Dr Greg Bahnsen - Taking it to the Streets: Worldviews in Collision (Part 3)

Give you a headache last night with all that material that you had to learn. We're going to be going through quite a bit more today. It's my hope that I can illustrate for you the methodology that I taught you last night and that somehow, through all the different illustrations, that you will discern that principle at work of going for the presuppositional points in your opponent's argument, reducing them to absurdity, so that the unbeliever has no place to stand in launching an attack upon your Christian faith. We ended last night looking at Proverbs 26, which teaches us that we have to answer fools in two ways. First of all, we have to answer them antithetically. We have to set our position over against theirs, not using their foolishness as our foundation. We don't want to go and say to the fool, well, I'm going to agree with you on all your basic assumptions and then still try to show you that, that you're wrong about Christianity. If you answer a fool according to his folly, you're going to be disliked unto him. The other thing we have to do is to give the fool a little bit of his own medicine. You do answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceits. It turns out that the unbeliever is not simply lost morally, not simply lost spiritually or for eternity. The unbeliever, according to the teaching of the Bible, is lost in every aspect of his being. Unbelievers are not all right intellectually. It's not as though they have their philosophy worked out and everything is okay in terms of the way they think. But then they don't live up to what they know to be true. The Bible teaches us that sin has affected everything about man. And so you're going to see in the unbelievers thinking that he or she is lost as well. And that's not usually the way we look at things. We approach the unbeliever as though, well, they can think perfectly all right, they've got things wired, as it were, but then their life is not in good shape and they're under the judgment of God. Well, let me tell you something. They're under the judgment of God in terms of the way they think as well. And that judgment comes to expression not simply in the hereafter, where God will judge every vain thought, but the vain thinking of the unbeliever is judged in this life as well, as unbelievers are unable to make sense out of life, unable to make sense out of reality and how they know the things that they know. And I'd like to begin this morning by giving you a series of illustrations of the presuppositions of the unbeliever coming into conflict with each other. Unbelievers are not able to have a view of what reality is like, how we know what we know and how we should live our lives. They're not able to have views in those areas that really will work together. Not everyone thinks clearly and not everyone thinks specifically about such matters as what is the nature of reality and how do we know what we know and how should we live our lives? And you shouldn't expect that the unbeliever you're talking to will be able to openly state explicitly lay out for you what his presuppositions are. But as I taught you last night, everybody has them. They may not be able to state them, they may not think in those terms, but they are using presuppositions. You know, people were breathing air long before scientists discovered that we breathe air, okay? And people use presuppositions in their thinking even when they have no idea what you're talking about. When you, if you were to say, what are your presuppositions? They'd say, is that a disease or something? They've got their presuppositions. And you must listen closely to what the unbeliever says so that you can figure out where he or she is coming from. We have to listen closely to the critics of the faith, find out what they are saying, and seek to identify what they take to be most basic about the nature of this world in which we live, what they think about how they came to know these things, and then how they should live their lives in terms of it. And once you identify the underlying presuppositions of the unbeliever on a case by case basis, when you know where this particular unbeliever is coming from, then you'll be able to give an answer that's intelligent and relevant. And I assure you, if you work at this, it will be a persuasive one. Now, it may not change their heart. I want to just reinforce what I said last night about the grace of God. You're not able to change people's hearts. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. But you should be able to close their mouths so that what they profess turns to absurdity. Even though they say that they are wise, as the Bible says, they become fools. And you'll be able to show the Foolishness of the unbeliever. And again, that isn't to say the unbeliever isn't going to walk away saying, oh, well, I don't believe that, or I don't care about that. But the unbeliever won't have a position to stand upon, or as I said last night, won't have a gun to use to shoot his bullets at you. So let's begin. First, illustration. Sometimes there's tension within a person's ethical perspective. And I used an illustration like this last night, but I'll repeat it this morning. It's good for us to learn this. Imagine that your neighbor expresses this outlook from that beer commercial. You only go around once in life, so grab for all the gusto you can get. Your neighbor