The Failure of Atheism

The Basis of Moral Knowledge and Human Conscience

Okay. And why is that?

Why?

Yeah, like what's your hang-up with an almighty God, I guess? I don't understand why it's concerning that people would believe that God is almighty.

I wasn't intending on getting into this.

Okay.

I just don't think that there is anybody like that. I mean, nature has its course. Not that God made it that way or anybody made it that way. It's just the way it progressed.

Okay, so you think, are you kind of like a naturalistic evolutionary, you know, the world...

I would guess you'd put it that way, yeah.

So, what are your thoughts on, you know, morality? Like, people hurt each other all the time. That most of us get angry when we see others, especially people that we love getting hurt, right?

I think that's a good thing. That's natural, right? I mean, that's the way it should be. Not do unto others as others have done unto you or whatever. So, I don't think that...

You know who said that first, right?

No. Jesus.

No, I know. I understand that. But I'm not saying I'm against the religion or his belief. I just don't believe that there's one supreme God or one God. And obviously there's all kinds of religions.

Yes.

All kinds of different gods, deities, whatever you want to call them.

Yeah, no, I understand.

So, I just, that's why I just, I don't cater to the thought of God.

I understand. So, from our perspective, I know you're trying to catch a bus, so I'll just keep it brief.

I gotta get to the store before it closes.

Oh, okay.

I'll do this for a minute.

What's your name?

My name's Greg.

Greg, Eric. Good to meet you.

Good to meet you, too.

General Revelation, Conscience, and Human Sinfulness

So, I believe that God has revealed himself to all of us in creation, in our conscience. That's kind of why I asked you the question about, like, we see people hurting and we hurt with them. Like, we recognize that there's bad there, that it's not good.

You know, like you said, you think that's a good thing. So, I think based on our conscience and based on the creation around us, God has revealed himself to us. But we, because we recognize that we're sinful creatures, no one's perfect, right?

Like, we all make mistakes, we tell lies, we, you know, steal, whatever it is. So, we recognize that we as sinful creatures cannot stand before a holy God. And so, we take the truth of who God is and who he's revealed himself through the creation around us and our own conscience and we suppress that truth and we reject God for a God of our own image or we pretend he's not there or something along those lines.

So, our call is to turn away from that mind of thinking, to trust in Christ because he is the one that can grant us peace with the one true and living God. There is one true God and he's revealed himself to you.

And the Bible tells us that on the last day, we will be without excuse. You know, we will stand before God and we will be guilty before him for our rejection of him. So, that's what my plea would be for you, Greg, is to turn to Christ because you can have peace with God.

The Resurrection of the Dead and the Tangibility of the Soul

That's what you're trying to preserve, your soul.

Well, soul and body, eternally, we believe that there's going to be a resurrection of the dead.

It's still, it's your soul, even eternally. I mean, it's not, you can't see that, you can't touch that.

Correct.

But it's there.

But it's there, yeah.

Yeah.

But that's up here, that's not...

Well, it's all connected, right? Body, flesh, body, spirit and soul are all connected.

That's your perception. I don't believe in the spirit. Has anything to do with the body, my blood, my cells, you know?

Do you think it's just kind of an ethereal, like, consciousness or what? Like, what do you mean? Is it just, it's only connected to you for a time and then it, do you believe that...

I'm saying a soul is not tangible.

Correct.

You can't hold it, you can't see it, you can't smell it, you can't taste it.

But Jesus' resurrection, and this is something maybe to answer your question, but Jesus' resurrection when he died and rose from the grave was not a spiritual body, it was a physical body.

You can't prove that he did that.

Well, that, I have scripture, though.

There's scripture.

Sure.

That has been written down and passed down.

Sure.

You know, so...

Yeah, I mean, that's oral tradition.

If you go to any accident and you ask all the witnesses, they're all going to have a different perception, different idea. And that's the whole thing about the Bible.

And that's what confirms, and that's what confirms the Bible, is that we have multiple...

No, it does.

Let me prove it to you. So, we have scripture, right, that was written, written down by, like you said, it was scribed and transcribed by many different people, right?

Exactly.

Okay?

So...

If we want to prove something to be true, we have different witnesses, different writers, all writing from different perspectives about the same thing with differences in their story, right? But all confirming.

So, if we, like you said, if we were out here on the sidewalk and someone was murdered and you asked each person, they would have a different perspective. But, how do we corroborate their story to find out whether a murder occurred and who did it?

To add them all together.

Multiple witnesses, right.

To add them all together.

So, what we have in scripture is over 5 ,000 different manuscripts, all pointing to the same message, the same truth, in that the gospel, and that's how we have our Bible, many different transcripts all coming together to have one consistent message.

And what is the consistency in it? It's not the exact perspective that everybody saw, but it's the gospel in what Jesus said, how one can be saved, eyewitnesses proving that he did resurrect.

I can believe in Jesus as a person.

Okay.

Like you and I. Yeah, sure. I can accept that. And maybe him having some really good ideas. How I would like to live my life.

Okay.

I haven't always done that, but how I would like to live my life.

None of us have perfectly, for sure.

How I would like to live my life, but I still don't put him as the son of God. You see what I'm saying?

I do.

I can believe in Jesus.

I can understand that as a person. And he's tangible. I mean, he existed, obviously he existed, like you said. But as far as believing in God, I can't make that stop.

The Incarnation, the Son of God, and the Limits of Skepticism

So, you talked a little bit about the spirit or the soul being intangible. You can't prove that it exists.

I gotta go get something.

Alright. I'm sorry. That's okay.

Have a good night, Greg.

I would love to spend more time with this. If you're around again, I'll catch you here.

We're here on Thursdays. Have a good night, Greg.

Did you get it tracked?

Yeah, he grabbed one.

Oh, I did.

Yeah, he did.

Yeah, have a good night.

Thanks for stopping by.