Objections and Objectors We Face

Proverbs 26 and the Paradox of Answering a Fool

I want to ask you to open your Bibles with me and we're going to turn to the 26th Chapter of the book of Proverbs. And I'm going to have Cody pass out the handouts. The text that I'll be reading from is printed on the handout, the ESV, but I know some of you have different translations.

This particular text is one that some people have accused as being an example of contradiction in Scripture. Later on, I'm going to show that it is not a contradiction at all. In fact, it's interesting that anyone would consider it a contradiction seeing as it's literally written one verse after the next.

And we have to give the Bible Scripture writers some credit to think that they would know if they wrote one thing that contradicted the next thing right after they wrote that one thing. Because it's literally one right after the other.

But as I said, it's not a contradiction, but it is an important truth and it's going to be the foundation for some of our lesson this evening. The title of tonight's lesson is Objections and the Objectors We Face.

So the heart of tonight's lesson is going to be looking at the objections that we come on when we are sharing our faith and the nature of the folks who make those objections. So let's look first at the text in Proverbs 26 verses 4 and 5.

Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Verse 5. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. You see where some might find there a point of contradiction.

Verse 4 says answer not a fool according to his folly. And verse 5 says answer a fool according to his folly. Seemingly giving two contradictory pieces of advice. But as I said later, I will explain why it might be considered a paradox, but it's certainly not a contradiction.

And hopefully help make some sense of that. But before I do that, I want to go through our lesson. Because as I said, this is all sort of bound together. Over the past several weeks, we have been studying the subject of apologetics.

Does anybody remember what the word apologetics means? What is apologetics? To give a defense, that's right. To give an answer or a defense for what we believe as Christians. And I'm going to ask you, how many of you remember the three schools of thought for apologetics?

There are three different methodologies. You could say there are more, but there are certainly not less than three schools of thought on apologetics. Anybody remember what they are? Evidential, classical, and presuppositional.

Evidential, well classical I put first only because in the order of our lesson that was the first one we talked about. Then evidential, then presuppositional. Remember that classical begins with the rational arguments for the existence of God.

Proving that we live in a theistic universe. And then makes its points that this is actually the God who exists is the God of the Bible. Evidential begins seeking to look at empirical data on the existence of God from a viewpoint of neutrality.

And presuppositional begins with presupposing the existence of God as the foundation of all logical discourse. And as I have stated, unashamedly, I consider myself a presuppositionalist. That doesn't mean you have to be.

But, since this is a course I'm teaching, I get to lead it in the way that I would believe and teach. And when you get ready to teach a course, I'll let you do it your way. How about that? But I do think that I'm making an argument from scripture or I wouldn't be teaching it.

Because even though I'm a presuppositionalist, I do not abandon logic and reason. So I'm not totally divorced from the classical position. Neither do I ignore evidences that point to the existence of God or the truth of the Bible.

So I've not abandoned or divorced myself from evidentialism. The main difference, as I have said, is that I begin all of my apologetic encounters with the presupposition that God exists. And not just any God, but the God of the Bible.

And as such, I presuppose the Bible is true. So there's two major presuppositions that I bring to the table. That God exists and not just any God, but the God of the Bible. And as such, I believe the Bible, of course, is true.

Now I am fully aware that there are those who disagree. And I know this might be kind of a weird way to start. But I spent a week away, or four days away. And while I was away, I had an opportunity to do a lot of listening.

I listen as I drive. A lot of times, if I know I'm going to be an hour or two on the road, I'll pull up a sermon. Or I'll pull up a debate. Or I'll pull up a lecture. And I'll put it in the speakers of the car.

And kids put their headphones in. They don't want to listen to what Dad's listening to, ordinarily. But I'll listen to Dr. White do a debate or something. So while I was on my way on our trip this past week, I listened to Dr. R .C. Sproul.

And I love Dr. R .C. Sproul. But he is one of the most vocal opponents of presuppositional apologetics. And I consider him a hero. He's my hero. One of them. So, that hurts a little. It hurts a little bit.

Because he stuck it to it pretty hard. But, I want to take a moment to say this. He's a classical apologist, by the way. Takes a classical approach to presuppositionalism. And he considers, or classical approach to apologetics, considers presuppositionalism an exercise in circular reasoning.

