Charlie Kirk and Frank Turek Dismantle Bill Maher's Claims About Jesus Christ's Historical Existence and Christianity
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Charlie Kirk and Frank Turek Dismantle Bill Maher's Claims About Jesus Christ's Historical Existence and Christianity
Charlie Kirk sits down with apologist Frank Turek to discuss his appearance on Bill Maher's program, where questions about the historical existence of Jesus Christ and Christianity's intellectual foundations were debated. Turek, author of "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist," provides detailed responses to Maher's contentions that Christianity copied from pagan religions, that Jesus may not have existed, and that the Holy Spirit was a later invention. Kirk and Turek explore the evidence for Christ's existence from non-Christian sources like Josephus, the archaeological accuracy of the Book of Acts, and why the resurrection must have been physical rather than spiritual. The conversation offers a master class in defending Christian faith with reason, evidence, and grace.
Charlie Kirk opens the discussion by addressing Bill Maher's suggestion that faith is anti-intellectual. Kirk counters by pointing to some of history's greatest minds who were captivated by Scripture, including Isaac Newton, who wrote more about biblical prophecy than physics, and Thomas Aquinas. Kirk argues that the scriptures are accessible to everyone while also being infinitely nourishing for intellectual exploration.
Frank Turek strongly agrees that the scriptures are not anti-intellectual. He points out that the Bible continually tells believers to give reasons for what they believe, and that even Yahweh in the Old Testament says, "Come, let us reason together." Turek then turns the tables on atheists, arguing that they cannot justify reason itself. If humans are just "molecules in motion" or "moist robots" as materialists claim, then every thought is merely a reaction to the laws of physics, not actual thinking. Turek references CS Lewis, who brilliantly demonstrated that if materialism is true, there's no way to justify thinking or reason itself.
Did Christianity Copy From Pagan Religions?
Kirk raises one of Maher's key contentions: that Christianity is simply a counterfeit of other Middle Eastern religions like the Osiris myth, with similar stories of virgin births and resurrections. Turek directly refutes this claim, stating that just because something appears on the internet doesn't make it true.
According to Turek, the only dying and rising god prior to Christianity was Osiris from Egypt, and that wasn't a resurrection into a new body but rather an ethereal resurrection into the underworld—fundamentally different from what the New Testament describes. He emphasizes that almost all of these supposed dying and rising gods actually come after Christianity, not before. If anyone is copying, it's the pagan myths copying from Christianity, not the other way around.
Turek further illustrates that parallels between stories don't necessarily prove copying. He provides the example of a novel from 1898 called "The Futility," which told the story of a ship making its maiden voyage from the UK that hit an iceberg, causing many deaths. This story predated the Titanic disaster by chance, yet nobody would claim the Titanic story was copied from this novel. The same principle applies to alleged parallels between Christianity and pagan myths.
Kirk adds that many religions with overlapping elements with Christianity show that the overlap aligns with Christianity's rise, suggesting they copied from Christianity. For example, in Norse mythology, the god Balder dies and comes back, creating a paradise after an apocalypse. However, this part of the myth was almost certainly influenced by the spread of Christianity and was only written down in the Middle Ages.
The Historical Existence of Jesus Christ
Kirk admits he was surprised that Maher questioned whether Jesus Christ actually existed, thinking this was a fringe view limited to Reddit or Discord channels rather than accepted scholarly thinking. Turek confirms that if there are one or two scholars out of thousands in academia who study this material—including atheist New Testament scholars—who say Jesus never existed, that would be a lot.
Turek makes a compelling logical argument: Jesus is inarguably the most influential human being to ever walk the earth. How could he possibly have never existed? It would be like someone 2,000 years from now claiming Luke Skywalker was the most influential human being to ever walk the earth. Nobody in the future would take a fictitious character and attribute such influence to them.
Beyond logic, Turek points to hard evidence: there are at least 10 ancient non-Christian sources within 150 years of Jesus's life that mention Jesus and/or the apostles. These include historians like Josephus, Suetonius, Thallus, Pliny, and Tacitus.
Josephus and Extra-Biblical Evidence
Kirk acknowledges he briefly stumbled over the name during his conversation with Maher, confusing Herodotus and Josephus. Turek explains that Josephus lived from 37 AD to about 100 AD and wrote several books related to the Jews, including "Antiquities" and a work about the Jewish war. Josephus mentions Jesus, John the Baptist, and records that James, the half-brother of Jesus and pastor of the church in Jerusalem, was killed as a martyr in 62 AD when the Sanhedrin threw him off the temple mount and stoned him to death.
This is particularly significant because James wrote the book of James in the New Testament and was the same person who did not believe his brother was God before the resurrection. James converted after Jesus appeared to him following the resurrection, which led to his eventual execution by the Jews.
Turek emphasizes that while these extra-biblical sources are valuable, the best evidence for Jesus comes from the New Testament documents themselves. You don't have to assume they are inspired to get good historical information from them. Even atheist scholars like Bart Ehrman, who teaches at UNC Chapel Hill, admit that Jesus existed and that the crucifixion of Jesus is probably one of the most attested facts from ancient history.
