

Jesus: curses a fig tree for not having fruit out of season. Frank: "What a morally perfect being, can't be made up."

Bringing up Han Solo doesn't really work for Frank as much as he thinks it does. In the movies, Han sees people blocking lasers with their eyes covered, jumping higher than any normal human, moving stuff with their mind, etc. And the ones doing those things are the believers. He was an eyewitness.

The story of Christ has had an enormous effect on western civilization and culture- it is very difficult to think of someone more influential. However if influence is all that matters then what does Mohammed’s influence on the world mean? Neither really speak of the truthfulness of their supernatural claims. Star Wars used to be a clear good versus bad titanic struggle - it too was jaded by prequels and sequels. What does that suggest?

I would like to give a big thanks to unbelievable- it is a really great channel I love watching

Frank can't seem to understand there are more choices than either an ultimate standard of goodness and individual subjectiveness. When we work together, it produces better outcomes for humans collectively than if we don't.

Starwars was heavily influenced by George Lucas reading Joseph Campbell "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". He had a rambling space-opera and it was Campbell's work that tied it all together.

Funny how Frank's example of purpose in soccer turned into a mere illustration of what purpose could be after Paul rightly pointed out that soccer is only a game because people agreed to follow the rules they designed.

We will come back to this after a quick break... saves Frank Turek every time!

I enjoyed this debate, a friendly discussion and some interesting thoughts from both sides. What’s the series Justin is referring to around 48:40, with the thought experiments around determinism etc?

Great conversation, but it suffered from what I think a lot of potentially great debates suffer from: the debaters start going into deep, interesting topics that aren’t necessarily “on point” with the catchy title of the debate and the moderator has to redirect. “I know the nature of morality is more interesting, but this is supposed to be about Star Wars!”

Very impressed with Paul. Not only is he clear in his thinking but also has a lot more patience than I do for nonsense. Great job Paul! Frank.... I really can't see you as anything more than a liar at this point. I don't think that's my fault.

I love when Christians bring up the moral argument. They think they have such a "gotcha". But most atheists I know have read the bible, and that god has no morality. They try to pretend like they can then ask how you can judge god, he's the one who made the rules. They like to say morals are written on the heart. But if morals are written on the heart and I look at the actions of the god and those actions are deeply immoral, then the god of the bible is obviously not the writer of those morals. I was raised Christian and extremely isolated. When when I examined the scriptures. I saw a creature that claimed he was god. He claimed he was prefect, he claimed everything he does is perfect. I also saw that his creation failed to measure up to his standard. If god were perfect, and he created people, then people would be perfect. People are not perfect, so one of the premises have to be incorrect. When I was a Christian after examining this dilemma I figured that the god of the bible was not the creator. People have come back and told me that god gave people free will, that's why we failed. They like to say god didn't fail, and that people are at fault for failing god. This to me seemed like a clear case of an abusive father that would abuse his child and the child saying his father's abuse is his own fault. It disgusted me, and that's how I became an apostate.

Ok.... our super hero fables draw on mythological tropes and conventions from previous legends.... except for the Jesus story. That one's completely original. Got it. 🙄

Is Frank’s argument really humans like fiction and superheroes, much like this story in an old book that’s very popular. BUT that story is true and the others are not cause I like it and I say it’s true, so it must be? Lol

If it was false it would have been easy to stop at the start... Wow. I mean, if Christianity was the only religion in the world I might concede the point. Or maybe he thinks all religions are true.

20:30 Paul’s face when Frank explained how Christianity is based on evidence, lol. Obviously, Paul has different criteria for evidence.

The Mary Sue comment killed. A close second was the comparison to similarities in the Batman movie iterations. I don’t think Frank was ready for Paul on this one.

I love how Turek will make an argument, like an argument from popularity, then when it's addressed well he says "well, it's not evidence but..." If you aren't trying to use it in an evidential manner, why did you bring it up in that context?! And when it's addressed, why do you have no better argument?

It was interesting watching Frank interrupt Paul more and more at the end, in the middle of Paul making his points. I thought that was telling; they were fantastic points.

The cool thing about a marshmallow Jabba the Hutt is you can put a bunch of Star Wars action figures around ít and have a whole battle scene.

Remember, for hundreds of thousands of years, humans were living with small groups of relatives. We did not evolve within huge nation-states.

