I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist LIVE from University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, OH)

[Music] i heard it on the radio on my way back home that i'm gonna be someone i guess [Music] i heard it on the radio on my way back home some days i don't think my mama thinks i'm good enough to be a superstar but one day superstar [Music] i'm gonna wear [Music] happy halloween [Music] i'm gonna wear [Music] oh [Music] [Music] i heard it on the radio on my way back home that i'm gonna be someone i guess hallelujah [Music] hallelujah [Music] so [Music] i can feel my saturation [Music] would you say i know [Music] i know it's hard to believe [Music] today's a good day never no never know when the next one will show it'll show so i'ma sing my song [Music] my soul [Music] is [Music] it's a good day [Music] closer you are closer we can feel you moving everything presents in this moment together we believe here and now your kingdom lives here [Music] here [Music] [Music] we stand upon [Music] here and now your kingdom [Music] the labels we create cannot divide us the voices of this world will not define for we believe your kingdom lives your kingdom lives here and now your kingdom here [Music] is [Music] good evening everybody we are going to get started thank you um yeah guys thank you so much for being here uh tonight we have the great privilege of hearing from dr frank turek um dr trigg travels the country speaking at secular universities and he's written a number of books which are on sale in the back of the room if you haven't already seen that stuff back there tonight he's going to be talking about why he does not have enough faith to be an atheist and at the end there's going to be plenty of time for questions so i encourage you guys to think of good questions to to ask and come up when that time is initiated there's also qr codes that are going to be they're all over the room taped on the back of chairs it's going to be displayed on the screen later and the purpose of that is just if you want to get connected if you're not part of a church or campus ministry and that's something that you're interested in getting connected with or if you just have questions about the talk tonight feel free to scan that code it's a really short survey and we'd love to connect with you answer any questions that you have a number of different churches and campus ministries in the uc cincinnati area have come together to put this event on tonight and on behalf of all of them we just want to welcome dr frank turek [Applause] good evening bearcats [Music] [Applause] let's go back to september 29th 2006. that's when petty officer michael monsoors 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 monsoor 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 montsour 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 monsoor'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 the 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 were uss michael monsoor the newest guided missile destroyer in the fleet zumwalt class this is mansour's mother sally being escorted on to 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 anyone sacrifice himself to save you and the answer is someone already has his name is jesus of nazareth but in today's culture a lot of people don't think the story's true after all it was written down by religious people we know religious people tend to embellish things it also has miracles in it 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 it's true you only need to answer four questions in the affirmative to show that christianity is 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 [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now that is some pretty grooving music isn't it yes that is actually from our tv show on wednesday nights on directv channel 378 it's also on roku uh look for nrb tv on roku we're also on radio every saturday mornings at 10 a.m but i know if you're a college student you don't get up to the crack of noon on saturday so you're not listening to it then that's okay it's podcasted it's called i don't have enough faith to be an atheist and what we do is we present evidence for christianity and we cross-examine ideas against it that's our website right there cross-examine.org now why are these the four questions truth god miracles in the new testament and this is going to serve as our outline here tonight first question does truth is exist why is that important because you hear people saying there's no truth you got your truth i got my truth right well if there's no truth obviously christianity can't be true of course if there's no truth then atheism can't be true either right in fact if there's no truth why would you be at the university of cincinnati what are you here to learn opinions no you're here to learn truth right we're going to deal with that question first second question does god exist obviously christianity can't be true if there's no god but i hope to show you tonight that there are three arguments that can show us that a theistic god exists these arguments are taught in the bible but you don't need the bible to know them in fact we're not even going to refer to the bible when we talk about question number two you don't need the bible or any other religious writing to figure out that god exists third question are miracles possible obviously if christianity has a resurrection there's got to be miracles that miracles have to be possible and a lot of people don't believe they're 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 atheists are admitting the data for this miracle then we're going to get to the key question is the new testament true the new testament doesn't have a prayer if there is no truth no god or no miracles but if truth exists if god exists and miracles are possible then we want to see if the documents are reliable enough to let us know if one 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 you didn't rise from the dead game over you might as well sleep in on sunday and watch or do whatever you want the rest of the week because christianity is not true even their greatest apostle paul said look if jesus hasn't risen from the dead your face in vain everything hinges on that event did it happen or didn't it now we can't go through this in great detail tonight if you want to go further the book's available on the book table as well as a 12-part dvd series there's a newer book out there called stealing from god why atheists need god to make their case what that book is about i've noticed that sometimes 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 effect they have to sit in god's lap to slap his face now you don't have to buy any of these books but if you do i do want to point out that all the proceeds in the cell the books and the dvds will go to feed needy children mine okay just so you know all right actually you don't need to buy a book if you want this powerpoint presentation because i'm going to send it to you for free if you just type the word evidence to 4422 don't put quotes on evidence just the word evidence to 4422 i'm going to send you this entire powerpoint presentation in a pdf format uh even the slides i can't show you because we have limited time here tonight all right i'll put that up at the end as well what we're going to do though is we're going to start right here at point one does truth exist are you ready to go bearcats come on let's go you're ready to go all right 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 you guys are number two in college football [Music] with that response i mean please he didn't say it that way you can't handle the truth he said it this way i want the truth you can't handle the truth all right let's try it again i want the truth now that felt better didn't it you can go to the playoffs with a response like that that was pretty good 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 well if you don't get anything outside of what we talk about here tonight this is going to be the most important thinking skill we're going to talk about whether you're a christian an atheist or anywhere in between this is going to be helpful this thinking skill is so powerful that half of what you need to know to discover what really is true you'll know after you learn this thinking skill and it's easy but i was a dimwit i was 33 years old i already had a master's degree and i didn't i didn't even know what i'm about to show you right now and it's so simple and the easiest way of showing you this thinking skill is to demonstrate using it suppose someone were to come up to you and say there is no truth post-modern claim what would you say to somebody who said that yeah 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 a self-defeating statement doesn't mean its own standard a self-defeating statement violates the law of non-contradiction a self-defeating statement is like saying i can't speak a word in english if i were to say that what would you say man you just use english to say it you're doing exactly what you say can't be done it can't be true now here's the thinking skill what you want to do when somebody says something like this is you want to turn the claim on itself turn the claim on itself so if somebody says there is no truth you turn that claim on itself and you say is that true right now let's do a few more of these because there are many in our culture suppose someone says all truth is relative they may say it that way rather than there's no truth if someone were to say this to you if you turn the claim on itself what would you say back yes is that a relative truth no this is an absolute truth claim claiming that all truths are relative that's obviously self-defeating it's like saying i can't speak a word in english or it's like saying my parents had no kids that lived right or my brother is an only child these are self-defeating statements and once you get good at recognizing these it's going to save you a lot of pain and suffering why because this process of turning a claim on itself will help you discover what is false and half the battle is trying to avoid what is false if you start living by false principles eventually you're going to slap up against reality and it's going to hurt you want to spend your time looking at truth how about this sometimes it's not said there is no truth or all truth is relative it's probably said in our culture more often than not this way there isn't the truth there's only my truth you've probably heard that or something like it i get to live my truth right if someone were to say this to you and you were to turn the claim on itself what would you say back you say is that just your truth or is it the truth because if this is just your truth up here then it's just your opinion so why should i believe it but if it's the truth then it can't be true because you're saying there is no the truth it's self-defeat you know what the truth of the matter is i know this might be upsetting to some but there's no such thing as your truth there's just the truth i know nobody likes to hear that but that's just the way things are sorry there's not your math there's just the math right there's not your logic there's just the logic now sometimes it isn't said this way either sometimes it's said this way well it's true for you but not for me this is my favorite one actually if somebody says it's true for you but not for me what would you say back to him if you turn the claim on itself what would you say back yeah there you go you'd say is that true for everybody it's true for you but not for me true for everybody because they're true for you but not for me it's true for everybody then true for you but not for me can't be true because it's true for everybody 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 total and say you know i'd like a hundred thousand dollars out of my account the bank tell elixir accountant says i'm sorry i only have six dollars and four 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 are you gonna get the money no if it's true there was only six dollars and four cents in your account that's true for all people at all times in all places when referring to your account at that time it's just true and i'm surprised but a lot of christians don't seem to get this i go to a lot of churches i ask them do you think did you think christianity is true and they say why and then i asked them or i ask them why and they say because i have faith is that a good answer does your faith make something true does your faith change whether or not god exists or jesus rose from the dead do you have to believe something and 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 well 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 we call this apologetics giving evidence for what you believe it's not apologizing you're trying to give evidence for what you 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 you see 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 do you realize that demons know that god exists better than we do but they don't trust in him if you want to have your moral transgressions forgiven you have to go from belief that to belief in to trust in look we know this distinction in relationships don't we there's a difference between belief that and belief in 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 lapse of judgment she said yes that's the difference between belief that and belief in really the word we ought to use is trust trust in that's that's really what the bible is talking about when it talks about faith most of the time it's talking about the second kind trust in after you know that it's true trust in it the real definition is trusting in what you have good reason to believe is true that's the definition of faith trusting in what you have good reason to believe is true how about this you've probably heard this claim there's no truth in anything but science if you turn the claim on itself what would you say back to somebody who said that is that a 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 that's philosophy and you can't do science without philosophy it's built on philosophy in fact everything's built on philosophy reading the bible's built on philosophy everything's built chemistry is built on physics is built on philosophy in fact there's a uh there's in the book back there stealing from god there's a chapter on science here's the title of the chapter science doesn't say anything scientists do you say why is that because all data needs to be gathered and all data needs to be interpreted and who does that scientist you ever wonder why you're getting conflicting advice on covid because sometimes scientists have the same data but they're interpreting it differently sometimes they have different data so they come to different conclusions sometimes they have inadequate data but they still try and draw conclusions sometimes there's a political agenda no that'll never happen science doesn't say a word scientists say things and sometimes your philosophical presuppositions can cause you to interpret the data differently than someone else and if you think about it the most important things in life have nothing to do with science honey do you love me yeah how come i don't know let's run an experiment no you've probably heard this too you should doubt everything skeptical claim someone says this and you apply the claim to itself you turn the claim on itself what what are you going to say back yeah should i doubt that why are skeptics skeptical of everything but skepticism you ever notice they don't doubt that well look how many people in here regardless of whether you're christian atheist anywhere in between how many people in here sometimes doubt that what you believe about those things is true look if you don't have your hand up right now you're probably not thinking very much right i mean i bring books on this stuff and sometimes i wake up in the morning oh i don't even know if this is true but then i start thinking about my my doubts and i realize most of my doubts are emotional they're not intellectual in other words the evidence for christianity is really good if i'm having a good day everything's 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 you know what the truth of the matter is your psychology is not going to tell you the truth about christianity or anything it's not the evidence will you know a lot of people are really afraid to fly they're afraid to get on a plane psychologically they can't handle it but do you know statistically it's the safest way to get anywhere but they can't handle it they won't go on they're afraid the psychology is not telling them the truth the evidence