says pleasure is the highest value in life. You live for pleasure. And there's no accountability after this life either. So go ahead and live life to its fullest. And when all is over, that's it. You're not going to answer to God for the way that you've lived. You realize that's what the beer commercial was telling you. Isn't that offensive? Isn't that horrible? That's not just a light little ditty. Thing is grab for all the gusta you can get. You know, you only go around once in life. But if you have a neighbor who believes that way, then you need to listen to your neighbor to see what else he believes about the way people live in this world. Let's say your neighbor is especially incensed over a well documented case of police brutality. Or he's incensed over the oppression and invasion of a weaker nation by some tyrant somewhere in the world. Or let's say that your neighbor's upset about the light set sentences that are handed down for rapists, or the bribes that are taken by government officials. Or your neighbor is really upset about racial discrimination. Well, you take your pick. The fact is, your neighbor cannot bring those two views together. He cannot say, grab for all the gusto you can get. You're not going to answer to anybody after this life anyway, and then turn around and be upset when somebody else in this world grabs for all the gusto he or she can get in a way that he doesn't like. You see, he didn't have to go to college to figure that out. You can sit there and just say, now wait a minute, this doesn't match up. These two things don't comport with each other. If you're going to be consistent, you say to your neighbor, if you really believe you should grab for all the gusto you can get. Then you ought to commend policemen that beat up people because they're grabbing for all the gusto they can get. You ought to commend tyrants in this world that invade weaker nations because they're grabbing all the gusto they can get. You see, your neighbor is going to say, well, I didn't mean it that way. Now, what are you going to do when your neighbor says that? You're going to say, oh, okay, well, then, if you didn't mean it that way, then I'm glad to hear that. I mean, so you're not. You don't have such a bad position. No, that's when you're going to press your advantage. You're going to say, oh, well, then how would you mean that? Can you even make sense of that, living in this world? And your neighbor, maybe for the first time in his life or her life, is going to have to come to the realization, I've got to work out a consistent ethical position. Let's look at a different kind of illustration attention within what we would call the epistemological perspective of the person to whom you're speaking. Epistemology deals with the theory of knowledge. How do we know what we know? What's the nature of knowledge? What's its limits? And so for. And so let's imagine you have a friend that's critical of your Christian faith, saying that you're just a superstitious and a gullible person. You're willing to believe anything. These Sunday school stories, you fall for that kind of thing. According to your friend or your neighbor, you shouldn't believe anything that's not verified by observation or more broadly, by your sense experiences. He will tell you, seeing is believing. And so I'm not going to believe anything that I don't see or that somebody didn't see and then told me about it. Seeing is believing. And the problem with Christians, according to your opponent, is that they believe things simply on the alleged authority of God speaking in the Bible. He says, you shouldn't believe what you haven't verified with your own senses. You Christians believe these things in the Bible, and that's not appropriate. And so you discuss this further with your friend. And one of the things you want to ask him is how he came to hold the view that knowledge is limited to observational experience. I know you don't usually talk that way, okay, but that's what it comes down to. You say, well, okay, you believe that seeing is believing. How did you come to believe that? Some of you are smiling. You're already seeing the noose being developed, right? Seeing is believing. Only believe those things that you can touch, that you can hear, that you can taste, that you can see with your eyes. Now, you want to ask your neighbor, how did you come to believe that? Let's say your neighbor says, well, I've been studying in the library and I've got some books on philosophy, and I've come to that conclusion. You say, oh, so did you see the truth that you can only know what you see, or did some book convince you of that? You feel the tension there. Your neighbor is following some authority, just like you follow some authority. His authority is the book from the library. Your authority is the Bible. Now, it looks like we're not really all that different, are we? Or let's say your neighbor says, well, I've been taking a course at the local college, and I have a professor who's convinced me all knowledge is based upon observation. You say, well, did this professor show you that all knowledge was based on observation? I mean, did you observe that fact with your eyes? Well, no, but the professor convinced me. And so what you have is your neighbor following an authority, the professor, and you're following an authority, allegedly God speaking in the Bible, and we're, you know, back to the same level again. But you want to go