Faith vs Science: A Battle of Worldviews

All right, so I told you

I was doing a series at another church called 10 questions and we went through the 10 toughest questions for Christianity.

So the question for this evening is, does science disprove God? And nope, let's go home.

Who wants a closing prayer? All right. That's the short answer. Ta -da.

How'd you like that? All right. Faith versus science, which is correct? Science is evidence -based.

Faith is believing with an absence of evidence. How do you like the way that's framed? Anybody like that, dislike that?

Great. This is terrific. This is the interactive portion of the presentation. Please feel free to speak up.

I disagree with it. Oh, you got an insight. All right. Why do you disagree with it, Miss Erica?

Because faith doesn't, it's not blind. Like there's evidence to support how it feels.

All right. Right. Exactly. And why is it faith versus science, as if these were adversaries, right?

The people who set the terms, set the parameters for what they want to teach you, right?

So this is loaded already. This is, this has built in presuppositions into the whole premise of this situation anyway.

The way the very proposition is phrased pits them against each other as if they were enemies.

In other words, they both can't be correct at the same time, right? It's either faith or science. It can't be a combination of both.

All right. So this presentation is going to be based particularly on our worldview and our presuppositions.

So that's our first slide, the presuppositions. Anyone of you want to take a guess at what a presupposition is?

Excellent. It's your basic assumptions about reality. Everybody comes to the table with basic assumptions about reality, about what they think the world is all about.

Everyone has presuppositions. Okay. I'm going to give you Greg Bonson's definition. He says a presupposition is an elementary or foundational assumption in one's reasoning or in the process by which opinions are formed.

It is not just any assumption in an argument, but a personal commitment that is held at the most basic level of one's network of beliefs.

So it's a commitment to a particular view before you start looking at the evidence.

Presuppositions form a wide ranging foundational perspective or a starting point, an anchor, okay, in terms of which everything else is interpreted and evaluated.

As such, presuppositions have the greatest authority in one's thinking, being treated as one's least negotiable beliefs and being granted the highest immunity of revision.

In other words, what he's saying is people's presuppositions are very difficult to dislodge.

When somebody has a presupposition, that's their basic assumption about reality. And in order for us to move them, we have to explain to them that they have presuppositions, we have presuppositions, we're not going to argue about the evidence, we're going to argue about what makes your worldview true to begin with.

What is the foundation that you're standing on? Because that's what's going to make all the difference.

Okay? Kind of.

A preconceived notion might just be something like a figment of somebody's imagination or something like that.

Even saying a preconceived notion is based on the fact that we can have preconceptions and things that are going on in our mind.

So presuppositions affect two main areas of thought. Metaphysics and epistemology.

Two big words, all right? Anybody want to take a guess at what metaphysics is?

No, not the physical world, that would be the material world. It's, that's ontology, exactly, the study of the nature of reality.

So that word meta means change and it also means other, okay?

So other than the physical world, metaphysics is the study of the nature of reality, the origin structure and nature of what is real.

Now, you recognize how important somebody's metaphysical presupposition is going to play into his or her worldview, right?

This is the filter by which they're going to process all the information they see, okay?

Next one is epistemology. It's the study of the nature of limits of knowledge. In other words, epistemology is the study of how we know what we know.

How do we ascertain truth? How do we know what is true or what is false?

How do we have access to truth and falsity? That's a big, big question.

I was doing an online discussion with somebody and it was, it was supposed to be presuppositional, but he kept going at me with evidence and he kind of was steamrolling me and I finally got him to slow down and I said, okay, listen, you're arguing about evidence and all these little different things, but you haven't told me what is the basis for your worldview?

I said, what is truth on your worldview? And he stopped dead in his tracks.

He was like, reality?

I said, who's reality? Yours, Hitler's, Mother Teresa's, who's reality? See, when you ask somebody, what is truth?

