The Noetic Effect of the Fall

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It won't be live on Facebook, but I'll post it later.
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Good evening, everyone.
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We want to hit the ground running tonight because we certainly have a lot to cover.
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This is week three of apologetics.
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And to begin, I want to, I am, it's, the screen is showing black, but I'm on my computer.
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It's just the way that particular camera works.
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But thank you, Daisy, for.
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Usually I see you here.
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I know.
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Want to begin by asking a question.
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What are the three schools of thought that we have been examining in apologetics? Raise your hand if you know what they are.
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Go ahead, Frank.
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Classical presupposition.
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That's right.
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Somebody give me a definition of classical apologetics.
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Go ahead, Nails.
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Yes, Nails.
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Yes, he can.
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If he wrote notes, he might as well be able to use them.
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Go ahead, Nails.
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What do you got? What do you got? That's right.
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That is correct.
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The classical approach is that you use reason and logic to rationalize the existence of God and work your way out from there.
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What is evidentialism? Well, you answered the last one.
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Let me see if anybody else wants to grab.
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Anybody wanna give me a definition of evidentialism? Well, that's an evidence.
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What I'm saying is what does evidentialism teach? It teaches that we begin from a neutral perspective and use evidence from our sense experience to arrive at a belief in God.
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What is presuppositionalism? It's the hard one.
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It's the right one, Daisy.
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No, it's okay.
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Daisy.
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No, I just, you had your sunglasses on.
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I didn't know.
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My reading glasses are in my band.
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So are those prescription? My band, these are prescription.
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Okay, okay.
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So I can read.
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Everyone, we have a guest tonight.
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This is, if you've ever heard Coffee with a Calvinist, this is Sam Brown.
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He was many times on the show with me.
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Sam, what is presuppositionalism? Presuppositionalism is the beginning with the presupposition that God is the beginning and end of all things and that you can't know anything without beginning with God.
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That's right.
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And we would go a little further.
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We would say we presuppose the truth of the Bible.
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So the presuppositionalism presupposes the existence of God and the truth of the Christian scriptures.
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So that is our presuppositional approach.
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And here's the thing that has to be remembered.
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Presuppositionalism does not deny the use of evidences in apologetic argument.
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Neither does it deny the concept of reason and logic in the apologetic interaction.
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In fact, it uses those things.
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The difference is where we begin.
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Remember, the evidentialist says we begin on neutral ground with the unbeliever.
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What I'm gonna show you tonight is that is impossible.
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Remember last week, what was the title of last week's lesson? The myth of neutrality.
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Well, tonight we're gonna discuss why neutrality is impossible.
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We found out last week that it was impossible.
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Tonight, we're going to look at what is known as the noetic effect of the fall.
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The noetic effect of the fall.
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If you have your Bibles, turn with me to 1 Corinthians 2 and go to verse 14.
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By the way, the word noetic doesn't have anything to do with Noah and the flood.
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It comes from the Greek word nuos, meaning mind.
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The word, so it's the effect that the fall had on the mind.
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So we can just, if you wanna put in your notes, the noetic effect is the effect that the fall had on the human mind.
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1 Corinthians 2 and verse 14.
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We're gonna see what it says about the effect of the fall on the mind.
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And it says, the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are folly to him.
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And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
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Now, we didn't pray before we started, but now that I've read scripture, I feel the urge to pray.
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Let's pray for our lesson.
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Father, I pray that you would give us grace tonight to understand what we have come to learn.
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Pray that you would give me clarity of mind and speech.
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I pray that you would open the eyes, ears, and hearts of those who are here, Lord, and by your spirit, that you would teach us all what your word has for us tonight in Christ's name, amen.
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Okay, when I was younger, I used to love to draw.
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And I think I may have told this story in a previous class.
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So if you have heard this story, remember, as my motto is, repetition is the key to learning.
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So if you hear the same story twice, don't feel too bad.
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Exactly, so when I was a kid, I used to love to draw.
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My dad took me to a store called Ready Arts.
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It's a store downtown that sells artistic supplies, and he bought me some charcoal pencils.
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And I was so excited to draw with charcoal because it's a medium that's quite different than lead pencil.
