How to Completely Refute Atheism

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So the subject of today is atheism and agnosticism. And it's, I mean, each really could get a time of their own.

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And I mentioned to you guys last night that we really need like two weeks. You need like two weeks of constant sessions to just keep working through the details here.

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I mean, really, I would love that. I would love like a week -long conference where we just got to spend so much time on each individual subject.

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But atheism and agnosticism is what we wanna talk about today. And so what I wanted to do last night was lay some basic foundations, sort of lay, this is the reason for apologetics.

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Here are the goals in apologetics. Here is the substance of apologetics. And then today we wanted to provide some applications.

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So the application today is with sort of the antithesis of the biblical worldview of our

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Christian faith. And then we're also gonna deal with one example, and that is a non -Christian cult, a religion that apes

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Christianity. Because oftentimes people will say, all right, I think I get it, right?

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Like unbelieving thought cannot justify, provide the preconditions necessary for anything in life, not for truth, not for beauty, not for goodness, not for laws of logic, not for science, not for ethics.

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Unbelieving thought is absolutely absurd. It's foolishness, exactly as God describes it.

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And so people will oftentimes say, well, Pastor Jeff, I've memorized some of the things that you've said in your on -the -street encounters and the debates, and I think

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I understand how to engage atheistic thought or agnostic thought. But then they'll say something, and I think maybe

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I'm just bad at communicating, and so I'm trying to work on it. They'll say something that kind of startles me.

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They'll say, but how do I do this with a Mormon? And what that,

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I think, speaks to me, if it's not my own shortcomings as a minister, I think it speaks to me as to a misunderstanding that we often have when it comes to apologetics.

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And here's what I wanna get at, and I hope you guys can grab hold of this and remember that I said this, because it's vitally important to get.

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When we talk about apologetics, we're not talking about learning a bunch of information and memorizing facts or arguments so that we can just regurgitate them when we are presented with somebody who says,

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I'm an atheist, and we all of a sudden go, okay, atheist, now give the script, right? Now, it's very important, because I have a friend,

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Cy Ten Bruggencate, he's a very, very good friend of mine. We love each other dearly, and he experiences this as well.

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People will oftentimes watch the videos or listen to the talks, and then what happens is, when you see that person go out and do evangelism, they literally quote word for word what they've heard either from Cy or from myself.

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Now, I appreciate what that means, is that it's blessing people, it's edifying people, it's lifting people up, but what

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I wanna encourage you to see is that apologetics, learning how to defend the faith, and I hope this blesses you, is not memorizing a script.

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That's important. It's not memorizing a bunch of catchy phrases and slogans and glib responses so that you can just whip it out and throw it at somebody.

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So, what this is is a total life and worldview. It is a total biblical perspective that impacts your thought and your speech at every single turn.

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So, here's what I'm getting at. When you grab hold of God's word as the foundation, you develop a copiousness that allows you to be able to engage and interact with the unbeliever in any realm.

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And so, what I'm encouraging you to do here, and in terms of developing a rigorous apologetic that is devastating to the unbelieving worldview,

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I'm encouraging you, ready? To treasure up his words in your heart that you might not send against him,

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Psalm 119. Treasure up his words, put them into your heart and mind, because if you're thinking with a mind of Christ, there isn't any thought that can ultimately come against that.

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So, I'm calling you to be better apologists of the Christian faith, to be better and stronger

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Christians, to know God's word better. And when you know

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God's truth better, truth can confront error better. And so, that really is the goal, not memorizing a script, not memorizing phrases, but actually understanding the perspective of truth, having the mind of Christ.

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And so, dealing with atheism, so, in other words, when we talk about Mormonism, just let me finish that thought real fast.

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When we talk about Mormonism, people will say, again, well, how do I do this with a Mormon? And here's the perspective.

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If you're standing on God's word, when you're standing on God's word and His revelation with the atheist, you're filtering through what the unbeliever is saying about themselves and about the world through what the scriptures say, and you're bringing the word of God to bear on every part of their position.

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When we talk to the Mormon, there is nothing different. The conversation might sound different, that's only because their worldview is different.

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What they're saying is different than the unbeliever, say, like the atheist or agnostic, and therefore, when you speak to them, you're actually going to different scriptures to respond to the

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Mormon, and we're gonna do that right after. So, today, right now, is atheism and agnosticism, and after that, we'll do

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Mormonism together. Sound good? Okay, so, and I've actually brought, like, a whole trunk load of books and things and resources, and I wanna do a lot of interaction, in particular, on Mormonism.

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So, atheism and agnosticism. This becomes rather difficult to do today because you'll even notice, if you listen to some of the

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YouTube stuff we have up, oftentimes, somebody will say, right in the middle of the video, that they're an atheist, and then halfway through, they're an agnostic.

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And then, after that, they become sort of a pagan idolatry, right? So, they just kind of shift, like moving the goalposts all the way through.

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Here's the thing. Classically, the definition of atheism is awe without theism, or it's a denial of the belief of God, it's a denial of the existence of God, or, more classically defined, atheism says, there is no

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God, period. Now, today, modern atheists, or actually, many of them, say in the new atheism movement, well, say

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I'm an atheist, but it turns out, really, they're an agnostic as they describe themselves. There seems to be sort of a collision of definitions happening today with atheists, where they say,

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I'm not saying that there absolutely is no God, I'm saying that the gods that I know about, they don't truly exist.

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What agnosticism actually says is that we can't know, ultimately, anything.

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Propositionally, we can't know if there's a God, if God exists, we just cannot know, and so the word awe, negation of, and then the

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Greek word gnosis, or for knowledge, okay? So we're without knowledge, knowledge cannot be gained or had, we cannot know.

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So I can immediately, if you've already caught it, I hope you have, you can immediately refute agnosticism when it starts speaking.

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So the agnostic says, we can't know anything. Do you know that?

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Do you see the point? Now, some might say, you might be tempted to say, and the agnostic often is tempted to say, well, that's just a word game, that's a trick.

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And the answer is no, it's not a word game, it's not a trick, it's a self -refutation. You see, here's the thing,

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Christians don't make those kinds of claims or mistakes. The Christian does not say, no knowledge is possible, immediately refuting themselves, making a knowledge claim.

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So when someone says, we cannot know anything at all, you said it, do you know that?

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And they go, well, yes, I know that. Then you just refuted yourself, your system is done. Stick a fork in them, it's over.

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Okay, now agnosticism is immediately refuted at the outset, because when you say no knowledge is possible, you immediately refute yourself every single time you open your mouth and make a knowledge claim, you are refuting your own position.

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Agnosticism is absurd. But we put the two together because they're essentially the same.

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When you talk to an agnostic today, chances are they're going to buy into the neo -Darwinian, micro -mutation, macro -evolutionary worldview that we've evolved from highly evolved societies of bacteria and an ungoverned, unpurposed universe to get us to where we're at today.

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That's the perspective. And so agnostics today are functionally atheists. And the worldview is essentially the same.

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Because if it were different, if their view of origins was different, if they acknowledged the existence of some

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God and they're worshiping that, they move from agnosticism to whatever religion or cult they're now a part of.

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And so you can see how there's difficulty for the agnostic at many points. But atheism and agnosticism are essentially wrapped up in the same thing.

