I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist LIVE from Marshall University

uh hey hey oh emily so down one two one two you guys can hear me keep talking awkwardly amongst yourselves we're good yep good evening um this humbles me thank you all for being here this is amazing and it's just one of those things you never know who's going to show up and who's not but with our guest speaker it doesn't surprise me dr turek and i have been friends for at least four or five years friends acquaintances whatever i have his phone number he doesn't answer anyway um he will be talking on truth miracles uh god and the bible feel free in the toward the end he will answer questions and we have a little surprise between the now and then so outside of that thank you again for being here i hope you enjoy it my friend dr frank turek thank you john thank you thundering herd yes that's that's john mays over there he's the head of rachel christie on this campus we'll tell you about that a little bit later let's go back to september 29th 2006. that's when petty officer michael monsoor is united states navy seal operating in ramadi iraq monsoor is standing on a roof in ramadi and he's standing in front of a doorway to this roof he has two navy seal teammates lying in the sniper prone position next to him they've already taken ak-47 fire and a rocket-propelled grenade but they're not exactly sure where the enemy is there's a bit of a lull in the fighting insurgents have blocked off the streets in ramadi and there's someone on the loudspeaker in the town mosque yelling kill the americans as monsor and his team are looking for the next attack an insurgent from an unknown location throws a grenade up on the roof it hits monsoor in the chest and it falls to his feet due to the length of the throw there's no opportunity to pick it up and throw it back he has only a split second to make a decision he can leap through the doorway behind him and save himself but if he does his two teammates lying on the roof will surely die yells grenade but instead of jumping backward to save himself he jumps forward chest first onto the grenade it detonates 30 minutes later 25 year old michael monsoor is dead his two teammates lying on the roof receive only minor injuries because monsaur's body muffled the blast one of the survivors said at montsour's funeral mikey looked death in the face that day and said you will not take my friends i will go in their stead i've never seen a united states president cry until april of 2008 that's when president george w bush invited monsour's parents into the east room of the white house to give them their son's medal of honor posthumously the president couldn't even get through the citation without breaking down since then monsoor's high school in garden grove california built a new stadium they named it michael a monsoor memorial stadium the golden trident insignia that the seals wear dominates the 50-yard line january 2019 north island california just outside of san diego the united states navy commissioned the uss michael montour the newest guided missile destroyer in the fleet zumwalt class this is monsoor's mother sally being escorted onto the ship named in honor of her fallen son now why did they do this because michael monsoor literally sacrificed himself to save his friends there's no greater love than to sacrifice yourself to save your friends said jesus of nazareth before he went to the cross michael monsoor sacrificed himself to save his friends the question is would anybody sacrifice himself to save you and the answer is someone already has his name is jesus of nazareth but in today's culture particularly on a college campus people don't believe the story's true they think it's invented after all it was written down by religious people we know religious people tend to embellish things and it's got miracles in it like a resurrection we don't believe in miracles anymore how can we believe such a story is true well i actually think it's quite easy to show that christianity is true you only need to answer four questions in the affirmative to show that it's true in other words if you investigate these four questions i think you'll realize that the answer to these four questions is yes and if the answer to these four questions is yes then christianity is true what are the four questions here are the four questions now that is pretty proven music isn't it yes that is actually from our tv show on every wednesday nights on directv channel 378 it's also on roku uh and look for nrb if you have roku it's also streamed on our website live at that time we're on radio every saturday mornings but since you're a college student i know you don't get up to the crack of noon on saturday so you're not going to listen to it at 10 a.m it's podcasted it's called the i don't have enough faith to be an atheist podcast you can listen to it anytime you want what we do is we present evidence for christianity and we cross examine ideas against it based on our website crossexamine.org now why are these the four questions truth god miracles and the new testament and this is going to serve as our outline here tonight first question does truth exist why is that important because you hear people saying you got your truth i got my truth all truth is relative right well if there's no truth obviously christianity can't be true of course if there's no truth and atheism can't be true either right actually if there was no truth why would you be at marshall university i mean why would you come to college if there's no truth of course there's truth we're going to deal with that first second question does god exist obviously christianity can't be true if there's no god i hope to show you tonight that there really is a spaceless timeless immaterial powerful personal intelligent creator who created all things and sustains all things to this very moment we're going to see three arguments for this being these arguments are taught in the bible but you don't need the bible to know them in fact we're going to try and establish point two without any reference to the bible third question are miracles possible obviously christianity can't be true if miracles are not possible but i hope to show you tonight that not only are miracles possible but the greatest miracle in the bible has already occurred and even the atheists are admitting the data for this miracle we'll get to that tonight and then finally we're going to deal with the question is the new testament true the new testament doesn't have a prayer if there's no truth no god or no miracles but if truth exists if god exists if miracles are possible then we're going to see if the documents are reliable enough to let us know if one particular event from the ancient world took place and that would be the resurrection because if jesus rose from the dead game over christianity is true of course if he didn't rise from the dead game over its faults as paul said writing to the church at corinth if jesus hasn't risen from the dead your faith is in vain but if he has risen from the dead that would mean he's god and if he's god whatever he teaches is true jesus taught the old testament was the word of god and he promised the new testament you say well why should we trust jesus look i just have a personal policy if somebody rises from the dead i just trust whatever the guy says right now there's a lot more detail in the book and we're not going to have time to go into a lot of detail here but if you want to go further the books available on the book table as well as a 12-part dvd set that's over seven hours long there's another book up there called stealing from god why atheists need god to make their case i've noticed that when atheists are arguing there is no god they actually have to steal aspects of reality that would only exist if god existed in order to say he doesn't exist in other words they have to sit in god's lap to slap his face now by the way all the proceeds from the sale of the books and the dvds will go to feed needy children mine okay just so you know i got three sons so i need some help now you actually don't have to buy a book to get the overall argument because if you type the word evidence no quotes just the word evidence to 44222 i'm going to send you the entire powerpoint presentation in a pdf format it's longer than the one i can show you tonight you'll get it all just text the word evidence to 4422 and those watching on youtube and facebook and instagram can do the same thing uh we'll send it to you and i'll put that number up at the end as well now what we're going to do is go through this very quickly well we're going to spend some time but we're going to cover a lot of ground so let me warn you about something i'm from new jersey okay i speak at 150 words a minute with gus to 350. okay you cannot listen in southern all right so you're gonna have to put on your northeast ears because we're going to cruise this cruise through this very quickly you guys ready to go all right we're going to start right here at point one does truth exist and whenever you start talking about truth you always have to start with jack nicholson right because tom cruise had him on the witness stand and he said to him colonel i want the truth and nicholson said thundering herd if he said it that way the movie would have gone nowhere you can't handle that that's not how we said it here's how he said it you can't handle the truth all right let's try it again i want the truth now that was thundering right didn't that feel good that felt a lot better didn't it well there's a lot of people that can't handle the truth they're saying you got your truth i got my truth all truth is relative if you don't get anything outside of what we talk about here tonight this may be the most important certainly the most important thinking skill we're going to talk about here in the next five minutes this thinking skill is so important that half of what you need to know to defend the christian faith you'll already know if you get this thinking skill down and even if you're an atheist you're going to find this helpful why because this thinking skill will help you identify what is false and half the battle is just exposing what is false so you can concentrate on what is true now what is this thinking skill it's easy easily communicated by showing you an example of using it if someone were to come up to you and say there is no truth you should ask that person a question what should the question be yeah if somebody says there is no truth you're going to say hey is that true is it true that there's no truth because if it's true that there's no truth to claim there is no truth can't be true but it claims to be true did i say that right can everybody see that this is a self-defeating statement what's a self-defeating statement a self-defeating statement doesn't meet its own standard to say there is no truth is a truth claim it would be like me saying i can't speak a word in english what would you say hey you just use english to say it would be like saying my parents had no kids that lived or my brother is an only child right these are self-defeating statements and once you get good at identifying self-defeating statements you're going to save yourself a lot of pain and suffering why because if you start believing things that are false and start orienting your life toward them eventually it's going to hurt now what's the thinking skill what you need to do is you need to turn the claim on itself turn the claim on itself so if somebody says there's no truth you're going to say does that meet its own standard you're going to ask is that true and see what they say right let's do a few more of these suppose someone were to say to you all truth is relative you've probably heard people say that if you turn the claim on itself what are you going to say back yes hayden's got it is that a relative truth he's only 14. he's got this come on you 25 year olds let's go right of course is that a relative truth no that's an absolute truth claim claiming all truth is relative now sometimes it's said this way there isn't the truth only my truth now if someone says this if you turn the claim on itself what would you say back to him you could say what about you could say what about my truth but then it's just a battle of opinions you could also say this is that just your truth or the truth because if this is just your truth then it's just your opinion why should i believe it but if it's the truth it defeats itself because you're saying there is no the truth you see this is self-defeating you know what the real truth of the matter is ladies and gentlemen i know it's really fashionable to say i'm living my truth you know there's no such thing as your truth there's just the truth either your opinion lines up with it or it doesn't now you say well frank there are truths that just apply to me and not you like my name's bill and your name's frank okay yeah but it's still objectively true that your name is bill and my name is frank sure there are truths that just apply to certain people but they're still objectively true actually sometimes it's not said this way sometimes it's said this way it's true for you but not for me you probably heard that right if somebody says this if you turn the claim on itself what would you say back yes if somebody says it's true for you but not for me say hey is that true for everyone is true for you but not for me true for everyone because if true for you but not for me is true for everyone then true for you but not for me can't be true because it's true of everyone did i say that right i know that can give you intellectual constipation if you think about it long enough but that's because it's self-defeating it's like saying i can't speak a word in english actually there's a more fun way of dealing with this if somebody says it's true for you but not for me say sure go try that with your bank teller yeah go to your bank toe and say i'd like a hundred thousand dollars out of my account the bank tell that your accountant says sorry you only have six dollars and twelve cents in your account it's easy to get the money you simply say that's true for you but not for me give me the hundred grand you're gonna get the money no if it's true there was only six dollars and twelve cents in your account that's true for all people in all places at all times when referring to you at that time it's just true actually i go to a lot of churches i normally ask people do you think christianity is true most people will say yes and then i'll ask them well why do you think it's true you know what answer i get more than any other because i have faith is that a good answer does your faith change whether or not christianity is true does it change whether or not god exists or jesus rose from the dead i mean you have to believe something to make it true you have to believe in gravity to stay on the ground do people who don't believe in gravity float away hey look there's another one hey if you believe you'll come back no that's not the way it works you say why is the bible always talking about faith then because there's two kinds of faith there's belief that and then there's belief in belief that is getting evidence that god exists that jesus rose from the dead that's evidentiary that's what we call in christianity apologetics doesn't mean we're saying we're sorry it means we're given evidence for what we believe but all the belief that in the world won't get your moral transgressions forgiven for that you got to go from belief that to belief in or to trust in look even the demons know that god exists in fact james the half brother of jesus who wrote that little book in the new testament called you guys are sharp tonight he said even the demons believe that god exists but they tremble why because they don't go from belief that to belief in do you realize the demons know that god exists better than we do but they don't trust in him to go have your moral transgressions forgiven you have to not just have head knowledge it's got to ultimately get to your heart and trust in it in fact we know this in relationships don't me don't we when i first met my wife 36 years ago i got evidence that she would be a good wife but all the evidence in the world didn't make her my wife i had to take a step of trust in her to ask her to be my wife and in a momentary less of judgment she said yes that's the difference between belief that and belief in most of the time when the bible's talking about faith it's talking about the second kind after you know that it's true trust in it in fact the definition of faith is trusting in what you have good evidence to believe trusting in what you have good evidence to believe and when you trust in you go from just head knowledge to not just head knowledge but also heart knowledge so there's a difference between belief that and belief in how about this you're going to hear this a lot too there's no truth in anything but science you guys have the top forensic science graduate program in the country did you guys know that here at the thundering herd you guys are good at science particularly historic science is what forensic science is but it says there's no truth in anything but science if someone says that to you what question would you ask him yeah simply say hey is that a scientific truth can you go in the laboratory and prove that no that's a philosophical claim you can't prove that in the laboratory in fact you can't do science without