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You can smooth charcoal out.
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You can make your lines more, use shadow and add depth to your picture.
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But what I learned very quickly was where I had grown up, I was not resting my hand on the paper as I drew.
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That's pretty common.
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Most of us do rest our arm on the paper as we draw.
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Well, as I drew a nice, beautiful picture, and as I began to draw, everything I drew was smudged.
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As my hand went across the paper, it drug across that charcoal line and made all the lines smudged.
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Yeah, well, that became to me an illustration of the fall.
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When God created man, we were made in his image and according to his likeness, and we were, as it were, perfect in that we were without sin, and we were, in one sense, upright.
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But mankind's fall into sin took God's masterpiece and created a smudge, as it were.
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That's a nice way of putting it.
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We marred God's masterpiece.
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God created man in his image and we smudged, or as it were, struck the image of God.
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And when we see the smartest men in the world, of which I am not accounted, and neither are many of you, or maybe I think any of you, so the smartest minds in the world, we are amazed at what they can come up with.
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And yet, they are still functioning with a fallen mind.
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They are functioning with what it is, really, a broken mind.
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And this is why some of the smartest men in the world still don't trust in God.
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Because the ability to maintain information and figure out logical deductions and produce ideas and creativity does not mean that someone will arrive at the knowledge of God.
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Because that part of our mind that has been most affected by the fall is the part that would trust in God.
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We have been damaged by the fall.
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And when man sinned, the image of God was corrupted, and the marring of the image of God has affected every area of man's existence.
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For instance, one of the areas of the mind is our morality.
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Where does morality come from? I agree that it comes from God, Bobby, and that's the right answer.
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But if you were talking to a secularist, and you said, where does morality come from? He said, it comes from the mind.
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It's created in the mind of man, right? And that is why there is so much moral disorder in the world because man does not think rightly about moral things.
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Wouldn't you agree that man has a broken morality? In fact, the Bible says that unbelievers are slaves.
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Now, that word is not popular, but what are we slaves to according to John 8, 34? Sin, we're slaves to sin.
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The unbeliever is under the restraint and hindrance of sin.
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And therefore, his morality has been corrupted.
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That's one part of the mind that has been corrupted, but also, we would say, not only his morality, but his intellect has been corrupted as well.
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Now, we've been in this class, this is our third week or second week, or third? We began in this class talking about how we understand existence.
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We've talked about how we understand truth.
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Remember the question last week, what is truth, right? And we said, that's all part of the intellect, right? It's understanding right from wrong, that's morality, but understanding is and is not as part of the intellect.
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All of that has been corrupted by the fall.
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Dr.
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Al Mohler said this.
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He says, there is a difference between the regenerate and the unregenerate mind.
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There is a difference between the regenerate and the unregenerate mind, and where do we find that difference? We find that difference in 1 Corinthians 2, 14.
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The unregenerate man, according to 1 Corinthians 2, 14, sees the things of God as what? Folly, and if we are maybe working from a different translation, the word would be what? Foolishness, they are foolishness to him.
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The regenerated man will believe, he will obey, and he will apply the truths of scripture.
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So we could say man's morality has been affected by the fall.
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We could say man's intellect, so morality, his sense of ought, right? And intellect is sense of is, if you're getting down to the nitty gritty of what we mean by the difference.
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Morality is about ought and ought not.
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Intellect is is and is not, what is and what is not, right? But then also there's a third sense in which man's ability to trust.
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So his morality has been affected, his intellect has been affected, and his ability to trust or believe has been affected.
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Again, looking at the text, the natural man does not accept the things of the spirit of God.
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What does accept mean? Well, accept them means to believe them, so that's an act of the intellect.
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It means to trust them, that's an act of faith.
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Faith and trust could be interwoven there.
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And it's also a moral act, because if we don't trust God, that is an immoral thing.
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Is it a sin to not believe? Yes, in fact, unbelief is the primary sin of all men.
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I heard somebody say one time, somebody was arguing against limited atonement.
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And they said, well, Jesus died for all sin except unbelief.
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You are the one who has to believe.
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They were trying to argue for universal atonement.
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And that's a dumb argument, by the way, not to be ugly.
