SBC: No Apologies | 2 - Does God Actually Exist?
Notes
Transcript
Today we are moving into the next topic in our new series, No Apologetics.
Today we will be looking at the Question, How do we know the God actually exist.
Now, the way that we're going to answer these questions will be in order of importance.
We looked last week at what biblical apologetics is, and this week we'll be moving into the foundational question of how do we know that God actually exists.
ROLE PLAY ACTIVITY
SPLIT UP INTO PARTNERS OF TWO
1 IS THE BELIEVER IN GOD, ONE IS THE DOUBTER
ONE PERSON WILL ASK HOW DO YOU KNOW GOD EXIST AND TRY TO COME UP WITH LOGICAL REBUTTALS AGAINST THEIR POINTS
THE OTHER PERSON WILL TRY TO CONVINCE THEM THAT GOD DOES EXISTS
THEN YOU WILL SWITCH - DON’T REUSE THE OTHER PERSON’S ARGUMENTS
Without a clear understanding Of the fact that God exists, there is no foundation for the rest of these questions to stand on.
It is the clear understanding of a creator of all things that leads to a clear understanding of the rest of these questions.
Next week, we will look at the question of how can we trust the Bible?
The week after that, we'll look at the question of was Jesus real? If so, who was he? Then the question did Jesus really rise from the dead? Then why does God allow evil suffering?
Week seven, we'll look at 'aren't all religions basically the same?' Then last week, why should I care if Christianity is true?
So you can see that these are in order of importance and foundation.
If we don't have a clear understanding that God exists, then we will struggle to trust in Scripture.
If we don't trust in Scripture, we will struggle to believe anything that it says about Jesus Christ.
So you can see that if you're trying to build a full case to someone of faith in Christ, or reliance on Scripture, or belief in God, you have to follow these certain orders.
I think this is where many Christians get lost in the defense of their faith: they start too high on the ladder.
If someone is questioning, "How do we know God exists?" and we start with the question of Jesus raising from the dead, there's a disconnection.
Now, the resurrection of Christ is one of the foremost reasons of how we can believe that God does exist, that the Bible is true, But instead of starting at an ultra-specific point and trying to work down to a foundation, I think it's better to work from the foundation up to the specific point.
And this is the idea behind the ladder picture.
When someone brings up an issue of debate, we do not try to get higher and higher on the ladder. Rather, we try to bring them down to the foundation.
And then, if the desire is to walk them back up to that specific point, we can do so, but only after we have established a clear foundation and are walking up safely to the top.
This is why we are starting with this question of 'Does God actually exist?'.
Now, while this may seem like a very complicated and difficult question to defend from a biblical perspective, it's actually fairly simple.
There's been a great amount of Research and solidified studies into simple responses to this question.
The greatest resource, in my opinion, to answer this question is the Book of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.
He goes through the three arguments of how we know that a God exists.
Now, in his book, he even clarifies that down to Christianity itself, but the three main arguments of how we know that a God exists are fairly simple.
So again, Using the Socratic Method that we talked about last week, we are not trying to throw out a single piece of information to win the debate.
Instead, we will try to walk the person down the ladder to a solid foundation. First meeting at a midpoint of agreement, and then further bringing them to the truth.
So let's start at the bottom. What is the foundation of this question of how we know that God exists?
And in all of our questions, we will find the foundation is, in some manner, Jesus. The foundation is always Jesus.
So in this case, we're not going to just answer the question of 'Does a god exist?' but rather 'Does our god exist?'
And this is really what takes the conversation from stopping at the midpoint and taking it even further, all the way to the foundation.
Because in this case, our midpoint is actually going to be answering the three primary responses to this question.
That can serve in a great sense, that may prove that a god exists by bringing someone to this midpoint; however, it doesn't quite solidify that it is our god that exists.
So we must determine in what way Jesus serves as the Ultimate. foundation here to answer this question.
We find in fact that Jesus serves as the foundation in one specific means.
Answer: The foundation we are trying to get to, the bottom of the ladder that this question rests upon, is that we know God exists Through the person, work, and ministry of Jesus.
So let's begin by picturing that we are standing at the top of a ladder. We are standing alongside someone who is doubting the question of if God exists. We're both wobbling at the top, trying to not fall flat.
