NZ Skeptics Articles

Lying for Jesus: Nic Blackie Edition

Mark Honeychurch - 4 September 2023

In the last two months, two of the non-religious organisations I volunteer for, the Humanists and the NZARH, have both been contacted by a young street preacher called Nic Blackie. Nic is looking for someone to interview on his Christian apologist podcast, called The Garrison. In order to figure out whether it’s a good idea to have someone talk with Nic, I’ve spent several hours listening to most episodes of his podcast. I suffer, so you don’t have to!

So, what have I learned about Nic and his beliefs? He appears to be a creationist who is both a proponent of Intelligent Design and a believer in a 6,000 year old universe. He thinks god requires everyone to abstain from sexual immorality, including masturbation. He believes that demonic forces are at work in our cities, and that each city has its own unique flavour of demonic possession. Nic uses some tactics that are very familiar to me, and that come from a famous Christchurch street preacher, Ray Comfort. For example, Nic likes to use one of Ray’s Way of the Master techniques of asking someone if they’ve ever lied, blasphemed, looked at someone with lust or cheated - and then calling them a lying, cheating, adulterous blasphemer and telling them their only salvation is Jesus Christ.

Nic’s style of arguing his points is as painful as his choice of topics. After listening to a few episodes, I felt like I was in fear of suffering death by 1,000 analogies. This technique smacks of C. S. Lewis as well as Ray Comfort. The trick is that analogies, which we’re used to hearing all the time, are used as a way of proving something, rather than as a method of aiding an explanation. Analogies should never be used as a proof, and hearing this being done as often as Nic does is painful.

The topic Nic has asked to talk about with a non-believer is morality, specifically his “gotcha” belief that morals are absolute, and that this requires a “moral law giver” - who, of course, in his mind is the Christian God. Nic’s already interviewed someone he considers a non-believer about morality, in episode 8 of his podcast, titled “A conversation with a Non-Christian about Morality”, where he talks with one of his school friends, Rei, who although being labelled a “non-believer”, confesses to a belief in a God of some kind, and professes to accept Jesus as a great spiritual teacher. The reason for Nic’s desire to have this conversation is that he believes this particular argument is one of the best arguments for the existence of God - and, rather than looking for an intellectual discussion about the topic, he seems to want to just prove that he’s right.

Of course, given that the podcast is edited* by Nic, and given his obvious willingness to be less than fully honest, I’m pretty sure that any atheist who appeared on his show would find themselves edited in a way that would make Nic appear to win any arguments. And it’s for this reason that I would warn people away from agreeing to talk with him, especially without clear rules about editorial rights and the power of veto - and even then, I’m not sure he could be trusted to honour any agreement he made.

Nic’s latest episode, “My list of Questions for Non-Christians”, appears to suggest that he’s having problems finding an atheist to talk to. Instead of talking to someone on this episode about his “checkmate, atheists” laundry list of half-thoughts that shows off his personal ignorance, he just reads out his questions to the audience. I was cruel enough after our Skeptical Activism meeting the other day to make Dan Ryan listen to the episode in my car on the way home, and his first comment was “he needs to pick up a biology book and read it”.

So, let’s have a quick look at Nic’s five questions for us non-believers, and see if indeed he’s figured out how to confound us, or whether maybe all it shows is that Nic still has a lot to learn about the world.

  1. What caused us to begin? Where did the first life come from? Or has it always been here? If all species evolved from the same first life, why are humans so much more advanced than other animals? If macroevolution is true, what evidence is there? Where did the space for the universe come from? Where did matter come from? Where did the laws of the universe come from? How did matter get so perfectly organised? Where did the energy come from to do all of the organising? When, where, why and how did life come from dead matter? When, where, why and how did life learn to reproduce itself? With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce? Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind, since this would only make more mouths to feed, and decrease the chances of survival? Does the individual or species have a drive to survive? How do you explain this? How can mutations create any new improved varieties (for example, recombining English letters will never produce Chinese books)? Is it possible that similarities in design between different animals prove a common creator, rather than a common ancestor?

It goes on, but hopefully now you can see why Dan suggested Nic needs to read a book or two.