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But to say that Jesus died for all sin except for unbelief, that's the worst one, because all other sins flow out of unbelief.
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Why did Eve sin in the garden? Because she, at that moment, did not believe the promise of God and the command of God, right? She believed Satan, who said, you will not die.
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God said, on the day that you eat of it dying, you shall die.
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What did Satan say? You shall not die.
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Who did she believe? She believed the serpent.
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Unbelief is the root of all, really all sin, because it's all coming back to what God has commanded.
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And we're saying, we know better.
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If we are in sin, we are telling God, at the moment we are in sin, we know better than you right now.
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And that's serious.
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It's a serious problem.
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So when we look at the issue of the three-fold sin, the three things, the three areas, we say his morality, his intellect, and his trust, his ability to trust.
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Every area of man's existence has been affected by the fall.
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If you have your Bibles again, I want to just very quickly kind of prove this from the earliest texts of the Bible.
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If you'll go back to Genesis chapter six.
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What is Genesis six? I don't even, I'm gonna throw something at, somebody said Nephilim.
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I will throw things in this room if y'all want to get into the Nephilim conversation.
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What's after the Nephilim, Bobby? Verse five.
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The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was, yeah, the ESV says, the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
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So think about that.
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What's the effect of sin in the heart? Only evil continually.
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And somebody says, well, that was before the flood.
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That was those doggone Nephilim.
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They're the ones that brought in that only evil continue.
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After the flood, man got better.
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Turn to chapter eight.
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Look at verse 21.
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This is after the flood.
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This is Noah making a altar to God and worshiping God.
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Notice what it says.
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It says, and when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.
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Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.
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So God reaffirms the depravity of man after the fall, after the flood rather.
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It wasn't as if God wiped away all the depravity and he started over with Noah and Noah was sinless.
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In fact, what's the first thing that we read about Noah after the flood and he comes off the ark? Is a failure, a moral failure.
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Like his father, Adam, who was the first man in the world.
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Noah stands as the first man in the new world and both of them had a moral failure.
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Both of them also had a moral failure with a fruit.
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Interestingly enough, Adam ate the fruit of the tree.
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Noah drank the fruit of the vine.
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Both of them had a sin that dealt with nakedness.
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Adam realized he was naked.
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Noah got drunk and got naked.
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There's a lot of parallels between Adam and Noah.
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We could list them off.
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They both had sons, one son who disgraced and two sons who were valiant.
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You know, Adam had Abel and Seth and Noah had Shem and Japheth, valiant sons and one evil son, Ham and Cain.
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It's the parallels between Adam and Noah are very interesting because they both stand at the head, the fountainhead of all humanity but both of them sin.
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Adam and Noah both give birth to sin in a world of sinners.
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So now we go back to the New Testament and I'm showing you all this to prove my point that when you talk to a person, when you're doing apologetics, you are dealing with somebody whose mind ain't right.
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You might say, well, my mind ain't right either.
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Well, the benefit if you're a believer is at least you have regenerated heart and the power of the Holy Spirit.
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You trust the scripture.
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The scripture's right, even if you're not.
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So you have a tool in your arsenal that they don't have.
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You have the truth.
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So go to Romans chapter eight.
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In Romans chapter eight, verse seven, it says, for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God for it does not submit to God's law.
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Indeed, it cannot.
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Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
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Let me ask you a question.
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Is an unbeliever in the flesh or in the spirit? They have to be in the flesh, right? By definition, the unbeliever is in the flesh.
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The unbeliever can't be in the spirit because he does not believe, therefore he does not have the spirit of God.
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So the good and necessary inference is that the unbeliever does not have the spirit.
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So when it talks about the flesh, the person who is in the flesh, notice what it says.
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It says their mind is set on the flesh.
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And by the way, for all of you who remember what it was like before you were a believer, was your mind set on the flesh? Was your mind always really set on the flesh? You might think, well, maybe there was, you know, I might've had some inklings of genuine goodness or spirituality, but according to this text, not only was your mind set on the flesh, but it was hostile to God.
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You know, people say, well, I don't believe in Jesus, but I love God.
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I say, well, let me define God from a biblical perspective and see how long you love him.
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Let me define God biblically and see how long you're willing to tolerate him.
