Transcription
I want to know why I should believe it's more probable that there is a God than there isn't.
Imagine walking onto a campus with one question burning in your mind. Does God exist? Today, you'll hear that question pressed hard by an intelligent student who refuses to back down. Across from him stands Cliff Connectley, a pastor, apologist, and evangelist. For decades, he has stood in open squares and on university steps, answering thousands of tough questions about God, truth, and life after death. In this exchange, the student demands compelling evidence for the existence of God. And Cliff responds with calm brilliance and precision. But near the end, something unexpected happens. Cliff moves beyond the arguments and speaks directly to his heart, challenging this young man to face where he truly stands with God. As you watch, I'll share two short insights that will help you see this exchange in a deeper way and strengthen your confidence in what you believe. Then I will close with one brief reflection that brings everything together and could change the way you see God, truth, and the way you live today.
And if you had a scientific question, you would go to a scientist and I presume you would expect a rational answer.
And if you had a philosophical question, you would go to a philosopher and perhaps less rational but still cogent, you would expect an answer. Mhm.
I have a religious question and I come to you as a religious man to answer it.
Right here, right now, I'm not an atheist. I can't equip myself with moral relativism. I'm an agnostic and I envy your faith. I want to know why I should believe it's more probable that there is a God than there isn't. You don't have to prove absolutely that there is. I just want to know that it's more probable that there is than that there isn't. And I want you to show me.
Okay. Thanks for asking that honest question. I appreciate it. The reason that I believe that God exists is because of certain evidence. First piece of evidence, the order and the design of the cosmos points me to some type of intelligent mind. Because my experience in life is in order to bring about order, I got to work real hard. And when I get sick, I don't go running to a neophite. When I get really sick, I go running to a highly highly trained doctor who understands the order and design of the human body. My experience in life is order demands an intelligent mind behind it. It doesn't come about by chance. Second piece of evidence for me, life in my experience always comes from life. I don't care if it's plant life, animal life, human life. You never get life out of non-life. In other words, you never get the animate from the inanimate. Therefore, is it more reasonable for me to believe in the beginning God? Or is it more reasonable for me to believe in the beginning matter and energy? Because I only see life come from life, never life come from non-life. It's far more plausible, reasonable for me to believe in the beginning God. Third point, the moral argument. I think you've been standing here while I've been articulating it. I am convinced that although they're not many, there are at least a few moral absolutes. Although there's a lot of ethical gray, probably more ethical gray than ethical black and white, there at times is ethical black and white. Crystal clear.
Moral absolute.
Moral absolute.
So those are the three reasons.
Those are three. Order, order design coming from intelligent mind. Life coming from life not from non-life. moral absolutes. Fourth one, love. My experience of life is that love is crucial to my marriage, my family, my friendships. Love is a crucial motive in my life. If it's lacking, life turns very sterile, very empty. The only way love can be real is if there is more to reality than matter and energy. There's got to be some type of God who creates us with this innate ability to genuinely love. If there is no God, the Duke University student was correct when he said, "Love is simply a biological drive to preserve the genetic pool." And I said, "Sir, do you really think that's what motivates Mother Teresa to work among the dying in Kolkata, India?" He said yes. I have a fundamental disagreement with that. My experience in life is no. Mother Teresa was motivated by love for the dying in Kolkata, India. That's why she did what she did. Not motivated primarily by a drive to preserve the genetic pool. That's a fourth piece of evidence.
Fourth, right?
You mind if I ask some questions about
Go right ahead.
Order. Um, I know a little about computers. Not a lot, but a little. And I know there are computer programs that write very complicated, very ordered programs that do things extremely ordered. But I would not go back and say that the program that wrote it is a life or capable of love or capable of thought in the way I think of thought.
I have seen order that is caused by seemingly disorder or random occurrences. I've seen order that doesn't necessarily come from a cogent willed source and I've seen order come from a cogent willed source that was very evil or you would define evil. So, first of all, I would contend that I've seen or think I've seen I think I've seen order from chaos and I know I've seen or at least I like to think I've seen order from what would you what you would dictate as evil? So, is it order from chaos? And if it's order only from order, why does that necessarily imply a good entity that created this order?