"I am very uncomfortable with the thought that we don't have an objective moral template, therefore we have an objective moral template." Such impeccable reasoning, Frank. -___-

Pretty sure that as much as Star Wars has anything to do with Christianity George Lucas meant for The Emporer to represent god, Darth Vader was Jesus and the rebels were representative of pagan religions and the force was the pantheistic idea. Ironically or not Christianity in star Wars is represented as/by the bad guys 🤷

We can't even say that Jesus was the original model of the "hero" as there are other Gods and Demi-Gods who go through the heroes story and even end up sacrificing themselves before him (Heracles, for example). Also, around the 50 minute mark... anyone else thing Turek is describing his lover as opposed to the hateful jackass in the bible?

I always look forward to these discussions with Paulogia. To me, he seems to be one of the most formidable apologists in the atheist community (hardly any Christians respond to him) so I would be curious about his input.

the gospel writers never claimed to be witnesses to the event!!! (1:12:00)

I would love to hear their opinions on the show Midnight Mass on netflix.

I'm impressed and pleased this discussion remained so friendly. I'm an atheist and I'm so glad to have Paulogia represent "my side." Paul is an incredibly nice and generous person, and it doesn't pain me a bit to have to admit that aspect of his personality probably says a lot about his christian upbringing....

Avoiding controversy by not arguing which Star Wars movie is best and debating religion instead lol.

It's amazing how the top apologists can spout the exact same nonsense as the worst ones. Jesus, a unique, perfect and consistent character described by eye witnesses? xD It's almost like both the ceiling and bar _have_ to be bolted straight to rock bottom with these people and their identical crap arguments to preconceived conclusions, whether they are (young earth) creationists or not...

Together with midichlorians there was another addition to the nature of The Force, Qui Gon drops a line about the "Living Force" which at the very least has a will, so is less impersonal, although still far from a maker. Then in RotS we have the "netherworld of the Force"

Frank was intelligently outmatched here.

Frank really wanted to hold onto the idea that the Gospels are eye-witness accounts. That's not what the evidence shows, the fact that no church father before 160ACE quotes from the Gospel by name, and quotes them as if they have no name is not expected under traditional authorship. The fact that the only copies of the Gospels we have with titles is from after 160ACE is also not expected under traditional authorship. The fact that an alleged eyewitness (Matthew) copies *word-for-word in a language different to the one they spoke* from a non-eyewitness (Mark) is also not expected under traditional authorship. This all makes a lot more sense as a codification of an oral tradition.

51:42 this response from Paul got a good chuckle out of me. Hits the nail on the head.

Nice one for the open comments

Frank always goes back to WWII even though we're talking about Star wars and comic book movies. You could just build a Frank AI and have it spit out the same old talking points if he isn't even going to change his analogies for the discussion at hand. We're not talking about soccer, we're talking about Star wars

"well [if what paul is saying is true] we're just locked in agnosticism" yes, that's why we're agnostics

Let’s admit that each of us has a feeling of what is right or wrong. These aren’t the same for everyone but there is a distribution curve that point to a normal distribution of right and wrong. This came from our evolution. However it isn’t clear we really know or accept those rules. We need to study and learn them - whatever their provenance.

We differentiate by the way in which a group goes about getting to their goals.

MAN I’m stealing that referee analogy. That is damn good.

Tapdancer Turdrek at his dishonest best

If you help your tribe survive, the genes you share with your relatives will survive.

Loved it!!👏🏽

Objective moral values are useless as a concept without a way to figure out what they actually are. We've had Christian dominance for 1500 years in Europe and only within the last decades they figured out that same-sex couples marrying and having sex isn't sinful or degranged at any larger scale (unless you're a devout Catholic, the Church calling it "gravely immoral" in 2003 as an example, or any number of other bigoted and homophobic denominations who still oppses it in all forms). Despite all of that supposedly being in their book written with the intention to offer clear moral guidance. Imagine screaming the sky is blue for all those centuries, while those who invoke your name insists it's red. That's Christians on countless moral issues over the years.

Paul destroyed Frank. His position was better informed, better reasoned, better expressed and never required an appeal to authority or intuition. Just beautiful Paul!

In this philosophical knife fight, Paulogia was dancing with a blaster and light sabre, while FT was apparently naked and unarmed...now and again only holding up a sign with "Morality!" scrawled on it. The argument for Christian morality is fraught. There were moral arguments for Manifest Destiny, and bodies litter residential schools across the US and Canada. Those "arguments for," were the moral gold standard in their times. Things change. Even the Church.

