The Irrefutable Proof of God

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But, so for me, coming to Christ was an interesting experience because not knowing really, being raised in a

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Christian home, not knowing a lot about the Christian world view in a sense, like what is the Bible, where does it come from, how do

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I know it's true, how can people deny it. Coming to the Christian faith, what I began to see in the scriptures is that it's an intellectually rigorous faith, and the claims in scripture are pretty big and pretty exclusive.

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Christ saying in John 14, 6, I am the way and the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me, that's a pretty audacious claim, that's pretty big, exclusive, he's the only way to be reconciled with the

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Father. But you also see in the scriptures sort of this pursuit of truth,

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I mean think about Jesus just that one claim, he says in John 14, 6, I am the way and the truth.

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So Jesus is actually claiming to be the embodiment of truth. You see in scripture all these truth claims, even such high ones as God saying things like in Proverbs 1, 7, that the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. So it's reverent submission and awe before God, the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of all knowledge, that's audacious, that's a big claim. Or God saying in the

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Proverbs, the fool says in his heart there is no God. And so those are big claims.

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You see Christianity came into the world with, even initially in the very beginnings of the book of Acts as you read the history of the beginnings of the

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Christian church, you see Christianity is not the kind of faith that's sort of like, hey it's true for me, and maybe it's true for you, hey this feels really good, come join our club.

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Christianity came with an intellectual rigor and a pursuit of truth, objective truth.

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And you see Christianity, say for example in Paul, Paul is first an antagonist towards the Christian faith, he's throwing

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Christians in jail, we know he's responsible for the death of at least one Christian, he's the one that held the codes, he sanctioned the death of the first martyr recorded in scripture.

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The Apostle Paul was trainer to Gamaliel, who to this day, if you were to ask a Jewish rabbi, who are some of the most famous rabbis in history,

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Gamaliel would be one of the top tier, one of the big guys. And so Paul receives what's sort of like the

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Harvard education of his day, the high level education of his day under Gamaliel, and he's an antagonist towards the

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Christian faith, and in the book of Galatians he writes his testimony, he says that he actually persecuted the church and he tried to destroy it.

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And so what you have in Acts is the conversion of Paul, where Paul goes from a hostile person to the

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Christian faith, where he comes to believe that Jesus is Mashiach, the promised Messiah, the one that was promised in the scriptures before Jesus actually walked on the earth, he turns to Christ, and the interesting thing that happens in Acts chapter 9 is what happens right after he comes to Christ, is that it says that he goes to Damascus, he takes a beeline for the synagogue.

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And what he does when he goes to the synagogue is he says that he reasons with the Jews in the synagogue, is that a horse?

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Is that seriously a horse? Oh okay, I was like, why are we, Queen Creek or something?

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Okay sorry, so the Apostle Paul, that must be my A &E going on there, okay so the

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Apostle Paul, as soon as he comes to Christ he takes a beeline for the synagogue in Damascus and it says that he reasons with the

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Jews, proving that Jesus is the Messiah. So you see, even in the early church, the Apostle Paul isn't saying, hey this feels really good to me,

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I really think this is true, I hope this is true, you should come along with us. The Apostle Paul goes right into the synagogues and he actually proves from the scriptures that Yeshua is in fact

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Mashiach, that Jesus is the Messiah. He goes and immediately reasons with them, and so you see

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Christianity initially going, not running away or retreating from conflict, but actually engaging it.

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And there's a famous scene in the book of Acts, I'm sure you guys maybe have studied this in the philosophy of religion class, you're studying the old philosophy of Aristotle and Socrates, and you see the

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Apostle Paul in the book of Acts actually at Areopagus, Mars Hill, it's a place of the

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Soaks, the Epicureans, and it's a famous place in history where Paul is essentially in Acts, I think it's 17 or 18, is brought up on charges, preliminary charges.

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He's presented at Mars Hill, and he presents a defense for the resurrection of Christ and the defense of the

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Christian faith, and so what do you see in the book of Acts? Christianity is not the kind of faith that retreats from the world, but actually it says that without God you can't even know anything.

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Without God we're all reduced to absurdity, without God we're reduced to foolishness. And so you see

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Christianity going into the religious context with a proclamation of the good news, that there's salvation in Christ, that the long -awaited and promised

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Messiah, the Deliverer, that God had promised throughout the Old Testament scriptures, had finally arrived and accomplished everything that was prophesied about Him.

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You see the religious context, you see serious conflict going on that actually leads to a couple things.

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One, people come to Christ, they come into a relationship with Jesus, their lives are transformed, you see really the beginning of the growth of the

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Kingdom of God in history, which was promised. But you also see a couple other things. You see people, the church is built up, it says, and people wanted to kill

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Paul. So they wanted him dead. So you see that conflict, the hostility happening immediately, but you also see the

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Christians going into the marketplaces. So they're going into the places of tough philosophical debate in the

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Areopagus. At the time, it's a high level of philosophical discussion and debate. And so you see

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Christianity going right into those contexts, and it wasn't, again, with the notion that, hey, this is true for us, and maybe, you know, you're true for you, this is sort of better, it feels better,

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I have a better experience. It was with objectivity. This is who God is, he's the one and only true and living

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God, none before, none after, he's not dependent upon anybody, he's the only

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God, he is, again, eternal, he is transcendent, he is limitless in his attributes.

