Atheists Don't Exist

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

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Alright guys, so, and no, we're not going to do that.
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So tonight is night two.
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If you were not here last night, I want to ask, is there anybody who was here who can tell me and tell the rest of us, what's the one main takeaway from last night? Does anybody remember the one main thing that we talked about last night yet? Well, that's what we're going to talk about tonight.
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But last night, I said this, I said, you can't defend what you don't possess.
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You can't defend what you don't possess.
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And the Bible says that we are to give a defense for what? No, not for our belief.
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That's a good guess.
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But we're to give it a defense for the hope that is within us.
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And if the hope isn't within us, then we can't give a defense.
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Now, I did say something last night I want to clarify.
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I said, if you're not a believer, then the rest of this week isn't for you.
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What I meant by that is defending the faith is not something you do until you actually possess the faith.
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But that doesn't mean that the rest of what I'm going to say doesn't apply in the sense of you learning it.
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What I'm saying is until you become a Christian, you're not defending what you have.
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If anything, you're just arguing about speculation, right? Until you actually come to the Lord Jesus Christ and believe on him through repentance and faith, you're not defending something you have.
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You might be defending something your parents have.
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You might be defending something your friends have, but you're not defending what you have.
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And the Bible says we're to give a defense for the hope that is within us.
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Right.
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So that's the point.
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And that was last night.
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And what we said is over the next three nights, beginning with tonight, we're going to be looking at three categories of objections to the Christian faith tonight.
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We're going to be looking at the existence and nature of God.
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And what I told you last night was what that young man just said back there.
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This is slam dunk.
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I tell you what, we get to the pool quick because this is a slam dunk.
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Now, the person in the work of Christ takes a little bit more history and theology to understand and defend.
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And the nature and reliability of scripture is going to be a little bit more.
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But but tonight and I'm not saying that we ain't got a lot of stuff to cover tonight.
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But what I am saying is this.
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Everybody already knows that God exists and anybody who tells you different is suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.
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Open your Bibles to Romans chapter one.
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We're going to read Romans chapter one.
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We're going to begin at verse 18.
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We're going to read down to verse 23 and then we're going to pray.
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We're going to focus mainly on verse 20, but I want to read at least 18 and 23 to grab the context of what Paul is saying.
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Paul begins with a very popular topic, the wrath of God.
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That was kind of a joke, but notice what he says beginning in verse 18, he says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unright ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.
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So they are without excuse.
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For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God nor give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise.
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They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I pray even now, Lord, that as we begin to seek to understand what this says and how it applies to us, I want to first ask that you would keep me from error as Lord God.
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I pray every time I preach, I know how fallible I am, but how perfect your word is.
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So, Lord, let your word be put on display and keep me from saying things which would not be in keeping with that word.
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I pray for the young people in this room, Lord, those who know you.
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I pray that this would give them a greater ability to make a defense for the hope that is within them.
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And Lord, for those who do not know you, I pray that this would confront them in their unbelief, that they would recognize that not only they know God exists in their heart, but Lord God, they are living in rebellion.
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And Lord God, that they would turn from that and turn to the Savior, the only one who can save us, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And I pray this in his name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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So as I said last night, I've studied and taught on apologetics for a long time and many years ago I became settled.
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This is one of the most important apologetics passages in the Bible.
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Romans chapter one, verses 18 to 23, specifically verse 20.
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And it's important because it tells us something about the nature of man.
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It tells us that men and women, that's a generic man, mankind, men who deny God's existence are not just neutral or free thinkers or, you know, just just haven't been convinced.
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That's what a lot of people think.
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No, this tells us that people who do not believe in the existence of God are actually in denial because they know God exists and they suppress that truth.
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And notice something I want to I want to be very clear about this.
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They do not lack evidence.
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One of the things that and for those who know what this means, I'm a presupposition list, not an evidentialist.
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I don't deny the value evidence, but I do believe that we have to have a starting point with some basic presuppositions.
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For instance, C.S.
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Lewis said, if I didn't believe my brain was created for thinking, I would have no reason to believe my own thought.
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Now, think about that, that's what's called a scientific axiom.
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It means it's believed without being proven because you can't prove it.
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You can't prove your brain is made for thinking.
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All you can do is think, right? You can't step out of your brain to prove that it's made for thinking because that's the only brain you got.