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And many today who call themselves agnostics are really ultimately just atheists and they're just afraid to say so,

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I think. So let's move forward to just a quick review of last night just to give us some foundations.

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You guys ready to go? Yes? So the foundation is revelation. The revelational epistemology

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I told you guys about. How do we know what we know? Now, epistemology, again, just a fancy word that just means the theory of knowledge.

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How do you know what you know? Now, you might think, well, this just seems like highfalutin stuff and what's the point?

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Do we really get into this discussion with somebody? If you don't use the word, doesn't matter. Everybody has an epistemology.

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They have a view of how they know what they know. Whether they've thought consciously about it or not, everybody has an epistemology and it's important to get to the bottom of how we know what we know.

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Many today are, say, empiricists in their epistemology. They'll say something to the effect of, well,

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I believe in science, whatever that means. I believe in science, as though the

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Christian is the blind faith religionist while the atheist believes in science. What they tend to mean when they say

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I believe in science is that they're an empiricist. What that means is they believe that you gain knowledge, you get to what is actually true via direct experience and observation, an empiricist.

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I have to see it, I have to observe it, it has to be tested. That's how I truly know, okay?

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So someone might be an empiricist in their epistemology. Someone may also be a rationalist in their epistemology.

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They might be a mixed bag. They might have a couple of different ways to take a stab at this. They might say, well, how do you know something is true?

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Well, you have to actually reason through it. It has to be logical, it has to be consistent.

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That's how I know something to be true. It has to be logical and reasonable. You have other people who have different sets of epistemology where they might say pragmatism.

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That is an epistemology, pragmatism. What's that mean? Oh, it worked for me. In my experience, it works, it works for me.

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Now, you should obviously, I hope, immediately catch the problem with that, right? Your personal experience doesn't speak to what is actually true.

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A lot of people experience a whole host of things and they think that, well, this is good, but we know fundamentally it is not good.

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Say, for example, the child molester, just to take a graphic example. The child molester has an experience in his life and the child molester might say, well, in my experience, this is good, this is healthy, this is true, this is something that I should be allowed to do.

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And I think all of us would reject that. Even the atheists today, the most strident, ardent atheists today might say, no,

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I reject that epistemology. I reject your personal experience. You could also have an epistemology that say fideism.

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What is fideism? Anyone know? The word's in there. Sola fide.

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The word fideism, fide -ism, it means faith. Think of it as faithism.

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And what does that essentially say? You just accept it by faith. You just believe.

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And the problem with that is that doesn't get to truth. And so there are different epistemologies, but our epistemology as Christians is a revelational epistemology.

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How do you know and have certainty about something, a truth claim, knowledge claim?

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How do you know? And the answer is, I told you, God said so. Because God says.

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Now, watch this. We have a distinct revelational epistemology, though, as Christians, and this is what you have to get.

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There are other religions in the world that also have revelational epistemology, but ours is distinct in that it is a revelational epistemology from the triune

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God of the Bible, and he speaks revelationally, this is important, not simply privately.

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That's important. This isn't a private, secret knowledge given to an individual revealed to that one individual.

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The revelation of God in Scripture is broadcast throughout the earth. It is at this very moment.

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It is covering every inch of God's universe. It is revelational epistemology that gets through to every single creature under heaven, and there is also added to that the special revelation of God that we talked about last night,

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God through his prophets and apostles, God through the person of Jesus Christ, and here's what makes this revelational epistemology so distinct.

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Listen closely to this. It's that Christians believe that God has acted in and through history.

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So just take as an example for a moment, there are other examples of revelational epistemology.

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Say, for example, Islam. Islam has a revelational epistemology, and wouldn't you know it because Islam apes

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Christianity. Islam copies Christianity and ends up distorting what it steals from like every religion and cult does.

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They borrow from Christianity, and then they distort the position. Mormonism is another example of a revelational epistemology.

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They are not like the unbeliever, the atheist. They don't say that revelation is not possible.

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The Mormon actually says no revelation is possible. God has spoken through the Bible, and now

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God has spoken privately to Joseph Smith. Do you see?

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It's a private revelation to Joseph Smith that nobody has witnessed, nobody has seen.

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It is his own private, secret knowledge. That is a revelational epistemology, but it is not the triune

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God of Scripture. It's not biblical revelational epistemology. You gotta grant that point.

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Revelational epistemology for the believer is not secret knowledge. It is knowledge that is broadcast to everybody at all times.

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So when the unbeliever challenges us, we say no, God has spoken clearly, is speaking clearly, and is speaking and communicating to you in all of your experiences at this very moment.

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In every appeal you have right now to logic, God is speaking. Every appeal you have right now to science,

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God is speaking. Every appeal you have right now to ethics, God is speaking. So epistemology is vitally important to get.

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How do we know? God says, because God says. That's where my certainty is,

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God says. Now again, it's not as simple as that in terms of where we can go now in the discussion.

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I'm not encouraging you to simply say, well, God says, so mm, right? I'm not asking you to be adolescent or elementary in that respect.

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I'm telling you that that is fundamentally the basis of knowledge and certainty. You want proof?

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Let's go to the Bible, Proverbs 1, verse 7. Proverbs 1, 7, let me encourage you, my brothers and sisters, to begin the process again of memorizing the

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Word of God, vitally important to get. It's vitally important to get with the unbeliever, the atheist, it's vitally important to get with the cultist.

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You need to know God's revelation. You need to know it. You have to commit yourself to turning off Facebook.

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You have to commit yourself to turning off Twitter. You gotta commit yourself to turning off YouTube. You gotta commit yourself to turning off the television for a period of time to study the

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Word of God and memorize it. Proverbs 1, verse 7, the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Now, we often, I have to confess,

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I'll confess to this completely, I'll be transparent. I read God's Word many times, and I have to admit,

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I get mellow -headed sometimes. Sometimes there are these beautiful, amazing things said to me by God through His Word that just go right past me, and I don't actually grab hold of the true significance of that statement.

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It's all over the Bible, and I do it all the time. I think all of us do. But this particular passage, just think about it, the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. So reverent submission and awe before God is the very beginning of knowledge.

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Fools despise wisdom and instruction. The Scriptures over and over and over again say that in His light we see light, that God is the very foundation of wisdom and knowledge.

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And in this particular case, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Knowledge doesn't get off the grounds without first reverent submission to God.

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And you might be asking, okay, why is that? And here's the truth of the matter. God is, in His very being, truth.

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God knows, in His very being, knowledge. He doesn't think propositionally.

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He's not trying to work things out. God, by the very essence of who He is,

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God knows all things, decrees all things. He is not like you and not like me.

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We are creatures with three -pound brains. God is an eternal being.

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God is triune. God is omnipotent. He is all -knowing. God has true knowledge.

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All of our knowledge as creatures is merely derivative. It is secondary to God's original knowledge.

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When we know something, we only know something because ultimately our knowledge is finally lining up with what

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God already knows. And so if you wanna truly know something as a creature under this creation, you have to start with reverent submission to God to have true knowledge.

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And here's the point. When God speaks truth, you can know it with certainty.

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Let me give you an example just to show you how important this is. Just at the outset, hopefully to whet your appetite here,

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I give you the chairs so you can think now about what this means. We stand on the revelation of God.

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This over here is the unbeliever. And for this case here, not the Mormon, not the Jehovah's Witness, but say the radical militant atheist.

