Theism vs Anti-Theistic Theories

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I want to thank you all for being here, we are continuing tonight in our study of the doctrines and theology of the Christian faith, an overview of Christian theology and doctrine.
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I said from the beginning this is actually a course in systematic theology.
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Systematic theology is the scientific approach of seeking to understand what the Word of God says and science is all about putting things into categories, putting things into groups and so that's what we're doing.
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We are making our understanding of God, we're categorizing our understanding of God and we're looking at different aspects of God's Word and how it has been revealed to us and we begin with the subject called theology proper.
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Theology proper is the study of God in his nature, God in his being and very specifically if we are looking at the three persons of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, then theology proper might also be called pathology or the study of the Father and so that is really the focus of this first portion of our lesson.
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Now if you were here last week you will remember I told you I didn't get through the lesson, I only got halfway through the lesson and so I said I would have to take it into next week and so if you weren't here last week I just want to quickly give you an overview of what we learned but I'm going to make this rather brief so that I can get and I don't end up having to do it again.
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So I want to get through it and get to the second half.
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We're looking at the existence of God, when you look at the different aspects of theology proper and I've listed them here for you, you have the existence of God, the revelation of God, the attributes of God, the nature and names of God and those are the five things that we're going to look at under the heading of theology proper.
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So we look at first the existence of God.
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Why do we believe that God exists and I don't know how many of you will remember this but last week I pointed to the fact that the reason why we know that God exists is that He puts that knowledge in our hearts, it's an innate knowledge.
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Romans 1, Romans chapter 1 verses 18 to 24 tells us that God has given us a knowledge in our hearts and it is so clear that no man at judgment will be able to claim ignorance.
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He will be, as the Greek says, unapologetus, without an excuse when he faces the living God.
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No man will be able to face God and say I didn't know you were there.
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There was the one atheist, I've mentioned him several times, who said when I see God, if I see God, I'm going to tell him I didn't have enough evidence to believe in you.
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That's not true.
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In fact, the Bible says that he had so much evidence that he will be judged on the basis of that evidence, that he will be judged according to that evidence, that he had so much life, that he had so much knowledge that God exists that there's no way that anyone could look and say I didn't know that you were there.
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So when I say there are people who don't believe in God, that's one thing, that's really what we're going to talk about tonight.
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But, we're going to get there in a minute, before I do that, if you look, I said last week, even though we know that God exists, we still have reason to believe God exists as well.
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And the five things that we looked at last week are the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the anthropological argument, the moral argument, and the ontological argument.
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I recommend listening to that audio if you weren't here, because I don't have time to break them all down again.
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But it's very simple, I can give you the simple overview.
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The cosmological argument is this, creation is proof that there was a creator.
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In the same way that you don't have to have seen the builder to know there was a builder that built this building, the building itself is testimony to a builder, creation is testimony to a creator.
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That's the cosmological argument.
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The teleological argument is the argument of purpose.
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Telos is the Greek term.
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It simply means that we not only see a creation, but we see a creation that's moving forward with purpose and design.
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And design is the evidence that there is a designer who had a purpose in his design.
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Like if we see a watch that's set to the proper time, sitting on the beach, when we walk down the beach, we don't pick up that watch and say, well, this watch must have come about naturally.
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We say, no, this was designed, and the design is testimony to purpose and a purposeful designer.
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That's the teleological argument.
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The anthropological argument is the argument that men and women, all mankind, are created with an immaterial portion we call the spirit or the soul.
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You are more than just matter and energy.
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You are more than just chemicals.
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You actually, and you know this, you know that you're more than that.
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And that's why we believe in things like dignity.
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And we believe in things like love.
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And we believe that these things are more than just chemical reactions in the brain, that these are testimony that we understand that man is more than just an animal.
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He's more than just stardust mixed up with the chemicals of the primordial soup and spit out onto the planet as it were just another one of the creatures that was spit out by that primordial ooze.
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That is not what we are.
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And we know it by nature.
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This is why we get angry when injustice happens.
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Why would we get angry at injustice if man did not have an inherent dignity? Why would we get angry at injustice if man did not have inherent worth and value? If all we are are bags of stardust, then why is there nobility? And what is love? That's the anthropological argument.
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It's also part of the moral argument.
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The basis for all morality is that God exists.
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In fact, it is as one great commentator said, if God does not exist, all things are permissible.
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If there is no God, then everything is permissible.
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Gordon Stein and Greg Bonson in the great debate which happened in the mid-1980s, I mentioned it last week, Gordon Stein, the atheist, was asked by Greg Bonson, why was what Hitler did evil? Was it evil? Was it wrong? And he said, well, it was against the law.
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It was against the rules.
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It was against the morals.
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He said, but was it inherently wrong? Was Hitler breaching a transcendent law, or was he simply breaking the law of man? Is there something over the law of man that makes what Hitler did, by nature, immoral? In the animal kingdom, there's murder, there's rape, there's theft, and we don't call it immoral.
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But among men, those things are immoral, because man is made in the image of God.
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And so we understand man as a different type of being than is any other creature.
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Lastly, the ontological argument, as I mentioned last week, more of a philosophical argument, not an argument I make, but it simply deals with the idea of perfection.
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God is perfect.
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It's better to exist and not exist, and so perfect beings will do that, which is better, and it's better to exist and not exist.
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It's not one that I hang my hat on, as I said last week, and you're more than willing to, you're more than welcome to say, I wouldn't use that argument either.
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But we're going to move on now, because in the same way that we make arguments for the existence of God, not to prove that God exists, but to simply help us to affirm why we know that God exists, we also have to deal with those theories that are opposed to the existence of God.
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And when I say God, you have to understand, and this is going to be the foundation for tonight's conversation, when I say God, I am specifically talking about the triune God of the Bible.
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I am not talking about Allah.
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I am not talking about the God of Mormonism.
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I am not talking about the God of the Jehovah Witness.
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I am not talking about false gods.
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When I say God, I'm talking about the only true and living God, and that's important because some of these, you'll see it says anti-theistic theories.
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You'll notice that some of them are actually theistic theories, but when it says anti-theistic, meaning anti-true God, or it's against the God who is.
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So just understand that that's what that means when it says anti-theistic theories.
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You'll notice here that there are seven, and if I could count, I would tell you there were six, because there's actually six.
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I apologize.
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I thought there were seven.
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I apologize for that.
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There are six anti-theistic theories that we're going to go over tonight.
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The first one is the atheistic world view.
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Now I'm going to pull over my board here.
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I like to show you sometimes what I'm saying, so we're going to go to the board.
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We're going to look first at atheistic world view.
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The word atheist, as we probably already know, and I know if you've learned from me and been a part of our studies in the past, you know this, but for those of you who maybe have not been here, the word atheist actually comes from the root theism, which means a belief in God.
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It has the alpha primitive, or the A at the beginning, and when we put the A at the beginning, that indicates something against or something opposed, so it makes it the opposite.
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We have theist as a person who believes that God exists, and then we have an atheist as a person who does not believe that God exists.
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I'm going to read to you from our handbook, and by the way, for those of you who don't know, we are using a textbook for this course.
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It is the Moody Handbook of Theology.
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It's available on Amazon if anyone wants a copy, but this is what we're using as our textbook.
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And it reads this.
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The term atheist comes from the Greek word theos, meaning God.
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The prefix A negates the preceding statement, therefore it is a non-believer in God.
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This word does come up in scripture.
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If someone would open their Bible to Ephesians chapter 2 and find there verse 12.
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Ephesians chapter 2, verse 12, and if you're there, raise your hand and I'm going to get you to read for me.
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We're doing Bible drills tonight.
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Let's see who's the first one.
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2.12.
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Okay, go ahead Miss Jen.
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Thank you.
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That phrase, without God in the world, in English it's two words, without God, but actually in the Greek it's atheoi, or atheist.
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But it's not the same way we would use the word, because they're saying that by living apart from God, they're without God.
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He's not saying they're claiming God doesn't exist, but they're living as if God doesn't exist.
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And that's what I want to point to, because there's actually three types of atheism I want to point out to you tonight.
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Because we talk about atheism and we sort of think it's a monolith.
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It's not.
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Atheism can be broken into three different types.
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First is the practical atheist.
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Second is the dogmatic atheist.
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And third is the virtual atheist.
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All right.
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Practical, dogmatic, and virtual.
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A practical atheist is not a person who necessarily denies the existence of God, but rather who lives as if God does not exist.
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And I believe Ephesians 2 and verse 12, that's more so what the line of thinking is there.
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The atheoi there are the people who are without God.
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It's not that they necessarily deny His existence, but more so they live as if He does not exist.
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How many of you remember the verse, and I'm sure you do, that says, The fool has said in his heart there is no God.
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Right? The fool has said in his heart there is no God.
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Did you know that that's not really talking about atheism? It's actually talking about a type of atheism.
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It's talking about practical atheism.
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Because a better way to translate that could be this.
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The fool has said in his heart God does not matter.
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The fool has said in his heart God does not matter.
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See, it's not so much that they're denying that He exists, they're denying that He matters.
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They're denying that He is in any way tied to their life, or their love, or their passions, or their seeking for happiness.
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You see, that's the atheism that really permeates America, because we have a world of people here in the United States that are so happy with everything that they have, in the sense that they're happy with their play toys, and they're happy with their cell phones, and they're happy with their illicit rendezvous, and they're happy with all these things because they're satisfying the flesh.
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God has no need in their life, He has no purpose in their life.
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From their perspective, God doesn't matter.
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When we go out to the fair every year and we hand out those tracts, and we're going to be doing it next...
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I ordered 4,000 tracts today, and my goal is to give out every single one of them.
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I'll have them in by the early part of next month.
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The vast majority of those people that we hand those tracts to as they walk by, and we try to have conversations with them, but most of them won't stop and talk to us, but they'll take a tract.
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The vast majority of them look at the tract, put it in their pocket, and it doesn't mean anything.
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Now, for those that it does mean something, that's why we're there, and that's why we'll give out 1,000 tracts, or 2,000 tracts, or however many we can, because God uses that, and we have seen God use that to change lives.
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I have no problem handing out thousands of tracts, knowing that the vast majority, it's not going to matter to them.
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You ask the average person if they're an atheist, they're going to say, no, I believe in God, but does God matter? In most of their lives, he does not, and that is practical atheism.
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But the second kind of atheism is the kind that I think most of you might expect.
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If I said atheism, you might expect I'm talking about dogmatic atheism.
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You're familiar with what dogmatics are, or the idea of standing for something, or being dogmatic, being very firm in your commitment about something.
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You know they actually teach dogmatics in certain philosophy classes, because people can be dogmatic about anything.
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You know there are people around the world that believe all kinds of different things, and they're dogmatic about their beliefs.
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Well, atheism is a thing that people can be dogmatic about.
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As I said earlier, I don't believe that anyone is truly an atheist, because God puts the knowledge of himself in their heart.
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But I do know that there are people who say they don't believe in God.
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I don't think they really believe it, but I know they say it.
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Oftentimes that's how I begin the conversation.
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The person will say, well, I don't want to talk to you, I'm an atheist.
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And I'll say, so you believe that God doesn't exist? And they'll say, yes.
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I'll say, do you know it for sure? Only a few will say, yes, I know God doesn't exist.
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Some will say, well, I believe he doesn't.
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And I say, but you don't know for sure.
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No, well then you're an agnostic, you're not an atheist, you don't know.
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We'll talk about agnosticism in a minute.
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But the point is, only a few will say, I know God doesn't exist.
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And I'll say, okay, well here's something I want to ask you then.
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I'm going to draw a pie chart.
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I'm going to pretend this is all the knowledge that exists in the entire universe.
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How much do you think you have of all the knowledge in the universe? Maybe 1% of all knowledge? 1%? That's you? And that's really saying something.
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If you have 1% of all knowledge in the universe, that would mean you have a lot of knowledge.
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Because there's a lot of knowledge in the universe.
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If you had even 1%, that would be amazing.
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Well, we'll say you have 1% of all knowledge.
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Is there not a chance that there's something in the 99% that's left that could contradict everything you think you know? Is there not a possibility that there's something out there in that 99% that could contradict everything you claim to know? Only an unreasonable person would say, no, it couldn't.
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Only an unreasonable person would say, no, it couldn't contradict me.
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So really, you don't know anything.
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Because everything you know could be contradicted by all the things you don't know.
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Well, how do you know anything? I know it by revelation.
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God knows everything.
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You see, God knows everything in the circle, and he told me stuff.
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So I do know stuff.
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In fact, you know stuff because God told you stuff.
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That's why I know stuff.
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Because I know the guy who knows it all.
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That's the difference.
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So that's just a simple way of proving that really dogmatic atheists aren't really as dogmatic as they maybe hope to be.
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But they will claim to be.
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So we can have that conversation.
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The third is the virtual atheist.
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I want to read from the book.
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Virtual atheist is a person who rejects God by his terminology.
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He rejects God by his terminology.
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You say, well, what does that mean? People who use unbiblical descriptions of God and unbiblical explanations of who he is.
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They're practically atheists because ultimately the God they believe in is not the God who is.
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Imagine someone who says, well, God exists.
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He's the ground of all being.
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First of all, I'm not even quite sure what they mean by that, but I've heard people say it.
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He's the ground of all being, or he's the force that binds us all together, sort of like Star Wars.
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Or God exists.
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She's a goddess, and she would never send anyone to hell, like that lady in Kmart told me.
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My goddess wouldn't send anyone to hell.
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I said, no, she wouldn't because she doesn't exist.
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You believe in a God who's a false god.
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She's an idol, and you made her up in your mind.
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So of course she can't send anybody to hell.
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She doesn't have the power to do anything.
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She is a figment of your imagination.
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That's virtual atheism.
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They're virtually atheistic in the sense that they don't believe in the God who is.
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They have replaced him with something else, and in a sense they're no longer true theists because a true theist believes in the true theos, the true God.
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All right, so we looked at atheism.
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Now let's look at the agnostic view.
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I mentioned it before.
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We've already dealt with the alpha primitive.
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If the A is in front of a word, that means the opposite, right? All right, so when we go to agnostic, the A is in front of the word gnostic.
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Now, I could chase a rabbit here, so I'm not going to.
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How many of you have ever heard of the Gnostics? How many of you have ever heard of the Gnostic Gospels? If you've ever heard of the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Judas, all of these lost books of the Bible, they're not lost books of the Bible.
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They weren't supposed to be there to begin with.
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Most of them were written in the 2nd, 3rd, sometimes even 4th, 5th, 6th century.
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These books are not contemporaneous.
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They're not written.
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They're pseudepigrapho.
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They're not even written by the person in the name they bear.
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This is not part of the Bible.
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The only one even close to that time period would be the Gospel of Thomas, and if you've ever read it, it's really, really, really weird.
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No, I'm not kidding.
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There's one point where Jesus tells Mary Magdalene to become saved.
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You have to become a man.
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It's an awful, read it.
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It's like a page long.
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It's really, really short.
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Go read the Gospel of Thomas.
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If you read it compared to the rest of the New Testament, there's no reason to believe why it should be there.
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This is that rabbit trail I said I could take.
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I'm not going to take the rabbit trail.
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But when we say agnostic, it's not talking about death.
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Okay? Just one line of confusion.
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The word gnostic means knowledge.
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The word gnostic means knowledge, or gnosis means knowledge.
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So agnostic means a person who simply says, I don't know.
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And an agnostic is one who says, we cannot know.
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That's the harder part.
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It's not, they don't just say, we don't know.
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They say, you can't know for sure.
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They try to be pragmatic.
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They say, well, you have to be able to scientifically verify the existence of God, and because God is not scientifically verifiable, we can't have Him as part of the discussion.
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We just can't know.
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That's the argument of the agnostic.
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At least a good argument in the sense of a person who's thought it through and said, well, I don't want to believe in God because I can't verify Him scientifically.
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And you say, well, what scientific evidence would prove to you that God exists? This is the question that Gordon Stein was asked by Greg Bonson.
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What scientific evidence would you take for the existence of God? And Bonson asked him that, and Stein thought for a minute, and he said, well, if that lectern right there raised up and suspended itself in midair for a few moments, and I could tell that it wasn't wires or mirrors or something, and I could tell that it was a true miracle, and it levitated back down and set itself in place, then I would believe that was a supernatural work, and I would be forced to conclude that God exists.
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And that's when Bonson had it.
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He said, no, you wouldn't.
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He said, you wouldn't automatically believe that God exists.
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In fact, you would do everything you could to prove that that was some kind of naturalistic thing, that something in nature or some kind of trick or some type of hypnotism was done because you don't not believe in God because you don't have enough evidence.
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You don't believe in God because you're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.
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Romans chapter 1 tells us that.
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You remember the people that followed Moses into the wilderness saw the Red Sea part and still had trouble believing in God.
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They saw the Shekinah cloud leading them, and they still had trouble believing in God.
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They saw heaven open in manifold, and they ate God's food, and they had trouble trusting in the faithfulness of God.
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Miracles and all of these things are testimonies to God's power, but they do not change a hardened heart.
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A miracle has never made a believer, not once.
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God opens the heart to believe, and that's what makes someone a believer.
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So agnosticism is, again, the position that we just can't know.
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And the next position you'll notice on here I have is naturalism or evolution.
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These, of course, there is overlap because a naturalist would probably identify himself either as an atheist or as an agnostic.
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But a naturalist takes a little different approach in that they argue for anti-supernaturalism.
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Anti-supernaturalism, that's a long word.
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It simply means they are opposed to anything that is not measured scientifically or measured by the natural.
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They say if God created man, then man is a morally responsible being.
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If man is the product of evolution, then he is the only biological, then he is only biological and not morally responsible to any god.
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That's the point of naturalism.
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If we are simply the product of nature, then we don't have a moral obligation to any god.
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Think about how that works out in life today.
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People who live as if there is no judgment.
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They live as if there is no ultimate justice.
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They live as if they are animals.
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And I've said this before, we have told kids in school for years that they are the products of evolution, they are monkeys, they are grown up apes, and then we get upset when they act like it.
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We tell them that they are apes and we get upset when they act like it.
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Naturalism really is an attempt to explain origins.
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The problem with naturalism is that it doesn't explain anything.
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The naturalist view of origins is this, all men are the product of some kind of naturalistic, not supernatural, but natural process of the universe.
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That does not answer the question of where we came from.
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It does not answer the question of origins.
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In fact, I've often said this, I do talk to people who believe these things, and I say, well, where do you believe that we came from? And they say, well, we came from evolution.
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I say, that's impossible.
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Because evolution is simply change.
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You can't have something change that doesn't exist.
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So when I say, where did we come from, and you say evolution, it's got to have something preceding that.
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Something has to precede evolution to be able to change.
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You don't start changing before you start being.
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So that's the naturalistic evolutionary view.
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The next one is, and again, time is never my friend, because I get caught up always on my first point, and now I've got to rush.
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Polytheism, what is polytheism? Well, we go back to the word theism.
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Theism means a belief in God.
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Poly means what? Poly means many or more than one.
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And the term polytheism simply means a belief in many gods.
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What are some religions that are polytheistic? Hindu, absolutely.
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They have a lot of gods.
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What's another one? The ancient Native American religions were polytheistic.
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There was the god of the wind, the god of the sea, the god of the trees, the great spirit.
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Greek mythology is filled with a pantheon of gods as to the Romans, and usually there was a crossover between those.
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Sometimes the same Roman Greek god might have two different names, but essentially the same god or goddess.
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What is the most, and if you get this, I will be so proud of you, because I've said this a bunch over the years, what is the most polytheistic religion in history? What? No, it's not what I've said.
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And I would argue that the one...
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Huh? It says what you said.
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Oh, I know.
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What's the most polytheistic religion in history? Anyone know? Anyone want to take a guess? You're going to laugh.
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You're not going to believe it.
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Mormonism.
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Mormonism is the most polytheistic religion in the world because they believe that God was once a man who had a god, and that god was once a man who had a god, and they believe in what's called the eternal regression, that there was always a god that came before.
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See, Mormonism believes that our god was once a man who lived on a planet that surrounded a star called Kolob, that because of his adherence to the teachings of his god, he was able to become a god in his universe, and he, through celestial marriage, produced the offspring that became our world, and now he's the god of our world.
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And guess what? One day, if you follow Mormon teachings, you too can be a god.
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What a sales pitch.
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You too can...
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Wow.
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Yeah, you can be god.
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And we can become gods ourselves, and through celestial marriage populate our own universes, and then out of those universes will come other gods.
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And it's a...
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It really is a perpetual...
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You talk about a pantheon, it's a googolplex of potential gods in the universe.
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Mormonism is the most polytheistic religion in the world, and yet they'll tell you they're just like you.
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That's the big thing with Mormonism now.
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They don't want any distinctions.
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They want to be known as another denomination.
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They are not.
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So, polytheism, belief in many gods.
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What is the next...
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Pantheism.
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Pan.
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Pantheism.
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You've heard this before.
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You might not be familiar with it.
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Pan, that prefix means all...
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And basically what it means is god is in everything, and everything is god.
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This is the idea that god is the trees, god is the air, he is the wind.
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Seneca said this, he said, what is god? He is all that you see and all that you do not see.
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That's pantheism.
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God is just everything.
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Last one in this list is deism.
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Deism is an important one for us to understand, because deism is the religion of the average American.
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It's not Christianity.
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He said, what do you mean? Actually, I'll give you the longer version.
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The longer version, a study was done.
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Many people were put into this study.
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They studied what they believe about religion, what they believe about god, and the book that was written as a result of that study concluded that the average young person in America, I think they studied mostly young people, and they said the average young person is not Christian in their beliefs, but believes in something called moralistic therapeutic deism.
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There may be a god, and he probably does exist, and he wants you to be good, and if you're good, you'll feel better about yourself.
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That's moralistic therapeutic deism.
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It's not Christianity, but it is the belief.
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I spent several years working in schools, both as a substitute teacher, as a paraprofessional, and as a security guard.
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Those were some rough years.
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When I was in seminary, I worked at a school, and I had several opportunities to talk to young people about what they believed, and I tell you what, the book did not get it wrong.
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How do you believe that you're saved? You're going to ask, do you believe that you're saved? Yes.
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Why are you saved? I believe in God.
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Where in the Bible does it say belief in God gets anybody saved? James chapter 2 says even the demons believe and shudder at the existence of God.
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Belief in God, a cold, simple belief in some kind of creative being, that's deism.
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That is not theism, and it's not Christianity.
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The difference between deism and theism is this.
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Deism says God essentially started the world spinning as it were like a top, like you take a spinning top and spin it, and he left it to spin, and he stepped away for it to do what it's going to do naturally.
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God is on the outside of the universe.
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He may see what we're doing, but he doesn't have any interaction, and he truly doesn't care.
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Deism says yes, there was a starter, there was a creator, but he doesn't have any interaction with his creation.
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Now where does this really play out for us? It's important to go back to what I said.
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Remember the arguments for the existence of God? The arguments for the existence of God, the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the anthropological argument, the teleological argument, all of those can only take you to bare theism.
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None of them prove the God of the Bible.
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They really only take you to bare theism.
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This is why, how many of you have heard of the intelligent design movement? Intelligent design is an attempt by scientists to try to put the argument against evolution back into the classroom by saying that there is reason to believe that there is design in the universe, and design is proof of a designer, and it's proof of an intelligent designer, and so we need to at least teach our kids who are in school that there's not only one way to look at natural history.
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We can look at natural history as being chaotic and unguided, or we can say natural history proves that there is an intelligent designer who is guiding the process of the world and its creation.
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The problem with that is neither one of those teach them about the God of the Bible.
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You either go from being an atheist to a deist.
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You never become a Christian.
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Anthony Flew, famous atheist, wrote many books on atheism, was known world-renowned as an atheist.
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Several years ago, he renounced atheism, and all of the Christian world was like, yay, Anthony Flew has renounced atheism because he, through all of his studies, realized that this couldn't have been an accident.
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This couldn't have been a product of a mistake.
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But Anthony Flew doesn't believe in Christ.
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Anthony Flew is a bare deist.
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Bare in the sense of...
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Yeah, yeah, just a flat deist.
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He doesn't believe in Yahweh, he doesn't believe in Jesus, he doesn't believe in the Bible, but he believes that something created the world because there's so much evidence he can't deny it.
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When I say deist, that's what I meant by bare deist.
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He's just a deist.
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He's not a Christian.
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See, when the Christian world wants to grab Anthony Flew and say, see, see, here's a guy who the evidence pointed him to God.
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No, the evidence just proved to him that he was being ridiculous by being an atheist.
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That's all the evidence does, is it proves that you're ridiculous by being an atheist.
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The only thing that changes the heart of men is the gospel working by the power of the Holy Spirit in a man's heart.
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This is why we preach the gospel.
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This is why when I'm talking to an atheist or anyone, I don't spend all my time making scientific arguments for the existence of God.
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A lot of times I just tell them out front.
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They'll say, I don't believe God exists.
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I say, I believe you know God exists, and I want to talk to you in your conscience.
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I want to talk to your conscience.
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I want to ask you a question.
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Have you ever told a lie? Well, yes.
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What does that make you? Well, I don't know.
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Well, if I told you a lie, what would it make me? A liar.
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So you're a liar.
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You don't like it when I call you that, do you? Because it affects your conscience.
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Have you ever stolen anything? Not anything important? Ever robbed Uncle Sam? You're a thief.
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Jesus said if you ever looked at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery in your heart.
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Have you ever looked with lust? I had a guy tell me no one time.
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I said, are you gay? I really did.
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And he stopped, and he thought, and he goes, wait, I've done that.
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I've got a proof.
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And I said, so what you're telling me is that you're a lying thief and an adulterer at heart.
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Because Jesus said that's adultery of the heart.
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And one day you're going to face God.
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And the God of this world is righteous and holy, and he sees your sin as an affront to his nature.
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And you have to stand before that holy judge.
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What are you going to do? See, oftentimes that eliminates all the other, because it gets to the heart of the issue.
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Because they know they're going to stand before God one day.
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They know it.
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And now they're having to deal with their conscience, which is telling them that they're a sinner in front of a holy God.
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Next week we're going to look at the revelation of God, because obviously I don't want to shortchange that.
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So we'll end tonight on that, and next week we'll move on to the revelation of God, which really fits into all of this, because we've said God exists, but how do we know about God? We know about God because He has revealed Himself to us.
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He has revealed Himself in general revelation and in special revelation.
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And next week we'll talk about the difference between those two, and why they both matter.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for Your truth.
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I pray that now, in the midst of this time, that You would bless us, and use this time to draw us closer to You, draw us closer to what You have to teach us, and ultimately, Lord, that we would hear Your Word telling us that we should believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and know that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and He's the only one worthy of our trust and our faith, and He is the one that the Bible says that we are to believe in.
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The Word of God says that we are to trust in Him, because there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
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So we love You and we trust You in His name.
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Amen.