 all so much for being here. I was asked to speak on a topic that I found very fascinating recently. In fact, it is something I've devoted an entire book towards that'll hopefully be coming out sometime next year. I have a few other books that have come out as well. But the thesis is how do Protestants argue like atheists? And when I put these ideas online and Protestants immediately comment on them, you can admit some people are a bit perturbed or peeved. How can you compare me to an atheist? I mean, come on. This is some really retrograde kind of Catholicism if you think I'm the same as an atheist. What kind of, why would you do that? And no, when I say how do Protestants argue like atheists, I am not in any way diminishing the important similarities that we have, our affirmation of things like the Trinity, which the Catechism calls the central mystery of our faith, the deity of Christ, these central aspects, our understanding of the inspiration of Scripture. I'm not downplaying the similarities that we have, nor am I saying that Protestants are on some kind of moral par with atheists. Rather, something that I have noticed in my engagement because in the apologetics that I do, I engage all different kinds of people, be they Protestant or atheist. But in doing this, I've noticed a lot of similarities, especially when I can see both camps together. One way that I have wanted to reach out to our Protestant brothers and sisters, one way that I think is probably one of the most effective ways that we as Catholics can have to evangelize our Protestant brothers and sisters is to become the very best defenders of the fundamental elements of the Christian faith that we share. Too often, I've seen Catholics focus on apologetics, and it's a good thing that they do that. And they become experts at arguing that Peter is the rock or that we don't worship Mary, and this is important for us to learn. But then they skip over demonstrating the historical reality of Christ's resurrection from the dead, the reliability of Scripture, mastering proofs for the existence of God. Honestly, I feel like some Catholics, and I've had this attitude once, think, well, we'll let the Protestants bring him to Jesus and then we'll bring him to the church. Does anyone ever maybe succumb to that temptation? And they think, great, they get him to Jesus, we'll get him to church. But my friends, imagine if somebody led you to Jesus, wouldn't you follow them to their church? How much more effective would it be if we are the ones who take people from non-belief, from atheism to the knowledge of our Lord and then immediately to the church that Jesus Christ founded? So that's why one of the ways my explicit goals to help reach out to Protestants is in my work as an apologist to focus on the areas where we agree, such as putting forth pro-life apologetics that many Protestant organizations use. Engaging atheists, for example, I was recently asked my friend Cameron Bertuzzi to the Capturing Christianity YouTube channel. He was hosting a conference last August, so a year ago in Houston. And the big kickoff for the conference was a debate between an atheist. And actually an atheist that I had debated before, Alex O'Connor, the cosmic skeptic. And so he's a well-known atheistic YouTuber and I was excited to engage him again in Houston. And our debate has got over a quarter of a million views on YouTube and that's been helpful in people who've said to me, I was an atheist and now I go to mass and it all started when I watched that debate. Because I had never seen anyone really counter Alex's arguments before. So I was excited to see that there was going to be this debate though I wasn't gonna be a part of it. I was just gonna go and watch popcorn and see Alex debate someone else. But the Protestant debater had to back out because of a conflict and Cameron called me up and said, you're really good at debating atheism. Do you wanna come down here? And most of the people there at the conference were actually Protestant, only a handful of Catholics. And yet many of these Protestants who had come for this event to watch me fill in to do this debate, they liked not just my arguments for the existence of God were very compelling to them and they fully agreed with them. And their basic attitude was, you make a good case for God, I'm really interested to hear your case for Catholicism. And so I think that before I talk about where Protestants and atheists argue in similar ways, I wanna really exhort us in our knowledge of the faith to learn not just Catholic fundamentals but Christian fundamentals. So that people can see, wow, you're, and it's not just on fundamental theology either. It's also, there are people who have followed my pro-life work who are Protestant and say, wow, I really like your arguments against abortion. So I'm really curious, why are you Catholic? And that can be the same for us. So in doing this debate, I was talking with Protestants there and with other Catholics, and I sat down for an interview with Cameron for his YouTube channel and Cameron himself is Protestant. And he was asking me different questions. And as a part of the interview, he said, well Trent, let me ask you this, what if there's a Protestant he really wants to be Catholic? You know, he really wants to be Catholic, but he's not sure. He's not, not all of his doubts are fully formed. You know, he's not overcome them yet. What should he do? And