They haven't thought these things out for the most part. You might get it to hit a philosophy student who starts, you know, processing through these things, but you want to ask somebody, what is truth on your worldview?

And we'll get into what that is tonight. So your worldview is going to need to answer these two questions.

What is the nature of reality and how do you know what you know? How do you ascertain truth on your worldview?

Okay. So from our point of view, God set the world up in a way such that he's the creator, we're the creature and he can communicate with us.

He reveals things to us such that we can know them and we can know them for certain.

Why? Because God is omniscient. If you have an omniscient being who reveals something to you, it's certainly true because he knows everything.

Without an omniscient being revealing something to you, how do you know anything for certain? We were talking before, another fact,

I was talking with Shane before, another fact could come along and completely dislodge your position. You won't know anything for certain on an atheistic worldview.

Okay? So two questions you want to ask people when they're talking with you is, what is the nature of reality and how do you ascertain truth?

How do you know what you know on your worldview? Okay, so let's take a look at science.

When you're looking up the definition of science, where do you look? You Google it.

That's what you do if you're a millennial. Alright. Sorry. I'm older than a millennial.

I'm pre -millennial. Get it? See? You had to do it.

Alright. Science. According to Google, science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

Can anybody spot some presuppositions in that definition? Yes. The idea of the physical and natural world being interconnected and that it doesn't make you look poor and unobservable.

Exactly. So science, according to them, is the study of the natural world. Well, what about the metaphysical world, the part that's behind the physical world, moving the physical world forward, right?

So they start out with the intellectual and practical. So their presupposition is, okay, we can ascertain truth, first of all, about the physical and natural world through what?

Observation and experiment. They assume that observation and experiment are the only ways you can know something.

The only way you can know something is through your five senses, according to them. So the question you might want to ask them is, which one of your five senses taught you that, that you can only know things through your senses?

You see, these presuppositions have gaping holes in them. So they have this presupposition right off the bat.

Okay, so faith, we're doing, we're talking about science versus faith. And when you want to know what faith is, what do you do?

There you go. All right. I tried to trick you. Well, the millennials

Google it. All right. Faith. I like the way they put this complete trust or confidence or something or someone.

Then number two, strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion based on spiritual apprehension, rather than proof.

So if you're talking about things from a spiritual point of view, wow, there's no proof for that.

This is just a, a spiritual apprehension that we have. There's no way to confirm things in this spiritual world.

Or like they say, it's like Mark Twain says, believe in what you know, ain't true, right?

How many people, how many atheists say, you don't even know that that's true. You're believing what you know, isn't true, right?

So what does the Bible tell us about faith? Faith is what? The assurance of things hopeful, the conviction of things not seen.

All right. We have an inner witness of the Holy spirit that brings conviction upon us and God reveals things to us.

It's also known as convicting evidence. Evidence that makes somebody, someone fully agree, understand and realize the truth or validity of something, especially based on argument or discussion.

So when we're talking about the things of God and we're going, we're opening up God's word, which is a revelation from an omniscient

God. We can trust that the words on the page are true and we can be certain about them.

And Jesus is my sheep, hear my voice, right? We're going to have that inner witness of the Holy spirit that testifies that what we're reading is true.

Romans 1 19 says, for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, naming his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse. Every single human being, according to the word of God knows that God exists.

There are no such thing as atheists. They'll tell you, oh, I don't believe in God. There's no proof.

Our Bible tells us they do believe in God. They're just suppressing that truth in their unrighteousness.

They don't want to be accountable to this God because they know they're guilty in God's sight.

Incidentally, we do apologetics, which means a defense for the faith. This word without excuse is an apologetics without a defense.

So when the atheist stands before God to give an account of himself, he's going to be without a defense.

Right, and that really should break our hearts because that's a human soul, that's a soul that God created, it's our job to bring them the good news, to give a reason for the hope that lies within us with gentleness and respect.

That's why we need to know these things to be able to convey them to unbelievers and see their souls saved.