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This God, who created all of us, calls us to turn to his Messiah, his

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Savior, for life and forgiveness and peace. I mean, that was the message, and it came into the world with a rigor.

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And so I wanted to sort of explain that as we started off, because I think it's important to hear that, but I wanted to sort of give you three quick reasons as to why

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I wanted to come here today and talk to you guys. First is a love for God. I love him, and he's changed my life.

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I know him, and he's forgiven me, and I want people to know about him.

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So the second is a desire to be obedient to him. So I gave you guys the word apologia.

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If you look in your Bibles, if you have a Bible at home, if not, I'll get you one. 1 Peter 3 .15,

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Peter writes the words, he says, to sanctify Christ as Lord of your hearts, always being ready to give an apologia, a reason, defense, to everyone who asks of you, a reason for the hope that's within you.

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And he says, yeah, do it with gentleness and with respect. And so Mike asked me to give a defense, and so here

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I am. So I'm trying to be obedient, okay? So the third thing is, and this is really, really important, is that I wanted to come because of a genuine love for people, a love for you guys.

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The truth is, is with my worldview, with what God has said about us and about the world, about himself, there's something that's important to see is that everyone in this room, the way

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I view you through the lens of what God has said about us is that you guys are all imago Dei. You guys are all in the image of God.

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You have inherent value and worth and beauty, and it's inescapable.

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And the truth of the matter is, is that God calls us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Jesus says, you know, greater love has no man than this, and the man lays life down for his friends.

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And so the real expression of love is to come into these kinds of discussions and to try to reason together to see, you know, is

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Jesus who he claimed to be, is God who he says he is, and what should our response to him be?

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And the greatest love you can have for anybody is to reason with them despite the conflict that might occur.

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If you truly believe that eternal life is possible, if you truly believe that Jesus in fact is the way, the truth, and the life, and that we all need him, then it would be the greatest act of hatred not to tell people about him.

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And so I think as a Christian, the greatest expression of love is to come even when there's conflict, even when there's disagreement, to say, let's talk about this.

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You know, if he is the way, we need to talk about that. We need a reason to that. So that's why I'm here. So I sort of explained to you 1

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Peter 3 .15, the command of scripture to always be ready to give a reason, defense for the faith, for the wholeness within you.

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And I just wanted to talk again about the history of the intellectually rigorous nature of the

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Christian faith. Again, I gave you the book of Acts, the beginnings of Christianity. As you look throughout history,

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Christians have been, it's been, it has been the Christian worldview that has driven us to think, to develop.

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If you look at the fathers of modern science, and look at where they came from, and look at what they were, what they believed about the world as to why it could be studied, how come we can study the universe.

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If you look at some of the greatest thinkers in, again, modern science, it's called modern science, it was the

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Christian worldview that drove that. It was a view of God who holds the universe together, who carries everything along.

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It was a view of us that were not just simply bags of biological stuff, stardust, bing -banging on the surface of the cosmos.

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We actually are an image of God. There's a distinction between what we see in front of us and what actually is outside of us.

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There's a spiritual nature to all of our existence. There's immaterial realities as well as material.

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So there are things like laws of logic that are universal, immaterial, necessary, invariant things.

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And there are ethical absolutes and standards, because God is the absolute standard of what is good.

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Everything's to be measured by his own holy character. So Christians, throughout history, it's the

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Christian worldview that drove a lot of things in education. Again, like Harvard and Yale, those were Christian institutions at their beginnings.

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Not so much anymore. Little changes have happened. And you look at even America today, like it or not, we have to come to grips with the fact that the early colonies, the

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Christian worldview was their framework. Even if you weren't Christian, you still had sort of the

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Christian worldview as your underpinnings and how you viewed life. It was just sort of in the atmosphere. And that's what gave rise to a lot of things about law and education and science and even the

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Constitution and Bill of Rights. A lot of the guys were pulling in their own mind from Jeremiah, Leviticus, things like that.

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Issues of property rights and natural rights to self -defense. These were all things that came from the

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Christian worldview. They sprang out of those things. And so I just wanted to, again, it's a short time we have today, but sort of touch on those things, the

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Christian worldview that drove those things. Okay, so here's what

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I have to do. I have like a few minutes to sort of present to you a case for the existence of God and the

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Christian worldview, and that's a daunting task in just a few minutes. So I'm going to do my best.

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Forgive me if it feels like I'm blitzing you, and just feel free to ask questions afterwards, but I'll do my best to try to make this as simple as possible.

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When you prove God's existence and the truthfulness of the Christian worldview, I want to give you sort of a foundation, okay, just to think about it as a basis.

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And that is that a Christian would say, given the scriptures, that the proof of the

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Christian God is that without Him, you can't prove anything. So let me say that again to you.

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The proof of the Christian God is that without Him, you can't prove anything. That's at least a starting point.

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And that sounds like an audacious claim. And I know that in history, Christians have oftentimes sort of tried to build a ladder to get up to God in the sense of, let's reason to get to God.

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Let's see if we can use certain tools like laws of logic, induction, uniformity in nature.

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Let's try to see if we can use causation. And people have used the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, different arguments in favor of trying to seek a way to reason to get to God.

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I'm going to say that throughout history as well, you've had Christians arguing at a much lower level, building a foundation before we can even get to that.