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Right.
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So an axiom of science is that my brain was made for thinking, therefore I can trust my thoughts.
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Right.
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What do we say to what do we say about people who can't trust their thoughts? Something's wrong with their brain.
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The brain's sick, they're crazy, they're psychotic, whatever.
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Right.
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But we say the average person thinks thoughts and he trusts his own thoughts.
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That's what science is all about.
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Right.
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We we measure things, we study things, we do all that for what purpose? To convince ourselves that something is true or not true.
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Why? Because we believe we can come up with that conclusion based on our own thoughts.
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And Lewis was making and again, I'm not a huge fan of C.S.
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Lewis and regarding theology, but I'm a huge fan of him and regarding his writing.
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I think he was a tremendous storyteller.
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And one of the things that he said in his teaching on this, he said, listen, he said, imagine a milk jug was spilled out on a table and it drew out the map of London.
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That wouldn't make any sense.
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He said, if a milk jug poured out water, milk is going to go everywhere.
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It's not going to make a map.
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It's not going to have any sense.
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It's just going to go wherever gravity takes it.
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He said, I would have just as much reason to believe that I could upset a milk carton and it would spill out the map of London and to think my brain came together accidentally to give me the proper thoughts that I have in my mind.
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So that's why I'm a presubstantialist.
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I believe there are certain axioms that I have to I have to at least come to the table believing certain things.
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And the Bible tells me that every man knows that God exists.
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In fact, every man knows God exists so much, according to this verse, that they are.
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And I'm going to write the word up here.
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I'm going to write it for you in the original language.
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So I've been messing with my blue.
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All right.
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Try it again.
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All right.
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All right.
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This word is unapologetic, big word, unapologetic.
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What's the root of unapologetic? Yeah, well, it's the same root.
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Apologetics means to do what class to give a defense.
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What happens when you put an alpha primitive at the beginning of something? Makes it the opposite, right? If you say you're a theist, if you put the alpha primitive beginning makes it an atheist means you don't believe in God, right? That's what atheists is.
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At least they think so.
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Unapologetic, this is putting this statement in front of the word apologetics.
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And it says they are without defense.
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Now, how are they without defense? If a man tells you that God doesn't exist one day, he's going to face God and he is going to be without defense because God made himself known to that man.
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And that man has no defense.
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I heard an atheist one time, very famous atheist, he said, when I die, if I find out God exists, I'm going to look him in the eye and I'm going to say I had no reason to believe in you because you didn't give me enough evidence.
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Ha! Sorry.
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That's how I responded.
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Ha! You're not going to you're not going to face God and say anything.
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You're going to be you know what the word prostrate means, means face down.
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Right.
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You're going to be face down before the Lord of glory, recognizing that your whole life you spent denying the very one who made himself known to you from the very moment that you came into this world.
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And you will be without defense.
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You're not going to you're not going to be able to offer up a defense for yourself.
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You're not going to be able to take the stand and give evidences against God.
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You are going to be crushed under the weight of his majesty.
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There is no excuse.
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According to the Apostle Paul, who I tend to agree with, you know, because he was part of the writing of this thing we call the Bible.
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According to the Apostle Paul, there is no excuse for not believing in the invisible God.
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By the way, the title of tonight's lesson is Defending the Invisible God.
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And as I already said, God has made himself known.
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The invisible has made himself known.
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Therefore, this defense is actually fairly easy.
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And what I'm going to teach you tonight is actually a fairly easy apologetic.
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Goes sort of something like this.
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I don't believe in God.
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Sure you do.
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That's not that easy, but I have said that before.
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I told you guys last night about the the fishing hole, right? We have we have a booth that we go and we set up at the fairs and stuff like that.
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And we have this booth.
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And I mean, we talk to thousands of people and I stand out there and I hand out tracks and I talk to folks.
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And I had to talk to a young man one time.
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He says, I don't want this.
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I don't believe in God.
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I said, sure you do.
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You don't even know me.
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I don't have to know you.
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I know the God who created you and he put the knowledge of himself within you.
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We had a 30 minute conversation.
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Was there some tit for tat? Was there some back and forth? Yes.
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But at the end of the day, he took the track home with him because he recognized that I wasn't going to put up with that nonsense.
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That's all it is.
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Atheism is nonsense.
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By the way, like I said last night, it's only makes up three percent of the world.