further than that. You want to go further than showing that your neighbor follows some authority of a book or a professor or something. You want to say, well, let's just look at what you have claimed, that all knowledge is limited to observation. But that's not something you can see. Can anybody see that in the room here? That all knowledge is limited to observation? You see, you can see particular things, particular material things. We can't see all the particular material things, though. That's an interesting fact. That subatomic particles are supposed to be material, but we can't see them. But let's forget about that. Let's keep this easy. We can see that piano, we can see that flag, and we can see a light, and we can see the ceiling and the floor and so forth. But you know what you don't see? You don't see some generalization about all knowledge. No one can see all knowledge, nor can anyone see that all knowledge is limited to what you can observe. That's not one of the things you observe. So let's go back and put this together for our friend. Our friend says knowledge is limited to what you can see. It turns out that the Statement that knowledge is limited to what you can see is not one of the things you see. And therefore you can't know that statement. And so if the unbeliever is to be believed when he says seeing is believing, then he does not have a foundation for saying seeing is believing. Or if you want it wrapped up real tight, what you can say to the unbeliever is if what you're saying is true, then you could never know that it's true. Because the very thing you're saying excludes the possibility of you knowing that. Now, I'm taking time on this kind of thing because this is what you'll run into. People will say that especially if they haven't thought things through. If they haven't become sophisticated through some philosophy class or reading a book, they'll just very easily say, well, if you don't see it, you can't believe it. And then you got to come back and say, well, did you see the truth that you can only believe the things you see. Let's talk about another kind of tension that you might find in the unbelievers thinking. This is a tension with respect to the nature of reality itself, or what we call in philosophy, metaphysics. The first illustration dealt with ethics, the second with how we know what we know, theory of knowledge. And now let me talk about the nature of reality itself. Let's imagine that a professor at school teaches a behavioristic view of man. You all know what behaviorism is. The claim that all human behavior is determined by antecedent factors, that all human behavior is predictable. If you just know the factors that go into the decisions that human beings make, essentially human beings are stimulus response mechanisms. And everything we do is based on the conditioning that we've had as we've grown up and the culture in which we live and so forth. Everything that we decide and everything that we do is thus predictable. Well, if all human behavior is predictable, as your professor will be quick to point out, then this idea of free will is an illusion. You may think that you have these options out there that you choose from. But if we knew all the factors that went into your conditioning and all the stimulus that you were receiving right now, we could tell you exactly the decision you would make. Now imagine further that when it comes time for you to take your final exam from this professor who has taught you a behavioristic view of human nature, that when you take your final exam, you cheat on the exam and the professor catches you. The professor is indignant. The professor insists on imposing a strict penalty. He's going to flunk you in this course because of what you've done. Now, if he does so, doesn't he expose an open conflict within his views of human nature by punishing you? He assumes that you were free to prepare for the examination, to answer the questions on your own, and you could have chosen to ride the coattails of somebody else more efficiently, let their effort get you through the course, that you were free to choose between those things, and that you chose to cheat instead of to do your own work. But you see, if what the professor taught you in the course is true, you can't help doing what you do. If you could not help doing what you did, given all your previous conditioning and all the variables of your environment, if you couldn't help but act this way, then it's senseless to punish you for what you did, very predictably what you did. And yet that's precisely what the professor in this class is trying to do to you. On the one hand, he teaches you human nature is behavior, and on the other hand, he treats you as though you're responsible because you made a choice. You can't have it both ways. Or imagine that we have a conflict between a person's view of how we know the things we know and what the nature of reality is. Maybe you have a colleague at work who graduated from college and fancies himself somewhat intellectual about matters of religion, and he's come to the conclusion that there is no God. There are no spiritual values, no spiritual realities, there are no spiritual forces or events. There's nothing but this material world in which we live. The physical world is all there is to reality, he's concluded. And then this colleague tells you it's intellectually impossible to accept the Christian outlook because Christianity has