philosophy science is built on philosophy in fact in the book stealing from god back there we have a chapter on science here's the title of the chapter science doesn't say anything scientists do why is that because all data needs to be gathered all data needs to be interpreted and who does that scientists do that you ever wonder why you get conflicting advice on covid people say follow the science you're going to say which science who said you see all data needs to be gathered all data needs to be interpreted sometimes they're all looking at the same data but they interpret it differently sometimes they've got different data and that's why they come to different advice conclusions regarding coveted policy science doesn't say a word it's scientists that say things and if you really think about it all truth can't come from science so many things you have to assume in order to do science and the most important things in life have nothing to do with science honey do you love me yeah why i don't know let's run an experiment no how about this you hear this a lot you should doubt everything skeptical claim someone says you should doubt everything you're going to turn the claim on itself and say should i doubt that i mean why are skeptic skeptics skeptical of everything but skepticism you ever notice they don't doubt that in fact let me ask you guys a question how many people in here whether you're a christian or atheist or anywhere in between sometimes doubt that what you believe is true look if you don't have your hand up right now you're probably not thinking very much of course you know i've written books on this stuff and sometimes i wake up in the morning and i go i don't even know if this is true you ever do that and then i start thinking about my doubts and i realize that my doubts are mostly emotional they're not intellectual in other words the evidence for christianity is really good but if i'm having a good day it looks fine bad day don't know good day fine bad day don't know good day fine bad day don't know what's changing me or the evidence me i'm going up and down the evidence doesn't change sometimes at events like this i'll see atheists who used to be christians and they'll say hey frank i used to be a christian but i lost my faith you know what i really want to say to him so so i mean are you telling me because your psychology changed that god has somehow popped out of existence since your psychology changed all the evidence for the resurrection is no longer any good your psychology is not going to tell you whether something's true or false not just in religion but in anything the evidence will tell you you know there's a lot of people that are afraid to fly they will not get on an airplane psychologically they can't handle it especially from this area right 50 years ago big terrible accident here at marshall and psychologically it freaks people out i get it but you realize that the safest way to get anywhere is in a plane your psychology won't tell you that the evidence will and if you start looking at the evidence then you'll be able to draw true valid conclusions but if you concentrate on your psychology you're going to be up and down all day based upon what pizza you had last night whether it was good or bad right based on your emotional state no what you ought to do is start concentrating on the evidence and if you start concentrating on the evidence then you should realize that your doubts you ought to doubt because if you start doubting your doubts then you're back to knowing something for sure have you guys thought about doubting your doubts i doubt all right how about this you hear this a lot too you want not judge first of all what's the problem with the claim yeah someone says you ought not judge you're going to say isn't that a judgment notice this is a judgment you say wait a minute frank jesus said don't judge nope never said it sure he did he said it in matthew chapter 7 verse 1. all right i know this is going to sound a little weird but it's true there are no verses in the bible there are no verses in the bible do you think when matthew was writing his biography which we call a gospel he got said he got to the point we said here's chapter 7 verse 1 no when were the chapter and verse divisions put in about 500 years ago to help us navigate the text which is a good thing right imagine if you go to church one sunday morning and your pastor goes go about two-thirds of the way in let's see if we can figure out where we are together no you're you're gonna have to have some numbers to help you navigate this large series of books right the problem is we tend to think if it's got a number in front of it we go oh we can just take it out make it say whatever we want no we can't we got to read the whole passage what does it say judge not lest you be judged by the same standard you judge others you'll be judged by that standard so before you try and take the speck out of your brother's eye you hypocrite by the way that's a judgment you hypocrite right take the log out of your own eye first then you'd be better able to help your brother is jesus telling us not to judge here no he's telling us to take the speck out of our brother's eye that involves making a judgment he's simply saying get that problem out of your life first so you can better help your brother so this is not a command not to judge it's actually a command on how to judge in other words don't judge hypocritically if you've got that problem fix it then go help your brother but it would be completely ridiculous to say don't make judgments why number one it's a judgment itself number two you'd be dead already if you didn't make judgments you made a hundred judgments just coming over here tonight now you're wondering was this a good judgment this guy's kind of crazy right everybody makes judgments atheists make judgments what judgments do they make there's no god jesus didn't rise from the dead bible's not telling the truth there is no meaning to life when you die you're just going to become worm food it's over have a nice day no everybody's making judgments the only question is are your judgments true i will say this though jesus did save a very stern rebuke for people who were judgmental and who were the judgmental ones in his day pharisees who are the pharisees what did they do what was their job they were the religious and political leaders of israel they helped run israel some of them were on the sanhedrin the jewish ruling council and rome delegated a lot of the legal authority for running day-to-day israel to them they were the politicians and jesus went after these people are you telling me jesus got involved in politics yes and he wasn't so nice doing it in fact if you think jesus was a sweet guy who's never said a bad word about anyone you have not read john chapter 2 john chapter 8 or matthew chapter 23. what happens in john chapter two jesus makes a whip and he goes and he jacks people up in the temple sweet and gentle jesus did this yes and then in john chapter eight he's having an argument with these pharisees he's in the middle of an argument with him and he says your father is the devil jesus you can't say that that's not very christ-like excuse me i am christ can you imagine you're having an argument with somebody and you stop right in the middle and you go your father is the devil don't try that with a sibling okay and then in matthew 23 what happens he's talking to these same pharisees and he says woe to you scribes and pharisees you hypocrites you strain out a net and swallow a camel oh you look great on the outside you're whitewashed tombs but on the inside you're full of dead men's bones you go a mile to make a convert and then once you make them a convert you make them twice as much a son of hell as you are how will you avoid being condemned to hell what sweet and gentle jesus said this yes jesus was not barney can't we all get along boys and girls no i came to bring a sword it's going to divide mother and daughter father and son jesus was tough read the text for yourself in fact why was he killed two reasons number one he claimed to be god that's blasphemy to the jews in sedition to the romans and number two he spoke truth to power especially the jewish authorities they knew that if jesus succeeded they were going to be out of a job in fact caiaphas knew jesus had resurrected lazarus from the dead and what did he say he's the high priest what did he say he said it's better that one innocent man die than the whole nation perish they knew a miracle occurred and they still wanted to kill jesus how rational is that men love darkness rather than light by the way i've noticed one other thing about judging you ever notice that when you compliment somebody which is a judgment nobody gets upset you know if you say to your best friend i really love you you're such a wonderful person i wish i could be like you you think your friend's gonna say who do you think you are are you judging me no they're never going to say that i've noticed that people don't really have a problem with judging they just have a problem with judgments they don't like in fact if you tell somebody the truth and they get upset with you you just help convict them we love the truth when it enlightens us we hate the truth when it convicts us a few military guys in here and i spent eight years in the navy which by the way stands for never again volunteer yourself you always get more flack when you're over the target if you tell somebody the truth and they're shooting back at you you're over the target they don't want their evil deeds exposed so everybody makes judgments the only question is are your judgments true we could spend a lot more time but we don't we got to move on i just want to sum this whole thing up can everybody see that this statement right here shoots itself can everybody see that and all the other statements we went through all truth is relative it's not there is no the truth just my truth true for you but not for me there's no truth in anything but science you should doubt everything you ought not judge and 100 other statements you hear in our culture they're all self-defeating they violate the law of non-contradiction they're they're like saying i can't speak a word in english they're not true there is truth thankfully otherwise you're spending a lot of money here at marshall for nothing right there is truth and you can know it so the next question is it true that god exists and before we leave question one i gotta point one thing out we have the q a later we'll put the mic down and if you're an atheist here thank you for coming but if you're an atheist i may ask you a question and it's not fair for me to ask you a question without giving you a warning so i'm going to tell you right now here's the question i might ask you the question is this if christianity were true would you become a christian i've had atheists stand at the microphone in front of hundreds of people and say no no how's that reasonable how's that rational it's not the problem isn't in the head the problem's in the heart they don't want it to be true they don't want there to be a god why because they want to be god of their own lives they're not on a truth quest or on a happiness quest and they're just going to believe whatever they think is going to make them happy and christian if you're a christian here a lot of times we do the same thing don't we there's a lot of inconvenient things in the bible we don't like and so we're not going to talk about them or we're just still still going to go our own way so it's not a head problem it's not about god's existence it's really about our resistance we don't want it to be true so a question to ask is if christianity were true would you become a christian if the person hesitates or says no you know the problem's not in the head it's in the heart it's a volitional problem not an intellectual problem now let's move on to the next well one other thing we got to say about the first question does truth exist if our reasoning is good to this point it means that relativism and post-modernism are false why they claim it's true that there's no truth self-defeating now what's the evidence that god exists i mentioned three arguments for this being the first argument is the argument from the beginning of the universe known as the cosmological argument cosmological just comes from the greek word cosmos which means world or universe the second argument is the argument from design known as the teleological argument telos is a greek word meaning design or purpose and it says if there's design in the universe and designing you life there must be a designer the third argument these are scientific arguments by the way the third argument doesn't have any science behind it yet it's the argument we've all known since we were very small children it's the argument from morality known as the moral argument and it says if there's one thing morally wrong out there just one like it's wrong to torture babies for fun or it's wrong to murder six million people in a holocaust there has to be a god why because if there is no standard beyond humanity everything's just a matter of opinion just your opinion against the baby tortures opinion your opinion against hitler's opinion but we know those things aren't just a matter of opinion therefore there must be a standard outside of us a righteous standard that we're obligated to obey and that would be god's nature we'll get to that argument later in fact we're going to spend most of our time on this on these three arguments but we're going to start right here at the first argument the cosmological argument now you got to admit it was worth coming out here tonight just to see god do that i mean come on in fact some of you have said i've never seen god move oh really let's look at this again now this is the argument that many say points back to the big now i know there's some christians in here going ah frank you know where christians in here and uh we don't believe in the big bang you guys don't believe in the big bang i believe in the big bang i just know who banged it in fact the evidence for the big bang is so good that even atheistic scientists are admitting the evidence for it stephen hawking was the top physicist in the world until he died about four years ago you may remember hawking had als normally als will kill you in four years or a few years somehow hawking had it for over 40 kind of a medical miracle anyway here's what hawking said about the beginning he said almost everyone now believes that the universe in time itself had a beginning at the big bang hawking tried to come up with another explanation other than god he failed but he's admitting the data that space time and matter literally had a beginning out of nothing agnostic astronomer or cosmologist alexander vellenkin uh wrote this about the beginning he said with the proof now in place cosmologist and by the way a cosmologist is not someone that puts on your makeup all right cosmologist is someone that studies the universe cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past eternal universe there is now no escape they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning now there are two interesting words in this quote the first is the word proof scientists don't often use that word why because science is tentative but he's seen so many lines of evidence point toward one conclusion that there was a beginning to space time and matter that he's calling it a proof the other interesting word is the word problem why is it a problem because if space-time and matter had a beginning out of nothing what could have caused space-time and matter it can't be a natural cause why because nature's the effect it can't be the cause nature was created at this point now this guy valencian believes in the multiverse have you heard of the multiverse that there are other universes out there and ours just happens to be the one that looks designed even though it really isn't it was just kind of luck but even valencia admits even if that's true you don't get rid of the need for an absolute beginning there's got to be a beginning to it all there's other problems with the multi-universe theory we can talk about later but he's admitting this is a problem now what's the evidence that's having these scientists say that space time and matter had a beginning out of nothing we're not going to go over it why number one we don't have time number two it's all in the book chapter three number three it's not controversial even the atheists are admitting it so let's just jump to the bottom line here's the bottom line if the universe had a beginning it must have had a beginner we got two options here either no one created something out of nothing which is the atheistic view or someone created something out of nothing which is the theistic view now here's my only question which view is more reasonable that no one created something out of nothing or that someone created something out of nothing what do you think yeah number two well i was at texas a m once and uh the guy some atheists said i think number one is more reasonable i said time out let's look at number two here's number two someone created something out of nothing now that's a miracle right but at least you got a miracle worker you got someone doing the miracle number one is a miracle with no miracle worker that's clearly absurd in fact i said to the audience that night at texas a m i said to show you how seriously