will tell them the truth same thing is true in christianity or anything else in fact sometimes when when an atheist will see me at an event like this they'll say frank you know i used to be a christian but i'm an atheist now i lost my faith now i don't mean to be unkind but since i'm from new jersey sometimes i am and when they say that i almost want to say so so are you telling me because your psychology changed that god has somehow popped out of existence are you telling me your psychology changed that jesus didn't rise from the dead again your psychology is not the test for truth the evidence is so if you really start thinking about the evidence then i think you'll realize that your doubts aren't really all that impressive in fact if you start doubting your doubts then you're back to knowing something for sure have you guys ever thought about doubting your doubts i doubt it or how about this you ought not judge if somebody says you ought not jobs judge what are you going to say back hey isn't that a judgment you ever notice that's a judgment you say wait a minute frank didn't jesus say don't judge nope never said it he did he said it in matthew chapter 7 verse 1. all right i know it's 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 of jesus which we call a gospel he went here's chapter seven verse one no those were put in 500 years ago to help us navigate the text which is a really good thing right because without numbers you wouldn't be able to find yourself around you know imagine going to church one morning and the pastor goes why don't you go about two-thirds of the way through let's see if we can find the same spot no right you need numbers the problem is we tend to think if it's got a number in front of it we can take it out and make it say whatever we want jesus doesn't stop with judge not what does he say right after that judge not lest you be judged by the same standard you judge others you'd be judged by that standard so before you try and take the spec out of your brother's eye take the log out of your own eye first then you'll 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 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 getting over here tonight and now you're wondering if it was a good judgment you're going this guy's kind of crazy what right everybody makes judgments atheists make judgments what judgments do they make there's no god jesus didn't rise from the dead there's no meaning to life when you die you're going to become worm food it's over there's no meaning have a nice day no there's no there's no there's nobody that doesn't make a judgment everybody makes 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 are the judgmental ones in his day pharisees who are the pharisees they were the religious and political leaders of israel some of them were on the sanhedrin the jewish ruling council and rome delegated a lot of the law making authority to them they were the politicians many of them and jesus went after these people are you telling me jesus got involved in politics yes and by the way he wasn't so nice doing it 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 2 jesus makes a whip and he goes and he jacks people up in the temple what sweet and gentle jesus did this yes and then in john chapter 8 he's having an argument with these same pharisees these political religious leaders and he gets to the point in the conversation where he says your father is the devil jesus you can't say that that's not very christ-like excuse me i am christ do you imagine you're having an argument with somebody and you say your father is the devil never try that with a sibling by the way okay and then in matthew 23 again the pharisees he says whoa do 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 don't buy into the whimpified view of jesus in fact why was jesus killed number one because he claimed to be god and that was blasphemy to the jews and sedition to the romans and number two is he spoke truth to power power that wanted him gone particularly the temple authorities because if he had succeeded they knew they were out of business caiaphas knew jesus had resurrected lazarus from the dead and what did he say it's better that one innocent man died than the whole nation perish yeah miracle would convince me jesus really was who he said he was no it might not hearts are set against him by the way i've noticed um that when you compliment somebody which is a judgment did you ever notice that nobody gets upset you know if you say to your best friend i really love you you're such a wonderful person i wish you could be like you you think your friend's gonna say who are you to judge right no they're never gonna say that see i've noticed that people don't have a problem with judging they just have a problem with judgments they don't like in fact if you tell somebody something that's true and they get mad at you you just help convict them as augustine said we love the truth when it enlightens us we hate the truth when it convicts us few military people in here and by the way i was in the navy which stands for never again volunteer yourself you always get more flack when you're over the target if you tell somebody something that's true and they're shooting back at you you're over the target they don't want their evil deeds exposed as jesus said men love darkness rather than light so don't buy into this idea you can't make judgments we have to make judgments without being judgmental in fact few christians in here somebody put it this way evangelism is just one beggar showing another beggar where the food is none of us are making it to heaven without jesus so why do we think we're any better than anybody else we're not now we could spend more time on this but we got to move on to the next point i just want to to make sure that everybody can see that this statement right here shoots itself can everybody see that and all the other statements we just went through they're all self-defeating they can't be true which means that relativism and postmodernism can't be true because they claim it's true that there's no truth and that's great why because i don't know what do you pay here 30 40 grand a year to be here you're here to learn truth right if there was no truth you're wasting your time you're wasting your money but you're here to learn truth so the next question is is it true that god exists but before we get to that i just need to say one more thing briefly a little bit later we're going to have a q a mike and if you're an atheist thank you for being here or any non-christian and if you want to ask a question i just want to warn you that i may ask you a question back and it's not fair for me to do that unless i warn you in advance so here's the question i might ask you the question is 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 here the problem's here they don't want it to be true they don't want there to be a god why they want to be god of their own lives they're not on a truth quest they're on a happiness quest and they're just going to believe whatever they think is going to make them happy and in fact some christians do this too we have a lot of inconvenient doctrines don't we oh yeah i disagree with jesus on that one really you call yourself a christian you disagree with jesus i never never thought of that hmm are we on a truth quest or a happiness quest so just get ready i may ask you that question okay the truth is out there the question is will we accept it so is it true that god exists and we're gonna spend most of our time actually the majority of our time on point two you're gonna go wow is he gonna get through this points three and four go quickly once point two is established okay so let's talk about the three arguments i mentioned for the existence of god the first argument is the argument from the beginning of the universe known as the cosmological argument now cosmological stands for the greek word cosmos or comes from the greek word cosmos which means world or universe and it says if the universe had a beginning it must have had a beginner the second argument is the argument from design known as the teleological argument telos is a greek word meaning designer purpose and it says if there's design in the universe and designing you life then there must be a designer now the third argument doesn't have any science behind it like these two do yet it's the argument we've all known since we were very small children it's more of a philosophical argument and 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 then there has to be a god why because if there is no standard beyond humanity then everything's just a matter of opinion that's just your opinion against a baby torturer's opinion or your opinion against hitler's opinion we know these issues aren't just a matter of opinion if that's the case there must be an external standard beyond us a moral righteous standard that we're obligated to obey and any deviation from that standard would be what we would call evil that standard is what we call god's nature whatever god is he is good and that is his nature if god doesn't exist nothing's ultimately objectively right or wrong now we'll get to that later but we've got to start right here at point one the cosmological argument now you gotta admit it was worth coming out here tonight just to see god do that now some of you are saying i've never seen god move oh really check this out now this is the argument that many say points back to the big now i know there's some christians in here going uh frank 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 physicists are admitting it stephen hawking who was probably the top most well-known physicist in the world until he died about four years ago of als you know hawking was kind of a medical miracle he had als he normally kills you in three or four years he had it for like 40 years 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 now hawking tried to come up with another explanation other than god he failed but he's admitting the data that space time and matter had a beginning out of nothing out of non-being what's nothing aristotle had a good definition of nothing he said nothing is what rocks dream about that's nothing it wasn't just hawking alexander valenkin russian cosmologist originally from russia but now teaches at tufts university wrote a book called many worlds in one where he tried to put forth the idea that there were multiple universes out there but even the lincoln admits that even if there are multiple universes the whole show needs an absolute beginning in fact here's what he said he said with the proof now in place cosmologist by the way a cosmologist is not someone that puts on your makeup all right a 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 two interesting words in this quote first word proof unusual for scientists use the word proof why because science is tentative it can always be overcome by more discoveries it's inductive but valencian sees so many lines of evidence crossing at one single point namely the universe had a beginning that he says it constitutes a proof the other interesting word is the word problem why is it a problem that there was a cosmic beginning because of all of nature had a beginning whatever created nature can't be made of nature it must be something beyond nature it must be something super nature something beyond space time and matter now we're not going to go through the evidence for this tonight why number one we don't have time number two it's all in the book chapter three and number three it's not controversial atheists and agnostics are admitting that space time and matter had a beginning out of nothing so what we're going to do is just jump to the bottom line and that's this if the universe had a beginning it seems it must have had a beginner we've got two options 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 number two i had someone at texas a m said number one and i said timeout let's look at number two for a second number two says someone created something out of nothing now that's a miracle right but at least you got a miracle worker you got someone number one is a miracle with no miracle worker that's clearly absurd you say well who's putting forth this well a guy like lawrence krauss he used to teach at arizona state university had a uh a book out called the universe from nothing where he tries to say how the universe could come into existence out of nothing without a cause and the problem was is nothing wasn't nothing it was actually something it was a quantum vacuum it wasn't nothing so he didn't succeed as even most atheists will admit in his in his attempt there but ladies and gentlemen do you realize that everybody believes in at least one miracle christians believe in more than one but we certainly believe in this miracle someone created something out of nothing you know atheists believe they believe that no one created something out of nothing at least some of them do everybody believes in at least one miracle 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 it says that 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 so i said to the audience that night at a m 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 who's sitting here in this auditorium tonight who is currently worried that as you sit here a hippopotamus has appeared out of nothing and is currently pooping on your pillow in your dorm room right you're not worried about that right in fact you're not worried that a raging bengal tiger is just going to appear out of nothing right here in this auditorium and start charging into people you're not worried about that why because you know that things don't pop into existence out of nothing by nothing without a cause so why would anyone suggest that the whole universe could do so i mean if things could pop into existence out of nothing buy nothing without a cause why doesn't everything do that why don't teslas pop into existence out of nothing by nothing without a cause you wake up one morning your hyundai is a tesla you go how do i charge this thing right why don't macbook pros pop into existence out of nothing buy nothing without a cause could have saved me four grand windows is better well yeah yeah yeah you and all those viruses all right um why don't why don't uh suppose you want to have a pizza tonight after this thing and and you're really hungry so you you go home should you should you order one or should you just sit in your kitchen and hope one pops into existence out of nothing buy nothing without a cause no it seems to me the atheists have all the faith in fact here's a question asking atheists this comes from the philosopher leibniz if there is no god why is there something rather than nothing at all if there is no god why does anything exist in other words now think about this ladies and gentlemen if space time and matter literally had a beginning out of nothing whatever created space time and matter can't be made a space time and matter in other words the cause must be spaceless timeless immaterial powerful personal in order to choose to create because in order to create from nothing someone has to make a choice and only persons can make choices the being would also have to be intelligent to have a mind to make a choice now ladies and gentlemen when you think about a spaceless timeless immaterial powerful personal intelligent cause who do you think of god you say well how do you know it's a christian god frank we don't yet we haven't done enough research yet but if we continue to go through these questions i think we'll realize that the same being that walked out of the tomb 1998 years ago is the same being in whose divine nature created the universe out of nothing we haven't established that yet all we've established is we have a being that looks like it could be the god of the bible this could be allah or some other god at this point but we seem to have a creator god now the next argument is the argument from design known as the teleological argument and there are two aspects to this argument one aspect is the fact that the universe appears designed the second aspect is the fact that you appear to be designed life appears to be designed let's just start with the universe first this is known as the fine-tuning of the universe scientists have discovered in recent decades that the universe is so precisely tweaked that if you were to change any one of a number of factors virtually imperceptibly about our universe there would be no universe or there would certainly be no universe that could support life and change any one of a number of these factors we're not here we'll start with atheist stephen hawking again who talked about the