And he even had a debate with Dr. Greg Bonson, one of the great students of the late Cornelius Van Til. Both of them are late. Greg died of cancer as a young man as well. But Greg Bonson debated R .C. Sproul on this topic.

They were both believers. They both loved each other. It was not a contentious debate at all. But they debated the subject of apologetic methodologies. I think those are helpful. Get both sides to share their thoughts.

And this is why I went and listened to the debate, got part of it, took some notes. And I want to share with you something that R .C. said. And this is a man I love. And if he were here today, I'd shake his hand and give him a hug.

I have no ill will towards R .C. Sproul at all. I love him and I think he's done more for the kingdom than I'll ever do. God has just used him mightily. But I want to say this. He said this talking to Bonson.

And this is where I cannot go with him. He says in the debate, I cannot know for certain that God exists. I can have full assurance in my heart when the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit comes. You see, I look at the evidence and I know the evidence is overwhelming.

But I cannot know for certain that God exists. Later he says, in a joking way, how do I know the internal work of the Spirit isn't just the Holy Spirit giving me indigestion? He's joking at that point.

And he even says he's playing devil's advocate. But he sort of shoots himself in the foot. Because he says I have an internal testimony and then later he says that really doesn't mean a whole lot. And it reminded me of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Now Dr. William Lane Craig, if you've never heard of him, he is one of the foremost Christian philosophers in the world. And he does debate with atheists on college campuses and stuff. But William Lane Craig is also a classical apologist.

And he, when he was debating, Lawrence Krauss, who was a very famous atheist, debating on this subject, he was asked, are you certain God exists? And he screamed out, no! With a little bit of a laugh.

No, I'm not certain. It's on YouTube, look it up. And as much as I love R .C., and as much as I appreciate Dr. Craig, and I would not doubt either one of their salvation, neither their commitment to apologetics, but this is where I believe the problem lies with classical and evidential apologetics because they both will not say for certain that God exists.

Instead, they both claim that the preponderance of the evidence points to the higher probability of the existence of God. Beloved, that is not what the Bible says. The Bible does not say that the preponderance of the evidence points to the higher probability of the existence of God.

The Bible says God exists and all men know it. The Bible not only says that all men are certain that God exists, but so certain that they will be judged on that knowledge. So I find myself at odds with people I love on this issue.

But I also have friends on this issue too. Dr. James White, Dr. Vody Balcom, Scott Oliphant, and the late Greg Bonson and Cornelius Van Til would agree with me. So I don't feel so bad. I'm not all alone.

But I did want to point that out because I spent some time listening. And as I said, Dr. Sproul did make some good points about circular reasoning and how we should be careful of that. But at the end of the day, when all you have is the greater preponderance of the evidence points to the probability of God, you don't have a proclamation of truth.

You have a proclamation of probably. Because if the greater preponderance of the evidence points to the probability of God, that means there's also a probability that He might not be. We don't go around proclaiming that God might be.

We proclaim that God is. We don't proclaim that the evidence points to a maybe. We say that our Scripture tells us for certain that all men know that He is. Now you wanted to say something, dear? No, well, I wouldn't say he's betting his soul.

He's betting that God does exist. Oh no, he believes God exists. Don't get me wrong, because he said I have full assurance, but he doesn't equate assurance and certainty. And that is an issue. The difference between assurance and certainty.

And it is a hard... There's a philosophical line and he's making that line. But I say that all men know for certain. He says believers know with full assurance. And there's a distinction being made. And I just want to be fair as much as I can to him as much as I can.

Well, like I said, the good thing about this, I will say this, whether you are a classical apologist, whether you are an evidential apologist, or whether you're a presuppositional apologist, I could have said, whether you're classical, evidential, or right.

No, that would have been really bad. No, I could say this. I could say, if you even have a position, that means you care enough to want to defend your faith. And that means you care enough to want to stand for the truth.

That's good in itself. But there is, again, I think the foundation is the issue of whether or not we're saying for certain, or whether we're saying that the greater probability points to this. So I want to just remind you of some things that we've looked at so far.

That was kind of a lengthy introduction. But here are the things that we've learned so far from Scripture. One, there are no neutral people. Two, all people know God exists and will be judged on the basis of that knowledge.

Three, all people who deny God or worship other gods are suppressing a truth that they know. Four, their variability to reason regarding the things of God have been corrupted by sin. And five, it requires a miracle of regeneration for a person to come to faith in Christ.

