Does God Exist? | Table Talk S03 E01

Man, I'm really excited to be back together for Table Talk. This is season three, and we've had a great response. A lot. A lot of people telling us that they're enjoying the format of considering biblical topics in a conversational format rather than a preacher with a Bible at a pulpit. This is just really how conversations occur in people's everyday lives. And a lot of individuals have been telling us we're just growing spiritually by sitting in on the conversation. And some people have been saying that, that this has stimulated for them small groups in their towns and their churches where they're getting together now and saying, hey, let's just do that. Let's just sit around a table and let's just bring up topics and let's just talk it through and see what the Bible has to say about whatever it is that we're interested in.

Excellent.

Yeah, this is gonna be fun, though. We're gonna be delving into, because we've talked about this, we've prayed about it. What should we do in this season three? And we came to a consensus that it would really be fun and just helpful for us and others and challenging to do a series called Hard Questions. And so what we've done is we've come to a list of questions we had actually more than 13 programs would accommodate, but we came up with 13 questions that we believe are some of the most challenging questions that people, not just us, but people in general. These things pop into people's heads. People want to believe in God. They want to believe what Scripture declares. But God gave us minds to reason with. He wants us to think. And we're not asked to leap into a kind of blind faith. I like to think that faith is one of our rational.

And at the same time, we're not pretending to offer squeaky clean answers either. I think I read somewhere, I forget where, where it's unfair for us to ask hard, difficult questions and expect easy answers.

Right? Right.

So we're gonna ask hard, difficult questions. We have to be willing to wrestle with the messiness of some of the answers. They're not all clean. They're not all simple or easy.

And recognize that even our best efforts to answer some of these difficult questions will come short of really filling it out with every detail we don't know.

And being honest that we don't know, like you said.

Right. Well, it's okay to say some things.

Are clear and some things are not clear.

Well, you take the nature of the things that we are seeking. We're not answering and asking Difficult questions about politics or economics. That's the human realm. That's something that is understandable, discernible, graspable. We're talking about difficult things related to God, to Scripture. There is an infinity beyond what we will talk about at the table. In other words, we're just, you know, you say we're wrestling, we are wrestling, but we're just scratching in some instances, you know, the tip of the iceberg. And there's an infinity beyond. And at some point and at some places in the conversation, it's very appropriate just to say we don't know. We think that the answer is in that direction. We've got good reason to believe it's over there somewhere. But as far as the specifics.

We will have to say in the course of this series. That's the best answer that we can give with the information that we have.

In coming up with a title, we actually considered calling it not the Hard Questions Series, but the Grappling Series. I mean, we seriously thought, well, maybe. Maybe that's the best we can do, is grapple. But at the same time, I want to say this. God is eager to communicate so we can gain clarity. We can gain sufficient clarity for faith.

That's right, Absolutely.

And that's a beautiful thing. We don't have all the answers, but Scripture is very illuminating.

There's enough certainty to help us wake up every morning with certain question marks, but there's enough certainty to make life meaningful and allow us to live meaningfully.

Right. Just this weekend, I was riding with Jeffrey's wife, Mariana, and we were going to church. And on the way to church, she actually was bringing soup to church, and it spilled all over his car. I joked that it actually increased the value of his car. If you've seen the car he drives, it increase the value of death. But anyway, in the course of that conversation, Jeffrey's wife's mother, as we know, has just recently passed away. About a year ago now, isn't it? And we were talking about, you know, how she. That was not an easy thing for her. You know, her mother was quite young, died of cancer. And she was talking about how she actually ended up in a bit of a funk, a bit of a spiritual depressive state that she herself wasn't even aware that she was in. And in the course of the conversation that we had this weekend, I said, you know, one of the trickiest things is that we're almost programmed when we believe in Scripture and when we have faith in Christ, to think that anything short of certainty is almost like Borderline sinful. That if we don't know absolutely for certain the answer to every question that we're being. We're lacking faith, we're doubting. And the truth is that we can turn certainty into an idol. We can turn certainty into something that if we don't know and anything short of that is considered, where's your faith? But it's not like that.

Even the prophets will eventually get into Scripture. But even the prophets in Scripture, like the Psalms.

There you go.

Some of the communication and even some of the prayers are just like an extreme expression of like, I don't get it. What's happening, God?

Why? Why?

Why?

I read a paraphrase recently of Psalm. I think it's Psalm 80. And the Psalmist is literally saying, God, are you blind? Are you deaf?

Can you hear us?

Don't you hear what I'm saying?

Job has the same testimony.

Absolutely.

It's as if God likes that, though. That's authentic. That's raw humanity. And he doesn't want us to just.

He'd rather us be honest than pretentious about what we're going through. Have you guys. This just came to my mind. I don't know if you've ever thought about it in this connection, but First Corinthians, chapter 13 actually says, you'll remember where Paul's talking about, when I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child. And then he says, we prophesy in part. So even the Bible, where prophets, human beings are inspired, are writing out what God shows them by inspiration. And yet you come to the New Testament and Paul looks at the Old Testament scriptures that were at his disposal and says, that's partial. We prophesy partially. I mean, there's more.