expansion rate of the universe 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 why because the expansion rate did not evolve to a certain point by chance whatever that means it started there it's one of the initial conditions of the universe seems to me the same being that created space time and matter is the same being that fine-tuned the expansion rate to be precisely what it needed to be also the gravitational force if it were altered by more than one in 10 to the 40th power we wouldn't be here what's one 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 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 is 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 would not be here that's one in 10 to the 40 precision i don't have enough faith to believe that that value just landed there by chance and oh by the way is chance a cause does chance cause things who caused this chance he was just here no chance is not a cause chance is a word we use to describe mathematical possibilities you know what scientists mean when they use the word chance uh we don't know look there's only two reasons for that value being right where it is either that value was designed to be there or it wasn't what makes more sense somebody designed it to be right where it is any different we wouldn't be here and we could go through a dozen more of these factors change any one of them we're not here this is why even christopher hitchens the great atheist who i had a couple of debates with a number of years ago who was brilliant because he had a british accent that made him sound even more brilliant um even he said man the fine-tuning argument is the best argument because we just there's no explanation for it but it's not just the universe that appears fine-tuned our solar system appears to be fine-tuned let's take a uh a look at our solar system it's designed with us in mind here we are 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 and a half 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 right here was not in its current orbit we couldn't exist here on earth what does jupiter do for us its 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 you know what these dark marks are those 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 same thing is true with saturn in fact let's take a look at the planets here there you go jupiter saturn uranus neptune earth look at poor pluto down here 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 you can hardly see pluto take a look at this this is arcturus another star in our galaxy this is in our galaxy not outside our galaxy here's the sun over here jupiter is one pixel in size on this scale earth is invisible pluto forget about it all right keep an eye on arcturus now where's arcturus now way over here right of regal that's antares that's another star in our galaxy the sun is one pixel in size on this scale jupiter is invisible earth pluto forget about him in fact if the earth was the size of a golf ball beetlejuice here look i don't name the stars okay if the earth was the size of a golf ball beetlejuice 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 this is inside our galaxy and 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 30 trillion miles how far is that 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 to the desert museum in tucson arizona if you ever get to go there at night on a clear night you can see thousands of stars in the sky so we're out there one night this is like 25 years ago and the guide says wow it's so clear tonight that if we look up at 903 we'll see the space shuttle in orbit so come on we're not going to see the 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 we look up in the sky and about 70 degrees above the horizon there's an object streaking out of the western desert sky relative to us about like this i mean it's really cooking 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 we 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 20 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 in 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 long do you think it would take us a long time 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 space no we're not we're not going anywhere in space we can hardly get out of our solar system took us nine years to get to pluto and how high are the heavens 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 how high are the heavens above the earth the hubble space telescope helped us discover that a number of years ago they trained the hubble space telescope on 124 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 and they trained hubble on that for several days this is called hubble ultra deep field you can google this you can find this video online it's in the public domain what is hubble ultra deep field i don't know if you can see this but along the bottom of this uh slide here these are mountains this is the southern hemisphere i'm going to show you the video they compiled from hubble ultra deep field what they found in 124 millionth of the sky when i start the video the constellations are going to come up and then hubble is going to zoom in on that tiny dot there is no audio it's just video you ready here it is hubble ultra deep field there are the constellations let's go see what's in 124 millionth of the sky what you're looking at are nearly 10 000 galaxies each with billions of stars apiece now you know why the bible says the heavens declare the glory of god and 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 grains of sand 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 will take you over 200 000 years bearcats i don't ever want to hear ever any one of you ever again use the word awesome for anything other than the heavens or god awesome shirt dude awesome shot dude awesome tick tock video no we're polluting the language here by the way the uh that's not the end of that verse in psalms here's what it says for as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is his love for those that fear him as far as the east is from the west so far as he removed our transgressions from us this being that created and sustains all these stars is the same being that entered humanity to take our punishment on himself because his love exceeds the height of the heavens above the earth now when you think about the number of stars equivalent to sand grains on a hundred thousand earths does that make you feel insignificant it shouldn't why because the heavens aren't made in the image of god but you are in fact this is you in the womb at 11 weeks so the heavens are fine too now let's look at life this is you in the womb in 11 weeks question is this animal mineral vegetable or human human in fact let's go back before 11 weeks let's go all the way 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 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 that's right don't let anyone ever tell you you're not special you beat out 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 dna 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 all the letters in the right order and when your egg and your soldier 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 in fact there's only four things that separated 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 time out you can't legislate morality all right no extra charge for this this comes 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 and when people say to me hey you can't impose your morality on me i go why not would that be immoral actually they're actually doing the same thing they they tell me i can't do they're saying i ought not impose all knots but they're imposing that they're ought not on me that i ought not impose my odd knots well wait a minute why do you get to impose your morality but i don't get to impose mine actually that's not the right answer the right answer is this when somebody says don't impose your morality on me 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's involved in marriage to begin with is to legally recognize the man-woman relationship over 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 out of the law have the law written on their hearts it's not my morality it's not your morality it's the immorality and if you have a problem with the morality you don't have a problem with me you have a problem with the creator upon whose nature this morality is derived all right no extra charge for that let's go back to this from this point till right now 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 100 000 cells per second for mostly anyway some cells became brain cells others lung cells others heart cells how did 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 very moment you just made four million new red blood cells you just made another 4 million new red blood cells you just made another 4 million knock it off how is this happening are you thinking about this are you going wait a minute frank time out i got to concentrate new red blood cells coming up no 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's going in a direction consistently you ever notice that an egg corn if it's properly nourished always becomes an oak tree why doesn't it become an elm tree or a birch tree or a sea seahorse well it's programmed to become an oak tree well who programmed it and by the way is an acorn conscious is an acorn in the ground going all right what do i have to do to become an oak tree no but it reliably goes in the direction of becoming an oak tree if it doesn't have a mind of its own there must be an external mind directing it toward an end aristotle called this the unmoved mover thomas aquinas came along in the 1200s and said this is going to be my fifth way to argue for god that all of nature's going in a direction it's going toward a target a final cause if it's going in a direction if it doesn't have a mind of its own there must be an external mind directing it now this is not a big bang cause way back when in fact aristotle mistakenly thought the universe was eternal he's not talking about a cause way back when he's talking about a cause every single second the universe exists because every single second the universe exists these laws by the way these laws which govern physical things and all physical things change do you notice the laws don't change why don't they where do laws come from they come from law givers why is everything so orderly going in a direction because it's being driven by a mind every single second of existence in fact god is to the universe what a band is to music if a band were up here playing the music it would be creating and sustaining the music what happens to the music the second the band stops playing music's over this is why paul comes along and he says in jesus we live and move and have our being and christ holds all things together and the writer of hebrew says god sustains all things by his powerful word god creates yes but he also sustains there's a lot more about that argument in the book stealing from god but we have to move on to our final argument for god and that is the moral argument let me ask you guys a question how do you know that your quarterback throwing a touchdown is better than your quarterback throwing a pick six how do you know that wins now you're getting at something not it's not just the rules you have to know the purpose of the game right if you know the purpose of the game then you can see that a touchdown for your side is better than your side throwing a pick six right if there's no purpose to the game you can't say a touchdown is better than an interception because without a best you can't say a play is good which is getting you closer to the goal or bad taking you further away from the goal now what does this have to do with morality well notice in football the purpose of the game comes from outside the game in other words the commissioner and the owners get together every year they tweak the rules a little bit but the players don't show up on the field and say what's the purpose of this game no the purpose is established before they ever get walk into the into the stadium and then they can judge whether a play is good or bad well the same thing is true in life except that the rules aren't arbitrary they're arbitrary in football they're not arbitrary in life the purpose of life is to know god and to make him known to love god and love one another that's why there are certain rules that say this gets you closer to that purpose or goal and this takes you further away if there's no god that means there's no purpose which means there's no right way to live life or wrong way to live life if there are no rules or purpose to a game there's no right way to play it or wrong way to play it do you realize that if there is no god the nazis were not wrong it's just your opinion how did we convict the nazis they said we're just following orders and we said you have a moral obligation to disobey moral orders because there's a standard beyond your government called international law c.s lewis called it the moral law thomas jefferson in the declaration of independence called it nature's law it's god's nature you have a moral obligation to disobey immoral orders you didn't do it look if your worldview is telling you the nazis weren't wrong you've got the wrong worldview if there is no god then love is no better than rape oh you may like love better but it's not objectively better because there's no purpose if there is no god there are no human rights every campus has people advocating for certain rights do you realize there are no rights unless god exists it's just your opinion against somebody else's opinion in fact if there is no god racism isn't wrong slavery isn't wrong murder isn't wrong nothing's wrong because nothing's right if there is no god tolerance is no better than intolerance by the way are christians commanded to be tolerant no tolerance is too weak tolerance says hold your nose and put up with them love says reach out and help them and sometimes to love people you can't tolerate the evil they want to do how many people in here are parents how many people in here are former children okay good that should be all of us then let me ask you a question if a parent approves of everything his or her child wants to do is that parent loving no love does not mean approval like our culture thinks it does well if you love me it'll approve of what i do no i might not approve of what you do because i love you also you can't complain about the problem of evil because evil proves god does exist wait a minute what do you mean evil proves god does exist well c.s lewis who lived through awful world war one he was in it came out of there going there can't be a good god there's too much injustice in the world and then one day he had an epiphany he realized his argument didn't work and here's what he wrote in mere christianity he said as an atheist my argument against god was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust but how had i gotten this idea of just and unjust a man does not call a line crooked 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 injustice was unless you knew what justice was something can't be immoral unless something is something can't be not right unless something is so evil doesn't disprove god because nothing would be evil unless there was a standard of good but there wouldn't be a standard of good not an objective standard unless god existed so evil doesn't disprove god it may prove there's a devil out there but it doesn't disprove god because nothing would be evil unless there was a standard of good and god is what we mean by the standard of good you say what do you mean by that how what do you mean evil isn't i mean can't can't evil coexist with aren't they equal in opposite forces no evil is a lack in a good thing evil is like cancer if you take all the cancer out of a good body what do you got got a better body what happens if you take all the body out of the cancer it doesn't exist evil is like rust in a car if you take all the rust out of a car what do you got you got a better car what happens if you take all the car out of the rust doesn't exist in other words evil is a parasite in good it can't exist without good you could put it this way the shadows prove the sunshine in order to have shadows you have to have sunshine 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 god exists i know this is but it's true all right last thing on this what does the word submit mean nobody likes this word what does it mean come under someone's mission yeah let's let's break it up into two sub mission what does mission mean means there's a goal there's a purpose there's a direction we should be taking and