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The unbeliever has a particular worldview. Now they say things about the world. They say things about origins.

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They say things about us. They say things about knowledge and truth and ethics and beauty and all those different things, but they have a particular perspective and worldview.

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They're not neutral and we're not supposed to be. Remember that? So we over here have the biblical worldview.

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Over here have the unbelieving worldview. Now watch for a moment. I'll make a claim.

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And I want you to tell me if what's coming out of my mouth is consistent with what I'm standing on.

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Do I get to say this? It is an absolute moral obligation that we love our neighbors and not eat them.

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Is what's coming out of my mouth consistent with what I'm standing on? Yes. And let's try this.

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Do I have certainty about that claim? Some of you did not answer and were worried.

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Probably Presbyterian. Okay, over here. I'm just kidding. Presbyterians are like my favorite.

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All my heroes are all Presbyterian and I mean that. People are like, soon, Jeff, soon, you will be, okay.

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So over here, there's the biblical revelation. I can make the claim and it's consistent with the revelation of God.

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I can make the claim and I can say I have certainty about it. Now here's the unbeliever, the militant atheist, and they're gonna make a claim.

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Ready? It is an absolute moral obligation that we love our neighbors and not eat them.

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Now I just said something. Was what I said consistent with what I'm standing on?

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There are no moral obligations. Do I have certainty about that claim? If you listen to one of the videos we have up, actually the one

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I pointed you to last night, it's Jeff and Cy walking to a bar. When I talk to this atheist or agnostic or pagan that he became after that, when

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I talked to him, I brought up the issue because we got to near the end of the discussion. He gave up science, he gave up logic, he gave up morality.

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He admitted that he didn't have any of those things and I brought up, because he brought it up, the fact that he cannot ultimately know whether he's not supposed to eat human beings.

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And his response, I said, do you eat hamburgers?

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He said, yeah. I said, do you eat fish? He said, yeah. I said, do you eat people?

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He goes, no. I said, given your worldview, why? It's a legitimate question.

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There were all random results of evolutionary processes in this unguided and unpurposed universe. You eat other results of evolutionary processes, but you don't eat people.

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How come? His response, they don't taste good. If I'm lying,

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I'm dying, he said it. And here's the thing, that is not the first time an atheist has told me that.

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But memory serves, when we had the head of the Atheist Society at ASU on our radio program to do a little debate with him, memory serves, he said exactly the same thing.

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And then he laughed and said, oh, no, no, I'm just kidding. We would get sick. Oh, okay. Because you would get sick and diseased, that's why you don't eat people.

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Remind me never to hire you as a babysitter, okay? But you see the point, Christians can make claims about certainty based upon not our own private knowledge, but based upon the public revelation of God.

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Do you see that? Unbelievers can't make those claims. So we gotta start at a basis here.

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And let me do one more before we go on. Colossians chapter two. Go to your Bibles to Colossians chapter two.

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I want you guys to have as much scripture as possible in the short time we have as a basis of moving forward.

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Colossians chapter two, starting at verse one.

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The apostle Paul says, for I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is

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Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Now, again, I've said before, I tend to get mellow headed at times and miss things.

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And that is something that we cannot miss. The apostle Paul makes a claim about Jesus. He says that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Jesus Christ.

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You want wisdom, you want knowledge, you need to find them ultimately in Jesus Christ. Now stop and think about the implications of that claim.

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You want wisdom and knowledge about ethics? It's only found in Jesus Christ.

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They're hidden in him. You want wisdom and knowledge about art? It's only in Jesus Christ.

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You don't have a basis, by the way, for art without Jesus Christ. Do you know that? There's no basis for language.

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There's no basis for poetry without Jesus Christ. There's no basis for science without Jesus Christ.

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There's no basis for beauty, truth, goodness without Jesus Christ. If you want to know with certainty, you have to have

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Jesus Christ as the foundation. Now here's the thing I don't want you to do. I don't want you to do what you're supposed to do as Christians and just say amen.

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Don't give me the autonomic response. I'm a martial artist. Some of you guys know that. I love to kick people in the face.

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It's one of my favorite things to do. It really is. Since I was little, I've loved to kick people in the head.

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And one of the things that I've taught, I've been a martial arts instructor my whole life. I owned a karate school, seems like forever ago, before I was ultimately vocational full -time ministry.

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And when I owned my martial arts school, I used to teach self -defense classes. I used to teach police and military.

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And one of the things that I used to teach was the autonomic response. When you hit somebody in a particular place on their body, we all have an autonomic response, an immediate response, the same response.

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So if a guy punches you down low, what's the reaction of the male body?

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Right? If a guy flicks you in the eyeball, what's your reaction when you get flicked in the eyeball?

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What's your immediate reaction? You already knew it. So you throw your hand up to your eye. That's an autonomic response.

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Christians have that in church, too. And sometimes you need to stop, pause, and accept, rather than just respond.

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Christians have the responses where something is claimed about Jesus, and we go, amen.

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And you haven't thought about the implications. Well, here's thinking about the implications. In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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Is that true? Is that true in our children's education? Can you do science with neutrality?

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Let me ask you a question. If you look at education as a Christian, if we educate our children in a biblical worldview, and then you take the average public school setting, secular university setting, is the science class different in Christian education than it is in secular education?

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What's the view of origins in the Christian science classroom? It's about Christ.

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What is the view of origins in the average public school setting? Darwinism.

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Do you see the point? No neutrality. Absolutely no neutrality. Now, one of those claims is true, and one of them is false.

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There's no neutrality. Let me ask you a question in neutrality, in regard to neutrality. Is it possible to be neutral?

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In the mathematics class? Come on now, let's be consistent.

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Is it possible to be neutral in the mathematics class? No. If you want to learn about this, go to All Access and listen to Dr.

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Mitch Stokes, who just put his lectures up on Apologia Academy on math. And this is the point.

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If you don't have Jesus Christ, you do not have a consistent and coherent way to do math.

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Let me give an example. We went to the Reason Rally a couple of years ago. That is where they said it was the largest gathering of atheists and secularists in the entire history of the world.

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They said there was like 30 ,000 people. It did not look like there were 30 ,000 people there, but we went and showed up.

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And we were there, and we started engaging atheists, looking around for atheists that would argue with us. And we can do this documentary.

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We were trying to put together at the time. So we're trying to find atheists. I talked to the co -president of the

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Atheist Society at Cornell University, brilliant guy. In the video, he gives up science.

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He gives up logic, gives up ethics. And he's like, yep. Gave it up. We talked to these young college students.

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And then I was noticing while I was talking to these people, I see this guy standing, like watching the whole time.

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And he's just sort of like antsy, like he just keeps trying to want to step in. And finally I'm like, all right, come on over.

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Calm down, let's talk. And so I start talking to the guy, and it turns out he is a math professor at a college in California.

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He's an atheist. He's a naturalistic materialist. He believes that all that exists is matter and motion. And he's a math teacher.

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So we're talking and trying to get to the gospel with the guy. And so I start challenging him on his position, his profession.

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And I said, well, you're a materialist. He says, yep. I said, so you teach arithmetic? He says, yes.

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I said, have you ever seen a law of math? He said, well, yes.

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We write down equations on there. I said, no, no, no. That's a representation of the law of math.

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I'll give you an example of what I mean here for a second. And so follow me here. This shows you in terms of knowledge and certainty in Christ.