Now I don't expect you to write that down. I didn't put that in your notes. But that's basically what we've looked at the last few weeks. But if you want that, just let me know afterwards and I'll photocopy my notes.

Because those five things are foundational. I put it out on Facebook this week in preparation for this lesson. Immediately got hit by an atheist. Who are you to say all men know God exists? What evidence can you provide?

Did you see it? And you saw my response. Because he said, don't point to Scripture. Who are you to tell me I can't use Scripture? Well the only people who wrote the Bible are people who had a vested interest.

And I shot that out of the water. I said, Saul of Tarsus had a vested interest in the reality of who Jesus was. He gave up his family. He gave up his position as a Pharisee. He went out as a missionary and died by getting his head chopped off.

Yeah, he had a vested interest. He was going to get a lot out of that deal. It's ridiculous. Your argument is foolish. Anyway, tonight we're going to turn our attention to the objectors and the objections we face.

And examining objections and objectors, we're going to maintain our presuppositional position. We're not going to run to classical and evidential apologetics. This is where often the wheels fall off the cart for presuppositionalists because they think the only way you can deal with people is with evidence and logic.

But I'm going to show you there's a different way. Because, and this is the key, and this is on your notes. We are not arguing for the greater preponderance of the evidence which can only point to the probable existence of a God.

We are declaring the certain existence of the God who is known by all men because He has made Himself known through both His creation and their consciences which bear witness to His existence. That's the key to all of this.

I don't know how long this series is going to last. Originally it was supposed to be six weeks. Now it could be 60 because I've got a lot that's on my mind. But, this is the heart of it. You need to understand what it is we're doing.

We are not declaring a probability. We are declaring a certainty. And it's a certainty they know. That's the key. That's where it's different. Will I point to evidence? Will I use logic? Yes. But I will never make them the judge.

See, that's what evidentialism does. Here's the evidence. You be the judge. No man stands in judgment over God. They don't get to judge. God is the judge. And that's what I point out. God has given you evidence not to judge, but by which you will be judged.

You're not the judge of the evidence. God is the judge of you and this evidence will bear witness against you in eternity. That you knew and you just, you suppress that truth. Alright. So, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to look at objections we face and then we're going to look at objectors we face. And I'm going to put some stuff on the board. Hopefully you'll be able to see it. These pens are a little thinner, but I think you guys can read it.

Alright. So the objections we face and the objectors. I spent time thinking about this and I want you to know that I came tonight willing to be corrected. I'm always willing to be corrected, but even more so now.

Because I was really thinking, racking my brain, praying, really kind of considering, and I was trying to think of categories of objections. And I could only come up with three categories. And every objection I could think of went to one of these three categories.

Now, if you come up with a fourth category I didn't think of, you can add it, I'll add it to the notes. But I want to tell you, I haven't come up with any more. Because again, the reason why I'm categorizing is because the categorizing for me, and maybe this is just the way my mind works, helps me to understand how to relate to the person I'm talking to.

Where's the objection coming from? What is the objection? What is the overarching presupposition of this objection? Remember presuppositional apologetics? What is the presupposition that's leading to this objection?

Okay? So we're going to look at three. And again, if you have a fourth or even more, I'm totally cool with that. Objection number one. Objections about the existence and nature of God. That's number one.

Existence and nature. Existence and nature of God. We're going to go back through these, but I'm going to go through them quick so you can write them down. Number two. Objections about the nature and reliability of Scripture.

Number two. The nature and reliability of Scripture. Number three. The proper, you don't have to write the word proper, but if you want to maybe put it above, because I didn't leave enough blank for you to write that in.

Because you could say the interpretation and application, but it should be the proper interpretation and proper application of Scripture. So the interpretation and application of Scripture. I honestly think that every conversation we have in an apologetic sense, meaning we're having to give a defense, will fall into these categories.

It's either going to be dealing with the existence and nature of God. It's going to be dealing with the nature and or reliability of the Bible. Or it is going to be dealing with the interpretation and application of the Bible.

Now if you can come up with something else, and maybe you will in the weeks to come and we can add something to this, but I'm going to go now and just sort of walk through what I mean. Okay? Well let's look first at the existence objection.