sub just means you're putting your own personal mission underneath and you're abdicating your own personal mission to contribute to these this other mission so look if i'm a diva receiver on the team and i go keep throwing me the ball man keep throwing me the ball and the coach goes man you ain't we are not going to win if we keep throwing you the ball we got to spread the ball around and i go okay i get it coach if we want to win i got to take my personal mission and submit it to the overall mission well the question is what is the overall mission of life you realize that if god exists and he does that we would all be foolish if we were to take our own personal mission and put it over the ultimate mission if we don't submit ourselves to the true mission we're going to be foolish because ladies and gentlemen we're going to be dead a lot longer than we're going to be alive all right so what can we draw from these three conclusions or these three arguments i should say i think from these three arguments we can conclude we have a spaceless timeless immaterial powerful personal intelligent creator who created all things and sustains all things and is moral now these are the attributes of the god of the bible and we haven't even opened the bible yet this is called natural theology you don't need any written text to figure out that god exists in fact the bible even tells you that in romans chapter one this being exists you might say well frank atheists have good reasons against this don't they i don't think so in fact if atheism is true you shouldn't trust your reason i can't say anything better than c.s lewis so i'm just going to read you what lewis wrote see if you can track along with this it's it's a two slide quote here's what lewis said suppose that 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 them so far okay here's what he how he finishes but if i can't trust my own thinking of course i can't trust the arguments leading to atheism and 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 look if we're just moist robots if we're driven completely by the laws of physics as many atheists say we are why should we think anything's true we shouldn't even believe our own thoughts so how are we going to discover who the true god is for that we got to go to miracles now this is the shortest of the four so this is going to take long but we got to deal with it very briefly here we know the truth exists and god exists how are we going to know which god is the true god well god can use miracles to tell us now a lot of people think miracles are impossible for example noah hey christians you christians in here can we just keep something between ourselves can we all agree that no i don't care if the ark encounters 45 minutes from here okay can we all agree that noah and the ark is crazy thank you and a resurrection how many people in here have seen somebody rise from the dead yeah none of us have yet our entire faith is built on 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 is the deal with jonah can you really believe in jonah well what is the greatest miracle in the bible yeah the greatest miracle in the bible is not the resurrection the greatest miracle in the bible is i got some of you a second time yes the greatest miracle in the bible is the first verse in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth now even the atheists are admitting the data for this miracle they're admitting that space time and matter had a beginning out of nothing well if that's the case then these other miracles are at least possible of course no is crazy unless god exists of course resurrections make no sense and can occur unless god exists of course jonah is a fairy tale unless god exists i mean if he can create the whole show out of nothing can he do whatever he wants that's not logically impossible inside the universe if he can create the whole show out of nothing of course he can now a lot of people here are going to say frankl i i can't believe something i've never seen you believe in a lot of things you've never seen you believe in your mind have you ever seen it you're using it right now you believe in the laws of logic and the laws of mathematics have you ever seen those i haven't seen them you believe in justice you ever seen justice oh you may have seen justice done but you've never seen justice it's not a physical thing it's an immaterial reality grounded in the nature of god you've never seen love and everyone in here believes in it what is love you know a a student at college in new jersey where we had our debate with christopher hitchens our second debate which you can see on our youtube channel a student asked hitchens this question what is love christopher and hitchens being a materialist had to come up with a materialistic answer so he said love is a chemical and i said don't say that to your wife honey do you love me yeah why because i got the chemical i might not have it tomorrow no love is not a chemical it's an immaterial virtue grounded in the nature of god it's a decision to seek what's best for the other person it's not a chemical you've never seen gravity oh frank come on there it is right there no you're not seeing gravity what are you seeing you're seeing the effects of gravity we really don't even know what gravity is you know that we're just seeing the effect that by the way that's how we know god exists we know god by his effects the creation is an effect we reason back to a cause a creator design is an effect we reason back to a cause a designer a moral law is an effect we reason back to a cause a moral law giver this is what scientists do they reason from effect back to cause when someone asks you how do you know god exists you say because i know god by his effects reason we can reason i'm reasoning back to a mind you've never seen george washington but you believe he exists in fact you've never seen the guy whose name's on that building over there what's it mechanic did i get that right huh mikken yeah you've never seen the guy have you some you don't want to see the guy right but you believe he existed he's got his name on a building he's left effects behind that are best explained by george washington or mcmicken or whatever and that's how you know god exists and that's how you know jesus existed he's leaving effects behind regardless of the holy spirit i'm just saying you know just by evidence that this being this person existed now if miracles do occur and by the way you don't need a single miracle to occur since the new testament for christianity to be true i think miracles have occurred and you can get craig keener's hernia-inducing two-volume set called miracles because he has investigated modern-day miracles and has a lot of evidence for them but even if he's all wrong about that christianity is still true but if miracles do occur they occur very rarely why because if they occurred all the time they wouldn't get our attention i mean imagine if people rose from the dead routinely what would the resurrection of jesus mean to us nothing you go to somebody and go jesus roasting the dead to prove he was god the guy 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 it can't be a regular event miracles have to be rare if they're going to get our attention do you realize this though for atheism to be true every single spiritual experience and miracle claim in the history of the world has to be false is that possible yeah possible is it reasonable i don't think so there's a lot more in the book on miracles but we got to wrap this up by getting to the key question is the new testament true now we don't have to prove the bible's in aaron or any of that we're just trying to see if the essentials of christianity are true what we want to discover is did jesus actually die and then rise from the dead because if he did then the christian god is the true god and there's a lot of evidence he did i'm going to line up i'm going to give you six lines of evidence we only have time to look at two okay they all begin with the letter e the first is we have early sources the second is we have eyewitness details there are scores of eyewitness details that only an eyewitness would know we have embarrassing stories i'll explain that in a minute as well as excruciating deaths those are the two we're going to look at we have embedded confirmation this is hard to explain in a short period of time so let me just give you two words to google if you want to learn about this because i think this number five here is the best evidence you've probably never heard of that the new testament writers are individually telling or individually witnessing the same historical events google two words undesigned coincidences undesigned coincidences their entire books written on this there's even free books on the internet you can get and when you get undesigned coincidences which i call embedded confirmation you'll see these guys couldn't have made this up there's expected predictions that deals with old testament prophecy if i only only had one old test testament prophecy to make my case on it would be isaiah 53 written 700 years in advance there's also extra biblical writers those are 10 ancient non-christian sources that lived within 150 years of jesus's life and when you take their joint references who are these people people like josephus sutonius dallas flagon these are all household names i know when you take their their brief references to jesus and the apostles and you compile them together you get a story congruent with the new testament and finally you have the explosive growth of the church out of jerusalem which is really hard to explain because christianity could have ended and been ended immediately if either the jews or the romans went to the tomb and taken and had taken jesus's dead body out of the tomb and they couldn't do that they wanted to do that but they couldn't do that why because jesus was still using his body it's really hard to explain how christianity which started with an empirical claim that jesus rose from the dead survived if jesus's tomb was known and it was how could it have survived if his body was in there it couldn't now as i say we don't have time to go all through all this but let's deal a little bit with embarrassing stories what are embarrassing stories embarrassing stories normally tell historians that if there's something embarrassing to the author or authors it's probably true why would it be true do you think this is the interactive portion of the program okay i'll give you a hint yeah you wanna you're not gonna make yourself look bad you're not gonna embarrass yourself you you're probably gonna make make yourself look better if you're inventing a story right you're not gonna embarrass yourself that's why we call this the dove factor because the new testament writers have filled the new testament with embarrassing details they never would have invented in fact let me put it this way 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 you rarely do you won't do that right unless you're trying to snow somebody short for a short period of time right now you don't lie to make yourself look bad you might lie to make yourself look good well the new testament is filled with embarrassing details they never would have invented for example peter their leader is called satan by jesus you think they made this up you think at one point mark said to peter hey pete i'm going to make this a real interesting story i'm going to 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 this is embarrassing and then peter says lord i'll never deny you what does he wind up doing he denies him three times and then later in the book of galatians this is in the bible paul says that he has to dope slap peter for not obeying the right theology there this is in the bible he's actually correcting another apostle this is embarrassing and then of course you know with the crucifixion all the disciples with the exception maybe of john they all run away this is like a monty python movie run away and and 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 discover the empty tomb would any man in here invent that no if i was inventing it i'd make myself look good wouldn't you i'd write something down like this let's see we marched right down there we overpowered that elite roman guard yeah that sounds pretty good what do you think john said get out peter roundhouse kicked him philip said we'll be back and then on sunday morning we marched right down to the tomb and we saw jesus who congratulated us on our great faith and then we went and comforted the trembling women i would never say it was mr wimpy 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 why would you never say the women were the first witnesses if you're trying to pass off a lie is the truth why that's right their testimony was not considered on par with that of a man so if you're making up the new testament story you only have the men be the first witnesses yet all four gospels say the women were the first witnesses which is telling us what they really were as embarrassing as it was i actually had a woman once she came up to me 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 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 actually in the new testament but it is it's matthew 28 19. i'm sorry 17. matthew 28 19 is the great commission jesus is giving them the great commission go therefore make disciples of all nations notice he doesn't say make believers he says make disciples there's a difference anyway right there in verse 17 is he's gathering all these people around him it says that some of his disciples believed but some doubted he's standing resurrected right in front of them and they're doubting it's like they're standing there going you see a guy over there yeah that guy over there is jesus no i'm telling you it can't be jesus he was just killed not long ago no i'm telling you it's him jesus is dead the romans killed him they know how to kill people it's jesus look they put a spirit inside blood and water came out they crucified him he's dead it's jesus it can't be it is how do you know the women told me they're not making this up there's even potentially embarrassing details about jesus in there 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 3. his own family thinks he's nuts now you may have heard the scholars say the new testament writers embellish jesus to be god really then why is john chapter i mean mark chapter 3 in there which is almost universally recognized to be the earliest gospel why are they doubting that jesus is of a sane mind if they're making this up also jesus is called a drunkard he's called demon possessed that's real flattering isn't it in fact one of his women witnesses was demon possessed formerly demon possessed what a great witness isn't it he has his feet wiped with the hair of a prostitute which easy could have been seen as a sexual advance and oh by the way notice there are two prostitutes in jesus's bloodline this is the messiah's bloodline who are they rahab and tamar do you think matthew and luke got together and 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 there rahab tame no that's embarrassing in fact when he gets to in matthew when he gets to uh oh no hang on a second it's not just the prostitutes that are embarrassing think of other people in the bloodline like judah where we get to terms you from not a good guy read about him in genesis david david a man after god's own heart yeah but he's a liar adulterer and a murderer guess what's hope for the rest of us then huh this guy's after god's own heart bathsheba's in the bloodline you know when matthew gets to bathsheba in the genealogy he won't mention her name you know what he says instead uriah's wife [Music] that's the slam right but he's telling the truth who is uriah husband of bathsheba whom david had killed so he could have bathsheba this is not an invented bloodline it's got a lot of shady characters in it the pharaoh in egypt would never tolerate such a thing when the historian says hey pharaoh i'm going to put a couple of prostitutes and some real shady characters in your genealogy what's the pharaoh going to say off with your head no the bible is the ultimate no spin zone it tells you all the evil that all of these supposed heroes have done it's embarrassing but true last one excruciating deaths this is the argument that says that these men who were in a position to know whether jesus had risen from the dead or not died excruciating deaths when they simply could have saved themselves by saying it never happened now it's really important to realize that the people who wrote the new testament down were jewish believers in yahweh they already thought