Presuppositional Apologetics

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Well we are going to now begin the lesson for today.
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I've introduced myself to you, you've all introduced yourself to me, at least as little as possible.
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So now we'll have an opportunity to go through the lesson.
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I put on the board three concepts that we're going to discuss today.
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Whether or not you take notes is up to you, whether or not you try to engage, ask questions, it's up to you.
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But these are the things we're going to talk about today.
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We're going to talk about the correspondence theory of truth, we're going to talk about the universal presupposition, and we're going to talk about the myth of neutrality.
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That's the three things that I like to point out to people when we talk about the subject of presuppositional apologetics.
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Very quickly, recently Mr.
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Cagle had you write a paper, or at least write three paragraphs, because he sent me the notes.
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He said there was three paragraphs you're supposed to write.
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One was on evidential apologetics, one was on classical apologetics, and one was on presuppositional apologetics.
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Did everyone do that? Yes.
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Have you already turned it in? Yes.
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Fantastic.
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Okay, so at least everyone should know a little bit about evidential, classical, and presuppositional apologetics.
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Now I'm going to ask for a show of hands, and if you don't raise your hand at least once, then I'll know that you're not engaged.
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So at least raise your hand one time.
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I'm going to give you three opportunities.
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How many of you would identify yourself as an evidentialist? How many of you would identify yourself as a presuppositionalist? How many of you would identify yourself as a classical? Okay, all right, very cool.
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All right, so I'm surprised.
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I'm literally shocked.
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Well, you raised your hand for the one that you know I'm here to defend.
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That's not cool.
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I'm here to defend presuppositionalism.
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But yeah, evidentialism is, I was surprised nobody did that one, because typically we all enter into the apologetics field through what is called evidential apologetics.
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And here's the evidentialist idea, is that I can only be convinced of something, or truth can only be discovered through the greater preponderance of the evidence, or the greater massing of the evidence.
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I have to have evidence to believe something.
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You know, if somebody said, I can fly, and you said, I don't believe you can fly, and then they took off, well, then you know they can fly, right? The evidence proves their claim.
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But if a person said, I can fly, and you said, I don't believe you can fly, and they say, well, trust me, I can fly.
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You'd say, I still don't believe you, right? If I said I can fly, you'd say, I'm lying.
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A lunatic.
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I'm either a liar or I'm a lunatic, because either I believe it or I'm lying to you, either way.
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The point is, you want some evidence for what somebody is saying.
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You want some evidence for what someone is claiming.
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And that's the evidential approach.
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The evidential approach says, for me to believe something, for me to believe something is true or false, I have to at least see some evidence to know whether or not that thing is true or false.
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That's the evidential approach.
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So let's apply that to the subject of God.
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Someone will say, I don't believe in God.
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Another person will say, I do believe in God.
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That's two positions that are the thesis and antithesis of one another.
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In classic debate, that would be a debatable topic.
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A person says, I believe in A.
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Another person says, I believe in not A.
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Thus, you have a thesis, God exists.
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You have the antithesis, God does not exist, right? So in those two things, you either have or you have not.
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You can't have both at the same time in the same relationship.
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That's called the law of non-contradiction.
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You cannot have and have not at the same time and in the same relationship.
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Everybody understand? Following along? Not going too fast? Okay.
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So we're talking about that.
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We're talking about the idea of truth.
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And how do we understand truth? Where do we get truth from? And how do we discover it? The evidentialist will say, evidence proves something is true or something is false.
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This is how science works.
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Science is based on an evidential approach.
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The senses discover things through the scientific method.
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Does anybody know the scientific method? Oh, come on.
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You guys are teenagers.
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You all know the scientific method, right? It starts with a, it's called an H.
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What is it? A hypothesis, right? The hypothesis is what? I think that if I do this, this will happen, right? And then what comes next? The experiment.
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Based on the hypothesis, I think that if this happens, this will happen.
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You do experiments and they have to be repeatable and verifiable and you have to be able to show them to other people.
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Other people have to be able to do the exact same experiment, get the exact same result, and we call that the scientific process because out of that comes a conclusion, which is either provable or not provable based on the evidence, right? So what I'm saying is people are by nature evidentialists.
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We have this desire to discover things or to prove things based on the evidence.
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I'm not trying to bore you.
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I'm trying to suck you in because I want to cause you to think about this because what I'm telling you today is that the evidential approach, the evidentialist approach to proving things is woefully lacking.
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It is not what I believe to be the best way to approach apologetics.
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Now, how do we define apologetics? What is apologetics? Defending your faith, right? Where's it come from? Where's that word come from? Probably some kind of Latin thing.