So, human beings are not neutral. Everybody has a point of view. Everybody has a presupposition.

Scientists, naturalistic scientists, have presuppositions. Christian scientists have presuppositions.

This is where it's a war of the worldviews, whose presuppositions provide us with a world that we can ascertain and know truth.

That's what this is about, okay? Okay, so I pulled up a little bit better definition of science than, you know,

Google. So this is from the sciencecouncil .org and it says science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.

That's a little bit more palatable. So scientific methodology includes the following. Objective observation, measurement and data.

Are human beings objective? No, no one is neutral. The atheist is suppressing the knowledge of God, right?

The Christian comes to the table saying God exists. I'm going to argue from that vantage point forward, okay?

So neither one of them come to the evidence neutral. The atheist doesn't say, well, I'm going to set my scientific mindset aside.

And the Christian doesn't say, well, I'm going to set God aside, although they sometimes do that with classical and evidential apologetics.

But no human being is objective. Next is evidence, okay?

Empirical and forensic. So scientists, science is based on observing things with your senses.

Again, in their worldview, the question becomes, how can you trust your senses? Why do you trust that your senses are reliable?

In a world of random, in a random chance universe, right? Maybe the process of evolution isn't, the process of evolution, according to them, is, gets the strong survive.

But evolution doesn't choose for truth. Evolution chooses for survivability, right?

So the evidence may be skewed based on your senses. Experiment and observation is benchmarks for testing hypothesis.

Induction, reasoning to establish conclusions drawn from facts or examples. And this is a big, big problem for atheists.

It's called the problem of induction. How do you know tomorrow, what's going to happen tomorrow, okay, today?

How do you know that the laws of gravity are not going to change tomorrow? How do you know that the atomic mass or the speed of light or Planck's constant or any of these constants that we have in the universe are not going to change?

You, without appealing to yesterday, right? So you have no knowledge for certain that tomorrow is going to be like today, except in a worldview that's, that has

God upholding the universe in the palm of his hand, keeping it that way. In a random chance world based on, you know, chaos, why would tomorrow be like today?

Okay, they have no answer for that. Repetition, obviously science, scientific experiments have to be repeated and proved over and over and over again.

Again, that's going to be part of induction. Critical analysis. Again, how can you be critical about something when your presupposition is

God doesn't exist? There is no such thing as the supernatural world. That's not being critical. Verification and testing, critical exposure to scrutiny, peer review and assessment.

So this, whatever conclusions they come to are going to have to be reviewed by other scientists who are also of the same mindset.

So again, it's not going to be objective. The real question is, why is science even possible in the first place?

How do we ascertain truth? Okay. And why does the universe stay at the constant that it is?

Why is tomorrow going to be like today on a random chance universe? Okay.

So are scientists objective? I'm going to give you a couple of quotes from, from some of them.

This is Dr. Richard Lawton. He says, we take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated, just so stories, because we have a prior commitment to materialism.

We cannot allow a divine foot in the door. Seems very objective to me.

I wouldn't want him on a trial, Jerry, right? This guy's got his mind made up. That's not looking at the evidence critically.

Are scientists open to evidence? Francis Crick, the founder of DNA says this, biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.

So they're looking at cells under a microscope. They're looking at DNA and it looks designed, but I have to constantly remind myself that it wasn't designed.

Sounds very open to evidence, doesn't he? Again, I wouldn't want this guy investigating a crime scene.

You're guilty. That's it. No other evidence involved. Here's my favorite scientist, Richard Dawkins.

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose, but then argues that they're not.

Just the product of a random chance universe. There's no purpose or design behind this. He has a presupposition that materialism is his presupposition and evolution is true.

So, are scientists using reason, right? We talked about that as part of the scientific process.

You have to reason to the conclusion. Again, Richard Dawkins says, DNA neither cares nor knows,

DNA just is, and we dance to its music. Well, think about it. If DNA just is and we dance to its music, then everything he just says was just his little evolution dance.