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And that is really what the scriptures present to us. I'm going to give you a verse, Proverbs 1 -7. It says, the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Now think about that for a second. It's not just a pithy thing you put on a graduation -like card, like some people do.

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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. That's a pretty audacious claim. Admit it, that the beginning of knowledge is fear of God, this

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God, the one and only true and living God. And as a Christian, I have to come to grips with that and say, look, that's what it says.

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And I'll give you another example. It says in Colossians 2, it says that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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So in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And in Proverbs 14 -1, think about this for a second, it says, the fool says in his heart there is no

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God. Now, by the way, don't get thrown by that. This is really important. God in the scriptures displays a holy character, a righteousness, a goodness, but also a love.

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And also he displays that he doesn't need to deal in flippant, cavalier insults, right?

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Capricious name -calling. So when God says the fool says in the heart there is no God, it's not meant to be like sort of like a

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Mr. T, like, you fool, right? You know, like that. It's meant to display the particular mindset of a person who rejects what's obvious to everybody.

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A person who will not engage the world in a way that is glorifying to God and actually even makes sense.

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A person who will deny that God exists all the while living in the world as though he does.

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That it reduces a person to foolishness. It's not name -calling. It's to describe the mindset of foolishness.

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And so, again, I'll say it to you again, the proof of the Christian God is apart from him you can't even prove anything.

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He is the basis of all knowledge. He is the way that we start all of our thinking as Christians.

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And without God, we don't have the preconditions necessary for intelligibility for the most basic things of life, like laws of logic, like induction, uniformity of nature, the future being like the past.

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We don't have the basis for ethical absolutes or standards at all. Good example, Dan Barker was on my radio program at the beginning of Apology on Radio, just as we'll get to this a little more in a second, but the beginning of Apology on Radio, at the beginning of every episode, there's some really edgy, cool music as it starts off, gets your heart pumping.

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And a couple of clips of guys who've been on the show. Well, when Dan Barker, he's on Fox News and MSNBC all the time right now because this is

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December and they hate Christmas. And so, the Freedom from Religion Foundation is all out like billboards and everything else because that's just what they do in December.

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So, at the beginning of the episode, you hear an exchange between Dan Barker and myself where Dan Barker, I asked him,

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I said, well, you're an atheist, do you believe that we're just bags of biological stuff? We're cosmic accidents, right? And he's like, yes.

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So, if we agree with Lawrence Krauss, physics professor at ASU, if we believe with Dawkins, we're just stardust.

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We're like Carl Sagan says, we're star stuff, right? And so, we're talking. He's like, yes, that's right. So, we start to talk and engage.

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And I said, so, he gave an example of a woman being raped. I said, well, wait a second though. In your world view, we're star stuff.

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We're stardust, ding -dang on the surface of the cosmos. What's the problem with stardust bumping into stardust?

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And Dan Barker says, rigorous answer, ready for it. He says, in the cosmic picture, nothing.

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It doesn't matter. And so, as a Christian, when we start our thinking with God, we're saying that unless you start with this

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God, the true and living God, who's actually spoken in creation. He testifies to us all the time in creation.

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He has spoken in his word, special revelation, and also particularly in history with his son. Unless you start with him, you're reduced to absurdity, like, for example, complaining about rape when you believe that we're stardust.

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Cosmic accidents. And even admitting, on a radio interview, something like, what's the problem with stardust bumping into stardust?

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Well, nothing. That's what we mean when we talk about reduced to absurdity, okay?

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So, that's a starting point. So, again, prove the Christian God is without him, you can't prove anything.

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Now, some foundations, quickly, and I won't belabor the point, because I know that your professor has probably taught you at least the beginnings of this, but basically, what we're doing when we talk about this, these questions of how do we know what we know and what is real, what is the nature of this, of reality, we talk about ethics and responsibilities, we're talking about worldviews.

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And this question, and it's amazing to me, it's interesting, as you look, say, in historical writings, even going back 300 or 400 years ago, that we've gotten somewhere,

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I think, today, in philosophy, and that we're really getting to the heart of the matter, you see people discussing worldview a lot.

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Obviously, we did a lot in history, but you see people today just really granting that as, that's the first place to start.

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We've gotta talk about worldview. We've gotta talk about what you believe about reality, what's your ontological view of the universe of human beings, what's your metaphysic, we talk about things like what epistemological systems do you believe, how do you know what you know, we talk about ethical absolutes and responsibilities, we're talking about worldviews.

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And this is why it's so important to start here. The claim is that without God, you can't prove anything. Without this

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God, the God who's revealed himself in the scriptures and in the Son of Christ, without him, you can't prove anything, you're reduced to absurdity.

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Now, that comes down to a worldview issue, and here's the deal, and I'm sure your professors have already taught you this, is that we all have a worldview, everybody does.

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Whether it's something that you've thought through and you've switched on, for example, some of you guys may have been raised, or we've been raised, maybe believing a particular thing with our families, our families taught us something.

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Maybe it was about God, maybe it was about not God, like there is no God. Whatever it was, you raised sort of like in that atmosphere.

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Maybe you caught it from mom, maybe you caught it from dad, maybe you caught it from your uncle, maybe you caught it from Lady Gaga. I don't know where you got it.

