John Lennox What is the strongest argument supporting the existence of God?

okay well let's look at what do you feel is the strongest argument supporting the existence of God well strong for whom that's an important question if somebody's coming to me brokenhearted because they've just lost a relative through illness there's no point in saying my dear just look at the fine-tuning of nature now I mean that seriously I was asked by an atheist professor of philosophy at Oxford to address his students who he told me were all atheists like him and he said we're going to grill you but I hope you're going to use your strongest argument what I said if you know what my strongest argument is good to be you'd better give it to me so he said thus if I'm ever to become a Christian the argument that would convince me most is fine-tuning it's strong for some people other people don't care six minutes about it they're not interested in it they don't understand its power in its force which is great people need all kinds of different arguments some need an intellectual argument because they're bothered there's something they don't understand and they need facts for example somebody's bothered about the existence of Jesus that's very simply dealt with all you have to do is read a bit of ancient history other people are bothered because they are immersed in various aspects of the problem of evil and pain and you don't deal with that by discussing Genesis 1 now I mean that quite seriously one of the questions here which I might as well deal with as we're going through is what's the hardest argument you face well the answer to that's obvious it's the problem of evil and pain that is the hardest question any of us face and we need to think about it because if we've nothing to say about it we're as bad as the atheists they have by definition nothing to say because atheism is a hopeless philosophy by definition there is no ultimate hope and that's why the Bible talks about it at the heart of our Christianity is not a set of physical laws it's a there's a cross and that is answering a big question it's telling us at the very least that God didn't remain distant from the problem of suffering but himself has become part of it that's a very different kind of answer than arguments from nature or the philosophy of science so there are all kinds of things that depends who's asking the question and we need to be sensitive you see sometimes very often I find you don't answer the question you answer the question or you try to find out where they're coming from where they're hurting what the problem is I never forget first learning this at Cambridge and college at dinner they used to provoke me of course because they like mocking my Irish Christianity and one night a chap but he was a very big shoppers as far as I remember and a Christian had asked me to explain why I believe in the resurrection I was trying to keep my voice down but of course the lore I put my voice the quieter the table became and suddenly a student funked the table to all the spoons and forks jumped and he said that's the most preposterous nonsense I've ever heard how can you believe that rubbish so I turned around and said well I said you feel really strongly about this he said I do I said tell me what did you make of Paul's evidence when you read it he said what I said well I presume you feel strongly because you've got an evidence base well did Paul talk about it I said come round for coffee so half an hour later he said to me do you know my parents shoved this stuff down my throat and I don't want it now I said that's the first honest thing you've said to me tonight half an hour later became a Christian and he has served the Lord for the last 50 years you see I got to the real issue his anger was an outburst against his parents that had nothing to do with intellectual arguments so I'm trying to help you see that this question has no single argument

Channel: C. S. Lewis Institute

Views: 327,980

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Id: q-zWCd6Dndw

Length: 4min 51sec (291 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2019