they were god's chosen people they didn't believe somebody could claim to be god that would be blasphemy and they didn't believe somebody in the middle of the time middle of time would resurrect they believed there'd be a resurrection at the end of time but not in the middle why would they invent such a story being already jewish believers in yahweh god's chosen people what did the new testament writers have to gain by making up a new religion what did they get they got kicked out of the synagogue and then they got beaten tortured and killed last time i checked that was not a list of perks we're going to start a new religion we are yeah what's it going to get us first get kicked out of the synagogue then beat and tortured and killed well sign me up you know what a great idea no i don't think so in fact they had every motive to say the resurrection did not happen not every motive to say it did i get this question a lot maybe you do if you're a christian are there any non-christian writers that talk about jesus and the apostles i mentioned them earlier just briefly they're not eye witnesses but they give the same basic story but you know what is sort of underneath that question and illicit assumption here's the illicit assumption you really can't trust the new testament writers because you see these were religious people and no religious people embellish things they make things up if you think about that for more than 10 seconds you realize how stupid that objection is why what motive did these people have to gain to make up a new religion nothing they had every motive to say it wasn't true not every motive to say it was true my friend jay warner wallace who you may have seen on dateline a number of times has written a book called cold case christianity he also has a brand new great book called person of interest you need to get anyway jim has been on dateline more than any other cold case detective because he solves murders decades old and he says that whenever he finds a dead body he always he knows that that guy is dead if it was murdered for one or of three reasons or a combination of the three reasons he says not a thousand reasons why that guy's dead it's one of these three or a combination of the three there was either a sex issue a money issue or a power issue sex money or power that's why people commit crimes that's why you and i sin because sex money and power are good things in fact they're so good we'll sometimes take shortcuts to get them so if you're going to say that they made all this up that they invented this you have to find one or more of those motivators for them to say yeah okay maybe they did make it up to get sex money or power question ladies and gentlemen did the writers of the new testament get real popular with the ladies for saying jesus had resurrected from the dead no did they get rich by saying jesus rose from the dead no they weren't 21st century prosperity gospel preachers okay did they get power by saying jesus had resurrected from the dead no they got persecuted the opposite paul had power as a persecutor as soon as he becomes a christian what happens he gets persecuted they had no motive to make this up they had every motive to say it didn't happen not every motive to say it did and then why would they die for a known lie you say wait a minute frank timeout if you're going to tell me that martyrdom proves christianity don't you have to say that martin improves islam no why because there's a lot of differences between the muslim martyrs of today and the new testament martyrs of new testament times but let me just give you one big difference for our purposes here the muslim martyrs 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 many 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 you can't get better evidence than that unless you were there yourself all right what i'm about to say to wrap this new testament section up is something that's going to annoy a lot of people in here sorry if you if you believe like i do that the bible's inerrant it's going to annoy you for a minute but stick with me it's going to sound like heresy but it's not christianity is not true because a series of documents we put under one binding we call the bible says it's true in fact christianity would be true if the bible never existed 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 was paul a christian before he wrote the book the book of romans of course he was that's why he wrote the book of romans because jesus had 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 in other words 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 even have a new testament or new testament documents written down by jewish believers in yahweh in the first century unless jesus rose from the dead why would they do it they wouldn't it's not an invented storyline now thankfully they did write it down so we could know about it and orient our lives toward it but it would be true even if they had never said a word about it because it originated with an event not a book all right now there's more but we don't have time to go into it here's the overall argument again does truth exist the answer is if somebody says there's no truth you're going to say is that true does god exist first argument cosmological second teleological third moral you get the attributes of god from those three arguments are miracles possible what's the greatest miracle in the bible creation first verse of the bible is the new testament telling the truth about the resurrection yeah it sure seems so why would they invent it doesn't make any sense they would if you want to go further the books and the dvds are back there there's that word again text it evidence to 44222 don't put quotes on it just the word evidence we're now teaching online courses if you go to our website crossexamine.org click on online courses you'll see them in fact sean mcdowell is about to teach one on the lgbtq issue you may be interested in uh it starts this week also we're on youtube twitter and facebook this is being streamed on youtube and twitter right now and facebook not twitter but you and instagram i think 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 have you guys signed up for you twit face yet it's kind of a jersey thing you ought to do it don't forget the podcast it's called i don't have enough faith to be an atheist don't forget the tv show on wednesday night and it's also streaming on our app if you don't do anything else download this cross-examined app two words in the app store it's got the podcast on there it's got the tv show on there it has a quick answer section on there anytime we go live you'll get a notification if you want to see any kind of presentation so check all that out so before we get to your questions it's true the question is so what if it's true so what if it's true someone actually did die for you now when i was in the navy i was in naval aviation so we had to earn wings which were fairly hard to earn but there's nothing more difficult in any service certainly not the navy to earn than a golden trident that's what the seals wear very few people that start seal training make it through maybe five ten percent make it through those that do make it through wear that trident with pride it is their identity when michael monsoor was buried in rose crane cemetery just outside of san diego california 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 him into his casket they took their identity and they put their identity in the one that died for them the one that sacrificed 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 major your bank account or your vocation none of those things are ultimate ladies and gentlemen we were here to put our identity in our savior and we would all be foolish if this is really true to not do that you know christianity is the only world view where you don't achieve your identity you receive your identity and you can't lose it if you have to achieve your identity all your pr all the pressure's on you you got to perform and somebody can always do it better than you can't they somebody's always better somebody's always prettier somebody's always more handsome somebody's always more skilled somebody always has the better spouse somebody no you get your identity from your savior and an eyewitness who was with jesus who wrote a biography we call the gospel of john said he has given you the right to become a child of god why do you need that because you've fallen short i've fallen short why wouldn't you accept the free gift of grace that's what christianity is all about it's grace it's not do this and do that it's done all you need to do is accept it why wouldn't you do that he didn't just die by the way he also rose again and that means one day you and i will rise again too the only question is to where all right it's time for questions and so the great clint bolin here who is a video extraordinaire is going to set up a microphone and you need to if you want to ask a question come up to the mic because the people online will not be able to hear you if you don't come up to the mic and since no one likes to ask the first question let's move right on to the second question so and you can line up behind him and while you do that if you would take a shot of this with your cell phone you can give us some feedback on the event and also you can uh get some information if you want to follow up because there are several christian groups here including hto h2o church and several others that can minister to you if you're interested all right all right all right yes sir give us your name again sir cade cade with rachel christie ministries yes sir um reason for christ yes yes in latin uh this is from dennis hess he's in williamsburg virginia i know dennis hey dennis okay he said he he says hi um so he's in williamsburg virginia he says ask him this question uh there is talk about 777 books of the bible and that the church i guess he's talking about the catholic church he says in parentheses is hiding these books in the vatican i'm not talking about the known books not in the canon uh can he shed any light on the veracity of this claim well when somebody makes a claim like that it's not your job or my job to refute the claim it's that person's job to support the claim so i haven't heard that claim if somebody had evidence i'd ask them what evidence do you have for that and what people need to understand is the catholic church did not have a stranglehold on the manuscripts that were written down because there was was no such thing as an organized catholic church for about 300 years and the new testament manuscripts were predate that by centuries as you know so to say that the catholic church i mean i'm just i don't know what evidence somebody would bring forth but just off the top of my head i would say how can that be that somehow the catholic church gathered all these manuscripts up of other biblical books and nobody else knows about them until now and they're hidden in some vault somewhere that just doesn't seem to make any sense it's like trying to change a manuscript you can't change all the manuscripts because they're spread all over the ancient world so in order to change what the bible says you'd have to hunt down every single manuscript and change every single one of them can't be done all right cool all right thanks thank you yes sir take the mask down if you could what's your name my name is peter hey peter how are you not too bad uh you were talking about the cosmological argument for the existence of god that the universe has to have a creator but does the existence of a creator cause problems of itself when it comes to the origin of that creator especially considering a creator of the universe would likely be more complex than the universe itself and then less likely to come into existence than the universe itself by itself okay good question but what do you mean by more complex um i would say that it would have to be like a this is kind of like piggybacking off of the watchmaker argument that there would have to be a watchmaker to create a watch though right it would be that the hard to really define more complex but i see where you're going with this let me let me see if i can see where you're you're coming from this is uh from richard dawkins book the god delusion where he talks about well if the universe is complex there must be a being more complex that created that okay but it depends on what he means by complex because as christians or as theists in general we don't believe that god is complex in the sense that he's made of parts because anything made of parts is composed and if it's composed there must be something outside that being that composed it so when we talk about god being simple what we mean is he doesn't have parts but he still has power he's an unembodied mind we might say so he doesn't have all these gears and complexities that we think of created physical things he's an immaterial powerful being and when you look at the evidence for the beginning of the universe it seems if space-time and matter had a beginning then the cause must be spaceless timeless if you're timeless do you have a beginning no no so this being didn't have a beginning this is the unmoved mover as aristotle would say the being is also immaterial he's personal he's intelligent he's powerful as we mentioned earlier so it really him it really hinges on what the word complex means powerful yes but not complex in the sense that he's composed of parts he's an immaterial being that had no beginning beginning and will have no end all of us and everything we see that's physical had a beginning and is composed which means something outside of it must have composed it in fact that's another argument for god peter is that everything that's composed needs a composer but you can't go on an infinite regress of composers eventually you're going to have to get back to an uncomposed composer and that's what aristotle would call the unmoved mover that's what the bible calls the great i am the being that is self-existing and eternal does that make sense do you mind if i add on sure go ahead go go go uh would it be simpler to assume that a lot of those traits that you use describing god could be used to just describe the universe we're in and be a simpler explanation for our existence well the universe we're in appears to be appears to have a beginning from nothing so it would seem that the cause must transcend space-time and matter so the cause can't be the universe because the universe is the effect you can't create yourself so there must be something that transcends the universe and not only was it created it seems but created in a very fine-tuned way as we saw earlier so it appears to be the product of intelligence a mind and that's the best we can do at this point thank you all right thank you peter yes sir what's your name uh my name is lyndon hey lyndon get a little closer if you would to the microphone lyndon thank you some have proposed um in order to refute the argument for the complexity of the universe and its fine tuning that perhaps infinite all possible universes exist and thus we just happen to be in the one that could support life to see it could you respond to multiverse hypothesis yeah sure multi-person the multiverse easy for me to say the multiverse hypothesis is relatively new and really what it is it is a response to the fact that the universe appears to be so designed nobody would be thinking that there are other universes out there unless they realize wow this place is so designed we've got to multiply our chances that this could have happened without intelligence if we're going to say there's no god in fact paul davies who teaches at arizona state university who is a cosmologist he's an agnostic he doesn't know whether god exists or not but he says the multiverse is a dodge they're trying to avoid the obvious implication that the universe had a beginning by it appears to be a beginner now here are some problems with the multiverse and this is all in the book by the way first of all there's no evidence for it it's purely speculative we can't observe any of these universes we have no way of knowing if they exist because we can only see our universe secondly multiple universes would seem to multiply the need for a creator because each one would need x or creation to get started and as valencian boot and gor guth found in their in their uh experiment or their actually their theory which has been verified even a multiverse needs an absolute beginning so the the valencian board guth theorem it's called shows that space time and matter had to have an absolute beginning and even valencian this guy right here i quoted earlier who has the