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The point is we all catch a worldview, maybe you got it from a science teacher. The point is that we all believe things about reality, about ourselves, about the world around us, about how we know what we know, about how we should live our lives.

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Whether it's something we've thought through and actually even made switches and tweaked our thinking, or if it's something we've caught and assumed, we all have a worldview.

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You can't escape it. It's the nature of our lives and our existence. We have a view of reality.

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There are no such things as brute facts when it comes to a human being.

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We always go about the business of interpretation. So for example, this is just an easy way to put it, say

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I'll use the two chairs just for example. And by the way, just by way of contrast, I thought we were going to maybe do a discussion possibly today with atheism.

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That's a good way to do it because it really shows sort of like two complete opposites, right? Say we take naturalistic materialism, like maybe a

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Dawkins kind of atheism, a militant kind of atheism. Say we take that as a worldview and contrast that with the exact opposite.

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The view of an eternal, transcendent God who's immutable, he's unchangeable, he's limitless in all of his attributes, he's always existed, he's not dependent, he's the creator of all of us and everything.

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That's two different worldviews, right? And so we talk about two different worldviews.

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Now if you're standing on, say, Christianity, if you're standing on the biblical revelation of God, his revelation, by the way the word is revelational epistemology, we believe we can know what we know with certainty because God has spoken in history.

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So if I stand on that revelation, and that's underneath me, so there's the truth that God has spoken, he's told me about himself, he's told me about reality, he's told me about how to know him, he's spoken in history about his character, about me,

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I'm standing on his revelation, and I'm thinking his thoughts after him, and I'm viewing the world really through his lens.

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Like, for example, when I came in the room and I said, one of the reasons I'm here today is I have a love for you, and I genuinely mean that, because I see you guys as image bearers of the same

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God. We've got the same creator. You guys have value and dignity and worth, and you are worthy of my love and my affection and my respect.

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That is just part and parcel of what happens to me when I stand in front of a classroom like this and I look at you.

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It's the lens through which I actually view the world. No brute facts, okay?

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And so that's the Christian worldview. Now, stand over here, say, on naturalistic materialism, say, again, an atheistic view, there is no

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God, say, Dawkins says in River Atomy, he says, there is no good, there is no evil, there is only blind and pitiless indifference, that we are all just as Krauss says, another naturalistic materialist, in a universe that didn't have us in mind.

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He says, there's a great clip on our website of Krauss basically describing existence.

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He says the world is abstinence in the universe. It didn't have us in mind, and he says the future is miserable.

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That's what he says. So you take that as your basic position. That's your worldview underneath you. That's how you approach the world.

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You're supposed to be standing on that stuff. So take, for example, a tree. You have a tree in front of you.

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A Christian and an atheist both have tree in front of them. But the truth of the matter is, even though it's tree in front of us, we're actually interpreting it completely differently.

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So as a Christian, when I stand on God's revelation, I look at every tree differently. I'm supposed to, by the way, supposed to, look at the tree differently from the atheists.

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So when I stand on a tree, I look at the tree and I say, beauty, there's artistry, there was purposeful creation there, there was design there, it works like this, and now it reflects back to God's glory.

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The tree is, again, there's artistry there, there's beauty. It's not just a blob of stuff that appeared out of nothing with no purpose.

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It actually has purpose and function in the world because that's the design that God gave to it. I can actually take photographs, get this, photographs of trees with the sun behind them and we can actually all look at that and go, there's artistry there, there's beauty there because that's the worldview as a

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Christian. I look at that tree through. But if you think about the fact that there's an atheistic worldview, a belief about reality, an atheist is supposed to be standing on that too.

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And if you were to ask him, fundamentally, with your worldview, Mr. Dawkins, Mr. Krauss, with your worldview, professors, what is that?

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They'll say, tree, it works like this. Result of blind and purposeless evolutionary processes that didn't have it in mind.

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Cosmic accident. That's worldview. We both look at tree, we both have same facts.

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Same facts. Tree, here's the bark, here's the internal workings of it, here's how it works, sun, rain, everything else, dirt, soil, there it is.

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But we interpret it completely differently. Worldview. And so that's the basic beginnings.

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So what I want to do is, I told you guys, pretty audacious claim, I said, the proof of the Christian God is that without him you can't prove anything.

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That is that God is the intellectual starting point of all of our thinking. Here's my argument. As a

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Christian, I'm not arguing to get to God. I'm not arguing to make my way to God.

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I'm actually saying that if you don't start with him, you can't even argue. That's not to say that you won't argue, it's to say that you will not have the intelligible preconditions for argument at all.

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And so let me just start, ooh, just try to log me in to your Wi -Fi service, okay.

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So first thing is this, neutrality's a myth, everyone has a worldview. Romans chapter 1 says this, let me give you a verse.

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Romans chapter 1 verse 18 and onward says this. After it says that there's this good news that is the power of God for salvation.

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Which is amazing. Good news from God. The gospel's not bad news, it's good news. God is saved in his son.

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Then it says this, for the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

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Okay, take a breath, what's that mean? Basically this. It says, that which is known about God is evident within them for God has made it evident to them.

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It says that the problem in humanity with all of us, with me and you and everyone in the world, is not that there's not enough light and evidence about God's existence.

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It's that we all know him. But our problem is that we're rebels. The problem is our sin. The problem is at times self -deception.