so I thought about it. I feel like the Holy Spirit moved me in the right direction. I said, well Cameron, what would you tell an atheist who said, I really wanna be Christian, but I'm just not there yet. I'm not past all these objections. What should I do? And I bet you would give an atheist probably a version of Pascal's wager. Hey, you've got nothing to lose in becoming Christian and you have everything to gain. Just try it out, go to church, pray, even if you don't feel like it. And then maybe the belief will settle a bit more. And so I said, then I would say the same thing for a Protestant, go to mass, go to adoration, give that a try, you have much to gain. And if you're already convinced that Catholics are just another denomination, another Christian denomination, if you're not a virulent anti-Catholic, but you think, well Catholics, they're like Methodists and Presbyterians, we're all Christians in Christ, then you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And so that started me on a journey to do an investigation to see, wait a minute, there's a lot of other similarities I've noticed in how Protestants argue and how atheists argue. And I think it ultimately boils down to that the debate between Catholicism and Protestantism, you could almost describe it in the same way you describe the debate between atheism and Christianity. How does the debate happen among atheists and Christians? Well, you have, atheists will say, I see the world around me, it's a great world, you and I agree the world exists, and we can understand the world without any of your God or religious revelation. It explains itself, we don't need any of that, this is just fine, we both agree on that, isn't that enough? And then the Christian gives the atheist reasons, and an atheist might sit there and say, well, those reasons aren't convincing to me, so atheism wins by default. If you can't convince me to be Christian, I'm fine remaining an atheist. So there's a bit of a shift of the burden of proof and a discussion about this shared reality that one person says is self-explanatory and another who says, wait, only God fully explains everything and makes the world make sense. Now where's the similarity? Well, what happens when Protestants and Catholics dialogue with one another? We both agree in this shared reality called the Bible. We all think it's really great, and Protestants will say it explains itself that it is the inspired word of God, we don't need the church to understand it. If you can't convince me Catholicism is true, then I'm happy remaining a Protestant. So once again, notice that there is an assumption that something one side is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty, the Protestant view that we just start with the Bible and with Christianity if Catholics can't make their case, too bad for them. But the other side doesn't have to explain, just like as I would say to an atheist, no, wait a minute, even if my proofs don't work, how do you explain why does the world exist? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there an objective moral law? If you can't explain these things, shouldn't that make you really question your worldview? And then I would say, well, wait a minute, how do you know that these 66 books make up the Bible? Could it be more than 66 books? It is. Where did that come from? How do you know that this interpretation you have of scripture is the correct one? How do you explain all this? And if you can't, shouldn't that make you very skeptical about your worldview? And so I've noticed these differences here and in pointing, sorry, I've noticed these similarities and in pointing out these similarities, I think it'll be very helpful for us in our dialogues with our Protestant brothers and sisters, not to have a kind of got you, you're being like an atheist moment, but rather to say what you're arguing and saying to me, I think you should really be careful. This is the same kind of argument atheists will make against Christianity. If you use this reasoning to reject Catholicism, you don't have any principled ground to stay on to reject this reasoning being used against Christianity itself. So let me offer you a few examples from my research. So first, number one would be this, Sola scriptura and Sola scienza, Sola science, if you will, that both groups, Protestants and atheists have a similar kind of argument when they both use a tool to restrict what counts as knowledge that ends up refuting itself. Both use a tool to restrict knowledge to support their conclusions, but the tool ends up refuting itself. So for example, as a Catholic apologist, try to see if you can guess, what do you think is the most common question I get asked? What is the most common thing searched for on our Catholic Answers website? It's a question. Where is that in the Bible? And in particular, it's where is purgatory in the Bible? That is the number, like every time you do the search analytics, it is the number one thing. It's the number one question that I get asked. Where is that in the Bible? And implicit within that question is the attitude that I am not going to believe something as Christian doctrine unless it is explicitly found in the Bible. That of course is the Protestant doctrine of Sola scriptura or by scripture alone. The 1647 Protestant Westminster Confession of Faith defines Sola scriptura, what we would call Sola scriptura, it defines it this