book called many worlds in one from 2006 who believes that there may be our other universes out there even he admits even if he's right the whole show needs an absolute beginning so it doesn't really seem to get rid of the uh the problem that atheists are trying to avoid you might ask who or what is producing these universes and keeping them from colliding this multiples multiplies causes beyond necessity you've probably heard of occam's razor uh you're where you're supposed to take the you're not supposed to multiply causes when a simpler cause could be just a single creator rather than all these multiple universes out there and then finally this is in an atheist admission of evidence for design and the fact that design can be detected that's why they're coming up with this theory because they're saying really it really does look like design even though on one hand they're saying it looks like it's designed on the other hand they're saying well design is in science well you can't have it both ways all right does that make sense all right thank you yes sir hey doctor hey jake hey jake now long time no see yeah thank you uh so i want to preface my question by saying i'm a fan of yours i've read your books watch your debates and q a videos all that i think most of the work you do is spectacular so well thank you sir thank you thank you thank you the good fight thank you um so i'm not a student here i'm the director of a latino uh mission and uh ministry in church here in cincinnati okay um so naturally part of my job is evangelism using apologetics so from my perspective as a minister to the latino spanish-speaking demographic um what are you and your ministry doing to further your outreach to that population well our executive director jorge gill who's out there right now hey jorge is really pushing that approach because he's bilingual and we have several people on our team are bilingual so we have a course called why i still don't have enough faith to be an atheist in spanish we have the stealing from god course course in spanish and we're starting to develop other courses in espanol as well and also uh we're about to establish an international youtube channel with all different languages on it and and jorge has a show a spanish show that he does about twice a week if you go to jorge gill if you go to his instagram page or uh he may be doing it on our youtube channel as well we have a spanish version of the youtube channel you can see it there right thanks and one more quick question if you don't mind i know it's cliche and it's a cliche to say it's cliche but um if you had to give one piece of advice to a young minister such as myself what would you say a minister or are you talking about advice on apologetics what do you mean either way i think that we as apologists have to major in the majors and not major in the minors in other words stay on the big issues like truth god miracles new testament we can argue amongst ourselves over other questions a lot of people want to talk about how old the universe is and i always say i'm i'm absolutely convinced at least it's at least 59 years old um we can argue about what ascetological view we take right we can argue about some harmonizations of scripture you know with is this a contradiction or just a difference we can argue over many secondary and tertiary issues we need to stay focused on the essentials because if god exists and jesus rose from the dead game over christianity is true if jesus didn't rise from the dead it's false amen all right thank you doctor thank you thank you jake appreciate it phillips all right my name is phillips um i had an atheist friend that was here he had to duck out early so he wanted me to ask this question it was basically can you define evolution and what's your opinion on it define evolution yeah well i would ask him what what does he mean by evolution if he means change over time count me in if he means adaptation within a type microevolution count me in if he means molecules to man without intelligent intervention count me out i don't i not only think there's not good evidence for that there's evidence against that in fact let me just point out this is what this is what happened just a few years ago in england there is a very august uh scientific affiliation called the royal society and they had this meeting in 2016 and here was the premise of the meeting that developments in evolutionary biology and adjacent fields have produced calls for revision of the standard theory of evolution although the issues involved remain hotly contested in fact people have realized in recent decades that dna is not destiny that you can't mutate dna and get a new body plan you need epigenetic information which is the structure of the cell to get a new body plan and you can't mutate that so these are the evolutionists who are calling this meeting these aren't intelligent design people these are the evolutionists saying look our plan isn't working or our theory isn't working we need to come up with another theory another naturalistic theory now they they had this meeting they didn't come to any conclusions but they're admitting the problem the problem is is that you can't just mutate dna and get a new body plant doesn't work that's good i have a personal question as well it's just you mentioned about the fact that we had to have all the stars and whatnot in the universe for us to exist can you explain more in detail why that is outside of just jupiter being the cosmic vacuum well i said that there has to be a 30 trillion miles of distance between the stars in our galaxy for us to exist here on earth if the distances were different the gravitational forces would not allow us to remain in a stable orbit as i understand that particular what we call anthropic principle there okay now i'm relying on other scientists for that i'm just repeating what they're saying but that distance is necessary for us to exist here in a stable orbit around our sun if those distances were different we wouldn't do that wow thank you all right thanks phillips gentlemen yes sir what's your name jack hey jack how are you doing well first off i want to say something might be a little bit controversial here that's okay we love controversy i'm blind so i think i have that privilege yes sir go ahead um attack today go bulldogs we're number one not cincinnati just just want to get that out there [Laughter] just want to get that out there so um my question was about the arguments for um evil being a shadow of good essentially yeah like i understand the basic basic idea with that is there a more philosophically rigorous way of proving that evil is a shadow instead of good being the shadow i mean there are all these analogies about cancer out of the body rust out of the car but that doesn't really prove anything is there a philosophically rigorous way to show that evil is a shadow of good instead of the other way around well let's take someone like satan okay we think satan is evil right and he is but metaphysically he's not evil meaning that he has good qualities what are the good qualities he has mind emotion and will those are all good and he uses them to do evil even hitler we look at hitler he had mind emotion and will and what was hitler trying to do according to him he was trying to do something good he was trying to create the super race and in order to do that he thought that he had to take he had to get rid of the undesirables the lower levels of life because according to darwin's theory they were lower levels and if we want to increase our evolution toward a higher level we've got to get rid of those people and take their resources and use them to create the aryan race thanos he wants to get rid of half the population right why because he's trying to what he thinks is to do a good thing do we have any superhero fans in here okay yeah tyrants are always trying to do good things by claiming that it's a good end and you're just gonna have to deal with the means so you can't think of the other way around you you very rarely do you any of us we rarely do evil for evil's sake we're always doing evil to get a good thing right sex money and power are good things that's why we do evil we don't do evil to try and get an evil thing we do evil to try and get a good thing and if you read by the way c.s lewis book on this jack well it's not on this but on mere christianity he talks about how dualism can't be the truth because if you think about it satan is called a fallen angel right he has good qualities but now he's using them for evil and the evil that he does gets him good things so a couple weeks ago and unbelievable i was listening to a debate between two philosophers and the one was positing that it could be that our conception is twisted and that god himself or the supreme being hey jack he's actually do me a favor just move to your right half a step yeah go ahead say it again unbelievable unbelievable the show with justin brower um a few weeks ago there was a debate between two philosophers and the atheist philosopher posited that maybe the supreme being in the universe is actually a force for evil as opposed to being good you see i i can't see how that can be because you wouldn't even know what evil was unless you knew what good was right you wouldn't know what um a immoral being was unless you knew what a moral being was you could know what morality was in the absence of immorality but you can't know immorality unless you know what morality is okay thank you that makes sense yeah all right thank you jack yes sir what's your name hello uh my name is jared jared yeah go ahead jerry uh big fan also i just wanted to ask so unlike the argument of how you know it's just insane how earth came to be you know perfectly aligned with all the other planets and you know human life coming to dna like all that just completely insane how all that works couldn't you say though since you know the universe or space itself is constantly expanding that out of sheer luck we could have just been made through well luck well that's one of the things that richard dawkins says in his book uh the god delusion he talks about luck and i'm i'm looking i'm reading dawkins going you're supposed to be a scientist what's luck right luck is not a cause just like chance it's not a cause so i ask you what do you mean by luck i mean luck doesn't cause anything let me give you an example let's suppose uh i take out a coin and uh you know we're about to pick sides or something on a team and you know heads i win you know tails you win and i flip the coin what's causing it to come up heads or tails is it luck or is it something else chance no it's not chance it's how much force i put on it what the wind is in the room how high off the ground i am how it started in my if we could figure out all of those uh forces to absolute precision we could tell with a hundred percent certainty how that thing's gonna gonna land because luck or chance doesn't do anything we just use luck or chance to cover our ignorance when we can't calculate all those forces very true okay all right that answers it thank you hey by the way before we move on folks if you could give us some feedback by taking a survey text the word event to this number and we're gonna we're gonna ask you three questions and you can just give us some feedback so we can improve what we're doing here yes sir what's your name hi i'm chase just quickly want to say thanks for saying what you do um thank you sir you make a big impact on a lot of people's hearts and minds so thank you for being uh faithful to what the lord has called you to do thank you um since you haven't said anything remotely controversial i'd like to get into something a little bit sure i'm off of the presentation so i wanted to ask about your views on women and as pastors elders leaders in the church what your thoughts are but also more than that what resources you would direct myself and others to um so we can better research and understand gender roles as they're pertaining to the church um quickly in second timothy in second corinthians we see what paul says about women remaining quiet during church services then we also see as you mentioned women were the first to see jesus after he was resurrected um then we see junia priscilla and lydia mentioned by paul as having some sort of authoritative standing in the church yet he also writes in second timothy and second corinthians about how women should not have authority over men and teach um it's something i'm working through theologically i want to make sure that i understand where the bible lands on truth but it just seems a little bit muddy so i'd like some clarity on how to approach that to understand what is true okay first of all men and women are one in under christ just like slave and free and jew and gentile you know ephesians i'm sorry uh galatians 3 28 we're all one in the eyes of christ right and just like a man and a woman are equally human god and jesus are equally divine but they have different functions right jesus has a different function than the father and a woman has a different function in the home than a man and a different function in the church than a man it's not because one is better or worse than the other it's because god has assigned these different roles for a reason he doesn't always explain what those reasons are but that's what they are now if you look at first timothy 2 and you look at the other passages second corinthians yeah second corinthians it's it could be that the passage in second time first of all it just the bottom line is i think that men should be the lead pastor because i think that's what the text says but i think because all that all the talk about elders and all this is all about men and all this okay uh but that doesn't mean women don't have a ministry they do but my friend greg cockle at standard reason many people here know greg is he wrote the book tactics he has a article that's very interesting on this passage on women not teaching or not having authority over a man he thinks that might have to do with the home rather than the church and if you read his i can't recreate his entire argument off top of my head but if you go to stand a reason and said should women teach i think that's the name of it just take a look because the same word that's used for women could be wife same word for man could be husband according to him i'm no greek expert i'm relying on him for that okay also for these kinds of issues these theological issues by the way these are secondary issues they're not primary issues right uh there's a great app you can get it's called got questions i don't know if you've seen that app but got questions so if you were to type in women in the church there you're probably going to get five or six articles that you can read and i think they do a pretty good job you might not agree with all of them but i think they do a pretty good job of laying out the case on each side so i would recommend as long as they're biblically based i'm sure they are biblically just for me it's a matter of exegetically looking at what the text says understanding what paul's intention was because right if he meant wife when he wrote it in the original language and it just says women now i want to understand what it meant originally but no that's helpful okay all right thank you yes sir hello my name is adam what's your name adam hey adam go ahead sir so uh i was debating it internet atheist and tick-tock uh-huh and um he asked me these questions i just want to go ahead and ask you because you probably give a better answer he asked how can nothing exist how can what how can nothing exist well he's assuming nothing is something you want to ask him what do you mean by nothing because like if i were to say to you adam i had nothing for lunch today do you think i went down to a restaurant in order to play to nothing no you you know what i meant i didn't eat lunch today it's non-bean it's not it's not a bean called nothing and this is what i think a lot of atheists have have unfortunately tried to confuse what nothing is like lawrence krauss the guy i mentioned earlier he tried to say nothing is actually a quantum vacuum which isn't nothing it's something which needs creation itself so i would ask him what do you mean by nothing what we mean by nothing is non-being it's not something called nothing it's non-being no thing i have one more question sure what rocks dream about as aristotle said okay how can i prove disorder cannot create order and intelligence how can i prove that disorder cannot create order and intelligence well it depends what he means by proof but there is nothing more set in science than thermodynamics it's virtually a closed science the