we all take the law of causality and by the way the law of causality doesn't say everything has a cause the law of causality says everything that comes to be has a cause there has to be an uncaused first cause it's either the universe or something outside the universe because you can't create yourself you can't go on an infinite regress of causes there's got to be an uncaused first cause so i said to a m that night i said to show you how seriously we all take the law of causality that things don't pop into existence out of nothing by nothing without a cause there is nobody currently sitting here tonight that as you sit here you're worried that a hippopotamus has appeared out of nothing by nothing in your dorm room and is currently pooping on your pillow you're not worried about that you're not worried that a raging bengal tiger is just going to appear out of nothing right here in the middle of this auditorium and start attacking people right because you know that things don't pop into existence out of nothing by nothing without a cause and if the whole universe can pop into existence out of nothing by nothing without a cause why doesn't everything do so why don't teslas pop into existence out of nothing buy nothing without a cause you wake up one morning your hyundai is a tesla and you go how do i charge this thing why don't macbook pros pop into existence out of nothing buy nothing without a cause could have saved me four grand if i was just a little bit more patient once we get through with this little talk here tonight and you're hungry and you want to have a pizza does it make sense to order one or should you just sit there in your dorm room wait and hope one pops into existence out of nothing by nothing without a cause no it's the atheist it seems to me that has all the faith look everyone believes in at least one miracle christians believe in more than one but we certainly believe that someone created something out of nothing some atheists today like lawrence krauss at arizona state university are trying to say that no one created something out of nothing that's a miracle but which one takes more faith number one takes a lot more faith in fact here's a question to ask an atheist if there is no god why is there something rather than nothing at all in other words if there is no god why does anything exist look think about this ladies and gentlemen if space time and matter had a beginning out of nothing and the atheists are admitting it what could have caused that whatever cause space time and matter can't be made of space-time and matter in other words the cause must transcend space-time and matter the cause must be spaceless timeless immaterial powerful to create the universe out of nothing personal in order to choose to create because impersonal forces can't choose to create anything you need a choice to go from nothingness to a state of creation also the being would have to be intelligent to have a mind to make a choice now when you think about a spaceless timeless immaterial powerful personal intelligent cause who do you think of god you say how do you know it's the christian god frank we don't yet i mean this could be allah at this point or some other just theistic god that created the universe but if we keep going down the questions like are miracles possible and to jesus rice and the dead we're going to realize that the same being that walked out of the tomb 1988 years ago is the same being and whose divine nature created the universe out of nothing you don't get there all the way with this one argument but you get a number of attributes from this one argument now let's move on to the next argument the design argument or teleological argument there are two aspects to this the universe appears design and you appear designed let's look at the universe first scientists in recent decades have discovered that the universe is fine-tuned that if you were to change any one of a number of factors about this universe virtually imperceptibly there would either be no universe or no universe that could support life let's go back to stephen hawking again an atheist he put it this way he said if the expansion rate of the universe was different by one part in a thousand million million a second after the big bang the universe would have collapsed back on itself or never developed galaxies if the expansion rate was that infinitesimally different at the very beginning none of us would be here now you can't make any sort of evolutionary explanation for this you can't say the expansion rate evolved to this point why because it started there this is one of the initial conditions of the universe seems to me the same beam that created space-time and matter is the same being that fine-tuned the expansion rate to be precisely what it needed to be for us to exist here on earth also the gravitational force if it were altered by more than 1 in 10 to the 40th power we wouldn't exist what's 1 in 10 to the 40th power that's one part in one with 40 zeros following it you say frank i can't get my head around that number i know neither can i so let me give you an illustration take a tape measure and stretch it across the entire known universe that's a long way you can't get that tape measure at lowe's set the gravitational force at a particular inch mark on that tape measure i realize gravity's not measured in inches but this is just give you a scale idea in your mind if the strength of gravity were different by one inch in either direction across the scale as wide as the entire known universe we wouldn't be here i don't have enough faith to believe that that value just landed there by chance and oh by the way his chance of cause does chance cause things who caused this chance he was just here no chance is not a cause a word we use to describe mathematical possibilities chance doesn't do a thing you know what scientists mean when they say well perhaps it arose by chance or was caused by chance you know what they really mean we don't know look there's only two reasons that that value is here right now two possible reasons it was designed to be there or it wasn't what's more reasonable somebody designed it to be there the same being that created space time and matter and fine tune the expansion rate and about a dozen other of these change any one of them we don't exist now it's not just our universe that appears to be designed with us in mind our solar system appears to be designed with us in mind let's take a look at the solar system here we are third rock from the sun if we were just a little bit closer to or a little bit further away from the sun we couldn't survive a little bit closer to we'd burn up a little bit further away we'd freeze we are what scientists call the goldilocks zone it's not too hot it's not too cold it is that's a lie it's too hot here in the summer axial tilt 23.5 degrees change that slightly we don't exist earth rotation 24 hours change that slightly we don't exist the size and distance of the moon from us change that slightly we don't exist if jupiter was not in its current orbit we couldn't exist here on earth why not yes because jupiter's gravitational force is so strong it attracts most of the meteors and space junk to it rather than us it's a cosmic vacuum cleaner in fact if you take a close-up look at jupiter these dark marks are comet fragment strikes that are bigger than the earth thank god for jupiter because if jupiter wasn't there we wouldn't be here saturn does the same thing in fact here are the planets you can see jupiter saturn uranus neptune earth look at poor pluto down here you know pluto recently has been demoted as a planet i don't know about you but i think it's size discrimination take a look at this i'll get it you can hardly see pluto over here take a look at this that's arcturus that's another star in our galaxy here's the sun jupiter is one pixel in size on this scale earth is invisible pluto forget about it in fact well keep an eye on archers for just a second where's arcturus now look at this way over here next to this star regal that's antares another star in our galaxy the sun is one pixel in size on this scale jupiter is invisible earth pluto forget about them in fact if the earth was the size of a golf ball beetlejuice here would be five or six empire state buildings high the heavens are awesome and that's just in our galaxy this is not outside our galaxy in fact the average distance between stars in our galaxy is 30 trillion miles and all that distance is necessary for us to exist here on earth now how far is 30 trillion miles far take you at least two tanks of gas and a toyota prius to go 30 trillion miles a number of years ago my wife and i took our sons out to the desert museum in tucson arizona if you ever get to go to tucson south side of the mountain range there and you go out to the desert museum at night if it's a clear night you can see thousands of stars in the sky so we're out there one night and the guide says it's so clear tonight that if we look up at 903 we will see the space shuttle in orbit i said oh come on we're not going to see a space shuttle it's only 120 feet long it's 350 miles up we're not going to see it oh me of little faith at 903 the guide goes look and we look up in the sky about 70 degrees above the horizon there's an object streaking across the western desert sky relative to us about like this i mean it's really moving when it got right about here it disappeared i don't know whether scotty beamed it up or what actually what happened was despite the fact that we were in total darkness the space shuttle was so high up that the sun was still reflecting off of it and when it got out of the range of the sun we couldn't see it anymore now when the space shuttle was in orbit the space shuttle was traveling at about 18 000 miles an hour that's five miles per second you got trouble getting to school in the morning take the space shuttle five miles a second think about how fast that is well i did a little calculation to try and figure out how long would it take us if we could get in the space shuttle and go from our star the sun to another star and average distance away inside our galaxy 30 trillion miles in other words how long would it take us to go 30 trillion miles if we could go five miles per second how how long a long time yeah you must be a math major yeah it would take us 201 450 years that means if you got in the space shuttle at the time of christ and started traveling from our star the sun to another star inside our galaxy an average distance away you've been going five miles a second for 2 000 years you would be less than 100th of the way there right now and we're going to explore spain no we're not we're not going anywhere in space we can hardly get out of our solar system it took us nine years to get to pluto well how many stars are there in the universe well the psalmist says this for as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is his love for those that fear him as high as the heavens are above the earth how high is that well the hubble space telescope has helped us discover how many stars there are in the universe you know it's circling the earth right now number of years ago they trained the hubble on one 24 millionth of the sky what's 124 millionth of the sky go outside tonight put a piece of rice on the end of your finger hold it up that piece of rice represents about 124 millionth of the sky what i'm about to show you is what they found in 124 millionth of the sky this is called hubble ultra deep field you can google this this little video is in the public domain and when i start this video first of all if you can see this along the bottom here these are mountains this is the southern hemisphere and they train hubble in the southern hemisphere and when i start this little video it's really just a series of pictures to to get out to the 124 millionth of the sky you're going to see the constellations come up and then hubble's going to zoom into this little fraction of the sky there is no audio it's just video are you guys ready here's hubble ultra deep field there are the constellations now let's zoom in what you're looking at in 124 millionth of the sky is nearly 10 000 galaxies each galaxy containing billions of stars how many stars are there in the entire universe researchers at the university of hawaii think they figured it out the number of stars in the universe are about equivalent to the number of sand grains on all the beaches on all the earth times one hundred thousand and to go from one star to another star just in our galaxy going five miles a second we'll take you over 200 000 years i don't ever want to hear anyone at marshall university ever use the word awesome again unless you're talking about the heavens or god awesome shot dude awesome shirt dude awesome tick tock video dude no what are you going to say for god is awesome but the verse doesn't end there for as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is his love for those who fear him as far as the east is from the west so far as he removed our transgressions from us you want to know what god is like look to the heavens what do you see when you look to the heavens stars equivalent to sand grains on a hundred thousand earths over two hundred thousand years at five miles a second between those stars it's infinite yeah that's the point now do you feel insignificant you shouldn't why because the heavens is beautiful and majestic and as expansive as they are aren't made in the image of god but you are this is why god said he's gonna remove our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west in fact this is you in the womb at 11 weeks question is this animal mineral vegetable or human no it's not a vegetable in fact let's go back and here's the design in you we just talked about the design in the universe let's go back to when before this let's go back to when your mother and your father got together to conceive you have you guys had this talk before i see some young people in here so i'll try and be discreet i also see some older people in here so i'll try and be discreet as well just in case you've forgotten how this works when your mother and your father got together to conceive you your mother unconsciously perfumed her egg to attract your father and then your father sent the entire population of the united states 300 million soldiers toward your mother's egg and then there was a race and you won don't let anyone ever tell you you're not special you beat 300 million others you have blown away anything michael phelps has done now seeing some of you limp in here earlier makes it hard for me to believe you were the fastest soldier in the gene pool but you were now your soldier was 20 to 30 times smaller than a grain of salt yet it contained half of the 3.2 billion letter genome your software program your dna that makes you you all the letters in the right order and your mother's egg was about the size of a period at the end of a sentence in an average book and it contained the other half of the 3.2 billion letter genome that makes you you all the letters in the right order and when your soldier and your egg came together a new 100 genetic human being was created you know you have not received any more genetic information from this point until right now your genetic information is just duplicated itself in fact there were only four things separating you from adulthood time air water and food those are the same four things that separate a two-year-old from adulthood does this have implications on the abortion issue yeah i think it does we don't kill the two-year-old why do we kill the unborn child in the womb genetically it's the same you say wait a minute frank you can't legislate morality all right no extra charge for this friends this is from our first book creatively titled legislating morality all laws legislate morality every law declares one behavior right and the opposite behavior wrong you can't think of a law which doesn't legislate morality the only question is whose morality will we legislate in fact when people say to me don't impose your morality on me i go why not would that be immoral because you're imposing your morality on me right now you're saying i ought not impose out knots but you're imposing that ought not on me why do you get do you impose your morality but i don't get to impose mine actually the better answer is this if somebody says don't impose your morality on me i say this isn't my morality i didn't make this stuff up i didn't make up the fact that murder's wrong that abortion's wrong that rape is wrong that theft is wrong that men were made for women and women were made for men and the best way to perpetuate and stabilize society which is the reason the government recognizes marriage to begin with is to legally recognize the man-woman relationship over the other every other relationship i didn't make any of this stuff up this isn't my morality this isn't your morality this just happens to be the morality the one thomas jefferson said was self-evident the one the apostle paul said the gentiles are not the law of the law written on their hearts everybody understands this morality but some of us don't like it so if you have a problem with demorality you don't have a problem with me you have a problem with the creator upon whose this this morality is derived all right no extra charge for that let's go back to this from this point in the womb a construction project of astonishing complexity began taking place