The human dynamic is there.

The human dynamic is there.

The human fingerprint is there.

And as I said, there's an infinity beyond. It's the iceberg thing, isn't it? You know, we're wrestling with what's above the water. But when we're talking about the things of God, the things of Scripture, the things of eternity, there is 9/10 or more, far more than that is beneath the surface. And yet I love what Jeffrey said. That doesn't mean that there can't be a modicum of certainty. It doesn't mean that we are just groping in the darkness blindly. No, we're going to see that there are some really compelling, persuasive answers to these hard questions. They're not all as clean and as nice and as simple as we'd love them to be, but that's the nature of reality. Life is messy.

It's complex. Yeah. Just last night, and you know who I'm talking about, if I said her name. A friend of mine called last night. We were on the phone for quite a long period of time. And this is where the rubber meets the road. She called, and you could hear her voice quivering. She's on the verge of tears. She says, I need to know that there is light at the end of this tunnel. My husband right now is in the throes of descending into mental illness, and I don't know what to do. We have children. This is their father. This is my husband. And she's crying out not just to a brother in Christ, you know, calling me. She's crying out to God and saying, God. And one of the things she said in the course of the conversation is she said, ty, I don't get it. We love God. We're serving him. And she said. This is what she said to me. She said, the Bible. Doesn't the Bible somewhere say that God won't put anything on us that we can't bear? He won't try us beyond what we're capable of bearing? And this is what she said to me. In all honesty, she said, that's not true. I'm there. I'm past that point. I'm about to break. I'm about to break. I don't know what to do. Where can I turn? And people have that kind of situation.

Well, that segues exactly into what we want to address as our first hard question. And that is when people are pushed, even when people aren't pushed, but. But when they are pushed to the place beyond which they feel like they can't endure the vicissitudes of life, they begin to ask this question, is God even there?

Does God exist?

Yeah, because maybe he's not. And we would be not true to the reality that exists outside of churches if we didn't admit that there are millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people that want to believe but are waiting and looking for some sort of credible answer that's beyond just, well, it makes me feel good. Or everybody in my church says that.

That'S the church or was raised that way.

I was raised that way.

So merely cultural, you mean? So the answers are kind of built into your upbringing, and then real life unfolds and you start to say those answers that I was given aren't matching up with how difficult this experience is.

Okay, I want to say something about that there is a difference, though, between the way that Scripture presents God and his relationship to humanity and the vicissitudes and difficulties and trials of life, and the way the church often presents it, the way that it's too often communicated. It reminds me of an Andrew gillihorn song about how it's just so easy, and the preacher stands up and he's got beautiful hair and a tie, and, you know, everything looks great in the choir, and it's just too nice. And the answers are too easy. And then people don't live in church.

They live in a church.

They go home, and they go home.

And their husband is going through a difficult trial, or there's more money than there is, or more month than there is money, or you got cancer or whatever. So the reality is that too often in church situations and cultural situations, and just as Christians, we are inclined, I think, to make the answers easier and more platitudinous than what scripture does. Like you were saying, David's like, what?

Hello?

What's going on?

Here's something else I think is important when I think about the question, does God exist? I think another way we can ask that question is, does love exist? Because love is the definition for God. According to the Bible, love is the definition for God. And when you look at the hardships and the trials and the difficulties that people are going through in their lives, that's really the question they're asking people. We're built for love, and people are looking for love. And when life decimates you, when husbands and wives go through these major trials, and children and grandparents, when humanity is decimated by evil, people are asking the question, even beyond this idea of a deity, they're asking the question, well, does love exist?

There you go.

And that's why people say, well, if God is love, then why is all this thing happening? Because they're looking for this. They're looking for love, and they're looking for a sense of. Of what love is and how it functions. Purpose in this situation. Yeah, in their situation.

I love the language that you use there, James. Decimated by life. And let's be honest, like, I'm happy today. You know, I woke up even though it was raining outside. I mean, I've got a beautiful wife, I've got two children. You know, I've got a roof over my head and food to eat. But in a moment, one cancer test, one car accident, you know, one chemical imbalance, one chemical imbalance in your brain, and you can be, as you say, decimated by life.

Yeah.

It's fragile.

Life is fragile.

So these. I don't know, maybe this will segue us.

You mentioned the question, does God exist or does love exist? It seems to me, at least the way I relate to this is that there's two levels of questions or answers. There's the intellectual, there's your brain, and then there's your heart. Right. So no one's going to be satisfied with just brainy answers. Stuff that just makes logical sense. We also need to. We need something to cling to with our hearts. At the same time, to simply focus on the emotional answers without the intellectual foundation makes those answers flimsy.

The two need to intersect.

Right.

