Transcription
Ladies and gentlemen, that William and Mary event, the “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” event at William and Mary, will be Wednesday, March 5th, Lord willing, this week. If you’re anywhere near Williamsburg, we’d love to see you. The details are on our website; it starts at 7:00 p.m. I believe.
And if you can’t be there, it will be, Lord willing again, simulcast or live-streamed on our YouTube channel, on, uh, on our website, on the app—the Cross-Examined app. By the way, if you don’t have the Cross-Examined app, why not? Two words in the app store: Cross-Examined. It has the podcast on there, streams the TV show, also has a quick answer section which can help you interact with people on the fly. They may say something you don’t—you’re not quite sure how to answer—all you have to do is take out your iPhone or your Droid and go, “Hey, hang on, I’m getting a text.” You can look up the answer right there. All right, let me do uh, some questions today that you’ve sent into hello@CrossExamined. This comes from Ghana. Uh, it says:
“I am Elijah, a medical student at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Yesterday I had a discussion with my lecturer, who is an evolutionist. He questioned the historical existence of Jesus Christ, claiming that his life is a myth. He challenged me to provide historical evidence from extra-biblical sources dating from the first century that confirm Jesus’s existence.”
All right, let me stop right here. There’s a couple other elements in this question, but let me stop with this one. Uh, first of all, when you’re talking to your lecturer, you, you have to probably do this, Elijah, uh, privately, not in front of the whole class. Because first of all, he owns the microphone; he can shut you down at any moment. And, uh, secondly, he’ll probably be more open in a one-on-one situation; he doesn’t feel like his prestige is anyway being challenged. But just like any other statement somebody makes, it is not your job to refute what that person says; it’s his job to give you evidence as to why his assertion is true. So if he were to say, “Well, Jesus is just a myth,” you want to ask him, “What do you mean by that? Why do you think he’s a myth? And what do you mean by a myth? You mean he never existed?” If he never existed, I might ask him, “What evidence do you have that the most influential human being in history didn’t exist? In other words, how did he become the most influential human being in history if he didn’t exist?” You’ve got to have some kind of evidence that shows this was a big hoax from the beginning, and that somehow, somehow this myth grew into a real human being, and now that human being is the most influ- influential human being in history. In fact, I might even ask him, “Do you think that 2,000 years from now a mythological person, like say Luke Skywalker, will be the most influential human being in the world? Do you think 2,000 years from now that’s even possible? No. Why would you think it’s possible that the most influential human being in history, 2,000 years later, really never existed?” Just ask him.
Now he’s asking for extra-biblical sources from the first century. I might ask him, “Why extra-biblical? Why can’t you trust the Bible?” “Oh, well, you know, that those were written down by Christians, and you can’t trust what Christians say.” I’d ask them, “Why not? What motive did these people have to make this up?” Remember, these were Jews; everybody other than Luke is a Jew. He doesn’t believe a man could claim to be God. I mean, they don’t believe that; that’s blasphemy. They didn’t believe one guy would rise from the dead in the middle of time; they thought we’d all rise from the dead at the end of time, because uh, Isaiah and Daniel talk about that kind of thing. But they’re not thinking one guy is going to claim to be God and rise from the dead in the in the middle of time. Why would they make this up? Why would they give up their long-held religious beliefs, like circumcision, like the Sabbath, like the entire sacrificial system, like uh, the fact that God is one uh, and there is no Trinity? I mean, yeah, you can get the Trinity in the Old Testament, but but it’s much clearer in the New. Why would they kind of leave all that virtually overnight and then go and begin to believe all of these other beliefs that replace those? Like, no more sacrificial system; Christ’s life is enough. Binding law of Moses? Nope, Jesus fulfilled it. Sabbath? No, we’re worshipping on Sunday, uh, and the Sabbath isn’t binding. Strict monotheism? No, we’re believing in a Trinity now. Uh, circumcision? No, we’re going with baptism and communion. Right? Why would they do all this virtually overnight and then be tortured and killed for saying it was true?