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It's actually Greek, but you're close.
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No, you're close.
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A different language.
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A dead language.
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Yeah, it is.
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It's a dead language.
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It comes from the Greek word apologia.
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Apologia means to make a defense.
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We get our English word apology from that.
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What do you think an apology is? We usually think an apology is saying you're sorry.
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You step on someone's foot.
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Oh, I'm going to apologize.
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That's not the way the word apology works.
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In Greek, it means I want to make a defense.
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If I step on your foot, you get mad.
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I'm going to tell you why I stepped on your foot.
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That's an apology.
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I'm going to make a defense for why I stepped on your foot.
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That was a reason for it.
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I didn't like that foot, right? No, I'm just kidding, but that's the idea is we have turned it into saying, we have turned it into a remorseful thing, and that's when someone says, I want to provide an apologetic for Christianity.
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People say, well, is he saying he's sorry for being a Christian? If he's giving an apologetic, is he sad or is he upset? Is he remorseful for being a Christian? No, I want to provide a defense.
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I want to say I'm a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I know why I'm a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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I can actually defend why I have chosen to follow Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and be his disciple.
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So that's what apologetics is.
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Apologetics is making a defense a reasonable defense for our faith.
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Now, when we talk about evidence and evidentialism versus presuppositionalism, evidentialism says that truth is determined by the greater preponderance of the evidence or truth is determined by what the evidence points to.
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Here is the fault in that.
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Evidence demands an interpreter.
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Someone has to interpret the evidence, right? I want to tell you a story.
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There was a man who believed that he was dead.
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Now, everybody just goes, well, he was stupid, but at least follow the logic, follow the story, narrative, okay? We can say he's crazy.
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We'll talk about that later.
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But a guy said, I'm dead.
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I believe that I'm dead.
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So his wife begins to doubt his mental faculties.
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She's concerned about his understanding of right from wrong.
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So she says, we need to take you to have your head examined.
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We need to take you to a physician and have him examine your brain.
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So he goes to the doctor and he sits down on the doctor's table, right on that little butcher paper that they pull out and make you sit on.
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He's sitting there on that little piece of paper and it's crinkling underneath him.
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And he's saying, look, doc, I don't know.
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I don't care what you say.
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I'm a dead man.
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And the doctor says, but look, your heart's beating.
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Your blood's pumping.
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Your brain is thinking and you're speaking.
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You're obviously not dead.
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He says, doc, there's nothing you can say to make me believe I'm not dead.
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The doctor thought about it for a minute.
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He says, he said, listen, all of the medical journals, all of scientific discovery has proven to us that dead people do not bleed.
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And I know this for a fact.
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I used to work for a funeral home.
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Dead people do not bleed.
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Their heart is no longer pumping.
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So the blood no longer is under pressure.
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So if you cut a dead person, they don't bleed like you would.
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So this guy said, okay, I believe you.
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I believe dead people don't bleed.
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There's no blood's not under pressure.
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Heart's not pumping.
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It makes sense.
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I believe you.
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So the doctor then pulls out a needle, walks over to the guy and he plugs him in the arm with the needle and blood starts to pour from the guy's arm.
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And he looks down and he says, wow, dead people do bleed.
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You see, that story is an example of how evidence is always going to be interpreted.
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And the person who doesn't want to believe something will interpret the evidence based on their own preconceptions of right and wrong or their presuppositions.
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You see, that's the problem with evidentialism is that it ignores the presupposition of the individual.
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Everyone has a presupposition.
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In fact, I'm actually going to jump to the second thing.
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I should have written this first.
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So if you were numbering these, maybe number this one, one, two, and three.
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I did that just to be confusing.
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No, I did it just because I was writing without thinking about how I wanted to go through this lesson.
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But I want to talk about the universal presupposition.
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What is the universal presupposition? What do we all have to presuppose before we can even talk about anything? Okay, gravity's real, there's a sense of right and wrong.
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Well, those things are presuppositions, but those are also things that we, yeah, okay, but that's not the one I'm talking about.
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But that's a good try.
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Is there anything else that we have to presume before we can have a conversation? You have to presuppose something.
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It's not a trick question, but it is kind of...
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Okay, you have to presuppose God's will.
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We'll get to that in a minute.
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You have to presuppose that you can have a conversation, is that what you said? You have to presuppose before you can talk about anything.
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What do you have to presuppose? That you can talk, okay, that's getting closer.
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That people will understand you, that's even closer, and you're all like right there.
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Okay, well, you don't necessarily have to have the same worldview to talk to someone.