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Atheism is is is the least likely thing you're going to run into.
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You're much more likely to run into a Mormon, Jehovah Witness, a Muslim, maybe not here in central Florida.
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You very, very, very likely to run into Mormons and stuff, though.
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And.
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But running into an atheist, you know, maybe you'll go to college, maybe you'll run into some atheists there, but even there, you're going to find it's not as popular as people think.
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We see guys like Christopher Hitchens, who is now dead.
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So we don't see him anymore, but we see guys like Richard Dawkins and men who are popular level atheists.
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And we think, oh, man, they represent such a large swath of people.
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Even atheists don't like those guys.
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You have to understand when somebody says, well, I don't believe in God.
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They are denying what is, according to the Bible, so obvious that there's no defense for for believing that.
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In fact, do you understand that it's only been in the last 150 years or so that atheism has even been really in the in the market of ideas? In fact, Richard Dawkins, actually one of the one of the atheists, Richard Dawkins did say this.
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He said that it was because of Darwin, who was the one who popularized the idea of evolution.
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Evolution, yeah, was that what you're going to say? Yes, yes.
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He studied finches on the Galapagos Islands and he noticed that different finches had different sized beaks because of their mating habits, feeding habits, things like that.
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And he determined that that was a type of change, which that's what evolution means, is change.
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And therefore, he argued that all of us have come from a single ancestor.
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So Darwin's theory was not new.
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Evolution's been around for a long time, but Darwin's theory was this, was that that we all descended from a single ancestor.
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So Darwinian evolution is that we all came from the same single celled organism and it's just been branched out over billions of years.
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Well, Richard Dawkins said that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
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Listen again, what he was saying, he was saying up until the time of Darwin, you really couldn't be an intellectually fulfilled atheist because there was no real way to believe that this came about accidentally.
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But Darwin comes along, he gives this fanciful idea of how it could have come about accidentally.
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And therefore, people gravitated towards that, began to believe in that.
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And now he says you can be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
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I'm here to tell you, you can't.
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But that's what he says.
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He says, if you believe in Darwin, you can be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
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The problem is Darwinism doesn't work either.
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But it's amazing what people will believe if they don't want to believe in God.
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And let me tell you this, we talk about atheism.
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I'm going to tell you what an atheist is.
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An atheist is not a person who doesn't believe in God.
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An atheist is a person who doesn't want to believe in God.
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That's the difference.
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People say, oh, atheists are just neutral people who don't believe in God.
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No, they are people who do not want to believe in God.
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And when you don't want to believe in something, you will do anything in the world to prove it.
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You guys ever heard about the man who believed he was dead? You've heard the story.
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Who hasn't? That's enough for me to tell the story.
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OK, just making sure.
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If everybody heard, I'll move on.
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There was a guy who believed he was dead.
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That sounds stupid, but go with me on this.
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He believed that he was dead.
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He told his wife, I died and I'm dead.
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She said, no, you're not.
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You're up.
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You're walking around.
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You're breathing.
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You ate breakfast.
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You're not dead.
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No, no, honey, I'm convinced.
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She said, well, I'm going to take you to the doctor because something's wrong with you.
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So she took him to the doctor.
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Doctor sits down with him.
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Runs a test, his heart's beating.
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Hey, man, your heart's beating.
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I'm dead.
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Got a pulse, man.
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You got a pulse.
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I am dead.
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I can hear breath entering and exhaling from your mouth.
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You are alive.
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I am dead.
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This guy was convinced he was dead.
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So the doctor said, listen.
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Dead men don't bleed.
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That's actually a fact.
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You look it up if you want to.
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I used to work in a funeral home.
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That's true.
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You cut a cadaver.
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It doesn't bleed.
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Dead men don't bleed.
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And he goes, oh, really? He said, yeah, he showed him in a medical textbook.
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Dead men don't bleed.
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He convinced him that dead men don't bleed.
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And the guy was like, OK, you convince me.
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To which the doctor took out a needle and poked him in the arm and blood starts pouring out of his arm.
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He said, look at that.
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Dead men bleed after all.
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You see, people will believe, will convince themselves.
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And once they've convinced themselves, they are they are sold.
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And and that's the tough part.
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People say, I don't believe God exists.
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They don't want to believe God exists.