Now there are non-Christian sources on this from about that time period, but why would you think they are more reliable than the people that had everything to lose by saying Christianity was true? And those are the people that wrote down the New Testament, and the apostles—some of them are the same people. Why would you think that disinterested sources who are not Christians are better resources for telling you what happened to Jesus? Now if you want to say that’s the case, fine, look at the non-Christian sources. When you look at the non-Christian sources, you get a story congruent with the New Testament. And who are the non-Christian sources? We have them all in the book, “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist.” This is from chapter nine. And when you add up what they say, uh, who are these people? Well, people like Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny. These are of course household names. Um, here, here’s what you get. This is actually from page 123 of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist.” Here’s what you get when you piece together ten non-Christian sources within 150 years of Jesus’s life. None of these people are Christians, but they say certain things about Christians and Christianity and Jesus that if Jesus was a myth, there’s no way they could say this. I mean, how does, how does—oh, it started way back in 33 A.D., it was a myth, and they thought it was real just within decades of that? Is that possible? Possible? Probably not. Reasonable? Reasonable to believe that these non-Christian sources write as if Jesus is a real person when in fact he wasn’t? Here’s what, um, here’s what what you get when you piece together these sources: Jesus lived during the time of Tiberius Caesar; he lived a virtuous life; he was a wonder-worker; he had a brother named James; he was acclaimed to be the Messiah; he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he was crucified on the on the eve of the Jewish Passover; darkness and an earthquake occurred when he died; his disciples believed that he rose from the dead; his disciples were willing to die for their belief; Christianity spread rapidly as far as Rome; and his disciples denied the Roman gods and worshipped Jesus as God. That sounds exactly like the New Testament.
Now these people don’t say Jesus is the Messiah or that Jesus did rise from the dead. If they did say that, they would be Christians. These people are saying the disciples believed Jesus rose from the dead, but that’s what they’re saying; that’s what the New Testament says. So there are no—maybe there’s one or two, but last I checked, if there’s one or two, that’s a lot. There are virtually no New Testament Scholars, even those who are atheists, who believe Jesus never existed. Nobody believes Jesus was a myth who is a scholar. Oh, sure, you can find stuff on the internet all you want, but you’re not going to find scholars saying—even Bart Ehrman says, of course Jesus existed and was crucified. So atheists, agnostics who are scholars, they, they wouldn’t agree with your friend at all. Why? Because there’s evidence that Jesus existed; very strong. There’s even archaeological evidence we’ve talked about on this program before. We found the ossuary of his brother James; Jesus’s name is on the side of it; it’s authentic; it comes from the first century. He never existed, but he had a brother who died, and he thought he’d put his mythological brother—or somebody thought, thought he thought they’d put their James’s mythological brother on the ossuary—his own ossuary. It says, “James, brother, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” Why would they do that? The guy never existed. Why would he be the most influential human being in the world if he never existed?
And I might ask Elijah, I might ask, ask your lecturer this question: “If Jesus wasn’t a myth and he actually predicted and accomplished his own resurrection to prove he was God, would you follow him?” I suspect the answer is no. Because when people say things like this, these kind of slogans—“Jesus never existed,” right, um, “Jesus is a myth”—they’re not really seriously looking into the issue. If they seriously look into it, they, they would know that whatever he is, he’s not a myth. And by the way, who could make up a character like Jesus? The guy had such amazing uh, qualities that you don’t even find it in fiction. In fact, in our book, “Hollywood Heroes: How Your Favorite Movies Reveal God,” my son and I wrote a couple years ago, we have a chapter in the back because the ultimate hero of all the blockbuster movies that you read about, read about that you watch over the past 50 or so years, the blockbuster franchises, they’ve all stolen from The Greatest Story Ever Told, and the greatest hero of all time, the ultimate hero is Jesus himself. And we cover in this book, uh, we cover—let me just go through the table of contents here: Captain America, Iron Man, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Batman, Wonder Woman, and of course the ultimate hero is Jesus. And we talk a little bit about Spider-Man and Superman in here as well. They’re all stolen from The Greatest Story Ever Told, because the great ultimate hero, Jesus himself, sacrifices himself to save people from evil, and that’s what all ultimate heroes do, or all heroes in the movies do. Jesus is the ultimate hero. Anyway, we—and I, I can’t go through this in any detail, but here are some of the qualities of Jesus: No other person in history or fiction is perfect like Jesus. I’m just reading the headlines. Jesus is the first and only world religious figure to make himself the message. There has not been a person in history more other-centered than Jesus. There is no, there is not another person in history as humble as Jesus, despite the fact that he’s God. There is not another person in history as brilliant as Jesus. And we give reasons obviously in that section. Jesus never allows his good qualities to lead him into sin. Good qualities—let me read this section here for just a little bit because it’s interesting: Everyone has good qualities, but some of our good qualities turn into bad behavior when we fail to hold them with the proper tension. For example, Captain America is usually right, but when he splits hairs or is unkind when expressing what is right, he fails to hold the tension between righteousness and humility. Iron Man wants to defeat evil, but when he insists that he must be in charge, he fails to defeat the evil in his own heart. The same may be true in our own lives. We may be warriors for truth, but our zeal for truth often causes us to speak without humility or grace. And I’m probably guilty of that a lot too. Conversely, we may be champions of compassion