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You can talk to somebody with a different worldview, but you're close.
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You're all like, oh, you're biting at the bit.
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You have to presuppose that your thinking is rational to have a conversation.
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You have to presuppose that your brain works, and it works correctly, because if you didn't think that your brain works, and you didn't think that your brain works correctly, then having a conversation would be meaningless, because it would have no meaning.
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All right, let me paint a picture for you.
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How many of you know who C.S.
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Lewis is? C.S.
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Lewis wrote, you know, a bunch of books, Narnia and all that.
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Okay, good.
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All right, so you obviously know who C.S.
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Lewis is.
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I want to quote C.S.
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Lewis.
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I want you to listen closely to what he says.
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He says, suppose there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind.
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In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking.
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It's merely the atoms inside my skull that happened for physical or chemical reasons to arrange themselves in a certain way, and this gives me as a byproduct the sensation I call thought.
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But if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like turning over a milk jug and hoping that it splashes itself into a fully formed map of London.
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If I can't trust my own thinking, I can't trust the arguments leading to atheism, and therefore I have no reason to be an atheist or anything else.
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Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought, so I can never use thought to become an atheist.
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Let me boil that down because that's a long quote.
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The overarching presupposition of all people is that our brains actually work, but for our brains to work for the purpose of thinking, they had to be designed for the purpose of thought.
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If they were not designed for the purpose of thought, then I have no reason to trust what they think.
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So I have to begin at least with the presupposition that my mind works and that it works correctly, and for me to believe that my mind works and that it works correctly, I have to at least believe that it was designed to work correctly.
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And what is the presupposition of me believing that my brain was designed? That it was designed by a designer, right? So I automatically begin with a presupposition that my mind has to be able to have a cogent, coherent thought.
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And if I'm not able to at least start with that presupposition, I have no reason to trust what I think.
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Now this may seem kind of weird, but I don't know how many of you watch movies, and I realize you're all from probably Christian homes, so some of you may have different levels of what you're able to watch, and that's cool.
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So if you've never seen this, it's fine.
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But how many of you have ever seen the movie Shutter Island? Heard of it? Okay, all right.
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It's not one I recommend.
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Don't go out and rent it.
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I haven't seen the whole movie, but I know the premise.
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I've read what the movie is about.
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The movie is about a man who is a detective, and he is called to an island, and on this island is a mental health hospital.
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So he's called to the island to investigate a murder.
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Somebody in the mental health hospital has been killed.
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So he has to come out, and he has to investigate the murder which has happened at the mental health facility.
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While he is there, he's seeing all these weird things happen.
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He's seeing very interesting things happening with the patients, and he's seeing the doctors and the nurses being very hush-hush and very crazy acting, and he's trying to determine who's the killer, who's the murderer, who's done this heinous thing, and he's going all around trying to find these things out.
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At the end of the movie, and I'm going to ruin it for you, so spoiler alert.
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At the end of the movie, it all comes to show that he was never an FBI agent.
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He was never a detective.
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He's in the mental health facility.
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He's strapped to a table, and everything in the movie happened in his mind.
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How do you know that right now you're not strapped to a table in a mental health facility, and this isn't all happening in your mind? Now, oh, I love what you just did.
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Your name was Josiah.
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You get an A for the day because Josiah just proved what I'm about to say.
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Josiah reached out to the young man beside him.
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I'm going to touch your dust.
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Okay, he went, and he said, but that was your way of saying, Josiah, I can prove it because I can feel it.
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What's the presupposition? Yeah, my presupposition is my feeling is right.
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My presupposition is that my senses work.
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All of that presupposes that there's order and not chaos, that there's right and not wrong, that there's truth and error, and I can know truth, and I can know error.
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The atheist worldview really has nothing outside of the senses to determine truth from error, and the problem is they can give no account for why they trust their senses.
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They can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're not strapped to a gurney in a mental health facility, imagining everything that's going on around them because they're having to trust themselves, their senses.
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So now we're going to go to the correspondence here.
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We're going to go up.
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Yes, you have a question.
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That's a lot like the old tv show, The Twilight Zone.
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There was this lady in a store, and ultimately, in the very end, she realizes that she was like a mannequin thing, and that they all had the chance to come to life like once a month or whatever, but she had forgotten, and it's a lot kind of like similar kind of thing.
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Yeah, you ever see The Matrix? No.
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Wow, okay, I'm really pulling out some pop culture references.