Okay. I I have strong disagreements with one point and I strongly agree with your second point. I think it's rather clear that a computer comes from an intelligent mind. I've never met a computer that just came about by accident. So that computer obviously was ordered by an intelligent mind. So there's no problem with computers. But I think you raise a tremendous issue when it comes to evil. I think you're absolutely correct. I think it's totally possible that this intelligent mind is a warped Scrooge.
Okay. What's what was the second reason now? Just to get
Okay. Second thing is life comes from life, not from non-life.
That one's harder for me. Um I'm not a biologist, but I know that there's a lot of theories that say that given the right materials, the right electric charge, so to speak, and the right atmosphere, we can create proteins, we can create enzymes, we can create complex molecules. And from that this
okay and my point would be I would not be shocked if scientists created life
because that's exactly what I believe intelligent mind creates life. My point is you've got to have the intelligent mind there. You don't just have life coming out of non-life by accident. You don't think it's possible, even remotely possible, even infantismally remotely possible, that in some primordial pool, a lightning strike struck a complex of of molecules that created an enzyme that then allowed us to evolve into this over billions of years.
Anything is possible.
Possible.
Correct.
Anything is possible.
For the god,
exactly. You see for me as for me as a thinking human being the question is what is most plausible in light of the evidence.
Third point was
third point was moral absolutes.
I don't have a counter for that.
Although this young man didn't have a reputation for Cliff's argument about moral absolutes, I believe it is one of the strongest arguments to show that God exists. The moral argument is powerful because it points to something every person already knows at the core of their being. There is such thing as objective right and wrong. If objective morals exist, they must come from an objective moral lawgiver higher than us, not from human opinion or culture. Without God, right and wrong would be nothing more than personal preference. Yet, we all recognize that some things like murder or lying are always wrong, and things like love or justice are always good. That shared moral awareness points to a creator who has written his law on our hearts.
Fourth,
fourth point was love.
That I don't understand. Um, and and I'd really benefit if you could explain it to me.
Sure.
I don't understand what you mean by it.
And I've never experienced what you're talking about
and I'm fairly happy with my life.
Mhm. All right. What I'm talking about is in the 60s there was a riot at the Sorbon, the French university in Paris, and a young man walked up to a bearded man and said, "Excuse me, sir. What are you rioting about?" The bearded man said, "I'm protesting this lousy world." The young man asked, "Do you believe in God?" Man said, "No, I'm an atheist." Young man asked, "Do you love anyone?" Bearded man lowered his head and said, "Yes, I love a woman by whom I've had a child and she's dying of leukemia." Young man said, "Well, if she's dying of leukemia, why don't you ditch her and go out and get some other fox who turns you on a little more?" Beard of man hauled back and almost hit the young guy. Young guy said, "Excuse me, sir. You said there is no God." Well, if there is no God, there is no innate human ability to genuinely care for somebody else. And if this woman is losing her ability to sexually excite you because her body's falling apart due to leukemia, why don't you go out and get some other fox who turns you on a little more? And then the young man pulled out a Gospel of John where we read that there is a God and this God is love. And when he created you and me in his image, in his likeness, he placed within you and me the innate ability to love. So, every atheist loves, every agnostic loves, every theist loves. Why? Because we're human beings, not machines. We're human beings created in the image and likeness of God.
Is that love the only emotion that God put in us? Or are all of our emotions from God?
No. God gave us emotions, but due to our sin, we can twist those emotions. The classic example is anger. There's nothing wrong with anger. Confronted by evil, God is angry. Confronted by evil, I should be angry. That's moral indignation. That's righteous anger. But in my selfishness, in my sinfulness, I twist anger and I lose my temper with someone because they step in front of me at the line at the airport. Don't they know who they just stepped in front of? And so I explode in a selfish type of anger. And that's sinful.
We tie this with your creation x Neilo argument. Creation from nothing. a counter to it.
Everything here from God.
Was there anything before God? Was there any before God?
God is eternal. So there was nothing before God.
Everything from God.
No. Not Not everything from God. Because God has given you and me gifts of creativity. Obviously, God did not make your jacket or eyeglasses. Obviously, God did not build that building. And obviously, if I go up to him and kick him in the jaw, that's not God kicking him in the jaw. Or if I go up to him and pull my wallet out and give him a dollar, it's not God giving him a dollar. So because God has given you and me gifts of creativity, we can create and we do all the time.
So then some things from God, some from man. Man used in a general sense, male, female.