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And what we end up doing is we end up actually suppressing the truth about God and unrighteousness. And even when we actually know about him, he sent the message to himself to all of us.

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We suppress the truth about him. We hold it down. And it ends up saying that even when the creation itself is testifying to us about God, it's shouting to us about this

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God that we all know, that we're holding down, even when that's happening, what we end up doing is we profess to be wise and become fools.

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Our thoughts become futile because we're suppressing the truth about him. And then it says we end up switching him for idols.

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So if you're going to ask a Christian, why are there so many different religions out there? Why are there so many different conceptions of God? We would say it's not because the image of God is not clear in us or the testimony of creation is not clear.

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We would say the reason there's so many different conceptions of God is because we're all centers against the same one.

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And what we do is we suppress the truth of him, and we end up switching him for idols.

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That it's not that there's not enough light. It's that there's a suppression of truth going on. And this is really, really important.

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There's one point right here. That is the claim of Scripture, is that we know him, but we suppress the truth of God.

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Now, what that would look like is sort of like if you're ever in a pool, and you have like a ball, and you take that ball and you shove it underwater, what do you have to do to keep that ball down?

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Hold it down. Suppress it, right? Now, what happens if you let go of it? So by nature, it will come up by nature.

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So you have to actively hold it down for the ball to stay under the water.

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And that's the idea of a suppression of Romans chapter 1, is that we know him, and we actively suppress the truth about him.

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And we end up switching him for idols. And so suppression of truth is going on, and so that's a really important claim.

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There is no neutrality with worldviews. It's clear everyone has one. But the Scripture actually says very clearly that we all know the same

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God, and we suppress the truth about him. And our lives become sort of like the whack -a -mole game.

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You know whack -a -mole? The most irritating game in all of humanity. Whack -a -mole.

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I always cheat, by the way. If there's tickets, I'm cheating. I'm just going to lay across them and just jump up and down.

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But whack -a -mole. Basically, how does it work? These little moles pop up. And what do you have to do the whole game?

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You have to try to pop one down, right? And as soon as you think you've got it, and you've hit one or two and they go down, the next thing you know, what do you have over here?

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Another one popping up. And then you've got to hit that one, and then you've got to suppress it, and the next one comes up over here. Well, the argument is, ultimately, without God, you can't prove anything.

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And we all know him, but we're suppressing the truth about him. And what our lives will end up being in the denial of his existence is a life of whack -a -mole.

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Where the image of God is going to be pouring out of us inescapably because we cannot cease being what

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God has made us to be in his image. And our lives, though we deny him, will be constant moments of whack -a -mole, of the image of God popping up, and we'll try to stamp it down, push it down, deny it, and over here, we're going to miss something.

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We're going to miss something. And so what will that look like? I'll give you three ways. In three ways.

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I'm going to give you three points to think about when I say the proof of the Christian God is apart from him, you can't prove anything.

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Number one, induction. Number one, induction. Now it's a tight philosophical term, essentially means the uniformity of nature, that the future is going to be like the past.

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Okay? The second thing, you write these down, I'll go through them, is laws of logic. And the third thing is ethics.

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Okay? So one is induction, two is laws of logic, and three would be ethics. Now I want you to think about this with the chairs, with the worldviews.

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We're going to have this chair representing the Christian worldview, revelational epistemology, God has spoken in history, told us about who he is, who we are, we're standing on that revelation.

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And this worldview over here is going to represent, just by contrast, naturalistic materialism, kind of the complete opposite, atheism.

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Okay? And so we've got Christianity and atheism. Then we think about induction. This is really important, because know this, as a

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Christian, you're going to read about this, I'm sure, in your books if you haven't already, the problem of induction is not a

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Christian conjured problem. It's not something that Christians have conjured up as a creative argument against, say, unbelievers, atheists, agnostics, skeptics, whatever.

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The problem of induction is a problem that philosophers, not just Christian philosophers, but skeptics and atheistic philosophers, have had to deal with and tried to deal with on a regular basis.

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David Hume, Scottish skeptic, dealt with this, and so did Bertrand Russell in his book Problems of Philosophy. He's a famous atheist.

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The problem of induction is a massive one, apart from God. It's a big one.

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Induction is essentially this. The future being like the past. And if you're like, I don't know what that means, and stop confusing me, it's really early.

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You've got to get this. You have been appealing to and assuming induction every single moment of your life, and you're doing it right now.

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And you just did it again. And there you go again. And there you go again. And there you go again.

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And you're doing it right now. It's very important to realize that in the morning when you got up this morning, what did you do?

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You got out of bed. You pulled your covers aside. Put your feet on the ground. Did any of you think this morning when you did that, pulled your covers aside, and you put your feet on the ground.

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This is college, right? It's me, guys, probably laying on the floor. But when you got up out of bed, put your feet on the floor, did you think for a second, did it cross your mind?

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Was it even a moment in your mind that there's a possibility that today you might float away to the ceiling?

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Or did you just assume the uniformity of nature, that the future would be like the past, that today's experience will be intelligible and like yesterday's experience?

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You just assumed it. Some of you guys, you got up, you went to the bathroom. Why? Based on induction, past experience, you know there'll be problems in the future today if you don't.

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Amen? All right. OK. You know this, right? How about toothbrush and toothpaste?