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Huh? Well, the idea behind The Matrix is the same thing, is that the people are in a world that it doesn't exist, but they don't know that it doesn't exist because they're being fed this information through a computer program, and so again, it's all the question is, is reality real, and how do you know? Well, without God, without a foundation for truth, all truth then becomes subjective, and if all truth becomes subjective, then ultimately, you are determining truth based simply on your finite understanding, and your finite understanding, we all know, can be corrupted, and so how do you have any reason to trust anything? So, let's talk about the correspondence theory of truth.
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The correspondence theory of truth is this.
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If you ask an atheist or just about anyone, or if you go to the dictionary and look up the word truth, here's how it is often defined.
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Truth is what corresponds to reality, okay? So, the correspondence theory of truth is truth is what corresponds to reality.
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If you want to write that in a short way, truth is what's real.
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Make sense? Right? Truth is what's real.
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We talked earlier about somebody being able to fly.
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Somebody says, I can fly.
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Show me, okay? I see you fly.
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That's real.
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I believe it, all right? Truth is what's real, but there's a part of that that's missing because the correspondence reality, the correspondence theory of truth is that truth is what is real as perceived by, and then you have two choices.
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I'll write this down.
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Correspondence theory of truth gives you two options.
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Truth is what corresponds reality or what is real as perceived by either God or by the individual.
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If you believe that truth is what is real as perceived by God, then you believe that truth has an objective standard and God is the standard.
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If you believe that truth is what is real as perceived by the individual, then you believe that truth is subjective.
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Every person gets to have their own truth, and you can be strapped to a gurney on Shutter Island, and you can have your truth.
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Everybody else has their truth, and truth becomes immaterial.
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It doesn't matter.
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Am I killing you guys on the last day before spring break? I am bringing you in here just to bore you on the last day of spring break.
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We could have a party.
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I would have brought a pizza.
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We could talk about the existential philosophy of pepperoni.
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I'm just kidding.
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Now, I hope you guys are getting something out of this.
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The point is truth is what is perceived is what is real as perceived by God or truth is what is real as perceived by the individual.
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If you had to choose, which one do you believe? You're all theists.
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At least, I believe you.
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You all say you go to church.
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Hopefully, you're all theists.
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You would all probably say, number one, truth is what is real as perceived by God, but you have to understand the only definition the atheist can give because he does not believe in God.
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The only definition the atheist can give is that truth is what is or truth is what is real as perceived by the individual.
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Because we have already shown that what is perceived by the individual is inherently unreliable because it's determined by our senses and our senses can be corrupted, then ultimately, in atheism, there is no reasonable foundation for truth.
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And that is why if you press an atheist to say, where do you get truth without God? They're going to say, well, I believe what I see.
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Why do you trust your sight? I believe what I can touch.
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Why do you trust your senses? Well, I believe my senses are correct.
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Okay, now you're in the realm of faith because you said, I believe.
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Sometimes they'll say, well, I have confidence that my senses are correct.
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And here's what's funny about them, huh? Well, let me just show you something on this.
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Confidence.
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From the Latin, con, with, fide, faith.
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If an atheist ever tells you, I don't have faith, I have confidence, say faith.
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Confidence is faith.
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Confide, with faith.
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That's all they're saying.
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I don't have faith, I have faith.
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What? I don't have faith, I have confidence.
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Confidence is faith.
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That's all it is.
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Atheists are living in the same way everyone else is, in a world of faith.
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They do not have any foundation for truth, except what they can see, taste, touch, smell, and hear.
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And the problem with that is all of those senses are ultimately corruptible.
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Make sense? So when we look at the correspondence theory of truth, they say, I believe truth is what is perceived by me, because that's ultimately the atheist's foundation.
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You say, well, I believe the truth is what corresponds, or rather truth is what is realized, perceived by God.
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So at least we know where our presupposition starts.
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And if you know where the presupposition starts, then you can have a conversation that is more helpful.
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For instance, the atheist will say, God doesn't exist because there's so much evil in the world.
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How many ever heard that? Have you ever heard an atheist say, I don't believe God exists because of all the evil in the world? Anybody? I hear it all the time.
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You know, when I speak to people, talk to atheists, they say, I don't believe God exists because there's so much evil in the world.
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What is the presupposition in that statement? Yeah, what did you say? The presupposition, when I say, I don't believe God exists because there's so much evil in the world, the presupposition is that there is such a thing as evil.
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The presupposition is that evil exists, because you're using that for your argument.
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You're saying, I don't believe A because B exists.
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Well, you're having to then assume that B exists.
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Are there things that are objectively evil? I'm asking that as a question.
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Are there things that are objectively evil? Give me something.
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Killing someone is objectively evil.