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You say, why would a man not want God to exist? Well, there's an old saying, and I don't remember who said it, I believe it was a Protestant theologian, but I could be wrong about that.
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I just tend to believe that because I like them.
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But he said, if there is no God, all things are permissible.
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If there is no God, all things are permissible.
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I think about the world we live in right now, don't we live in a world that wants everything to be permissible? Don't we live in a world that does not want to live under the authority of anyone or anything? Don't we live in a world that says I can be anything I want to even a snapping turtle? Doesn't matter.
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I'm dead because all I got to do is declare it.
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Now, you laugh at me, what's any different than me stand up here and say, and I'm a six foot tall black woman.
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It don't make any sense, neither.
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But that's the kind of crazy stuff people say.
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Right.
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People say things and it ain't right, but we are expected to listen to them.
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Why? Because there's no authority.
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They say, I am an island unto myself.
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And when I say it, I declare it.
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And it is like Michael Scott declaring he was bankrupt.
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That's for you office fans.
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One guy.
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Thank you.
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This is you can't just say you're bankrupt.
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I didn't say it.
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I declared it.
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OK, sorry.
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All right.
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Yeah.
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When you derail, you got to bring it back.
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Right.
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OK, I bring it back.
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So when we talk about this subject, when we talk about the idea of talking to someone about God and them saying, I don't believe in God or maybe that's maybe that's some of you.
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And I want you to know, I'm not trying to be insulting.
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And I'm not coming up here and I'm not trying to trying to, you know, give you a piece of ice that was just touching somebody's foot.
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I ain't trying to do that to you.
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I am.
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I'm trying to point out the reason why there's no defense, because that's what God said through the apostle Paul.
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There's no defense for that.
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There's absolutely no defense for that.
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Years ago, I was there's some houses behind our church and I was walking around house to house handing out gospel tracts.
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I'm a real big fan of gospel tracts.
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And if you don't know why, come and talk to me sometime.
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I really think they're usable.
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I think God uses them and they're important.
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And I was handing out gospel tracts at house to house, just walking up, handed, you know, going on to the next house with a guy.
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He said to me, he said, man, I'm an atheist.
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And at the time I was I was a little uncomfortable.
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You ever get uncomfortable? I get uncomfortable all the time.
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And I was a little uncomfortable.
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I didn't want to argue with a man on his own steps.
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Right.
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So I took the track back and I walked on, kind of had my tail between my legs, kind of like, you know, beat up puppy.
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And I went back, got in my truck, drove around for a little while and I realized.
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I can't let it go.
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I can't I can't leave it at that.
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So I went back.
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I walk up to the guy's house, not know you.
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What? Hello.
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You're back.
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Yes.
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I have to tell you this.
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I know you told me you're an atheist.
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I just want you to know that is not true.
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Am I am I saying are you saying I'm a liar? No, I'm not saying you're a liar, but I am saying this.
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The Bible says that you are currently suppressing the truth and unrighteousness, that what can be known about God, namely his invisible attributes and his divine nature, have been clearly perceived and the things that have been made.
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And every time you walk out of your house and you see the sun or you see the moon or you see trees or you see grass or you see your children or your grandchildren, that is testimony to you that there is a God who made you.
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I'd like to say he fell on his knees and trust in Jesus.
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He did not.
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But at least I got to tell him that I got to interact with what he said more than just OK.
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Everybody turn to Psalm 19 and you ought to know this one because you're studying it in your memory verses.
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In fact, right now, for 100 cool points, who can stand up without looking at their Bible and quote Psalm 19, verse one? Do it.
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Oh, OK, I thought I had one up.
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I thought you were saying, yes, nobody.
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Thank you.
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You get 100 cool points.
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Those are worth nothing.
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To anyone but me, they're worth it to me.
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Thank you.
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What's your name? Charles, you got 100 cool points.
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OK, Charles is right.
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The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaim his handiwork.
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If you're there, I want to keep reading, though.
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It says day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.
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There is no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard.
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Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.
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In them, he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving its chamber and like a strong man runs its course with joy.
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It's rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them.
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And there is nothing hidden from its heat.
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Now, that's poetic.
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So let me break down poetry.
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I'm not real good with poetry, but I understand this.
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What he is saying is the heavens and that doesn't mean God's house.
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We always think like heaven is where God lives.
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No, the heavens in this particular context is the sky above us.
