ABHE Session #4 – J.P. Moreland

Having been in the ministry 40 years, one of his spiritual gifts is the gift of evangelism.

He just wrote a book that could be given to a non-Christian person who would be willing to read about why Christianity is true. The book is called The God Question. This session is a general approach taken in the book.

This isn’t the normal way to talk to individual people, because you should start with their felt needs. But when talking to a group of non-Christians (Lions Clubs, etc.), this is a good approach to structure it.

This is like presenting a case in a jury trial. There are three phases:
1. Interest the audience in the truth issue, not the pragmatic issue. (Appeal to reason instead of emotion)
2. Build the case for a monotheistic God who is the best explanation for the universe.
3. Then move to Christianity above other forms of monotheism like Judaism or Islam.

I. Motivate the thoughtful religious approach to religion.

The “Won Mug” approach to religion is an illustration that is helpful. Won Mug graduated from high school, but was an absolute idiot. He couldn’t do division or multiplication. He went to his local University (Harvard), took a class, and got 3 out of 100 right on his first test. The professor calls a meeting of all the professors on campus. We have a dunce on campus named Won Mug. Let’s make him think he’s the smartest student on campus for four years, then we’ll mock him behind his back, and let him know after 4 years just how dumb he is. The next day, he asks a question that is idiotic, and the professor says it’s the smartest question he’s ever been asked. He starts getting 100/100 on all his tests. He ends up pursuing a PhD in physics. He supervises several doctoral dissertations each year. He’s interviewed by Time and Newsweek. He goes to conferences every year. He’s an absolute joke. Everyone is laughing at him behind his back. Would you want to be Won Mug? Would you want your son or daughter to be him? Remember, his beliefs work. He’s happy. All day long, his mind is filled with the beliefs that he is really sharp and the finest physicist in the US. Won Mug’s beliefs work, but they are false. If you don’t envy him but you pity him, that’s proof that there’s something more important than whether a belief works. It’s whether the belief is true. Most people realize that if you have false beliefs that work for you, you are not to be envied, you are to be pitied.

The “mother” illustration says that since what we want are beliefs that are true, the problem is that all religions can’t be true. True story: Christianity is fine for you and that’s great, but everyone should have their own. Ok, what does my mother look like? I have no idea. Give it a shot. Three people guess what she looks like. They all give good guesses that are different. But his mother can’t be 5-2, 5-4, and 5-7 all at the same time. She can’t be 100, 150, and 200 pounds all at the same time. You could raise money and persuade people that any of those three things are true. But it wouldn’t make a difference because they contradict each other. If my mother isn’t really that size, you are wrong. The different world’s religions contradict each other. There can’t be 330 million gods. Sincerity isn’t enough.
This illustration shows that the world’s religions can’t all be true and that sincerity isn’t enough.

The “smorgasboard” illustration points out that some people are discouraged by the contrary nature of the world’s religions. So they cope by picking and choosing what they like from the different approaches that are out there. But the problem with that is illustrated by going to a smorgasboard for lunch. You get on your plate exactly what you like and leave off your plate exactly what you don’t like. The problem with the smorgasbord approach is you get exactly from God what you go out looking for. If you pick and choose according to what you like and don’t like, you are almost guaranteed falsehood. You will project what you want upon reality and have a fictitious approach to God.

The “Brain surgeon” illustration shows why you don’t want to make a mistake on this question. If a gardener pulls a flower instead of a weed, it’s no big deal. But suppose you have a brain tumor that needs to be removed and you go to a recommended brain surgeon. He says he’ll help and asks to confirm that the brain is somewhere around the navel area. You will go somewhere else. The more important issue, the greater the damage in having a false belief. The best thing you can do is use your mind as carefully as possible and approach the question of God thoughtfully, given all of our limitations.

II. Now, let’s make a case that there is a supreme being who is a personal god. Lay out three pieces of evidence that God exists.

A. The universe began to exist and something supernatural had to cause it. There are some pieces of evidence that this is true.
1. The second law of thermodynamics says that in a closed system, which does not allow energy or matter in from the outside, that the system is using up its fuel. Use the illustration of a car’s gas tank. It’s not a perfect illustration, but it’s close enough. If you go to a car that is still moving, then you know it hasn’t used up all the gasoline in the tank. You probably also know that the car hasn’t been driven constantly for more than 20 years. If the person had been driving for 50 years, the car would have run out of gas about 49.9 years ago. We know for sure that the car hasn’t been driven forever or else it would have run out of gas infinitely long ago. Since the car still has gas in it and is using up its gas, the conclusion is that the car was filled up some finite period of time ago. Probably not too long ago.