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What if the guy's trying to kill you? Okay, and I'm not trying to start an argument.
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I'm just saying, killing someone can be neutral, right? Or at least can be benevolent.
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What if somebody's trying to kill you and I kill them? I'm saving you, right? I'm a police officer.
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I come in, bang, right? So killing someone is neutral or it could be benevolent.
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But murder, I always like to be very specific with language, and that's what you meant, and that's fine.
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I'm just helping.
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Because a lot of people, when they go through the Ten Commandments, they go to number six and they said, thou shalt not kill.
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It's not what the Hebrew says.
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The Hebrew says, thou shalt not commit murder, because committing murder is evil.
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Killing is not always evil.
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Killing can be benevolent.
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Killing can be used to save lives, right? We take the life of a murderer so that he doesn't take more lives.
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It's called capital punishment, right? So murder is evil, right? What's another thing that's evil? What if I came and took your lunch money? That would be awful.
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That's a good thing.
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That's basically like a situation where you can kill.
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Yeah, okay.
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I forgot mine, so you're not going to get very much from me.
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Huh? I forgot mine, so you're not going to get very much from me.
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Oh man, okay.
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All right.
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Here's what I want you guys to think about.
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If atheism is true, if atheism is true, and we're going to posit that, if atheism is true, then God does not exist, because that is the definition of atheism.
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If God does not exist, that means there is no transcendent law giver, okay? If there is no transcendent, transcendent simply means to be above or to rise above.
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If there is no transcendent law giver, then there is no transcendent law.
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There is no transcendent moral law.
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If there is no transcendent moral law, there is nothing which is objectively evil, and thus, how can I say that murder is evil if there is no objective standard of morality? For instance, is what Hitler did evil? What did he do? He killed six million Jews and then several of other types of nationalities and different people.
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He killed everyone that wasn't putting forward the Aryan race, right? Hitler, what Hitler did was evil, right? Everybody, you can, yes.
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Was what Hitler did evil? Why? Because it was murder.
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Why is murder wrong? Okay, because Jesus said it's wrong.
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I'm talking about from an atheist perspective.
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We say if the atheist is right, if the atheist is correct, and there is no law giver, there's no moral law, there's no moral standard, there's no transcendent moral standard.
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All standards are individualized.
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So the question comes back to the atheist.
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Why is what Hitler did wrong? That's right.
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Yeah, because Hitler's argument was he was doing what was right.
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Yeah, Hitler's argument was, I believe that the Aryan race should be supreme.
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And the way to help encourage its supremacy is to get rid of the other races, those which hold it back, and not to corrupt bloodlines and such.
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So he was killing people.
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He was doing what, according to his moral compass and his standard, was the right thing to do.
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But almost the whole world say it's wrong.
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But wait, but he says it's right.
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And remember what we said about truth.
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Truth is what is real as perceived by the individual from the atheist perspective, right? Because there is no God.
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So if the truth is what corresponds to reality as perceived by the individual, what about Hitler? If he was convinced that what he was doing was true, who am I to say, Hitler, you're wrong? If all we have is subjectivism, if all we have is subjectivism, and it's just me and Hitler in a room, and Hitler says, this is right.
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And I say, no, this is right.
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Where's the standard? Am I right? Just because 99% of the world agreed with me? Does that make it right? Guess what? A lot of people in the world believe in some pretty terrible things.
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Does that make them right? Most of the people in America believe it's okay to kill a baby in the womb.
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Does that make it right? Absolutely right.
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It doesn't make it right.
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But because people believe in it, that becomes the standard of morality for those who have no higher standard.
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And truth becomes subject to a vote.
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51% say it's right, thus it becomes truth.
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No, that's not how truth works.
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That's the problem.
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I want to read to you a little illustration here.
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In the mid-80s, there was a debate between a man named Gordon Stein, who was an atheist, and a man named Greg Bonson.
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Greg Bonson was a Christian teacher, philosopher, and he was a presuppositionalist.
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In the debate, Greg Bonson and Gordon Stein were debating the existence of God, and Stein, who was the atheist, was unable to give a reason why Hitler's actions were evil.
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I want to read to you what he said.
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Bonson said, Stein, why is what Hitler did evil? And this is an atheist philosopher, and this was his response.
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Quote, Germany is part of the Western European tradition.
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It's not deepest Africa or some place on Mars.
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They have the same Judeo-Christian background and basically the same connection with the rest of the developed world.
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So therefore, the standards of morality that have been worked out as consensus of that society apply to them too.
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They can't arbitrarily, Hitler can't arbitrarily say, I'm not going by the consensus that genocide is evil or wrong.