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And he says the heavens declare the glory of God.
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And last time I was here a couple of years ago, I did the five solos and the last one is solely to glory.
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And I explained what glory is.
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Glory is God's holiness on display, demonstrating God's power and magnificence and his might.
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That's what his holiness on display is.
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And that's his glory.
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And the Bible says the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above declares his handiwork.
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But then it goes into verse two.
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It's his day to day.
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It pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.
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What that means is every single day and every single night, God's glory is on display.
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Every person, everywhere you go, you can't escape it.
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And that's what he says.
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The voice goes out through all the earth and the sun is like a preacher.
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The sun, we know that we are going around the sun and the earth is turning toward the sun and away from the sun.
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But from our perspective, the sun comes up in the morning, goes down in the evening.
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Right.
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And what he's saying is the sun is like a preacher.
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The sun gets up in the morning, he rises and he comes up and he spends all day going across the sky until he goes to bed at night.
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And that is a symbol of a preacher crying out.
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Look at me.
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Look at the majesty of God.
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Look at what I put on display.
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Because guess what? You ever seen those pictures on the Internet would show you how small we are compared to the sun? Like the earth is here and the sun's here.
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Guess what? God's bigger than all that.
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So when we see the sun and we say, wow, look at that giant floating, burning orb, isn't it weird? Look at this big thing.
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And we see this and it's it's hot and we feel its heat, even though it's billions of light years away, we can feel it weird.
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And we say that is not an accident that came about by some design.
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There is there is an amazing symmetry in the world that causes us to step back and say this, this bears the handprints of a designer.
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I went to a hospital years and years ago, and the man who was in the hospital had just had his intestines removed.
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He had had a terrible disease and he was now going to live the rest of his life with a bag on his body because of his because of this disease that he had had in his intestines.
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It's a terrible, terrible thing.
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He was an atheist.
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I knew this because he was related to somebody in my family.
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He did not ask me to come.
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My family member asked me to come and all the preachers in the room.
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Y'all know what that's like.
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Hey, can you go talk to somebody who don't want to see you? Oh, by the way, he's having the worst day of his life.
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Sure, we'd love to go.
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That's what we do.
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So I get up and go to the hospital to see the man who doesn't want to see me on the absolute worst day of his life.
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Walk in the room, he does not look happy to see me.
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But I began to strike up a cordial conversation with him and he was nice to me and we had a nice maybe five minute of, you know, how are you feeling? Which is the worst thing to ask you on the worst day of his life.
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But I asked it anyway, how are you feeling? Bad.
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OK.
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And he brought up God and I was thankful because I knew he didn't believe in God, at least he said he didn't clarify, said he was naked, didn't want to believe in God.
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And he said, you know what? I came to your church a few years ago and I didn't like it.
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Thanks.
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Of course you didn't.
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But I said, I came to your church a few years ago.
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I didn't like it.
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I said, OK, why? Well, I didn't like it because I didn't believe in God.
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Well, I came and you preached on hell and I think that was very nice.
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OK, so I let that one go.
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Not here to argue hell, but I did circle back.
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I guess I said, OK, I said, let me ask you a question.
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You're sitting in front of a big window.
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The hospital bed was turned toward the window and the window was open.
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So I walked over to the window and I pointed at a building across the street.
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Very nice, big, tall building, 15 floors or so big, tall building.
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I said, hey, man, you see that? He said, yeah.
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I said, how do you suppose that got there? He said, what do you mean? I said, well, do you think somebody built that? He said, well, of course somebody built that.
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I said, you think it had a designer? He said, yeah.
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I said, you think it had an architect? Yeah.
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I said, you think it had workers, laborers that came and put the bricks down and all this stuff? I said, you think that happened? He said, well, of course.
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I said, yeah, because you'd be a fool to look at that and think it came about all by itself.
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Right.
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And he got the thing.
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Yeah.
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I said, your whole body that is now crumbling does show evidence of design.
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In fact, the doctors who worked on you show evidence of design because their brains were smart enough to figure out how to take out all of your insides and replace it with a Ziploc bag.
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I mean, that takes some smarts, right? Yeah.
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You think that happened by accident? So now we're now we're talking because he's starting to he's starting to recognize the the unapologetic, he's starting to realize his his argument does not have a defense.
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Yes.