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If I had a chalkboard here. Children, there is this thing. A chalkboard, and I had chalk.

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And I wrote, ready? Follow me now. If I wrote 1 plus 1 equals 2 on the chalkboard.

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1 plus 1 equals 2 on the chalkboard. Now, if I pointed to this number 2, and I said, is this 2?

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You would say? Yes. OK. Now, if I took my hand, and I wiped off that 2, and I said, all right, 2 is gone now.

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You can no longer use 2 in your thinking. I've taken it away. It now doesn't exist.

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You said it was 2, and I took it away. No more 2. What would you, you would immediately,

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I said, no. You took away a representation of the universal truth of 2 -ness.

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That's true. Do you see the point? The physical representation only represented the immaterial, universal, unchanging law of 2 -ness.

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Now, that law cannot be seen, cannot be touched, cannot be weighed. There is no color to it.

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It is a universal, abstract, necessary, invariant, unchanging law.

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Now, this unbeliever, as I'm talking to him, he's a math teacher, remember. I start challenging him on his materialism.

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You're an atheist. You believe you live in an unguided, unpurposed universe. It is time and chance acting on matter.

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It is just stuff happening. Like Shakespeare says, it is sound and fury signifying nothing.

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All that exists is the material, right? He says, exactly. I said, OK. Have you ever seen a law of math?

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Well, no. So I start getting to the bottom of it. And I start challenging him. In your world, you cannot account for universal, abstract, invariant laws of any sort, whether they're logic, arithmetic, or, say, physical laws.

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Your world, you can't account for it. And he ultimately grants it and says, well, yeah. And so I said,

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OK, here, ready? Is 2 plus 2 4? And he knew what

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I was doing. And he goes, well, maybe not. And so what

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I said to him, I said, here's where the wheels come off. Here's where you won't live consistently as an atheist.

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I said, because you'll say as a strict materialist that there are no universals. There are no abstract laws.

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There's no invariant laws. All it is is sound and fury signifying nothing, just matter in motion.

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You'll say that. But if your students do their tests that way, you will fail them.

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I said, you act like a Christian and an image bearer of God every single time you teach your students, every test you grade, every time you act as an image bearer of God and you violate your commitments as an atheist at every turn of your life.

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You need to repent. You see, you cannot do math.

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You cannot do science. You cannot do logic without Jesus Christ. Christians have a basis for universal, immaterial, invariant laws.

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Should be obvious to us. As Christians, we believe that God is spirit. God is eternal.

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God is unchanging. And the laws of this universe reflect the order that God actually gives to the universe.

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Our thinking is to be like God's thinking. God cannot lie. God cannot engage in logical contradictions.

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All of us are to essentially have our thoughts come into conformity with God's thoughts. Christians do not believe that the universe is strictly matter in motion.

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We believe that there are immaterial aspects to our being, amen? We believe that it's possible to have immaterial laws, unchanging laws in God's governed universe.

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We don't run into the problem that the materialist does in terms of the laws of math. If you don't have

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Jesus, you don't have math. But listen, atheists do math.

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And here's what we're not saying. We're not saying, we are not saying that unbelievers, because they don't have

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Jesus, can't do math. I have to confess something. I am really bad at math.

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I am. My wife is bad at math. Our children have to get help from somebody else.

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I pay for that, right? There are atheists that are better at arithmetic than I am.

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And Van Til has a famous saying, he said it often, or it's the least said about him often, that atheists can count.

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Sometimes they can count very well. Sometimes they can count better than Christians. But listen, atheists cannot account for their counting.

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They cannot justify it. And their unbelieving perspective, they cannot account for mathematics, laws of logic.

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Christians have certainty. And our knowledge is wrapped up in our knowledge of Jesus Christ.

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He is the source. He is the one in whom we find our resting place for salvation, and he is the source of all of our certainty, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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Now, one more thing I want to show you here. It's very, very important. It's in the same text. Here we go. Go to verse six.

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Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, just as you were taught abounding in thanksgiving.

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Here it is. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

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So that necessitates that there is a philosophy that is according to Christ.

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And there is a philosophy that is not according to Christ. I want to point this out for a moment.

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Now, we talked last night just briefly, and I don't want to in any way diminish my brothers in Christ who teach apologetics and do apologetics, who have tried to fight for Christ and the glory of God.

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I love these brothers that might be classical or evidentialists in their apologetic, but it doesn't mean that we can't offer correction from the word of God.

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It is possible to do the defense of the faith in an inconsistent way. It's possible to defend

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Jesus in a way that ultimately is not honoring to Jesus Christ. It's possible to do that.

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It's possible to try to create an apologetic in a philosophy that is not rooted in Jesus Christ.

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And here's the problem. When you do that, when you try to actually engage in philosophy and apologetics apart from Jesus Christ, this is vitally important to get, don't lose this, you actually develop a philosophy that is internally inconsistent and incoherent.

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If it's devoid of Christ, it is going to fall apart. So not rooting all of our philosophy and apologetics in Jesus Christ means you are setting yourself up and the person you're talking to for disaster.

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It is also, listen, a moral failure when we defend Jesus Christ in a way that is not honoring to him.

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I'm not saying you lose your salvation. I'm not saying you're just an awful, despicable, disgraceful person. I'm saying it is a failure when we pretend to be neutral with Jesus Christ.

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That's a failure. Also, listen, this pretended neutrality has profoundly impacted our witness as a church.

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One last thing I'll say to this point on knowledge. This is so important. And many of you guys know I'm in the

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Puritan tradition in terms of eschatology and so that's a particular view of the world and if you're not on board with that, that's not the point in bringing this up.

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We can all agree on this. In history, Christians were the ones that were the movers and shakers of culture.

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In history, Christians were the ones that were giving the world these great educational institutions.

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In history, Christians were the ones that gave to the world this great pop in modern science.

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I mentioned last night, you can thank the biblical worldview and Jesus Christ for your smartphones. I wasn't just saying that, that's the truth.

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You see, the technology that you're holding in your pocket right now didn't come from atheistic thought. It came actually from a biblical worldview and particularly a

39:19

Christian, who by the way was a post -millennialist. But anyways, here's the point.

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In history, listen, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Harvard, Brown University, these universities historically were not kind of Christian.

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They were developed on the basis of the Christian worldview to the glory of Jesus Christ. You know what

39:41

I love? I love that atheistic professor, Richard Dawkins, when he was teaching, he used to have to walk into a university that was built by Christians and he had to walk under edifices that would say, in his light, we see light.

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He'd walk into his classroom, the lecture hall, to go and teach people his bootleg ridiculous worldview and he walks under something that a

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Christian stamped there for the glory of Jesus Christ. My friend,

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Dr. White said on an episode we did a while back in some of these institutions, though his name is on the walls, it is not praised in the halls.

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Yes, times have changed and I think a lot of that has to do with, as Christians, our pretended neutrality and our boldness in confronting the world.

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I do believe that when you preach the gospel, it changes things. Don't you think so?

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Don't you think that when Christ came into your life, he changed you and he is changing you now?

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You see, we believe, as Christians, in individual sanctification. We believe that when God comes into my life, he changes my life, he changes my heart, he changes my mind, he changes my family, he changes my church.

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We all believe that he changes things when he saves us. Well, here's the thing, when God changes people, those people actually have a different culture.