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Isn't it interesting that today when you went to brush your teeth, hopefully you didn't again, this is college, so we don't know what happens.

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When you brush your teeth, you squeeze that toothpaste tube. Isn't it amazing? Isn't it a miracle that today toothpaste spurred out of the tube like it did yesterday?

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And I would venture to say that I'll bet, I'll bet, I'll bet that if today when you squeeze that tube and nothing came out,

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I'll bet that none of you would have assumed that the laws of physics have completely gone awry today. You would do what?

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Based on past experience, uniformity of nature, we look for a problem with the tube or maybe it's stinking empty. Right? Something else is going on.

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You guys drink water today, right? Some of you guys are drinking now. Why'd you drink water? Why did you drink anything today?

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You guys can participate. You were thirsty. So what? So? Don't drink.

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Keep going guys. What happens? Don't drink. You get dehydrated. So what? You get dehydrated. So? What?

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Not comfortable. Not comfortable. So what? Who cares about comfort? What comes after dehydration and uncomfortability? Death.

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Is that a word? Pick that up. Pick a minute up. Okay? Death. We know based on past experience, uniformity of nature, and induction that if I don't drink today based on past experience that I will die.

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Right? You appeal to uniformity of nature when you drove your vehicles here or however you got here every single step of the way you got in the room and you are appealing to it right now and the fact and proof of it is none of you is holding to the chair right now thinking that any second you're going to float away.

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And you have been appealing to induction in every second of my conversation and argument with you.

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Even laws of logic. In all of the thought processes, in all of the thinking, in all the argumentation, you're appealing to induction the whole time.

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Watch this. Here's the question. If we don't start with God, do we have a basis that satisfies the preconditions for intelligibility to make use of induction?

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In other words, we all assume it right now. You're doing it right now and you will do it for the rest of your lives. You will assume induction, the uniformity of nature.

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The question is this. Not what are we all doing. We all do it. The question is who has a worldview that can satisfy the preconditions for induction that the future will be like the past.

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Let's take the Christian worldview for a second. Christian worldview says God has spoken, we have certainty. How do

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I know what I know as a Christian? It might seem Sunday school simple, but God has spoken in history and revealed himself.

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So what does God say in his word? He says what about the universe? That he created it and that he sustains it.

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It says in Hebrews chapter one that he carries the universe along to its intended destination. That he has given the universe a fixed order.

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So what do I have? I have as a Christian certainty, not a guess, not just a simple blind wishful hope, but certainty that this

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God who has revealed himself actually carries the universe along to its intended destination. So if you say to me,

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Jeff, what is your answer for induction? The future being like the past. I say I have absolute certainty based on the testimony of this

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God that the future will be like the past. Therefore, laws of logic are possible in my worldview.

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Therefore, science is possible in my worldview. All scientific method depends on induction.

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Pharmaceutical medicine is possible in my worldview. And I have an answer for it because the future will be like the past.

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Now take for a second this worldview over here, naturalistic materialism. There is no God. There is only blind and pitiless indifference.

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We are all accidents in a little corner of the universe. When Dawkins and Krauss were at Gammage at ASU, I went and saw them.

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I've seen them every time they've come. When they were at Gammage, Krauss said in his speech, you can get it online, you can go to YouTube and watch it.

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He said basically the physical constants in the universe came about by sheer accident.

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Now I want you to consider for a second, if the physical constants in the universe came about by accident, and if we are all accidents in the universe, stardust in the universe that does not care, do

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I have a basis for appealing to the future being like the past? Do I have an intellectually cogent philosophical response for the future being like the past if I don't have any certainty that the next five seconds will be like the past?

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Now we might try to argue in this way. We might try to argue like an atheist did in a public debate with me when

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I asked him to give a basis for induction given his atheism that there is no

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God, no meaning, no purpose, we're all cosmic accidents, and the physical constants are just accidents.

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I said give me a basis for induction. Respond to Bertrand Russell, the famous atheist, on induction. How do you know the future will be like the past?

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And he said what? What most people would say. Because it always has been. In the past, in my past experience, nature was always uniform.

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But Bertrand Russell, the famous atheist, his problems in philosophy would take that atheist to task.

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And David Hume, famous Scottish guy. You cannot, you cannot give a justification for the future uniformity based on past uniformity because it's begging the question.

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Nobody's asking what the past has been. We're asking how do we know in the future that nature will be uniform and that induction holds.

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And if anybody ever says because the past has been, we're doing what? Begging the question.

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The question is which philosophical worldview gives you a basis for what you will do every step, every breath, your entire life?

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You will appeal to induction, uniform in nature. You will not live in this world apart from it. But watch this. If you stand on God, you have absolute certainty about that moment every breath you do it.

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But watch this. If we're over here on atheism, we have no basis for induction.

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But isn't it amazing that the atheist will say what? Krauss will say the physical constants we observe are all just accidents, right?

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We're all constant accidents. The universe is bleak and miserable ahead of us. And watch this.

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And then he goes into his lab and does what? Assumes uniformity every moment of his life.

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Isn't it amazing to see today the staunch militant atheist that I love? I love to have relationships with them.

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I've got tons of atheist friends. I discuss with them in my radio room. I took out two really well -known atheists to lunch in the last six months.