I love when Frank talks about objective morality and then talks about how owning people is okay because God said so. Would you want to be owned Frank?

Clearly Frank Turek has not read The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.

Speaking of obvious fictions recycling old stories, let's talk about the bible using the epic of gilgamesh flood story 🤣

Anyone who thinks fictional stories are evidence for only 1 of those stories being true still has some important thinking ahead of them...

When is Paul going to write his book?

good ethics and decent human behaviour have nothing to do with appeasing a celestial being..it is for the common wellbeing of society or else it would be chaos every day.

Frank Turek's question that asks why human dive on the bomb to save another. Would be a same question if instead we were to ask why would a water buffalo choose to stand ground against a predator, to help save another buffalo, instead of turning tail and running away to save itself. Same thing with Elephants too, if we were to ask why they cooperate together to help their elephant clans, rather than to just turn tail and run away to safety for themselves and focus on merely seeking to save themselves alone, and so on. However, there's not one of the beings (human,buffalo,elephant ) what would have AVOIDED their extinction, unless they'd been the type of being what would NATURALLY attempted to turn toward social cooperation, together, as a systems whats "fittest for survival" . Right?. And us human are still following the trait we had originally acquired earlier on in time too. We are not so different than the buffalo,elephants and others too, in this sense. Why is it that Frank cannot see this?. Does Frank ever sit and wonder why "it is" that the buffalo and elephant choose to do what they do. Surely Frank hadn't been led to believe that the buffalo and elephant might read bibles too (like human do). Had he? I suspect Frank might have set of to find evidence that evolution would only ever be "dog eat dog" cold hearted type nasty thing what they teach people to believe in church groups. However, there's miles of scenario in nature , what provide us evidence to suggest that acts of altruism can also be beneficial to beings "as a whole" for survival (rather than to face extinction) So altruism can also still be motivated by a "form of selflessness". Ie:The selfish urge of "beings" to seek "a way" to survive Still selfish foundation, and yet can also have become the precursor for something "good" like what us human by now end up "to think of" as "morals" Perhaps Frank be better to accept that evolution OBVIOUSLY isn't necessarily the stone cold hearted matter of like what Franks "been mislead" to believe it is. Right? . If Frank was already SET ON (determined) attempting to try his best to "complicate" the situation (to try to fit God into the picture), then he'd have already been acknowledging this by now The same similar traits have also arisen in other beings existences. Its not only among human who are the beings considered to be far more aware, either. So perhaps its "something" far more regular than what people of faith would care to stop to consider ?

I find it interesting that Turek notes that people love a fantasy story, but doesn't realize that he continues to tell one that is very popular. Greatest story ever told, indeed.

It's amazing that Frank wasn't totally obnoxious but he did have his Frank Turek moments such as pretending he couldn't understand how a story could be exaggerated or Twisted into a beneficial manner from actual historical accounts how walking in Shallowater became walking on water I'll bring some wine to some poor people over the years became he turned water into wine so on and so forth how could oral tradition stories possibly get convoluted or completely turn into something they were not originally how could that possibly happen?

In my experience, my dreams are essentially about moral/ethical issues though sometimes their contents emerge as bizarre and convoluted.

The fact that Turek thinks being "locked in agnosticism" regarding unfalsifiable religious claims is a bad thing tells you everything you need to know about him.

In most heroic stories, the hero makes sacrifices for tangible reasons, ie stopping a bad guy or throwing a bomb into the Sun. With Jesus, you have to add a lot of theological interpretation to make his death heroic and not simply tragic.

Nice analysis.

He can't see how a fictional character could become so influential. Hmm. Let's look at the impact Casino Royal had on the interest of people in Poker, look at the amount of people ´who "know" what house they would be in in Hogwarts. And those are stories nobody believes to actually be true. My guess is that Turek doesn't believe all the stories in the Quran are true or the stories about the Hindu Gods. How did they become so influential? Because people in power either believed them or saw value in perpetuating them. That's it. It's not that hard.

It's all the tradition of the 'hero's journey' literary device. It happened long before Jesus - notably Homer's The Odyssey by 8th century BC. When pointed out, believers will accept that it's a great way to mythologize and create legends for the other narratives; except the 'hero' they believe.

As usual "there is something wrong with this world"!!!! We have actually got better but religion is not always the cause (but mostly) but it makes conflict worse.