There needs to be an intersection between rational answers and experiential answers. Right?

Absolutely.

They both need to come together somehow.

Yeah.

Let me ask you guys, every one of us here at the table are all converts to the faith. We've all become followers of Jesus. We weren't raised in strong Christian homes, I don't think. Is that right?

I was raised in a Christian home, but not really knowing God or knowing the Bible.

Okay, that still applies. So let me ask you this question. Maybe it's too simple of a question. And if it is, just shut the question down. What was it that originally sort of began to open to your awareness, hey, there is a God. He is good. In other words, the question is, was it primarily intellectual or was it some emotional thing?

Well, for me, at the most basic level, I had a really pretty girlfriend who believed in God.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ty Gibson.

And I had a really lovely mother who began to believe in God. Beautiful. And I was one of those teenage kids who had a particularly high level of fondness for my mom. And I had a lot of respect for her. And the fact that she found belief in God tenable made me stop and wonder. And then when my girlfriend said, I believed in God, ever since, I believed anything. And then my mom and my girlfriend, by the way, the girlfriend became my wife. But when they began studying the Bible together, I thought, I respect them, I love them, they're intelligent. This seems really idiotic. I don't know how they could believe such things. But I began to think, huh, if they see something in this, maybe I should explore it. At least, if for no other reason, just so I can rationalize with them and show them that it's ridiculous. Turns out it's not ridiculous. Turns out for me anyway, that. That very simplistic mom, girlfriend conspiring together against me in my favor.

I got it.

Yeah. It turns out that that Very simple encounter led me to ask some of the very hard questions that we're going to explore in this 13 part series. And I have to tell you, there is a rational basis for believing in the existence of God. It's not emotional, it's not just cultural. Telling you what, some of the things that we're about to unpack here are pretty persuasive because God expects us to.

Use our brains, right? God doesn't expect us to put our brains on the shelf in order to believe. In fact, scripture says you can't really believe responsibly without using and engaging your mind and your intellect.

What about you guys?

The question David asked, to me, it's more similar. I mean, I can't say it was all logical arguments. It wasn't right. I was drawn because I sensed that there was meaning and purpose. I encountered scripture and I encountered meaning and purpose in the gospel. So it totally conquered my heart. But I always tell people I stayed because.

It also conquered my mind. So I was drawn because it conquered my heart. But I stayed in the relationship, quote unquote, because it made sense. Yeah, what I believed in my heart made sense in my mind. So I think it's been a journey on that basically.

Have you heard that little thing that people say the greatest distance in the world is 18 inches? The distance between a man's or a woman's or a man's mind and their.

Heart, or vice versa. Some people are more emotionally geared and their journey begins with heart issues and gets into the mind. Other people are more intellectually wired and it begins with the mind and it's a little more difficult to get.

And for them, for those, it's opposite if they don't engage their heart. So what keeps them is engaging their heart.

That's why I like David. In the Bible, he was a man after God's own heart. And when you look at his life, he was like this perfect equilibrium between intellect and emotion.

He was a poet.

Yeah, he was a poet, but he was also a warrior.

Yeah, for me I think it was more of an experiential thing. I was raised in a Christian home, you know, so to speak, saying prayers, going to church. But in my teenage years I was just out in the world and I was seeking happiness, I was seeking joy, I was seeking satisfaction, fulfillment in the things of the world. And I was empty, empty, empty inside. I didn't have this love, I didn't have this experimental reality that I knew this experience in reality that I knew I really needed. I was looking for it in friends, I was looking for it in life. I was looking for it in success. I was looking for satisfaction, for love, for feeling something that I knew I was made for. And I just went down, down, down, down, down. And when I got to the very bottom, I realized just by asking Christ to come into my heart, I realized and experienced a peace that I think millions, if not billions of people have experienced on a level that is practical, that causes them to think and believe that God is real and the Bible is real. And the peace that he offers is real because it's outside of everything else that it was outside of everything else I'd ever experienced. It was something that was totally supernatural in a very real sense, but it became practical in my life. There was a peace, a joy, there was a relief from guilt. And it started affecting me and impacting me and my relationship with myself, with other people and the way that I lived and the choices that I made. And that to me, that was before the Bible ever came into being.

I didn't know the Bible.

I knew the Lord's Prayer. I said it every night, whether I was drunk or sober. I'd say Our Father and Hail Mary. But before I ever really got into the Word of God, I accepted Christ as my Savior. Someone told me to do pray this prayer, and I experienced peace and joy before the intellectual understanding of what I was doing even hit my head. Wow. It was a whole hard experience, but.

It would have been like Jeffreys then. So later, then you come to be aware of the great arguments or principles upon which intellectual confidence is formed.

I am taking this thing that I've experienced, this love, this forgiveness I experienced, and I'm pursuing it to its source, and its source is in the Bible, thinking, wow, that's it. And what I'm finding in the Bible matches up with the experience I've just had.

Wow. Yeah, powerful.