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I love them, okay? But isn't it amazing that the militant atheist who thinks that we're cosmic accidents in a different universe and that the physical constants are all just accidents?

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Isn't it amazing that he will say there is no God, there is no meaning, there is no purpose, blind and pitiless indifference, we're all cosmic accidents, the physical constants are all constants, are all accidents, but he doesn't live that way, does he?

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It's amazing that it's as though the atheist will say one thing and then he sort of sneaks over into the

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Christian worldview, stands on it in his life, assuming uniformity, assuming invisible, immaterial laws of logic his whole life.

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And then when you point it out to him and say, well, Professor Dawkins, you're acting like a Christian right now. You're assuming uniformity, laws of logic, ethical absolutes.

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He'll go, no, there is no God, there's no meaning, there's no purpose in the universe. So what we're saying is that's the suppression of truth.

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We all know God. And the atheist can say there's no meaning.

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He can say there's no purpose. He can say there's all physical accidents and everything else going on.

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We're all just stardust bobbing on the surface of the cosmos, but he won't live that way. He will borrow from the Christian worldview and framework his entire life.

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And then when you point it out to him that what is coming out of his mouth is not consistent with what he's standing on, you'll see the conflict.

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You'll see the suppression of truth, okay? So the next thing is laws of logic. I'll go quickly with this one. Laws of logic.

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What if I were to walk into the class today, okay? Mike asked me to come in, honored to take the opportunity, and I come and you all sit down, and it's early in the morning, to be honest.

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No one likes to be up this time. Or is it just me? Okay, it's just me, okay? All right, and then, okay.

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So you come into the classroom, and you're like, hey, there's this guy here, and he has a delicious beard, and he's going to speak to us today in class.

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And I come up, and I say, welcome, everybody. I'm going to prove to you

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God's existence today. Purple cows, over the moon, under the sea, and because the crisscross across the bus to the go, to the go, to the go, to the go, go, go.

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What would you say to that? Impressive? How long would you sit still for that?

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Probably all morning, because it is entertaining, right? Some of you guys would do anything to watch something like that.

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But here's the truth. We all know that none of us would accept that. You would not accept me saying something like that as a coherent argument for God's existence.

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Isn't it amazing? Isn't it amazing that since we've walked in here, and I walked up here, some of you guys are probably skeptical.

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That's great. Some of you guys are testing everything I'm saying, and you should be, because I would say you're image bearers of God.

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God calls us to have consistent, rational, logical thinking. Isn't it amazing that you've been the whole time holding me to laws of logic to see if I contradict myself?

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Is he being reasonable? Is he being rational? Is he being consistent? Isn't it amazing that every single moment you've been in here, you've been holding me to laws of logic?

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But here's the problem. Have you ever touched one? Have you ever tasted a law of logic?

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How much does it weigh? What's the mass of a law of logic? Where do

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I find it? Where does it grow? Somewhere? Canada? No, not

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Canada. Where can I find it? Where can I touch it? Where can I see it and examine a law of logic?

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Laws of logic are immaterial and apparently universal, unchanging entities.

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Laws of logic. And you're holding me to it right now. And we have to ask the question, if we don't start with God, can we make sense of an appeal to immaterial, unchanging, that's invariant, laws of logic?

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Necessary laws of logic. Well again, it's a worldview question. Given the Christian worldview, do we have a basis for laws of logic?

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Absolutely. You see, for a Christian, we know that reality, God is spirit, and reality has more than one component of just matter and motion.

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We have not only the material, but the immaterial. And that God, ready, is logic.

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That God is rational, that he is consistent, he is unchanging, and his thinking is to be what our thinking is like.

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In other words, in his light, we're to have life. Our thinking is to be a reflection of his thinking.

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Listen closely, here's the bottom line. To engage in logical contradiction is to engage in the nature of life.

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And God cannot lie. And so as people made his image, we're reflections of that God, who is consistent, who is unchanging, who is not made of simple matter, who is limitless, all those different things.

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Laws of logic make sense in the Christian worldview, and we actually have a standard by which to measure if our thinking is logical or coherent.

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We have a biblical basis for logic. But stand over here for a second. The atheist says, there is no

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God, there is no meaning, we're all stardust, no good, no evil, only blind and pitiless indifference.

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Take Dr. Will Provine at Cornell, there's no imminent morality, we live, we die, and we're gone, we're absolutely gone when we die.

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I have a question. If we are all descendants of highly evolved societies of bacteria in a universe that did not have us in mind, that evolved from bacteria to apes to us, do we have a basis to appeal in a naturalistic materialist universe to immaterial laws of logic?

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Does that worldview make it possible to have a cogent response to that question?

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Because you see, in atheism, if all we are is matter and motion, then all of our thinking right now is a result of brain gas.

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So take it this way. This is a good experiment, easy to remember, okay? Laws of logic.

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If naturalistic materialism were true, and if the thinking in our mind is the result of brain chemistry firing biochemical responses happening in our brains, then we're not really thinking right now, are we?

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We're just fizzing. It'd be sort of like this. Hey, let's have a debate. Everyone, let's have a debate.

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If we have a debate, we have Dr. Pepper or we have Mountain Dew, okay? Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew, and I invite everyone at SCC to come in to watch the debate of the century.

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Set up the tables, some cloth, maybe a glass of water for Mr. Pepper or Mr. Dew, okay?