Has no basis in truth. It's just his DNA causing him to say these things.

Second, he says, DNA doesn't care and DNA doesn't know. He just made a truth statement as if he knows something.

See how self -refuting this is? DNA neither knows nor cares. How do you know that? Okay. Third, wouldn't people of faith who you have disdain for just be dancing to their

DNA? Wouldn't that have to be a possibility on your worldview? Why are you so upset with people of faith if it's just the way their

DNA is programmed them? So, how does he know what purpose is?

We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA. That is exactly what we are for.

Pretty bold statement. We are machines for propagating DNA and the propagation of DNA is a self -sustaining process.

It is every living object's sole reason for living. Yeah, exactly.

How does he know the purpose when he just said that DNA neither cares nor knows? Two slides ago he says, there is no purpose for the world.

When you hold to that presupposition and you are not allowed to let a divine foot in the door, you have to concoct a bunch of stuff and hope that it sticks together.

It's because of his presupposition, his pre -commitment to materialism.

He cannot allow a supernatural explanation for what's going on.

I keep saying he just does his little evolution dance. Do scientists do critical analysis?

Here's Stephen Jay Gould, he's a Harvard paleontologist, tops in his field. He says the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as a trade secret of paleontology.

Evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches.

The rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.

What he's saying is the fossil record does not bear out the truth of evolution.

The lack of fossils, he says, makes the scientists say we have to infer these things.

We're pre -committed to evolution, so how do I get these fossils to fit that story?

Versus looking at the story and saying, okay, let me see where that leads. They start with a pre -commitment.

Here's David Berlinski, he's a world -renowned mathematician. He says there are gaps in the fossil graveyard, places where there should be intermediate forms but where there is nothing whatsoever instead.

No paleontologist denies that. This is so. It is simply a fact. Darwin's theory and the fossil record are in conflict.

When he talks about intermediate forms, he's talking about that missing link, the fossil that bridges fishes to men.

There should be millions and millions of these things based on what evolution teaches because it happened over millions and millions of years and it's a very slow process.

The bankruptcy of the fossil record is enough to disqualify evolution. But better than that,

Darwin himself says this. To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection seems,

I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. How does an eye form itself over time?

He recognized intuitively there's no way that's going to happen. So one of the things that the scientific method doesn't include, what scientific imperative tells you that you must be honest in your findings.

If we're all just dancing to our DNA, where's the responsibility to be honest?

Funny, they have these things called, these are the peppered moths, you ever see these in the science textbooks?

There's one white moth up top and one gray moth on the bottom and this supposedly was to show how the white moth was picked off.

The birds would come and they'd see that moth and eat it and the other one, the gray moth, would survive.

So this is natural selection according to them. What they don't tell you is that those moths do not land on those trees and they're pinned there.

They don't perch themselves on the bark of the tree, they're up in the leaves, they hide.

So in order to make this sound true, they had to get these moths and pin them to the tree.

Yet, this still appears in science textbooks. Next, you've probably seen these, these are heckles embryos.

These are to show that this is a pig and that's some kind of sea creature, it's to show that they all have the same vertebrae.

It looks really good, right? Fairnagle arches are not gill slits, even in fake drawings.

So what happened was they asked him, okay, could you show us the animals that you did this with?

He said, no. They said, well, where'd you get the drawings? He says, I just drew them. This is a figment of heckles imagination.

This is not based in any sort of fact whatsoever. So these are just drawings because he's committed to evolution, so he has to make this look right.

Okay, you probably heard of Piltdown Man. This was billed as the missing link. This was the fossil that was going to bridge the apes and the humans, right?

So they found a human skull and an ape jaw, well, he didn't say it was a human skull and an ape jaw.

He billed this as the intermediate fossil. Later on, when they actually were allowed to examine the skull, they found out that part of it was human and part of it was ape, and then they named who the forger was in the newspapers.