What's an existence objection? Well somebody who says, I don't believe God exists because... And you can add whatever you want there. I can't see him, and if I can't see him, I don't believe he exists.

Now, how foolish is that objection? Because a hundred years ago, we couldn't see bacteria. Maybe a little longer than that, but you understand just a few hundred years ago, we didn't have an electron microscope, we couldn't see DNA.

Didn't mean it wasn't there. Exactly. And a lot of things we couldn't see, and yet were, and it took a greater ability to see, to see. Right? But that is one objection. But there are others, that's usually not, usually won't get somebody to be so simple.

But that is the heart of the existence argument. I don't see God, so I don't believe in God. But then there's the nature argument. And the nature argument deals more with why I don't believe in God. Because the people normally won't be so, well, I don't want to say foolish, but people normally won't be so simple as to simply say, well, I can't see him so he's not there.

Even though there have been some people who have made that argument. I forget who it was, there was a there was an astronaut, I think, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but it was something to the effect I've been to space and I didn't see God or something, or maybe it was a mountain climber who said I've been to the top and God wasn't there.

It was something very simple. Like, you know, we've been out to outer space and God's not there. You know. That's the existence argument. I just don't believe he exists. Yeah? We can see the effect? Absolutely.

But you understand though, that's the existence argument. You simply just don't believe that he is. But the nature argument is more it's more common that if you're talking to someone and they don't believe in God more than likely it's going to be something regarding his nature.

For instance, I don't believe in God because there's so much evil in the world. And if there was a good God and an all powerful God then he should do something about all the evil in the world. So I can't believe in God in his existence because I can't believe in God in his nature.

You see? So it's existence and nature together. Nature. I'm sorry if you're having trouble seeing. The existence and nature. So nature in my notes I put a second set I said the nature argument they're moral and ontological.

And now I'm going to make it even worse on Chuck. He's having trouble seeing and now I just wrote it even smaller. Under nature I put two. I put moral and ontological. The moral argument for God the argument against God is the argument of evil.

I just don't believe there's a good God if there's evil in the world or he'd do something about it. But the ontological argument is a little bit more profound but it comes across sort of childish. Because this is what they will say.

I don't believe there's some guy in the sky looking at me. Right? You've heard that. Maybe not quite as poetic. But you've heard people say I don't believe there's some man up in the heavens looking down at everything I do.

And you see that may sound simplistic but that is an ontological argument. Because one they're making a point about the nature of God as simply being a man type being that's watching like men would watch.

Right? And when somebody tells me I don't believe in some guy in the sky who's just watching everything I do I say I don't either. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't even know what you mean.

I know what they mean but I'm just saying I kind of play along. Explain that. You know? You know one of the things that men desperately crave is privacy. Think about your computer and your phone. There's settings on it that you can set that will erase everything you do for privacy's sake.

Even the watches we bought our kids watches for Christmas. You know the little computer watch? I picked up my son's watch one day and I picked it up to look at it and it came up the screen lit up. It's got this amazing when you look at it it opens up and it was a code.

And I said what kind of man puts a code on every time you want to check the time? You got to put a code but it's privacy. Wants that privacy. But you know what? One atheist and I can't call his name now and I'll try to remember to look it up for next week.

He said that was the greatest fear in believing in God was to know that he could never have privacy. Was to know that there was somebody always watching. So there's the ontological argument. I don't want to believe in God.

I can't believe in God because that would mean I don't have any privacy. You might think that's a silly argument but that's an argument to a heart that wants to be free from consequences. One of the greatest freedoms that men want is the freedom to do what they want without consequence.

And if God is watching there's consequence. So the arguments against God tend to be either about his existence or about his nature. Now moving on the arguments about scripture and I had to make it two.

I could have made it one long one. The nature, reliability, interpretation, application of scripture. That had been really long and I like to make them look even. And I like things that come in threes.

So I put it in there to where we had two. So the number two is the nature and reliability of scripture. Now here's a nature argument regarding scripture. Maybe you've heard this. I don't believe the Bible because the Bible was written by men.

Now I like what Votie Bauckham said He said Have you ever read a book that weren't written by a man? Have you ever read anything? Are you throwing out all your other books too? What do you mean you don't believe it because it was written by men?

That's the only way any book's ever been written. You don't see all the college kids going to their science textbooks and throwing them in the trash and saying to the professor I can't read this, it was written by a man!

You understand? It's a ridiculous argument but that's the objection to the nature of scripture. Because what we say the scripture is. The Word of God. But we don't say that God wrote it. We say God has superintended it's writing.

But men wrote the scriptures. We do not. You have to understand the doctrine of inspiration which will be part of this course. Because when we go through the because each one of these over the weeks to come we're going to break down and give how we would defend if somebody came at us with these.

Tonight's an overview but in the weeks to come we're going to be breaking these down. But one of the things that we will deal with is somebody saying about the scripture and our response, we believe the scripture is the Word of God.

Why? We're going to talk about why. Because there are whys to that. But the heart of the matter is when somebody says the bible's written by man, what they're saying is it wasn't written by God. That's the heart of the objection.

They're saying it's not been superintended by God. Okay. At least we know the objection, right? That's what tonight's about. Know your objections, know your objectors. We'll get to those in a minute. Time must allow it.

As I'm running, I got a lot to say. But then there's the reliability objections. The nature objection is just written by men. But the reliability objection is a little bit more um I don't want to say it's more profound, it's just more it's more well understood and wrongly understood.

And maybe that's difficult too. People are saying something that they don't understand but they take it to be true. They'll say something like this. The bible has been rewritten many times, so we can't know what it said.

I told you the story about the devils, right? The devils that came to the church. I know you've heard it. Pat's been here longer than anybody, so she's heard it. A few years ago we had a fall festival.

During the fall festival two girls came to the church dressed as devils. And I thought that was a little bit in poor taste, but what are you going to do? Well, I did walk over to them while they were sitting down having some punch and I sat down and I said, tell me about yourselves.

I didn't know them. Tell me about yourselves. So they started talking and started talking about the bible. And one of the objections was the bible's been written so many times and rewritten so many times we have no idea what it says.

Now, I don't want to get into this. I did say, I said, well I have a Greek New Testament inside. Do you want to go read it with me? I wasn't trying to be a jerk. I was just saying, we have the bible that was written in the original language.

So, if I can prove to you that what this is is actually what Paul wrote and what John wrote and what these people wrote. Remember the presupposition though? No, that wouldn't satisfy me. Because it's not about evidence.

But that's her argument. It's not about evidence. It's about a presupposition. She doesn't believe the bible's true. She hears something. The bible's been rewritten many times. So she holds on to that as her reasoning.

But it's not good reasoning. Because she doesn't know historically. She doesn't know anything about the history. I said, do you know anything about the transmission of the text? How the bible came to be in the form it is today?

How we got the 66 books of the bible and who wrote them and when they were written and what years they were written? Do you know any of this? No. Why did you say what you said? Because you heard it on television.

You heard it on the History Channel or the Discovery Channel or the Disney Channel. You heard it somewhere. Or you thought it up yourself. But it just ain't so. It's like the lady I remember, I was sitting in Pizza Hut with a friend of my mother's, my mom, and she's sitting there and she goes, I want to get a copy of what the bible was before King James came along and changed it.

And I was like, just shoot me with a pepperoni. What are you talking about? I don't have the capacity to deal with that. It's just not there. That was profoundly ignorant. I didn't say that. But I mean in my mind.

What are you even talking about? King James didn't have nothing to do with the King James Bible. It was dedicated to the king. Over 40 different scholars used the available manuscripts that they had. Handwritten Greek manuscripts and Hebrew manuscripts to translate it into English.

And it wasn't the first English translation. The Geneva Bible and several other bibles were translated prior to the King James Bible. It was just the first one that had a dedication to the king. And it was done by the order of the king.

Yeah, it had the approval of the king is what I meant to say. But anyway, I've really veered. But you understand what I'm saying. The objection is about the nature of Scripture or the reliability of Scripture.

There are answers to these questions and we should know the answers. And by the end of this course hopefully you'll know better the answers. But the next is the interpretation application. The interpretation application is very important and should never be, because a lot of people might not disbelieve the Bible but they'll disbelieve what you're saying about the Bible.

As you say, you must believe in Jesus to be saved. I don't believe that. Well, this is what the Bible says. Well, that's your opinion. That's your interpretation. It's not an interpretation. Words have meaning.

And that's the words. I mean, it really isn't. When Jesus says, I am the way and the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father but through me. That cannot be interpreted outside of the exclusivity of Christ.