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They have a different way of approaching the world and if we preach the gospel with boldness and with clarity, brothers and sisters,

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I believe that the world changes and I think, as Christians, we have to firm up our commitments to Christ and to the gospel if we're ever gonna see any genuine change in the world.

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So quickly, I'm gonna go here to just this example of different worldviews. Remember, everyone has a worldview.

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Nobody is neutral, that's a fiction. It's a fiction according to scripture. It's also a fiction and fallacious philosophically speaking.

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Everybody has a worldview, nobody is neutral. Christ commands us not to be neutral. Now, here's the thing,

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I say this often, it's not as though everybody has thought consciously about their worldview.

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Sometimes you just grab your worldview because mom and dad said so. Sometimes it was grandma and grandpa.

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Sometimes it was a teacher in school, maybe a science teacher. But everybody has a worldview, everybody gets a worldview and sometimes you actually make significant changes in your worldview.

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Some of you guys in Christ right now know how that change was. Sometimes it's dramatic, sometimes it hurts, right?

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You think one way and all of a sudden you re -examine it and your worldview changes, it completely shifts.

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You thought about it and oftentimes we don't, we just grab it. Sometimes your worldview comes from Lady Gaga.

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Something I've told my kids, I was just having a conversation with my daughter. She's gonna kill me for saying this. I was having a conversation with my daughter.

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We turned the radio on, there was a really catchy song on and I was like, what's that? And so I listened for about 30 seconds and then

42:52

I shut it off. And she was like, and she's 15 and pray for me. She was like, and we have just an amazing relationship,

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I love her. She's like, what, wasn't that a catchy song? And I was like, yeah, it was actually, the person was really gifted and talented.

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I said, but did you hear what they said? And she's like, no. I said, well, let's turn it on.

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So we listened to it again, it's still going and she's like, oh, oh yeah. Oh yeah, okay.

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It still sounds good though. I was like, yes. And you could thank

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God for this beauty and these gifts and these skills. But here's the thing, I said to her, I said, all music is preaching.

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I said, I want you to think about it for a moment. What is she saying? What is she swiftly saying about the world?

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What is she saying about relationships? And so we started talking about it. And I said, do you realize that every song you listen to is preaching?

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It's preaching a worldview. And guess what? Our children are adopting it. They're sucking it up and they're embracing it.

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I'll give you one. Some of you guys might be in the in crowd and you'll know, we'll know, we'll know, okay, okay.

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I can't change even if I tried. Got it?

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Go ahead, say it. You're not gonna get condemned. If you know the song, finish it. I can't change even if I tried, even if I wanted to.

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Sinner. That's Macklemore's song, right?

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It's really catchy. Actually, it's really, it's a catchy, beautiful hook and the song

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Macklemore, same love, right? Same love. Macklemore does the song really catchy.

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He's super gifted and talented, really is an amazing artist, but he has this song and what's the song about?

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The song is about same sex attraction. And what is it doing? It's condemning Christianity.

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It's condemning the Bible and it's preaching all of is the same. And listen to, listen for a moment here, how unbelievably horrible that worldview is.

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I can't change. I can't change even if I tried, even if I wanted to.

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Do you think of how depressing that is? How dark and sad and broken that is?

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Tell that to the thief. What if we had a song that was sung by child molesters and it had this unbelievably beautiful hook and the child molester was singing saying,

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I can't change even if I tried, even if I wanted to. Would people be applauding?

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Would people be praising this song or would they be shocked and in horror over such a claim that you can't change even if you tried, even if you wanted to?

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Well, you better try and you had better want to change your wanter because it's off.

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Do you see the point? But we live in a culture today where we actually see these sorts of things as good.

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And what we have for the world is the claim that there is hope in Jesus Christ to change all of us, to change the heterosexual who struggles with lust and sin and adultery and to change the homosexual who struggles with their particular lust, to change the liar, to change the homosexual, the thief, the broken.

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Do you see the point? Every song is preaching. Everyone has a worldview. Now listen, everyone has a view of reality.

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Everyone has a view of say laws of logic. Everyone has a view of how you know what you know.

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Everyone has a view of ethics. And again, it may not be thought through, but it's there. And our job as Christians is to get to the bottom of that and to bring

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Christ and God's revelation into it. What's the call? Repentance and faith.

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What's the goal in talking to say the atheist or the agnostic? What's the goal? Is to point out their borrowed capital, point to it, to show them the internal inconsistency and call them to repentance and faith.

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And so here's, let's do this today. Let's do this. The text, I want you guys to go to to show you the twofold apologetic methodology.

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Go to Proverbs 26. Let's get down into business now.

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Proverbs 26. This Dr. Bonson called the twofold apologetic methodology.

47:31

What you don't want is to hear from Jeff, tips from Jeff on how to do evangelism. That's not lasting.

47:38

It's not lasting. You want a word from God. And isn't it amazing?

47:43

Brothers and sisters, that God has given to us an actual revelation where he not only tells us about himself, he even tells us details about life like how to argue for his truth.

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Proverbs 26, four and five. Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.

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And then what seems like a contradiction, it says answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

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Now again, that sounds like a contradiction, but it really is a common Hebrew device to show you two different perspectives, two different methodologies.

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First, don't answer the fool according to their folly, lest you be like him.

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If we, in terms of this discussion, as Christians stand on the revelation of God, and then we get attacked by the unbeliever or challenged by the unbeliever.

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If we stand off of our Christian commitments and begin to behave like the unbeliever or reason like the unbeliever, if we adopt their perspective, if we pretend neutrality with them, then we'll be like them.

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We're gonna go where they're going. One of the ways that Bonson used to say it, he used to say, if you get on the unbeliever's train, and it's going their direction, if you get on their train, no matter how hard you run to the other side of the train, you're going to their destination.

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And if, as Christians, we pretend neutrality, we say, well, maybe Jesus Christ isn't who he claims to be.

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Maybe the word of God isn't what it claims to be. Maybe there really is no God. Let's see where the evidence takes us.

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If we behave in that way, reason in that way, we lose the entire basis of knowledge, first and foremost, but we are gonna end up reasoning like the unbeliever.

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Don't answer the fool according to their folly. That is to say, in this context, firm up your commitments to Jesus Christ.

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Sounds a lot like 1 Peter 3, 15. Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.

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Remember that no knowledge is possible without Jesus Christ. Remember that he is Lord of all.

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Remember that God says in Deuteronomy 6 and on, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad.

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Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You should love the Lord your

50:17

God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Isn't it amazing that Jesus said that the first and greatest commandment in the law of God next to loving neighbor as you love yourself is what?

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Love God with heart, soul, and mind. To love

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God with your mind. Don't go the unbeliever's direction. Don't answer the fool according to their folly, or you'll be like them.

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And the second part of the twofold apologetic methodology is this, answer the fool according to their folly lest they be wise in their own conceits.

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This is to say, to do an internal critique of the unbeliever's system. Show them its foolishness.

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Step into their worldview and show them. The way I like to describe this is think about it in terms of the

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Christian, you in this case, and say the atheist at sea.

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You're at sea and the Christian is in an impenetrable ship. You are in this steel ship.

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It is floating. It is watertight, solid. It is a beautiful ship, really. It's an amazing ship.

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It's a big ship, plenty of space, lots of room, plenty of space to relax. It is doing well. A massive storm comes and it is barely moving, this thing.