and grace for people struggling with sin, but when we lack the courage to speak the truth that can actually help people, our cowardice enables them to continue down the path of destruction. The great economist Thomas Sowell nails the point by saying, “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth; when you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” None of us holds the tension between truth and grace perfectly like Jesus did. Jesus is at the same time both a lion and a lamb. He is someone who walks and talks the absolute truth; in fact, he’s the embodiment of truth. And while he totally exposes people with, with his insight, he somehow delivers the message without adding offense. Yes, some already opposed him; the Pharisees are offended by the truth he proclaims, but Jesus doesn’t add offense. He tells the Samaritan woman at the well that she has had five husbands and the man she’s living with now is not her husband; that would normally be perceived as intrusive and none of your business. But the grace and love of Jesus—WIS—are over—even though Jews and Samaritans hate one another, she tells her entire village that Jesus could be the Messiah; then many come to believe he is the savior of the world. Now, as you, as you read the biographies of Jesus called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the New Testament, in order to fully appreciate how these amazing qualities are displayed by one person, after reading them, we think you’ll, you’ll see that this quote from Tim Keller is spot on. Keller said this: “It is this paradox that he is both God and human, speaking of Jesus, that gives Jesus an overwhelming beauty. He is the lion and the lamb. Despite his high claims, he is never pompous; you never see him standing on his own dignity. Despite being absolutely approachable to the weakest and broken, he is completely fearless before the corrupt and powerful. He has tenderness without weakness; strength without harshness; humility without the slightest lack of confidence; unhesitating authority with a complete lack of self-absorption; holiness and unending convictions without any shortage of approachability; power without insensitivity.” Unquote. Marinate on these seemingly opposed characteristics. Do you see all of these displayed in other any other human being from history, literature, or in your own personal experience? Maybe someone you know can hold the tension be between one or two of these characteristics, but all of them? Jesus did this. Jesus, who is perfectly full of grace and truth, is a character who could not have been invented. That’s from “Hollywood Heroes: How Your Favorite Movies Reveal God.” There’s a lot more about Jesus in there and those movie characters, but I would ask Elijah, your lecturer, how did this character become so real? Yeah, he’s a myth by, by your own assertion. H, h, h, how, how does he, how does he hold these seemingly contradictory qualities in tension perfectly if he’s a mythical character? Nobody could invent Jesus; he’s real. There’s nobody that’s been created in fiction like Jesus. And so you add that to the arguments I mentioned earlier—that these people who said they saw this went and died for it when they could have saved themselves by saying it never happened and had no inclination to say to invent it; they didn’t get sex; they didn’t get money; they didn’t get power for saying it was true. You add that to just the amazing unique character of Jesus. If anything, Jesus is, he’s not a myth. So I would ask him if he, if, if he really predicted and accomplished his own resurrection from the dead, would you follow him? Ask that of your instructor and see what he says. If he hesitates or says no, you could give him all the evidence in the world; Jesus could appear to him, and he’d probably go, “I’m suffering a hallucination.” He doesn’t want it to be true, Elijah, but I commend you for caring about your instructor enough to want to at least present Jesus to him.
Anyway, Elijah goes on with another section of the question; he says this:
“Additionally, I’m looking for resources, books, or materials that explore the intersection of science and faith, particularly those that address common arguments raised by atheists.”
Well, we, we have some resources, of course. “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” gets into that a lot. If you want to talk more about science and what atheists say, our book “Stealing from God” would be helpful. But let me recommend others from other authors: John Lennox. Anything by John Lennox, who is, as you know, a mathematician and philosopher from Oxford University, is great. I’m trying to think of John’s uh, book on science—“God’s Undertaker”—I see it over there on my shelf right now. That’s a great one. “Gunning for God” is another one. Uh, there’s one that he’s written on science specifically; I know it’s “God’s Undertaker,” but there’s a newer one. I’m going to look it up as we’re talking. Uh, it’s, it’s a book—has “Science B God,” something like that. Let me, let me, let me find that one by John Lennox, Elijah. And if, if you can find that, that would be something that I would highly recommend. John Lennox, science—let me see if I can find this—um—“Can Science Explain Everything?” That’s it. “Can Science Explain Everything?” Uh, that’s a great book. He’s also got “Cosmic Chemistry,” I mean, uh, and that, and that book I mentioned, “God’s Undertaker”—any of those books are great. Check that out. Also, Stephen Meyer. I don’t know how read you are in this, Elijah, but Stephen Meyer’s “Return of the God Hypothesis,” that’s his newest one. And in that, Steve talks about the three great arguments for the theistic God, or a theistic God: the cosmological argument, and the two aspects of the teleological argument—fine-tuning and the signature in the cell—the fact that life itself appears to be designed. So you, you’ve got the creation of the universe, you’ve got the design of the universe, and you have the creation and design of life. And he says that people are returning to the God hypothesis because not only can’t natural laws explain any of this, there’s positive evidence for an intelligent being when you look at the creation of the universe, the fine-tuning of the universe, or what you find in life—this genetic code that in every one of your 40 trillion cells there’s a, there’s a software program 3.2 billion letters long that we don’t just lack a natural explanation for; it’s not, not a God of the gaps argument to say there’s an intelligence that put that in there. Why? Because we know that programs always come from programmers. So we actually have positive evidence for an intelligent being. So you might want to check out Stephen Meyer’s “Return of the God Hypothesis.”