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Hostility to God is quick with the natural mind.
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And that's the point, right? The noadic effect is that the mind is hostile toward God.
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And in fact, it does not submit to God's law and it can't.
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It can't because it is broken and it cannot please God.
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So remember what we learned last week.
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A man knows by nature that God exists, but his sinful heart binds him to the point that he intellectually will reject the gospel.
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In fact, I want to quote again, Dr.
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Al Mohler.
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He says this, the problem is not what we do not know.
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It is what we will not know.
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Say it again.
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It's not what we do not know.
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It's what we will not know.
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I had a professor when I was in seminary, he said, no one is so blind as the man who chooses not to see.
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No one is so blind as the man who refuses to see.
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And that's where the unbeliever is.
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So the noadic effect of the fall has affected man morally, it's affected him intellectually, it's affected him in regard to his trust, his ability to have faith.
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Therefore, and you may want to write this one down, because of the noadic effect, man does not have a completely free will.
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Because of the noadic effect, man does not have a completely free will.
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The dictionary defines freedom as this, the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.
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Does the Bible say that men act without hindrance or restraint? No, it says men act with what hindrance? The sin, right? Yeah, sin is the hindrance.
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Sin is the restraint.
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As we said, the Bible teaches us that everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.
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All of this takes us to a very important point.
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And it is the point of understanding, and I want to write this word down for you.
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It is the word epistemology.
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Epistemology comes from the Greek word which means knowledge and logos.
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It's the combination of episteme and logos.
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So episteme means knowledge.
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Logos means a study of something.
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So epistemology means the study of knowledge.
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How do we know anything? How do we know what we know is correct? And how is that knowledge attained or acquired? I sent out a quote this week.
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How many of you got the email? Did you read it? Well, obviously you didn't, Sam, but.
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If you don't get my emails, let me know because I've been sending out stuff and I want you guys to have these things.
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I sent a quote from, this is from a website that I use.
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And this is about Christian epistemology.
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I want to read it to you.
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Science in deductive reason, by which means one may acquire knowledge, presupposes that the universe be logical and orderly and that it obeys mathematical laws consistent over space and time.
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Even though conditions in different regions of space can be radically diverse, there nonetheless exists an underlying uniformity.
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The Christian who believes in a transcendent causal reality expects there to be order in the universe since the Bible teaches that God upholds all things by his power.
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The Christian expects the universe to behave in an orderly and rational fashion.
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Since God is omnipresent and consistent with himself, the Christian expects that all regions of the universe will obey the same laws, even though the physical conditions of different regions of the universe may be different.
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So ultimately what this is saying is that the Christian has a reason for knowing what he knows because we believe in a God who created the world in a way that it is knowable.
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We believe that God created the world in a way that it can be rationalized.
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It can be logically understood.
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God created the laws of logic.
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Let me say that again.
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God created the laws of logic.
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You guys familiar with the laws of logic? This is the most basic ones.
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What are some of the laws of logic? No, logic.
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How do we know something? Like for instance, A equals A.
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Right? That's logical.
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A equals A.
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That's the law of relation.
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A is A, right? And A does not equal not A.
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That's the law of non-contradiction.
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Something cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same relationship.
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So if I say, Darian, you're here tonight, I can't also say you're not here because that would be a contradiction for you to be here and not be here at the same time and in the same relationship.
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It's not logical.
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Right, huh? It's not logical.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So these logical foundations of truth are things that we deduce, but they have to have come from somewhere.
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The fact that the, write these two words down, chaos and cosmos.
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What does cosmos mean? Cosmos, it actually means order.
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It means beauty.
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It means, it relates to the order.
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When we talk about the cosmos or the cosmos, it's the order of the world or the universe.
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The Greek word cosmos is the word that's translated for world, but it's referring to the world as a system, right? So cosmos is order.
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What is chaos? Disorder, right? It's the opposite.
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Now, if the world is, as the atheist claims, uncreated, established on nothing and produced by no one, then we would not expect there to be order, but rather disorder.
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In fact, as Dr.
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Frame points out in his lectures, he says, we wouldn't be able to figure anything out if that's the way it was.
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We are presupposing an orderly universe when we have a discourse.