This was great. Just my kind of discussion! I think fantasy and sci-fi stories point to or illustrate the things we don't like about the real world, the kind of nightmares we have, the kind of world we would or might like to live in, and the kinds of people we think might come to the rescue to put things right or save us from cruel monsters and tyrants.... because we want a happy ending! We want there to be people who have courage and moral integrity who don't give up and give in to temptation... People to look up to as inspirational role models (or wish we had superpowers like them!!) So fantasy-sci-fi fans like me and many others might not just be big kids who want some escapist entertainment but also thoughtful people who wonder about the big story in the real world (if there really is one and it's not just random ups and downs!) and want it to have hope - and I haven't found more hope for the real world than the ultimate hope the Christian faith points to even though it is honest that we have a lot of hard times to go through in the mean time. Of course we all have hopes for things to improve in the world in our own lifetimes but that's not such a certain hope it's just [somtimes tentative] optimism for temporary solutions like technology invented to solve energy problems and medicines found to treat diseases etc. It gives encouragement and hope to see how God can change people's lives for the better and make us into better people who can do little things that might add up to making a big difference. Trying to make analogies with fantasy heroes and Jesus does have some points about some aspects of heroism coming from this ultimate real rescue mission and incomparable character, but they are not real world stories. I think they are understood best in their own contexts because each fantasy world has its own worldview and when you have a whole galaxy or universe invented in the story like in Star Wars, that could have practically infinitely many worldviews and myths and cultures and religious beliefs of different groups in those worlds...! Maybe criticising some fantasy works because they have a different worldview that seems in some way incompatible with our own (Christian or other) is missing the point, because to appreciate a story it needs to be understood in its own worldview which usually if not always means 'suspending disbelief'! However much or little each story hero points to Jesus, at least I think the stories as a whole point to some aspect of reality of what we as humans feel about life and our struggles and some philosophical or moral lessons the writer wants to portray, which are likely influenced by some kind of religious or cultural background.

Paulogia got derailed by Hitler's love

Frank is such a disingenuous twit. Inventing a "perfect" character is easy, it's making one that's flawed that's difficult. The are several versions of Batman, or Spiderman, or Robin Hood, or Romeo and Juliet, yet they all contain the essential elements that make those characters who they are.

Turek has some really tired arguments about the reliability of the gospels. He essentially just says we can't prove their unreliability so he will keep assuming they are true. How boring... If the writers believed it, thats good enough for him. Great, but where did the writers get the information? Oral tradition. How reliable is oral tradition? They dont even claim to be witnessess, so is our worldview supposed to be based on our trust in unfalsifiable rumors? I'm happy to believe that they believed it to be true, but I expect the dudes who brought down the World Trade Center believed their stuff too, and they can't all be correct. All this fluff about Jesus being hella influential can be explained by totally mundane historical context; none of the magical stuff needs to be true for us to find ourselves where we are today. I swear, Turek's target demo must be people who only read Turek.

this is a great vid!

It's an old video, but I'm often behind. Even so, Frank Turek did not conduct himself well. Repetition of your original point in the face of potential counter-arguments or counter-evidence is not a rebuttal. Similarly, failure to listen to and account for what the person across from you has said is not a dialog, it's a monologue with a noisy audience (Turek monologuing and Paul as the "noisy audience"). Finally, the ending Gish Gallup from Turek, followed by his constant interruptions of Paul to nit-pick individual points demonstrated an inconsistent standard - both of communication and of argumentation.

"Do starwars and superheros point to Jesus?" No, we've had hero narratives/legends long before that.

I love how both Frank and the host keep throwing out "supports" for the truth of the bible but don't let Paul address them.

Turek, accustomed to owning the microphone, expecting to get to promote his book, underestimates the power of a SW fan being asked about SW lore.

I find it amusing how visibly emptional and defensive he gets as soon as the conversation begins to approach questions of his ideology being true or not. It is also telling how he clearly approached the subject from the position of assuming that his ideology is the truth, and then only comparing the fiction in relation to that "truth". Therefore making it almost impossible for him to see the (often a stretch) correlations as anything other than refections of that "truth". Leaving no room for possibly intepretating them all as correlated and caused by anything else, such as a commonality of human psychology, and our nature as a storytelling ape.

1:08:50 - Funny how Christians are creating legends about what Bart Ehrman has said, even while he's alive and activity refuting it.