way. The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the holy scripture. Although it's interesting, holy scripture doesn't tell us what is and isn't scripture. It also doesn't tell us when people stopped writing scripture that divine revelation ended in the first century after the death of the last apostle or apostolic man. So that makes me very skeptical of this argument. But the idea is that I won't believe it unless you can prove it from scripture. But that's similar to when an atheist says I won't believe it unless you can prove it from science. You know, when I say God exists, many atheists will say to me, where's your proof? Where's the scientific evidence? Prove it with science. Well, I have this philosophical argument that sounds, no, no, I don't want word salad. I want scientific proof. All right, well, what's science? Science is a way of cataloging, describing and understanding the natural physical world, a way of understanding how matter and energy interact with one another in the space time universe. I can't use science to find God any more than I could use a flashlight to find its own batteries. Or it's like using a yardstick to weigh a chicken or trying to find a diamond on the beach using a metal detector. You're using the wrong tool, but it doesn't mean that the quest itself is futile. And so what's interesting here is when I see many Protestants have great arguments against sola ciencia. So Greg Cokal, who's a Protestant apologist, he talks about how by science alone doesn't work. He says this, imagine you wanted to collect all knowledge in a box. Let's call it the truth box. Before any alleged truth could go into the box, it must first pass the scientific truth test that something has to be proven with science. The problem is that your knowledge project can never get started because some truths need to be in the truth box first before science could begin its analysis. And Greg is right. In order to say that things have to be proven by science, I have to first know what science is. That science works. I have to know about metaphysical truths, that the laws of science are the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. So if everything has to be proven by science, I can't prove anything because I can't prove the very thing I'm using for this test. It's self-refuting. But then you see where the problem arises here. Just replace a truth box that requires a scientific test with a doctrine box. Doctrine just means truth. That has to pass a scriptural test. That everything that goes in the doctrine, because what Greg Kokel would end up doing, is saying it can only be in the doctrine box if it passes the scriptural test. I find it explicitly in scripture. But as he says, the problem is, is that your knowledge project could never get started. Well, what is scripture? I'd have to answer that question first. And I have to run it through the filter, but I don't know what my scripture box is. It ends up being self-refuting in that respect. Now, here's what's interesting though. When Christians point out the error of scientism, atheists, instead of admitting the problem, sometimes will say, yeah, well, science is still better than religion. Think of all the things religion gets wrong, and science gets right. So we should prefer science over religion. Well, that's not a very fair comparison. You're judging religion based on how some religious people have applied it to scientific questions. But as Cardinal Cisabronius once said during the Galileo controversy, the Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. And it teaches us important truths about reality. God made the world. He made it from nothing, which science has not refuted. He created human beings, and human beings are made in God's image. But as to how he did it, that's what science tells us. And so I've noticed that they'll just attack the other standard instead of showing that, no, science can't prove everything. And religion does tell us important things science can't prove. Science can't tell us human beings have intrinsic dignity. And even the most mentally disabled human is worth more than the smartest pig or rat. Science can't tell us that. Something else must. Someone who created us and gave us dignity. And I noticed something similar happens with Protestants. That when I point out that Sola Scriptura is unworkable, unbiblical and self-refuting, their argument tends to shift to, well, we should practice Sola Scriptura because we have no good reason to trust Catholic sacred tradition. They'll say, why would you believe in the Catholic tradition? We have the Bible that's good enough. Tradition is this nebulous concept, this grab bag. We have no reason to trust Catholic tradition. And besides, in fact, here is what Norm Geisler says about Catholic tradition. He says in his book, the late Protestant apologist, Norm Geisler, writing in his book with Ralph McKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, Agreements and Differences, he writes of Catholic tradition, oral traditions are notoriously unreliable. They are the stuff of which legends and myths are made. But now this gets really awkward for Dr. Geisler because what happens when an atheist says to him, well, why should I believe in the Gospels? Well, why wouldn't you? Well, how long after the time of Jesus were the Gospels written? Even at a conservative estimate, 30, 40 years? Well, how could I trust it? Well, the stories of