cells began multiplying at a rate of 4 000 cells per second brain cells began multiplying at a rate of a hundred thousand cells per second for mostly anyway some cells became brain cells others heart cells others lung cells how do they know how to do this nobody knows some cells went so far across you to become what they needed to become that it would be equivalent to you today walking across the united states alone and that construction project continues to this day you just made four million new red blood cells you just made another four million new red blood cells you just made another four million new knock it off are you thinking about this are you sitting there going time out frank i got to concentrate new red blood cells coming up this is just happening how is it happening aristotle recognized something 2400 years ago he didn't know anything about blood cells but he did notice that all of nature is going in a direction for example why does an acorn if it's properly nourished always go in the direction of becoming an oak tree why doesn't it become an elm tree or a birch tree or a sea seahorse you say well it's programmed to become an oak tree well who programmed it and it's an acorn conscious is an acorn in the ground going all right what do i have to do to become an oak tree no yet it reliably goes in the direction of becoming an oak tree if it doesn't have a mind of its own yet it reliably goes in a direction there must be an external mind directing it toward an end this is what aristotle called the unmoved mover thomas aquinas came along in the 1200s a.d and said this is going to be my fifth way to argue for god that all of nature's going in a direction well if all of nature's going in a direction there must be some director now notice this is not an argument for a big bang god way back when that's another argument this is an argument for a creator and sustainer god every single second the universe exists in fact aristotle mistakenly thought the universe was eternal but he said there still has to be an external cause keeping everything going all of nature is held together it's all going in a direction the natural laws that govern everything are sustained by a mind this is why the apostle paul came along and said in him we live and move and have our being and that christ holds all things together and the writer of hebrew says god sustains all things by his powerful word in fact god is to the universe what a band is to music if a band were up here playing music the band would be creating and sustaining the music right what happens to the music the second the band stops playing music's over same thing is true with god god creates the universe he creates you he creates the natural laws to keep it going and he sustains all that if he were to pull his hand away we'd all go out of existence there's a lot more about that in the book stealing from god if you want to go further but we've got to go to our final argument you're probably looking at your watch going how is he going to get through all this this goes quicker we're spending the most of our time in point two the other two points go quicker but this third argument might be the most relevant of the three particularly in our country today because everyone has a moral claim to something let me ask you guys a question how do you know your quarterback throwing a touchdown is better than your quarterback throwing an interception how do you know that why is it a good thing to make a touchdown because there is what what do you have to know in order to know the touchdowns better not just the rules the goal yeah you got to know the purpose right you got to know the purpose of the game only if you know the purpose can you say your guy throwing a touchdown is better than your guy throwing an interception because it gets you closer to the purpose of the game if there is no purpose to the game you can't say a touchdown is better than an interception right also notice that the purpose of the game comes from outside the game in other words the players just don't show up on sunday and decide what the rules are the rules are established before the game ever starts by the commissioner and the owners and they tweak the rules every year right well in football the game is arbitrary the rules could be different but in life the rules aren't arbitrary why because the purpose comes from outside this life god himself his nature and the rules or commands he gives us flow from his nature if there's no god you can't say that one particular way to live gets you closer to the purpose of life which is good or another way to live takes you further away there is no good or bad if there's no best if there's no standard if there's no purpose the only way this life makes any sense is if god exists otherwise everything is just a matter of opinion also notice this word here what does it mean to submit nobody likes that word submit but i tell you that's one of the most important words to your life and mine let's break the word up sub mission what does the word mission mean there's a goal there's a purpose and sub means you're putting your own purpose under that purpose look if i'm a diva receiver and i say man you got to keep throwing me the ball and the coach says timeout we keep throwing you the ball we're not going to win we got to spread the ball around if we keep throwing it to you we're going to lose if we want to win we got to spread it around and i go okay i get it i'm going to submit my mission my purpose my goal to the overall ultimate mission to win the game that's a good thing when i do that right same thing is true in life you can have your own mini purpose but you're going to die and become worm food if there's no god if there really is a god and there really is a purpose to life you would be foolish to not to submit your little purpose to the ultimate purpose do you realize that if there's no god the nazis were not wrong how did we convict the nazis the nazis said we were just following our government and we said you have a moral obligation to disobey moral orders immoral orders why because there's a morality beyond your government it's international law jefferson called it nature's law in the declaration of independence paul calls it the law written on the heart in romans chapter 2. it's god's nature there would be no way we could say the nazis were wrong unless there's a standard beyond governments also love is no better than rape if there is no god oh you may like love better than rape but objectively it's not better why because there's no best there's no standard without god you can't say that there are human rights because there are no human rights if there's no god where do rights come from they don't come from governments jefferson said governments are instituted among men to secure rights government doesn't give you your rights it secures rights if there's no god there's no rights to anything i know a lot of people on college campuses have all sorts of causes do you know if there's no god there's not only no right to same-sex marriage there's no right to natural marriage do you know if there's no god there's no right to abortion there's not even a right to life there's no rights to anything unless god exists and if there is no god racism isn't wrong slavery isn't wrong discrimination isn't wrong it's just your opinion if there's no god if there's no god tolerance is no better than intolerance by the way are christians commanded to be tolerant no christians are commanded to be loving you see tolerance is too weak tolerances hold your nose and put up with them love says reach out and help them and you know how you help people sometimes you don't tolerate the evil they do in fact on our culture people think love is approval if you love me you'll approve what i do parent how many in here are parents how many in here are former children okay if your parents approved of everything you wanted to do would they be loving no you have to stand in the way of evil love does not equal approval love equals we'll stand for the truth because love always protects love always perseveres love rejoices in the truth paul said in the passage everyone reads at their wedding but nobody obeys first corinthians 13. and if there is no god you can't complain about the problem of evil because evil proves god does exist it doesn't prove he doesn't exist you say how does that work frank well c.s lewis early on in his life he went to world war one and he said there can't be a good god because there's too much injustice or unjustice in the world and then one day he had an epiphany and he realized his argument didn't work and here's how he wrote about it in mere christianity he said as an atheist my argument against god was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust but how would i got this idea of just and unjust a man does not call a line crooked unless somebody unless he has some idea of a straight line what was i comparing this universe with when i called it unjust you see you wouldn't know what a crooked line was unless you knew what a straight line was you wouldn't know what unjustice was unless you knew what justice was something can't be immoral unless something is moral something can't be not right unless something is right so evil doesn't disprove god because evil is the standard or i should say god is the standard by which we'd even know what evil was see evil doesn't exist on its own evil exists as a lack in a good thing evil is like cancer if you take all the cancer at a good bod out of a good body you got a better body what happens if you take all the body out of the cancer you got nothing evil is like rust in a car if you take all the rust out of a car you got a better car what happens if you take all the car out of the rust you got nothing in other words evil doesn't exist on its own it exists as a parasite or a lack in a good thing or you can put it this way the shadows prove the sunshine in order to have shadows you got to have sunshine right in other words in order to have evil you have to have good oh you can have sunshine without shadows you can have good without evil but you can't have shadows without sunshine you can't have evil without good so if evil exists and we all know it does then good must exist but for good to exist god must exist otherwise everything's just a matter of opinion now there's a lot more in the books on that but we've got to move on let's just draw a conclusion from these three arguments from these three arguments we have a spaceless timeless immaterial powerful personal intelligent moral creator who created all these things and sustains all these things and whose every attribute is infinite now this is the god of the bible and yet we haven't even opened the bible yet do you notice that you don't need the bible to know that god exists in fact the bible even teaches this romans chapter one you say wait a minute frank atheists have to have some arguments against this actually their arguments don't work why because if atheism is true you shouldn't believe any arguments what c.s lewis put it best i can't say anything better than c.s lewis so i'm just going to read you what he wrote are you ready look look what lewis says it's a it's a two slide quote here's what he says suppose there were no intelligence behind the universe in that case nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking thought is merely the byproduct of some atoms within my skull but if so how can i trust my own thinking to be true you with him so far but if i can't trust my own thinking of course i can't trust the arguments leading to atheism and then therefore have no reason to be an atheist or anything else unless i believe in god i can't believe in thought so i can never use thought to disbelieve in god boom can't say it better than that unless your your mind is made in the image of the great mind why should you believe anything you think you can believe in everything you think or many of the things you think because god exists that's why but how do we know who the true god is for that we've got to go to number three and this is the shortest of the four points it's pretty easy to show that miracles are possible if god exists the problem is some people believe miracles are impossible for example noah and the ark christians can we just keep this between ourselves i know it's being streamed but let's just keep this between ourselves can we all agree that noah and the ark is crazy thank you a resurrection how many people in here have seen someone rise from the dead none of us yet our entire belief system is dependent on us believing something that none of us have ever seen how rational is that and for some reason the big problem miracle in the bible is jonah is that a whale of a tale or a tale of a whale i mean what's the deal with jonah can you really believe in jonah well what is the greatest miracle in the bible no the resurrection is easy the greatest miracle in the bible is the first verse in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth if that verse is true every other verse is at least possible right here's the interesting thing the atheists are admitting the data for the first verse they don't think it's god but what else could it be if space-time and matter had a beginning out of nothing it's got to be a being like god that transcends space-time and matter so if the first verse is true every other one of these verses is at least possible i mean if it's true that god created the universe out of nothing can he do the noah miracle of course noah is crazy unless god exists of course resurrections don't occur unless god exists of course jonah is silly unless god exists by the way do you notice that jesus relates two of the most controversial miracles in the old testament noah or sorry noah and jonah to his own life do you think jesus thought that noah and jonah were historical or hysterical he thought they were historical now look a lot of people don't believe in miracles because they've never seen one that's not a good reason to disbelieve something why because you believe in a lot of things you've never seen you've never seen your mind yet you believe in it right you believe in the laws of logic and the laws of math you ever seen those no you believe in justice have you ever seen justice oh you may have seen justice done or not done but you've never seen justice in itself because it's not a something you see it's an immaterial reality grounded in the nature of god you've never seen love but you believe in love don't you i had a couple of debates a number of years ago with christopher hitchens you guys remember who christopher hitchens was he was a brilliant british atheist who sounded more brilliant than he was because he had a british accent and in our second debate at the college of new jersey some student in the audience asked christopher this question christopher what is love and christopher being a materialist had to give a materialist answer so he finally said love is a chemical and i said don't tell that to your wife honey do you love me yeah why because i got the chemical today tomorrow i might not have the chemical love is not a chemical love is an immaterial virtue grounded in the nature of god you may love you may be in love but you've never seen love you've never seen gravity frank nope you're seeing it right there no you're not seeing gravity what are you seeing you're seeing the effects of gravity by the way that's how we know god exists we don't see god directly we know him by his effects if somebody asks you how do you know god exists you say i know god by his effects what's the effect creation is in effect cause creator design and effect cause designer moral law and effect cause a moral law giver reason and effect cause a mind your reasoning from effect back to cause that's what scientists do you've never seen george washington yet you believe he existed why because he's left effects behind that are best explained by the cause known as george washington the same is true about jesus your reasoning from effect to cause and by the way no miracles need to have occurred for christianity to be true since jesus and the apostles there may have been no miracles since then and christianity would still be true now i think miracles have occurred and still occur in fact if you want evidence for that get craig keener's not far from here in kentucky he's a unbelievable researcher seminary professor he wrote a two volume 1100 page hernia-inducing set on miracles modern day miracles but you don't need miracles in the current day for christianity to be true and by the way if miracles do occur they have to be rare why because if miracles were regular if they happened all the time we wouldn't think they were miracles they wouldn't get our attention as special acts of god and that's really the purpose of a miracle it's a special act of god to get our attention i mean if stuff happened all the time we'd go hey this stuff happens all the time i mean imagine if resurrections occurred routinely what would the resurrection of christ mean to us nothing you go to somebody you go jesus rose from the dead to prove he was god and your friend goes so what uncle leroy just rose from the dead two weeks ago now i gotta give the inheritance back no it's gotta be a rare event if it's gonna get our attention so against the backdrop of natural laws that's the only way you can identify a miracle now there are a lot of things in this life that happen routinely that really