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When we have a conversation, we are presupposing an orderly universe, a universe of order.
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And the atheist wants us to believe that a universe of order comes without an orderer, that a universe of order comes without.
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In fact, what they want us to believe is that cosmos comes from chaos, because what do they believe started everything? What is a big bang? It's an explosion.
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What happens in an explosion? Disorder.
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You've never had someone explode a bunch of car parts and produce a 57 Chevy, ever.
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Now, you can take a 57 Chevy and put a piece of C4 in it and blow it up and you'll have the pieces, but you won't have the car.
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You understand the point? The argument of atheism is actually an argument of ridiculousness because it says that cosmos came from chaos, that order sprung from disorder.
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You see, this is epistemology.
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How do we know what we know? We believe we know what we know because God made us with the ability to reason.
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They believe they can reason, but they have no reason why.
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They have no reason for reason.
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Now, you might think we're three classes deep.
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You've been saying the same thing for three classes.
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It's because it's important.
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I say the same thing.
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I'm saying it in different ways, but ultimately I'm driving you to the same point, to understand the first half of this class.
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See, because I could have brought you in and start immediately telling you about why you should trust the Bible, why you should trust what the Bible says about Jesus's resurrection, why you should trust about creation.
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We could talk about evidences for the flood, evidences for this and that and the other thing, why the Bible is written over 1,500 years, 40 different authors, three different languages, yet it has the same message from beginning to ending.
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We could talk about all of those things that are evidences for the truth of Christianity, but I'm asking you why you even believe that you can come up with a reason for reason.
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What did we talk about last week? A brick wall.
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We're looking at the foundation of knowledge because if the foundation is unleveled, the whole wall is unleveled.
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We're starting at the foundation.
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This is why we have arrived at the modern world.
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Actually, we're in a postmodern world, and if you listened to my podcast last week, we talked about postmodernism.
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What is postmodernism? The idea is you really can't know anything.
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See, modernism was the idea that all truth could be arrived at by empirical data, that we can arrive at all truth through empirical data.
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That was the concept of modernism, which really was revolutionary, changed the world, the modern world, but postmodernism says we can't arrive at any truth because we really don't know anything.
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It's like the smart aleck and the scientist.
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The smart aleck thinks he knows everything, and the scientist knows he knows nothing.
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So when we speak to an unbeliever the things of God, we are not speaking to a rational and objective observer of the facts.
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We are speaking to a rebellious enemy of God.
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Now, I'm not telling you that when you go talk to an unbeliever you need to go poke him in the chest and say, you're God's enemy.
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That may not be the most appropriate tact to take.
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It works for you, Sam.
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Well, for a moment, I wanna just mention something that Dr.
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Frame addresses in his lectures, and that is that an argument, you're dealing with an argument with an unbeliever, an argument should be, it's gonna have three parts.
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It's going to begin with certain presuppositions, and it's going to have, even if you presuppose your mind works as it should, that's an ultimate presupposition.
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If you presuppose the laws of logic and rationality, that's true.
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It is going to also include evidences.
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You're going to discuss evidences, but from a presuppositional perspective.
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But there is also a sense in which an argument, and this is Dr.
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Frame's language, I think it's true, should be persuasive, argument should be persuasive.
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So if I made the argument, the Bible says that it is the word of God, the Bible is true, therefore the Bible is the word of God.
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Is that true? Yes, so is that a true argument? But is that a persuasive argument for an unbeliever? Probably not, probably not, but the point I'm making is it's a true argument.
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It's based on the right presupposition, based on the right truth, but it's not a persuasive argument.
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So we have to begin to think about, okay, the Holy Spirit is the one who does the persuading, but we are still called to be gentle and reverent in the giving of a defense, and I think part of that is being winsome in our, winsome tartness, I know where you're going.
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But we'll talk about that later.
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We have a big history.
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We've done a lot of the study together, talk together.
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But there's, you know, we have to be somewhat persuasive in our conversation as well.
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You know, we have to, when we're interacting with someone, so automatically going in and saying, you rebellious person, you know God exists, and that may be the way that you, that you, and I have had conversations that go there that have that, but that might not be the way that we start.