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This thing is built for sea. It is fantastic. And again, it is unsinkable.

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And along comes the unbeliever, the atheist in this storm. And they're in a broke down teeny little wooden raft.

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And there are holes in this little boat they have and it's taking in water.

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And this is often how the conflict happens between the atheist and the Christian. The atheist comes up to the

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Christian's ship, which is not taking in water. He stands up in his little boat, it's taking in water, and he yells up to the

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Christian, hey, your boat is stupid. You're an idiot for being in that boat.

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You're ignorant. Your boat is dumb and you're dumb for being in the boat. And what

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Christians often do is when the atheist attacks us in that way, what we do is we get, oh no, and okay, maybe

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I should step into your boat and see how things are going. When in reality, we need to realize, don't answer the fool according to their folly.

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Don't take on their position. Don't pretend neutrality when you're in this ship that cannot be penetrated.

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But there's a second part of this apologetic method, and that is to step into the unbeliever's little boat, to take them by the head, and to gently show them that they're sinking.

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Step into their position, do an internal critique. Show them how their worldview is foolishness.

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Show them how their abandonment of God and rejection of God has led them to embrace folly and ultimately destruction.

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That's the twofold apologetic methodology. So let's just do some examples, shall we? So first thing, standing on the biblical revelation,

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I gave you an example. You're to love your neighbor and not eat them. Is that consistent again with what's coming, what's under my feet, yes?

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The unbeliever, okay, let's try it. And then just let's try some examples with each other.

53:55

The unbeliever's system, what do they say about the world? The atheist says, our view of origins, like I said last night, is the universe came from nothing, that there was inorganic, non -living matter that became living.

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There was non -moral matter that suddenly became moral and started demanding that other bags of protoplasm were nice to one another.

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We live in an unguided, unpurposed universe. We're just stuff spinning around in time and in space.

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Our ancestors were fish. We went from fish to philosophers, from the goo to you.

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That's where we came from, okay? If you're the naturalist and materialist, you mean there is no supernatural intervention, no guidance, no governance, no personality, and all we are is matter.

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That's all that exists is stuff. Now, the unbeliever says the physical constants that we see around us in the world today came about by sheer accident.

54:57

Get that for a moment now. The physical constants that we see around us in the world today came about by sheer accident.

55:05

Do you know who said that? Physicist Lawrence Krauss alongside

55:10

Richard Dawkins while at Gammage at ASU. Now, isn't it amazing that a professor of physics, physical laws, said publicly with a smile that the physical constants that we see around us came about by sheer accident?

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And this is a man that teaches people laws of physics. Let me just say this.

55:37

If they're sheer accidents, that means they cannot be dependent upon now or in the future.

55:43

There is no ability to appeal to induction that the future will be like the past if all of it is sheer accidents.

55:50

The unbeliever says, science, science, we gotta observe it, we've gotta see it. But let's do an internal critique.

55:57

The Christian believes that the all -powerful, personal, loving God has revealed to us,

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Hebrews chapter one, that he carries the universe along to its intended destination.

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That Jesus upholds all things by the word of his power. That means that he carries it to its intended destination, that God is sovereign, he gives to the universe a fixed order.

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When we see miracles as Christians, they're supposed to surprise us, not the unbeliever.

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Anything's possible in the unbeliever's universe. When the unbeliever mocks you as a Christian for miracles in the

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Bible, you need to remember that you're the one that has the basis to believe that the universe is uniform and therefore miracles are strange occurrences.

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They're redemptive, they point us to God. When we see a dead man rise from the dead, we're the ones that are supposed to say, what is that?

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Right? We're the ones that are supposed to say, how in the world? Why? Because God governs the universe.

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He's given to it a fixed order. It can be clocked and timed. We can do science and physics and math.

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Why? Because the God who governs it and he gives it a law -like nature so that when miracles happens, we're supposed to go, what just happened?

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That sea, the Red Sea, the fish, the loaves, the little girl coming back from the dead,

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Lazarus coming back from the dead. We're supposed to be in awe of that. The unbeliever's system.

57:34

He mocks Christians for believing in miracles. But don't you realize in the unbeliever's system, frogs becoming princes is a real thing.

57:49

Think about it. Do you see that in the unbeliever's system, they have no basis to chastise the

57:55

Christians for miracles because the unbeliever believes that nothing turned into something, that inorganic matter became organic, non -moral matter became moral, fish became philosophers.

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Do you get the point? Their entire system, anything is possible.

58:13

When they see in the scriptures a dead man came back from the dead, they should see, well, strange things happen in this universe, right?

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Do you see the point? Now watch this. When the unbeliever chastises you as a Christian and they say, I believe in science.

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I believe in science. You need to say as a Christian, really? You believe in science?

58:35

Well, all of science is based upon induction, that the future will be like the past.

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So past experience will be like future experience because we can look back at what happened in the past, how we observe things, and we can project that into the future.

58:50

It's called induction, the uniformity of nature. And listen, do not let this turn you off because you're appealing to it right now.

58:59

You might be thinking, why do I care about that? Oh, you better care. You better care and you do care.

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You just don't know that you care. Some of you guys that know, you know that you know and why it matters, okay?

59:11

Induction is the very basis of everything you're doing right now. Everybody right now is sitting here in this room and none of you have been thinking at any point, oh my goodness,

59:22

I could totally flow away to the ceiling right now. Okay, none of you have.

59:28

You've all been sitting here and you've all been depending upon the uniformity in nature the entire time.

59:34

You haven't thought twice about it. When you got out of bed today, you guys rolled your covers aside, put your feet on the floor and you stood up.

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Did any of you guys think this morning when you woke up, you were like, oh, did anybody fear that you had flowed away?

59:52

Everybody got up today and you did stuff, right? You did stuff. You went to the bathroom, many of you guys went to the bathroom because you know based on past experience, if you don't, there'll be problems later, right?

01:00:02

You know, uniformity in nature. You went to the bathroom and you possibly got a drink of water, why?

01:00:09

Many of you guys are drinking stuff right now. Why are you drinking? No, I'm not gonna hurt you.

01:00:18

I like to kick people in the head but not my brothers and sisters, okay? So why are you drinking?

01:00:23

Why are you drinking? You're thirsty, so? So, don't drink. Your body needs water, so?

01:00:30

Don't drink. What will happen? Went right to it. You'll die.

01:00:36

Very good, okay? No hard questions today, it's early, right? So, you know based on past experience, the way our nature is, the way nature is uniform, if you don't drink, you die.

01:00:48

And so you drink because nature is uniform and you know this universe can be clocked and based on past experience, if you don't do that, you're gonna die.

01:00:57

And you do that at every single turn in your life. Listen closely because this is a devastating argument. They refute atheism at the start.

01:01:04

Atheism cannot even speak after this. They have no justification that provides the preconditions necessary for induction, the uniformity in nature.

01:01:15

Why? Their universe is ungoverned, it is unpurposed, it is time and chance acting on matter.

01:01:21

They have no basis to believe that now, the next five seconds from now, the next two weeks will be like the past.

01:01:27

All they have, time and chance acting on matter. Proof, Richard, sorry, Lawrence Krauss says, the physical constants we see came about by sheer accident.

01:01:37

If they're accidents, my friends, then there is no basis to appeal to them in the future. Guess what is now rendered useless?