Has Frank EVER read any comic book in his life??🤣🤣🤣 Superman is damn near the EPITOME of Mary Sue And with the synoptic gospels topic.... The way that Frank failed to understand it is like when you ask someone if you could copy their homework and they say, "yeah bro, but don't copy it word for word.". These gospels literally pulled from a common source, which explains why they have a majority of the same stories. And let's not act like Frank isn't arguing from incredulity..... "I don't understand how....", "I can't see how.....".

I feel like Paul knows more about the subject of Frank's own book than frank does!, so maybe that's why Frank keeps trying to srgue the general moral argument .Frank can't go head to head with Paul on the show's actual topic, so he circles back to his comfortable wheel house where he feels more knowledgeable. Even the host tried to keep frank on topic. Frank's new book must be pretty amateur then.

48:01 a few thoughts 1. this cs lewis quote makes me wonder what lewis meant by “true”. why is that not something “some atoms in your skull” could attain? he makes it seem as though that’s a foregone conclusion, but some work needs to be done to show what properties a collection of atoms making up a brain has that precludes it from being a trustworthy source of that which is true. 2. i think there should be less trust in your mental faculties if they were designed by an intelligent being. we interact with beings all the time we define as “intelligent”, and those beings often have all sorts of motives, rationals, and reasons for the things they do. there is no rule that says an intelligent being MUST create a being which is also intelligent and thinks true thoughts. an example: i could create a program that prints “2+2=5”. i could intentionally design it to NOT know what is true. if there is some intelligent being designing me, i have to trust that it WANTS my thinking to match up with what’s true (in addition to trusting that it’s there in the first place). i think, again, it is treated as a foregone assumption that an intelligent being MUST create other intelligent beings, and again, work needs to shown to demonstrate this as true.

Paul locking horns with Frank on the moral argument was just great. Kept composure in a situation I would fall apart in due to Frank’s well constructed and practiced play book. Frank tried to lead him to a place of discomfort and cognitive dissonance and Paul owned his position entirely well. Good on ya Paul.

Frank Turek is so hard to watch in this. He's the used-car salesman of appologists. Just brushes aside everything that Paul says and pushes the sale.

In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed. It's an important part of human culture due to how it's associated with self-actualization. Both Jung and Joseph Campbell have addressed this exensively. Star Wars & Superheroes movies are a modern version thereof. While they share a lot of similarities with myths from across different cultures due to how universal it is, similarities with the Jesus story are superficial at best!

If wrong is what I don't like, what happens when I change my mind? Then the wrong is changing all the time.

Thankfully it was someone like Paul who seems like a nice fellow and not someone like Dillahunty discussing who would have given it an inappropriate angry and hateful conversation.

So fiction proves fiction? That figures!

25:30 Concerning the ontology of moral goodness: In any society, even the Mafia, there are rules for pragmatic reasons. Probably, punishments are expected for those who fail to follow the rules. And there might be awards for those who perform very well. For each individual, the punishments should be bad, and the awards should be good. We have the tendency to avoid what is bad for us and be attracted to what is good for us. Even if we might think something is good for us, it might have very bad consequences. For instance, drug addiction. It seems most of all people understand that concept of individual good and bad. There aren't many discussions about what is the ontology of selfishness. Selfish people want to maximize the good to themselves, as individuals, regardless of how much others have, even if others are harmed. We have morality when people have to deal with each others. In that case, we might have conflicts. It's like in any society, but for all people. How an impartial judge would deal with that problem is the essence of moral good. Hitler might say some groups of people should be killed, because, according to him, some “race” should implement their will and maximize their imposition, and supposedly some groups are harming that “race”. But his arguments have factual mistakes and are based in selfishness. If Hitler was in any of the group are supposed to be eliminated, probably he would have a different opinion and think being killed is unfair. Even for a selfish person, being killed is bad.

Luke Skywalker probably won't be the MOST influencial character in 200 or 2000 years but Darth Vader, Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda, the guys that made Luke as he turns out to be, are already gathering a LOT of influence. Especially Ben about the relativity of truth. Not to mention I've seen at least twice kids asking if Jesus was Obi Wan. Yep, like in the meme. OK that was biased. Someone made a picture in a very geeky festival of Jesus with a lightsaber.

No No Turek has it the wrong way around. Jesus clearly points to Harry Potter, Star Wars and Marvel Movies.