Christian vs. Atheist: Is This Proof That God Actually Exists?... | DSH 2164

Scott (0:00)

When you said atheism is giving me freedom from religious dogma, like it has, but atheism also gives way to genocide. Where does that come from? And Kate, I'm gonna be honest with you, I think you're awesome, and I love getting to know you, but I think you're really good at not answering the question. Where does that value come from? Why is torturing babies wrong?

Kate (0:19)

What would you do if you woke up tomorrow and believed that God commanded you to do one of these horrible things that you've listed that you think atheism opens a door to?

Sean Kelly (0:37)

We're at FreedomFest. The prompt is, can we be confident God exists? We're gonna start with Scott, right?

Scott (0:43)

Yeah, so I'm on the affirmative. I believe that we can be confident that God exists. I'm a Biola student. I go to Biola University in Southern California, and I'm gonna be a senior next year. I'm a youth pastor in Southern California as well, and so I believe that we can be confident that God exists. So my grandfather wrote a book called Evidence That Demands A Verdict. It's one of the best-selling Christian books of all time, and it's all the evidence for Jesus and that Christianity is true. But he opens up and he says something super significant. He says, if atheism is true, Christianity is certainly false.

So if God does not exist, Christianity is certainly false.

But if theism is true, if Christianity is true, if God does exist, that makes the claims of Christianity that much more probable. So today, I'm a Christian. I believe that we have good evidence that Jesus Christ not only existed, but he claimed to be God, he performed miracles, and that he rose again on the third day.

But in order to prove that, in order to say that that's actually a plausible thing that could have happened, God must exist first. We cannot get the person of Jesus who he claimed to be, if God doesn't exist. And so I think that we can go into the arguments for the existence of God. And I think that there's three broad arguments that everything falls under. We can go on down all the, as you like to say, the rabbit holes of all these different things. But I think the three arguments best line up with number one being the cosmological argument for God. Asking the question, where do we come from? Is the earth, is our universe infinite? Or is there a finite start beginning? Well, I would say that I think that the universe started at the Big Bang, that there was a singular point in time that universe started. So then there's philosophical evidence for that. And there's still philosophical arguments for that. And there's scientific arguments for that, that we can totally get into. Philosophically being the Kalam cosmological argument, or the teleological argument for God. And then we look at scientific evidence. We can look at the second law of thermodynamics, and that we can look at the models, whether it's a steady state model, whether it's all these different types of models that show that there must be a starting point to our universe. Then we get into morality and asking the question, why are we here?

Kate (2:45)

Who are we?

Scott (2:46)

Being able to ask those questions, is there objective truth in this world? Because I do not believe that you can get objective truth in this world without God. I believe that we can recognize certain morals without God, but I don't believe that we have a justification for standing for those moral obligations towards humans. So we can talk about the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, philosophical angles for there, but I believe that we can look at this world and say, there are objective truths in this world. And then finally, which I don't know how much we're going to be able to get into today, but I believe the third argument for the existence of God is the person of Jesus Christ. I think, Kate, I've listened to enough of what you've said. I think you and me both agree that Jesus Christ was actually a historical person. And that begs the question, who was he? He is the most significant person that has ever lived. And if Jesus Christ was a real person, that begs the question, who was he? Was he the son of God? Was he a liar? Obviously, CS. Lewis's trilemma, Lord Liar or Lunatic, and being able to take that stance. And so, the thing we're talking about today is, can we be confident that God exists? Kate, I'll be honest with you right now. I'm not certain that God exists.