Objection 1: I Do Not Believe in God

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Well, tonight we are in our continued series on the subject of apologetics.
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And I want to make reference to something I said last week in our introduction.
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Last week I mentioned Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul.
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And I said something about a debate that he had had with Greg Bonson about how he had referenced the fact that he would not say that he knows God exists for certain, but rather that he has assurance that God exists.
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Some of you afterwards came to me and said, I can't believe you would say that.
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And I want to just clear up very quickly that what Dr.
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Sproul was trying to convey is a philosophical distinction between certainty and assurance.
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Every one of you tonight, and I'm going to try to, in a defense of Dr.
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Sproul for just a second, every one of you tonight drove here in a car with full assurance that your brakes would work.
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Because you wouldn't have gotten in and driven had you not believed with all your heart that your brakes were going to stop you.
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Certainly you wouldn't have driven to 55, 60 miles an hour without the assurance that your brakes would stop you.
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But you don't have absolute certainty that your brakes will stop you, you have assurance.
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And that's the distinction he was making.
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Now, I don't necessarily agree.
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Because I do believe we can have certainty because the Bible says every man has been given that knowledge in his heart and will be judged according to that knowledge.
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But I always want to be fair, especially with men that I love and respect, that we understand at least what he was saying.
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That he was making a distinction between certainty and assurance.
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But don't ever think for a second that he doesn't have the assurance of eternal life.
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He believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and preaches him with great power and conviction.
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So that's my follow-up to last week's lesson.
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I just want to be very, very, very clear.
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So last week we addressed objections and objectors that we face.
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We said there's basically three categories of objections.
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There's the existence and the nature of God.
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There's the nature and reliability of Scripture.
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There's the interpretation and the application of Scripture.
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And those three categories break down into several sub-categories.
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But those are sort of the major headings.
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And so for the duration of this course, however many weeks it takes, we're going to be going through those objections.
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And tonight's objection is what do we say when we face a person who says, I do not believe that God exists.
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Now I worded that very specifically and it's worded very specifically in your notes.
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Because if someone says, I know God does not exist, you're dealing with an unreasonable person.
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Because you can't know that.
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And I've explained this in earlier lessons.
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That's like saying, I know that there's no gold in China.
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I can say there is gold in China and all I have to do is show you some.
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But if I said there is no, I know there's no gold in China, that requires knowledge of all of China.
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I would have to know what was inside of every rock, inside of every mountain, inside of every Chinese person's mouth.
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I would have to know everything.
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And because I don't have all knowledge, I can't say that I know that there's no gold in China.
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So if somebody says, I know God doesn't exist, simply and politely say, you can't know that.
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Now you can believe that He doesn't exist.
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And even that I would argue they don't really believe because they know God does exist, but we're not there yet.
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But from the outset, if somebody says, I know God doesn't exist, they have gone past the point of reason.
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Just to begin.
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So we're going to deal with the objection when someone says, I do not believe in the existence of God.
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And tonight we're going to unpack that objection.
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And I want to say a few things.
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As I said, I'm going to be talking fast, I have a lot to say tonight.
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I want to begin by saying this.
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I do not recommend that you try to memorize the answers that I'm going to give you.
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Because if you simply memorize a set of answers to questions, if you're faced with a living, breathing person who's asking you questions, all they have to do is take you off script, and then you're out in the cold.
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What I'm trying to provide to you are reasons and principles whereby you can make arguments.
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I'm not trying to give you a script to recite.
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And I'll give you an example.
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When the Jehovah Witness comes to my door, I do the Ray Comfort, and I do give Ray Comfort credit for this, because years ago I heard him say this.
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He said, if you ever speak to a Jehovah Witness or anyone who comes to your door, say, okay, imagine you came to my door today, and I had a knife in my back, and I was bleeding out, and I only have two minutes to live.
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You have two minutes to share with me how to have eternal life, because I'm going to die.
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Go.
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That takes a man off his script, because that's not what they're used to hearing.
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And it forces them to have to deal with the issue that they do not have the gospel.
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Because they do not have a gospel that can save a dying man.
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And so that is my way of sort of taking them off script.
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Because I know that that's what they do.
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They train to have answers to questions, and specific answers to specific questions that they're given.