Let me also say this, and I need to develop this more—I developed it a little bit in “Stealing from God,” but in a future update of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist,” one day we’ll update it—I want to point out that the atheists—and I, I, I, I talk about this in “Stealing from God,” but I, I, I really want to point out that when atheists are arguing that there’s no evidence for God, they’re presupposing a number of things that are best explained by God. God-like, for example, their own minds. How do they, why do they trust their own minds? If the mind or the brain was put together by some sort of, by some sort of natural process that didn’t have its end in mind, why would you trust it? This is what John Lennox asks his materialistic colleagues. He’ll ask them, “You know, tell me the history of your brain,” and they’ll basically say, “Well, the history of my brain is it, it got here by some random process that didn’t have its end in mind.” And then Lennox will ask, will ask them, “And you trust it? Why would you trust such a creation?” As if a tornado put together a computer by raging through a junkyard, would you trust the computer? No, you’d go, “This thing wasn’t designed, so why should I trust anything from it?” But we can trust our minds; we can trust our brains, which should tell us that our minds are brains were, were put together by a designer so we could know the real world; we could know evidence. And the reason we have a mind and not just a brain is because if we’re just a brain, we can’t trust anything we think; we’re just molecular machines; we’re just moist robots. We have free will; we know that intuitively that we have free will; we can follow the evidence where it leads. We’re a soul; we’re not just a body. We have consciousness that can’t be completely explained by molecules bumping into one another. Why do we have this immaterial realm that allows us to know the real world and to make decisions, free will decisions? Why are these laws of logic and laws of mathematics? Where are they grounded? Where they’re immaterial; you can’t find the laws of logic in a drawer somewhere, or the laws of mathematics made out of material; they’re not; they’re immaterial realities. How about the laws of themselves? Where did they come from? And why are they so persistent and consistent? Where do laws come from? They come from lawgivers. Why, why is cause and effect? Why, why does that even happen? Why is the universe orderly? Where does an orderly world come from? An orderly universe? They come from a mind. Why? Because we reason from effect to cause; that’s what cause and effect tells us; that’s what scientists do; they reason from effect to cause. If there’s order in the world, there must be an orderer. If there are laws of, of nature, there must be a lawgiver. If there are laws of logic and laws of mathematics, we’re reasoning back to a mind; the ultimate grounding of this is a mind. If the universe had a beginning—and it did—if space, matter, and time had a beginning, then the cause must be outside of space, matter, and time; it must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal, intelligent to create the universe and to sustain the universe in the state it’s in. We’re reasoning from the effect we see all around us. This is why Paul says that God is understood by what has been made, so that people are without excuse; he says that in Romans chapter 1. We look around us; we see what is made, and we reason back to a cause. The problem with atheists is they have no ultimate cause; there’s no cause. They see all the effects around them, but they have no cause. In fact, that’s how we know God exists; we know God by his effects; we reason from effects back to cause. And so I would point that out, Elijah. I would say, um, “How do you explain your ability to argue? How do you, how do you explain why we have evidence for anything? Forget evidence for God for just a second; evidence for anything. Like, why, why when you put two parts of hydrogen and one part oxygen together you always get water? Why, why does that happen? And how can we know that? If you’re a molecular machine, you can’t know that. If there’s no order to the universe, you wouldn’t get a consistent outcome by putting two parts hydrogen and one, one part oxygen together; you wouldn’t get water. Because if there was no consistency, no order, things, things would change, and there would be no things. Actually, there’d be no God. I mean, there’d be no universe without God. I mean, if there is no God, why is there something rather than nothing? Why does anything exist? Exist? If there is no God.” Now this doesn’t prove the Christian God; only if Jesus has risen from the dead is this the Christian God. But atheists, unfortunately, are stealing from God while they’re arguing against him. They’re stealing rationality; they’re stealing the laws of logic; the laws of math; they’re stealing the laws of nature; they’re stealing a universe, because there should be no universe unless there was something outside the universe that brought it into existence. So you’re stealing from God while you’re arguing against him. Now “Stealing from God,” anything by John Lennox, Stephen Meyer will help you do that.