second law of thermodynamics says that things go to disorder not order and all scientists agree that ultimately this whole universe is going to go to disorder that we're going to go to heat death so forget about eternal life here unless god steps in and recreates everything we're ultimately going to all go to heat death see the second law of thermodynamics says things are going to disorder meaning for example that nature will take a building and turn it into a pile of bricks but nature will never take a pile of bricks and turn it into a building and the problem with macroevolution and the atheistic viewpoint is they're trying to build everything from the bottom up with natural laws and natural laws don't do that natural laws go to disorder not order now an astute evolutionist would say well we don't talk about the beginning of the universe i'm sorry the beginning of life we don't know what created life but we're saying subsequent life forms can get more and more complex and it is true that a i mean we get more complex as we grow right we're taking energy from the outside and we're growing that's true but you have to have a life form first to do that you also need a universe a fine-tuned universe before you can ever get life so it multiplies problems for the atheist and there are several other problems with the macroevolutionary theory including irreducibly irreducible complexity epigenetic information i just briefly mentioned ago the fact that we we run into genetic limits to change that even using our minds we can't break genetic limits you know that um breeders can breed all different kinds of dogs but they can't break out of the out of the dog genus right and if you're using your mind and you can't break out of the dog janice why do we think we can break out of the dog janus with an unintelligent process and last thing i'll say on this is that even if macroevolution were true it wouldn't get rid of the need for god why because macroevolution explains one out of maybe 10 different things that need to be explained you need to explain where the universe came from why it's fine-tuned you need to explain where life came from you need to explain the origin of consciousness the origin of mathematics the origin of morality the origin of uh several other things that can't be explained just by the natural laws themselves for example where do natural laws come from that's driving all this stuff laws come from law givers so even if the macro evolutionary worldview were true in the sense that they could figure out how subsequent life forms could come into existence it wouldn't do anything to get rid of the need for god god bless you all right thanks adam appreciate it man yes sir take off that mask if you could man so yeah what's your name trey trey go ahead sir uh first i'd like to say that i'm a christian and i've been following you for the past two years oh thanks brother really helped me strengthen you and my mom go ahead okay so am i allowed to ask you two questions hi mom she's watching yeah go ahead sir all right um so my first question is in regard to the old testament yes sir um there are many scholars of the ancient near east egyptology in the hebrew bible who claim that archaeological evidence debunks many of the historical events and people in the old testament is there an apologetic defense to such claims they're claiming that there is not evidence for people in the old testament they're saying that archaeological evidence from different ancient events say for instance like um in the bible for instance like in joshua when the israelites went into jericho they say that there's no evidence of a battle between the israelites and jericho and they try and say well that disproves that event from happening in the bible okay yeah first of all absence of evidence is not evidence of absence right yes uh and there is evidence that jericho that the walls fell oddly uh outward okay and uh bryant wood has done the in done the investigation on that and now that you mention it let's let's just let's just look at just a few people that have been discovered in the old testament do you see these are obscure people in the old testament these are seals that were discovered in jerusalem in the city of david which is off the southern wall of the current city of jerusalem this was jerusalem and david's day do you see all these names you yeah those are ooza and uh or uziah jotham ahaz ezekiel these these are or hezekiah these are all seals of these people that have been found in the dirt i mean these are real people now this doesn't prove that everything the bible says that these folks did they did but it does show that these people it seems existed some of these are really odd names some of these people i can't remember who they are uh but like this guy down here those are kings well some of them are kings but some of them are scribes for jeremiah and they're mentioned once or twice in jeremiah and these seals have been on earth with their names on it even i think isaiah's up is isaiah up here isaiah may not be up here but i think they may have found an isaiah seal too if i'm not mistaken so here's a book to get unearthing the bible by titus kennedy titus kennedy titus kennedy's a real life indiana jones okay titus kennedy himself uh back in 2018 i think it was went to the sudan which was not a place you wanted to go because he needed to verify an inscription of yahweh the oldest inscription of yahweh found anywhere in the world he needed to verify it so he flew to sudan and then slept with the scorpions trying to get to this one obscure location and did verify this inscription from yahweh about yahweh from 1400 bc exactly the time that the israelites would have left egypt and this was egypt at the time of the exodus this part of sudan and that's the oldest discovery inscription of yahweh discovered anywhere in the world and it's discovered in egypt and in his book unearthing the bible he'll have that with pictures and many other discoveries so check that out okay and i have one last question yes sir um there are also many that say that christianity stole religious concepts from other ancient civilizations such as the chemnit persian king's title of king of kings and lord of lords and the dying and resurrecting god from egypt as well as the roman emperor being the son of god how do we as christians get around such claims well you'd have to ver you'd have to investigate each one on a case-by-case basis and it wouldn't be the first time that the bible uses a phrase from somebody else to say no we are the true oh i get that right we're the true this is the true son of god you think caesar's the son of god no jesus is really the son of god that doesn't mean that it's false it means it's a it's a modern day polemic in fact this is what i think maybe genesis 1 is about because look genesis 1 is written by moses and the people had just come out of 400 years of slavery in egypt they're walking through the desert when they're walking through the desert they're not going i wonder how old this place is right that's not the question they're asking they're wondering is yahweh the true god or are the gods of egypt the true god well if you look at the egyptian creation story in the egyptian creation story their gods are somehow already in the world and then they somehow bring order to the chaos whereas the hebrew creation story is no no no god is outside the universe he creates the universe and he brings order to the chaos he doesn't even have to fight with anyone he's the true god so it seems the way that was written genesis 1 was a polemic against the egyptian creation story okay all right thank you all right thank you trey yeah you could just bend it down a little bit what's your name my name is jackson jackson go ahead sir um now i forgot my question okay um if there are other universes what was the point of making them because like assuming we are the only civilized people are you talking about other galaxies other galaxies oh okay well let me ask you a question if the if the universe ended at the cloud tops we'd probably look up and go this isn't any big deal right but when we look out and we realize that the number of stars out there are equivalent to sand grains and a hundred thousand earths we're starting to get the majesty of what the creator is like because we know god by his effects we can't know god directly i mean try and think of something infinite it's hard to think you can't do that but you can think about a finite thing that's really big like the universe and get some kind of analogous idea to what the infinite might be and i think that's why god one reason god created such a vast universe because he says look to the heavens if you want to know what i'm like look to the heavens does that make sense yeah okay and i have one more question go ahead jackson um how would you go about well i have a friend who is not a christian and um his whole argument is god doesn't know the things that i've done so how would you go god doesn't what god doesn't know the things that i've done so therefore he can't be real god doesn't know i would ask him how does he know god doesn't know that's what i say to him right it was just really like you see because if god is outside of time he sees the end from the beginning all at once he knows everything that your friend has done and everything he will do just like he knows everything you will do but you're still doing it freely and so if that being does exist and he's just which he is there's going to be a judgment so why would you want to be judged when you could be pardoned because somebody else took the punishment for you jesus did right yeah why wouldn't you want that why wouldn't anyone want that do you think why is he not wanting to be a christian i'm thinking as something to do with accountability probably you're probably right so ask him if christianity were true would you become a christian what do you think he would say he'd probably say i mean if it was true but then but then you feel like yeah just just not yeah just say if it was true would you become a christian you'd probably say yes but it's not true oh well it doesn't sound too open then does it see what you might say to him well why don't we investigate it together why don't we go through the evidence together would you do that see what he says all right yeah thanks jackson thanks for caring about your friend too yes sir hi um i'm george hey george turn that up just a little bit oh right here yeah there you go yes sir go ahead uh can i say hi to my mom please yeah hi mom oh she's right over here okay i don't know which camera okay that's why anyways uh yeah i've been following you for quite a while now and uh i really gotta thank you frank because i because of you i really upstarted in my journey in apologetics and now i'm just a big nerd in philosophy theology history so um anyway i guess my question is that um i just i've been looking to a lot of the arguments like the column contingency and the moral arguments and like those are all my favorite but i think the one argument that i've been kind of getting interested in that i find like really fascinating is the problem of induction like from what i understand is um basically the problem of like in the atheistic worldview where they can't really justify the indictive reasoning of basically the uniformity in nature and how they propose that um what's a better word um i think the question that was proposed by bertrand russell david hume um how they can't really justify inductive reasoning so i guess my question is it's just like do you have any resources or any books like you recommend that kind of dives deep into that or on inductive reasoning yeah well problem of adduction what is their problem of induction um well basically just um basically just like proposing that the uniformity in nature where they kind of hinge on that but through an atheistic worldview there's no justifiable reason from what i understand i mean is this something that you yeah well what you're speaking of the uniformity of nature is that in order for us to understand what happened in the past we have to assume the past has worked the same way then as it does now yeah right yeah so if uh napoleon comes across the rosetta stone and he sees those three languages in the rosetta stone he immediately knows that had to be an intelligent being because he's assuming that whenever they created the rosetta stone natural laws could not have done that right right only intelligence could do that okay if we can't assume the principle of uniformity in the past then we can't get out the past because we weren't there right so we have to assume the laws worked yesterday the way they do today that's the principle of uniformity gotcha and and my question for the atheist would be why is the universe so orderly why did when we put h2o that's like a church here too when we put h2o together you know two parts hydrogen one part oxygen we got water yesterday we do it today we get water again if we're here tomorrow we'll probably get water again why is that so consistent because this universe and the laws that govern it are the product of a mind an orderer that's the only way we can do science because if water didn't form that way yesterday then and we can't do cause and effect now we can't do cause and effect later if everything was chaos we couldn't we couldn't discover true cause and effect could we so that would be the problem i would present to an atheist how do you account for the orderliness of the universe in fact there was a paper written back in 1961 called the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics by eugene vigner i talk about it in the book stealing from god where he basically said why is this universe so well described by mathematics why can we discover how this universe work works by math yeah and you know what an answer he gave being an atheist i don't know but it seems to me it's mathematical because god is mathematical that his nature is orderly and that is imposed on its creation do you have any books or resources well you can start with stealing from god yeah and then uh i would look into on science you might look into stephen meyer you know who stephen meyer is i've heard of him yes uh look at his new book called the god hypothesis return of the god hypothesis all right all right thank you all right thank you yes sir hi my name is pk say again so um i'm actually not exactly a christian right now but it's i'd say i'm i'm a freshman in my faith right now okay good growing into it so far i had a small question like maybe it might be bouncing off of what you talked about today but how do you deal when you're angry at god it says like it says a lot of times even in psalm 37 where you say that says refrain from anger and forsake wrath fret not yourself it tends only to evil and like me personally like growing up the background i came from as well it talks a lot about like if if there's something wrong happening with you or there's something bad that's happened it's probably your mistake so god's probably punishing you for doing something that you might have done like maybe in the past or something that you're about to do maybe that's that's what you did wrong that's why you're paying the price for it it's kind of a kind of a karma view you mean exactly yeah but like when it's it talks about in christianity that god is never angry at you like there's always grace he always forgives you there's no boundaries between you and him once you believe in him completely but how does it work the opposite way when when you know god is such a powerful being like there's no one ever closer to him but how does it work the opposite way when you're the one who's angry at him well first of all you can be angry at god because many of the psalmists are angry at god like god where are you why is all this happening we haven't even been sinning and things aren't going well right god can handle your emotion i know this is going to sound weird but do you know that you can't hurt god by being mad at him and you can't help him by worshiping him yeah right he's an infinite being you can't add to an infinite being you can't take away from an infinite being so he can handle all your emotions it's okay to be mad at god but if you're mad at god you know what that means in your mind god exists you can't be mad at somebody that doesn't exist right yeah okay so god we we get mad at god because our expectations aren't met yeah so the question is what kind of expectations should we expect as a christian just loving him and interesting and what do we get back from him we may get disciplined that's uh hebrews chapter 12 we may get persecuted jesus said that if they persecuted