My experience was very similar to that.

What was yours?

Well, just being at the bottom and needing some sort of sense of purpose, of. I'm a very upbeat, very buoyant person. But at the time in my life, when I was about 23, it was a period of just deep personal difficulty caused by the ending of a relationship. So yours is interesting. Yours starts a relationship and this is like a good thing. With mine, it was the opposite, but it was exactly as you described that it started off that I just invited Jesus into my heart, and all of a sudden all these things start happening. I'm like, whoa. And then it's like, well, wait a minute, is this true? Or Have I just tricked my. And then it goes to where you're.

Saying you trace it to its source.

I like the way you say that. Tracing it.

Have you guys ever read this? I can't remember. Maybe you know the source, but there's a Christian philosopher who said, I believe in order that I might understand Augustine. Yeah, and that's exactly what you guys are describing. You gave your heart to Christ and then the intellectual horizon opened up.

Faith seeking, understanding.

So. So you began with an experiential thing that grew into an intellectual and rational process. And so, yeah, there are a lot of people, I think, who, if they simply look at the data and the facts and they find fault in the storyline of scripture, it's just academic and they'll never move on. But if you begin with the premise of wait a minute, my heart is telling me that there is a love to be had, there is a perfection of beauty out there somewhere that I long for while just taking that step of initial faith. Then you start to see things you wouldn't see otherwise.

When we come back after the break, I want to. I've got a point on that that I think is really persuasive.

So let's just. Yeah, let's just pause, take a break and we'll come right back.

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So at the close of the, the first little conversation that we had there, we. We're talking about how for I think all of us, and certainly for many people, there's this initial sort of experiential heart moment. But then there's the okay, is this true? Or have I just kind of tricked myself? And I was thinking about, I had said something that I wanted to make a point, and that is that it was several years ago, actually in a series of lectures by Dr. John Lennox. I heard him say that the word skeptic actually comes from the Greek word skeptine, which means to view or to observe from a distance, right? So to be over here and to be skeptical, to be aloof from non committal about something. And the point that he made, and I thought it was so profound, was that if God was just an idea or a concept or a philosophy, right, like an economic idea or a political philosophy, you could be aloof from it. You could be skeptical about it. But God is not an idea. God is not a concept. He's a person. And the only way to get to know a person is to draw close to them. You have to at some level surrender an initial skepticism about that person across the room, about that person that's sitting next to you on the airplane, or God.

In other words, God isn't mere data. It's not just he's not composed of facts. That's why you can have university professors.

At a university who are heads of religion departments and they're atheists, because they're just analyzing and poking holes in the data and the information. They're not drawing in and saying, wait a minute, what does God look like on the interior of the subject?

That kind of goes with something that Jesus said. This whole, I think we quoted Augustine, the church Father.

Yeah, faith seeking understanding.

Yeah, faith seeking understanding. I believe in order to understand. To understand. And in John 7:17, Jesus says something similar. He says, if anyone wills to do his will, he shall know concerning the doctrine. So he shall know. He shall understand. If anyone wills, he shall understand. Whether it is from God or whether I speak on my own authority, powerful so Jesus walked around saying, the only way you can actually discover whether or not what I say, the claims that I'm making are true or false is you have to, like you said, approach and come close in order to discover. You can't observe from a distance with skepticism, only looking for contradictions. You'll find what you look for.

Basically, I was thinking, it's interesting that you would quote there. John 17. I was thinking of John 7:17. John 7:17. Thank you. I was thinking of Matthew 11, where the invitation that Jesus gives is very emotional, it's very personal. It's from a person to a person. Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. We were talking about that in the first segment. You know this lady that you're on the phone with, she needs rest. She's burdened. Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest. In other words, the invitation is not to a mental ascent, to a body of ideas, to a bunch of data. Oh, I believe that. I believe A, B, C, D, E, F and G. And therefore I am persuaded that there is a God. I'm not saying that there's not an intellectual component. There is, and we're going to talk about that. But at the core level of what God is, He's love, he is a relationship, He's a being. He's a person to whom we draw near. And as we draw near, then that nascent faith, that embryonic faith, grows into an increasingly mature and even intellectually satisfying understanding.

And that's not to say that.

Somebody could not encounter the gospel, the message of the gospel, starting the other way.

Yeah.

Without. In other words, I don't have to be emotionally needy in order to appreciate the claims of the gospel. Right.

I do think everybody's emotionally needy at whether or not they're alone.

Yeah.

They don't know that they are. They're not operating on that consciousness.

I know what you're saying.

And that brings me to the point that I was thinking about when you were talking. I was thinking that everyone's breaking point is different.

There you go.