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And before I left, I said this, I said, you know what? You didn't like the sermon when you came to hear me preach years ago.
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Because I talked about hell, I said, but understand, the reason I talk about hell is because it's real.
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You may not like that, it's real.
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But what you believe and what you think doesn't change what's true.
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You not believe in gravity, you stand on that building and jump off, gravity is going to kick your behind all the way down and then it's going to smush you when you hit bottom because what you believe don't change what is the heavens declare the glory of God.
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Everything we see around us is evidence telling us that God exists.
31:23
How many of you have heard of the James Webb Space Telescope? OK, this is a new thing.
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When I was a kid, it was the Hubble Space Telescope that was a big deal.
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They sent this space telescope out into the universe and it sent back pictures that were amazing.
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And that's the pictures we've had for 40 years.
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But just a few weeks ago, they sent the James Webb Space Telescope that has given now through infrared technology, a much clearer picture of the universe showing us the very handprints of God on everything, that it's not just a molten mass of chaos, but it is a beautiful tapestry showing us a picture of the hands of God.
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And if the universe is so magnificent and so vast, what does that tell you about the one who made it? That he is even greater and even more magnificent.
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And some people will ask me, well, doesn't science tell us that we don't need a creator? No, it does not.
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In fact, I want to introduce you to another term.
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Some of you may know what this is.
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Some of you may not.
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Metaphysics.
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I think I spelled it right.
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I'll make sure.
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It'd be a little embarrassing if I did.
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I misspelled it.
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What is metaphysics? You may know.
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All right.
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The word meta means above.
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All right.
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It's a prefix.
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All right.
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Above or beyond something.
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All right.
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And physics is how we understand the world.
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Physics is how we do science.
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Right.
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I want to read to you.
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The reason why I was explaining this is I want to read to you a quote.
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This is from a book called The Problem of God by Mark Clark.
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And he is going to quote an evolutionary biologist named Stephen Jay Gould.
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Now, Stephen Jay Gould is not a believer, but he's quoting him to show when people say, oh, well, science disproves God, it does not and it cannot.
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And this is the reason why, because science can only deal with the physical world.
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Science cannot deal with that which is beyond the physical world.
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Science does not deal with the metaphysical world.
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It does not deal with anything beyond the physical.
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So listen to this quote.
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Science has come to terms with the fact that nothing it deduces can nothing it deduces about reality can really disprove the existence of God.
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Hear that again.
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Nothing it proves about reality can disprove the existence of God.
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Why? Science studies the natural physical world.
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But the existence of God is what is called a metaphysical question.
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God is being found beyond the physical world.
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Thus, the question of his existence is beyond what physics can evaluate.
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Whatever power atheists think lies in science, it by itself cannot speak to the question of God's existence.
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Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould, the most celebrated atheist, evolutionary biologist, paleontologist and historian of science of the last generation, understood this fact deeply, arguing that nature.
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Listen to what he said.
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This is the greatest mind of the other side, says this.
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Nature just is.
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We cannot use nature for our moral instruction or for answering any question within the magisterium of religion.
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To say it for my colleagues and for the umpteenth million time, science cannot, by its legitimate methods, adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature.
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We neither affirm it nor deny it.
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We simply cannot comment to comment on it.
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As scientists, science cannot prove the existence of God and it cannot disprove the existence of God because it only deals with the physical and God made the physical.
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Therefore, he's not a part of creation.
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By the way, understand that God is not part of creation.
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God is outside of creation.
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Everything that is created was created by him, and therefore he's not part of it.
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If you believe God's part of creation, that's called pantheism.
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God's the trees, God's the air, God's the bushes.
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No, that's not Christian theism.
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That is pantheism.
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And that's not what the Bible teaches.
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So when we talk about science and religion and people say all science has disproven God, it can't and it won't because it's not even in the same.
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It's not even the same classification of ideas.
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In fact, maybe you've heard this one, maybe you've heard that over the years, especially back during the Middle Ages, the church persecuted scientists.
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You ever heard that? That the church and science have been at odds with one another.
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Let me read to you another quote.
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This is from historian David Lindbergh speaking about the medieval period wherein these supposed persecutions of science took place.
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He says this.
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There was no warfare between science and the church.
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Historians agree the science versus religion story and a 19th century is a 19th century fabrication.
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The church did not persecute those who taught scientific theories.