are miraculous but since they happen all the time we don't call them miracles for example how many moms in here all right how many how many dads in here have seen your own kids born now when you see your flesh and blood come out of another human being you don't go evolution right you go there's something amazing here this is incredible but it happens every day right so miracles are possible because god exists all we need to discover now is if the greatest miracle in the new testament occurred and that is the resurrection of jesus because if jesus rose from the dead christianity is true now there's a lot of evidence he did rise from the dead and i'm going to give you eight lines of evidence the new testament writers are telling the truth about this we don't have time to cover them all i'm just going to list them and we're going to look at two of them they all begin with the letter e early sources new testament is written down early and it's got early data in it secondly eyewitness details are throughout the text these are some of these details are listed in chapter 10 if i don't have enough faith to be an atheist embarrassing stories i'll explain that in a minute as well as excruciating deaths these are the two we're going to look at embedded confirmation this is the best evidence you've probably never heard of that the new testament writers are independently witnessing the same historical event i don't have time to explain it to you right now but if you want to google it google two words undesigned coincidences undesigned coincidences there have been books written on this in fact lydia mcgrew at western michigan university in 2017 wrote a book called hidden in plain view once you read about these and there's some of them in the book stealing from god once you read about these you're going to go yeah there's no way they could make this up they couldn't undesign coincidences i call embedded confirmation number six expected predictions this is old testament prophecy if i had only one prophecy to make my case on it would be isaiah chapter 53 written 700 years in advance about jesus number seven extra biblical writers there are ten ancient non-christian sources within 150 years of jesus's life household names like josephus suetonius dallas flagon tacitus you were probably reading about them earlier today weren't you when you take their brief references to jesus and the apostles you get a story congruent with the new testament they don't think that jesus rose from the dead but they say the disciples believe jesus rose from the dead which is pretty good confirming evidence finally number eight the explosive growth of the church it's really hard to explain how christianity could have come out of first century jerusalem when two parties wanted to squash it and they could have done so easily by going to the tomb and taking out the dead body of jesus the jews and the romans wanted to squash christianity and they couldn't do it why because the tomb was empty jesus was still using his body now as i say we only have time to cover a couple of these let's start with embarrassing stories what are embarrassing stories historians know that if there's something embarrassing to the author or authors of a written text it's probably true why because you're not going to invent things that make you look bad that embarrass you you might only put flattering things in the story right in fact how many people in here have ever lied to make yourself look good if you don't have your hand up right now you're lying to make yourself look good and it's not working we know you're lying all right how many people in here have ever lied to make yourself look bad no you don't lie to make yourself look bad you might lie to make yourself look good but you won't lie to make yourself look bad well the new testament writers have filled the new testament by the way this isn't true in the old testament too but we're just looking at the new testament the new testament writers have filled the new testament with embarrassing details they never would have invented that's why we call this the dove factor they're not making this up here's just a few of them notice peter their leader is called satan by jesus do you think they invented that do you think mark at one point said to peter hey pete i'm going to make this a real interesting story i'm gonna have the lord call you satan what do you think peter would have said have him call you satan look i'm the leader here and then peter says lord i'll never deny you what does he wind up doing he denies him three times and then at the crucifixion all the disciples maybe with the exception of john they all run away this is like a monty python movie run away and who are the brave ones who are the brave ones the women the women are the brave ones now who wrote the new testament down men now what man is going to invent that he was hiding for fear of the jews why the women went down discovered the empty tomb would any man in here invent that no if i was there and inventing it i'd make myself look good wouldn't you i'd write down let's see we marched right down there and we overpowered that elite roman guard yeah that sounds pretty good peter said gap out john roundhouse kicked him philip said we'll be back and then on sunday morning we march right down to the tomb and we saw jesus who congratulated us on our great faith and then we went and comforted the trembling i would never say it was mr pants why the women went down discovered the empty tomb and oh by the way why would you never say the women were the first witnesses in that culture forget about the fact it was embarrassing to men it was but independent of that why would you never say the women were the first witnesses because in that culture a woman's testimony was not considered on par with that of a man so if you're making up the new testament story you'd only have the men be the first witnesses yet all four gospels say the women were the first witnesses in fact one of them was a formerly demon-possessed woman oh what a great witness why are they saying this because that's the way it really happened they're not making it up i had a woman come up to me once and she said frank i know why jesus appeared to the women first i said why and she said because he wanted to get the story out i said that is an excellent point i had not thought of that because ladies when your man comes home from work does he say much there could have been a nuclear explosion down at the plant he's not going to tell you you'll see it on the news before you hear it from him you'll be watching the news going hey han what oh yeah i forgot to tell you the nuke blew up i've been hot for three days what's for dinner right he's not going to tell you i can't even believe this next verse is in the new testament but it is you know the great commission the end of matthew where jesus says go therefore make disciples of all nations notice he doesn't say make believers he says make disciples right there's a difference anyway right there with all his disciples there in verse 17 it says this some believed but some doubted he's standing resurrected right in front of them and they're going you see that guy over there yep that guy over there is jesus no i'm telling you it can't be jesus he was killed not long ago no i'm telling you it's him look he's dead the romans killed him they crucified him it's him they put a spear in his side blood water came out that guy's dead it's him it can't be it is how do you know the women told me you know they're not making this up there's even potentially embarrassing details about jesus jesus is considered out of his mind by his own family who come to seize him and take him home this is in mark chapter three his own family thinks he's nuts now you may have heard the scholars say that the new testament writers embellish jesus to be god oh really then why is mark chapter 3 in there which is almost universally recognized to be the earliest gospel his family thinks he's nuts his own brothers don't believe in him jesus is called a drunkard he's called demon possessed you think they made that up he has his feet white put the hair of a prostitute which is it could have been seen as a sexual advance and by the way notice there are two prostitutes in jesus's bloodline who are they rahab and tamar you think when matthew and luke got together to write down the genealogies they said you know what i really think we ought to spice up the messiah's bloodline a little bit let's put a couple of prostitutes in here let's see rahab tame no they're just telling the truth as embarrassing as it is in fact there's a lot of embarrassing people in the messiah's bloodline judah from where we get the term judah or jew i mean not a good guy david david a man after god's own heart yeah but he's a liar adulterer and a murderer gee i guess there's hope for the rest of us then huh bathsheba's in there in fact when matthew gets to her in the genealogy he won't even mention her name what does he say instead uriah's wife that's a slam right but he's telling the truth who is uriah husband of bathsheba whom david had killed so he could have bathsheba they're not making this up it's embarrassing but they're telling the truth it's the ultimate no spin zone do you think a pharaoh would allow his historians to say hey i'm pulling your genealogy together let me put some bad guys in there and some prostitutes what do you think pharaoh would say off with your head no the new testament's telling the truth as embarrassing as it is there's more in the books but we got to move on to our final point here and that's excruciating deaths and this is the argument that says that these men who are in a position to know whether jesus had resurrected or not died excruciating deaths when they could have saved themselves by simply saying look it never happened now it's important to recognize that the writers in the new testament all of them with the exception of luke were all jewish believers in yahweh luke is the only gentile they all think they're god's chosen people for like 2 000 years what motive or what did they have to gain by making up a new religion what did they get by saying jesus had resurrected from the dead they got kicked out of the synagogue and then they got beaten tortured and killed that's not a list of perks we're going to start a new religion we are yeah what's it going to get us we'll first get kicked out of the synagogue then beat and tortured and killed well sign me up no i don't think so right in fact they had every motive to say the resurrection did not happen not every motive to say it did if you're a christian maybe you get this question i get it sometimes are there any non-christian writers that talk about jesus and the apostles i mentioned them briefly a few minutes ago there are but you know what is often underneath that question an illicit assumption what's the illicit assumption oh you really can't trust the new testament writers you can only trust the secular writers because the new testament writers were biased if you think about that for more than 10 seconds you realize how stupid that claim is what did these people have to gain by saying jesus rose from the dead nothing they had everything temporarily to lose in fact my friend jay warner wallace the cold case homicide detective who's been on dateline more than any other cold case homicide detective because he solves murders decades old says that whenever he finds a dead body he knows he's been murdered he says i know that guy's dead for one of only three reasons or a combination of the three there was either a sex issue a money issue or a power issue sex money or power those are the three universal motivators that would get people to murder one another in fact they're the same motivators that cause us to sin sex money and power are good things but they're so good sometimes we'll take shortcuts to get them so if you're gonna say the new testament writers made this up you've got to find one or more of those three motivators question did the new testament writers get real popular with the ladies for saying jesus had resurrected from the dead no did they make money no they weren't 21st century prosperity gospel preachers did they get power no they got persecuted they got the opposite of power paul had power as a persecutor of the church when he becomes a believer he's persecuted there's no motive to make this up they had every motive to say it wasn't true in fact jim's new book person of interest john back there is going to give away a copy before you leave it's a great new book you're going to want to get it you might also ask the question why would they die for a known lie say wait a minute frank if you're going to say that martyrdom proves christianity don't you have to say martin improves islam no why because there's a number of differences between the muslim martyrs today and the new testament martyrs of new testament times let me just give you one difference for our purposes the muslim martyrs of today haven't witnessed anything that tells them that islam is true they just have faith the new testament martyrs on the other hand witnessed jesus rise from the dead they saw jesus they touched jesus they ate with jesus they verified with their own senses that jesus had risen from the dead some people will die for a lie they think is the truth nobody will die for a lie they know is a lie and the new testament writers were in a position to know whether it was a lie or not and they went to their deaths anyway look they didn't believe a man who could claim to be god that was blasphemy they didn't believe a man could rise from the dead in the middle of the time they thought he would ride we'd all rise at the end of time this was totally out of their paradigm they weren't looking for this jesus went looking for them in fact what i'm about to say for to those of you that think the bible's inerrant like i do is going to sound like heresy for a minute but it's not just stick with me and it's this is not true because a series of documents we put under one binding we call the bible says is true in fact christianity would be true if the bible never existed you say how can that be because christianity did not originate with a book christianity originated with an event the resurrection do you realize there were thousands of christians before a line of the new testament was ever written how can that be how could you be a christian without the book of romans was paul a christian before he wrote the book of romans course he was that's why he wrote the book of romans he wrote it because jesus appeared to him was matthew a christian before he wrote the gospel of matthew of course he was that's why he wrote the gospel of matthew to tell you what he had witnessed same thing is true with john and the others in fact we could put it this way the new testament writers did not create the resurrection the resurrection created the new testament writers you wouldn't have a book written by jews in the first century unless jesus had risen from the dead remember they didn't believe a man could claim to be god and it'd not be blasphemy they didn't believe somebody would rise from the dead in the middle of time this was outside their paradigm now there's more on this but we gotta you get the book to go further let's sum the whole thing up does truth exist someone says there's no truth you're going to say is that true right all those other things are self-defeating does god exist three arguments cosmological teleological and moral are miracles possible the greatest miracle in the bible is the first verse and even atheists are admitting the data for that and is the new testament true about the resurrection yes we just went through a couple of eight lines of evidence now if you want to go further you can the book and the dvds are back there don't forget to text the word evidence to four four two two two no quotes just the word evidence the four four two two two uh we're teaching online courses now there's a new course on the abortion issue starting today and there's another course sean mcdowell is about to start on the lgbtq issue uh and he's teaching it uh i think it starts october 18th check that on our website we're on youtube twitter and facebook in fact we're on youtube right now check out our youtube channel two words in the youtube channel search cross-examine in fact we're so into youtube twitter and facebook we've actually combined these three into one social media platform we call it you twit face it's kind of a jersey thing have you signed up for you twit face yet we're on instagram as well we've got a podcast i don't have enough faith to be an atheist we've got directv on wednesday night it's also on roku and it's streamed on our website and if you don't do anything else download the cross-examined app two words in the app store cross-examine and it's got our podcasts on there it streams the tv show live and it also has a quick answer section on there so you can get answers right off your phone as you're talking to somebody all right all right before you get to your questions it's true the question we gotta ask is so what so what if it's true well here's the big so what someone actually did die for you it's true now when i was in the navy i was in naval aviation and you had to earn golden wings which were fairly hard to earn but there's nothing more difficult to earn in the navy than a golden trident that's what the seals wear very few people that start seal training make