Elijah has a final point to this question; he says this:
“Lastly, I need material that supports the authenticity of the New Testament, refuting claims that it was a product of Roman political ideology designed to control the masses.”
Well, first of all, again, it is not your job to refute what somebody says; it’s their job to support what they say. So why do you think that Christianity is Roman political ideology designed to control the masses? Because, friends, Rome had no problem controlling the masses; Rome had their own pantheon of gods. What, why, why would they need, why would they need a Christian God to show up that says, “Love your enemies and bless those who persecute you and deny yourself?” That would be the antithesis of Rome. So I don’t know who came up with that kind of uh, claim, but again, you need to ask them what evidence they have for it. Why do you think Christianity is Roman political ideology when they, they had their own Gods; they had their own political structure; they didn’t need Christianity. In fact, Christianity overcame the Roman Empire. So I, I don’t know where this kind of hypothesis is coming from. I would, I would ask that person, Elijah, I would say, “Whatever you have for that hypothesis,” and then I might bring up what I just mentioned: You know, Rome doesn’t need any, doesn’t need a Christian God to uh, to control the masses; Rome controlled the masses quite well just with its own pantheon. In fact, that’s why Christians were often persecuted because they wouldn’t bow to the Roman gods. I mean, the Romans would have been fine with Christians saying, “Okay, uh, if, if Christians were saying, ‘We’ve got Jesus, but we’ll also pay homage to the Roman gods,’ Romans would have been fine with that. But the Romans thought that it’s because these Christians haven’t paid homage to our gods that all these bad things are happening to us, so you know, we’re going to come after you; we’re going to persecute you.” It wasn’t that they were paying homage to Jesus that was that big of a deal; it’s that they were paying homage to Jesus exclusively, and that was not something you did in the Roman culture. So anyway, Elijah, blessings on what you’re doing there, uh, and uh, just ask a lot of questions. And as some of the questions I’ve mentioned here are from Greg Koukl’s book “Tactics,” so I would highly recommend you get Greg’s book “Tactics”; it will help you out quite a bit to navigate conversations. And the key to all of this is really asking a lot of questions, because so many people don’t really have evidence for their worldview; they just have slogans they’ve heard or preferences they have, and they haven’t really analyzed them, and they put them all together in one worldview, not realizing many of them are mutually exclusive and they’re not even true. So if you just ask enough questions—“What do you mean by that? How’d you come to that conclusion?”—they can begin to doubt their worldview, and then only then, when they begin to doubt their worldview, might they be open to your worldview. So get that book “Tactics,” and also download our app, Cross-Examined app, because the questions I just mentioned here in this podcast are in the app, so that will help you as well.
All right, friends, it’s been great being with you. We’re going to do another Q&A next week uh, in the midweek podcast. And, uh, as you know, this is also a podcast that is aired on the American Family Radio network uh, on Saturday and Sunday. So we have two podcasts a week; one that goes on radio, that’s the Saturday and Sunday one; it usually drops online on Friday. And then the midweek podcast comes out on Tuesday. Also want to mention we got some great courses coming up. I’ll be your instructor for the Great Book of Romans, my favorite book in the New Testament, The Book of Romans. We go through it, the entire book in this class. We also have a few seats left for CIA, the online CIA. And if you take the presenter section or the presenter track, I’ll be one of your instructors as well as Greg Koukl, Natasha Crane, and Alisa Childers. In fact, two out of those four are going to evaluate you on your presentation. And if you don’t get the instructor track, you’ll still see us live for live Q&As, uh, and then you’ll get the benefit of all the other instructors that are part of the online CIA. That includes uh, Jay Warner Wallace and David Wood and Jorge Giil and Richard Howe and uh, let’s see, Alan Parr and several others. So check out CIA; go to crossexamined.org, click on online courses; you will see them there. And Lord willing, we will see you here next week. God bless.
If you’re looking for solid answers to life’s biggest questions, don’t miss the latest episode of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist.” Find it on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, OnePlace, and Podcast Addict. Tune in, discover the truth, and share it with someone who needs it. Let’s keep spreading the truth together. [Music]