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Now, we could argue people say, what about Galileo? Wasn't Galileo persecuted because he believed in a heliocentric universe, meaning the sun's in the middle? Let me read you this.
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Galileo was a friend of the church for most of his life.
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He was a practicing Catholic.
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And in 1616, he came to Rome.
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He met with the pope multiple times.
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As time went on, he did become more critical of the church and its views.
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And the church did persecute Galileo.
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But here's how.
37:08
Here's how.
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He was never charged with heresy.
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He was never placed in a dungeon.
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He was never tortured.
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All that is popular mythology.
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Here's what happened.
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He was on house arrest.
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In the custody of Archbishop of Siena, who housed him in his palace for five months, didn't let him go home.
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Yeah, that's that's some terrible persecution.
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He got to live in a palace for five months.
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Then he went home to Vienna.
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I'm sorry.
37:35
He returned to his villa in Florence.
37:37
Excuse me.
37:38
Continuing his scientific work.
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He even published his scientific work before he died of natural causes in 1642.
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Wasn't burned to the stake.
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Wasn't killed for his ideas.
37:47
The church didn't like what he was saying.
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They had some disagreements and there were some issues.
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But the whole idea, oh, well, Galileo was just punished and persecuted.
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No.
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Guess where the greatest advancements in science and art were in the world before the 19th century? In the church.
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In the church.
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Yes.
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According to this, he died of natural causes in 1642.
38:19
You don't know about that one.
38:21
OK, well, I'll tell you what, later on, we'll Google it.
38:24
How about that? Because Google is the answer to everything.
38:28
One more quote, I hate reading quotes because you could read this for yourself, but let me just finish with this one.
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This is Oxford professor Alistair McGrath.
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And he says this, the idea that science and religion are in perpetual conflict is no longer taken seriously by any major historian of science.
38:47
One of the last remaining bastions of atheism, which survives only at the popular level, namely the myth that an atheistic fact based science is permanently at war with a faith based religion.
38:58
That is a myth.
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In fact, one of the greatest scientists in the world said this, he said, a lot of people begin to drink from the glass of the natural scientists and they begin to drink and they find atheism in the glass only to when they reach the bottom.
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They find God's been waiting there for them the whole time.
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Because what they realize is there's questions that science can't answer.
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Let me ask you this.
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When was the last time your science teacher told you why you're here? Because I don't deal with questions like that.
39:31
Why are we here, class? Oh, who's catechized? Let me see.
39:39
What's the chief end of man? Testify.
39:45
Oh, I just became Pentecostal for half a minute because I was.
39:48
For me, the Lord has filled me.
39:50
So who that was as close as I ever come to speaking in tongues, right? That in that moment.
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Sorry, I got it.
39:59
I got to get I got to get finished.
40:00
I know you all want to do.
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I want girls want to go swimming and everything.
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I get it.
40:04
I'm going to start wrapping up.
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Understand this.
40:08
When somebody says, well, science disproves God, that's not true.
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Science can't disprove God.
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And science is not at odds with at odds with God.
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You want to be a scientist? Great.
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Be a scientist to the glory of God.
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You can do that.
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Many men do do that.
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And women always remember when I say men, it's generic men and women.
40:32
In fact, it is scientific reasoning.
40:36
That can cause us to recognize what Paul said in Romans one makes sense.
40:41
How many of you ever heard of William Pele? OK, my man back there, my one.
40:48
That's another hundred points just for you.
40:54
William Pele.
40:57
Lived between 1743 and 1805.
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And he made this argument, and I do think this argument still holds up, even though men like Richard Dawkins try to make fun of it, they try to argue against it, I think this argument still holds up.
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And it's based on the concept of the teleological argument.
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I'm not going to write that word up here because it's big, but I will write the word it's based on.
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The Greek word is Telos.
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Actually, I think it's Latin.
41:21
Let me clarify that.
41:22
The word Telos and the word is teleological.
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Telos means purpose or goal.
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The teleological argument is when we look at the universe, there seems to be an appearance of purpose.
41:38
By the way, ask your science teacher the next time you talk to her.
41:42
What were your Christian schools that if you're in a secular school? So not only why am I here? Is there a purpose to any of this? So if you believe in naturalistic evolution, you have to believe that really there is no purpose.
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But we live in a world where that doesn't make sense.