So some of us, we're very strong willed. We have a very strong capability in life of achieving our goals and setting out to accomplish the things that we think will make us happy. And other people are very weak. And the different levels of breaking points for all of us. Like for me, for example, I was determined, I mean, bound and determined. And I was moving through systematically life, one accomplishment after another, to find my happiness. I was driven. I was going to Find it. And, you know, God was just a thing on the side that I was raised to believe in. And so he wasn't a major part or focus of my life. With some people, they're raised in such a powerful, let's say, Christian environment that they might be, in their own understanding, intellectually of the Bible, unable to deal with the. The smallest little deviation in their life from what is absolutely joyful, loving, et cetera, and it may just throw them for a loop. And what I think happens at times is that God has to dismantle all of this intellectual stuff that we think is him in order for us to get into a relationship with him that is fundamental to all of that information.

You know what I'm trying to say?

So what sometimes we do when we hit a trial is we say, well, wait a minute, this isn't supposed to happen to me. The Bible says, and these promises say, and my pastor said, this stuff isn't supposed to happen. And God says, no, wait a minute, that's not me. That's intellectual stuff, but me. I want you to have a relationship with me. And when you have a relationship with me, it doesn't matter what happens to you.

There you go.

None of that matters anymore.

It's like what we were talking about in that first segment that too often we take this very facile view that if you believe, then everything lines up, but that's not. Life's not that way. Life is messy. It's tricky.

See what you guys think of this, because I think that this bears out in just about every human being's experience. We're all familiar with Bertrand Russell, the British mathematician and philosopher who was one of the strongest advocates of atheism. And just see what you think about the comparison of these two quotes. This is a quotation from his early career in philosophy and advocating atheism. And. And he said, if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course. It is a mere flash in the pan. It is a stage in the decay of the solar system. At a certain stage in the decay, you get the sort of conditions and temperature and so forth that are suitable for protoplasma. And there is life for a short period of time in the solar system. You see in the moon, however, the sort of thing to which Earth is tending something dead, cold and lifeless. He's basically communicating the materialistic. And he's saying, this is really. We're a flash in the pan. Life is just okay, but that's early in his career, okay? Very stoic, factual, data driven, atheist. This is toward the end of his life, a few years before he died. Same guy says, quote, nothing can penetrate the loneliness of the human heart except the intensity of the highest order of the sort of love that the religious teachers have preached. So do you see what this guy's saying? I mean, early in his career with his academic stoicism, basically our universe means nothing and it's just a flash in the pan and life has no meaning. Toward the end of his life, he's saying, wait a minute. He's saying the only way for the human heart to really be cured of its loneliness that's at the core of all of us is with the intensity of this sort of love that people who believe in God are talking about.

And you know what time.

Every single person on planet Earth who's ever lived or ever will live is going to come to that conclusion at one point or another. And that's the point, the point we were making earlier. And that is everyone has a breaking point. Everyone has a point at which they realize that love is that foundation. It's the building block. And every knee is going to bow and every tongue is going to confess that one truth. It's just that some of us on planet Earth are so indoctrinated in the material and the intellectual that it's hard for us to enter into this reality, this experiential reality that all of us are made for, that all of us need.

I loved when you said in the first session that we are built for love.

That's so true. That's exactly right. We are built to love and to be loved. I think you've written, that's in your book. That's God Named Desire.

Let me throw another one out. This is fascinating. Sigmund Freud was the founder of psychotherapy and he was an ardent atheist to his dying day. But he also, with all of his academic God doesn't exist. Religion is irrelevant. He comes to the end of his life and quoting from Freud himself, he says that as he came to the end of his life, that he can't deny that there is a strange, secret. Secret, because academically he couldn't come right out and say this, that he was possessed of strange, secret longings for a life of quite another kind. Isn't that something? So there's a stoic atheist who's saying there is no God. He comes to the end of his life and he's like, wait a minute, I long for something secretly that is for a life of quite a different kind.

That goes back to the point that we were saying is that there's two strands to this. There's just dry, logical, your intellect, facts, like you're saying, information, and then there's the human experience that longs for our beliefs, whatever our beliefs are. Those two have to intersect. So you have an atheist over here who's just operating on just the hard.

Dry, lifeless facts or logic that they believe in, but yet it doesn't correspond to the reality of their own human experience.

Okay, so we've talked about the experiential side and we only have so many minutes for this conversation. So we've acknowledged that there is a rational side, there is a data driven side, and there are really good rational reasons to believe that God exists. I mean, our question for this first program, this first conversation is, does God exist? And how can I know? So what are some of the reasons that are most persuasive to you guys? I mean, we know there are. We can make a list of good intellectual, rational, logical reasons to believe in the existence of God. Which ones appeal to you? Or if you had to pick one, what's the most persistent?

There's a lot, for me, there's a lot of strands of evidence. Yeah, it's cumulative. There's corroborating evidence everywhere we look. But what I find most compelling, I mean, we can string up arguments from scientific discoveries and all of that, and that's compelling. Right. We have to pay attention to that. But what I find compelling is if you remove God from the equation, what does reality look like? So on one point of this, I think of value, purpose and meaning in human life. And that's the thing that I go back to always. If God did not exist, how do we account for our belief in other human beings having value? So if I'm going to remove God from the equation and say I'm an atheist, I don't believe in the existence of, then now I have a problem. Because now I live as though other people have value. I live as though other people are meaningful, as though there's purpose to human life. But I can't account for that purpose if God is out of the picture.