Jesus existed by word of mouth. You mean an oral tradition. So when it's a Christian oral tradition, this is how Dr. Geisler describes it. First century, let's see, the New Testament writers were living in a culture where the vast majority of people were illiterate and there was no initial need or utility in writing their testimonies down. First century people in Palestine developed strong memories in order to remember and pass on information. In such an oral culture, facts about Jesus may have been put into a memorable form. So when it's a Christian tradition that ends up in the Bible, well, then it's reliable and illiterate people are great at passing on traditions. But when it's a Catholic tradition about how to interpret scripture according to the rule of faith, it's unreliable the stuff of which legends and myth are made. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Now he might say, well, no, we're talking some Catholic traditions go on much longer than just when the Gospels were written down. That's just a few decades. Some Catholic tradition goes on maybe for centuries, but he still has a problem because Dr. Geiser uses the same defense for the reliability of the Old Testament, which existed as oral tradition for centuries until it was written down. And he says of the Old Testament, oral tradition was very important in the Jewish culture and served as one of the main ways to transfer information among many other things. So once again, my concern is it's sort of like, what's that parable? I was reading ASOP to my kids. It's the parable, I believe, of the scorpion and the turtle. Please give me a ride across this stream. You'll sting me and we'll both die. No, I won't. He stings them and they both go down. In attacking Catholic tradition in order to build up soul scriptura, you're gonna undermine the very thing that made up the Bible in the first place since the biblical accounts existed as oral traditions before they were written down. In the words of the venerable Tony Stark, not a great plan. The next one is Parallelomania, all right? So Parallelomania was coined by a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, SBL, in 1961, Samuel Sandmell. And he talked about how there's people who are trying to argue that certain aspects of religions or Christianity are actually based on another religion or another culture. And to prove this borrowing took place, they try to find parallels. Any kind of parallel, anything, even the most trivial, they try to find parallels everywhere. And he called that Parallelomania. Now, sometimes there are parallels. Now, sometimes things are borrowed even intentionally in order to subvert them, for example. Some Protestants like to quote Cardinal Henry Newman, who said that many things that Catholics do were already done before among with the pagans, like lighting candles and votive offerings and incense. And they'll quote Newman. They'll say, see, even Newman says what they do is pagan. And look for that quote. If they're at least honest, there will be little ellipses, three periods, because they leave out the part where Cardinal Newman says, and the ring in marriage. Because where is this in the Bible? This is a pagan custom. It first probably has its roots in ancient Egypt. Yet its symbolism is compatible with Christianity, and so we baptize it and make it a part of our own rights. But the Parallelomania can get pretty absurd, especially when you have unscholarly anti-Catholic writers doing this. My favorite is probably Jack Chick. Jack Chick is probably, I hear the groans and the chuckles a little. How many people here have heard of Jack Chick? I hear someone boo. Jack Chick is probably the world's most famous cartoonist. At least the world's most published. He is a fundamentalist Baptist, I believe, and he has a very narrow theology. I think every other Christian, except the people at his church, he's a late, by the way, the late author, Jack Chick. He passed away a few years ago. He was very reclusive. There's no photographs of him. The only image we have of him is one that Jimmy Akin wrote down as a sketch when he met him once. You can find it at Catholic.com. But he would put forward these little comic books and usually there were all kinds of subjects, but the Catholic ones are usually about a Catholic who's not a very good person, who dies, ends up in heaven, the judgment seat of God, and Jesus is sitting before him. Now for being a fundamentalist Protestant, by the way, he had a bit of a dilemma. He made these cartoons where people meet Jesus. But what does the first and second commandment, depending on how you enumerate for Protestants, there's probably a commandment that would come up here, right? Thou shalt not make any graven images. So what he does to get around this in the cartoons is Jesus is absolutely terrifying. He's a 50-foot tall, robed giant without a face. He just doesn't draw Jesus' face as if that gets around the rules somehow. Fine, I guess. And the guy says, I was a good person, I went to Mass. You are damned because you were part of the pagan whore of Babylon. And then you read in the comic later, how do we know Catholicism is pagan? Well, the Eucharist, that's not anything that Jesus gave us, despite what the Bible says. Rather, the Eucharist comes from ancient Egypt. It was a sacrifice that they would hold up the bread and it would turn into the God Osiris and people would eat it. And that's where