Now it can be wrongly misconstrued and misinterpreted by the other side but there really isn't a way to interpret it properly and leave the exclusivity of Christ. But you will hear people say, that's just your understanding.

Y 'all know who Oprah Winfrey is. I remember Oprah. Yeah, like they wouldn't know. No. I remember Oprah. Very famous. You can find this clip. Very easy to find. She was asked. No, I'm sorry, she wasn't.

She was told. There was a lady in her audience. They were having a conversation where the audience could interact and the lady says, but you have, Jesus is necessary for salvation. And Oprah looked at her and again, you look it up and find it.

She said, He can't be. That was her response. He can't be. That's impossible. Yeah? Absolutely. And the whole argument of interpretation, are there interpretational difficulties with Scripture? Absolutely.

But, and that's why there's Presbyterians and Baptists and different things. We have things that we disagree about and they're legitimate disagreements. But, there is something that the Reformers called the perspiscuity of Scripture.

And I love that word because it's fun to say. But the perspiscuity of Scripture is the clarity of Scripture on the essentials. That while Scripture may have difficulty on some non-essential issues, the essential issues of the Gospel are without cloudiness or without obscurity.

They are absolutely clear. And it really takes exegetical gymnastics to deny them. And that's what you see. So that's the three. And like I said, if you want to add to the list, feel free. But I think that any argument that I've heard and have had to deal with, comes down to either the existence and nature of God, the nature and reliability of the Bible, or the interpretation and application of the Bible.

Everything else, like I said, or everything sort of falls into one of those categories. So now we're going to go down the other list. And I'm going to obviously have to do it much more quickly because I spent a lot of time on that.

And since we are going to subdivide these later, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on each one now. But let's look first at, I'll give you the answers very quickly. Because I, and again, we can always add to this list for sure.

But there are five objectors that I think we should recognize. One, objectors that are arguing from a position of atheism or agnosticism. That's one. Atheism, agnosticism. Number two, objectors arguing from secularism and I put, or spirituality.

And we'll talk about that in a minute. Secularism, spirituality. Number three, objectors arguing from a position of false religion. Now one could argue that spirituality and even atheism is a false religion, but I'm trying to be specific in how I break things down.

So we'll just leave it there. Number four, this one's kind of difficult because it's not a word you're probably used to. People arguing from the position of anti-theism. Different than atheism. And I put, or hyper-skepticism.

That's another term. Anti-theism, hyper-skepticism is number four. And number five, this is an easy one. People arguing from heresy. That's easy. So very quickly in the next few minutes, I want to break these down.

Just quickly. I won't keep you here all night, I promise. But hey, some of you drove a long way. Might as well get a little out of this so you can make it a little long. And it stopped raining, so hopefully be safe.

But let's look at these objectors. Number one, people arguing from the position of atheism or agnosticism. I'm going to use my red pen now. I brought a red pen. And I want you to tell me where atheism and agnosticism falls under the issue of objections.

The first objection of the atheist is the very existence of God. Now he will have issues with the Bible and all that, but it begins with the existence of God. Because what is an atheist? An atheist is someone who claims that God does not exist.

But I want to tell you something. Atheists claim that God does not exist. But they do not know that God does not exist. And if an atheist tells you, I know God does not exist, you can know that at that moment you're not dealing with a reasonable person.

Let me explain why. Because to know that something does not exist requires all knowledge of that thing. I'll give you an example. If I said to you, Jackie, I believe there's gold in China. Would you agree?

Most likely. And how would I prove it to you? I would just show you. Right? Let's fly to China. Let's look around. And as soon as we find a piece of gold, I've proved my point. But now if I said, Jackie, there's no gold in China.

I'm making a statement that I cannot prove. And I cannot know. Because I would have to not only know about every jewelry store, I would have to not only know what was inside of every mountain, and what was inside of every stream, I would have to know what was inside of every Chinese person's mouth.

I would have to know everything about everything. And since that level of knowledge is impossible, I can't know that there's no gold in China. All I can do is claim it, but I can't know it. So if somebody says, I know God doesn't exist, you can feel free to tell them, my pastor said, you can't know that.

No, don't say that. No, just know that they can't know that. That's why I have a friend who has a t-shirt that says, I am an atheist. I don't believe in atheists. That's what the shirt says. It's an A in front of the word atheist.