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And we don't by the way, we don't we don't act like there's no purpose.
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We act like there's purpose all the time.
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And that's what William Paley said.
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He said, imagine you were walking on a beach.
42:14
And you happened upon a shiny disc in the sand and you reach down and you pick the disc up out of the sand and you knocked it off and you realized it was a watch, a pocket watch.
42:29
If you don't know what a pocket watch is, that's what we had before we had iPhones, because now we put our iPhone in our pocket.
42:37
But used to you put a watch in your pocket or wear it on your wrist.
42:41
He said, imagine you knocked the dirt off the sand off that little disc and you opened it up and you found it was a watch.
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And it was ticking and not only was it ticking, but it was ticking at the right time that it was calibrated properly.
42:58
And he said, what kind of a person would examine that and believe for a second that that came about through random chance? No one.
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There would be no way to look at that watch and say this came about randomly.
43:16
You would have to know by that watch, by looking at that watch, that that was put.
43:21
Not only was it put together by an intelligent person, but it was also set to the right time by an intelligent person.
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All of those things had to happen for you to arrive at that watch.
43:31
And that was William Pele's argument.
43:36
And you think about your body and just how just how much more, how much more intricate of design is in your body.
43:44
I had my own William Pele moment.
43:46
I like telling stories, I hope you don't mind.
43:49
My own William Pele moment happened on a camping youth camp just like this one.
43:54
Years and years ago, I was at a youth camp where I was doing what Mr.
44:00
Austin is doing.
44:01
I was the camp director.
44:03
And I was taking the kids on a canoe trip down the Suwannee River.
44:10
Not a great idea.
44:13
A lot of work for not that much fun.
44:16
So we're going down the Suwannee River and the Suwannee River at certain points has sandy banks.
44:23
And I noticed on one of the sandy banks, there was a park bench that someone had obviously brought down to the bank of the river and placed there for sitting.
44:36
Now, over time, it had gotten covered with sand and water and rain had eroded some of it away and some of the wood had broken and some of the bolts were beginning to rust.
44:46
But there was enough of the shape of that bench for me to look at that and say, yeah, that is obvious that that didn't happen by accident.
44:59
Now, William Pele talked about a watch set to the right time.
45:04
But you know, even in your own brain, that a park bench doesn't come about by accident.
45:09
But you think you did? You think this world did? You know what they call the earth? They call it the Goldilocks planet.
45:24
You know why? Because it's just right.
45:29
It's just close enough to the sun where we have liquid water.
45:35
And we have an atmosphere.
45:38
All of those things would be absolutely impossible if we were one percent closer or one percent further away from the sun.
45:47
It's just right.
45:50
Not only is the earth habitable, but the earth is hospitable.
45:59
See, a cave is habitable, right? If you were out in the woods and you needed a place to stay for the night and you were feeling like you wanted to get some cover, you could go go into a cave and you would you would feel at least safe from the elements.
46:12
But if you were walking around in the woods and you came across a cabin that had air conditioning and cable television, well, cable Roku, OK, had Roku, you guys don't have cable anymore.
46:24
And you walked in and there was a refrigerator stocked with food and a medicine cabinet stocked with medicine.
46:30
You would say, man, this is not only habitable, this is hospitable, right? Think about the earth.
46:37
The earth produces food for you to eat medicine to take care of you.
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That stuff don't get shipped in from Mars.
46:45
That stuff was already here.
46:49
And not only is it hospitable, but it's beautiful.
46:56
I want to tell you something, I'm going to end with this, you know, God actually cares about beauty.
47:02
God gives us beauty.
47:07
And just like the girls and that young man who came up and sang earlier, that's beautiful.
47:12
We get to enjoy the beauty of music.
47:16
My wife loves birds.
47:17
We put bird houses in our backyard so she can just sit there and watch those birds eat that those seeds because it's beautiful.
47:27
It's a beautiful thing.
47:28
We live in a world that is not only habitable, it's hospitable, it was made just right.
47:38
Somebody tells you they don't believe in God, there ain't no defense for that.
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None at all.
47:46
Let's pray.
47:48
Father, I thank you for your word.
47:50
I thank you for your truth.
47:52
I pray, Lord, that you'll lead us from this place tonight with more questions, more desire to know.
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And Lord, help us to trust in you in Jesus name.
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Amen.