01:01:44

Science, logic, everything. How about this? Do you know what depends upon the uniformity in nature?

01:01:53

The pharmaceutical industry. Can you imagine if we actually lived in the universe the atheists say we live in, which is time and chance acting on matter?

01:02:02

Cannot be dependent upon, no induction ultimately justifiable in the future.

01:02:07

Can you imagine, you go to the counter to the pharmacist, and you're like, here's the script, and he's like, whoa, we don't know.

01:02:16

The pharmacist gives you the stuff, and he's like, is this gonna work?

01:02:25

Did a few times before, we don't know in this crazy universe we live in, right?

01:02:30

Good luck, right? You know what's amazing? Every time someone sells a prescription, they're acting like a

01:02:38

Christian. And you know what else? When they sell a prescription at a pharmacy, they're acting like a

01:02:44

Christian, how? In the ethical responsibility they have to make sure that they're giving the right dosage, the right kind of medicine to the right person, because it is against God's law to hurt people and to kill them.

01:02:59

Do you see? The pharmaceutical industry is a

01:03:04

Christian kind of industry. Some of you guys are like, no, no, no. It needs reform, okay, granted.

01:03:11

But the point is, you get it? In order to be a pharmacist, you've gotta first be a

01:03:16

Christian to be consistent. How about another industry that's based upon the uniformity of nature? How about flying airplanes?

01:03:24

Do you know what's amazing? Every single atheist pilot is amazing, right? The atheist pilot gets behind his seat and does his checks and everything, and he gets ready to launch this aircraft with all these souls behind him into the sky, and his fundamental assertion about reality is, ready?

01:03:42

Time and chance acting on matter, a completely ungoverned, unguided universe. You know what he can't do?

01:03:48

He can't fly a plane like that. Every time the atheist gets on that tarmac and goes to take off, do you know what he abandons?

01:03:56

His atheism. He believes in he lives in an ordered and guided universe at that point, and he depends upon the laws of physics and logic and math at every turn.

01:04:06

If he doesn't, it's not possible. Do you know what else he depends upon? The ethical responsibility he has for all the people behind him.

01:04:15

He acts for a moment like they're not just merely protoplasm. He acts for a moment like there's actually meaning and value and dignity in all these people.

01:04:24

I was watching the movie Sully about two weeks ago with my family. It was amazing, just this moment, this plane crash.

01:04:32

I don't wanna ruin the movie for you, but it happened in real life, so you need to catch up. The plane lands, specifically said it wasn't a crash, it was a water landing.

01:04:41

It lands in the water, and what was really dawned on me as soon as the movie was playing through was that Sully was just broken up, and he kept asking how many survivors, how many survivors, are there 155?

01:04:55

He didn't wanna do anything until he found out about the survivors and needed to know about the survivors. When he found out, he just broke down and started crying because he realized, okay, everyone's alive.

01:05:04

They're alive. You know what that is? What every single one of us know. Those are image bearers of God, and it matters if they die.

01:05:14

You see, here's the thing. Without God, you have no basis whatsoever to care about the souls on board of an airplane or the souls really anywhere.

01:05:21

There's no basis for grief. There's no basis for sorrow. There's no basis for suffering, but only as a

01:05:26

Christian can you have meaning in all of those things. When the atheist says to you, I believe in science, ask them, oh, you believe in science?

01:05:33

Well, don't you believe that we live in an ungoverned, unguided universe? They say, yeah. Okay, give me a justification using your worldview and not mine.

01:05:42

Give me a justification for the uniformity in nature that the future will be like the past with your atheism, and watch.

01:05:50

Here's the internal critique. The unbeliever says, oh, okay, so science, you need to have uniformity in nature.

01:05:56

You need to have the future like the past. Okay, so here's how it works. I know the future will be like the past because it was before.

01:06:08

You gotta think about that for a moment. I know the future will be like the past because it was before.

01:06:17

Listen, when the unbeliever says this, it doesn't take a Christian to point it out.

01:06:22

Bertrand Russell, one of the most famous atheists in history, he wrote about this problem in a book called

01:06:28

Problems in Philosophy. Listen closely, this is devastating. And he said this, Problems in Philosophy.

01:06:34

He said, we need a basis for the uniformity in nature. He says this, everything we do, literally everything we do is based upon the uniformity in nature.

01:06:45

Logic, language, science, everything's based on uniformity in nature. And he says this, he actually asks an imaginary opponent.

01:06:54

He says, give me a basis for the future being like the past. I need to know. Everything in our experience is based on this.

01:07:02

I need to know we have a basis for the future being like the past. And he goes, and if you say to me, well, it always has been, he goes, that is a refutation of itself because nobody's asking you what the past was.

01:07:15

We're asking you, how do we know the future will be like the past?

01:07:21

And the moment you appeal to the past to do it, you are refuting yourself. You need something better than, well, it always has been.

01:07:28

So I was in a debate with some atheists a couple years ago and I brought this up. I said, give me a basis using your atheistic worldview, not mine, your atheistic worldview for the future being like the past.

01:07:41

Give me a basis. And he says this, well, it always has been.

01:07:47

And so I said, so you live by faith? And he goes, well, no.

01:07:54

I said, well, do you know the future? But like the past, he goes, well, no. I said, so you live by faith. He didn't like that.

01:08:01

Do you see, it is a faith commitment though. The atheist has faith, but it's a blind faith in chaos.

01:08:08

I really hope so. The Christian also has faith, but it's not a blind faith. It is faith in a person.

01:08:15

It's in a God who's revealed himself and he's told us with certainty, the same kind of certainty we can say you are to love your neighbor and not eat your neighbor.

01:08:24

God says that he governs the universe and he guides it. Listen, when the unbeliever says to you, I believe in science, he has no basis for it.

01:08:33

How about laws of logic? How am I doing on time? Am I way over? We're done? Let me wrap it up here, okay?

01:08:42

Hey, you guys, I'm giving you your money's worth, right? So laws of logic. The unbeliever says that there is only the atheist, only the material, nothing spiritual, nothing immaterial.

01:08:57

And yet they appeal to laws of logic. But again, like laws of math, laws of logic are universal.

01:09:04

They are unchanging. They are necessary for our human experience. And the unbeliever wants them, but they cannot justify them.

01:09:13

You know what the atheist wants at all points? They just wanna gimme. Just gimme that.

01:09:18

Just gimme logic so I can argue against God. Just gimme science so I can live. Just gimme ethics for my children.

01:09:26

Just gimme it. I just wanna have that so I can argue against God. What we need to do as Christians is point to people and say, you can't even have that without Jesus Christ.

01:09:35

You can't have science without Jesus Christ. You can't have logic. You can't have ethics. And here's a good point.

01:09:41

Laws of logic. You've been depending upon them the whole time. You're doing it right now. As I'm speaking, you're going, are there any holes in what he's saying?

01:09:49

Are there any inconsistencies? And if I had them, you'd point them out. And rightfully so. Because as Christians, when we stand on God's revelation, we know our thoughts are to be a reflection of the way

01:09:59

God thinks. That God cannot lie. To lie is to engage in contradiction.

01:10:07

To lie is to contradict what is actually true. The basis,

01:10:13

I mean this can be expanded upon, the basis of laws of logic is the very character and mind of God. Unchanging, universal, immaterial.