Why not?

Well, because if God is out of the picture, then we have to find an alternative explanation for who we are. And the dominant alternative explanation is Darwinian evolution. We're here just through the natural processes of nature.

We're a flash in the pan, in.

The decay of the universe. And we're going to get to that I'm sure at a future difficult question, but if that's true.

How do you account for value? If it's survival of the fittest, only the strong survive. If all we're here is to propagate DNA, then on the basis of what do I say other human beings have value and live as though they have value? I can only account for that if God is in a picture.

I think what you're saying. Let me just clarify because I think this is really important. Are you saying that if I don't believe in God's existence, I tend to live in contradiction to that?

Yeah. You can say I don't believe in God and still be a moral person, still be somebody who treats others as though they have value. Clearly the world is populated with people like that. The point is not that. The point is, can you consistently live life?

Assuming that's the intellectual basis, yes.

Assuming that there's such thing as love, can you live as though there's love and at the same time reject that there's a God and we're only here through mechanical processes that are not intelligible, that are not intentional. It's just.

The undirected process of nature. And yet there's purpose, meaning and value in individual lives.

Love and good and evil.

So to me, that's what's most compelling out of all of the things that I see is at the basic fundamental level. When I wake up in the morning, I assume there's purpose and meaning in life. But where did that assumption come from?

And it's not just Jeffrey that assumes that. You take a look at all the movies that Hollywood creates or whatever. There's triumph, there's honor, there's valor. Not every movie and just terrible ones out there, but honor, valor, triumph, hope, dreams, the underdog, dignity. You know, we are clearly being appealed to. We are being entertained by things that are already resonant in our heart. Hollywood's not creating a thing and then saying, hey, this should be resonant with you. There's already something in us that longs for that. And you're saying, okay, so in the absence of God, here's how I would say it's. If there was no God, movies as an extension of reality would look very different than they do now. Life would look different, marriage would look different.

It would never appeal to your inherent intuition that there's as if.

It's as if we literally can't tell any other storyline. It doesn't occur to us to tell a story that doesn't have the elements of good. And evil and the hope that good triumphs or love and the pursuit for love and. And love being broken apart and then pursuing love and hoping that it works out. We don't know any other storyline that is the story. I mean, try to think of a story that doesn't have those elements in it.

And here's something else that's really interesting and that is in movies, death is a very sad thing. A sad movie is one that ends if the hero dies, or one that ends in death of some kind. That's a sad movie. Well, in the Bible, in 1 Corinthians 15, death is an enemy to God. Death is something that God is going to destroy. So how do you separate those two ideas? You can't separate those two ideas. Death is a sad thing in our natural world that we live in. And to God, death is an enemy.

This is a really, really helpful conversation for me. This is stimulating and we have other good, rational reasons to talk about, but we need to take another break. So when we come back, let's just crack it open a little bit more.

Sounds good.

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Before the break, we said, hey, let's just start getting into the rational arguments for the existence of God. We've pretty much nailed down that there is an experiential aspect, but what are some of the good, rational, logical reasons to believe in the existence of God? Now, somebody before the break actually started breaking one down. No, it was Jeffrey. Jeffrey was giving his number one. Or at least what appeals to your mind?

What is meaning?

Yeah, yeah. So anybody else? What are good rational arguments for the existence of God?

The argument that I find most persuasive or the evidence that I find most. And that's a difficult thing to say, right? Because there are many things. It's like you said, it's cumulative. It's the composite of corroborating evidence. But something that I come back to over and over again is really two arguments that merge into one. Two pieces of evidence that merge into one, and that is the universe that we live in is a universe that is conducive not just to life, but this is a key point to the existence of self reflective, intelligent, self aware life. So there's that and then over here that minds exist, not just brains. A brain is an organ located inside of the skull. But there's this thing called the mind.

It's immaterial.

It's immaterial, it's non physical. It's your identity, it's your character, it's your hopes, it's your dreams, it's the you ness that makes you you. Now you put these two things together, not only do we have a universe with all of its physical constants that cosmologists and other scientists have said, hey man, the universe is really well tuned, fine tuned for the existence of life. Okay, fine. But if the highest level of life on earth was say a canary or an earthworm or even a horse, life would still be beautiful. There'd be valleys, there'd be flowers, there'd be photosynthesis, there'd be all of this beauty here, all of this symmetry, but there would be no mind to appreciate it.

You could say it like this, nobody would know it. The world would be beautiful, but nobody would know it.