Yeah. He's God's given us gifts of creativity.
And as far as the moral absolutes go, you say there's some. Okay. Where do I find them?
Two places. First of all, you go to your conscience. And secondly, you ask, "Has God revealed a standard that I can measure my conscience against?" Jesus Christ claimed that he was that standard, that his ethical teachings are that standard. You can find them in the sermon on the mount, Matthew 5 through7. You can find them in the ten commandments, Exodus 20.
My conscience, the first source.
First one, conscience. Right.
That troubles me. My conscience guides my behavior very differently from what I would assume you would guide it as yourself.
That's right. I'm extremely selfish and almost exclusively act in my own interest. That's right. That is how my conscience guides me.
Uh-huh. Well, I dare say though that occasionally you experience guilt.
Maybe not often, but occasionally.
My point is guilt.
You've never experienced guilt?
Not guilt. I've regretted my actions in the sense that they didn't have the outcome I thought they were. They weren't as beneficial to me as I thought they would be. That's regret, but not guilt.
All right. Speaking for myself, at times I have experienced guilt, which means I am convinced that what I did was wrong.
Compared to something other than your conscience?
Well, all I know is I experience guilt my conscience informs me of it.
And these four reasons that you've given you feel make it more probable that there is a god and that there isn't.
Correct. And then there's another one. Okay. your agnosticism.
Okay.
It is an intellectual option to be an agnostic. It is a practical impossibility. Every day you have to make priorities. Every day you have to make ethical decisions. And your priorities in life and your ethical decisions in life tackle show very clearly you're not agnostic. You believe something. You believe in someone. that has motivated you to set the priorities that you have. I obviously don't know what those are. What you believe in has obviously motivated you to invest your money the way you do, your time the way you do. So there are many people who can say I'm agnostic. I don't know. But practically the way you live your life shows that you believe something.
Cliff makes a powerful point here. You can say you don't believe in God, but you still live by moral absolutes. Acting as if some things are truly right and others are truly wrong, which only makes sense if God exists. But saying you can have morality without God is like saying you can have sunlight without the sun. You can't separate the light from its source. In the same way, you can't have true morality, meaning or purpose without God who gives them. Our actions reveal what our hearts already know, that we are living in a world created by a moral and personal God.
So then would it be more honest of me to say practically um I believe in me
and I'm Yes. Uhhuh. Correct.
And I may have misinterpreted agnosticism. I took it and have taken it to mean I don't know what's there. I'm not going to make any decision about it. I'll listen to whoever has something to say and see what I think.
Right? And I think intellectually you can do that. But now you have to go out and live your life. And the way you live your life shows whether you acknowledge God or not. See, that's the embarrassing thing about what we're talking about out here. The embarrassing thing about what we're talking about here is it's not like do you like black leather or brown leather jackets, which is totally an issue of your own preference. Do you like Pepsi or Coke? Because you see, it really doesn't matter whether you like a brown leather jacket or brown or a black leather jacket, whether you like Pepsi or Coke. Those are rather inconsequential issues. But the issue of God's existence is not along the lines of Pepsi and Coke, black and brown leather jackets. It's an issue that goes right to the heart of human existence because it's an issue of what is the meaning and purpose of your life? Why do you live your life ethically the way you do? And what about life after death? Are you ever going to have to answer to anybody for the way you lived your life? You see, so due to the grieviously serious nature of the issues that are all wrapped up in God's existence, although I can say I don't know whether God exists or not, the way I live my life, the meaning I attach to my life, the ethical decisions I make in my life, tact will tell you what I believe about reality. This was a powerful dialogue between Cliff and the young man, showing that we can wrestle with big questions, disagree respectfully, and still pursue truth. Cliff gave several strong arguments for the existence of God. But the greatest proof is in the person of Jesus Christ. He forgave sins, something only God can do. He walked on water, proving his authority over creation. He turned water into wine, revealing his divine glory. And most importantly, he rose from the dead, conquering sin and death once and for all. Every miracle pointed to one truth. Jesus is God, the savior of the world. If you've never trusted in him, turn to Jesus today. He alone can forgive your sins, give you new life, and fill your life with lasting hope and peace. The same savior who conquered the grave is alive and calling you to repent and believe in him. If you like this content and want to see more like it, click one of the next two videos. Until the next time, this was Truth Unleashed. God bless.