The universe is like that gas tank, using up its energy. There will come a day when there is no longer any heat or light, because those are generated by decay of things using up their energy. Since the universe is using up its fuel (light, heat, and motion) and hasn’t done it yet, then it had to come into existence some finite period of time ago when it was wound up from the beginning. Whatever is wound up has to have something that wound it up outside of the universe that gave it energy at the beginning. It has been using that up every since.

2. The impossibility of crossing infinity. Nothing can cross infinity because of the nature of infinity. You die and go to heaven and God says, “You messed up a little bit, so I want you to count the natural numbers forever.” You can count to the number 50 quadrillion zillion and be ahead of the person who has just started. But then you realize that you have gotten no closer to finishing than when you started. It’s like trying to jump out of a pit that’s infinitely tall with no edge. It doesn’t matter how high you could jump. If the universe never had a beginning, then the line to when the universe began goes to infinity. The present moment can only be preceded by a finite number of moments. Going from minus infinity to zero can’t be finished, because you can’t cross infinity. You can’t even get started. How many events would a universe have to cross to get to an infinite number? An infinite amount. Coming to the present from minus infinity is like jumping out of an infinitely tall bottomless pit. Not only can it not be completed, it cannot be begun. There had to be an absolute beginning of time beyond which there was no time. Something outside of time had to bring time into existence. Whatever that thing is, it can’t be physical (because it creates matter), it can’t be in time (because it creates time), and it can’t be natural (because it creates natural). It has to be spiritual, capable of producing change without being changed also. It has to be an unmoved mover. If something had to change inside of it before it began time, that change inside of it would itself be the beginning of time.

3. The existence of biological information. Start with the movie Contact (Jodie Foster). She was a SETI researcher looking for extraterrestrial intelligence. If SETI researchers (a legitimate scientific research project). To look for intelligent life in outer space, they must define when they will find it. So they have drawn a distinction between randomness, order, and information. Use the illustration of alphabet soup, which is random information. There are two characteristics of randomness. What would I tell a computer if you wanted it to generate a random string of symbols. “Select any letter and repeat.” It is not specific, and it is simple. It only requires two instructions for randomness. Contrast that with 50 me’s in a row: mememememememememememememememememememememememememememememememe.

That is specific, simple, and repetitive. This is like ice crystals in the natural world, or polymerization in organic chemistry. That is order and randomness.

Contrast that with “John loves Mary.” First, it is specific. Second, it is complex (15 instructions). Third, it is not repetitive. This third example is what scientists call “information bearing.”

The three choices are randomness, order, and information. Scientists assume that information only comes from an intelligent mind. Jodie Foster knew that there was life in outer space when she heard a signal containing the first 20 prime numbers in a row. That was specific, complex, and not repetitive. The cause of that information had to be a mind.

Look at biological information. Living organisms contain libraries of information in their DNA. If information only comes from a mind, there is no reason to deny that the volumes of information in living things have behind them a mind.

4. The existence of absolute moral law and equal human rights. There are moral principles that are true whether someone believes them or not. If someone says they are a moralist, then find out what they care deeply about, treat it as if it is relative, then find out what happens. Someone says he’s a relativist and loves the environment. So what happens if once a month people pour a drum of acid in a lake and see how many fish they can kill. That will make him very unhappy. It sure looks like you think what my friends are doing is wrong. You are only a relativist in areas you don’t care about, but in things you do care about, you are an absolutist. There are only “selective relativists.”

If there is really an absolute law, where does it come from? It comes from beings with will. They come from legislators. If there is an absolute moral law, there’s a pretty good chance that we have an absolute moral legislator. In the Nuremburg trials, they talked about how there is a Law above the law. Since laws come from beings with a will, there must be an absolute lawgiver.