So you take these two things, you have a fantastically well designed, fine tuned universe that is conducive to the existence and proliferation of the diversity of life, the origin and diversity of life. And then you put human minds into it that are able to apprehend the beauty that would be there even if the mind wasn't. This goes back to a quotation that I've just thought about quite a bit and I love. And Einstein said it on a number of different occasions in different ways. And so I'll sort of put some of them together. He essentially said that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is precisely its comprehensibility. The fact that there are minds here to think about the nature of the distance to the sun, or the photosynthetic process, or the, the neurochemistry in the brain, the fact that there are minds here that are apprehending all of this. And I like the way C.S. lewis says it, speaking of the same phenomenon, he says, surely this ought to raise our suspicions. Yeah, yeah, you know, not just because again, life is one thing, life is a miracle in and of itself, but the existence of intelligent, self reflective life that is aware of its place in the cosmos. To me this is far more than a coincidence. It's. It's far more than a happy coincidence. It is.

An evidence that screams the existence of a creator God who purposefully, intentionally made not only the universe as it is, but minds to appreciate and apprehend the beauty that's there.

I'm thinking of a scripture that actually communicates the very point that you're bringing up in Romans chapter one. Same one, Romans 1:19 and 20.

I don't know if you guys have noticed this particular point or not, but it's just been occurring to me recently here. Paul is reasoning forward in a line of thought for the existence of God in a sense. And he says verse 19. Because what may be known of God is manifest in them. For God has shown it to them. It's manifest in them. So what is this intuitive. Yeah, what is this location that he's pointing to? There's kind of, I guess what we might call a local intuitive awareness in the human being himself, in the human being herself. There's something going on in us. Well, what's going on in us? Well, one of the things that is going on inside of us is consciousness, the capacity for self reflection, this ability to look out of ourselves and to wonder about the physical reality around us and beyond the physical reality. To have these aspirations for something that transcends the physical. Why in the world do we aspire to something beyond merely getting food to eat and reproducing? We're longing for something. So that's one of the things that's in us that testifies to the existence of God. Secondly, there's something else going on in us that Paul's referring to and that's just moral activity. There's a moral conscience. We know the difference between right and wrong. We not only know the difference, but check this out. If you do something wrong, you feel bad about it. We call that guilt or shame. You don't like the fact that you did it. Now you can harden yourself by doing the same dastardly deed over and over and over again until you finally justify it and you evade your guilt. But the fact is that at some stage in the process, you do something wrong, you violate somebody and you don't like yourself for it. Conversely, when you do something right, if you do a kind deed, if you relieve suffering, you feel good about that for some reason. So there's all this moral activity and Paul says what may be known of God.

Is manifest in the activities of the human mind and heart and conscience. And then this for God has shown it to them, which says that God is active in self revelation. He wants us to know him. And therefore there's this constant communication that's going on. So I think that scripture actually backs up the rational argument that you're giving.

On that moral point that you're making. We may not always agree between right or wrong. Different cultures may have different views on different things and different individuals. But the point is that we are all aware that there is such a thing as right or wrong, whether or not we may agree or disagree on the details.

But let me speak to that. There is a point on that, and that is that for all of this talk about moral plurality and relativism, there are themes that run through all moral cultures and all people who have not seared their conscience to the point of not appreciating those differences. For example, there is no culture anywhere, island culture, any culture anywhere, that says that cowardice is a positive thing. That there's no moral culture that says that it's honorable to treat with cruelty those that have treated you with kindness. And there are many of these moral themes. So there might be variations on a theme. Here's a good example. Polygamy. Some cultures say numerous wives. Other cultures say one wife, right? Or one spouse. But the principle of fidelity is the same in both of those cultures. Say, hey, you'll be true to your three wives, right? Yeah, I'll be true. You'll be true to your wife, right? So that's a variation on a theme. But the principle of fidelity runs through that culture.

And I don't think there's any culture in the world that is satisfied with you taking my stuff. There are cultures in which I'm fine with me taking your stuff, but nobody is happy with you taking my when.

The shoe's on the other foot.

And so there's definitely moral activity going on in our home.

So the point here is that. But how do you account for this ubiquitous. That means ever present moral fiber and fabric in which we are all living and existing in the absence of some transcendent moral reality. Getting back to your thing, if it's just molecules in motion mechanically, how do we end up with this moral matrix? There's a lot of M's there. How do we end up with this moral matrix in which we're living?

Right, James, you got a scripture there?

I have a scripture that this would move us to another point that I think is really powerful. Personally and it's one that keeps me on track with God. It's one that I think a lot of people have taken in, and it has led them to God. And the verses I'm looking at Here are Psalm 19. I know you're going to know Psalm 19, verses 1 and onward.

Beautiful.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night after night reveals knowledge. There is no speech or language. Their voice is not heard.

That's right.

The heavens and creation itself does not have a specific language. A, B, C, D, you know, Alphabet, where they're communicating specific words. But as people look at nature, as they look at the stars, and as they look at creation itself, it speaks to them of the Creator. Over and over again, people are led to the conclusion that there is a God. Because there's no way. And especially in science, and even more so today in science, the more we, I think, pursue and grow in our ability to understand scientifically how this world is created, the more scientists are coming to the conclusion that there must be a God, there must be a Creator.