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So if you want to take somebody who's been trained to do that, simply take them off script, and now they're out in the cold.
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So the last thing that I want to do is turn you into another Jehovah Witness.
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I don't want to just turn you into somebody who repeats an answer the same way I would.
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That's not fair to you, and it's not the way that we should be doing apologetics.
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We are not trying to memorize answers.
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Again, we're trying to internalize the reason and the principle behind an argument.
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As we're considering specific objections in the weeks to come, I want you to listen for the underlying presuppositions.
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Be aware of when an objector uses a presupposition, when he assumes something to be true.
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Thereby you might use that to say, but you're assuming this to be true, you don't know it.
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Make mental notes of how certain objections run together, and certain responses are useful for more than one objection.
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Also keep this in mind, and this is hugely important.
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There are going to be times when you run into people who are very, very quick, and mentally sharp, and they're crafty with their words, and they can make terrific-sounding arguments.
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Just because someone argues well does not make them correct.
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In fact, a good debater, a good arguer, can usually take either side of a position and make an argument that sounds reasonable.
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Dr.
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James White, one of my favorite apologists, used to do this years ago.
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He would take students, and he would take the part of a Mormon missionary.
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Because he had studied Mormonism so much, he could defend Mormonism at least the way they would.
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And sometimes he could defend it better than they could, because he's such a good debater.
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He's so good at making arguments.
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And so, does that make his arguments right? No.
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But it is important to understand it, because just because someone argues well does not make them correct.
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Just because someone is arguing well does not make them right.
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And likewise, and this is important to note, that just because someone is an expert in one area does not make them an expert in all areas.
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Just because someone is an expert in one area...
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I see this all the time in the martial arts.
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As you know, I teach karate here at the church for our program that we have for kids.
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And I know people who are martial arts masters.
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And I don't say that like a small thing.
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It's no small thing to spend 30 years mastering a skill.
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But what I have seen is these masters allow that position of authority to go to their heads.
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And where they are masters of the martial arts, they become the guru of life in every subject.
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And thus they hold court with every subject and they demand allegiance to their opinions, no matter how ignorant they are.
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And as a result, they find their students coming to them for advice on all kinds of things unrelated to the martial arts.
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And it happens in other areas too.
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Think about college professors.
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Do you know the longer you stay in college, the more you know about less? This is absolutely true.
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The longer you stay in college, the more you know about less.
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Because when you begin school, you learn a very liberal education.
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Not necessarily meaning liberal in the sense that we say conservative liberal, but it's very broad.
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You have an education that is very broad and open.
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And deals with all kinds of different subjects.
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And when you begin college, that happens.
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You have to take math and English and art and all these core subjects.
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But then, let's say you're going to become a history major.
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Well, you start to focus on just history.
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Not on the math and on the science, but you become focused on history.
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But then you want to go to a master's degree, you have to write a thesis on some part of history.
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So not only, now you're not an expert in all of history, you're an expert in this part of history.
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But then, you want to become a PhD, a doctorate in history.
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Now you're an expert on what happened in 1882.
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And you know everything that happened in 1882.
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You know from the moment it started to the moment it ended.
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You wrote a 55-page doctoral dissertation with 75 different original source references.
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And you can tell everything that happened in 1882.
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But you ain't got a clue what happened in 1901.
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At least outside of what you learned in the liberal area when you were learning about everything.
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And again, that's why I say, the longer you stay in college, the more you know about less.
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So you get somebody who's an expert in one area, maybe very ignorant in other areas.
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And this is important because this happens especially in Hollywood.
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Why do we think that an actor or an entertainer Why do we think it matters what they consider is an important political or social issue? Well, because they've been given social credentials of value.
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They're important because I watched them on a 50-foot screen.
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And often this fame goes to their head and they begin to revel in this self-importance.
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Recently, comedian Kathy Griffin, you all saw the thing where she had the photograph taken with the severed head of the president depicted.
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Well, somebody came to her defense.
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His name is Jim Carrey.
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Maybe you've heard of him.
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Jim Carrey, also a comedian.
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Jim Carrey came to her defense.
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And this is what he said in his defense of her.
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He was trying to help make her feel better.
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This is what he said.
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I want to quote what he said.
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Quote, Don't worry for your existence.