the Eucharist came from. And so that's where it was borrowed. And even so, how do we know this? Because on the Eucharist, there's a monogram, IHS. What does that stand for? Isis Horus Sebb, the Egyptian Trinity. This is really in one of his comics. And this isn't just coming from him. He basically borrowed a lot of this stuff from Alexander Hyslop, who published in 18, he was a Scottish Presbyterian theologian and he published in 1853 a pamphlet called The Two Babylon's Romanism and its Origins. So Hyslop really started this idea that Catholicism is just reworked Babylonian mythology and paganism. And so Chick went on with that. You know, look at these similarities. It's just stolen from paganism. Why, you know, look at Catholicism is a pagan imitation. And I would say to my Protestant friends, thankfully my Protestant friends are scholarly that would not embrace this stuff. But there are many who do. They would realize you've got a big problem when you make this argument. The argument is this thing in Catholicism looks like this thing in paganism. Therefore Catholicism is pagan. Another example is look at the veneration of Mary. Oh, it looks just like this statue of a goddess in this pagan religion. Therefore Catholicism is pagan. Wait, if it looks pagan, it is pagan. So if that's true for Catholicism, didn't many pagans believe in dying and rising gods? Dionysus, Bacchus, Hercules, Horus, Osiris, many that they believed in dying and rising gods. There was a king of the gods. Their Christianity itself has similarities to paganism. There is a documentary film that's got millions of views online called Zeitgeist. It's a big conspiracy theory documentary. And one of the conspiracy theories in it is that Jesus never existed. His life was stolen from Egyptian mythology. And so they'll say, for example, that, ah, yes, well, Jesus is just like Horus. The Egyptian God Horus, he was crucified. And he rose from the dead three days later, baptized by Anna, had 12 disciples. It's all the same story. And in both cases, Christianity coming from Egyptian mythology and Catholicism coming from Egyptian mythology, you can refute it the same way. You go back to the primary sources and see that's not true. The primary sources are wrong. That these parallel arguments aren't using Egyptian primary sources. They're using bad secondary sources. A common one that comes up is Gerald Massey. Gerald Massey was a 19th century, early 20th century Egyptologist. But nobody uses his work anymore. And they knew that even back in the day they knew he was bad. And still, the work pops up among fundamentalist Protestants and fundamentalist atheists. In 1888, Archibald Sase, one of the renowned Egyptologists of the British Museum, said of Massey's work that no lunatic could possibly write more wild rubbish. I miss that in academia. Nowadays, he has to be more polite. But back in the day when you wrote a journal, you could call anybody a lunatic. Maybe one day, maybe one day we'll bring it back. The stuff about the Eucharist, that's just wrong. Massey is also, so he said, for example, Gerald Massey said that flesh and beer were trans-elemented or trans-substantiated by the scent of raw, the Holy Spirit. That he reads a hieroglyph, gets it wrong and imposes Christian terminology on it. The same is true for trying to say Horus was crucified. That never happened in Egyptian mythology. Atheistic fundamentalists reached that conclusion because they see a picture of Horus with his arms open. And then, oh, obviously he was crucified. People think this means crucifixion. I'm not gonna be liberal with hugs around them, but, all right. In fact, there was an individual Protestant author in 1966, Ralph Woodrow. He wrote a book on the subject called Babylon Mystery Religion. And so what Woodrow did is he took Alexander Hyslop's arguments from 1853, reworded them, because they're very difficult to follow, into the much more readable Babylon Mystery Religion. But he's an honest guy. And he looked at the scholarship more and said, wait a minute, wait a minute. There are parallels, but they don't prove anything. So then what he did was he went back to the work and repudiated it and wrote a follow-up book saying he was wrong in 1997 called the Babylon Connection. Here's one thing he writes in it. As Christians, we don't reject prayer just because pagans pray to their gods. We don't reject water baptism just because ancient tribes plunged into water as a religious ritual. If finding a pagan parallel provides proof of paganism, the Lord himself would be pagan. So this argument, this common argument against Catholicism, it looks like paganism, so it is pagan, that would destroy Christianity itself. And so it's one, our Protestant brothers and sisters should reject, even for their own sake, for their own theology. And C.S. Lewis predicted that these kinds of parallels would exist. He said that the human being is a religious person. They can naturally intuit these truths even if they don't fully understand them. This idea that there is a supreme creator and wouldn't it be beautiful if that creator entered into the world with us? So Lewis wrote this, we must not be nervous about parallels and pagan Christs. They ought to be there. It would be a stumbling block if they weren't. We must not in false spirituality withhold our imaginative welcome. It's true for Christian and pagan similarities and Catholic and pagan similarities. All