Was Paul Talking About a Spiritual Jesus?
Kirk addresses another fringe theory that Paul was talking about a spiritual Jesus rather than a physical, resurrected Christ. He references First Corinthians where Paul explicitly states that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to 500 believers. Turek firmly rejects any merit to the argument that Paul thought Jesus was merely a spiritual or celestial being.
Paul makes it crystal clear that he's talking about a resurrected body that came out of the tomb. If Jesus had only resurrected spiritually, his body could still be in the tomb, and that claim could have been made. But that wasn't the case—Jesus's tomb was empty. It would have been easy to squash Christianity if the tomb wasn't empty, because both the Romans and the Jews, who didn't want Christianity to succeed, would have gone to the right tomb and produced the body. They didn't do it because his body wasn't there.
This was a physical resurrection, which is precisely what made it so controversial to the Greeks. When Paul spoke on Mars Hill as recorded in Acts 17 and brought up a physical resurrection, the Greeks were incredulous. They didn't want bodily resurrection; they wanted to be liberated from the body. Christianity only makes sense if the resurrection was physical.
The Holy Spirit: A Later Invention?
Maher claimed during the interview that the Holy Spirit was not mentioned until 300 years later. Kirk believes he did a good job interjecting and correcting this false claim, noting that the Spirit is mentioned throughout the Old Testament and prominently at the baptism of Christ, where the Spirit came upon Jesus and God the Father declared, "This is my son in whom I am pleased."
Turek confirms there is no truth to Maher's claim. The Holy Spirit is throughout the New Testament and the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit comes upon believers at Pentecost, which is recorded in the Book of Acts, one of the most verifiable books in the New Testament. Both the Gospel of Luke and Acts were written by Luke, who was a historian of the first rank—a fact admitted even by archaeologist Sir William Ramsay, who initially was skeptical of Luke 100 years ago but spent 20 years studying his work and concluded Luke was a historian of the first rank.
In the Book of Acts alone, there are 84 historically and eyewitness-confirmable details that only an eyewitness or someone who knew an eyewitness would know. Turek and his co-author list all of these in their book "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist."
The Importance of Eyewitness Testimony
Kirk had addressed this in his response video, but Turek elaborates on why the date of the documents is important, though what's more important are the sources for the documents. If Kirk or Turek were to write a book about 9/11 right now—about 23 years after the event—what's most important is that they would be interviewing people who saw it. The same principle applies to the New Testament.
The dates these books were written during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, by eyewitnesses or people who knew eyewitnesses, is proven by the data in the text that only an eyewitness would know. If they weren't eyewitnesses themselves, like Luke, they were interviewing people who were there and were still alive when the books were being written. This is eyewitness testimony telling us what really happened.
Furthermore, these witnesses had no motive to make it up. They didn't get sex, money, or power. As former believers in Yahweh who were simply Jewish believers, all they got for their testimony was being kicked out of synagogues, beaten, tortured, and killed. Turek praises Kirk's question to Maher about why the apostles would fake the resurrection as brilliant, noting that Maher had no response because there is no answer. They wouldn't fake it to get themselves abused.
How Christians Should Share the Gospel
In closing, Kirk asks Turek about the approach Christians should take when sharing the gospel. Kirk notes he tried to take a gentler touch with Maher, wanting to develop a relationship rather than going all in with heavy apologetics or finger-wagging. He asks Turek, as someone who does this for a living, about the different approaches believers should bring to unusual circumstances when pointing toward Jesus.
Turek responds that both he and Kirk try to avoid "owning" people. Instead, they want to gently correct and ask lots of questions so that people walk away wanting to know more, not hating the interaction. When someone asks a question, you're not just answering a question—you're answering a person. You want to provide an opening for the next conversation.
Turek's approach includes asking, "If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?" He's had atheists stand at microphones in front of hundreds of people on college campuses and say no because they don't want it to be true. This clears the deck of all their objections and reveals the real issue. Kirk asked a similar question to Maher: "Do you hope you were wrong?"
Christians should ask questions, make points, and highlight grace above all, because grace is what people are looking for. There are only two things anyone will receive in the afterlife: justice or grace. There is no other category.
Cross Examined Ministry
Kirk encourages the audience to support Frank Turek's work and mentions wanting to get a signed copy of "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist" for Bill Maher, with an obligation to read it. Turek explains that Cross Examined goes to college campuses presenting evidence that Christianity is true, then taking questions. They have a YouTube channel called "Cross Examined" and a podcast with the same name as the book. They've posted over 2,500 videos on their YouTube channel, most of them Q&A videos from college campuses.
Kirk shares that he first became aware of Frank Turek on public access television in Spokane after speaking at Washington State University in spring 2018. Seven years later, Turek has become a wonderful friend whose impact continues to grow.