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All of this is meaningless.
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All of creation is just God's fidget spinner.
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It's really not important.
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What's important is that we're all here.
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End quote.
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Now, I've got to say, that is some extra special philosophy right there.
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Yes, sir.
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Remember, he played God that week.
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But what's amazing about it is you have nihilism and theism together.
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Because he says we're all nothing, but we're on God's fidget spinner.
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Nothing matters, but it matters that we're here.
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If you really think hard about what he said, it's an exercise in futility.
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It's really ridiculous.
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Yes, sir.
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He has too many teeth to be clever.
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He has too many teeth.
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So, again, don't be intimidated because a person is a quote-unquote expert.
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Don't be intimidated because someone is famous.
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Not that you're necessarily going to run into a lot of famous people, but we sometimes may be in a situation where we're talking to somebody that has themselves some type of social credit, and they feel like that causes them to have some value.
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Yes, sir.
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Oh, yeah.
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A good example, another good example is Bill Nye.
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How many of you know who Bill Nye is? Bill Nye.
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He made a name for himself as the science guy many years ago, and now he's made it his mission to save the world.
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That's what his television show is now called.
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It's no longer Bill Nye the Science Guy.
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Now it's Bill Nye Saves the World.
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And what is he saving the world from? If you watch the show or listen to him talk, he is trying to save the world from anti-scientific thinking, which he defines essentially as most forms of theism or belief in God, which he considers unscientific.
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Now, some people attack Bill Nye.
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They say, Bill Nye is not really a scientist.
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Well, he is an engineer, and engineering is a form of science.
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So I don't have a problem with saying Bill Nye is a scientist, but even as a scientist, he's not an expert in all sciences.
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He's an engineer.
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He has a very limited field as far as his understanding of the sciences, and he's also not a philosopher, and he's not a theologian.
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Nye can speak with expertise in certain areas, but he can also speak foolishly in many other areas.
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So do not assume that because someone is an expert in one area that they are able to speak with expertise in all areas.
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The same person who speaks as an expert in one area may speak as a fool in another.
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Now I realize that may seem like a belabored introduction, and it was, but my point is to say that sometimes objections, and those who object to us might intimidate us.
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But I want you to remember, you are standing on the truth of God's Word.
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You are standing on the bedrock of Scripture.
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Jesus says, when we build our house upon His Word, it's as if we were building our house on a rock.
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And when we are talking to someone who is coming from an anti-God, anti-theist, anti-Scripture point of view, they are standing on sand.
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Whether or not they look like they're on balance doesn't matter.
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They're standing on a sandy ground.
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And we really have nothing to fear from their objections.
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I said this Sunday morning, I said all truth is God's truth.
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And so if they say something that is true, I can rejoice that it is true.
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Because if it's true, then it's God's truth.
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And I have nothing to fear from that.
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In the end, our job is to proclaim the truth of Scripture to the unbeliever, and we do not have the power to convert Him.
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We'll never have the power to convert Him.
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But we can proclaim the truth to Him, and that's what we're going to talk about tonight.
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That was a very long introduction to finally get to the question, what do I say when someone says, I do not believe in God.
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Now, if you remember last week when I listed the categories up here, I said, okay, you've got the categories of unbelief and objections.
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I said the first objection is the existence of God.
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And I said it's actually one of the least common.
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I think sometimes we start thinking that atheists are kind of like the lurking monster in the shadows, and if we ever go out and witness, an atheist is going to jump out and attack us.
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Most likely, we're going to run into a secularist.
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More and more likely, we're starting to run into people who are in other religions like Islam.
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But running into atheists, unless you're on a college campus, you're less likely.
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But it is growing.
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According to the Pew Research Center, the number of people who were identified as atheists doubled from 2007 to 2014, going from 1.6% of the population, according to the study, to over 3% of the population.
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Still, though, it's only 3%.
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It's not a big portion of the population, but it's growing.
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If it doubled in seven years, that's considerable.
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And another 4% would identify themselves as agnostic.
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So if you add 4 to 3, you get 7, and now you've got 7%, and we're not too far off of 1 in 10 at that point.
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It's more than 1 in 20.
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So it is growing.
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So there is more of a chance.