01:10:23

And as Christians, we have a basis for laws of logic. But the unbeliever, ready, who believes that he's matter in motion or she's matter in motion, they have no justification for immaterial, universal laws of thought.

01:10:36

So when the atheist says to you, Christianity is so illogical, you know what your first answer should be? Well, I reject that, but so what?

01:10:46

You're an atheist, right? They say, well, yeah. Well, then laws of logic aren't necessary.

01:10:52

They aren't universal. They aren't unchanging. Why are you chastising me? My grandpappy was a fish.

01:11:00

Is it wrong to be inconsistent and illogical? And the unbeliever goes, well, no, it's not absolute.

01:11:08

Okay, well, to the good, see what I'm gonna say about it, come. I see you got a purple. Wood. And the sky is hello.

01:11:17

And the mother said, what, what? And ice cream under the bridge and cars and zoom.

01:11:25

And the unbeliever goes, wait, you're not making any sense. Oh, but I am making sense.

01:11:32

And a great example is I had this atheist come into a chapel one day at the hospital.

01:11:37

And I used to put signs up all over the hospital every day. And I'd say, come and refute the

01:11:44

Christian pastor. And I would invite the Christian pastor and I would invite people to just come in and argue with me. It was grand because these people were like on detoxification medicine, high as a kite.

01:11:53

And they would just come in to like argue with the pastor. And it was just great. Rooms were full every single night. So this atheist comes in and he's challenging me.

01:12:04

And I invited it and I just wanted to love these people. And so many people came to Christ through it, it's amazing. That's how Apologia Church was formed, by the way, out of that hospital.

01:12:13

So praise God for that. But this atheist, militant atheist comes in, he's challenging me.

01:12:19

And so I brought up laws of logic. I said, well, laws of logic. I said, you're a materialist, you're an atheist.

01:12:26

There's no God, there's no meaning, no order, nothing immaterial. He goes, right, right. I said, okay, are laws of logic absolutely necessary?

01:12:36

And he knew what I was doing. And he was like, no.

01:12:43

I said, okay, they are. He goes, no. I go, okay, great, thank you, they are.

01:12:49

He goes, no. I said, good, okay, yes. And he goes, no.

01:12:55

I said, so yes. And he goes, no. And now everybody's face is red.

01:13:00

They're like just trying to hold it in. He's getting furious now. He's like, no. I said, okay, so yes.

01:13:06

He goes, why are you doing this? I said, why am I not doing this? And he kept going and I was contradicting him.

01:13:12

And I said, is it bothering you that I'm contradicting you? He says, yes.

01:13:17

I said, no. I said, do you see the point? I said, you said the laws of logic are not necessary, not universal, not absolute because you're trying to be a consistent atheist.

01:13:28

But the moment I start contradicting you and engaging in logical contradiction, you won't have it.

01:13:35

Why? Because you're made in the image of God. You know the God that I'm talking about. Your problem is sin.

01:13:40

And though you try to construct a very sophisticated worldview, you can't get around the image of God that you are.

01:13:47

And the unbeliever, all they have is brain gas. The thoughts that are happening in their mind is the result of chemical processes simply firing away in their head.

01:13:55

In that case, they're not even really thinking, they're fizzing. And you happen to be fizzing like a

01:14:00

Christian and they're fizzing like an atheist. So what? That's all they have.

01:14:06

I talked to this atheist in our debate. He's a materialist. I said, are laws of logic material or immaterial in nature?

01:14:13

Are they made of matter? And he goes, immaterial. I said, okay, can you put one in my hand, please?

01:14:21

He goes, Jeff, I hate when you do this. He said, no, no, it's happening in my brain.

01:14:28

I said, okay, so can I cut out the law of logic? And he goes, no, no, it's the result of chemical processes.

01:14:34

And if it's the result of chemical processes, listen, it's not a law, it's not universal, and I'm not required to obey it because what's happening in your brain is different than what's happening in my brain.

01:14:47

And if all you have is brain gas, you don't have laws, you just simply have chemical processes.

01:14:53

That's all the unbeliever has. That's an internal critique of their system. And it's not a matter of just a sophisticated argument.

01:15:00

You could say it as simply as this. So what? You're an atheist. You live in a universe that doesn't care.

01:15:06

There's no justice ahead of any of us. That's all you've got. And the reason you construct this system and yet behave like a

01:15:13

Christian is because you know the God that I'm talking about. And you need Jesus Christ. He's your only hope.

01:15:20

You need to turn from your sin. This is who Jesus is. He's God who came to rescue rebels. He took on flesh, died for sinners, and rose from the dead.

01:15:28

Your only hope is turning to him in faith. And the last thing, and this is quick because it's easy and it impacts us profoundly.

01:15:39

Ethics. You get new opportunities to underscore this point every day because every day there is sin in the world and every day there's brokenness in the world.

01:15:49

Pick a subject. Pick an item that happens on the news today. And you point to the unbeliever and you say, can

01:15:56

I ask you a question about that? Is that wrong? Was it absolutely wrong? Let me do an internal critique with your atheism.

01:16:04

Was that wrong? I used to bring this up when it happened because it was a good example.

01:16:15

Couple years ago in Florida, there was a man, many of you guys remember this, there was a man who nobody really knows why it happened, but he essentially got undressed, was nude, walked across a bridge and he came upon a homeless man who

01:16:33

I think was sleeping. And while naked, he attacked this homeless man and began to eat his face.

01:16:41

You guys heard that story? And it was all captured on a security camera. And you could see, listen, when the police pulled up and the police hopped out, there was a little barrier wall right here.

01:16:53

You couldn't really see what was happening over the wall. So you see the police officer pull up to see, okay, what's going on? And he looks over this wall and you saw the police officer fall back on his heels.

01:17:01

Like he was so shocked at what he was seeing with this man hovering over this homeless man.

01:17:09

And it's just an amazing example to use when discussing with an unbeliever their perspective.

01:17:16

Say, ask you a question. There's an example. From your atheistic perspective, was that absolutely wrong? Now, if the unbeliever is being consistent with their own perspective, they will say no.

01:17:28

All the atheist has is sentimentality and preference.

01:17:35

They have no absolutes, none. No ability to justify any absolute moral claim.

01:17:41

If you press the unbeliever on their position, they have to say what Richard Dawkins says in River Out of Eden. No good, no evil, blind, pitiless, indifference.

01:17:51

Dr. Will Provine, professor of biology at Cornell said there is no imminent morality. You know what that means? It's an illusion.

01:17:58

There's no morality. He says you live, you die, and you're gone. You're absolutely gone when you die.

01:18:03

That is what the unbelievers have. But the point of contact, listen, the point of contact is actually touching at the image of God in them and showing them that they cannot live that way.

01:18:15

They will not live that way. Because while the unbeliever says there's no absolute, imminent morality for any of us, guess what he does?

01:18:23

He goes home and he kisses his wife. He goes home and he hugs his children. He goes home and he demands justice.

01:18:30

When somebody steals his car stereo, do you know what he does? He calls the cops. And he acts as though there's some sort of moral infraction.

01:18:39

He acts as though there's a need, a demand for justice. What we need to point unbelievers to is you don't have justice without Jesus.

01:18:47

You don't have righteousness without Jesus. You don't have laws of any sort without Jesus. There's no wisdom without Jesus.