contradictions within it. Christianity teaches that God is one, God is three. Christianity teaches that God is all powerful, that he's all loving, and yet there's evil in this world. How can you have all these things put together now? Maybe you've had that experience, you have somebody who's come to atheistic conclusions about life, and yet they start pressing you about the contradictions within your Christian faith. Now, one of the things you can do, and I think you should do, is to point out that the alleged contradictions are not truly contradictory. You can say, they say, from a Christian perspective, the way in which God is one and the way in which God is three is not the same. So we're not contradicting ourselves. There's a great mystery there. But it's not the Mystery of logical contradiction. It's the mystery of something that is transcendent, that goes beyond human experience, and there's nothing logically wrong with that. You may not believe that such a God exists, but you cannot logically say that's a problem from within the Christian perspective. Now, you can give that kind of answer, but I would hope that you would press further than just to give that answer. Because you want to go on the offensive now. You want to go after what your unbelieving friend has been saying. You want to examine his presuppositions, and what are the two presuppositions that will come to your mind? On the one hand, he says reality is only physical, and on the other hand, you're not allowed to contradict yourself. That is to say, there are laws of logic that you've got to obey if you're going to know what you're talking about. Well, the veiled problem that I illustrated for you already last night is that in the thinking of this colleague of yours, reality is always physical. And yet there's something else. The laws of logic that we have to live up to, which are not physical. You can't have it both ways. If you're going to say the world is only made up of physical components, only made up of matter, you can't turn around and then appeal to something that's not made up of matter. You can't appeal to any kind of laws, laws of ethics or laws of logic either. So you may want to point out to your unbelieving friend that it's very strange that you're concerned about logical contradictions in the Christian faith, because on your view of the world, logical contradictions aren't anything. Logic isn't anything, on your view of the world. And so we see in case after case after case, the unbeliever cannot put together his view of the world, cannot make sense out of life, cannot integrate what he thinks about reality, what he thinks about knowledge, or what he thinks about how we should live our lives. If you have your Bibles, please turn with me this morning to Psalm 14. Just picking up from these illustrations. I'd like to talk to you now about atheists and other fools. Psalm 14. We'll look just at the first three verses. David says, the fool hath said in his heart there is no God. They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none that doeth good. Jehovah looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand that did seek after God. They are all gone aside. They are together become filthy. There is none that doeth good. No, not one. Three things about atheism are taught to us here, and I would like you to get them into your notes. And the first one may not be so obvious. You might not have thought about it this way, but what David tells us here is that atheism is motivated by moral considerations. David points to the moral motivation of atheism when people say there is no God. The reason why they are doing that, what is pushing them along to do that, is moral in character. Now, it may surprise you because many times atheists give us the impression that the reason they don't believe in God is intellectual in character and they offer intellectual arguments against God and so forth. I understand that's what's out there for you to see. But behind the scenes, the Bible tells you the atheist is motivated by moral considerations. The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. And what's the first thing David says right after that? They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none that doeth good. Stop and think about it. If you have not done what is good, if you have done what is abominable in the sight of God, if you are under the wrath and the curse of God and you know that you have that coming, then you have a motivation to pretend there is no God. You see, you practice the ostrich technique, right? You have some kind of opposition out there that you're afraid of. Put your head in the sand and pretend it's not there. That's what David is telling you. He says, the fool says in his heart there is no God. And he says that because he is so wicked, not because he's so smart. I want you to have the confidence that when you deal with atheists, you may not be able to say this, although sometimes I do say this directly to atheists. You may not want to make that your lead point, but you need to know that this person doesn't have good intellectual reasons for not believing in God. This person is running from God. This person doesn't want to acknowledge God. Or to put it another way, the atheist has an axe to grind. He has every reason he's motivated to not want to come to a conclusion that's going to make him uncomfortable. Secondly, notice what David says about atheism in this passage. The