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That may not be the way that we engage with the person.
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You guys remember way back to three classes ago, or two classes ago, I said how do I begin interactions with people in general? Yes, I deal with the issue of guilt and law.
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Before we ever get to objections to Christianity, we talk about sin and their guilt before God.
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Those are the things that we start with because those are the things that are, that's how God is gonna break the heart, right? First, and that's where we wanna go.
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So, we're dealing with a rebellious enemy.
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We're dealing with a person whose mind doesn't act, doesn't work as it should, and therefore we have to come at them in a way that is presupposing the truth of scripture, is using the proper use of reason and evidences, and to do so in a way that is persuasive.
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Just a moment here.
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All right, so, let us now, I wanna make sure I'm being clear here.
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This is just a thought about how we engage with people.
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This is not necessarily how it's always gonna work out.
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It's not always gonna, it's not, in your book, and we're gonna talk about the reading this week, notice what he said about engagement with people.
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He said it is person variable.
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Remember that phrase, person variable? That person variable is important because how I engage with a person, it's gonna change from person to person, and the reason is is because every person is in a different place.
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Some person, a person who grew up in church, but is not a believer, may not have the same antipathy towards the things of God as a person who grew up in a church, in a home where, didn't go to church, or he may have more antipathy towards God because he'd been hurt by church.
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He may have been insulted in church or hurt by the pastor or something.
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So apologetics is person variable.
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I love that phrase.
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I think Dr.
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Frame is really onto something there because it really does change how I'm gonna address the individual because I'm gonna try to figure out what it is.
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What it is in their mind that's the problem.
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I know their problem has a mind, it's sin, right? But everybody's sin is different, right? I mean, if I were going around the room and I said, okay, stand up and tell me your five worst, most difficult sins that you deal with.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're not gonna do that.
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Let's for a moment, I wanna give you an example.
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I wanna give you an example.
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This is not a argument for the existence of God, but this is a moral conversation that you may find yourself in.
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Let's say you're talking to someone about abortion, okay? Now, I realize ethics class was a few months ago, but we talked about abortion in ethics class, but tonight let's just for the moment talk about abortion from the sense of the noetic effect because tonight's about how the mind is messed up, right? From a purely scientific standpoint, I'll make a statement, you may disagree, but just follow my logic.
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From a purely scientific standpoint, abortion should not be legal.
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Here's my reason.
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It is clearly and scientifically the murder of a living human being.
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That is what abortion is.
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And this is so well understood that only until recently if a woman was pregnant and was struck and the baby died, the person who struck her could be charged with murder.
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It's only been recently that that has changed in only a few municipalities, places like New York and others have made it to where because they understood what the logic of that is.
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If you can be charged for hitting a pregnant woman and the baby dies and you can be charged with murder, therefore the baby is a living human being, right? Because you can't murder a non-living human being or a non-human being, right? So you're affirming the living because you're saying it's murder.
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You're affirming that it's human because you're saying it's murder.
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So by that act of the law, you strike a pregnant woman, the baby dies, you are guilty of murder.
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By that by itself, it's logically murder.
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However, if a man puts on a lab coat and he puts a woman's legs in stirrups and he invades her body with a tool, a vacuum tool and other sharp instruments and destroys the baby inside of her, he's no longer a murderer.
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Why? There's no consistent logical argument as to why, but there is a worldview difference that causes people to see it differently.
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And this is where I said noetic effect affects our worldview epistemology.
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The worldview difference is the one who supports abortion believes that autonomy, which means human freedom, is more important than the life of the unborn child.
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That the freedom to not have the baby is more important than the life of the baby.
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This would not work if the baby were outside the womb.
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If a mother has a three month old and she says, I don't wanna be a mother and she takes that baby and she drowns it in its bathtub and she puts it in a dumpster, then that would be murder.
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But if it's three months before the baby's born and she goes to a doctor's office and she says, remove this baby from me and kill it in the process, she is no longer a murderer.
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No logical reason.
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But this is where we are in our society.
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There's more than 50%, well, at least that's how many we supposedly voted for the new president, who were voting on a platform of what? A platform of not just abortion, but certainly that was one of the things, what they call reproductive freedom.