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I mean, Kevin and I know this because we're sitting in a restaurant one day, and a man walks up, hears us talking about God, pulls up a chair and says, tell me why you believe in God.
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Okay.
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It is becoming a little more common.
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So I want to address it tonight.
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First of all, and we haven't even gotten to your notes yet, but we will, I promise.
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First of all, the phrase, I do not believe in God, is actually a very powerful affirmation.
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I want you to consider in your mind for just a second just how powerful an affirmation it is for someone to say, I do not believe in any God.
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Only in the last 200 years has such a statement become even respectable in society.
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In fact, Dr.
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Al Mohler has demonstrated that it wasn't until the 16th century, it wasn't until the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, that the word atheist was even used regularly in the way that we use it today.
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Because prior to that, even people who would argue against the Bible, or argue against the God of the Bible, had no accounting for how we got here.
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And because they had no accounting for origins, there really was no atheists in the sense of the way we think of it today.
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Even that Bible passage we quote so much, the fool hath said in his heart there is no God, that's not so much talking about atheists.
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It's talking about people who say that God is not involved, or God is not working.
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The fool has said in his heart that God is not existing, but not involved.
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It's a little bit more nuanced than we tend to understand it.
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Because it was really only until the 1800s, there was really no other explanation.
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That there had to be some divine force that brought us here.
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But as you know, in the 1800s something changed.
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A massive shift in the world came.
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And that shift was the publishing of the writings of Charles Darwin.
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Now Charles Darwin was not the original evolutionist.
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His grandfather believed in evolution.
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But Charles Darwin popularized the mechanism by which evolution occurs.
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We would call it the survival of the fittest, or the more standardized term is natural selection.
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And this is what Richard Dawkins says about Darwin.
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Richard Dawkins who is a famous evolutionary biologist who denies the existence of God and he is himself an anti-atheist, hates the idea of God, especially the God of the Bible.
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And Richard Dawkins says that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
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Let's say that again.
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Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
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Essentially saying that prior to Darwin, you had to claim some supernatural activity, even if you didn't believe in the God of the Bible, you had to believe in some supernatural act.
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But Darwin provided, as it were, the key to the kingdom.
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By providing this mechanism, whereby he would argue that life could come from non-life, and that is how atheism became a position which was intellectually, according to Dawkins, intellectually satisfying or intellectually fulfilling.
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Now, in future lessons, we are going to look at the claims of Darwinism, we are going to compare them to Scripture, but for now it is important for us to note, for this lesson, that most of the people, I would say if not all, but I would never say a blank at all, but most of the people you will talk to who identify themselves as atheists will be coming from an evolutionary worldview, because it is the only worldview where they can find intellectual satisfaction.
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They must have a view of where humanity came from because humanity is here.
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And Darwinian evolution provides a foundation for them to stand on.
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So when we hear, I do not believe in God, it is a powerful affirmation, and it is also affirming most likely that they believe in the Darwinian landscape of the history of the world.
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And the problem for them is the foundation upon which they stand is itself very shaky.
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Darwinism as a worldview does not deal with the most profound questions of human existence.
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Darwinism as a worldview, in fact, ultimately ignores many of the most profound questions of human existence.
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It seeks to propose a naturalistic or an anti-supernatural answer for the existence of life.
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And in actuality, all it does is provide a supposed mechanism for change and growth within a living system.
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I'm not saying it is the mechanism, but it's a proposed or supposed mechanism for change and growth within a living system.
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It does not, I repeat, it does not deal with where life came from or why life matters.
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It only deals with how life can potentially change over time.
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And that's different than where it came from or why it matters.
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Richard Dawkins was interviewed in a film.
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In fact, we may watch this film as a group if we decide to.
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I'll let us decide as a group.
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But how many of you saw the film Expelled? Expelled was a documentary by Ben Stein.
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Ben Stein is not a Christian.
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Ben Stein is a Jewish man.
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And Ben Stein was looking into the fact that many people who believe in intelligent design have been put out of classrooms because they will not toe the line of the evolutionary framework that is the standard of the sciences now.
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Even though many people say it's just a theory, it's not just a theory for many people anymore.
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And even then, the way they use the word theory, they use it as fact.
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And so if you do not agree with it, you're not welcome in many places.
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But Stein, in the film, interviewed Richard Dawkins.
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And in the interview, he asked if invoking a designer...
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Now, he's not saying God.
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He's just talking to Dawkins, and he's talking about a designer, and he's talking about invoking the use of a designer in the creation of man, the creation of the world.
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He said, is a designer possible as an explanation in understanding genetics and even evolution? This was Dawkins' answer, and I'm going to quote directly from Dawkins.
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And this is a quote, so I'm actually going to say it as he said it, so forgive me if it's a little choppy.
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He says, quote, Well, it could come about in the following way.
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It could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved, probably by some kind of Darwinian means, probably to a very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet.
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Now, that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility, and I suppose it's possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer, end quote.
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Now, I don't want to read that whole quote again, but I want you to go back to what he said at the beginning.
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He said, sure, it's possible that there's a designer, but that designer, he had to evolve, and he had to evolve by some type of Darwinian means.
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Who's being religious now? Because he's saying, sure, we could have been designed, sure, we could have been seeded by essentially aliens, but those aliens had to evolve.
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He has a religious adherence to Darwinism.
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It's the axiom upon which everything else, all of his arguments, must rest.
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It is his ultimate presupposition.
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And that's why I say to you, when someone comes up to you and says, I don't believe God exists, they have a presupposition about how life came to be.
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They must, as I said, it's sort of the old King James way, he must, needs, maintain his position at all costs.
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And that's what he does.
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So what do we say if a person says, I do not believe in God? Well, I'm going to give you, you have your blanks here.
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I'm going to give you how I, again, I'm not giving you a script.
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I'm going to tell you how I talk to people.
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In general, I ask questions as I'm talking to try to get the people to realize the vacuous nature of their worldview if it is outside of the God of the Bible.
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So my first question is this.
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How do you believe life came to exist? If somebody says to me, I do not believe God exists.
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My question first is, well, how do you believe life came to exist? I think it's a legitimate question.
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I think it's a fair question.
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And I think it gives them an opportunity to dig their own hole.
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Jennifer.
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Yeah, that's it.
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So we asked the first question, how do we believe life came to, how do you believe life came to exist? In almost every case, and I can't say in every case, but in almost every case, they're going to say some form of evolution.
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And if they say evolution, if evolution is the answer, we can challenge that answer.
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Because evolution is not an answer for how life came to exist.
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It is a supposed answer of how living things change and grow over time.
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And they are presupposing something that evolution cannot do.
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They are presupposing that evolution can create.
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It can't.
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It can only deal with what has been created or what already exists.
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So it does not deal with ultimate origins.
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I want to quote to you from, and I've got a lot of quotes tonight, so forgive me.
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Go back and get the audio if you, don't try to write these because these are long.
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But this is from David Berlinski.
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David Berlinski is a PhD from Princeton University.
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He has taught mathematics and philosophy.
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He is himself a secular Jew who describes himself as an agnostic.
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This man is not a believer.
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But he sees Richard Dawkins and men like him and says those guys are wrong because they have a militant view of atheism that they are forcing onto science.
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He wrote a book called The Devil's Delusion.
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You know why it's titled that? Because Dawkins' book is called The God Delusion.
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So Berlinski wrote a response called The Devil's Delusion.
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But this is a quote from his book.
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Has anyone provided proof of God's inexistence? Not even close.
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Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close.
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Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close.
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Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough.
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Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right and what is moral? Not close enough.
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Has secularism in the 20th century been a force for good? Not even close to being close.
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Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ballpark.
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Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough.
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Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.
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And this is a scientist, not a believer, himself identified as an agnostic, but saying what we all know is true.
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Science has not proven that the world came about and birthed itself out of nothing, because such a thing is foolish.
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If one assumes evolution, it may answer some questions, but it is impotent to answer the really profound questions, the question of origin and the question of purpose are not answered by evolution.
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So here is the next answer on your sheet.
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Because I want to move.
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If a person says I don't believe in God, I'm going to say how do you believe the world came to exist? How do you believe life came to exist? Explain it to me.
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And when they've explained some evolutionary process, and I may at some point explain why I believe such a thing is vacuous and unintellectual and unsupported by the science.
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I will then ask this question.
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Do you know what the Bible says about how life came to exist? Now I know what some of you are thinking.
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Well, they don't believe the Bible.