Some of these questions have obvious answers. Yes, individuals have a drive to survive, and this is why they want to reproduce more of their kind. Yes, mutations can and do create new information.

Some of the questions are nonsensical, or have an erroneous assumption in the question itself. Reproduction isn’t some kind of conscious decision that animals make, so asking why an animal would want to reproduce is besides the point. Who’s to say that matter is “perfectly organised”?

Finally, some of the questions have no answer - at least not yet. But not having an answer doesn’t mean that you can just inject God, and say Goddidit. Any answer to questions about our biological origins on earth, or the origin of the universe, may eventually come from scientific discovery, but I’m pretty damn sure it’s not going to come from any religious group simply claiming that their God was responsible. Apart from anything else, that is really a non-answer. As an answer it’s not testable, doesn’t further our understanding of the world, and has no explanatory power - it’s just a dark dead-end street.

  1. Where did morality come from? Why do humans set up courts, but monkeys don’t? If we’ve all evolved from the same original common ancestor, then why do humans have such a sense of morality? Is all morality subjective? If so, why should we punish individuals for doing what was right in their own eyes?… Who defined the words good and evil? Under what authority did they do so? Why do societies built on Judeo-Christian beliefs tend to do better economically and have a higher life expectancy? What life is more important to protect? A fly, or a human being? If we punish humans for murdering each other, shouldn’t we punish humans for murdering insects? What’s worse: one person dying in a car crash, or an entire school bus? Why? Is it because life does have value? In which case, where does our value get derived from? If there’s nothing after we die, and no one will be judged for their actions, why try to be kind to the poor? Why give to charities?

Again, this continues for a while… a long, painful while. This is Nic’s well-trodden path, his trump card that he thinks is a slam dunk argument for his chosen flavour of Christian God. In his argument (although I’d be surprised if he actually truly believes it), logically we either have a set of morals given to us by god, or anything goes and we should all just look after ourselves. I’m no expert in ethics and the origins of morality, but this is a huge can of worms with a lot of complexity, and there’s much that we don’t even understand properly yet. But, on a practical level, all I can tell Nic is that I absolutely do not believe in a God, and I’d like to think that I still manage to lead a fairly ethical life. And, given that I’m doing this without the threat of hell hanging over me, maybe this concern of his is unfounded. Maybe people of all different faiths, and those of none, are all capable of being kind, well-adjusted members of society. If there’s one thing that I could recommend Nic might start with when opening this can of worms, it’s the idea of moral intersubjectivity.

  1. What is our purpose?… Why does anything really matter in the long term?…

Oh, do I have news for Nic. According to our godless, science-based world view, nothing we do is likely to have any consequence in the long term. And there’s no ultimate, divine-imbued purpose to our lives. If you want purpose, you’re going to have to find it for yourself, I’m afraid. Maybe, in Nic’s case, education could be a purpose he could set for himself - and hopefully learning about the complexities of life might give him a little humility.

  1. How do we disprove the resurrection of Jesus?

Well, this one is ass-backward. Nic goes on to say that the burden of proof is with Christians in this instance, but then immediately goes on to simply proclaim that this evidence has been provided, and that the burden of proof now lies with those who say the event didn’t happen. He follows this up with some weird arguments about miracles, straw man atheist arguments against the resurrection, and more.

  1. What is our destiny? If there’s nothing after we die, then why not end it all when life gets tough? You aren’t going to feel anything, right?

Nic then tries to explain that he’s not telling us atheists that we should kill ourselves, but to me this disclaimer doesn’t seem to gel with what he’s saying. He then goes on to talk about people who are in pain every day, and whether they should end their lives. And, in this case, the answer I think, sometimes at least, is yes. And thank goodness a majority of New Zealanders, who voted for our new End of Life law, think the same way. Life isn’t something that needs to be preserved whatever the cost, just because some God apparently said so. People should be able to choose to end their life with dignity, rather than in excruciating pain.

It’s sad to see someone actually trying to be a cookie-cutter copy of Ray Comfort - nobody should be trying to emulate that man and his daft ideas about the world. Although I’ve not linked to Nic’s podcast, as I don’t want to accidentally drive any traffic his way, I’ll leave you with a recent video where Nic is interviewed and talks about his street evangelism in Christchurch: