Debate: Does God Exist? # 10

Wetness is a necessary state of water, and it's a universal truth that things get wet when water is applied to them. The universal truth didn't evolve.

That's my point. I'm sorry, I'm not very good at saying it.

That's okay. I had to listen, and it's a very good point. And it's difficult to articulate that sometimes. You're not all wet. I'm nervous. You did very well. Thank you. It's a universal truth. That's all you're saying, and it did not evolve.

The idea of wetness, as an example, didn't evolve.

It's just you're wet or you're not wet. That's what my point was trying to be, but it was kind of skewed because I didn't say it properly, and I apologize.

No, you did fine. You did fine. It's just not valid.

My question is to you, Reverend. Earlier, you basically stated that you believe all things have a beginning and an ending, correct? No. You said that there has to be a beginning somewhere.

Logically, there cannot be an infinite regression of uncaused causes. The reason is because that means things would go back for an infinite amount of time. If there's an infinite amount of time in the past, you could never get to the present because in order to get to the present, you have to transverse an infinite amount of time.

But logically, it cannot be transversed. Therefore, there could not have been an infinite amount of time in the back. Therefore, there could not have been an infinite number of regressions. Therefore, there must be one uncaused cause.

All right. Next question.

Salvation, Trust in Jesus Christ, and Who Is Lost

This question is addressed at Matt. Based on what you've said here today, I would use logic to conclude that if one doesn't put their faith and their heart in Jesus Christ, that they wouldn't be accepted in the kingdom of heaven.

Would you say to us today that everybody, whether ignorant, Muslim, or any other religion for that matter, is going to hell? Yes.

You don't trust in Jesus Christ. And since you asked the question, I'll put the preacher hat on. And you can certainly respond to this. Whether you like it or don't like it, I'm not saying I don't care.

I do care. I really do care. But the truth is, Jesus Christ, who claimed to be God in flesh, of which I can defend very well from Scripture, who rose from the dead, of which I can defend historically from the Scriptures, said that if you don't put your trust and your faith in Him, then you're lost.

You've got to deal with Him. That's the issue. And I trust Him. I'm not going to trust that when I die, I stop existing. Flip a coin. I don't exist or I exist. Which one am I going to risk eternity on?

Yes. Now, Matt, let's be real clear on this. In your righteous, holy, guided view, all Jews are going to hell, and all Muslims are going to hell. Did the young lady in the turban in the back hear that?

All Muslims are going to hell. I want to be clear on that. That's what you think. You're very clear on it. All Muslims are going to hell. All Jews are going to hell. Now, among Protestant groups, are all Protestants going to heaven or only certain Protestants going to heaven?

Can I answer? Or would you then kick in the do not judge, let's judge not that ye be not judged. Would that be an applicable place for that Scripture to apply? No. I mean, isn't that pretty bad for you to condemn everybody, all the human race who doesn't believe the way you do to some kind of eternity of torment?

You've got to be up there looking down on them and then dropping little drops of water on them so you say, see, there's water and therefore there's God. Let me just interject here as well. It sounds like there's a desire to have some theological discussion outside of the formal rules of logic that we've been debating.

So if you have those, bring those up. I'm sure that Reverend Slick will be happy to address them and that Edwin Kagan will as well. So if you want to discuss theology proper, we'll go ahead and do that, and we'll carry this on as long as you deem necessary.

Okay? All right. Thanks.

Faith, Belief, and the Nature of God

Question to the Reverend. It says here on your card that God doesn't believe in atheists, therefore atheists don't exist. That's a joke.

That's a joke, I think. I hope it is. Well, yes. I don't believe in Matt, yet Matt exists. Okay.

As a definition in believing in something, do you believe that you have to have faith in something as well? You have to define.

That's going to be difficult. You have to define the terms better. That's a good question, but we have to really define faith and belief a little bit better to answer it. I'm not trying to evade it.

Okay. Say in the next room I believe there's a quarter on the ground in there. Would you be saying that I have faith that there's a quarter there? Okay. Do you believe that faith requires evidence? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

All right. Does God believe in people themselves? Well, I'm not sure what you mean by God believes in people and he's aware of their existence. Does he have faith in them? Well, I'm not sure what you mean by he has faith in them.