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I don't care.
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I'm just telling them what the Bible...
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You're asking me what I would say, and I'm telling you how I would respond.
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I would let them speak.
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Tell me what you think about the origin of the universe.
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Do you know what the Bible says? And here's the thing.
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They may know.
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In fact, they may have heard about seven days of creation, six days plus one.
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They may have heard about Adam and Eve.
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They may have heard about the flood.
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And they may mock all of those things with relentless hatred.
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But while those things are important, that's not where I start.
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I start with Genesis 1.1.
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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Because the heart of the matter, before you even get to six days, before you get to Adam and Eve, before you get to a flood, the heart of the matter is this, is that God is described in the Bible as the only absolute and eternal being.
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And an eternal and absolute reality is actually a logical necessity in a world that exists.
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As we've noted earlier in this course, we agree with the atheist that something exists.
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We can both agree that we exist.
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If a person says, I don't know if I exist, punch him in the arm or steal his wallet.
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And then when he tries to take you to court, you don't even believe I exist.
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How could what I do? No, don't do that.
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But I'm just saying, you don't have to argue whether or not you exist.
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But for something to exist, and I've made this argument earlier in the course, but I want to really flesh it out right now.
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For something to exist now, something must have always existed.
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Because if there was ever a time when nothing...
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See, you can't even comprehend nothing.
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Because if there ever was a time when nothing existed, nothing would still exist because of the law of ex nihilo nihil fit.
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Out of nothing, nothing comes.
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We can't conceive of nothing any more than we can conceive of eternity or God being timeless.
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We can't conceive of nothing.
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Even if somebody said, well, I'm going to stretch out a pool and put nothing in it.
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There's space in which the pool is taking up.
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That's something.
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But if there ever was a time when there was nothing, there would still be nothing.
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Because out of nothing comes nothing.
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Somebody says, well, what are you proposing? I say, well, God is the something that's always been.
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Well, but I'm saying He's the something because there's always had to be something.
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And they say, well, if God made everything, who made God? But this question assumes, it assumes what we've already proven is untrue.
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It assumes there's not something that's eternal.
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And we've said there must be something that's eternal because if there was ever some time when there was nothing, there would still be nothing.
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So something has to be eternal.
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God describes Himself as I am.
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What does that mean? It means self-existing, independent, absolutely without need of anyone else.
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If you said, Brian, if you said I am, you would have to qualify that.
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You'd have to say I am, I exist, because I've got the right atmosphere.
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I exist because I have enough food or enough water.
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I exist because I have enough air in my lungs to produce the needed movement to bring the air in and force the carbon dioxide out.
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I get oxygen, carbon dioxide out.
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All of those things are necessary for your existence.
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So when you say I am, you have qualifications.
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God doesn't.
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He just simply says I am.
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His existence is without qualification.
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And you can ask the person, I think this is on your sheet, you can ask the person, has there ever been a time when nothing existed? I like to ask that question.
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I like to see the thought.
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Because honestly, that can go one of two ways.
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They can say yes, yes, there was a time when there was absolutely nothing.
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That's what Stephen Hawking says.
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Stephen Hawking says there was nothing.
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But because of gravity, nothing can become something.
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And I say, but wait a minute, you said there was nothing.
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He said, but gravity is nothing.
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No, gravity is something.
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I'm talking about nothing.
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Was there ever a time when there wasn't even gravity? Because you're saying gravity is necessary to take and make something out of nothing.
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But if they do say, if you ask the question, has there ever been a time when nothing existed? And they say no, the next question is simple.
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Well, what is eternal then? Some people might say, well, the universe is eternal.
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Say the best scientists in the world disagree with you.
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Because the best scientists in the world do say the universe had a beginning.
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The best scientists in the world say you're wrong.
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The universe is not eternal.
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So you want to argue science? That's what they say.
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Argue with them.
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And it's coming to an end.
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Yeah.
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But here's the other thing.
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They might say this.
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And some of you have heard this.
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You've heard the concept that energy is neither created nor destroyed.
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And that is a physics truism.
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Matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed.
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Right? We all learned that in seventh grade.
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So they'll say matter and energy are the eternal things.
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And all we are is matter and energy in the form that it's in now.
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One day it will be in a different form.