There are some single phrases, single things we could throw out to try to knock them down off the ladder, but we looked at last week how that should not be our approach.
So instead, we're going to first determine a midpoint, the middle of the ladder that we are going to try to direct them safely down to.
This is a mid-point of agreement that's easier to prove than jumping all the way down to the foundation, but still is bringing you in the right direction.
So what is our midpoint in this question if God actually exists? What is the middle ground that will be somewhat subtle to find agreement on and eventually lead us in a safer way down to the foundation of gravity?
On this case, as we said already, this midpoint is actually 3.
There are three foundations that serve as this midpoint, which are logical arguments to answer the question of 'Does God exist?'
And these are the three arguments.
The Cosmological Argument
The Teleological Argument
The Moral Argument
These three arguments are very well known and are often where most would go to prove the existence of a God.
So we're going to jump right into these, and I'm going to explain what these are, give you some practical truths to support them, and then we'll look at how to walk the person down to these.
So the first argument that we'll look at is the cosmological argument.
This one is fairly simple. This argument looks at the idea of the need for a creator based on the laws of cause and effect.
And the idea is that when we look at the cosmos, when we look at this world, we look at what we can observe around us. It clearly indicates a creator.
Science, math, and all laws of nature would say that all effects have a cause.
If something exists, there is a cause for that existence.
Example: This church building exists because of the cause of a construction crew building it. It did not just appear for no reason.
So the direction the cosmological argument takes us is that we see the universe exist. That is the effect. What is the cause?
And the evolutionist would continue to trace causes backwardly.
They would say, "Well, we exist now because of the cause of evolution."
We exist because we came from this evolutionary being.
And that evolutionary being exists because of the evolutionary being before them.
And they will trace this all the way back to the world coming into being.
And at some point, they will reach the cause for the universe existing, being no cause at all or an endless cycle of causes.
They would say either, the world came into being for no reason, or it came from and endless line of causes and effects.
And this is where the argument takes shape.
If everything exists, if all effects come about because of a cause, then it makes no logical or scientific sense that our universe exists today without a cause.
The evolutionists would at some point come to the statement that there was an effect with no cause.
That the universe just came into being for no inherent reason.
And this goes against all nature. It goes against science. It goes against math. It goes against all things that we hold to now as truth.
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So this is the first basic argument, the second is the teleological argument.
This argument is based on the same premise as the cosmological argument, but it takes it a step further.
The idea here is that the intricate design of the universe indicates a creator.
So we already looked at how this church building existing indicates that it has a cause. This is simple
There is an effect so there must be a cause.
But if we take it a step further we can clearly observe that there is not just a creation, but an intelligent design.
When this building was being built, imagine if someone in Greencastle, saw the building start to take shape, but there were no windows yet. Then they installed these stained glass windows, and the person comes by and sees them installed for the first time.
Would they think.… “wow it’s incredible how all of those pieces of glass just came fell together in that order”
No, they would say wow the design and intelligence of the person who put that together is incredible.
And this is the same observation we make with the universe.
We do not look at the universe and logically observe, wow, its amazing how all of this just came into existence.
According to the rest of our world and how the intelligent design is observed, there is nothing in our nature, science, or math, that would indicate that this world came into being by chance.
Now I want to share a video by a man named Frank Turek
Author
Apologist
Public Speaker
In this video is a clip about 7 min. long where he goes over some of the incredible design of the universe.
VIDEO
The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Scripture tells us that by observing the universe around us, we see God.
Scripture is clear that the observable universe is evidence of a creator.
So we can see clearly that logic, science, and math do not show us that the universe was created by chance.
There are hundreds upon hundreds of other facts just like these that point to an intelligent creator.
So with the cosmological and teleological arguments, we can see that a creator must exists, but we don’t see that it is our God, this could be any creator.
But there is one more common argument that points us to not just a creator, but our creator,
This is the Law of Morality
This law was heavily discussed in C.S. Lewis’s book Mere Christianity, and the premise is fairly simple.
In our world we have objective morality.
Some would argue this point, but most would agree that there is some objective level of morality.
That there is a measure of right and wrong that is consistent across all mankind.
For instance if you were to poll the entire world, the vast majority would say it is wrong to murder and innocent person for no reason.