fool hath said in his heart there is no God. What is the intellectual character of atheism? Now, if we were to have brought in this weekend some of the Leading professors and writers in our day that argue against the existence of God. It would be very easy, I think, for you to sit there and think, well, the reason people, you know, are atheists, the intellectual character of atheists, is that they're so smart. You know, now they may have made mistakes, but they're really, you know, intellectual about this. That isn't what David says. David says when a person says there is no God, he's acting like a fool. And it's the fool foolishness of your atheist friends that you're going to be able to expose if you just keep talking and asking them what they believe about reality and how they know what they know and how they should live their lives. Atheism is not only motivated by moral considerations. Atheism is intellectually foolish. And the third thing I want you to see about atheism this morning is that the atheist project is always unsuccessful. The outcome of the atheist. What is the atheist project? What is the atheist trying to do? The atheist is trying to run from God. The atheist is trying to build a roof over his head so that God's revelation cannot get in. The atheist doesn't want to acknowledge the existence of God, and so he's going to use all of his foolish intellect to try to come up with arguments against it. The third thing you need to see then is that that project is always unsuccessful. Turn in your bibles to Romans 1, 1825. Romans 1, 1825. Paul says, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God manifested it unto them. Because God is communicating to everyone who lives in this world. Everyone knows God's existence. Everyone knows the living and true God. They may suppress that, they may unrighteously distort what they know, and so forth, but the fact is, God has communicated it. For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity, in order that they may be without excuse. Because knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless heart was darkened. Notice that Paul says, knowing God, they did all these things. It isn't as though they did all these things. And so now they don't know God. They do know God. That's the very beginning of the process. And then they start running from it. Knowing God, they don't glorify him, they don't give thanks, but instead become vain in their reasoning and their senseless heart is darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, of birds, four footed beasts and creeping things, wherefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts unto uncleanness that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves. We're seeing that very process coming to its fruition in our culture today and the open advocacy of the homosexual lifestyle. And then verse 25. For that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie. The Bible teaches you that atheism is foolish in its intellectual character and that the atheist project is always unsuccessful. They know God, they try to suppress that. They try to distort that with unrighteous techniques. In the end, they exchange the truth for a lie. They don't want to hold God in their consciousness. They'll do anything they can to try to get rid of the knowledge of God. This is what we call self deception. The atheist deceives himself, the atheist deceives herself that there is no God. Because if there's a God, I'm in big trouble. Now let me ask you this. When you have children who are trying to rationalize their disobedience, do you find them usually come right out and admit what their motivations are? Is that what happens with your children? You come home and you find something has been broken in the house, somebody's been running around or roughhousing where they shouldn't be. And then your children have these remarkable excuses. You know, about the neighbor's dog that got into the house and what could you do, right? You say, is that right? That dog got. How'd the dog get into the house? Oh, the back door was left open. Is that right? Now, as you're going through this process with your child, making up the excuses for how the vase got broken, do you expect the child's going to come out and say, now you have to understand, mom, the reason I'm giving you these excuses is because I don't want you to know that I'm at fault and I don't want you to punish me. And so now let's go on with our story. Now, the dog got in the house and was running around and da, da, da, of course not when people are rationalizing. They don't come out and admit that they're rationalizing. And if you know very much about adult behavior, and we can make fun of children doing this, but if you know much about adult behavior, you realize that adults get so good at rationalizing they even fool themselves sometimes. They can even talk themselves into believing the lie that they're telling because they don't want to admit something about themselves. What if we have a mother who. She's a single mother, she's raising a child and she has only one child. Her little Johnny is her pride and joy. And she thinks this boy is just. He's an angel, he's just the greatest. But the teachers at school don't have that view of Johnny. Teachers at school see what a little hellion he is. They have trouble disciplining him. They even know that he's mean spirited. He steals lunch money from children and so forth. Well, eventually