The annual Truth Quest Youth Apologetics Conference in Prescott, AZ, happened again! The theme this year was “Truth & Freedom”. It was Friday and Saturday, April 12-13, 2024, and I was blessed and able to once again give the presentation “Does God Exist?”

I came in exhausted, so if I stumble through some parts, know that. The extra blessing this time was the addition of a panel for QnA discussion. Pastor Matt Kottman of our hosting church, Solid Rock Christian Fellowship, was our panel host. NextGen Pastor Titus Vester of Willow Hills Baptist was our fellow panelist.

Below are the video, my presentation, and the notes. (As usual, I mostly stuck to notes, but not completely.)

(Oh, and my shirt states, “If at first you don’t succeed, try doing what your math teacher taught you the first time.”)

TQ24 – Workshop: GOD 101 – Does God Exist?

https://prezi.com/p/embed/xg36AAmJNpb0JOEHOVSX/

“God does not exist.”
• From etymology.com: from Latin – existere/exsistere = “to step out, stand forth, emerge appear”
o Therefore, God does not exist
• Just Kidding! It also means “to be”, and as we know God simply is.
o Exodus 3:14: “I AM WHO I AM” or simply “I Am”
 Not “I was” or “I will be” or “I can be” – God eternally is.
Can we know anything?
Do we fall into the fallacies of infinite regress, that “there are turtles all the way down?”
Perhaps we fall into circular reasoning. “We know this because of that, and that’s true because of this.”
Infinite regress looks like asking, “If God created everything, then who created God?” Or “everything came from something before it.”
Evolutionary theorists do these often, such as saying we know the age of rock layers because of the fossils we find, and we know the age of the fossils because of the rock layers they’re in.
Ultimately, all arguments resort to circular reasoning, meaning it’s not necessarily a fallacy. However, with God the argument is that He is the uncaused first cause.
But can we believe in God?
What is faith?
Blind faith – believing without evidence.
True faith – belief in action based on evidence.

What is evidence?

Merriam-Webster: (all text original)
“1a: an outward sign : INDICATION; b: something that furnishes proof : TESTIMONY; specifically : something legally submitted to a tribunal to ascertain the truth of a matter
2: one who bears witness; especially : one who voluntarily confesses a crime and testifies for the prosecution against one’s accomplices”
Should be: Testable, Observable, and/or Confirmable
o What is Gravity? How does it work? [Play video] , but it is a Law of Nature
 “However, if we are to be honest, we do not know what gravity “is” in any fundamental way – we only know how it behaves. Gravity is a force of attraction that exists between any two masses, any two bodies, any two particles. Gravity is not just the attraction between objects and the Earth”
(NASA.gov – Retrieved February 28, 2023 from https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question30.html#:~:text=However%2C%20if%20we%20are%20to,only%20know%20how%20it%20behaves.&text=Gravity%20is%20a%20force%20of,between%20objects%20and%20the%20Earth.)
 No one really understands how a bicycle stays upright even without a rider [minutephysics video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZAc5t2lkvo%5D

NASA helps us see that no one really understands gravity.
Evidence of this is that no one really understands why the physics work that makes a bicycle stay upright, even without a rider.
Can we scientifically measure … science?
Science comes from the Latin for knowledge, and it is a PROCESS for evaluating evidence.
“Christianity does not profess to convince the perverse and headstrong, to bring irresistible evidence to the daring and profane, to vanquish the proud scorner, and afford evidences from which the careless and perverse cannot possibly escape. This might go to destroy man’s responsibility. All that Christianity professes, is to propose such evidences as may satisfy the meek, the tractable, the candid, the serious inquirer.”  Bishop Wilson, Evidences of Christianity, 1.38.
“Christians do not claim that their faith gives them omniscience or absolute knowledge of reality. Only God has that. But they believe that the Christian account of things – creation, fall, redemption, and restoration – makes the most sense in the world.”  Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, p. 127