right, here's the next one. Skepticism of Miracles. So in the summa contra gentiles, St. Thomas Aquinas talks about miracles. Why aren't there as many miracles now as there were in the time of Moses or the time of Jesus? And Aquinas says, well, miracles are primarily used to validate the giving of divine revelation. We would expect them at the inaugurations of covenants. And so we wouldn't expect them as much afterwards. However, he does say, yet it is also a fact that even in our own time, God does not cease to work miracles through his saints for the confirmation of the faith. And this became a major sticking point in the years after the Protestant Reformation. Because when Protestant said, well, no, the church is not the church of Christ, we are going to restore the true elements. People would naturally say, well, how can you say the Catholic church isn't Christ's church? Look at the miracles that the saints have done. How else could this be accomplished? And so there's different ways to try to argue against the miracles. I'll get to a common one later. But one is to say, well, maybe they didn't really happen. Maybe these miracles are stories that are just made up. We don't want to, if we start believing in miracles, next step we're going to end up being Catholic and we don't want that. It's true. Now that's not all Protestants, but I want to talk about how it proceeded for the few centuries after the Reformation. Thomas Kidd wrote an article about the healing of Mercy Wheeler at a Protestant revival in the 1740s. That she had a illness that kept her from walking and then she was healed at this Protestant revival. But he writes this when the news of her story began to spread. To 18th century Protestants, miracles were too closely associated with Catholicism. And anti-Catholicism served as an essential component of British Protestant identity. Opponents of the revivals attempted to associate them with Catholic superstition, whenever extraordinary claims surfaced. So as Protestantism grew and developed over the centuries, there has been a split among Protestants that falls basically into two camps, though there's a range in between them. One would be the cessationist view, the idea that miracles or at least certain kinds of miracles ended with the death of the apostles. There are no more genuine miracles after the apostolic age. The other side would be continuationists. This is common among Pentecostals, for example, who believe that spiritual gifts are still common in this day and age. So I'm not saying the parallels, by the way, don't necessarily apply to every single Protestant. The only thing Protestants all have in common is that they're not Catholic or Orthodox. After that, you get everything from soup to nuts. Although that's also true in Catholicism. We're well aware of it. We have the commendable to the questionable all within the same church. Universal, why it's called being Catholic. So there's a golf in between, where people are open, but skeptical, open, but cautious. So the cessationists argued, no, there are no more miracles, and so we don't have to worry about Catholic claims to miracles because they're not genuine. And one book that was written to argue against all miracles, especially Catholic miracles, was the book Counterfeit Miracles, written by B.B. Warfeld in 1918, one of the Princeton theologians, a Calvinist. And so, but what he writes about why, well, why shouldn't we believe there's so many testimonies of miracles through the saints, even going through all of church history. Here's something he writes. And as I read this, take out Catholic and put in Christian, and it will sound very much like Richard Dawkins, listen. The worldview of the Catholic, where Dawkins might say a Christian, is one all his own, and is very expressly a miraculous one. He reckons with the miraculous in every act. Miracles suggests itself to him as a natural explanation of every event, and nothing seems too strange to him to be true. Sounds like something a new atheists would say to Protestant Christians who believe that if you pray, someone can really be healed. That even supernaturally, not just through natural means. And so he says the healings at Lord's, for example, are the product of suggestion. And he says medieval miracle stories come from, quote, the thought of an age so little instructed in the true character of the forces of nature, and especially its deeply seated conception of the essentially magical nature of religion and its mode of working. So it comes from an age little instructed in the true character of the forces of nature. That's just like what atheists say, why Christians believe in miracles. You don't know the science enough, and then you wouldn't be so astounded by it. And other Protestants have noted this in Warfield's argument. So L. Philip Barnes, in his review of Warfield's book, this is what he writes. He says, look, Warfield needs to be careful that all his arguments to show, yep, there's no historical reason to believe in the miracles after the apostolic age. I mean, Augustine even says miracles were performed in his own time that he was aware of. And Warfield's responses, well, why didn't other people at that time write about it besides Augustine? John Remsburg, an atheist writing at the same time as Warfield, wrote a book saying Jesus didn't exist. Why? Why didn't other ancient historians write about these miracles at that time? The parallels