As for equal human rights, use the illustration of his daughter Ashley. When she was in 6th grade, she saw a flyer that said all human beings should be treated equally. Pretend there is no God for a minute. Why would you believe that we should treat everyone equally? If the house were burning down and you could save only one of two objects, which would you save? The one that is worth more. What if it was between a piece of paper and a dog? Or between a piece of paper and a person? We learn that equals ought to be treated equally and unequals ought to be treated unequally. It is immoral for unequal things to be treated as equals. Now human beings have nothing in common that is equal. No one is inherently equal. The only thing we have is belly buttons. Do people with larger belly buttons have more rights? Could you remove someone’s belly button and use them however we want? If people are going to have equal human rights, there must be something we have in common that is equal. Whatever that thing is, it can’t be trivial and silly like a belly button. It has to be deep and important. Martin Luther King believed we should be treated equally because we all have the image of God. Without that, nothing is important enough to matter.

5. The origin of consciousness. If you start with matter, you can’t get mind from matter. If we have consciousness, there must be an explanation for it. We can’t get something from nothing. The best explanation of how mind can come into existence is if the universe begins with a mind. But if you start with matter, you can’t explain how mind comes from matter.

These things provide sufficient information to believe in the existence of one personal God. That is the most reasonable explanation of these facts compared to any other explanation of them.

At this point, the average person has their jaw on the floor. They have never seen a Christian give any evidence for what they believe. Seeing a Christian clothed and in the right mind is more impressive than they have seen before. Christians don’t do this. They give their testimonies, which isn’t bad. But it isn’t all that we do.

III. Moving from a belief in God to personal Christianity. There are four criteria for choosing a religion.
A. Pick a religion whose depiction of God harmonizes with what we know about God from creation. It ought to be monotheistic. There is something about the creation that points to one monotheistic supreme being. Suggest to people that when they pick up other religious books, they should judge it in light of the book of creation they have been reading all of their lives. You ought to be monotheistic or else you don’t have an adequate explanation for the things above. Don’t suggest people to be monotheists because the Bible teaches that. Instead, because the world suggests it.

B. Pick a religion whose diagnosis of the human condition and solution to the human condition is the best one. My understanding of Jesus is that if you can find a better path than his, he would want you to follow it. He loved people enough that he would want them to be better off. But you won’t find it. Look at things like the problem of shame and guilt, empowerment to live a life I know I ought to live, threefold alienation [from God, from each other and themselves], the need for a tender Abba God with whom I can be intimate and close (this works well with Muslims).

You need a religion that explains these things and gives hope for overcoming them. The hunger for intimacy, to overcome the threefold alienation, empowerment, and the problem of shame and guilt are best explained and addressed in the religion of Jesus.

C. Pick a religion that is best explained by supernatural activity of God. Mohammed goes into a cave and comes out saying that the Koran was revealed to him while he was in the cave. That could have happened, but are there any good reasons to believe it? Not much other than the Koran itself. But with Christianity we have two pieces of evidence that this was supernatural: Messianic prophecy fulfilled and the resurrection. The number of prophecies that are fulfilled are to say the least bizarre, and tremendously effective. The historical evidence that the NT documents are reliable and that Christ rose from the dead. This is where the Case for Christ and other arguments are useful.

D. Pick a religion that has all of Jesus in it instead of a distorted, watered down picture of Jesus. Someone in the audience might say that you pick that criterion just because you’re a Christian. But every religion in the world wants to claim Jesus as one of its own. Everyone wants Jesus. Even the Jews are starting to treat Jesus as a wise and thoughtful rabbi. In Hinduism, he’s an avatar. In Islam, he’s the healer, one of the greatest prophets. Now, since everyone rightly wants a piece of Jesus, the most significant human who ever lived, why not go straight to the source. Use the “hot dog illustration.” Suppose you came across someone with a three day old stale hot dog. He’s chewing on it and loves the meat. So you tell him you are cooking a sirloin steak and you will trade it to him for the hot dog. What you have now learned is that the guy isn’t really a meat lover. He may be a gnarly hot dog lover, but he’s not a meat lover. He would give it up in a heartbeat for a better piece of meat.

If someone says I’m a God seeker and they settle for a religion with a watered down version of Jesus, and they get a chance for the real thing, that proves they are more interested in preserving their cultural connections and traditions rather than God. If they were really interested, they would gladly trade what they have for the real thing.

These are some of the reasons why I am a Christian, and the truth of Christianity has been confirmed in my life through the presence of God and the Holy Spirit since I accepted him years ago. Then you give your testimony.