it through five ten percent maybe those that do make it through wear that trident with pride it is literally their military identity when michael monsoor was buried in rose crane cemetery just outside of san diego just about every navy seal on the west coast showed up for his funeral and when they passed his casket they took off their tridents and they pressed them into his casket they took their identity and put their identity in their savior the one that died for them that's what we're supposed to do but our culture says no put your identity in your political party or put your identity in your ethnic group or put your identity in your race there's only one race the human race or put your identity in your sexual orientation or your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your spouse or your vocation or your bank account you know none of those things are ultimate ladies and gentlemen we were all meant to put our identity in our savior and a man who was there and it was an eyewitness to this in fact he in fact he wrote a biography we call the gospel his name was john he said that god has given you the right to become a child of god by accepting what christ has done do you know christianity is the only worldview where you don't achieve your identity you receive your identity there's nothing you can do to achieve your identity you just receive it you accept it as a free gift which takes all the pressure off you because if you have to achieve your identity there's always someone that can do it better you're never going to think you're going to measure up but if you receive your identity if you're adopted into the family of god and you're an heir to the throne all the rewards he gives you that's secure there's nothing you can do to earn it he's earned it why wouldn't you accept the free gift have you accepted the free gift of what christ has done for you if you haven't why haven't you he didn't just die he also rose again to prove he's god now with that being said we're going to go to questions and just before we go to questions john wants to give away a book john you want to pass out the survey if you want to get a free copy of person of interest which is a book written by my co-author or my friend actually jay warner wallace it's the most unique book and we must be out of time no uh you want to fill out that little uh card he has and drop it off at the table and john when do you because john and his group talk about these kinds of issues every week thursday night where room 2w16 thursday nights at 7 right in this building so if you want to be a part of a group that talks about evidence-based issues and questions and answers come to it and you're meeting this thursday too right okay thursday 7 p.m all right all right as we're doing that we got a mic set up as you can see right back near their cameras so if anyone wants to ask a question and no one likes to ask the first question so we're going to move right on to the second question you just gotta go back to that mic so everyone can hear you because it's streamed live right now on youtube and they won't hear you if you just ask it independently uh for the rest of you uh john has given you a survey also if you wouldn't mind giving us some feedback hang on a second if you text the word event to this phone number right here we're going to send you two or three questions you can help us improve uh this seminar so please do that you don't have to do it right now you can do it in the morning but you'll probably forget if you do it in the morning so if you can do it now that'd be great all right yes sir i isaiah yeah you got all right isaiah go ahead sir yeah so if the universe is so big right uh-huh like as you said and we're in like a goldilocks zone i mean couldn't it be said that that since it's like an eternity big right i mean infinitely big then there would be a guaranteed chance that another goldilocks zone would happen because there's an infinite amount of possibilities good question there's not an infinite number of possibilities because even though the universe is enormously unimaginably vast it's still limited in fact the universe right now is expanding it's accelerating what's it expanding into nothing it's not expanding into space it's creating space but atheists uh peter ward i think is one of them are trying to think of the authors of the book called rare earth they're atheists and despite the enormous universe they personally believe there's no other place that has all the qualifications that we have for life look even if you have all of those factors for life that doesn't mean you're going to get life there's a difference between a necessary condition and a sufficient condition right here we have a necessary condition for a fire we've got fuel this whole building is fuel right but it's not a sufficient condition you need a spark you need a flame to get the fire started okay just because you have a habitable planet doesn't mean you're necessarily going to have life there you just have a necessary condition but you then need life to be created somehow for life to exist okay cool can i get one more sure go ahead that's that's it you're done thanks oh okay yeah go ahead uh what what's the best way to to better my faith with god like i already i have a good relationship with them but i don't want that like you know teeter-totter all the time and my emotions so what what's the best well there's some of the disciplines reading prayer meditation getting with a good church and a group of believers and also serving in that group not just being a consumer you see in america we're consumers we don't like this church because we're not having our needs met so we go to another church right until we don't have our needs met there and then we go to another church instead of going to a church and saying what can i do to help serve the body and serve the community remember the purpose of church is not only to worship god but to equip the saints to do ministry ephesians 4 so that you so we're supposed to be doing the ministry in the church so if you do those things if you study if you read if you meditate on god's word if you pray and if you have a good group of people you can get together with to worship god and also serve with that's the way you can grow you've got other things you can do as well you can go to southern evangelical seminary where i went scs.edu all right thank you man really appreciate all right thanks isaiah yes what's your name my name's josie hey josie go ahead um i was wondering if uh you think being gay is right okay when you say being gay what do you mean by that i mean having a uh having basically a like a girl likes a girl like if you mean having the feelings that you like somebody else who's the same sex and like being their girlfriend and getting married and okay well it doesn't matter what i think because i'm not the moral arbiter of the universe okay if god exists and he does and if jesus is god and he is then there's only one kind of sexual relationship that is directing you toward the purpose of life and the purpose of life is to know god and to make him known and that one kind of relationship is between a man and a woman in one relationship for one lifetime marriage between a man and a woman every other kind of sexual relationship is illicit according to jesus the apostles and the bible okay i also have a disagreement with you about the big bang theory that's okay go ahead i have uh how do you think do you think that everything formed by like like god sent like an asteroid and like it banged into everything or do you think like he sent he sent like a bang to create like the planets then the waters and the uh animals then well the big bang theory isn't what i agree with i just agree with the evidence for the big bang that there was a beginning and if there was a beginning there must be a beginner see the big bang theory is just saying there was a beginning how it began secularists will say we don't know i'm saying if space-time and matter had a beginning then whatever created space-time and matter must transcend space-time and matter the cause must be spaceless timeless immaterial powerful personal and intelligent those are the attributes of what could be the christian god you've got to do more work to see if it is the christian god you got to see if jesus rose from the dead as we just did a few minutes ago but if jesus has risen from the dead then he's the being that created the universe out of nothing okay that's it thank you josie good questions yes sir hello i'm uh gerald grubbs hey gerald yeah just move that up a little bit go ahead sir uh yeah uh you mentioned you know evidence and uh get a little closer if you went to the mic you mentioned uh about evidence and miracles being rare uh-huh i've got a comment but i do have a question yes sir uh i think the greatest thing we can do is as christ followers and go out into the world and tell what he has done for you you know that's one of the greatest things we can do start conversations and bring the truth to the world yes that being said last june uh june of 2020 i was diagnosed with stage four and anal carcinoma cancer i had it in my esophagus stomach neck a oral artery going to my heart too many cells to even count the doctor said she gave me one year to live as of last week all my cells have disappeared all right you know amen and a lot of that a lot of that come from a lot of crying out to god of course in the beginning but i made a decision to get out of god's way and raise my faith level and i believe that's what started the whole thing that being said you know i wanted to know a little bit about you and how god has you know god's evidently working in your life and and putting this together and you've got lots of study to study yourself approved i just wanted to add something brief about yourself and how god's worked in tandem with your studies well i grew up in the catholic church because i'm from new jersey and it's the law and i went to catholic high school but growing up i never really knew who jesus was and it wasn't until i got into the navy that i met the son of a methodist minister and i had so many questions for him he finally said look you just need to get josh mcdowell books evidence demands a verdict in more than a carpenter so i read those books and i said wow this really looks like it's true and i became a christian about 1985 when i got out of the navy i happened to meet norman geisler who at the time was sort of the michael jordan of apologetics or steph curry of apologetics and uh he was starting a seminary in charlotte north carolina and we were living in the dc area so six months later we moved my wife and our three sons five and under we moved to charlotte to go to scs southern evangelical seminary and i had the privilege to travel with dr geisler for a while we wrote a couple of books legislating morality and i don't have enough faith to be an atheist and then in 2007 i started this ministry called crossexamine.org with a bunch of other people to go to mostly to colleges high schools and churches and present the evidence that christianity is true and so that's what we've been doing and that's what we try and continue to do and i could see god's hand in it looking back i mean how why would i meet norman geisler where did that come from came out of nowhere okay well thank you very much thank you sir yes sir what's your name my name's sam hey sam hey um i had a question uh i'm kind of looking for your definition of what it means to be born again um jesus said that a man must be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven and through my experience with talking to calvinists they say you have to first be indwelt with the spirit before you can even say yes to salvation but in the old testament for my knowledge no one was ever in dwelt with the spirit but we know like abraham was saved so what is your definition then of being born again well the calvinistic viewpoint is as you said it that god has to regenerate you before you can believe because they say we're dead in our trespasses trespasses and sins i don't think the way that the calvinists interpret that as correct i think when it says we're dead in our trespasses and sins it means there's nothing we can do to make up for that that jesus is the only way that we're going to ever be reconciled to god however i think we can accept that offer that christ gives us in order to be saved because look if god has to regenerate us before we can believe and yet god wants all to be saved why isn't everyone saved then he does want us all to be saved yet only he regenerates some that appears to be a contradiction to me it also appears to be a contradiction to say that we can have love without free will if we don't have free will what's how can we love we're not moist robots as the atheists say uh so i have some issues with the hard five-point calvinism view i also think tragically it makes god the author of evil you say why does it make god the author of evil well i'll give you a little story that went back to dallas theological seminary a number of years ago my co-author dr norman geisler who actually wrote a book called chosen but free later after this debate was debating a calvinist by name of john gerstner and during the debate geyser asked gerstner does man have free will and gerstner said yes man has free will to do what he desires but god gives him the desires of his heart so geyser asks well who gave adam the desire to sin and gerstner said mystery and geisler said contradiction now you're making god the author of evil see that seems to be a problem in my view anyway making god the author of evil god is not allah he's not arbitrary he's good he allows evil he may bring judgment on us but he is not the author of evil he gives everybody the ability to respond to him but only some of us do because we resist the holy spirit we don't want there to be a god we want to be god of our own lives so i think we have free will that we can respond to god's call to the holy spirit going out to all the world convicting the world of sin but some of us don't want to be convicted we want to go our own way so would you say that a biblical definition then of uh being born again would be to receive a new heart and we become new creatures and then being dwelt by the spirit is the inheritance of our faith yeah ephesians 1 you're sealed with the holy spirit when you believe paul says in romans chapter 10 he says that if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that jesus has risen from the dead you will be saved yes it's a it's a conscious decision look jesus said if you're not with me you're against me so it's a conscious decision to repent and accept what christ has done okay thank you all right thanks sam yes sir what's your name jeremy hey jeremy um is uh someone that's uh dyslexic agnostic does that mean they believe or they wonder if there is a dog i got you the rest of them did it's it's late it's late go ahead um you've answered the question before but i can't find it online anywhere so um uh someone asked you how is there only one god like you explained how there can only be one god it only makes sense if there's only one god could you go through that again well let's it's probably best demonstrated with a slide so stand by for vectors victor call for clearance clarence roger roger do we have any airplane fans in here i mean come on there can only be one infinite being why an infinite bean lacks nothing correct for two beans to differ one must lack something the other has right but a being that lacks something is not infinite therefore there can be one only infinite being and look there's got to be a being that is uncomposed everything in the universe is composed the universe is composed it's made of parts i'm made of parts you're made of parts the universe is made of parts but if we're composed someone must have composed us and you can't go on an infinite regress of composers you've got to get back to an uncomposed composer this uncomposed composer isn't made of parts his essence equals his existence as aquinas would say he just is he is the great i am that's what the bible calls him in fact jesus said to the pharisees before abraham was born i am what's he quoting who's he quoting he's quoting exodus 3 14 the burning bush do you remember when god appeared to charlton heston and moses says to god who should i tell the israelites you are and god says tell them i am send you what does i am mean i am means the self-existent eternal one the being that had no beginning the being that had no end the being that just bees his essence equals his existence he is to be he's infinite he has he's not he doesn't lack anything he's totally maxed out totally actualized as aristotle and aquinas would say see we're a combination of what's called actuality and potentiality we have the potential to change to grow to learn to forget to change to alter god doesn't have any of those potentials he's completely maxed out he's the complete actualized uncomposed infinite being and there can only be one thank you all right thanks yes sir what's your name hi my name is justin justin go ahead dr frank turk i have a question about uh presuppositional and evidential yes apologetics yes and can you explain both and why you choose one and out the other okay um i'm not an expert in presuppositional apologetics but what i've seen about it if i understand it correctly is that you have to presuppose that the bible is true in order