Evidence

Naturalism vs. Theism
• Naturalism believes that nature is the only thing that has creative properties so they reject any creative force outside the box (the universe).
• “That is, science is assumed to be, not only rational and causal and unified, but also naturalistic, banning by definition even the possibility of a supernatural First Cause of the rationality, causality, and unity of the universe with which science deals. But such an assumption is purely arbitrary (even emotional, as Isaac Asimov had admitted) and was certainly not held by the great scientists of the past, nor is it indicated by any actual scientific data.” (Dr. Henry M. Morris, The Biblical Basis for Modern Science, p.23)
BIAS
Let’s remember that we all have the same evidences, but we bring our own biases.
It is closed minded and unscientific to only believe in the material.
We all have bias in our approach of discovery but which is the greater bias, naturalism or theism?
“The current bias of science arbitrarily eliminates certain answers before the game gets started. Many scientists and historians must come up with conclusions that leave the supernatural out of the picture because their philosophy demands it. A theist is not so encumbered. She believes in the laws of nature, but is also open to the possibility of supernatural intervention. Both are consistent with her worldview. She can judge the evidence on its own merits, unhindered by a philosophy that automatically eliminates supernatural options before the evidence receives a hearing. Ironically, Christians bias broadens her categories making her more open-minded, not less. She has a greater chance of discovering truth because she can follow the evidence wherever it leads.”
-Greg Koukl, Tactics, p.174-175
“For me it is more reasonable to believe, based on the laws of logic as well as the observable scientific evidence that God exists, rather than to believe what the atheist believes that nothing, times nobody, equals everything we see in the universe.”
-Charlie Campbell, http://www.alwaysbeready.com/component/content/article?id=137
Isn’t it interesting that the first “scientists” were all theologians or Christians in their respective disciplines?
Why? Romans 1:20 …
This is called “General Revelation.”

The Cosmos

“Cosmogony is the study of ideas about the origin of the cosmos. The term is closely related to cosmology, which is the study of the cosmos in all its aspects.”
-Dr. Henry M. Morris, The Biblical Basis for Modern Science, p.119
What is the cosmos?
“The cosmos, in simplest terms, is the space-mass-time universe and all its arrays of complex systems…God created the heavens (i.e., ‘space’) and the earth (i.e., ‘matter’) in the beginning (i.e., ‘time’).”
-Dr. Henry M. Morris, The Biblical Basis for Modern Science, p 119

Kalam Cosmological
In 1979, Christian philosopher William Lane Craig published his research on the Kalam Cosmological Argument, reduced to a simple syllogism (“1. This is a truth, 2. This is a fact about something, therefore 3. This fact is true.):
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
Taken a few steps further, here are other arguments he has posited:
1. Something exists.
2. Nothing does not produce something.
3. Something must have always existed, leaving two options: either the universe or something outside of the universe.
4. If the universe were infinite, we could never arrive at “Today” because time would never truly advance. Math would fail. For time to work, a beginning is necessary. Entropy helps prove this, as all things break down over time. (Time is not an illusion, it is merely affected by other things, such as speed and energy … and gravity.) Thus, the universe must have had a beginning with a cause.
5. If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists who sans (without) the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful, because an effect cannot be greater than its cause.
6. Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful.
“The most basic scientific principle, and the criterion that governs all human experience, is the law of causality. This law states that although one cause can have many effects, no effect can be either quantitatively greater than or qualitatively superior to it’s cause. An effect can never be greater and, in fact, will always be less-than it’s cause. Thus a chain of effects and their cause must eventually trace to an essentially infinite first cause.”
-Henry Morris, The Biblical Basis for Modern Science
We all know that nothing happens in isolation. When we try to trace an event to it’s cause, or causes, we find that we never seem to reach a stopping point. The cause of an event itself caused by a prior cause, and so on back. Eventually we must face the question of a possible uncaused First Cause.
The universe itself is evidence.
Why?