But if you were to ask that person why, they would eventually come to one of two conclusions
1 it actually isn’t wrong
2 its wrong because it just is
And the person that lands on point 1, that it isn’t actually wrong would likely come to the conclusion that there is no objective morality. And this is the type of mindset that men like Hitler, and Charles Darwin had.
That you do what benefits you the most, and right and wrong doesn’t matter.
AND LISTEN - IF GOD DOESN’T EXISTS, THEN THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT
IF GOD DOES NOT EXISTS, THERE IS NO REASON TO DO ANYTHING THAT DOESN’T BENEFIT YOU PERSONALLY
If it benefits you to murder the other pile of flesh and skin and organs and cells and take their stuff for yourself, there is no inherent reason that this is wrong.
But God does exists, and because of this we have the inherent nature of good
And understand that it is only through observing God and his perfect righteousness and goodness, that we see what is wrong in contrast to him
Without him there is no measure of right and wrong because there is nothing good to measure wrong up to
But even the person that doesn’t believe in God would rarely say that there is no inherent right and wrong, that there all right and wrong is just cultural.
But if you take a person from America, a person from Africa, a person from Russia, a person from Antarctica, and a person from an uncontacted Island tribe and you ask each of them..… IS IT GOOD OR BAD TO KILL AN INNOCENT PERSON FOR NO REASON, everyone one of them would say it is not good
The Bible tells us that this is part of the nature of who we are, that this moral law is written in our hearts.
for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them) in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.
Notice he is not talking about christians here, he is referencing gentiles as unbelievers here.
He is saying that unbelievers, without the law,still do by nature the things in the law, even though they don’t have it, or they don’t know where it came from.
Why? Because its written in their hearts, because God does exists, and everything in this world is contrasted to his glory.
So these are the three midpoint arguments.
We are at the top of the ladder and someone asks, well how can you know that God actually exists.
Your midpoint can be 1 of three, or all three of these arguments.
So what you are trying to get them to agree with you on is that the evidence of the universe itself points to a creator, thats it.
And some questions you could ask to get you to this point would be this.....
“Do you think everything exists for a reason?”
If they say No
Then you work down to the cosmological argument
Ok well can you think of anything in our universe that exists for no reason, like it just came into being randomly with no cause?
Maybe after some convincing - They will say well no everything now comes into being because of something
Response - so it would seem logical that our universe came into being for a reason, that it had a cause
Then this leads to the teleological argument
If they say Yes
You can skip straight to the teleological argument
If everything exists for a reason then the evidence of the intricacy of our universe points to a creator being that reason, that cause
Now the next step down to get to Jesus is the Law of Morality
If the universe exists for a reason, and that evidence points to an intelligent being as the creator, than what type of creator is this?
This is where you could ask the question, do you believe that there is such a thing as right and wrong?
Whether they say yes or no - ask why?
You are trying to get them to a point to agree that objective morality does exists, that believers and unbelievers all agree in their hearts that there is an existence of right and wrong
And here is how to lead them from here to Jesus
If right and wrong exists, than would you agree that there has to be an ultimate measure of good for us to even be aware of what is wrong.
EX: Imagine if you were blind from birth, you have never seen anything. Now with this being your case, imagine trying to describe the difference between light and dark.
You couldn’t because you can’t understand darkness without light and you can’t understand light without darkness
So God is the light that allows us to see darkness
and if he is the perfect light, the measure of all morality as the creator of all things, than anything below him must be darker
So if we are in darkness as his creation, below the measure of perfect goodness, than we can’t be in his presence in perfect unity now we would be bringing darkness into the presence of this perfect light
So the only way we can be in the presence of the perfect light is if we get rid of all of our darkness, but we can’t do that.
So God, the creator, the perfect light, the creator of all morality, comes to earth as a man, lives a perfect life and dies, paying the punishment for mankinds moral failure, and by believing in him we can take his perfect goodness and light on us and be made perfect so that we can be in the presence of the perfect creator
Obviously the conversations will probably not go this smooth, but I want you to see this as a template.
So you can have an idea of what this could like of taking someone's doubt that a creator even exists, and lead them to a saving knowledge of Christ through that question.
ROLE PLAY ACTIVITY
ROLE PLAY AGAIN, SAME PARTNERS, NOW USE WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED TO TRY TO AND FORM YOUR ARGUMENT