Yet, Piltdown Man, Java Man, Lucy, all these supposed intermediate fossils, these are the apostles of evolution, right?

These things still appear in the science textbooks. Why? Because they're committed. They have a pre -commitment to this worldview.

They won't let it go. As Dr. Lawatton said, you cannot allow a divine foot in the door.

Okay, so I asked you before, what scientific imperative tells you that you must be honest in your findings? Christians have ten commandments, scientists have one, eat or be eaten, right?

We have to push this agenda at all costs. We are not allowed to let a divine foot in the door.

So let's take a look at how evolution holds up scientifically, right?

Objective observation. Are these guys objective in any way, shape, or form? No. Right?

Evidence. They doctored the evidence to make their point.

Experiment on our observation as benchmarks for testing hypothesis. Is evolution testable?

No. Thank you. There's no experiment that you can do that can prove evolution.

Why? Because it takes millions and millions and millions of years according to them. So it fails the experiment test. Induction. They can't explain induction.

They can't tell you for certain what tomorrow is going to be based on past experience. That's out. Evolution. Repetition.

Can you repeat the experiment? Is evolution repeatable? No. Critical analysis. Based on what all these guys have said and done on their findings?

Not at all. Verification and testing. Critical exposure to scrutiny, peer review, and assessment. These guys are all in the tank for this.

So that's out. Basically, evolution is a belief, but not a scientific fact based on the scientific method itself.

It does not hold water. There we go. So how does it hold us scientifically?

Not so good. Religiously, it holds up pretty well.

Because it's based on an apprehension rather than proof. There is no proof for evolution. It's their religion, and they have to hold to it.

Because when you hold to religion, you can shape and mold people the way you want. You can get them to believe that they're animals.

Let's move a little bit quicker. I'm using a book now by Paul Nelson called Presuppositionalism. He's a scientist, and he says, as a scientist,

I'm qualified to state that evolution is not an empirical science. It cannot be demonstrated by observation, nor proven by experimentation.

The transmutation of one distinct species into another has never been observed because it is beyond the limits of experimentation.

No human being can live long enough to observe it. It's impossible to verify, because it cannot be tested. Therefore, evolution cannot be classified as a theory, because by definition, a theory must be testable.

Evolution is simply unprovable. It's a speculative philosophy, a faith projection back into time.

Okay. So, what does the naturalist propose, the naturalistic worldview propose?

It proposes that nature is governed entirely by natural law. Natural law is what's going to govern everything we see.

The laws of nature are sovereign. They cannot be broken. They can't be violated. That's why miracles are not possible.

Every aspect of the universe is obedient to the natural law, because natural law governs everything.

Again, miracles cannot occur. The laws of nature are immutable. They can't change. Otherwise, the entire enterprise of science is impossible.

Right? So, if the laws of nature were mutable and changed over time, well, then we couldn't rely on the results of the scientific experiments we did.

So, they're immutable. Naturalism absolutely depends on the immutable God of natural law to make sense of anything.

Sounds like a seminary class in evolution, right? Natural law is eternal.

Believers in naturalism hold the laws of nature had no beginning. They just are and always have been.

You ever hear Carl Sagan? The cosmos is all that is, ever was, or ever will be.

Sounds very religious, the way it rolls off his tongue. So, these laws are not created, but have existed for all eternity.

This is a metaphysical reality that they hold to by what? Faith. Natural law is self -determining, right?

Natural law determines all materialistic causes and effects. Every cause and effect is due to the natural law that governs it.

But self -determination can only come from a person or a self. Laws do not select for anything, let alone truth.

To the naturalist, the sovereign, immutable, eternal, and self -deterministic God of natural law is the cause of the intricate order and design of nature.

So, this is something they hold to by faith. There's no experiment they can do to prove it. Again, it's a deeply held presupposition.