the principal calls in Mrs. Jones, we'll call her, and explains that if Johnny doesn't straighten up, they'll have no alternative but to expel him from school. And Mrs. Jones gets very defensive. My little Johnny wouldn't do that kind of thing. You're wrong. Somebody's lying about him. Well, no, Mrs. Jones, actually the teacher saw him do it. Well, she's had it in for Johnny for a long time. Now you're chuckling out there, but you know that what I'm saying is true. People do this. And so now Johnny, he kind of ups the ante a bit. He not only steals lunch money from children, he starts doing very vicious things. Maybe he puts razor blades in their atlas or something. I mean, he's a terrible boy. Now Mrs. Jones is called in and told that they have to expel him from school and so forth. Does she believe that her little Johnny is wrong? No, she says, well, you're just doing this to get even because I didn't agree with you last time. You've had it in for Johnny. I'm taking him out of this school and I'm going to put him in another school. And it isn't long before the other school starts making reports about Johnny. And Mrs. Jones, rather than saying, wow, maybe I went out on a limb defending this boy, her little angel. Instead she says, that other school called you, didn't they? They put an evil thought in your mind about my Johnny. So she takes him out of that school, puts him in another school. Now all the while Mrs. Jones tells her neighbors how wonderful her boy is, how she just loves him he's just a charming child. He's so good, so helpful and so forth. But the neighbors notice something about Mrs. Jones. She never allows Johnny to be in a room with her purse by himself. She always makes sure that she has her purse with her and. And that Johnny's not around it all by himself. Now let me ask you, does Mrs. Jones believe that she's the mother of a good child or does she believe she's the mother of a delinquent child? Which does she believe? Be careful, because either answer, if you choose one of them, is going to be wrong. You know that either answer is wrong because there's evidence for both of those beliefs. She knows that her child is a hellion. That's why there's all this rationalization, outrageous excuses for why the teachers are turning in her child and so forth. You know that she believes her child is a hellion. She doesn't want him around her purse and so forth. And yet, on the other hand, there's evidence that she thinks Johnny's this wonderful boy. She always sticks up for him, praises him to the neighbors and so forth. Wouldn't you call that a case of self deception? Here's a person who believes something about herself, that she's the mother of a bad child, but she doesn't want to believe that. And so she does all these other sorts of things to bring herself to believe she's the mother of a good child. And so children rationalize, and sometimes we can be humored by the way in which they make up excuses. Adults get very refined at rationalizing, so much so that they can even bring themselves to believe what are lies really to believe the falsehoods that they are propagating for others. And the atheist is very much like that. The atheist has come up with rationalizations and excuses for not believing in God's existence and has actually convinced himself that that's what he thinks. There is no God. But Paul tells us in Romans 1 that the atheist in his heart of hearts does believe in God. He just won't admit it. He can't bring it out. He cannot thank God for what God has made possible in his life. He doesn't want to own up to God because he's been suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. And in the end he exchanges the truth of God for a lie. So you need to know these things when you're talking to your atheist friends or colleagues. You need to know, here are the three points again, that atheism is motivated by moral considerations, not rational considerations. You need to know. Secondly, that the rational considerations of the atheist are foolish according to God. And if you think God knows everything, you should believe that God knows everything. If he tells you they're foolish, you can believe that. Count on it. That if you push, no matter how much the extent exterior of the atheist seems tough, intellectually sound, if you just push, you're going to find a marshmallow there. The intellectual position of the atheist is foolish. And thirdly, you need to know that the atheist is always unsuccessful in trying to get rid of God in his consciousness. He always will know God because he's the creature of God and God has made himself known to the atheist. So how can we put this into practice, this idea that the atheist is actually a believer? He believes in God in his heart of hearts, but he doesn't want to admit it. Atheists will often tell you that the most difficult problem Christians have in justifying their position is what's called the problem of evil. The problem of evil goes something like this. According to Christian teaching, God is all powerful and God is also all good. Now a being that is completely good will eliminate evil to whatever degree he can. And a being that is all powerful can eliminate all evil because he has the power to do so. So if Christianity is true, if God is all good and all powerful, there should be no evil. However, there is evil in this world and therefore Christianity is wrong. That's what we call the problem of evil. If it's