are uncanny. But the arguments that you can debunk all the miracles after the apostles' suggestion, folklore, things that are not trustworthy, here's what Barnes writes, a fellow Protestant. The problem, however, is that a number of these negative points would be equally telling if applied to some of the biblical miracles. For example, as Colin Brown has pointed out in his discussion of Warfield's position, the raising of Lazarus as reported in John 11 is not well-attested, being recorded only in John's gospel. There's no corroborative evidence. Other naturalistic explanations could be given, and so on. So, there we go. The point here is not to dispute the veracity of the story, it is rather to note that if the same considerations produced by Warfield in his dismissal of post-apostolic miracles were applied to some biblical stories, then a similar negative verdict would be required in the latter cases as the former. Once again, in trying to get rid of the Catholic things that bother you, like miracle stories, which would make one wonder, why are the Catholics doing all these miracles? You're going to undercut the evidences we have for the miracles we jointly believe in, like in scripture. Cardinal Newman in the 19th century noted this problem as well. Here's what he writes. It may be taken as a general truth that where there is an admission of Catholic doctrines, there no prejudice will exist against ecclesiastical miracles, while those who disbelieve in the existence among us of the hidden power will eagerly avail themselves of every plea for explaining away its open manifestation. So if you're already predisposed to not believe in miracles in general, because you're an atheist, or you're predisposed to not believe in Catholic miracles because you're a particular brand of Protestantism, then you try to find any way you can to explain the evidence away instead of following the evidence where it leads. Here's another example. When I debate atheists, I've noticed on the resurrection of Jesus, when the resurrection of Jesus is being debated, why do you believe in the resurrection? Atheists will often ask Christians, well, why don't you believe in this other miracle if you believe that Jesus rose from the dead? And so I was in a debate once and someone asked me, all right, if you believe Jesus rose from the dead, are you gonna believe that Mary appeared to a bunch of people at Fatima? Yes. And I said in the debate, in some respects, in some respects, we have better evidence for the appearance of Mary at Fatima than we do for the resurrection. Not all the evidence, we have distinct evidence in the form of testimony under the threat of martyrdom, for example, and other elements with the resurrection. But with Mary at Fatima, unlike the resurrection, we have contemporary newspaper accounts of this event happening along with descriptions of things that appear supernatural and not just merely an optical illusion, like puddles drying up and people's clothes becoming dry quickly after this amazing event of the sun dancing in the sky. And so they kind of mocked me a bit, but I said, this makes my position stronger. But this, and they brought this up with me in this debate that I had with an atheist online because it's often, this often is used against Protestants. Because remember what I said at the beginning? When I looked, when I converted 20 years ago to become Catholic, what made me Christian were Protestant apologists. William Lane Craig, JP Moreland, Sean McDowell. It was, I hate to say it, it was a Protestant apologist that got me to Jesus. A little bit of Peter Crafe flow with the, Peter Craft and Father Ronald T'Chely's book, the Christian Handbook of Apologetics. And that also helped me along the way. But when, so they're used to, a lot of atheists are used to just Protestants defending something like the historicity of the resurrection. So when a Catholic does it, this argument, it doesn't work. Bart Ehrman, a well-known agnostic scholar of the New Testament, he recently debated my colleague Jimmy Akin actually on the reliability of the Gospels. Ehrman himself raises the apparitions of Mary and says, look, there's more evidence for the apparitions of Mary than for the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection. So Protestants are inconsistent if they believe in one but not the other. Here's what Ehrman writes. It is striking and worth noting that typically believers in one religious tradition often insist on the evidence for the miracles that support their views and completely discount the evidence for miracles attested in another religious tradition. Protestant apologist interested in proving that Jesus raised from the dead rarely show any interest in applying their finely honed historical talents to the exalted Blessed Virgin Mary. Now, he's being facetious when he says exalted Blessed Virgin Mary because he's an agnostic, but Ehrman makes a good point. If they're willing to believe that people saw Jesus after his death, well, why didn't, why wouldn't, if we had that same evidence for people seeing Mary after the end of her earthly life and better evidence in some cases, why wouldn't we follow that? Mike Lacona actually is one of the best defenders of the resurrection. He's a Protestant and he's an apologist for the resurrection. He wrote a 500 page book based on his dissertation, one of the best defenses of the resurrection out there. It's called the