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I'm just going to change it and make it right.
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He has not the prerogative to do that, neither does the German society as a whole, because it is still a part of the larger society, which you might call Western society.
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So even though morality is a consensus of an entire civilization, he cannot just arbitrarily do that.
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So what he did is evil and wrong.
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I know that's a long quote, but basically here's what he said.
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Hitler doesn't have the right to go against the consensus of everyone else.
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What is Gordon Stein's presupposition? That there is such a thing as right and wrong, because he said Hitler doesn't have the right to do that.
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Who told you he didn't have the right? And how do you get to determine whether or not he had that right? You can't, unless you presuppose there is such a thing as truth.
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It all comes down to your presupposition as to whether or not truth exists or not.
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And where do you get truth without God? Where do you get any foundation for truth without a transcendent lawgiver? Why do the laws of logic work? Why can something not be and be at the same time? Why does that law of contradiction work? Because this is the way God has established the universe.
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This is why science works.
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I hate when people say Christianity is unscientific.
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Christianity is the only reason why science works, because it's the only reason why I believe that I can do an experiment today, and tomorrow do the exact same experiment, get the exact same result, because God has made a world which is consistent with itself, and it has consistent and reliable predictability.
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Are you hanging with me? God is foundational for truth, and without God, you can't have it.
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All you can have is individual subjectivity, which does not lead to truth.
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I'm a little passionate about this.
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I guess you can probably say I get into this.
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It's an important subject, because when I'm talking to the atheist, and we're there talking, and he's saying, well, I don't believe that God exists.
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First of all, I don't believe him.
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I'm an a-atheist.
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I don't believe in atheists.
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I put the extra a in.
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You know, atheist is putting the alpha at the beginning of theist, and it means they don't believe in something, right? When you put an a at the beginning of a word, that takes it to the negative.
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So, a theist is a person who believes in God.
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An atheist is a person who doesn't.
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That's putting the alpha there at the front.
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If you put an additional alpha, it becomes an a-atheist.
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I don't believe in atheists.
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I don't believe there's any person in the world who doesn't believe that God, or doesn't know that God exists.
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Now, they may not believe it, but they do know it, and I want to show you that from the Bible.
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This is where we're going to end.
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I got about 15 minutes left, and I do want to look at some Bible today.
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So, if you didn't bring a Bible, if you have your phones, and you want to open up a Bible app, that's fine.
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I don't know if you're allowed to do that in here, but don't be on Facebook, okay? Open your Bible app, or if you want a Bible, there's a paper one in the back.
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Mr.
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Cagle might listen to this and say, oh, we let him take out their phones.
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That was not a good idea.
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I substitute teach in public school, so I see phones in the classroom all the time, unfortunately.
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I substitute teach.
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I actually had a great conversation the other day with a young man.
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He was sitting, he was telling the class, and he was getting some attention for it, and I understand.
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He just was really, really wanting attention, and he's saying, yeah, I don't believe in your Christian God.
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I believe in the gods of, I believe in the gods of Egypt.
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I believe in all the different gods, the Egyptian gods.
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I don't know, but this is before the movie came out, but it might be, you know what? He might have been, I didn't think about that.
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He might have been influenced by it.
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Oh, I like that.
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You know, that's really cool.
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I like gods who blow stuff up.
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But he was just sitting there talking about how he believes in the gods of Egypt, and I, as a substitute teacher in a public school system, I have to be somewhat careful how I engage students.
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You know, I don't just go up and hand out gospel tracts, you know, like I might on the street, but I still will engage them.
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I mean, you know, if they fire me, oh, you know, so what? I mean, it's not my primary job.
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I use it to take my wife out to dinner sometimes, you know, make a little extra money.
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So I went, and I sat down with him, and we're just sitting there talking, and I'm saying, tell me what you believe, and he starts going through this, and he starts saying, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't believe that your God exists.
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He's pointing at me.
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I said, sure you do.
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I said, you might not say you believe it.
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I said, but you, I don't, you know he does.
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I said, right now, what you're doing is you're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness, as the Bible says.
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The Bible says that every person knows by nature that God exists, and that he suppresses that truth and unrighteousness.
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I said, so I'm not even going to debate with you on something you already know.
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I just want to help you understand this.
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Have you ever in your life told a lie? He said, sure.
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I said, have you told several? He said, yeah.
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I said, so what do you call somebody who tells lies? He said, a liar.
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I said, well, the Bible says that all liars will have their place in the lake of fire.
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Does that concern you? I don't know if I believe that.
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I said, it doesn't matter what you believe.