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And we set it up, and the whole place is full. The debate of the century, and everyone is walking in, you hear the bustle and the tussle and all the stuff going on and all the murmuring and voices.

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I say, everyone, quiet down, quiet down. Debate of the century. And I grab Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew, and I start shaking them up.

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Shaking them up, shaking them up, shaking them up. And ready, everyone? The debate of the century. Put them down, pop the top, and they start spraying.

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Would it be possible to ask the question, which one is winning the debate? You would say, neither.

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They're fizzing. You see, we all understand that chemical responses don't produce truth.

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And if our thoughts are the result of, again, highly evolved societies and bacteria in a universe that didn't have us in mind, moving through age to humans, in a universe that doesn't care, and we're all star -stuffed, if what's happening in our brains is just simple biochemical responses, and that's it, then we don't have any basis for appealing to universal laws of logic.

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It's just brain gas. And if you have a Christian and an atheist debating, the only difference is the atheist is fizzing atheistic thoughts, and the

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Christian is fizzing Christian -theistic thoughts. Who cares? Who cares? But do we have a basis in an atheistic framework for appealing to immaterial, universal, invariant laws like laws of logic?

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I would say if you don't start with God, you can't prove anything. Last point, let's be quick. This is a quick one, easy one. I think most of us have captured this right away.

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I think it's impossible not to. If you don't start with God, you can't prove anything. How about ethics? I'll do it my way in a story real fast.

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You guys know this. It's familiar to us. We can give hundreds. Where do we even start as a question, right? Where do we even begin this discussion?

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Okay, so a couple years ago, Tucson. Some of you guys might remember where you were at. There was a shooting at a

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Safeway parking lot in Tucson, right? Remember this? A guy comes in, starts shooting people up and everything else.

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Horrible thing. So I happened to be that day in a lobby with a cafe, and there was these screens all over the wall, tons of screens.

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And I was there when it came up on the screens, and it was amazing to watch the reactions of people. Something that I really,

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I was like, oh my goodness, I can't believe this. So I'm sitting there watching it, but then what caught my eye was that there were dozens of people kind of walking through, getting their coffee, getting their stuff, going to do their thing.

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And I kept watching everyone stop. And I saw everyone's reactions. There's different people, men, women, children, old people.

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And I'm watching, just looking at these TVs, and I saw people gasping in horror, like, oh my gosh, people touching,

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I can't believe what's going on, pointing, you know, I can't believe this. I saw people crying.

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I saw people just angry, shaking their heads. I saw people just stunned, just like, oh, I can't believe what's happening.

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The shooting that took place. And I have to ask the question, we all saw the same thing.

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But which worldview gives you a basis for gasping? Which worldview gives you an intellectually strong foundation for saying that that is objectively wrong, and immoral, and not good?

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If we stand on a Christian view of reality, I have a basis to gasp. I have a basis to cry, and should cry.

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When the image bearers of God are murdered by another image bearer of God, there is an absolute standard of good, which is

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God in his own character. Simple, ready? Give you some verses. God is love.

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Some of you guys have heard that. God is love. And the Bible defines that, it says, love, watch, love does no harm to its neighbor.

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I have an absolute standard by which to judge the man that goes on a murderous rampage against others.

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But I have a question. That's standing on God and starting with him. If I stand over here, on Darwin's, Dawkins' naturalistic materialism, there is no

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God, there is no good. That's his statement. There is no evil. There is only blind and pitiless indifference.

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If you listen to Krauss, or listen to Will Provine, again, simple quote from Provine, says there is no imminent morality.

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There is no active, present, real morality. There is no standard. We live, we die, and we're gone.

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Do I have a basis with that worldview to gasp when stardust puts holes in other stardust?

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It might be uncomfortable, but is it objectively evil?

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Do I have a standard of certainty to call that wrong? And I would say without God you can't prove anything.

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Without this God, you can't prove anything. If we don't start with him, we're reduced to absurdity. And that would be the basis of the

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Christian worldview. So what's the out? Here's the out. If we're all suppressing the truth about God, if we all know the same

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God, if we're all in the image of the same God, and he is good, and the problem is we're not, if we're all actively suppressing the truth about him, what is the

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Christian answer? Is that it's not just our thinking that is wrong, it's our whole lives.

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And so what's the good news? Is even though he's good and we're not, even though he's righteous and we're not, even though we are rebels and we run away from him daily, and we engage in a life of drinking in darkness, running away from the light, this

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God, the one we've all offended, me, you, everybody, he has actually demonstrated his love by Christ, God himself, the second person in the

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Trinity, Christ, enters into humanity, takes on flesh to chase the rebels. He lives a life that they've failed so that justice could be satisfied because God is just.

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He goes to take a death we deserve, he's buried, he conquers death as a matter of historical record, and he calls everyone to turn from sin to him, to put their faith in him for salvation and forgiveness, and that's a gift.

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It's a gift, none of us deserve it, we deserve the opposite. But that's why it's good news, it's because despite our condition, he's saved.

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And that's the gospel. And when Jesus saves us, he doesn't just save us from our sin, he also saves our thinking.

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We're able to make sense of our experience, we're able to give answers to things like induction, laws of logic, ethical absolutes.

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Jesus doesn't just save us for heaven one day, he saves us now. And so that would be a good snapshot, a picture of the