me they're going to persecute you and paul said anyone who lives a faithful life in christ jesus will get persecuted we may receive good things too but all those things can work together for good because if things never went wrong for us by our own earthly natures or by our own earthly expectations we would never grow would we i mean think about if any of us in this room got whatever we wanted every time if i got whatever i wanted every time i'd be even more of a moral monster than i already am i'd become some sort of self-entitled celebrity who would pitch the hissy fit every time my water wasn't at 14.6 degrees right you you got to have obstacles and difficulty and people saying no in your life if you don't you're not going to grow i mean think of kids right what do we call kids who get everything they want spoiled why are they spoiled they get everything because their character is spoiled if you give a kid everything he or she wants you're going to ruin them you need to put boundaries you need to say no you need to make things difficult sometimes so when when things aren't going well according to our expectations god is still at work and if you read luke 13 luke 13 jesus basically says the tower that fell on the people at siloam that killed those 18 people or the galileans that pilate mixed their blood with the sacrifices he said do you think those people were worse than you there were sinners in you and that's why they were killed he said no but unless you repent the same thing's going to happen to you in other words he's not saying that because things go bad it's because you might you may have done something evil well maybe you did and that's why it went bad but that's not necessarily the reason there may be a thousand other reasons that this bad thing has happened but god can still bring good from it so it's not a one-to-one relationship that you know if you do x god's gonna necessarily do y there's something called the ripple effect out there you know about the ripple effect right yeah that everything that happens now ripples forward into the future to affect trillions of other things in fact if you think about the ripple effect in your own lives think about all the ripples that needed to take place for you to be alive today your parents had to meet their parents had to meet their parents had to meet that and all those things that caused them to meet had to happen there's so many ripples out there that we can't keep track of and of course god can so when we see a ripple that comes along and we go or something happens we go i can't see any good coming from this well of course we can't we can see this much of reality god sees the whole thing he can see the end from the beginning it's an infinite horizon that's right but it's okay to be mad at god but it's not a good long-term strategy hopefully okay all right i just wanted to let you know all right thank you so much yes sir hey my name is logan logan go ahead sir i'm a christian i just wanted to get a little closer if you would logan go ahead i want to know how you answer the question why is christianity the only right religion and then specifically why is islam wrong okay well it's not the only right religion meaning that christianity has everything right and everybody has everything wrong other world religions have some things right islam has has right that we ought to pray we ought to give to the poor i mean there is god does exist these are all right things but where they differ from christianity if christianity is true then they're wrong why do i not think islam is true because i don't think there's any evidence that muhammad was a prophet nor did muhammad give any evidence he was a prophet why because muhammad said i don't do miracles i just warn people there's only one god it's in the quran it says this the miracles attributed to muhammad come much later in the hadith the written traditions of what muhammad said and did and they were written about 150 years after he's dead and many of those so-called miracles are obvious rip-offs of the biblical miracles like instead of changing water to wine muhammad changed water to milk that kind of stuff right okay even many muslim scholars will say they're not many of them are invalid so i don't think that islam has given me any reason to say that christianity is or islam is true in christianity's faults in fact in surah 4 verse 157 this is the fourth chapter of the quran verse 157 it says that jesus never died he was taken straight to heaven now the only people in the world serious people in the world who study this stuff who don't believe jesus was crucified are the muslims atheistic scholars like bart airman they say if there's one established fact from history as jesus was crucified jews believe jesus was crucified christians believed jesus was crucified it's only the muslims that don't believe jesus was crucified why because they're getting a so-called revelation 600 plus years later that tells them that but there's no reason to believe that it's true when you have eyewitnesses from 600 years before that who saw jesus die and rise again thank you all right thanks yes sir go ahead uh my name is andrew i'm just curious how do you defend the argument against christianity um that goes something along the lines of uh the god of the bible's not worse not worth worshiping because of the atrocities he's committed in the old testament okay first question is what do you mean by atrocities uh just like uh let's say all the murder or the all the people he killed the what the the murder or like him killing people okay question when god kills somebody does he murder them i would say no but i'm saying like how do you defend well that's why i'd ask them is is god when god kills somebody whether he just pulls his hand away and we die naturally or he says the canaanites must die is that murder for god no no because he's the creator he can resurrect life right so it's not murder for god it's judgment god gets to decide when we die because he's the creator and he's the only one that can resurrect us so i always ask people when you say find the canaanite situation in the bible does god just wake up like some sort of cosmic mafia boss and say canaanites i want him dead no he's given them 400 years of warning and when they continue to do these evil practices such as sacrificing their children to molec he finally tells the israelites you need to drive these people out of the land and so he does do that he drives them out of the land many of them are killed many of them just ran away okay that's judgment that's not murder in fact if christianity is true people don't really die they just change location they just go from this location to the to the eternal location and it's up to god when that happens whether it's two years old or 82 years old that's up to him so no god has the authority to do that and i would ask people because i had this happen recently where a young woman got up there and said you know i just can't believe in the god of the old testament he would kill people and i i went through all this and i finally asked her i said well where are you on the abortion issue and she said i'm pro-choice and i said let me ask you this why is it that when god plays god in the old testament he decides who lives and dies he's immoral but when you play god here on earth and you decide who lives and dies through abortion that's somehow your moral right i mean why is it that we have the right to kill people but god doesn't it's basically the question so i find people who make these arguments very inconsistent i would ask what moral standard are you using and by the way that's another question you could ask too is by what moral standard are any of these atrocities if there's no god right oh yeah and then i have another question how do you deal with the problem of like natural evils like natural disasters okay well the question is where do first of all a question like that assumes that people are valuable right yeah and that people ought not die young is that necessarily true i would say so that ought not die oh no we don't want him to die young but some people do we live in a fallen world the the natural disasters go back to a fallen world just like moral moral uh issues you know there are two kinds of evil there's a kind of evil people do to one another and it's kind of evil that occurs to us just through natural disasters and what i would say is is that natural disasters do occur we don't always know why they occur and that's why jesus used both a natural disaster in luke 13 and a moral person an immoral person doing evil to somebody else pilate in that to say look these people didn't die because they're worse sinners than you but unless you repent these same things will happen to you so i would talk about the fact that we live in a fallen world and i would also say this that if you notice the kinds of miracles that jesus does they're in four categories he's sinless that's one of our problems right he has power over nature that's another problem nature can kill us earthquakes hurricanes tsunamis he has power over sickness he heals people and he has power over death he raises people from the dead those are the four things that make this a fallen world sin nature sickness and death and jesus comes along and he says i can fix all of those things i'm the messiah and so he did he does now we still live in this fallen world because god is waiting for the full number of gentiles to come in before he comes back and takes us all into eternity but jesus isn't doing random miracles he's doing miracles in those four categories to say i'm the one that can fix what's wrong with this world he's the messiah the savior thank you all right thanks by the way um a book that you want to get on some of these old testament atrocities and that kind of thing is paul kopan's book is god a moral monster check it out okay all right thank you yes sir what's your name hey i'm ej and i happen to be a big fan of you and i'm also a big fan of god um and you got and you got your bengal colors on right there too yeah very sharp so i i think i have three questions the first question is um if everybody's worth saving then what's up with um what's his name satan right um what's the need for hell if you know god the god of mercy can you know forgive satan well if satan doesn't want to be forgiven if satan doesn't want to be in heaven then god is not going to force him into heaven against his will so hell shows that man is free and god is love why because god is not going to force people into his presence against their will and he's going to separate himself from them and that's why ultimate reality is going to be two places heaven with god hell separated from god but love requires free will and god can't force anyone to love him because then they wouldn't have free will forced love is not love it's a contradiction so he has to give us all the free will to love him but that also gives us the freedom to reject him as well and then speaking of free will if god gave us this thing called free will and he happens to be omniscient or he knows everything and there's this thing called destiny is there really free will yes because just because god knows what's going to happen doesn't mean that he's forcing you to do it let me give you an example of this let's suppose a young woman has a new baby and she puts the baby down to sleep one night and she knows at some point during the night that baby's going to wake up and want to eat right yeah okay but because she knows that does that does that mean she's forcing the baby to wake up no knowledge does not imply causation god knows what we're going to do because he's outside of time and he's all-knowing but that doesn't mean he's forcing us to do those things but you did say that as a christian it's always good to submit your personal mission to the passion of god yes isn't your personal mission synonymous with free will yes you can choose to submit your personal mission to god's mission or you can decide to go your own way okay and that's what a lot of people do and even christians we do we don't follow god perfectly of course we don't that's why we need a savior and then i got the last question um in the quran abraham is mentioned as ibrahim and jacob is mentioned as yakubu and there were a whole lot of people mentioned jesus for example was mentioned as um i think isa yeah you're right yeah so if that is so when we have some biblical characters in um the quran why can't we consider the islamic god to be the christian god because the islamic god is is strictly monotheistic whereas the christian god is triune and if you ask a muslim scholar and a christian scholar are they the same god they will both say no for that very reason one of the greatest sins in islam is called shirk that's putting partners with god and muslims think you're somehow putting a partner with god if you believe in a trinity but i think the trinity solves problems it doesn't create them because without a trinity how do you have eternal love if there's just god and no one to love in a strictly monotheistic being you don't have love but if you have a lover a loved one and a spirit of love you can have love for all eternity in a trinity all right all right thank you sir all right thank you yes ma'am what's your name i'm katie say again katie katie go ahead katie get a little closer if you wanted that mike i have a friend who is a muslim and we debate occasionally and he came up with this question that i haven't been able to come up with a sufficient answer for um basically it's the argument that uh how do you respond to the islamic belief that jesus can't be god because god can't die okay let's let's deal with the trinity for a second because that that's really the answer to it because the trinity as i mentioned before is actually solves the problem rather than creates a problem think of uh and there's no perfect illustration of the trinity but i think this is the best we can do right think of one triangle one divine nature and there's three corners to that triangle right you have a father a son and a holy spirit this is one being with three persons in it but the son jesus has a human nature that doesn't intermingle with the divine nature but the son this one person has two natures he has a divine nature and a human nature so when jesus died on the cross which nature died the human just the human nature god didn't die jesus's human nature died and the only way that you can bridge a gap between god and man is to have a being that is perfect on both sides of that gap so jesus is a perfect human nature he doesn't sin he's never sinned and he also has a divine nature so he can bring the two together and so whenever you ask a question about jesus you always have to ask two questions did jesus die as man yes as god no did jesus get hungry as man yes as god no did jesus know all things as god yes as man no right you always have to ask two questions about jesus because he's got two natures you could also look at it this way that the trinity is one what with three who's you got who won the father who two the son and who three the holy spirit but who too the son has two what's he's got what one the divine nature and what two the human nature so whenever you're talking about who to you gotta ask which one are you talking about what one or what too see this is the abbott and costello theology we have here okay so so basically his human nature died god nature yes god's nature did not die so you could say it's a good question but since jesus says two natures he he doesn't that now you could use even an analogy from a movie you've got have you seen the movie avatar yeah okay well okay well it's it's a popular movie and in this movie there's this guy who's in a wheelchair and they put him in this machine and when he puts it but they put him in this machine in this in this space village outside of the of this the the spaceship he turns into an avatar a creature outside so he's one person with two natures he's got a human nature inside the spaceship and an avatar nature outside the spaceship and i mean that's just a fiction fictional version really of one person with two natures okay all right thank you thanks katie hey it's peter again hello again all right last question with peter all right second to last question oh we have a buck guy with us look at that we got oh we got to go sorry peter let's talk privately i'll be back at the book table if anybody wants to talk briefly sorry we got to go thank you all for being here

Channel: Cross Examined

Views: 33,390

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

Id: 0WmB5cHJ94s

Length: 170min 15sec (10215 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021