to know anything and i don't think that's the case okay you can know a lot of things without the bible being true you can know that the sun goes uh or the earth goes around the sun you can know many things about natural revelation the sun comes up in the east that water flows downhill i mean you can know a lot of things about nature without the bible i think evidentiary apologetics which is what we've been doing here makes more sense because you have to start with truth because you know today people some people don't even believe in truth so you have to start there and then you can move on to god miracles in the new testament now i think one of the problems that the presuppositionalists run into is they will run into the problem when they say you have to believe the bible in order to know anything else if they run into a muslim the muslim could say no you just have to believe in the koran well why should i believe the koran and not the bible or the presuppositions might say well let me give you evidence as to why the bible is true then sure and not the quran now you're back to the evidentialist approach though right in order to show the bible's true you've got to go through the stuff we just went through so i think in any event you're going to get back to what's called the the evidential approach or the classical approach which is what we're trying to do here does that make sense yeah all right thank you thank you yes sir what's your name dr uh anthony hey anthony hey um first of all i just want to thank you for doing this um this is super cool um actually when i first started looking into christianity and taking it seriously you were one of the first voices that i ever heard on the unbelievable podcast with justin brierly yep that one yes um so great podcast by the way it's a debate podcast look it up unbelievable um so one of my questions for you um is just kind of something that i've run up against lately a wall kind of that i'm working through i believe in inerrancy um i have no doubts about the resurrection things like that um however um i've come to a spot lately with the genealogies you made reference to in matthew 1 um and in luke 3 the the genealogies of christ are very different at points they diverge um and it seems there's there's so many different voices with so many different opinions about whose genealogy is what um and i guess my question for you is is how do we make sense of those um differences and does that affect how we think about the resurrection or anything else does anything else kind of become shaky okay well as i understand it the two genealogies matthew and luke are tracing different bloodlines okay one is tracy mary's bloodline and the other is tracing joseph's bloodline okay so they're going to be different secondly there's a book out there that my co-author wrote called the big book of bible difficulties by norman geisler and thomas howe both professors at our seminary dr geister since passed on but thomas howe is still there that book has a lot of answers to these kinds of questions okay thirdly uh genealogies may be organized in such a way as to make a point i think if i'm remembering correctly it may be matthew's genealogy which is in blocks of 14 is that right yeah yeah that's trying to make uh some sort of point it's not meant to be an exhaustive genealogy it's meant to make some sort of point based on the number 14. okay and so remember inerrancy means that that the bible's an errand at all that it teaches and we have to take it in the sense that a ancient reader would have taken it not in our modern 21st century sense because people that live 2000 years ago didn't have our perspective so the text would mean wouldn't mean anything to them if they had to have our mindset we can have their mindset but they can't have our future mindset so we have to bring ourselves back to the time of the writing to try and understand what the writing means okay and that's going to be true of any revelation if god's going to have a consistent revelation he's got to make it he's got to make it comprehensible to every period of time and so that's why you got to put yourself back in the mind at the time of the writing okay all right thank you all right thanks a lot anthony what's the matter you guys can't stay for four hours i mean please come on yes ma'am what's your name hi my name is ashley hey ashley um i used to be a part of a very fundamentalist network of churches i guess it was called international christian church or international churches of christ yes i know who have you who you speak of because i all i was in that not completely but when we first became christians we met people from the boston movement church of christ yes who were very zealous but also very legalistic yes yes so um one of their biggest doctrines was that you were saved through the act of baptism and something that would exclude you from salvation was even if you were baptized not being baptized with the knowledge that you're being baptized for your salvation very detail oriented yeah so i wanted to know uh what are your beliefs on where does baptism play into our salvation and our christianity yes baptism is a sign you're saved it's not a sacrament to make you saved in fact i think the easiest way of demonstrating this is if you go to first corinthians chapter one paul in the context of saying look don't follow me don't follow apollos follow jesus because he's talking to factions within the church at corinth and he gets to the point of baptism and he says look were you baptized in my name or baptized in apollo's name or no you're baptized in jesus name he says i don't even know who i baptized except for a couple of people that i can remember now he said i did not come to baptize i came to preach the gospel so he's bifurcating in other words he's separating the gospel and baptism and then if you go to romans 1 remember we're just in first corinthians 1. go to romans 1 he says the gospel saves so in first corinthians 1 if baptism is not part of the gospel and in romans 1 the gospel saves then baptism is not part of salvation it's a sign of salvation so then what do you make of scriptures like first peter 3 1 i think where it says and this baptist uh this baptism that now saves you also or in the great commandment or what is it the great commission um when jesus is commanding the disciples to go and make more disciples baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit well remember baptism was a sign of salvation then and when you got baptized publicly you were essentially putting a target on yourself because in that culture that was something that obviously wasn't accepted it wasn't until the 300s a.d did christianity became tolerable in the roman emperor empire so it's a sign of salvation it is not a requirement for salvation otherwise paul wouldn't have said i don't even remember who i baptized right he said i came to preach the gospel these other verses you're bringing up like first peter 3 is a notoriously difficult passage to uncover okay or to i'd say to interpret properly and this acts chapter 2 where he says repent and be baptized every one of you for the forgiveness of your sins okay peter says it there but that word there could be translated repent and be baptized uh with a view toward your salvation and the other times peter and the other apostles in acts talk about being saved they don't mention baptism why is that because it's not an essential part of salvation it is something that we are commanded to do and we should do but we're saved before we do it obviously the thief on the cross was saved he never got baptized either did he so cornelius was saved prior to i'd have to look at zach's chapter 10. okay so i i know that when a when you have a group of people get so zealous about a particular thing and they bring their proof text to it it can sometimes take a while to psychologically let go of those proof texts but i can't see why paul would have said i don't even care who i baptized i don't remember who i baptized the baptism was so important to salvation he never would have said that does that make sense yes thank you all right thanks ashley yes sir what's your name hello my name is josh hey josh go ahead and i was really i uh i um you know had my own personal journey through life and stuff like that and i was just wondering you know through all the ups and downs that you know i've had all the way up to now being you know 23. uh only recently have i really started to run towards the faith that i have now and the one question that you know is always on my mind whenever i wake up now is like how do i become as close or as much like jesus as i can because now the main thing that it's on my mind is like how do i put that same energy that same you know spiritualness into the world how do i try to be as close to him as possible it's a similar question to what isaiah asked before that you have to practice the disciplines obviously study not just the bible but also theology and philosophy and and apologetics why is this true uh study meditate pray get a group of people around you who you can serve with and learn from and teach others uh and very few things are mastered with casual contact right i mean to use a sports analogy the best guys in the nfl the best guys on the pga tour the best guys in the nba the best guys in any sports league didn't just show up one day and start being superstars right took a lot of work a lot of effort and the same thing is true if you want to be closer to god it does take work it does take effort it does take an a an effort to try and learn more and to try and be a follower of christ it doesn't happen through osmosis okay all right thank you yes sir hi dr trick um i have a couple of like build up questions because i'm not sure if this makes much sense yes what's your name uh ben ben go ahead my first one would be how would you describe omnipotence and omniscience well omnipotence is all-powerful and omniscience is all-knowing would you say that god is omniscient and omnipotent uh yes so would you say that god created the laws of logic and has power over them no why not god is there those laws flow from his nature they're not arbitrary just like his moral laws aren't arbitrary the natural laws that he created the universe with could have been different but if they were we wouldn't be here the way the universe is set up the natural laws are precisely fine-tuned but they're not a reflection of his nature like say the law that you should love god and love your neighbor that's a reflection of his nature but the laws of nature itself the laws you know gravity strong and weak nuclear forces electromagnetism those laws of nature they could have been different they're not a direct reflection of god's nature so you would say that god could not make something that's simultaneously a square and a circle no he couldn't because that be a con that would contradict his nature that would contradict reality so he couldn't enact miracles over the laws of logic miracle no it would be like he would he's not going to contradict his nature he's not going to contradict his nature in logic or contradict his late nature and morality either okay that answers my question then okay thanks man thanks hello yes ma'am what's your name i'm sierra hey sierra um i have two questions for you actually i don't know if this is gonna start or not okay go ahead uh my first one is about women in leadership in the church i was wondering what your thoughts are surrounding what biblically our allowances are as far as positions that we can take in church ministry whether that be like deacon elder pastor things of that nature so that's my first one okay i think from the scriptures the way i read paul and these are controversial verses as you know but i think the way we read paul is all people in the church are equal in terms of our essence we're all made in the image of god but we have different functions and so it appears that god wants the men to be the senior pastor and women can be just about everybody else although he does talk about the elders being in in a male sense you know the wife or the husband of one wife kind of thing uh so i think that women can be teachers i think women can be engaged in ministry uh throughout the church i think though the senior pastor according to what i read in the new testament should be a man that's just the way it's done and for someone to say well i don't want to submit to god's function then we're not following jesus because notice jesus has the same essence as the father but he has a different function he voluntarily submits his will if he has a different will than the father in order to fall in line with god's overall mission and we're all called to do that we're all called to submit in fact paul says submit to one another and was mentioned earlier in the presentation submit is a bad word in our culture but in reality if god exists and he does the most intelligent thing we can do is to put our own mission under his to submit our will to his and my second question is how can we pray for you oh well thank you you can pray that we have opportunities to do this on a college campus more we haven't been able to do it for 18 months until these past couple of weeks this is our third event in about 18 months so you can pray for that you can pray that god protects us where we go you can pray that we get more people to do this because we're always looking for people that can go out and interact with others and try and present them the truth that christianity is true so if you would pray for those things pray for protection pray for opportunities pray for more people to be able to come and present this way and answer questions not just at colleges but at churches and high schools and wherever we can so thank you thank you for thank you for that ask sierra i appreciate that yes sir what's your name kelby hey kelby go ahead okay um technical details over here thank you so um you're kind of touching on earlier a little bit about baptism and yeah and my background is i grew up in a church of christ yes i no longer do because um but now pertaining to it i lead the question to i have a friend who is a lutheran okay and i respect him he knows a lot of biblical knowledge and he's got a degree in politics at liberty university i highly respect him but when he posts on facebook when i have discussions with him i'm puzzled about what they believe for one they may say in one hand you know you're saved by faith alone through grace alone but at the same time they'll say statements like well the water is connected with the word and i don't understand what that means uh the second statement i was figuring hope that you maybe would help me have some clarity of uh what that means i'm not a lutheran so i don't know i would ask him in fact there are questions you should ask people when they say something like if he says the water is connected with the word it's not your job to refute what he says it's his job to support what he says so the first question you want to ask him is what do you mean by that what do you mean the waters connected with the word secondly how did you come to that conclusion because you want evidence or him to provide evidence for his position just asserting the waters connected with the word is just an assertion it's not an argument so you want to get evidence for that and then if you have something to say back to counter what he said if you don't agree with what he said then you can go to the third question and the third question is have you ever considered and then fill in the blank whatever that is have you ever considered that you're using say a figure of speech and taking it literally if that's in fact what you're doing okay so i think those three questions which are in our app the cross-examined app and those three questions which really come from greg koko's great book tactics can help you with any issue what do you mean by that how do you come to that conclusion have you ever considered in fact josie over here who asked the question about is it okay to be gay what was my first question what do you mean by being gay what does that even mean i know what people think it means that my orientation is fixed and there's nothing i can do about it but is that really the truth okay so you need to ask the question okay and having a certain orientation does that force you to engage in the behavior no not necessarily so i think you have to ask questions what do you mean by that how did you come to that conclusion have you ever considered and i have a second question sorry and um so maybe this may not make much sense but uh uh can pertain to when i speak to people about uh their views on where i'm pro-life and someone else might be pro-choice okay and automatically some people might get refuted they may get angry of course um maybe they may look at me like you have no clue what you're talking about do you think maybe that there is something that the people who are pro-life or have a some sort of the truth that they're not telling us or you think they're trying to communicate something that we're not getting people who are pro-life pro-life for pro-choice what do you mean that uh approach oyster may say you don't get it like there's um something you're not getting like they're wants to communicate something maybe are they trying to say well what about us women do you care about us do you um you know obviously we're for you know the sanctity of life right but what about the woman do