Lecture

Welcome to the apologetics course. It’s an urban apologetics course. And I need you to understand we’re going to be touching on the basics of apologetics. This is such a wide, vast topic. But if you grasp the basics, it’ll give you a beginning on how to defend your faith. First let me explain. Apologetics comes from the word apologia, which means to give an answer for. We’re not apologizing; we’re giving an answer for why we believe what we believe in. In this culture, in the twenty-first century, with so many questions being asked . . . some of them are old soup warmed over. They’ve been asked and answered before, but many people have not heard those answers. It is important, regardless of what level of ministry you’re in, that you’re able to give an answer for your faith. There’s a scriptural mandate given to us in 1 Peter 3:15. It says, “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that [asks] of you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” (KJV).The Scripture admonishes us to always be ready to give an answer, the reason that we have this hope in Christ Jesus. It’s not because we heard a great worship song. It’s not because God made us feel good. No. It’s because there is an intellectual answer that bolsters our faith. My faith is fueled by evidence.

So we’re going to start today in this session on an age-old question. Before we can talk about anything, is there really a God? How does one know that there is a God? How can I know that there is a God? That’s the question that—there are many people who are atheist or agnostic—atheist meaning atheist, they do not believe in God. Agnostic, they’re not sure if there’s a God. And then there are the apatheists, those who don’t care. They have apathy; they don’t care. But it is sweeping the world, whether I’m in Africa, Asia, South America, the United States, North America. It doesn’t matter. Australia, Asia, it doesn’t matter, you hear this question. So let’s just look at a few of the arguments in this space of time.

First of all, the Bible, itself, precludes this answer (Romans 1:20–23). It says this, it says, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things” (NKJV). This is a very great passage because it begins to talk about that you can know that there’s a God, even if people did not have a Bible. And we’ll talk about the Bible in a few moments. The Bible’s one of the greatest miracles of all time. Even without a Bible, God demonstrates Himself through His creation. And so, through His creation, through the invisible things and the visible things . . . As a matter of fact, some call that intuitional apologetics. Beautiful things like a sunrise, the laughter of a child, the rolling ocean, green grass, beautiful music, harmony, love, all of these things point to a God that deep down and in your intuition, you know that there’s a God.

Not only that but scientifically we can see through the visible and invisible things that there is a God. For instance, there’s an argument called the cosmological argument. Cosmological argument. Now, that’s a big field, but just to narrow it down a bit, part of the cosmological argument looks at things like the laws of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics is the law of entropy, which means everything in the universe tends to go into chaos. Nothing is in order unless it’s put into order. And so the fact that there is order in the universe means that there had to be someone to put it in order. Einstein’s general Law of Relativity fits with that, E=mc2. It predicts that the universe is expanding. Time, space, and matter had a finite beginning at what scientists call the Big Bang. I believe in the Big Bang: in the beginning, bang, God created the heaven and the earth. There had to be a Big Bang. And if there’s a big bang . . . One of my favorite authors Frank Turek says, “If there was a Big Bang, there had to be a Big Banger.” Who created that bang?

But anyway, time, space, and matter continue to expand. There’s time, space, and matter that had a finite beginning. There had to be someone who is timeless, spaceless, and with no matter in a place where there is no matter to have created all of this. Time, space, and matter were created at some finite place, which means someone, something outside of time, space, and matter had to create time, space, and matter. Imagine your favorite cake made of flour, sugar, eggs, butter, whatever it’s made of. That favorite cake, we can agree that whoever made the cake is not made of flour, sugar, butter, eggs. They had to be outside the cake to create the cake. Same with our universe. And just like that person who’s outside the cake to create the cake, they present that cake. You know someone made a cake because it had to be put together with a reasonable level of intelligence. Well, that person that made the cake can cut the cake; they can freeze the cake; they could put icing on the cake. They put it in the oven when they baked the cake. And they are not confined by the laws of every crumb inside the cake. They can do whatever they want with that cake. Now if we can do that with a cake, how much more can a Creator, standing outside of time, space, and matter, come inside of His creation and manipulate it in ways which we call miracles, that defy our natural laws? If that’s the case and we can see that there had to be a Creator based on just this short bit of evidence that there’s so much more that we can give, we can see that there had to be a Creator. The greatest miracle of all time is that the universe is in order, and it’s been created. If God could create the universe, why could He not walk on water? Why could He not raise from the dead? Why couldn’t they walk across on dry land on the Red Sea? There’s so many things that could happen. And so we recognize and understand just by these two scientific principles—Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and second law of thermodynamics—things are in order. According to science, even that law of thermodynamics, if anything has a beginning, it must have an end. And scientists will let you know that there’s a time where the universe will come to an end. Now, the Bible has already told us that, and we understand that.

There’s also something called the anthropic principle (anthrop, meaning man, -ic), anthropic principles, which demonstrate that through those anthropic principles that the universe is finely tuned for our existence. Finely tuned. Just to give you a couple of examples that demonstrate that there had to be a Designer to all of this; and if there’s a Designer, that’s who we call God: Oxygen levels in the air that we breathe. We breathe this air, fresh air, in this studio. We breathe this air; and in the air is a mixture of gases: 21 percent oxygen in our air. If there were 25 percent oxygen, everything would catch on fire. It would be too much. If there were 18 percent oxygen, we would suffocate because there wouldn’t be enough oxygen. But it’s finely tuned exactly at the level where it needs to be, so that we can exist. Even the rotation of the earth [is finely tuned]. If it took longer than 24 hours, the temperature differences would be too great between night and day and we would not be able to exist on this planet. Even earthquakes, even simple things like the seismic activity gives tectonic uplift and brings up nutrients from the sea so that we can have the plants and vegetation that we have. There’re so many other things that we can look at through the anthropic principles—or that is called the teleological argument. But we don’t have time for that because this is a basic course.

Then we can continue. Even the fact of moral laws. People say, “How can there be a God when there’s suffering?” The fact that we know the difference between good and bad. When was the last time someone was protesting because of the suffering of grasshoppers or cockroaches or [because] the bat didn’t get perfect food or things of that sort? The fact that we have what is a conscience (there are basic things that are right and wrong) demonstrates that there had to be . . . the fact that we know that there’s evil or bad means that there has to be a level of good and we know the difference between Adolf Hitler and Mother Teresa. Why are we repulsed by Adolf Hitler, but we revere Mother Teresa? Because there’s a standard for good. And it demonstrates that there is a conscious giver of good, which has to be the God that we serve.

That’s very basic and very [low-level]. I would encourage you to study and learn and think deeper on this topic. But when someone says, “How do you know there’s a God?” and you begin to wonder, How do I know there’s a God? it’s not just because of how we feel, but there is evidence that supports our faith. I could go on and on and on, but I pray that prepares you to be able to say, “I know that there’s a God because He demonstrates Himself in so many ways, scientifically, as well as morally, as well as through the fine-tuning of our universe and even intuitionally, because I can feel it when I see certain things in this creation.” God bless you. See you in the next session.