And to dislodge them from that, we have to present the Christian worldview, showing them that without God, you could not be certain of anything.

You could not know anything for certain. Okay. I'm going to pass by this.

They personify the natural laws. It says, you know, they call the natural laws Mother Nature.

And you remember that old chiffon commercial? I know I'm dating myself, right? It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature. Most of you don't even know what

I'm talking about. That's okay. All right. All right, so natural law possesses the divine attributes of sovereignty, immutability, eternality, self -determination, and personhood.

And God possesses the divine attributes of sovereignty, immutability, eternality, self -determination, and personhood.

But their presupposition prevents them from seeing that this comes from the sovereign hand of God.

Their presupposition is that the existence of God is impossible. Therefore, he doesn't exist.

Their prior faith commitment determines their conclusion. So, where you start, what you park yourself on at the beginning is what you're going to end up with.

It would be like somebody, you ever see those guys who do the metal detectors on the beach? And they go up and down, up and down for like hours at a time, and they find like a little thing, it's not worth anything, right?

So, it would be like the guy with the metal detector. You meet him in the parking lot, and you say, what happened? He says, oh, there's no wood, glass, or aluminum on the beach.

It's like, well, you're using a metal detector. Of course there's no wood, glass, or aluminum. They're using the wrong tool.

They're trying to use naturalistic tools to measure a supernatural occurrence, a metaphysical reality.

So, the conclusion, faith and science. Anselm said, credo ut intelligam, and it was based on the teaching of Augustine, which basically says, it's a

Latin phrase that means, I believe in order that I may understand. It summarizes the proper relationship between faith and knowledge.

Faith and science are not enemies, they are husband and wife. You cannot have a couple, okay, you cannot have a marriage without a husband and a wife, the same way you cannot know anything without faith and science.

For us, faith in the triune God and the revelation of his inspired word precedes the understanding of everything else. We believe the word of God in order that we might understand the universe in all of its reality.

Belief must precede understanding. You understand what that means? They believe that materialism is true and then filter everything through that belief.

We start off believing that God is true. His laws are written on our heart.

We have what Calvin said, the senses divinitas, a sense of the divine built within us.

And if we don't suppress that, okay, we're gonna see things the way God intended them to see.

So I want you to look at this real quick and tell me what you see. What do you think that is? She said her room, very good.

Looks like a pile of junk, right? And from this angle, I would agree with you, but just watch this for a second.

Okay, so this is a perfect illustration of what seems to be a pile of junk. There's a couch in the back, there was a guitar

I saw, a couple of statues and things. And when God creates reality, human beings are all over the place, looking at reality from all these different directions.

And they could see the couch and identify it as a couch, and would they be right? Absolutely they would be right, because they're created in the image of God and they can know things.

But it's only until that you look at this in the way that God intended and designed it, through his eyes, through his word, that you're gonna see it clearly and understand it for certain.

That's why when the camera rolled around and you look through that little black peephole, you saw what the artist intended when he put all this junk together.

I'm not saying that God created junk in the world, but he created all these things. There's all these different facts in the world, and they could be interpreted in any different way.

However, God has an intention and a design for those facts. He has a purpose for those things.

We need to think God's thoughts after him to understand the reality of what he created, okay?

All right. So, you cannot do science without faith, and both sides have presuppositions.

I like the way C .S. Lewis said it. He says, I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it

I see everything else. Right, the sun illuminates everything. And then we have scripture that testifies to that, too.

Psalm 36, For with you is the fountain of life, in your light do we see light.

So, it's only in God's light that we get to see. He's the one who provides the light, who gives us revelation of things, such that we can know them for certain.

Proverbs 2 .6 says, For the Lord gives wisdom from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

So important that when we read our scripture, we understand and know that those things are the only things that we can know for certain because God is omniscient.

He reveals them to us in such a way that we can know them. Right, we're receptors, like information needs a transmitter and a receiver.