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But now it's in this form right now.
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But this leads to an even deeper question.
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If matter and energy are the two eternal things, are matter and energy intelligent? Are matter and energy intelligent? Does matter have knowledge? And does energy have direction? And if the answer is no, then this is what must be believed.
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And hear this.
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If the answer is no, this is what must be believed.
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All of the order in the universe comes from disorder.
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All the uniformity and logic in the universe comes from chaos.
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And life itself has been born from non-life.
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And you're telling me I'm being ridiculous? But this is the key.
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And this is where I'm driving towards.
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Because, again, I'm not proving God's existence.
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I'm trying to get them to a point where they have to recognize something.
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And this is the last blank, I think.
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Do you realize the implications of your world view? Do you realize the implications of your world view? Because what you have said, what you have said to me, you don't believe that God exists.
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You believe that the universe came into being somehow that you can't explain.
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You believe that you're here and that you have existence, but you have no reasonable reason for your existence outside of chaos becoming order, illogical becoming logical, and death, well, not even death, non-life becoming life.
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Do you understand the implications of that? Because you can't prove any of that.
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All you can do is presuppose it.
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Do you understand the implications of your presupposition? Let me explain to you what the implication of your presupposition is this.
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If the order we experience comes from disorder, then why do you believe that the order we experience will continue? What reason do you have for confidence in the uniformity of nature and the continuation of the laws of logic themselves? And some would say, well, we've got the past, and the past gives us certainty for the future.
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No, it doesn't.
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All the past gives us certainty for is the past.
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The past cannot prove the future.
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In fact, I want to quote David Hume.
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You know who David Hume is, 18th century philosopher, best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism.
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And he said this, quote, Although we do indeed believe that the future will be like the past, the truth of that belief is not self-evident.
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In fact, it is always possible for nature to change, so inferences from the past to the future are never rationally certain.
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End quote.
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I'll try to say it a little bit more simply.
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If the world evolved from chaos and the world is now orderly, what makes us have confidence that the order will continue? In fact, scientists are baffled by this.
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You might think I'm talking crazy, but I want to tell you what scientists say about this very thing.
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These aren't believing men.
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These aren't like a bunch of Christians who got together and wrote a book.
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This is scientists who are just simply talking about natural law and how amazing it is.
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Physicist Paul C.
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Davies wrote this.
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He said, To be a scientist, you have to have faith.
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I'll start again, and I like that.
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He said, To be a scientist, you have to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin.
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You've got to believe that these laws won't fail, that we won't wake up tomorrow to find heat flowing from cold to hot or the speed of light changing by the hour.
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Over the years, I've often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are, and the favorite reply is, there is no reason why they are what they are.
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They just are.
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But isn't that an important quote? We don't know why it is.
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It just is.
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We don't know why it be.
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It just be.
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Right? We don't know.
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They are because they are, and God says I am.
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I am because I am.
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But I want to quote a few others.
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Physicist Eugene Wigner says this, He confesses that the mathematical underpinning of nature is something bordering on the mysterious, and there is no rational explanation for it.
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If all of the world is out of chaos, there is no rational explanation for the mathematical order in the universe.
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Richard Feynman, you've probably heard of him, Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics, he says, Why nature is mathematical is a mystery.
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The fact that there are rules at all is kind of a miracle.
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How miraculous are the laws that govern the universe.
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I'm not going to quote directly, but Lee Smolin, who is a physicist, he talks about it like this.
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He said, Imagine God is sitting at a desk, and on the desk are all of these dials, and each of the dials represents some law or some value in the universe that has to be constant.
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Gravity, electromagnetic force, you name it.
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There are dials for everything.
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And everyone is tuned, specific.
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He said, If you were to move one of these dials, not 5%, not 1%, but a fraction of a percent, of one dial, you would make the existence of the universe impossible.
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So the implication of your world view is that that level of specificity came from nothing, which you can't account for, and you have no reason to account for its continuation.
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But that's not the most important.
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Because the second thing is the most important, and this is where you've got to really draw in the subject.
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Because if what you're saying is true, and let's just say that even though it's mathematically impossible, let's just say all of that is true.
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If life is born from non-life, what is life? Because we experience life on a conscious level.
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But when I say that, I have to ask a second question.