Well, that certainly is the case in physics. The majority of professional physicists would be believers in something, in some transcendent intelligence.

Let me just say this, David. In some places, scientists are becoming or outnumbering theologians in their understanding of God and his existence. There are theologians who intellectually theologize about this religion but don't believe in God. And there are scientists who believe in a Creator even though they don't have the theology.

You were going to say something. I'm going to come back to that, but go ahead.

You won't forget?

I won't forget because it's a quotation. I want to read on that Very.

Okay. What I was going to add by saying that Psalm 19 and the argument you're giving for the existence of God is the argument from design, the teleological argument. And part of that design, not only do you look up into the heavens and the heavens declare the glory of God, but again, looking inside of the design of the human being, we have DNA. And DNA is information. It's intelligent information. And that intelligent information is so complex that it is rightfully called language. There are four chemical components that communicate so carefully. Everything from eye color to traits of personality in a person. And for example, I just found this quote very interesting. Bill Gates said that DNA is like a software program, only much more complex than anything we've ever devised. There's more complex and coherent information in a teaspoon of DNA than present in all the books ever written in human history in a teaspoon of DNA.

That's dense.

That's a lot of info.

There's the tie on that. I know you're gonna jump, but. No, do your thing. We're on the DNA thing. There's this philosophical atheist who was a basically the face of atheism, Anthony Flew, who recently, well, it's been probably seven years ago now, 10 years ago, essentially went from being an atheist not to being an evangelical Bible believing Christian per se, but at least a huge transition from an atheist to there's a creator, There's a creator. And the argument that really tipped it over for him was what we're talking about. He's saying, you know, we're looking at what we're looking at and there's screaming intelligence.

Anthony Flew is someone to be reckoned with. I mean, he's deceased now rather recently. But the fact is that, just look at the title of his book. There is no God. And no is crossed out. There is a God. Because this title of the book where he basically said, I do believe in the existence of God now, is reflecting both his previous philosophical approach to life. There is no God. He was one of the most prominent atheists, academic atheists. And in the introduction to this book, he basically says, I've changed my mind. God does exist. And he said, the reason I changed my mind is because I followed the evidence where it leads and it led me to believe in the existence of God.

Amazing.

I'll read a quotation here. This is not the one that I was originally going to read, but I just have this in front of me. This is from Dr. Flew. He says what I think the DNA material has done is shown that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements together. In other words, Ty is exactly right. When we're dealing with DNA, we're not just dealing with a molecular compound. We're dealing with data. Information. There's information. And the only known source of information is intelligence. So what Flew is saying and what many scientists today are saying and non scientists, we can't trust the importance of this quest only to the professionals. It's too important. Lay people have to be thinking about these things as well. We have to be thinking about them. We're not scientists. We have to say, hey, wait a minute, there's information here, there's data here. Where does information come from? Information comes from intelligence. Okay, this is the quotation I wanted to read. This is from Dr. Owen Gingrich, who was the head of the history of science at Harvard University, he was the professor of, he was the head of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. I mean the guy's like a top tier scientist. Listen to what he says. He wrote a great little book called God's Universe. And he said to me, belief in a final cause, a creator God, gives a coherent understanding of why the universe seems so congenially designed for the existence of, listen, intelligent, self reflective life. So now this is a guy who's saying, as you were saying, a scientist who's looking at the universe and saying, wait a minute, he's not a theologian looking at Scripture. A scientist looking at the universe and saying the heavens declare the glory of God.

Absolutely astounding. I think that we could amass quite an arsenal of good arguments for the existence of God. There's the argument from design that has been mentioned. There's the argument from mind, from purpose, from purpose. Just good and evil. And the fact that we all know that there's good and evil, which by.

The way is also part of Psalm. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.

Same psalm, same psalm.

I love that. But we have to confess also that the bottom line really is that the experiential part plays prominently into any individual person's realization that God exists. Because the fact is, even if we were to amass all the data and all the arguments for the existence of God, the fact is you can't prove the existence of God to the satisfaction of everybody in the world. You can prove the existence of God to your own satisfaction experientially. And I can tell you from. And I think the same is true of you guys. I not only believe that God exists.

Personally, I know that God exists not simply because of data and information, but because I've had an encounter.

I know it as much as I know I exist.

That's pretty.

I'm as convinced that God exists as I am that I exist.

Beautiful.

I love the distinction there. That we cannot prove the existence of God to someone else's absolute satisfaction if they insist on skepticism. But that doesn't mean that we can't personally taste and see that. That's an invitation to an experience. Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Yeah. So we're believers because there's rational basis for faith. And we're believers because we have experientially, individually come to know God as a personal being. And that's a good place to stop. Right, right there.

And beautiful.

We'll pursue our conversations further.