Again, this goes back to the preconditions of intelligibility. Which worldview can properly explain how we know anything?

On an atheistic worldview, there's no transmitter, there's no information and no receiver.

There's no message. It's completely impersonal. The basis for their worldview is irrationality.

It wasn't a person. Only persons rationalize. So what's basic and fundamental on their worldview is irrationality.

What's basic and fundamental on our worldview is omnipotence, omniscience, perfect rationality.

It's where we get the laws of logic from. So, basically it comes down to this. In the end, the conflict is not between faith and science.

The conflict is between theistic and naturalistic presuppositions. Make sense?

Questions? It was that good.

Go ahead. No, I think that it's just the same as the fact that science or evolutionary theory is based primarily on faith and belief but has no reason to account for belief.

And that's really the point they can't argue because I believe that it's the book you gave me on Dr.

Lyle who points out that when you try to argue like evidence with a non -believer, they're just seeing it through their glasses.

So they're always going to have a counter -argument when you point out that science or evolutionary science doesn't play by its own rules.

There's really no counter -argument. Correct. Perfect, yeah. And Dr. Lyle does a great job of this and he was taught by Bonson.

You don't want to argue evidence. That's like arguing the leaves at the end of the tree versus arguing the root.

We want to get to the root of your worldview. Again, the question is how do you ascertain truth?

How do you know what you know? And what is the nature of reality? What is truth?

You can stop people in their tracks when you ask them those questions but just be prepared to give them the answers, the proper answers and recognize that without God, there is no truth.

We always say without God, there is no morality but without God, there is no truth because there's no intention and purpose for the universe if there was no one creating it with intention and purpose.

If it just came, popped into existence out of nothing, then we can define all these different facts however we want and we wouldn't be wrong because there is no intent and purpose in making the universe behind it, right?

But if there is a creator and obviously there is and he created things with intention and a design and a purpose, then we need to find out what that purpose is.

You ask somebody, what's the meaning of life? You're gonna probably get a subjective answer unless you're talking to a

Christian. What's the meaning of life? To glorify God, right? Yes. How would you narrow down the two questions that we should ask somebody?

Is one, how do you know that what you believe is true? Is that a good question?

Yeah, I would say, what is truth? What is truth? Okay, now, they're probably gonna give you what's called the correspondence theory of truth and they're gonna say, truth is that which conforms to reality and that's really a tautology, okay?

What is reality? Oh, reality is what's true. Now we're in a big circle.

So you wanna say, who's reality? Who defines reality? You know, if I define reality, well then

I define what's true. Is there a greater metaphysical answer to this question?

What is the meaning of life? If there was no creator and it popped into existence out of nothing, well then there is no meaning behind it.

So I can assign whatever I want to meaning, right? So what is truth?

For the Christian, truth is that which conforms to the mind of God, right? Whatever God thinks, whatever

God says about the world, that's what's true. How do we know? Because he created the world.

He created with an intent and a purpose and a plan, a design. So it was

Van Til, actually it was a scientist before that, I forget his name, I think it was Kepler. He says, truth is thinking

God's thoughts after him. We wanna think God's thoughts after him. When we think

God's thoughts, we're walking in truth. It's so important that we read our word, right?

What's the best book on apologetics? The Bible. Yes? That says,

I am the way, the truth. Absolutely, right. We don't just know about the truth, we know the truth.

The truth was a who before it was a what? You had a question? Yeah. Yes, the truth has to be a standard, has to be a standard.

So when I talk to people, yes, what is truth? So if you don't feel right and wrong, I mean, you have a conscience,

God gave you a conscience. So even atheists know right from wrong. So where did that come from? Tell me that evolved brother.

You know what I mean? I mean, it has to be a standard. You know what you like to say, like told things like, your truth binds you.

No, man, it has to have a standard. That's family, brother. Absolutely. But then, you know, the guy's mind is here.