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If I didn't believe in gravity, and I jumped off a building, it wouldn't matter.
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Gravity's still going to kick my tail when I hit the ground.
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It doesn't matter what you believe.
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It matters what's true, and the whole class was silent at that point, because he's like, oh.
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It doesn't matter what you believe.
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It matters what's true, because if you don't believe in gravity, and you step off a ten-story building, you're going to hit the ground the same speed of whether you believed or whether you didn't.
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What you believe doesn't make something true or not.
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Truth is truth independent of what you believe, right? So you need to try to find the truth and determine the truth.
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You don't need to sit here and say, I make truth by what I believe, because that's foolishness.
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This is what the of Romans 1.
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You want to open up Romans 1? The Apostle Paul says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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So what does verse 18 tell us? It says that men suppress the truth.
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Verse 19, For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
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For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.
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So they are without excuse.
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Very quickly, verse 20.
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Who has an excuse when they face God? No one, right? Because it says right here, it says, Everything about God that can be known is plain to them, namely His eternal power and divine nature.
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Ultimately, here's the thing.
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If somebody says I don't have enough evidence for God, say God has provided you ample evidence.
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And when you face Him one day, because we all will, the Bible says appointed unto man once to die and then comes judgment.
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When you face God on judgment day, you will face God having had plenty of evidence.
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I've heard atheists say, If I die and I find out there's a God, I'm going to look him square in the face.
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I'm going to say you just didn't give me enough evidence to believe.
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And here's my response.
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Yeah, here's my response.
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One, good luck.
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That ain't going to work.
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But no, I say, I say, look, the most righteous man in all of Israel was Isaiah.
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Isaiah, in Isaiah chapter six, faced God.
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And the Bible says the most righteous man on earth at that time, Isaiah, put his hand over his mouth and said, Woe is me, for I am undone and I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.
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The most righteous man in the world looked at God and said, Oh no, I'm a bad person.
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So don't tell me you atheists are going to stand before the God of this universe and say, Hey, you know, you just didn't give me enough.
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You are going to break in half under the weight of His majesty.
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Tell me you're going to face God with that nonsense.
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I'm sorry.
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But that's just silly.
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Here's verse 21.
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Very important.
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For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
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You see, what men do is men worship.
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That is what men do.
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All men worship something.
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We are called homo religiosus in Latin, the homo sapien, the thinking being, right? The homo religiosus is the religious being.
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We are the only being in the world that worships.
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You don't see cows out there on their knees going moo.
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You don't see that, right? That's dumb.
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You don't see cows worship.
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You don't see fish gathered around for church services on Sunday morning.
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We are the only creature in the world that worships and we all worship.
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People worship totem poles that they carve out.
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People worship golden images.
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People worship at the feet of science.
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Science is the God of many people in this world because if you ask them, what do you believe in? I believe in science and science is what? Science is their God because if you told them science has proven God exists, well, I can believe that because science is the all provable thing.
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The problem is that's not what they're looking for.
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The point of all this is to simply say, when you speak to an atheist and at some point you will.
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Some, you're what, 15, 17? What's age range in here, huh? Wow, you're 13 year olds.
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Well, you're all about my children.
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My children are, I have a daughter who's 17.
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She's going to prom on Friday.
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Anybody in here in a hurry, going to the hurry prom? Okay, well, she's homeschooled too.
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So, you see, we're part of hurry and they have a prom once a year.
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So, she's going to prom on Friday.
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My son's 15, just started driving.
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So, y'all, I did this lesson with them yesterday just to practice.
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Well, because I wanted to come in and be able to share with you guys and make sure that it was understandable because this is some deep stuff and I want to make sure that it made sense.
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My kids, you know, they're smart but they're not, you know, they're not brainiacs or anything.
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So, I figured if they could handle it, you guys can handle it, we'll be all be good.
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So, you know, we have the opportunity as you grow older.
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You probably will go to college or at least into some type of a trade field where you're going to be learning and you're going to be exposed to different types of people, especially if you go to college.
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You're going to be exposed to people who are going to be sharing with you all different kinds of ideas and different objections.
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I remember when I was 19 years old, I worked for America Online back when it was, you know, a company that mattered.
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It doesn't matter anymore.
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But when I was 19 years old, America Online was really the only way to get on the internet and you had to do it through a phone line.
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If you were on the phone, you couldn't get on the internet.
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It's really weird.
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It was a very weird time to live.
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And I remember sitting next to a man who was a science teacher who had quit teaching science and going to work for America Online.
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And I said to him about believing in God and he says, I don't believe in God because I know too much.