you care about us too right things like that do you believe that there or do you believe there is an absolute truth maybe that they are not speaking or having clarity look sometimes i think people haven't thought the whole issue through for example my brother-in-law was talking to a friend of hers that claims to be a christian but she was pro-choice really pro-abortion on this issue and she was saying what about the woman's right to choose and he said to her what about the baby's body what about his or her right and you know what she said i never thought about that never thought about it well do you think now that might be shocking to pro-lifers what do you mean you never but some people haven't so you have to try and show them that in fact there's a human being in there in fact there is a video on our website or sorry on our youtube channel actually let me direct you somewhere else go to case4life.com or dot org one of the two case4life.com case4life.org and there's going to be a video that's going to be on that home page it's 52 seconds if you watch that video and still consider abortion to be a moral right i can't believe not you anybody anybody out there okay if you watch that video and you still think abortion is a moral right i'm questioning your moral judgment i mean i can know all the evidence too like i mentioned you before before the event i mentioned to you i said i've been reading case for life by uh scott clifton that's scott's website case4life.com he's starting to teach a course today called the ethics of abortion and if you go to cross-examine.org and click on online courses you can still join it he's the best pro-lifer pro-life speaker i think in the country uh and that 52-second video i show to people and i say are you still pro-abortion after seeing this because what you're going to see are three different stages of abortion abortion of like a few weeks old abortion mid you know second trimester and abortion in the third trimester right it's just the truth okay and one more follow-up with that i promise i'm done okay um so with that means that with being pro-life pro-choice and all that okay um do you also think that maybe morally overall you think they all are really considering abortion or you think that's maybe their last pit stop because maybe they're do you think maybe that they don't want to get rid of the baby do you think that maybe they want people to direct them to resources and help and counseling and so forth or do you think they derive abortion off of because no one's not giving them help i think it depends on each individual case obviously the problem is the way the laws are in our country now it gives men the ability to pressure women to kill their children okay it it makes men free to get rid of the consequences of what they've done in fact anybody can pressure a woman the parents the boyfriend friends because it's legal also my wife told this to our three sons growing up she said any woman you have sex with you have given the right to kill your child wow and that's true even if you're married that's true the father has no right according to the law to protect his own baby now by the way if you're in here and you've had an abortion or you're watching out there and you've had an abortion this is not to condemn anybody it's just to prevent anybody from moving ahead with such a terrible decision there's forgiveness under the cross all sins are forgivable we just don't want you to make a tragic mistake a sin to kill a child there are many people that will take that child if you don't want it thank you thanks thank you very much all right thank you yes sir what's going on dr frank turk how are you good what's your name my name is josiah hey josiah go ahead okay so my own beliefs aside looking through different religions i see a lot of similarities on specific dates or accounts like december 25th or the number of disciples or prophets i was wondering why are there so many connections to so many different religions out there excuse me and uh yeah just kind of like if you can elaborate on that you know what i mean like why the so many different doctrines or so many different uh resemblances between different religions okay first of all the stuff you see on the internet about geez about other ancient gods having 12 disciples and being born of a virgin on december 25th is all bunk okay it's not properly researched does it the zeitgeist movie isn't true with that being said though there are certain commonalities among world religions and my friend jay warner wallace in his brand new book person of interest points out this might have been a way that god was preparing the world for the real messiah the true messiah in fact c.s lewis himself was always intrigued by sacrificial gods in pagan myths it was j.r.r tolkien the guy who wrote lord of the rings who was a friend of c.s lewis and was part of a study group with c.s lewis who convinced him that although lewis was moved by these pagan god stories he was never moved by the true myth right the jesus story and what he meant was that the jesus story is literally true it what he is what he called the true myth but all those other myth stories were preparing the hearts of men in the first century to accept the true rising god and that was jesus of nazareth and jim lays it out beautifully in person of interest so you might want to pick up that book and in fact tune in on thursday night this thursday night at nine eastern because i'm gonna have jim on the hope one live stream right here on youtube and he's gonna explain that gotcha thank you so much thank you all right yes sir what's your name yes my name is dean hey dean and my question is this if god is loving and does not create evil how do you explain the 2004 indian ocean tsunami which killed 230 000 people and more than two-thirds of those killed were women children and the elderly yeah that's an excellent question dean if god why evil we talked earlier in the session that it doesn't disprove god because thanks clint because nothing would be evil unless there was a purpose to life and a standard for good and that could only exist if god existed right yes but now if you're asking well why does this particular evil occur i can't answer why that particular evil occurs i can't answer why it occurs but i know why i don't know why i'm stuck in time you're stuck in time we can't see the end from the beginning god can in other words there's a ripple effect for everything that occurs good and bad think about everything that has occurred in history for you to be sitting here tonight i mean just just think about your parents they had to meet and their parents parents had to meet and their parents parents parents had to meet and their parents parents are you know how many different things went on for all of those things to take place for you to even be sitting here today there are trillions of ripples that follow every event and if we're going to look at one event the tsunami a terrible situation where a quarter of a million people died we don't know how many ripples that particular event has sent forward into the future uh i mean it's kind of incomprehensible to even think about right but why would god create a world where those eventualities are required for that ripple effect yes there must have been some positive ripple effects but the two-thirds of those people who were women children and you know the elderly who couldn't escape the storm why are they sort of like caught in the crossfire so well remember if life ends in this earth and there's nothing beyond it that's senseless but of course christians don't believe that life ends at this earth that it goes into eternity so i agree that it's senseless for all those people to die if a there's no eternity and b there are there's no ripple effect but those two things do exist there is an eternity and there is a ripple effect and as paul says we don't fix our eyes on what is seen for what is scene is temporary we fix our eyes and what is unseen for what is unseen is eternal and it's creating for us a greater weight of glory that far outweighs them all also there was a pastor at notre dame the the great cathedral in paris that's now being rebuilt since the fire but this was 150 years ago and he in talking about the ripple effect and talking about the fact that god is outside of time and can see the end from the beginning he said this if god were to give me his power for 24 hours you would see how many changes in this world i would make but if he gave me his wisdom too i would leave things as they are because he knows how it's all going to turn out we don't now of course christians trace back natural evil all the way back to a choice first satan made a choice and then adam and eve made a choice and that caused the world to fall but of course jesus entered the bloodstream of humanity as soon as the fall occurred the first prophecy being genesis 3 15 in order to redeem those who rebelled against him from the evil that this world has become so god doesn't sit idly by and goes oh look look at all this evil stuff that's happening down there he actually comes into this world and takes evil upon himself so ultimately we won't have to pay for our own sins thank you very much all right by the way it's a good question people always ask what are the hardest questions to answer these are the hardest questions to answer because there is so much speculation and we don't have enough time to really delve into it if you want to go further into this the book stealing from god has a whole chapter on this very problem great all right thanks dean all right yes sir what's your name matthew matthew which which means gift from god ladies and gentlemen here he is a weird name from an atheist well maybe god's telling you something at least mom and dad were trying to tell you something go ahead matthew i have a couple questions uh first if morality is derived from god then how do you account for different standards of morality among different countries and civilizations and over different periods of time yeah excellent question i think c.s lewis investigated that very question quite well in his book at the abolition of man where he says that although there are differences among the periphery he says that all major civilizations have agreed on an essential moral code that you can't think of a society where say it was considered good that you double-crossed all the people kindest to you or that you ran away from your friends in battle he said you might as well think of a place where two plus two equal five you will not find a culture like that but actually the argument for morality doesn't require human agreement if everybody disagreed with morality that wouldn't mean that morality is somehow subjective imagine this imagine the nazis had won world war ii matthew and took over the entire world and convinced everybody that murdering jews was a good thing would that make it a good thing of course not no of course not right because there's a standard beyond us if we have morality wrong that's not god's fault that's our fault see that would be more sociology rather than morality how people behave we're talking about a standard even if we disagree with the standard it still exists but then you assert earlier in your presentation about science how science doesn't say anything scientists do it's a similar issue here with morality because sure there might be a god who sets specific moral standards but that ultimately means nothing if that's not how people view society well no because people have the free will to say that we're not going to follow the moral code for example we were just talking about abortion you know and i know that when you if you if you and i were right here and saw a live baby being dismembered we would immediately understand intuitively that's wrong however we might suppress the truth about that because we want the convenience of not having a child in our lives and we can suppress the truth we all suppress the truth it's not a matter of our of our cognition it's a matter of our resistance to the implications of what the right thing is we understand dismembering babies is wrong but we may suppress that so we can have the convenience of getting someone out of our lives we don't want in our lives but again sure we may have that objective standard of morality set by a god but that doesn't mean anything here on earth if that's not how we live and that's not how we view morality that's still what's more relevant to us for example you bring up the nazis repeatedly how without a god setting morality then we can't prove that the nazis were evil but still we know nazis were evil because we all collectively agree that what they did is bad it's a standard of morality that exists because we agree that it exists so if again if you what you just said though just contradicted what you said earlier because you said if if the nazis had won and convinced everybody that murdering jews was was right you admitted that would still be wrong even if everyone collectively agreed it was right sure if everyone in that hypothetical world agreed it was right i would still know it's wrong because i accept these societal standards and i understand wait wait no the societal standard was murder jews that's the name i'm talking about the societal standards of morality within our life within the real world well the nazis were part of the real world what do you mean yes but they didn't win they didn't convince everyone on the planet that what they did was right and we know because everyone agrees that murder is bad that we know that mass murder is also bad it's like the uh philosopher simone de beauvoir asserts in her essay pierce and sineas that ultimately regardless of whether there is a god or not there cannot be such thing as standards of morality set by god because it's ultimately what we agree it to be and what we agree it to be can change and can be wrong okay but you're con you're going back at what you said earlier that's the problem because you said earlier that the nazis would be wrong even if everybody agreed that what they were doing was right yes and i'm saying that from the perspective of my life in the world where they didn't win we just okay hang on hang on let me finish this off matthew that would just be your opinion then yes ultimately morality is an opinion it's okay then societal opinion all right then stop right there if it's just an opinion then the nazis weren't really wrong correct the nazis were wrong because we all agree they were wrong there was also there was also millennia in history when people agreed that slavery was right yeah looking back on those times we we don't today agree that slavery was right okay all right let's stay on the nazis for just a second matthew let's just stay on the nazis for just a second okay so you're saying that the nazis weren't really wrong because the standard is just human opinion and so if everybody all humanity decides murdering jews is right you're going to say that's okay correct i would not say that's okay okay well you're contradicting your premise or morality you're contradicting the premise then matthew even this is either the society decides what's right or there's a standard beyond society that is right and therefore you can judge societies by that standard which is your view yet ultimately we can't judge societies by that standard because we can't possibly know that standard in this life even drawing morality from the bible we have fundamental disagreements on the interpretation of different passages such as hang on hang on matthew we can't go down a rabbit trail here you just a few minutes ago had said that everybody agreed murders wrong and therefore mass murder is wrong but now you're saying that people can't agree what's right and wrong so which is i'm saying we can agree i'm saying we can't know for certain if there is a god what that god believes to be right and wrong we simply cannot know that in our lives why why do you say that because ultimately what morality comes down to is what people agree it to be for instance we a lot of people draw their morality from the bible and we agree on core issues of biblical morality but we can still debate certain aspects of it for instance like when you say that when you say that homosexuality is wrong that it's against god yet the very passage that derives from is itself up for debate for instance so we talked about the math matt we we can't go down every one of these we we got to finish anyway but if i gave you a book would you read it i'm sure sure scout's honor you give me a book i will read it all right i'm going to give you a book and if you don't read it you're being immoral i would be being immoral because i'm betraying your trust right and that's wrong universally yes because thank you matthew all right friends thank you so much uh don't forget by the way matthew don't go anywhere don't go anywhere i got to give you a book uh i'll be at the book table and don't forget thursday night 7 p.m if you want to learn more about this a room across the hall i can't remember the room number now but it's over there john what is it 2w16 thanks for the folks watching out there we'll be at university of cincinnati in two weeks from

Channel: Cross Examined

Views: 8,691

Rating: 4.9182482 out of 5

Keywords: Frank Turek, Christianity, Atheism, Apologetics, God, Theology, Bible, Religion

Id: qqa_0PRXYfY

Length: 169min 3sec (10143 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021