YIKES: Famous Atheist Corrects Vatican On Basic Theology… And He’s NOT Wrong

You don’t normally look to an evolutionary biologist for a defence of the gospel, especially when he is open about his unbelief. But we live in strange times.

Stranger still is the person who he finds himself defending it against.

A quirk in the cancel culture wars has created some unlikely friendships, including the one James Lindsey has developed with traditional Christians. He’s come to respect them, if not share their beliefs, and they have a shared antipathy to the rot of cultural wokeness.

He has some fantastic content on the bankruptcy of DEI, and how it has roots in (or at the very least a striking resemblance to) a first-century gnostic heresy the Apostles were battling in their warnings against false teachers.

Solomon was right about there being nothing new under the sun. His critique of woke warriors in the broader culture has included critique of woke warriors who want to hijack cultural institutions — including religious institutions.

One recent social media post will serve as an example:

https://x.com/ConceptualJames/status/1792733193478504767

The grave error the woman in that photo has made should not need explaining to any intelligent reader. And yet, she thinks she’s making an intelligent point. That’s the irony of the ideology we’re up against. It’s anti-rational. (That’s not even likely to be an offensive descriptor to a group that embraces deconstructionist ideas.)

That gives you the background we’ll need for the pope’s appearance on 60 Minutes. He’s said a LOT of things that would make for interesting jumping off points for conversation about theology, politics, philosophy, or human nature.

But one thing he said was so far afield from traditional Christian belief that even an avowed atheist could spot it and challenge it as false teaching.

https://x.com/ConceptualJames/status/1792563684620804459

Yes there are ‘some sinners’, but ‘the heart itself is good’?

This is the problem that comes with elevating someone openly hostile to his own Archbishops while embracing leaders from rival religions and pseudo-religious movements and activism (including kowtowing to demands of Xi’s CCP and celebrating environmentalism).

The question about the human heart being wicked isn’t some kind of a thorny moral issue that’s difficult to work out. If we were basically good, as he would claim, we would NOT have needed a savior. Christ would asked his Father if there is any way that cup could pass from Him and he would get an answer of ‘yes’.

But that’s NOT the gospel. The gospel is pretty adamant about some basic facts: God made the world perfect. He put humanity in that perfect world. Our first parents were tempted to sin, we failed that test, we rebelled against our Maker, and everything about our life and world has been deeply fractured ever since… beginning with our relationship with God himself.

Jeremiah 17:9 tells us: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

(The KJV is even stronger in its wording with ‘desperately wicked’.)

The entire Old Testament is about giving humanity enough rope to realize we don’t have the solution to that problem within ourself, that the heavy lifting had to be done by God himself.

The Apostle Paul pulls no punches in his letter to the Romans when he makes the case against both the gentiles (who were never given the perfect law of God) and the children of Israel (who had been given a flawless legal covenant from the hand of God himself) were exposed as deeply sinful. Invoking the Psalms, he writes in the third chapter:

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

An atheist asked exactly the right question, one that more people speaking in the capacity as Christian leaders NEED to hear from their audiences: did the statement made by the preacher line up with God’s word?

When the Bereans held Paul to this standard, and checked what he said against Scripture, the Apostle praised them for it. If a guy who helped WRITE much of the Bible can be held to that standard, what excuse does anyone after him have for ducking it?

Truth be told, it shouldn’t fall to the outsiders to call BS when our leaders wander off the path, those of us who claim Christian faith should ALL be so well grounded that we can’t help but speak up when we see this sort of nonsense.

Who knows? If enough faithful people in the pews of some denominations that have since gone off the rails had spoken up, they might have been saved before completely self-destructing.

Lionhearted: Making Young Christian Males Rowdy Biblical Men

Dear young Christian male, this book you’re about to read is meant to challenge you to your very core. Its intent is not to make you feel warm and fuzzy. Some of the chapters will upset you greatly, especially if you’re a dandy who was raised with kid gloves by a helicopter mommy.

That said, in addition to the holy introspection contained herein, this book will also shoot adrenaline into your soul. It’ll push you to be a Godly risk taker and earth shaker. A veritable Rebel With A Cause just like the Captain of Our Salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you want a feel-good book that tickles your ears and morphs you into a little Christian popinjay, this tome ain’t for you. You should put this book down and walk away from it immediately. However, if, young man, if … your motto is to give God your utmost for His highest, and you wanna live a life worthy of Christ’s death, then this book will be grist for your mill.

Get your copy of Lionhearted: Making Young Christian Males Rowdy Biblical Men TODAY!