Fine-Tuned Universe
• Fine-Tuning of the Universe
o [Fine-Tuning of the Universe video by Reasonable Faith]
 Some even suggest we may live in a simulation … which means … created …
 So, we have a universe that has a definitive beginning. (Even if arguments are being made saying otherwise.)
 It is so finely tuned that a severely minor change would mean at best no life and at worst no universe.
 And Christians get made fun of for discussing “elephants all the way down” (which is what a multiverse is) or something outside of the physical universe (showing they have faith in Science and human potential.)

DNA

There is so much complexity and fine-tuning in a universe with a beginning, and it includes biology.
We could discuss all of the amazingly complex parts of biology that seem to be irreducibly complex, including the eye, of which Darwin himself was terrified to consider the complexity.
“Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”
-Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker
“Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”
-Francis Crick, cited in William Dembski, Science and Design
However, today we will focus on one element of biology in particular that ties to the very evidence scientists search for when they search for life in the universe: information …
• Biology is an expression of information, i.e. DNA, and information only comes from a mind.
• DNA – The code of life – Is it all a happy accident?
o Francis Crick, one of the two scientists who discovered DNA, having observed the complexity of DNA, estimated that the odds that intelligent life exists on the Earth as the result of non-directed processes to be around … 1:102,000,000,000 (That’s one with ten to the two billionth power.) – [Cited in Gary Habermas and Mike Licona, The Case for the Resurrection, 2004, p. 179]
o 01000111 01001111 01000100 00100000 01100101 01111000 01101001 01110011 01110100 01110011
 This is binary, a code of just 2 characters, but DNA is made up of 4 characters that tell every living cell how to build itself, grow, and reproduce.
 This binary  “GOD exists”
The universe and life itself proclaims a Creator exists.

Jesus!

The ultimate proof of God is the death and resurrection of Jesus: He presented His physical body to His disciples.
• Naturalism or Intelligent Design: both require faith because both cannot observe the past, but what is more probable? What is the most likely, reasonable reality?
• Think 4th Dimensionally:
o Hearing from an atheist …
 What is the supernatural?
• “But we need more than naturalistic sciences. We cannot derive meaning, human value, and equality from a laboratory.” -Abdu Murray, Saving Truth, p. 173D
 Is there something outside of space and time?
• The more we understand the cosmos the bigger and the more intricate the design is observed. We have to conclude that there is a God that is incredibly detailed, unfathomably large, and surpassing beautiful.
 What would a higher being be like?
• [Flatlanders video by Carl Sagan from Cosmos]
• It is perfectly reasonable to believe in a more than probable God who exists outside of space-time.
• “For me it is more reasonable to believe, based on the laws of logic as well as the observable scientific evidence that God exists, rather than to believe what the atheist believes that nothing, times nobody, equals everything we see in the universe.” -Charlie Campbell, http://www.alwaysbeready.com/component/content/article?id=137
• The Ultimate Proof: Jesus presented Himself as God and proved it!
o The Hebrew Bible (what we call the Old Testament) made over 100 distinct prophecies about One who would come to save all people from sin.
o Jesus of Nazareth was born the way prophesied, lived a life performing miracles and pointing people to God, and then He said He would be killed and raised to life again.
o And Jesus did that. Evidence? John 20:19-20, 24-29
o 1 Corinthians 15:17-24
Why?
Did God need to create anything, especially us?
No. Acts 17:24-25 – God is a free Being who has no need for anything.
Did He have to save us? Did He have to become a human and die?
No. He could have just destroyed us in our sin, but He was free to choose to save us out of His love for us. (Consider Genesis 6:5-7 [destroying the world by flood]; Exodus 32:9-10 and Deuteronomy 9:13-14 [wanting to destroy Israel for the golden calf])
Because of His freedom to choose us, if we choose to follow God, we become free from sin and shame, and one day all of creation will be free from corruption. Romans 8; 2 Corinthians 3:17; Galatians 5:1,13