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You see, they changed the language to change the argument.
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It's not about abortion, it's about reproductive freedom.
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Who are you to tell a woman what to do with her body? Well, suicide's illegal.
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Do you know that? Suicide is illegal.
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If you get caught trying to do that, they will arrest you and put you in a hall.
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Yeah, yeah, suicide's illegal.
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So what are we to tell somebody they can't do with their body? Drugs are illegal.
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Who are we to tell somebody they can't do with their own body? Yeah.
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No, I'm saying you go down the list, right? It's a nonsensical argument, but it makes sense in the mind of who? In the mind of the person whose mind is clouded by sin, whose mind is governed by the fall.
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When you are in sin, you will justify whatever behavior you are in because you love your sin.
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The abortion issue is a good place to recognize how argumentation works because the people are so convinced you can't argue them out of it.
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I've seen men who go to abortion clinics, Jeff Durbin, James White, and others, John Barros, many good men who go down and preach at the abortion clinics, and I have seen on video people who say to them, I know I'm killing my baby, but I don't want it, and it's not illegal.
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Every time new information comes available on the subject of abortion, those supporting it have to change their argument.
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At first, it was just a clump of cells, but then we increased our technology for sonograms.
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What happened when the sonograms increased? It's no longer just a clump of cells.
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Now they realize it's an actual person, so the debate changed.
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Now, how do we define personhood? Well, that's what changed.
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The debate becomes more philosophical than scientific because now we have to determine what a person is.
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Who is a person? Isn't that what caused the conversation about slavery? Was it determining what a person was? And the argument of whether or not people who were black were really persons? It's the same argument with abortion.
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Now a new argument has arisen.
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Murder's okay.
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You say, who argues that? Well, recently a very famous comedian included in his act this statement on the subject of abortion.
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He said, abortion is 100% killing a whole baby, and we know it.
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That was part of a comedy act, by the way.
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Yes, it's 100% killing a baby.
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Well, people laughed.
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I can get you the video if you want.
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Do you know that? Isn't that George Carlin? No, no, this was a recent.
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George Carlin, been dead for a while.
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Louis C.K.
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I think it- Oh, he's a comedian? Well, ha ha, Sam.
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I think it was, I think it was, it was, but he said, we know it's killing a baby.
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Freedom's more important.
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That's the argument.
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See, here's the point I'm making.
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When you're dealing with somebody whose brain don't work right, every argument you give will just be one more thing they have to overcome.
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And even if you give a logical, consistent, rational, evidential-based argument, all they're gonna do is move to the next argument.
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Dealing with the unbeliever is a lot like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall.
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They just, if they don't like what you say, they move to something else.
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I know that from my own experience.
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Somebody will say, well, I don't believe the Bible because it's been changed so many times.
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If I could read you the Bible in the original language as it was written by the Apostle Paul, would that help you? Well, no, I believe the Bible, I believe Paul was wrong.
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Okay, well, no, no, that's not what you said.
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You believe it's been changed, which indicates that it was right at the beginning.
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If I tell you I can read what it said in the beginning, now you're saying that's not right.
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You see, the argument just keeps getting pushed back because the noetic effect of the fall, even though it's broken, it's quite clever.
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It's always finding new answers.
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As I said, if you overcome one argument, they go to another.
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I'll give you another, I'll give you an example.
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Going back to abortion, and I know everybody's so excited to talk about abortion tonight, but I just think this is a good example, right? Here's an argument.
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Person says, we can't stop abortion because of rape and incest.
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Okay, what if we could limit abortions to only those that happened due to rape and incest? Not even there, James, I agree with you, but what if we could limit it to just that, but all the ones for convenience we would have to get rid of? What's the answer? No, it has to be available to everyone.
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Why? Why even mention the rape and incest if that's not really the concern? That's a canard or a red herring.
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When they talk about rape and incest, that's a canard.
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They are using something that really is irrelevant because if you could limit it to the rape and the incest, no, we have to have it for everybody.
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So it's not about rape or incest.
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Same thing with transgenderism.
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Let's talk about another example.
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Somebody says, well, we have to accept transgender people because there's a genetic disorder called gender dysphoria which creates confusion in the mind of people regarding their gender.