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What then is consciousness? For the absolute materialist, consciousness as an individual, rather in an individual, is simply the experience of chemical reactions in the brain which we call thought.
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Let me say that again.
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For the absolute materialist, for the person who says there's nothing supernatural, there is no soul, atheists will say there's no soul, you're a mind, you're a biomechanical machine.
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For them, the experience of consciousness, what we would say is consciousness, that experience of consciousness is simply chemical reactions in the brain.
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And if thought is no more than a chemical reaction, then there is no such thing as genuine rationality.
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Let me say that again.
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If your thoughts are nothing but chemical reactions in the brain, there is no such thing as rationality.
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Because rationality is simply reactionality.
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The reactions of chemicals in your brain.
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If what you believe is true, you're an atheist because that's the way the chemicals in your brain have reacted, and I'm a theist because that's the way the chemicals in my brain have reacted, why are you upset with me over something I can't control? I can't control the chemicals in my brain.
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But you're not really coming at this rationally, you're coming at this reactionally.
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Your brain is reacting to the chemicals that are moving within it.
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And before I ask the question, why should I trust chemicals that are simply reacting in my brain, I have to ask this question, is that all I am? And is that all you are? Because this is the implication of your worldview.
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Is that all you are, all of the consciousness, it's bound up in you, is just a biomechanical machine that has chemicals that react to one another and form things that we call thought.
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And if that is true, what does that say about my sense of ought? Do you have a sense of ought? If you're the atheist, do you have a sense of ought? What does that mean? Do you think some things ought to be and some things ought not to be? Again, if he says no, take his wallet.
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But what does this say regarding human dignity? Do you believe humans have dignity? Does this affect how I understand something as simple as love? And I did, I think I did ask that guy, does he love his girlfriend? Why? What is love? And why does it matter? If all you are is chemical reactions and stardust, and what one guy said, a grown up germ, what is love? What about free will? Now I'm not coming at this from a Calvinistic Armenian debate, I don't even want to go there tonight.
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But, even Calvinists believe in moral ability and the ability to make decisions.
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We believe in moral accountability.
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What we call moral agency.
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But do you know what Stephen Hawking said about free will? Stephen Hawking said, and I have a long quote, but I just want to read the end of the quote.
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He says, It seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.
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Because he made the argument that the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are determined, are as determined as the orbit of the planets.
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And so you are what your chemicals demand you to be.
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And free will is an illusion.
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Sam Harris, who is a neuroscientist, said the same thing.
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He actually said, free will is an illusion.
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Our wills are simply not of our own making.
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Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control.
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We do not have the freedom we think we do.
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If you believe that, Mr.
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Atheist, why are you upset with me over believing something different than you if I have no control over it? You see, their world view does not add any consistency to what they are saying.
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And they are inconsistent.
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You see, the question of the existence of God is so much more than a basic scientific inquiry.
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It is the foundation upon which all other things rest.
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If a person says, I do not believe in God, then we know this, they have replaced the belief in God with something they must have.
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Because without God, you are left with an absolutely inescapable vacuum out of which there is no escape.
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And it must be filled with something.
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Most try to fill that vacuum with Darwinism, but Darwinism is no answer.
55:57
Darwinism merely pushes back the question, but never gets to the original issue.
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Werner Heisenberg, who is a German theoretical physicist and one of the key pioneers of quantum mechanics, said this, and I quote, The first gulp from the glass of the natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting for you.
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So in my closing, I want to say this.
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Please note how we have responded, or how I have responded to the objection.
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Have I referenced evidences and rationality? Yes.
56:44
So am I a bad presuppositionalist? Slow down.
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Because I have defended presuppositionalism this whole time.
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I have begun with a presupposition.
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My presupposition is that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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And that is the only logical, reasonable understanding for how the world is here and why it matters.
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And it is not really something we must prove.
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Rather, it is something we must proclaim.
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Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for tonight.
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I hope that this has been helpful, Father, and I pray that you would use it to help us grow.
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I pray that in the weeks to come, that we'll get even more firm in our understanding of how to defend the truth.
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But, Lord, to understand that ultimately you are the one who converts the heart, not us.
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I thank you, Father, for all of your blessings, especially the blessing of knowing that you are our God and that you have sent your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.
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Amen.