not worked out for you premise by premise and just that way by your unbelieving friend, you've still heard the problem of evil repeatedly. If God is good, why did this child have to die? If God is good, why is there war? If God is good, why is there this flood? And on and on and on. Unbelievers will tell you you can't believe what the Bible has to say. Because there's evil, there's wicked things in this world, and according to the teaching of the Bible, God should be able to deal with that. He doesn't. So he's not all good or he's unable to deal with it, in which case he's not all powerful. So you can't have it both ways. You can't have an all good God and a God that is all powerful and have the existence of evil. That is probably the most common objection to Christianity. There are plenty of others, but I think this comes up more often than not. Remember one evening I was on a radio call in show, the Dennis Prager show out in Southern California, and the format There is. You have a Protestant and a Roman Catholic and a Jew all on stage, and people call in with their questions, and you get these different perspectives, perspectives. And then sometimes we get into arguments there in the studio and so forth and so on. And I don't remember how it came up, but at some point in the discussion in the studio, I had occasion to say something about adoring God. And somebody called in, and they were just livid about my talking about adoring God. And so we want to find out what's wrong. This person apparently was on a jury that week in some courtroom in Los Angeles and had seen evidence of a particularly terrible case of child molestation. And so this person is describing for me, you know, these photographs and this horrible evidence and so forth. And he says, how can you adore a God that will allow something like that to happen when you can almost see in the studio the other guys backing away from their mics, like, oh, now you're in trouble. But, you know, I felt not at all intimidated or wanting to back away from that because, you see, this person was really playing right into my hands in terms of defending the Christian faith. Now I wonder if you can see why. What have I taught you? Let's see if. If the method that I've been trying to instill in you is becoming clear for you, what I want to do is I want to look for the basic assumptions of this person who's so angry about child molestation. Isn't that right? This person is furious that a child got molested in such a terrible way. How can there be a God that allows that sort of thing? And so I asked the person who calls in, I said, that really makes you indignant, doesn't it? You're really upset about that. I mean, to belabor the obvious, absolutely, how can you believe in a God that would allow that kind of thing? I said, well, okay, if you're really unhappy about that, then you want to play for keeps here. You want to say it's absolutely wrong for a person to molest the child, don't you? I do, too. As a Christian, I happen to think it's horrible. It's a tragic situation, but even more, it's abominable in the eyes of God. Well, this person, you see, says, yes. I don't want it to be something that's like different strokes for different folks. I don't think people have the right to molest children. I say, either do I. That's fine. Now, since you don't believe in God and you're very angry that I talk about adoring God and so forth. Let's stop and think about it. If you don't believe in God, then what defines right and wrong? What is the standard of right and wrong? You believe that every individual has to choose for himself his standards of morality. Well, yeah, I say, well, don't you see? If you don't believe in God, then you have no reason to condemn child molestation at all, do you? Because if you don't believe in God, the person who molested that child had every right to follow his moral convictions and you have every right to be upset with it. But that's just the way it is in this world. Sound and fury signifying nothing. There are no universal, absolute standards of morality if you don't believe in God. And so my point is, in order for you to be just that indignant about child molestation, you must first believe that there's a God whose holy character defines right and wrong for all mankind. Otherwise, it's just some people get their pleasure in a way that you don't prefer. And none of us want to let child molestation go with that kind of cop out. It's like, well, this is not to everybody's taste, but some people like to abuse children. No, we want to say there is a universal standard that judges all mankind. And how would you get such a universal standard if you didn't believe in a personal holy God? See, do you see then how the method works? The unbeliever can come on really strong with what appears to be, you know, evidence that's going to make it hard to believe the Bible. It, on the surface seems to be such a tough case. But if you just stop and ask, what are the presuppositions of this person? He may not be telling you what they are. You may have to, you know, kind of figure it out, reading between the lines, listening to him and so forth. But once you see what this person's underlying assumptions are, then you can point out that he can't make sense of what he's saying. Saying given his underlying assumptions, there's either going to be a major conflict in his views or it's going to be totally senseless. You cannot condemn child molestation