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- Atheist Alex O'Connor's All Over, Persecution Abroad, and Chemistry's Christian Father
Atheist Alex O'Connor's All Over, Persecution Abroad, and Chemistry's Christian Father
Alex O’Connor’s sudden Christian media popularity, recent instances of Christian persecution abroad, significant cultural and political developments in the U.S., and Robert Boyle’s theology of science.
Anthony Langer
February 08, 2025
It’s Saturday, February 8, 2025.
Today’s edition covers Alex O’Connor’s sudden Christian media popularity, recent instances of Christian persecution abroad, significant cultural and political developments in the U.S., and Robert Boyle’s theology of science.
“Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise,
and apply your heart to my knowledge,
for it will be pleasant if you keep them within you,
if all of them are ready on your lips.”
(Proverbs 22:17-18)
Of Christian Concern
ALEX O’CONNOR, ALL OVER: POPULAR ATHEIST DOES THE ROUNDS ON CHRISTIAN MEDIA
Screenshot of Ruslan KD (left) and Alex O’Connor’s (right) debate.
Famed atheist Alex O’Connor, also known as CosmicSkeptic, has been getting a lot of attention from Christians recently. Here’s why.
Wes Huff Fallout
It began after Bible scholar Wesley Huff’s high-profile appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast (Jan. 7), in which Huff discussed a range of biblical textual issues. O’Connor, whose Substack about page describes him as “a YouTuber, writer, and public speaker, and host of the Within Reason Podcast, with over one million subscribers on YouTube,” found some disagreements. He voiced his points of difference on a video titled “How Wes Huff Got the Bible Wrong on Joe Rogan” (Jan. 11). Christian apologist Gavin Ortlund made a response video (Jan. 11), and O’Connor in turn responded to that (Jan. 20).
“The reason I want to speak to you today,” O’Connor told Christian influencer Ruslan KD in a subsequent video on Ruslan’s YouTube channel last month (Jan. 22),
is because Wes Huff obviously made the video and I responded, and Gavin Ortlund responded to that, and he made a comment saying that he at least for now isn't going to respond to that. The only other sort of big player in the game here with with regular viewers making regular content about this is you.
Ruslan and his assistant Zach Sperrazzo debated O’Connor on Huff’s claim that the Isaiah scroll, a famous ancient manuscript (c. 125 BC), is "word for word identical" to the later Masoretic text (c. 10th century AD). Huff has since admitted to misspeaking when he made this statement, but maintained that the text is “nearly identical.” O’Connor, on the other hand, argues that the variation between the texts is significant. For an AI summary of Ruslan and Sperrazzo’s over-three-hour debate with O’Connor, see here.
Jubilee and More
A few days later, O’Connor starred in YouTube channel Jubilee’s video “1 Atheist vs. 25 Christians” (Jan. 26), in which he challenged believers to respond to the claims:
“Suffering makes God’s existence unlikely.”
“God commands genocide in the Bible.”
“There is insufficient evidence to believe in the resurrection.”
“Jesus never claimed to be God.”
Last Thursday (Jan. 30), Apologia Studios, the popular media ministry of Apologia Church in Arizona, reacted to some of O’Connor’s arguments in both the Ruslan debate and the Jubilee video.
Apparently unrelated, this past Thursday (Feb. 6), Christian influencer Brandon McGuire of Daily Dose of Wisdom reacted to a 2023 debate between O’Connor and Ben Shapiro.
David Wood Debate
O’Connor was slated to debate Christian apologist David Wood at the upcoming DEBATECON 5 (Feb. 15-16). The planned topic was whether Jesus claimed to be divine. However, O’Connor backed out after Islamists threatened the conference, which will continue as planned notwithstanding. Wood posted a video on Thursday (Feb. 6) responding to this news and announcing that Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch will take O’Connor’s place, with the new debate topic being whether Muhammad existed.
The same day, Ruslan KD reacted to Wood’s video and announced that he (Ruslan) is working to reschedule the O’Connor and Wood debate at his own upcoming conference, the Bless God Summit (Mar 27-29).
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Also Noteworthy
Screenshot from Sen. John Kennedy’s speech on the Senate floor.
→ Persecution news:
Chinese pastor Deng Yanxiang was sentenced to two years in prison for “illegal business operations” after distributing Christian literature and materials—a common charge against members of house churches in China (Project 18:15 covered a similar case last May). The preacher’s release is set for May, as he has already served over 18 months.
The militant Islamic group Boko Haram’s “escalating attacks…displac[ed] more than 4,000 [Nigerian] Christians in recent days,” International Christian Concern reports.