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That's what he said.
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And he said, I don't believe and I didn't know anything about presuppositional apology.
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I wasn't even a believer at the time.
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I said I believe in God, but I found out I really came to a realization of my sin in Christ later.
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But I knew enough to know God existed, even though I wasn't a believer in Jesus Christ.
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I wasn't converted.
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I wasn't saved.
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I knew that God existed because I wasn't ridiculous.
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I think not believing in God is ridiculous.
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And he said, I don't believe in God because I know too much.
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You're going to hear people say that as you go to college, as you go into the workforce, as you go into the world, you're going to hear people say, I am just too smart to believe in your God.
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Press them, point out their inconsistencies, not in an ugly way.
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The Bible tells us when we share our faith and we defend our faith, that we sanctify the Lord Jesus Christ in our hearts, always giving a defense for the hope that is within us, but doing so with gentleness and reverence.
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When I share my faith, I don't go out and I say, you're a fool who knows God exists.
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The Bible says the fool says in his heart there is no God and you're that fool.
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Is that mean? It'd be terrible, right? That is not trying to win a soul.
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That's trying to win an argument.
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And there's a difference between trying to win a soul and trying to win an argument.
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We can win arguments all day, but we won't be encouraging people to know Christ.
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What we do is we draw out their inconsistencies.
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We ask the question, why do you believe what you believe is true? Well, I don't know that it's true.
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I just believe it.
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Well, why do you have the faith that it's true? Because that's faith.
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And why is your faith more valid than my faith? Because we're both dealing with faith.
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Make them be consistent.
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Encourage them to be consistent.
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Because the great hallmark of atheism is they're terribly inconsistent.
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An atheist will come up and say to you, you're judging me.
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Don't judge me.
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And I'll say, how do you know I'm judging you? Well, I believe you're judging me.
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Well, you're judging me for judging you.
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So what makes my judgment any different than yours? You're judging me for judging you.
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You're just as bad as me.
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Because I'll say, is what I'm doing wrong? They'll say, yes.
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Is judging people wrong? Yes.
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Stop judging me.
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You're telling me I'm wrong.
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You see, it's exactly.
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You are living in my worldview.
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The atheist has to borrow from the Christian worldview to make his world make sense.
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That's the key to all of this.
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There is no neutral person.
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There is no neutral person.
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Going back to Romans 1, just as a reminder, the Bible says the unbeliever is not neutral.
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He's actually suppressing the truth of unrighteousness.
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He's the man who's I'm dead while his heart's still beating.
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He's the man who's saying I'm dead while he's still breathing.
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He's living inconsistently.
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There is no neutral person that finishes up because the myth of neutrality is this.
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There's a myth that people come to the evidence neutrally.
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And that's what the scientists, you often hear the atheists say, well, I just look at the evidence and I'm neutral.
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I'm totally neutral.
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I just look at the evidence.
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That's not true.
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Nobody is neutral.
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There is no neutral person, according to the apostle Paul.
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All people know God exists and all people suppress the truth.
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The person suppressing the truth is not neutral.
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He's actively opposed to it.
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That's not neutrality.
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So instead of trying to convince a person of something he already knows, I speak to his conscience.
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I say, okay, you don't believe God exists.
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I do believe God exists.
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Do you believe truth exists? Well, I believe truth is what is real is perceived by me.
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Is that something atheists can say? I believe truth is what's perceived by the individual.
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I'm the individual.
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So that's what truth is, right? Well, here's the problem again with that.
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Why do you think you're right? Why do you believe what you believe is right? Well, I think that it's right because are you the standard of truth? No.
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Again, I know we're out of time.
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So I appeal to the conscience rather than to the intellect.
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When I talk to such a person, I say, look, the issue is you've lied.
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You've stolen.
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You've looked with lust.
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You've done these things and you're going to face God at judgment one day.
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I don't believe in that.
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Okay, but I'm telling you what is true.
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You can reject this truth and you will, but I'm sharing with you the most important thing in the world because here's what I believe.
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I believe that right now you stand on the precipice of hell and if you were to die, you could go there.
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And I care enough about you to share this with you.
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Whether or not you believe it, I want to share it with you.
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And that's what, that's the way I go into it rather than trying to argue them all day about whether or not they believe in God.
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I go right to the conscience.
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I wish I had more time and maybe if I ever come back, we'll talk about how to bridge the gap from the intellect to the conscience.
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Can we pray real quick? Lord, thank you for this opportunity to talk.
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I pray that this has been helpful for these young people.
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May it be used for your glory in Jesus name.
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Amen.