if you're an atheist. Or if you do, the condemnation amounts only to this. It's translated as, that's not my preference. But condemnation of the kind of indignant sort that I was hearing from the caller is not just like it's not my preference. But how do you arise? How do you rise to the level of universal, absolute, moral condemnation of something if you don't have something that is universal and absolute, and that's the character of God according to Christianity. And so I end up saying to the person, as a Christian, I can make sense of what you're saying. As a Christian, I can agree with you. But if you're an atheist, then what you're saying makes no sense at all. The Bible indicates to us that because atheists do not live up to their presuppositions, they become fools. They profess themselves to be wise, but in fact they become fools in the eyes of God. All of their thinking can be reduced to absurdity. If you're just patient enough to let the atheist do the work for you, ask the right questions, challenge the underlying assumptions, and point out the foolishness of that position. Atheists have a number of misconceptions. One of them is that evil doesn't fit in with the existence of God. As a matter of fact, any judgment of evil proves the existence of God indirectly or eventually, because without such a God, you can't make that judgment. Another misconception of atheists. If I can hold you for a minute more before our break is about miracles, you'll have atheists tell you, well, I don't believe in miracles. Miracles are impossible. And since you Christians believe in miracles, then what you believe is absurd. I can't go along with that. Well, what's the problem with miracles? Ask the atheist that, you know, kind of inquire, get to the bottom of this. Why is it that there can be no miracles? Well, because this world operates in a uniform fashion. There's cause and effect, and there are laws of physics and they are never broken. And so if the laws of physics are never broken, then the dead do not rise, axe heads don't float, water doesn't turn into wine, on and on. Well, then you want to ask your atheist friend to say, well, if the laws of physics can never be broken, how did you find out that the laws of physics can never be broken? Say, well, I bet you probably haven't thought about it all that much. But nevertheless, if you say that you've never seen the laws of physics broken and therefore there are no miracles, basically you're saying, since I've never seen one, there can't be any. Okay, well, before a child goes to the zoo and has never seen an elephant, does that mean there are no elephants? I mean, that's a terrible argument. I've never seen an elephant. So there are no elephants. I've never seen a miracle. So there are no miracles. Now the atheists say, no, it's not just a matter that I haven't seen it, it's that they cannot happen. They say, well, yeah, but that's what you're supposed to be proving. You're supposed to be proving that they cannot happen. You're not supposed to just assume that they cannot happen. He says, well, but if there was a miracle, it would violate the, the laws of science. To which you want to say, isn't that exactly the point? If they didn't violate the laws of science as you understand them, then they wouldn't be wondrous, would they? They wouldn't draw our attention. They wouldn't be miraculous. So you got to show the atheist that in almost every case that I've seen and I've read a lot of them and I've dealt with a lot of people, I hardly know a case where the atheist wasn't begging the question over and over and over again, that is to say, assuming what he's supposed to be proving. And he says, you can't have miracles because they violate the laws of science. And you say that's exactly what makes them miraculous. Now tell me why that can't happen. How much would the atheist have to know in order to rule out miracles? He'd have to know everything exactly. He'd have to be omniscient. But if the atheist were omniscient so that he could rule out miracles, the atheist would then be God, wouldn't he? And so you couldn't rule out God on the basis that there are no miracles because you would have to be God to rule out the miracles. Atheists cannot escape knowing God. That isn't to say they always express their theology clearly and correctly. There's lots of distortions, but in one way or another, the atheist believes that there's a God because the atheist wants to have universal knowledge to rule out miracles. Well, we've got an alternative. We've got a personal God that does know everything, does control everything, and he can do miracles. And so we set the two systems over against each other and show the ridiculousness of the atheist position. Atheists have nothing to gain when they appeal to evil or they try to rule out miracles. Atheists are guilty of many intellectual miscues. And after I give you a brief break this morning, we come back. I'll continue with that and we'll go on to talk about people that are not atheists, but they're unbelievers of a different sort. Maybe they follow different religions or something. And then eventually we'll get on to the scientific attack on Christianity from evolution. But by the time you go to lunch today, I hope you're feeling a lot more confident. Hey, I can talk to people. I can find out what their basic assumptions are and then start showing that they have no ground to stand on. Let's take a break. Thank you.