The European Union threatened Pakistan’s preferential trade status “if it does not address human rights concerns, including controversial blasphemy laws, forced marriages/conversions of minority girls and freedom of religion,” Morning Star News reports.
Yemeni Christian convert Abdulbaqi Saeed Abdo was freed from his three-year detention in Egypt for participating in a Christian Facebook page about Islam. His case remains open.
A Pakistani court acquitted two Christian brothers of blasphemy charges after eight witnesses under cross-examination failed to “identify which quranic passage or verses had allegedly been desecrated by the brothers,” Morning Star News reports.
→ Center for Baptist Leadership reports that the Southern Baptist Convention’s disaster relief ministry Send Relief “took taxpayer-funded refugee resettlement grants from the Biden Administration in violation of SBC Statement of Faith.”
→ The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced that “identity months” are “dead” at the agency. The January 31 statement issued guidance that official resources, including man-hours, will no longer be used “to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months.” | The DoD also revised agency regulations to remove reimbursement of travel expenses for employees obtaining abortions.
→ The Virginia Senate effectively killed a bill that would have required parents who homeschool their children for religious reasons to submit additional information to the state for approval.
→ A federal appeals court has required the city of San Francisco to rehire employees who were fired for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine, the Christian Post reports. The ruling specifically referenced the irreparable harm done by violating the appellants’ religious freedoms.
→ Online Bible teacher Mike Winger removed his old interview with Dr. Michael Brown in view of the ongoing third-party investigation into allegations of misconduct by Brown.
→ Pastor Richard Edwin Youngblood filed an affidavit claiming Bishop T.D. Jakes tried to sexually assault him, adding to his younger brother Duane Youngblood’s allegations.
→ Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have uncovered the U.S. foreign aid program USAID’s wasteful and immoral spending, including millions of dollars to foreign LGBTQ initiatives, DEI efforts, and terrorist-aligned organizations. President Donald Trump’s administration is now essentially trying to shut down USAID.
U.S. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana reviewed some of Musk’s scandalous findings in an address on the Senate floor.
Related, on Tuesday, Pastor Josh Howerton of megachurch Lakepointe Church suggested that “American Christians [do not] realize how perverse our international influence has become” and shared a shocking story to prove it.
Content Catch-Up
Recent, notable content of Christian interest.*
Screenshot of cover photo: “N Maombi Samson’s video.
→ Foreign Gospel Country?: “There's happy,” Christian podcaster Jon Harris posted last Friday, “And then there's African Country music happy.” He included a clip of Kenyan singer Maombi Samson’s gospel country song “Nitauimba,” some of whose lyrics are English. (Video)
This set off Christian journalist Megan Basham to make a thread of foreign music groups who appropriate, to her obvious enjoyment, Southern Christian music. For your perusal:
*Not necessarily an endorsement
Church History Tidbit
Robert Boyle’s Theology of Science
The Shannon Portrait of the Hon. Robert Boyle F. R. S. (1627-1691), 1689 oil painting on canvas by Johann Kerseboom (Public Domain)
Last week, we noted that the accomplished German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), a Christian, believed the Fall hadn’t affected our understanding of arithmetic, geometry, and logic. Since God had made us in His image, he reasoned, we can think His thoughts after Him. Thus, in the words of Messiah College science history professor Edward B. Davis, Kepler believed “science should be done . . . by abstract analysis of the pure mathematics that God had built into nature and placed in our minds.”
Contrast that view with the perspective of another scientist, Kepler’s junior, who also held to a Christian faith: the Englishman and father of modern chemistry, Robert Boyle (1627–1691).
Davis reports,
Boyle grounded his view of scientific knowledge in our status as finite creatures with a limited capacity to probe the deepest secrets of nature. Where Kepler believed we could obtain fully reliable knowledge of nature through mathematics, Boyle did not view the conclusions of reason as unquestionable truths: “Intelligibility by us men is no necessary condition of the absolute truth of a Thing.”
Boyle maintained that God had created freely, not out of logical necessity, and may have created other worlds beyond our own (a multiverse, if you will). He believed that the reason God created is “undiscoverable by us” and we can only conclude that “it pleased God” to make things as He did.
As a result of these considerations, Boyle believed that
science should be done . . . [by] slowly building a picture of nature from the ground up by hard experimental work . . . He thought we needed carefully designed experiments and observations of the nature God has actually made, not speculations about what God must have done.
Who was right, Kepler or Boyle? Or, in some way, both?
Go deeper on this topic with Davis’ Christian History article, “A world of love and light: Christian theology shaped modern science through the work of Johannes Kepler and Robert Boyle.”
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