resurrection, a new historiographical approach. And I noticed this line in one of the footnotes because when you're a nerd like me, you read all the footnotes. And this is what he wrote. For myself, I'm not prepared to adjudicate on the matter of Mary and apparitions. Because I am Protestant, I carry a theological bias against an appearance of Mary. However, I am not predisposed to reject the reality of apparitions in general. And he's being honest. At least he's being honest. He says, look, there is evidence for this, but I have a theological worldview that's incompatible with it. Maybe the theological worldview needs to be tweaked. Just a tiny bit. And so I find that to be interesting to show that when atheists attack the resurrection, they go after the reliability of witnesses to say that this is a mistake, this is hallucination. Protestants are quick to rebut those counterarguments. Yet those same arguments are often made when people claim that they saw the Blessed Virgin Mary. So what other way can we get around that? Now, some Protestants who will say that it's demonic basically. They'll say, well, the reason is that the appearances of Mary, they're demonic actually. But you know what's great? I've got a great retort to this from a guy who had to deal with this a bunch in his own ministry. He's our Lord. And because they said about our Lord, well, how does he perform these miracles if he's not a prophet? And then the Pharisees thought they were very clever. Well, he drives out demons by the Prince of Demons, of course. To which Jesus said in Luke 11, 17 through 18, every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste. And house falls upon house. And if Satan also was divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? So why is the devil impersonating Mary to get people to join a church where during our baptismal vows, we promised to reject the devil and all of his empty promises? It does not make sense. It doesn't make sense. Now, what about the other miracles though? Some of you might say, yeah, but Trent, what about Mercy Wheeler? What about these miracles? If miracles prove Catholicism, what about other Protestant miracles? What about miracles in other religions? Do they all cancel each other out? No, I do believe that some miracles could be demonic in nature. Other miracles in a non-Christian religion could be God showing mercy and kindness to a non-Christian and healing them, even though the non-Christian doesn't know which God they're correctly praying to because God loves everyone. And it also may be the case, that's why we have to be careful when we make these arguments. In comparing the arguments between Protestants and atheists, I try very hard to be fair and I wanna root out bad Catholic arguments as well. For example, some people will say, well, I'm Catholic because we got all the miracles. Where are your miracles, Mr. Protestant? That's an arrogant response that will backfire. First, Calvin's answer was the same as Aquinas's. We're not inaugurating a new covenant, we're preserving one the apostles gave so we don't need miracles for preserving revelation that was given. Number two, they can say, well, we do have miracles. There are stories of evangelical pastors who've healed people, some who've claimed to have raised people from the dead and I believe that's quite possible. Craig Keener has a two volume book on miracles, Catholic and Protestant. So Christians are able with the gifts of the Holy Spirit to do wondrous deeds. However, the real problem I think for our Protestant brothers and sisters is if God allows a Protestant to perform a miracle, that can validate theology that we all share, like belief in the triune God who has revealed himself through the incarnation. But when God performs a specifically Catholic miracle, like a Eucharistic host becoming flesh and blood, that seems to be an endorsement not of just a fundamental Christian theology, but an endorsement of the truth of fundamental Catholic theology as well. So I had so much more here. Ah, but that's the key. Always leave them wanting more because eventually that was I think three examples and I have about 15 that I'll be sharing in the book when it will be released. If you're just dying for more, go to when Protestants argue like atheists, search for that on YouTube. I have a few videos where I explore the concept. I also dialogue with, there's a dialogue I have with two Protestants on this question. Cause I believe that we will become very bad evangelists and apologists if we only practice our skills on those who agree with us. One, we've hid the lantern under a bushel basket if we do that. And two, we've turned this into some kind of a sport or hobby rather than the important mission and fieldwork of spreading the kingdom. And so that's why when I come up with arguments like these, I wanna go and test them. And I wanna go and have debates and dialogues with those who disagree with me to test them for their logical soundness and so that I'm just not being a jerk. You know, cause it's, that's something that we must always watch out for. The venerable Fulton Sheen once said that you could win an argument but lose a soul and we don't wanna do that. But we don't also have to lose arguments and win souls. It happens sometimes. We can do both, but we can do so in a charitable way. So thank you very much for being here today. Enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you.