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Okay, so what you're saying is that there's a legitimate mental disorder called gender dysphoria that can cause people to believe that they are the wrong gender assigned at birth.
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Answer, yes.
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Okay, if we could pinpoint that genetic problem and limit people who are able to be transgender only to the people who have that genetic disorder, would you be satisfied with that and make all the other ones? No, it has to be available for everybody.
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Then gender dysphoria is not the issue.
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That's the canard.
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You see, the point I'm making is there's always trying to put up a roadblock, but it's not the real issue.
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Two great questions which demonstrate the noetic effect of sin are these.
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Write these down.
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Two great questions if you're dealing with an unbeliever.
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Number one, what evidence would you accept to prove the existence of God? What evidence would you accept to prove the existence of God? What would it take? Because according to the Bible, they have enough evidence.
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Remember that.
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According to Romans 1, all men know God exists.
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So if you are talking to someone who says, I don't believe God exists, a good first question might be, what evidence would it take to convince you that God exists? But that's not the best question.
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That's the setup question.
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Not that we're trying to trick anybody, but that is the question that leads to the second question.
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If it could be proven to your satisfaction that God exists, would you worship him? See, because that's the real problem.
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And I know this for a fact.
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When you ask that second question, almost every time they will say, no.
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Even if I knew God existed, even if I knew God existed for a fact, I would not worship him.
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It's not about evidence.
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It's about a heart that is turned from God and a mind that is broken.
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So honestly, that's a good way to start.
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What evidence would it take for you to prove God exists? And they'll give you all kinds of crazy miracles.
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Remember Gordon Stein and Greg Bonson? We talked about that.
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When Gordon Stein was asked that question by Bonson, what evidence would you accept? He said, well, if the lectern raised up four feet in the air and it suspended, and I knew it wasn't wires or mirrors or something.
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He said, I would have to concede that God exists.
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And Greg Bonson responded with that genius response.
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He said, no, you wouldn't.
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In fact, I brought the actual words tonight.
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This is what he said.
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Gordon Stein said, if that podium suddenly rose into the air five feet, stayed there for a minute, and then dropped right down again, I would say that is evidence of a supernatural because it would violate everything we know about the laws of physics and chemistry.
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This was the response by Greg Bonson.
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He said, people are not made theists by miracles.
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People must change their worldview.
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Their hearts must be changed.
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They need to be converted.
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That's what it takes.
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And that's what it would take for Dr.
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Stein to believe.
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If this podium rose up five feet off the ground and stayed there, Dr.
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Stein would eventually have in the future some naturalistic explanation because they believe things on faith, by which I mean they believe things as which they have not proven by their senses.
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Stein would have come up with an answer at some point for why that podium lifted off the ground.
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He would never accept that it was God simply by the evidence.
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That's Bonson's point.
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Even if the podium lifted up, you're still not gonna believe in God.
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How many people saw Jesus's miracles and yet did not believe? Turn to John 6.
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Talked about this last night in our midweek Bible study at Sovereign Grace.
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John chapter 6.
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What happened in John 6? Jesus fed the 5,000.
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Those people followed Him across the sea.
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They searched Him out.
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And this is what they said.
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They came to Him and they wanted to hear what He had to say and this is what Jesus said to them.
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John 6, 36.
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But I said to you that you have seen me and yet you do not believe.
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Now, these are people who saw Jesus.
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They ate of the 5,000.
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They were the part of the 5,000 who ate of the loaves and the fish.
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They saw Jesus feed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish and Jesus looked them in the face and He said to them very clearly, you have seen me and yet you do not believe.
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Later in the same passage, He says, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.
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Why? Because their minds are corrupt.
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Until God changes the heart and the mind, the person will not come to Christ.
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So what we do in apologetics, what we do in evangelism which involves apologetics is we simply remove barriers.
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As people put up their barriers, we remove the barriers but God is the one who changes the heart.
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We cannot change the heart.
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What did Paul say? I planted, I did, Apollos watered but God gave the increase.
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So that's what we have to trust when dealing with this.
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All right, we are to our one hour mark.
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We're gonna take a five, seven minute break.
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We'll come back and talk about our class reading.