What’s important is that I started off by emphasizing truth rather than what works. I went from there to monotheism. I went from there to Christianity. Then I went to my personal testimony. This is a helpful approach to apologetics as well.

Questions and Answers:
1. Alienation is one of the things Christianity best addresses. What if someone asks why Christianity hasn’t worked? Christian nations are at war, it doesn’t work.
Answer: there is no such thing as a Christian nation. Also, wherever the teachings of Jesus and his friends have been given half a chance to be practiced, it has worked powerfully. Where these things are only given lip service, they haven’t worked. It isn’t a fair test of Christianity if people give lip service to it. Christians have gone all over the world at their own sacrifice to feed the poor and care for the sick. Not atheists. And 1000 times more than other religions.

2. This is a line for a rigorous mind that can follow logic. But what about those who can’t stay with us through the argument. That’s a different idea if they are a student in a Christian college rather than a regular university student. Take longer to develop these ideas and develop them more slowly. But be the adult and insist that this stuff matters even if they don’t think it matters. If you treat it seriously and slowly, they will latch on to it. If it is an audience of students elsewhere, then you have to make the assumption that they are made in the image of God and part of that image is to be thoughtful about this. A lot of Christians take a more “felt needs” approach. But even 19-20 years are so surprised to hear a Christian standing up and sounding intelligent that it lowers their resistance. Some people it makes angry.

3. Who are the top apologists in the Western world today? William Lane Craig is the top right now in terms of laying out intellectual arguments for Christianity in the public square. Richard Swinburg at Oxford has written a lot of things on apologetics. Gary Habermas of Liberty University is also excellent.

4. Does it work to send an apologist to a state university to have a debate? Someone who has put in time as an “apologetic junkie” can succeed if they will get up and be humble, not arrogant or hostile. Even a lot of university professors have never read anything on the other side. They come into a debate blindsided. If you do your homework, you are probably better prepared than the university person.

5. On yesterday’s presentation, you said there were three positions (not just secular and monotheist). For him, the three worldviews are secularism, monotheism, and Christianity.

He gave a paper about why evangelicals are overcommitted to the Bible and how we should change that. Obviously, you can never be too committed to Scripture for ourselves as a Christian. But you can be so committed to Scripture that you don’t have time for anything else. The Bible is not the only source of information about God and morality. There is creation and natural law as well. If Christians want to engage in politics without creating a theocracy, they need to bring in creation and natural law as well.

6. In today’s secular mindset, what do you think about personal testimony? We say that you can’t argue with a changed life. But that’s not correct. You can’t argue that the life changed, but you can argue what caused it. Changed lives are easy to refute if they are a standalone argument. One reason for a testimony is to explain what happened to me so that people will know. The second reason is to bring testimony as a piece of evidence in an attempt to persuade someone. Mormons and Muslims give testimonies as well. Ours should be more dramatic than theirs, but they must also be within a framework beyond ourselves.

7. How can a physicist or chemist be an atheist if they understand the design? Because of the history of physics since the 17th century. There were two kinds of explanations offered for phenomena in the world: efficient causal explanations (what produced it) and teleological explanations (what is its purpose).

Solomon uses the efficient causal explanations in Ecclesiastes 1:3-6. He uses the final cause (purpose) in Ecclesiastes 1:7ff. Either the water is boiling because it is heated or because we want tea.

The physics in Newton’s time was Aristotelian physics. Their explanations were given purposively. Newton said that we don’t need to appeal to purposes, we can explain it only by forces. Darwin ridded the functional parts of organisms from teleology. Instead, only those who had eyes that enabled them to see survived. Darwin used efficient causes without final causes to explain evolution. Skinner did the same thing to explain people in the 1950s. You didn’t come here for purposes, but drives and motives in your subconscious that determined you to do this. Newton was right to rid motion from teleology. But Darwin and Skinner haven’t been successful at killing teleology. When you are told to start looking for teleology, you assume that you must ignore causal explanations. That history has put blinders on people who should be able to clearly see what is there. But they have been so socialized against final causes that they can’t see.

“Darwin’s dangerous idea” is that humans never do anything for a purpose.

8. What about the argument that polytheism is older? The evidence for that is not clear. That is an application of Marxist concepts of history to the study of religions. Even in polytheistic religions, there is a higher god. Monotheism seems to be more primitive than polytheism.