There's a grave, there's. I gave them all. They're suppressing that truth in unrighteousness, right?

They don't wanna allow for the existence of God because then they're gonna be obligated to him. And they know, based on the law that's written in their heart, that they're guilty.

Yes. Sorry, just going back to my other question. So I know

I have the question, what is truth? But based upon metaphysics and epistemology, what would be, so like one of those, one question would be, what is truth?

What would be the other question to basically establish? How do you ascertain truth? How do you know what you know?

Okay? Because everybody said, well, I know stuff. How do you know what you know? Well, my senses.

How do you know your senses are reliable? How do you know you're not in the matrix right now? Serious.

I mean, and that's a question that atheists ask us. So how do you know you're not in the matrix? Because God told us we're not.

That's the only way out. It's something called solipsism, where everything is a figment of somebody's imagination and we're all in this giant dream that this one particular guy's having, right?

And the atheist has no way out of that. He cannot prove that we're not in somebody else's mind right now.

The only worldview that can ascertain truth that has access to truth and falsity is the

Christian worldview. How do you know God is real? The same way I know my mother's middle name.

He told me. You don't have to go further than that. Somebody tells you, what's your name?

Ralph. He's Ralph. How do you know? He told me, right? How do we know

God is real? He told us. He appeared in the flesh. Oh, I don't believe that. That's irrelevant.

So you don't believe it. And what does that mean? Right, there's some people who don't believe the world is round.

And it's irrelevant, the world is round, whether you believe it or not. They don't know, right?

You don't, I'm sorry. Yeah, science is based on observation and fact. So it's like, they can't go back to the beginning and prove that, everyone can go on and on and on and on.

But in the beginning, God, so there it is, brother. Yeah, well, for us, it's in the beginning,

God. For them, it's in the beginning, the particles. The particles just came into existence. And, you know,

I've talked to several atheists and they're like, oh, you're telling me. That a virgin can give birth to a child.

You're kidding me, you really believe that? I said, well, I believe that Jesus was born of a virgin.

I said, but don't you believe that the universe popped into existence out of nothing?

Pick your miracle. Jesus being born of a virgin is nothing if he breathed the whole world into existence, which you believe that the world came into existence.

You believe that the cosmos had a beginning. If there was no cause, well, then you believe in a virgin birth of the universe.

Yes, that's right.

That's right. Absolutely, that's an excellent point.

Obviously, the man in the flesh is at enmity with God. He will not submit to God's law, nor will he do so.

The things of the spirit are spiritually discerned. The man in the flesh cannot know them. Now, some Christians' solution to that is give them more information.

Give them more information, point them to the evidence. Giving an unbeliever more evidence is not gonna sway him.

It's gonna push him deeper into his position and make you look foolish in certain cases.

Now, do we use evidence? Can we use evidence? Absolutely, we can use evidence. But we argue from the existence of God to the evidence, not from the evidence to God.

Si Ten Brugengate says, God should never be at the end of an argument. He's always the beginning.

Yes. I was gonna say that reminds me of, Trish had posted something about not putting

God on trial. And that's absolutely correct. Like, I feel like we shouldn't have to be convincing people that God exists, right?

It does exist, we know that he exists. So when we are trying to convince them, by persuading them and providing evidence and all that stuff, it's like we're putting

God on trial. What does the human heart wanna do? The human heart wants to be the judge and will judge if God exists or not.

Isn't the opposite true? Isn't he the judge and he's gonna judge whether we're in conformity with him and his word or not?

Right? Again, it's, you look at the attributes of God. Omniscience, omnipresence, all these things.

The communicable attributes, the attributes that he gives to us, mercy, love, those types of things. We have those and we take them for granted.

What do we want? We want omnipotence. We want all the incommunicable attributes of God.

Why? Because deep down inside, we wanna be God. We wanna be the one who's ruling things.

But there can only be one king, one ruler, one center around which everything revolves.