I'm serious. I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm not sure what you mean by that. If you mean he's confident that they'll make mistakes, yeah, or do good things, relatively speaking, yeah.

Do you believe that God is infinitely infallible, all-knowing? Yes. Why would God need faith or would he need to believe in us?

Good question, but I have to give a two-minute sermonette to answer it. Let me just try and break it down. That's really not going to do it justice. The reason faith is the element or the means of what we call justification and being made right with God is because there's an infinitely holy God, and we're not.

We blow it. We make mistakes. We sin. We break his law. We've incurred a judgment against him. Otherwise, it's not a law. And there's no other way for us to be right with God. We can't undo that damage.

So, therefore, God makes it possible for us to be saved from that judgment by taking care of the sin issue himself. And since it's all on him and not on us, the only thing left for us to do is to trust in what he has done, and that's where the issue of faith comes in.

That's why it's necessary because it's not dependent upon our effort but upon God's work. That's the gospel. Edwin, your response to that?

I don't have a response to that. Move on to the next one. Christian theological issues. Thank you. Great question. Next question. My question is for you, Edwin. Earlier you said that logic is man-made, right?

Yes, I did. And would that mean that you would agree with universal truth? No, it doesn't mean that at all. It's relative then? Do I believe the truth is relative? Yes, absolutely. The truth is relative?

Yes. But wouldn't truth have to be absolute? No. It wouldn't? Okay. Well, I'm not making the connection in my head how truth can be relative when it should be absolute. And if you could explain that, it would help me out.

Well, what does cold mean or what does hot mean? It might mean one thing to a person raised in one climate and one to another. If truth is not relative, why do we... There are actually some people who voted for the current president of the United States.

People have different views on different things. Are you able to accept that? Let me give you an example here. What you're doing is looking for a way where you can say, Well, through belief, all of these things are made clear.

These things are clarified by belief. I concede that makes things a lot easier. It certainly does. It avoids sticky processes of thought. Now, have you ever heard a wonderful little song sung in Sunday schools?

Tell me why the stars do shine. Tell me why the ivy twines. Tell me why the sky is so blue. And I will tell you why. Have you ever heard that? Very sweet. In the end, the refrain is, Because God made the stars to shine.

Because God made the ivy twine. Because God made the sky so blue. Because God made you. That's why I love you. Well, scientist and atheist and philosopher Isaac Asimov, before his death, put his mind to that particular thing and came up with another version.

He said, Nuclear fission makes the stars to shine. Trophisms makes the ivy twine. Rayleigh scatter makes the sky so blue. Testicular hormone is why I love you. You know, you can either ascribe things to faith and to some kind of philosophical gibberish principle and religion is very good at this by making very simple ideas very complicated.

Very simple things and giving them big words and meanings and then saying, You must believe in this on faith. Again, I commend to you Alice in Wonderland where the queen of hearts says to Alice, You should take this on faith.

Alice says, How do you do that? Queen says, You shut your eyes. You take a deep breath and you try real hard. That's how you take it on faith.

Well, I'm kind of concerned as well because you used relative terms now. And so, you said hot and cold. Those are relative terms. Thank you. For us. Okay.

There's an example for you. Yeah, they are relative. So there's not a given truth of what is hot and what's cold, right? But if I was to say,.

This is 400 degrees Kelvin. Would that not be an absolute truth?

Ah, now that's getting into something more interesting. That's where, if we could use those kind of measurements to prove God, I wouldn't be here. There wouldn't be any atheists. You have to be able to have proof and be able to replicate it.

You know, measure twice, cut once. Get it right. And then you don't need the argument. If it was perfectly clear and you could prove, like we don't have these debates on whether or not a rock will sink into water.

We do have things on evolution, saying it's only a theory. And so is gravity. And every day I drop something. I hope that today maybe it will float up, but it doesn't. It goes down and the theory is affirmed.

But we don't have people sitting around holding hands saying, I believe in gravity. I do not believe that things fall up, as non-believers say, you know.