Source: David R. Tribble

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes.

I really like Penn Jillette.

If you haven’t heard of him, he’s most famous for being a magician and runner-up of Donald Trump’s recent Celebrity Apprentice All-Stars, but only slightly less famous for being an outspoken atheist. Penn is really intelligent and kind. He’s also genuinely intellectually honest, and I have a.hard time NOT liking people who are intellectually honest. I’m pretty sure he’s somewhat pro-choice, although he made a video a long time ago that I can’t find anymore where he talked about how abortion is a really tough issue for him and that his mind could be changed about it.

The point is, Penn is one of my favorite atheists. He’s the kind of guy I would love to be friends with. You listen to him talk about anything and you want to hang out with this guy and talk religion and politics.

If you haven’t seen it before, you should absolutely watch the video below about how Christians would have to hate the people they don’t try to convert. It’s one of the most clear and pointed arguments FOR evangelism I’ve ever heard, and it came from an atheist. The relevant quote is below the video in case you prefer reading only, although I think you lose something when you don’t hear these words said from the man himself.

This is what I posted to my Facebook page earlier today:

I’m going to go spend four hours with one of the smartest philosophers I know, after three hours with him yesterday. I may never change his mind. But we both like each other and we’re both challenging each other. His friendship is a worthy enough end, even if he never meets my savior.

Am I saying this to brag or to get a pat on the back? Nope. I’m saying this because I want you to be convinced to have relationships with people, whether or not you believe they will think more like you because of it.

I’m not going to get into the details of what happened today. My friend and I had a private debate and I’m sure both of us allowed ourselves to speculate on ideas that we haven’t fully worked out yet, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for public comment.

It looked kind of like this.
But for four hours.

What I can say is that as terrifying as it was to even privately debate a friend who is as smart as he is, who is probably in the top philosophy course in the country right now, it was so worth it. We definitely challenged each other more than I expected, in both directions. But what a joy to just spend four hours doing non-stop debate with somebody who thinks carefully and doesn’t bring in purely emotional arguments. We just vigorously attacked each other’s arguments using thought experiment after thought experiment, but in the way he says professional philosophers do that: charitably, in an informal dialogue, seriously looking for the flaws in each others views and our own views. I’m genuinely looking forward to my next opportunity with him.

In a sense, he’s my philosophical nemesis.

And he is my friend.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes.

I believe Christians should have relationships with unchurched people and that pro-lifers should have relationships with pro-choice people. Atheist Ira Glass recently did an interview that includes the best argument I’ve ever heard regarding relational evangelism.

Last year, I hosted an episode of Life Report on the topic of whether pro-lifers should have pro-choice friends. I did this because I was surprised that some of my closest pro-life colleagues had expressed some strong concerns about the fact that I had (and still have) pro-choice friends. By “friend,” I don’t simply mean “acquaintance;” I’m talking about people that I genuinely care about and would like to hang out with, whether or not we’re talking about abortion on that particular day.

I recently happened across a fascinating interview that Jim Henderson did with Ira Glass, the host and producer of This American Life. Toward the beginning of the interview, Ira explains how he thinks Christians are unfairly portrayed by the media and that the Christians in his life aren’t anything like the stereotype that many atheists hold. You can see Ira talk about this in the video below:

Ira says that even though all sub-groups complain about being treated unfairly by the media, it seems like Christians are portrayed more severely — that is, they’re portrayed as crazy, evil people — which is not at all the experience that Ira has had with the Christians in his life, even with the fundamentalists.

In the next video, Ira spends seven minutes describing his friendship with a couple of missionaries named Glenn and Jane Fitzgerald. He met them because he wanted to do a piece on Chicago gangs, and they were the only people outside of the Police Department who had any contact with the gangs in Chicago. You can watch Ira talk affectionately about his relationship with Glenn and Jane in the embedded video below: