The Sean McDowell Show - The Latest Case for God (w/ Lee Strobel)

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Has science had made the idea of a Creator irrelevant? Lee Strobel, best known for his books like Case for a Creator and The Case for Christ, talks about why he thinks science is pointing in a different direction. In recent years, a diverse and impressive body of research has increasingly supported the conclusion that the universe was intelligently designed. In this interview, I talk with former investigative journalist Lee Strobel about his latest book. READ: Is God Real? by Lee Strobel (https://amzn.to/40dkrNQ) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Is God real? Is God real? The more I look at the universe, the less convinced I am. Is there any reason to believe that? I believe that God is real and worthy to be trusted. What actually is the evidence that God exists and we can know Him? What is truth? Our guest today doesn't need an introduction because he is a New York Times best-selling author,

personal friend of mine, a friend of Biola, Lee Strobel. Whatever begins to exist as a cause, we look at the evidence for the resurrection, and then we look at ultimately the gospel. Lee, I was going to say we'll have you out on when a new book comes out, but I'd have you on any time. This just gives us an excuse. Your book is called Is God Real? And the obvious question is, why isn't it the case for something? And why did you call your book with a question, is God real? Well, this is the first time I've ever done a book

where I haven't gone to the publisher and said, hey, this is what I feel led to write. I want to do a book on this title. They came to me and they said, we've noticed something technologically. It's very interesting. They said, we've noticed something uh technologically it's very interesting they said we've noticed that 200 times a second around the clock someone on planet earth is typing into a computer search engine basically the question is god real and i said oh my goodness that let me do a book on that let's address that if there's that much curiosity and interest and so that's why the title and that's why the approach I took in the book. Okay. So how's this book similar and different than other books you've

written, Case for Christ, Case for Creator, because there's some overlap, but there's also some things that are unique. Yeah, there's some overlap in the sense that I've drawn from some of my earlier works and a lot of new material as well. But what makes it different is it combines science, philosophy, and history, whereas my previous books kind of focused on each of those. So Case for Christ deals with history, Case for Creator dealt with science, Case for Faith dealt with philosophy largely. And so this book combines all of that and looks at a series of scientific discoveries over the last 50 to 80 years that point powerfully, I believe, toward the existence of God. And then it deals with history. It deals with the question of the resurrection of Jesus, deals with philosophy as well,

the moral argument and so forth. And then I deal with the two biggest objections to Christianity, which is if God is real, why is there suffering? And if God is real, why does he seem so hidden? So I've tried to do something that would encourage Christians, that would deepen their own faith, but also prepare them for their kids and their grandkids when they come to them with tough questions and with objections. And frankly, our kids and grandkids are going to be challenged in their faith more than our generation was. There was a guy talking online about his six-year-old granddaughter who was on the playground of a public school, who was being taunted by the other students because she believed in God. Oh, you believe in fairy tales. You believe in make-believe.

You know, we've got to prepare our kids and grandkids. And so I hope this book will contribute toward that. But also, I hope they give the book away after they read it. Give it away to a spiritual skeptic, a neighbor, a friend or someone or a Christmas gift or whatever. Someone who is open minded and curious about faith. I think this book could be used by God to lead them into his kingdom. So we're going to take a look at some of the arguments. And I've got some pushbacks for you, probably the kind of challenges that you've considered before.

But essentially, is this book for somebody who goes, all right, man, I love you, Lee, you've got dozens of books. I just want one book that's going to capture the heart of what you do. Is that kind of what this book does? Is that a fair way to look at it? Yeah, I think it does because it cuts across the grain of all these different disciplines. Fair enough. All right. So the subtitle of your book is Exploring the Ultimate Question of Life. Yeah.

Why is the existence of God the ultimate question? What makes that question so much more consequential in your mind than any other question? To me, it is the consequential question. In fact, you could go to an atheist scientist like William Provine, and he was in a debate with a Christian, and he said, I'll just be honest from an atheist point of view. If there is no creator, then there are five things that are true. Number one, there's no evidence for God. Number two, there's no life after death. Number three, there's no absolute foundation for right and wrong. Number four, there's no absolute meaning to life.

And number five, people don't really have free will. Wow. Well, it's an atheist evaluating why this is the biggest, most consequential question of all. If all of those things are true, if there is no God, my goodness, it changes everything. That's really good. And the distinction I know you make is not that atheists can't be moral, not that atheists can't make choices, but can a naturalistic worldview ground or account for those things? And Will Provine, correctly in my view, says that he can't. That's right.

Oh, go ahead. Right or wrong. It's just opinions. It's preferences rather than a transcendent right or wrong. So again, we're going to get to the evidence, but do you think, how much do you think people are really wrestling with the question of, is God real? Has it increased since the pandemic? Is it different now? Is there any difference from when you first wrote Case for Christ, I think maybe 98 in the late 90s? Where are we at now with that question? I'm seeing two trends, and I think they're related.

The first trend is there's an increasing number of people in America who do not believe in God. When I was in high school and met Leslie for the first time in 1966, 98% of American adults believed in God. 98%. Today, the number is 81%. And then if you press people and you ask them, are you sure? Are you pretty sure that God exists? Only 64% say yes.

So we're seeing an increase in that kind of skepticism. But at the same time, I believe that is fueling an increase in people searching for God and searching for answers. Because take a look at Generation Z, supposedly the first post-Christian generation, a generation where twice as many young people are willing to call themselves atheists, as in my generation, atheism is no longer a dirty word among Generation Z. And yet, what are we seeing as a result of that? Well, the Centers for Disease Control just this year released a study and said that 60% of young female students in America last year experienced persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness. And it's 25% made plans for suicide. 25%. Now I was talking to a friend of mine, you may know him, Greg Steer. He's a... Yeah, I love Greg.

Yeah, he's an expert on ministry to young people. And he said, you know, the bad news is that Generation Z is flat on its back, knocked down by sadness, loneliness, and anxiety. But you know what? When you're flat on your back, the only way to look is up. And so because of that, it's caused increased openness to seeking spiritual answers. In fact, another guy you may know, Shane Pruitt, whose ministry is to travel the country and speak to groups of teenagers and college students about God. He said, get this, in the last three years, he said more young people begin to follow Jesus Christ than in the previous 18 years of ministry combined. So we're seeing this away and we're seeing evidence at various universities of these little pockets of awakening that are taking place and revival that are taking place. Life after death. If there is no absolute foundation for right and wrong, if there is no real free will, then my goodness, of course you would feel hopeless.

Of course you would feel full of anxiety. And so I think it's causing people to begin to seek more. And that's my hope that this will eventually result in more people finding faith. So when I pick up your book, one of the things I see, Is God Real? I'm thinking, okay, Lee assumes people are asking this question. I didn't know the backstory of how much they were typing it in. And that title is going to hook someone and say, you know what? I have been wondering about that question.

I want to know if there's evidence. Now, how do you motivate somebody who kind of goes, you know what, Lee? I don't really care. It doesn't matter to me. It's not that important. I'm happy because of fill in the blank. Is it like the rich young ruler where Jesus just lets him walk away and you pray for that person and wait for them to be ready? Or are there things that you have found effective, of course, praying for people to at least kind of create an itch where somebody goes, all right, I want to know and consider this question and maybe who Jesus is. Yeah. Apathy is a big issue. You know, we're apathetic when things are going okay.

You know, I mean, I know times in my life I've been fine, you know, just percolating along and not really praying that much and not really relying on God that much. And then, as you know, 12 years ago, I almost died. And when the doctor looks in your face and says to you, you're one step away from a coma, two steps away from dying. I'm telling you, pray. You pray at that time. So a lot of young people, they're early in their life. They don't think they got a whole life ahead of them.

Things are going okay. They maybe are falling in love and things are happening. It's tough sometimes to motivate people to ask these deeper existential questions about our existence, our origin, and our future, our eternity. So I think the most effective way is through friendships, through relationships, and just ask questions like, hey, Thanksgiving's coming up. Who are you thankful to this Thanksgiving? Are you thankful to anybody? Or Christmas is coming up. Did you celebrate Christmas as a child? Oh, why did you stop? What motivated you to no longer care? I think to ask questions often generates conversations that we don't expect to otherwise have. A lot of times I like to ask people,

I'm just curious, if you could ask God any one question and you knew he'd give you an answer right now, what would you ask him? And often that unveils what I call a spiritual sticking point in someone's journey spiritually, an objection, a question or something. And it provides great opportunity for conversations. So I find, especially among young people, they like to talk about what they believe and what they don't believe. They don't twist their arm. You know, one of the great phenomena I've seen in the church in recent years are what we call spiritual discovery groups, groups for non-Christians. And, you know, people think it's hard to get people in those groups. No, it's not. It's hard to get people to stop talking. People love these groups. And by the way, 80% of people

who join these groups come to faith in Christ. Amazing. So, you know, I think it's a matter of engaging people where they're at, asking them questions that try to unveil what it is that's the spiritual sticking point in their life. All right. So I've got one more question for you before we get to the evidence. I just said, there's so many things I want to know that came to my mind reading your book. And let me give a little historical context for this. You obviously know my father. You guys go back decades. One of the things I love talking about with my dad is he's 84.

He's just got this historical perspective of how culture shifted. And when he started doing apologetics, 60s and 70s, there was an assumption that there was such a thing as truth. We can know it and we should follow it. The question is, where does the evidence point and the idea also was that the problem is out there in the world like vietnam there's a problem externally now things have shifted much more subjective and internally that in fact to not affirm somebody's internal identification and beliefs about themselves is considered a kind of sin today. And we hear people say things like, that might be true

for you, Lee, but it's not true for me. Live your truth. So your book, I imagine somebody who's a critic could say, Lee, this is a kind of apologetics book that worked in the 80s and the 90s, but you clearly don't understand that how people perceive truth has shifted. How would you respond to that? And do you do apologetics differently in any fashion, or does it still work to kind of do it the way you've done it? Yeah, I think it has shifted over the years, no question about it. And you, I appreciate your ministry and keeping your finger on the pulse of how culture is shifting and changing. For instance, as people are asking, not so much, not only is God real, but is God good? That's another question that is on people's minds. But I think it's incumbent on us in a culture that has lost its grip on the definition of truth to wrestle with that and to deal with that and to help people understand it is unlivable and it is illogical to have a culture in which there is no belief in absolute truth.

And so what I do in the book is I interviewed a scholar by the name of Chad Meister. Chad, interestingly, used to be one of my volunteers at a ministry at our church in Chicago years ago when he was getting his master's degree. Now he has a Ph.D. and has written 50 books and is one of the great philosophers. But so I've known Chad a number of years. And one day I was preaching at church on the resurrection and a guy came up to me later and he said, Hey, I'm an atheist. What you said is interesting. Can we get together and talk about it? And I said, I'd love to, but I'm traveling the next two weeks out of the country. Hey, my friend Chad's here. And I pulled Chad over. I said, Chad will get together with you. Chad said, yeah, absolutely. Come over to my house. We'll have pizza.

So before the guy came over to Chad's house, Chad's thinking, how do I talk to him? Because this is a guy, he's a contemporary guy. He doesn't believe in truth. He doesn't believe in the baseline of what I did growing up and so forth. And so he developed what he calls the apologetics pyramid. And he walked this guy through this pyramid when he came over to his house. The pyramid starts at the broadest level, which is exactly what you said. What is truth? And it looks at questions of livability and logic. And it looks at the various permutations, what people think truth is. But then it lands on what truth actually is, which is what is consistent with reality.

You know, what what what is consistent with what we see in the world, what is actual and so forth. And so you start at what is truth and you work through that. And so I think that's good for people these days who have misplaced notions about what the truth is. but the correspondence theory of truth is truth corresponds to that which is real. And so we go through truth and then it goes to the next level of worldviews. There's only three possible worldviews. Theism, there is a God. Atheism, there is no God. Or pantheism, everything's God. And again, we apply the test of livability and logic. And we determine through that, and it's on the book, that only theism emerges intact. Then we go to revelation. And God has revealed himself through nature, but also through scripture. And there's various scriptures and various worldviews. And so we look

at the reliability of the Bible versus, for instance, the reliability of the Quran. And we establish that the Bible is historically reliable in terms of telling us about Jesus, his teachings, miracles, death, and resurrection. Then we go up further and we look at the evidence for the resurrection. And then we look at ultimately the gospel. So it's a way of working from the broadest question, which is what is truth, which as you say, is in dispute in our culture and working toward ultimately what the gospel is. And this guy, they started talking at 7 p.m. at his house over pizza. And by 11 p.m., that atheist was a Christian.

Oh, my goodness. So we see that God has used this. And so Chad shared this in this book. And I think it's I think it'll be helpful for people regardless of where they're coming from. Yeah, I hadn't really thought about that, but it makes sense. Like when you wrote Case for Christ, you just launch into your story and the evidence. But here, because people are skeptical of truth, we got to walk through what is truth? Can we know it?

How do you discover it? That's a really vital step. Well, excellent. With that said, let's jump into some of the evidence that you lay out. You start the book with the Kalam cosmological argument. Maybe just sum up for us what that argument is. And then I've got one or two pushbacks that I often hear on this. I'd love to hear your response to. Yeah. I interviewed Dr. William Lane Craig, who's the biggest proponent of it. Of course, this is an argument that goes back to medieval Islam originally. But basically, it's very simple. It says that whatever begins to exist has a cause.

We know now, virtually every scientist agrees, the universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe must have a cause behind it. Well, what kind of a cause can bring a universe into existence? Well, it must be transcendent since it's separate from the universe. It must be uncaused itself because it had to be the cause behind the universe. Must be spirit or immaterial because it existed before the physical world. Must be eternal or timeless because it existed before physical time was created.

Must be powerful given the immensity of the creation event. Must be smart given the precision of the creation event. Must be personal because he had to make the decision to create, must be caring because he crafted such an incredible habitat for us to flourish in. And the scientific principles of Occam's razor would tell us it'd be just one creator. So we look at those characteristics and we say, those are the qualities that match the description of the God of the Bible. It rules out pantheism because pantheism claims that everything is God, you know, and it can't be if God has to be transcendent and apart from creation. It rules out Eastern beliefs of a cyclical universe because science has now established that that's not practical from a physics standpoint.

And there must be a cause and a origin of the universe. And even if we're a tiny part of a multiverse, the theorem developed by Dr. Alexander Vilenkin at Tufts University, famous cosmologist and two colleagues, tells us there would still be a beginning point in the past. So this is, I think, a powerful argument from science. And again, this is only scientific discoveries of the last 50, 60 years. Scientists used to believe for centuries that the universe was eternal. But now the expansion of the universe tells us that it must have had a beginning point at some point in the past. And there's also great philosophical arguments that an eternal past is not possible.

Now, you listed a bunch of attributes that this cause would have. The one that I think, at least in my experience, people push back on most is personal. And the argument, at least the point that you made was this cause had to make a decision. Now, flush that out a little bit more, why we know this cause had to make a decision and why that would have to be a personal agent to do so. Yeah, there's only two possibilities. There's either a scientific explanation for the universe coming into existence, or there's a personal explanation. It can't be a scientific explanation because the origin of the universe can't be explained by some prior conditions and natural

laws that weren't even in existence. So there must be a personal explanation. Well, the cause of the universe transcends time and space. So it can't be a physical reality. It must be immaterial. Well, there are only two possibilities then. First, it could be an abstract object like numbers. Well, numbers don't bring things into existence. Numbers have no causal power. The other possibility is an unembodied mind because that can be creative. It can create. And what is God? He is a spirit. He is an unembodied mind. So that's consistent with God. Now, he had to make the decision to create because if the universe were just a mechanical construct that would occur whenever sufficient conditions were met and those conditions existed eternally, then the universe

would be eternal. But it's not. It's finite in its age. And therefore, there must have been a point in time where some sort of decision was made to create. So a decision of the will by an agent, an unembodied mind that has freedom of the will, I think is the best explanation for the moment at which the universe came into existence. Okay. so if matter and time comes into existence then the cause like you said has to be timeless and immaterial Right and you said the two things we can think of are like numbers or the laws of logic or a mind Right. Maybe we're just not thinking enough. Maybe there's a third category What this feels like a god of the gaps, I've heard people say, where, well, we just can't think of another explanation,

so we're defaulting to God. How would you respond to that challenge? Yeah, I think it's a fallacious challenge because the evidence is pointing in a direction. The evidence is pointing to a conclusion. You can always say, oh, what if? You know, golly, what if a UFO appeared and changed history in a way that we never really perceived? What if? Well, wait a minute. We don't build our lives on what ifs all the time. In other words, you know, I've got a glass of water here that my wife gave me before our interview. How do I know it wasn't poisoned? It could have been poisoned, but it came in a clean glass. I don't smell anything unusual. My wife has no ill will against me. She has no reason to hurt me. It looks clear. It looks clean. But then I take a step of

faith in the same direction the evidence is pointing, and I take a sip. I taste and see that the water is good. And that's what the Bible says, to taste and see that the Lord is good. When the evidence points in a direction, you know, not everything may be possible, but not everything is likely. Not everything is probable. And when we have all of this evidence from science, which changed the entire direction of cosmology, when we have everything from science pointed to this origin, and when we can I got to say, let's hold, you know what, if we come up with some other thing, you know, all science is provisional. All science is provisional. Maybe we change our opinion in the future. Well, I doubt that's going to happen because we're not just inventing God to fill a gap. We are taking a step in the same direction

the evidence is pointing. We do that every day of our lives, where we take a step of trust in the same direction the evidence is pointing. Okay, so you jumped from the Kalam cosmological argument to tasting and seeing that the Lord is good, which is a kind of Jewish and Christian understanding, obviously. But the word Kalam is Islamic. Many of the leading defenders are Islamic. So how do you get from this to the God of Christianity? And if it doesn't get us there, what's the point? Yeah, every argument doesn't make every point. So I can't use the Kalam argument to prove that Christianity is true in any sense. I can show that the logical

attributes of the cause of the universe match up with how the Bible describes the God of Christianity, but that's about as far as I can go. But that's okay because we have other arguments that point in the direction of the truth of Christianity. We have the fine-tuning of the universe, and we have the resurrection of Jesus that give us further evidence from science and from history that Christianity is true. So I just say, you know, Kalam can take us only so far. Then we have to look at other arguments and other evidence. And so we go from science to history and investigate the resurrection of Jesus. And that gives us Jesus' claim that he was the unique son of God. And then that claim backed up by his returning from the dead. So you mentioned the fine-tuning universe.

This is the second argument, I believe, in the book. Let's talk about that for a second. Maybe remind us what it is and what's your favorite illustration or example that you think best kind of captures the power of fine tuning? Yeah, you know, this is fascinating. Again, this is only discoveries over the last 50 to 80 years. I interviewed for the book, Dr. Michael Strauss, PhD from UCLA, professor at a major secular university, works at the Hedron Collider in Switzerland.

He's written hundreds of scientific articles that have been published in scientific publications. So he knows what he's talking about. And modern physics tells us that the numbers that govern the operation of the universe are finely tuned on a razor's edge so that life can exist. It rules out the possibility this could have happened by chance because the numbers are so astronomical that as Dr. Strauss told me, scientifically, they can say ain't gonna happen by chant. So it's like you walk out at night and instead of seeing stars in the sky, you see 50 to 100 giant dials in the sky. And those dials have possible calibrations that could be calibrated to trillions or trillions and trillions of settings.

And yet every one of these dials is perfectly calibrated so that life can exist. That is a picture that we get from modern physics. I'll give you just one dial, the force of gravity. Everybody knows what the force of gravity is. If I drop this pen, it's going to fall down. Well, the force of gravity happens to be set at the exact right place so that life can exist. How precise is it? Imagine a ruler, a gauge across the entire known universe was a 15 billion light years wide. And this gauge is broken down in one inch increments. That represents the plausible

range along which the force of gravity could have been set. And yet it's set at the exact right place so that life can exist. What if we were to change it one inch compared to the 15 billion light years width of the universe? Intelligent life would be impossible anywhere in the universe. One inch compared to the width of the universe. That's just one of these settings. The other one that Hugh Ross, the astrophysicist with a PhD from the University of Toronto, has made famous is the ratio between the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force. It's finely tuned to one part in 10,000 trillion trillion trillion. Now to understand that number, imagine a continent the size of North America piled with dimes that go all the way up to the moon, 238,000 miles of dimes.

Now imagine a billion continents the size of our continent North America with dimes piled imagine a billion continents, the size of our continent, North America, with dimes piled up 238,000 miles to the moon. Now pick out one dime, spray paint it red, mix it among all those dimes, and then blindfold someone and say, you can reach in one time and pick out one dime. What are the odds you would pick that red dime? One chance in 10,000 trillion, trillion, trillion. So those are just two parameters. I mean, it is absolutely mind blowing. And when you look at the the conditions that allow Earth to be suitable for intelligent life, there's about over 300, I think 322 conditions that have to be met in order for a planet like ours to be life-sustaining for intelligent life. And I asked Dr. Strauss, I said, well, golly, yeah, but, you know, there's maybe a billion trillion planets in our known universe. So certainly there's going to be others that, you know, just by the odds fulfill that.

And he said to me, well, let's run the numbers. And you run the numbers and you find the odds against that are so astronomical. He said to me, ain't going to happen. Just ain't going to happen mathematically. So how do we account for this? And I go through the way to account for this other than fine tuning requires a fine tuner. All right. So here's the question that I've received on this, is you said earlier with the dials that there's these trillions of possibilities and they're all precisely where they need to be. Yet when it comes to Earth, we have the conditions for life, but most places in the universe are inhospitable to life.

Most galaxies can't support life. Most planets can't support life. So things are so exquisitely fine-tuned. Why is seemingly so little, if any, of the universe even capable of supporting life? Oh, yeah. So it's a question that, look at the vastness of the universe. Why would we be the only ones? That kind of thing? Yeah. In a sense, one thing I'll hear is if the universe is so exquisitely fine-tuned, most of the universe is not hospitable. You can't live in most of the universe. It's actually dangerous. I asked Dr. Strauss about that. Yeah, it's a great question. I asked Dr. Strauss about that, and his answer was, our universe is as small as it

possibly can be and allow us to have life on planet Earth. I said, what do you mean? He said, Lee, you look at the history of the universe and it involves stars that were initially formed that created certain elements. And then they went away and those elements coalesced. There were new stars that formed and other elements like iron and so forth were formed so that rocky planets could form. And then new stars took over and so the universe has been on this this progress it's been expanding for billions 13 billion years it's been expanding um so that the elements that are needed for creation of life could be there for God to avail himself of and create life out of and so if that is true then our universe is as small as it possibly could

be so that our little habitat can have intelligent life because it's expanding that whole time. It's growing that whole time. And then finally, when we're able to get to the point of human life flourishing in a location such as ours, it looks like there's a lot of wasted space out there. It looks like there's a lot of wasted galaxies. No, they're not wasted. They were necessary in order for us to create what was necessary for life to exist on our planet. Besides which, if God has unlimited resources, then for him, there's no such thing as wasteful. I mean, he can, you know, use as many resources.

Oh, we got a small pause here. Yeah. Oh, we got you back. Okay. No worries. We can keep going. I think that was a good time to end. I want to shift. We've looked at cosmological argument, we looked at fine tuning. Then you kind of move more specifically into the evidence for Jesus. And am I right that Case for Christ was 1998? That's right. So it's been 25 years. Yeah. So I have two questions for you about this. And the first one is, has the evidence shifted since the time you first became a Christian and started investigating this? And of course, it was some time after that, that you published Case for Christ. How has it shifted over that time that you've seen in terms of historical evidence for Jesus? Well, one of the things that's happened, and your dad was really responsible for a lot of this,

is he didn't just write books. He created a whole genre of literature by popularizing apologetic materials. When I did my investigation as an atheist many, many years ago, there was hardly anything out there to help me, a lay person, to investigate something like the historical evidence for the resurrection. There just wasn't anything out there hardly. your father, Josh McDowell, began writing on a popular level that opened the door now to all kinds of popular level material that that make the evidence of history understandable. It puts a cook on the bottom shelf for people out there who are interested in exploring this kind of evidence. So I think one of the phenomena that has occurred in recent years involving the resurrection has been the popularization of the data and the evidence. So that I think Christians today are more conversant with the evidence for the resurrection than people were in my era when I go to people and they had no idea how to answer the question of why trust that Jesus claimed to be the son of God and backed up that claim by returning from the dead. So I think that's

happened. And I think another phenomenon is the first Corinthians 15 verse three creed of the earliest church has become more recognized. You know, Wolfhard Pannenberg, the German scholar, has written about this and kind of opened the door to a lot of people. By the way, William Lane Craig got his Ph.D., one of his Ph.D. Yeah, it's amazing. And, you know, scholars, we started to see scholars coming to faith in Christ because of this 1 Corinthians 15 creed. And I think it's better understood today than it was back in the day, we see people like Dr. Gary Habermas, who's working on a monumental, what is it, four million word or some such thing? Some four volume, 5,000 page, I don't know what it is.

Yeah. Some huge treatise that's going to deal with every potential objection and argument against the resurrection. He spent his lifetime doing that. Well, we didn't have that, you know, 50 huge treatise that's going to deal with every potential objection and argument against the resurrection. He spent his lifetime doing that. Well, we didn't have that, you know, 50 years ago, 40 years ago. So I think we're in kind of a golden era of Christian apologetics. I think your dad deserves credit for kind of opening that door on the popular level. And so people can benefit from that. And in my book, I interviewed Dr. Michael Lacona, who got his PhD on the resurrection from the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He's a protege of Dr. Gary Habermas and has written a monumental book called The New Historiographical

Approach to the Evidence for the Resurrection. And so I think this is a time in history where people, average folks, I think, can grasp why it is that we can believe with confidence that Jesus didn't just claim to be the Son of God, but he backed up that claim by returning from the dead. It's interesting that there's both scholarly growth. I mean, in the 70s, when Habermas did his dissertation, it was a single dissertation on the resurrection. Now, Lacona did that too. His was dissertation a little longer.

Now you could never do a dissertation on that because it's five volumes. It's getting nuanced and more argued and more particular, which is a positive thing. You mentioned the first Corinthians 15 creed. So this may be the answer, but maybe not. What do you personally, when you look at the evidence, are there one or two things that jump out that you just say, guy, if I, I know it's a cumulative case, but if I had to pick one or two things that just really get your attention, what would they be? I think one thing, first, clearly that Jesus was truly dead after being crucified that,

you know, a lot of people and I used to think, oh, maybe he survived it and the cool, damp air of the tomb revived him. But even the Journal of the American Medical Association carried an investigation into the death of Jesus. It says clearly, based on the historical and medical evidence, it's clear that Jesus was dead even before the wound to his side was inflicted. So I think we understand crucifixion better now

than we did in the past, thanks to physicians and others that have written about the physiology of what takes place during a crucifixion. But the 1 Corinthians 15 creed to me is pivotal. And the reason is that I used to think, like a lot of skeptics, that the resurrection was a legend. And I knew it took time for legend to develop in the ancient world. A.N. Sherwin White, the great classical historian from Oxford and Cambridge, said the passage of two generations of time is not even enough for legend to grow up and wipe out a solid core of historical truth. So I thought that many years, many decades, maybe 100 years, 150 years after the life of Jesus, these stories were invented. These legends came into being about the resurrection. And yet the first Corinthians 15 creed, I'll give some background.

It is a creed that summarizes the gospel. It says that Jesus died. Why? For our sins. He was buried. On the third day, he rose from the dead. And it mentions the specific names of eyewitnesses and groups of eyewitnesses to whom he appeared, including a skeptic like James, the half-brother of Jesus, who didn't follow Jesus during his lifetime, and Peter and so forth. And so what's important about this creed is how immediately it developed after the death of Jesus. Remember, we say it takes time for legend to develop. Well, we know that Paul used to be Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor, a hater of Christians.

One to three years after the death of Jesus, Paul's on the road to Damascus, and he has this encounter with the risen Christ, and he becomes the apostle Paul. So immediately he goes into Damascus, and he meets with some apostles. There are scholars who believe this is when he was given this creed containing this evidence of the resurrection, but others think it was maybe three years later. Three years later, Paul goes to Jerusalem and he meets for 15 days with two eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus who are mentioned by name in the creed, Peter and James. And the Greek word that Paul uses to describe that meeting in Galatians suggests that this was an investigative meeting.

They're checking each other out. What do you know? What did you experience? Some scholars believe this is when he was given the creed. Two people named in the creed. And so he writes the creed ultimately in a letter to the church in Corinth. And that letter was written about 22 years or so after the death of Jesus. But we believe the creed itself dates back to within one to six years after the death of

Jesus, based on that evidence I just mentioned, but then one to six years. And therefore, the beliefs that make up that creed go back even earlier, virtually to the cross itself. And so you have an eminent New Testament scholar like Dr. James D.G. Dunn, one of the most prominent in the world. And he says, this creed, we can be entirely confident. I'd love me to put that in. We can be entirely confident was formulated as a creed within months of the death of Jesus, within months. That is historical gold to have a report of the resurrection with named eyewitnesses and groups of eyewitnesses dating back to within months of the death of Jesus. I mean, if you want to look at one bit of evidence,

and I know of some people who have come to faith just based on this creed. There's a lot more, obviously, but I think it is a powerful and persuasive piece of historical data. Now, I'd love to see the evidence that Dunn says months, because I'm guessing there's a lot of scholars that'll push back on that. But nonetheless, if it's within just a few years, it's still, compared to other historical sources, is gold. Exactly. We know within one to six years, yeah. And, you know, when you think of the two

first two biographies of Alexander the Great by Arian of Plutarch written, what, 40 years after his life, and they're generally considered reliable. So to go within one to six years itself is impressive. But then to go back even further is even more. And by the way, this isn't Dr. Joe Schmoe that came. Of course, of course. This is like the king of New Testament scholars. You know, I teach this class on the resurrection at Talbot at Biola. And at the end, I ask my students, what do you find the most compelling piece of evidence? If you had to pick one, and the top three are the empty tomb discovered by women, which of course doesn't necessarily prove it's supernatural, but they find that a compelling piece. The willingness of the apostles to suffer

and die, which warms my heart because I've done some work in that area. And then the 1 Corinthians 15 Creed is probably the most common response. Those are three good avenues of evidence. Absolutely. And I like the way, because you wrote your dissertation on what did happen to the apostles, right? But I think the willingness of the apostles to die for their conviction that Jesus appeared to them is well established. I mean, I've found at least seven sources, six of them outside the Bible, that indicate the disciples lived lives of deprivation, suffering as a result of their proclamation. So they were clearly willing to die, whether a couple of them did or not is really kind of irrelevant. Their willingness to die is well-established. That they're not liars and they're not making it up. That's the piece. Lee, one of the chapters in your book that fascinated me is that you have a chapter on religious experience. I don't recall you talking about this and kind of using this argument as much in the past. So I'm curious what you mean by it, why you included it, and why you think this points towards Christianity,

because there's going to be a lot of people are going to say other religions have religious experiences, too. Yeah, great questions. And you're right. I really haven't written about this much in the past. I interviewed Dr. Douglas Grotheis, a great apologist, a philosopher, Denver Seminary, about this issue. He's written about it in his books. And I'm fascinated, like you are, by this topic. People who, out of the blue, have an encounter with God that absolutely revolutionizes their life. And I'm thinking of one example I use of a guy who became my friend before he died, Evel Knievel, the great motorcycle daredevil rider who was going to get his book of world records for the most broken bones of any human being on the planet. He lived a wild life. He

was a drunk. He was a womanizer. He once went to prison for beating up a business associate with a baseball bat. He's a gambler. And so he's on the beach in Florida. And he said, God spoke to me. He said, I didn't hear it in my ears. I felt it inside of me. And the voice said, Robert, which is his real name, Robert, I've saved you more times than you'll ever know.

Now you need to come to me through my son, Jesus. And he said, I was just stunned by this. It was so clear. And so he called the only Christian he knew, Frank Gifford, the sportscaster, and said, Frank, you're a Christian. I don't even know who Jesus is. Who's Jesus? And Frank said, read that book, The Case for Christ. But anyway, Evel Knievel had one of the most radical conversions of Christ I have ever seen. 180 degrees in his values, his character, his worldview. He absolutely became on fire for God to the point where when he was baptized, he looked out at the congregation. said do you know jesus have you met him has he changed your life like he's changed mine he can do it and the pastor ripped up his

notes for the sermon and said you've heard the gospel anybody want to come up and be baptized right now get up and come forward this church never had had an altar called in their life oh wow hundred people came forward in two services um so I go, well, how do you explain that? How do you explain this? Or my friend, did you know Bob Passantino? You know, I knew of him, but I didn't know him personally. Okay. He was a well-known apologist. He'd been a skeptic. He'd been an atheist and became a Christian because he was in the car with a Christian who was trying to engage him with answers to tough questions. And they experienced the Holy Spirit in their car to the degree to which it transformed their lives. And Bob Pasquino became a great apologist. So I'm fascinated by

this. Now, the question you raise is a very relevant one, which is how do we know these are not demonic imitations? How do we know that it's not pointing to another religion? And I think the answer to that is the Bible has the answer. It says, test the spirits. And so we already established in my book, before we get to this part, about the reliability of scripture, that it's not just mythology, make-believe, wishful thinking, but that the Bible and the gospels in particular point powerfully and compellingly toward the truth of what happened in the life, teachings, miracles, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And so we have a basis by that point in the book where we have a standard by which we can weigh whether an experience may come from

a demonic source or come from something else. I think that's kind of the screen that we need to use. But I find personally, I've never had that kind of experience. I did have a prophetic dream when I was a child that came true, what, 20 or 30 years later? I guess it was 20 years later. That was a factor in my spiritual journey. I don't know if, I guess you'd call that an experience, but I never had anything like Evel Knievel had. And yet when I see credible people talking about these kinds of experiences, to me, that provides a little more evidence that, yeah, we're on the right track here. We're talking about something that is real and is true, because if God is real, then we would expect to have some experience of him.

Maybe not like Evel Knievel had, but some experience of spiritual growth. The Bible says we, over time, if we receive Jesus, we grow in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. We see these changes as we experience God's teachings in our life more and more. But even though I think you're right, there are some hesitations here. We have to be careful what we accept as being true. I think we do have a good screen in Scripture using that to try to weigh. It's just consistent. An experience we have of God is not going to be contrary to something that we see in Scripture.

Now, the common challenge to religious experience would come from atheist thinkers like Marx and Freud, who basically suggested that religious experience is the result of wish fulfillment, that we wish for a heavenly father, we wish for a more peaceful life. And in some ways, I can see why that would resonate with people. But I'm curious, and I suspect you don't buy that argument. Tell us your response. Yeah, I actually asked Dr. Grothuis about this, and he made a point that is a point I always make, which is, wait a minute. Wishful thinking? If I want to make up a religion, if I want to make up a God, it has to be the God of the Bible that says that, hey, you know, narrow is the road to heaven and wide is the road to hell.

And, you know, here's what, here are my, the ways that I want you to live and the commands I want you to follow. Hey, if I'm going to make up, if I'm going to have a wish fulfillment idea of what God is like, he's going to be a God that says, hey, whatever, party time, you know. So I don't think the God of the Bible is necessarily someone that people would make up if they were free to really just go to their imagination and invent some idea of a heavenly father. historical Jesus, fine-tuning, cosmology. And again, there's other areas that you don't even include in the book. You had to draw the limit somewhere. But hands down, the biggest objection is the problem of evil and suffering. This is a huge topic. I actually teach a full course on why does God allow evil in our graduate program.

But what's maybe one or two points that you would make that you think is important for seekers to consider when they're faced with that very real visceral objection? It is the number one objection, no question about it. I talked earlier about asking the question, if you could ask God any one question you knew he'd give you an answer right now, what would you ask him? I did a national survey of that question and this by far was the number one response so it is a legitimate i think couple things to keep in mind number one um this objection does not negate we have about 20 lines of evidence and i deal with many of them in the book not even all of them but there are about 20 lines of evidence that point toward the truth

of Christianity. The existence of evil and suffering in the world does not negate all of that. It doesn't throw all of that out. We still have to deal with that. That's number one. Number two, every worldview has to deal with this. Atheism has to deal with the existence of evil and suffering. It's not just something confined to a problem of Christianity. But I think Christianity has the most credible response, and that is that God from eternity past has existed as the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, in a perfect relationship of love. And so love is the ultimate value in the universe. And when god said i want to create humankind he wanted us to experience love love each other and to love him well the only way that we could experience love is if we're given freedom of choice freedom of will why because to love always involves a choice when

i when my daughter was little this goes back back many, many decades, but when she was little, there was a doll called Chatty Cathy. And so I got her a Chatty Cathy for Christmas and Chatty Cathy was famous as a doll because you pull a string on her back and you let go and it would talk to you. This is very rudimentary technology. So she pulls the string and lets it go and the doll says, I love you. About as good as it got. Now, did that doll love my daughter? No, of course not. It was programmed to say that. It had to say. They had no choice. Real love involves the choiceankind has decided not to love. It's decided to turn its back on God and turn its back on other people. We create enough calories of day in food to give every person on the planet 10,000 calories a day. So why are people starving to death? Because we don't care, because we're selfish, because our governments don't provide for the care for everyone on the

planet for whatever reason. I can take my hand and I can feed a hungry person, or I can take my hand and I can pick up a gun and kill an innocent person. But if I take my hand and pick up a gun and kill an innocent person, it's a little disingenuous to say, God, why do you allow evil and suffering in the world? The problem is us. God, by giving us free will, allowed for the possibility that we would actualize the potential of evil and suffering. And we have. And so we have the introduction of moral evil and natural evil into our world. But the Bible says in many ways that God can use the difficulties in our life for our good. People are drawn to Christ because in times of crisis and pain and suffering,

they seek God in ways they never would have before. Romans 8.28 says to all followers of God that if you follow him, you're committed to his purposes in this world or the next, God will cause good to emerge from the suffering you experience in this sin-ravaged world. And I think of my wife. My wife has a neuromuscular condition that has had her in pain every day for 20 years. And she will be in pain every day for the rest of her life unless God intervenes with a miracle, which he has not done. She has an incurable condition. And you wonder for people who suffer like that, how can God possibly draw anything good from that? And yet I see how it has shaped her character and her values, how she has become an empathetic person who extends the love of God to other people who are hurting.

But even more than that, even more than that, think of this. God took the worst thing that could ever happen in the history of the universe, the worst thing, the death of the son of God on a cross. And out of that, he created the best thing that's ever happened in the universe, which is the opening of heaven to all who follow him. So if God can take the worst thing in the universe and create out of it the best thing in the universe,

I think he can take even the sufferings that we go through in a sin-stained world and draw good ultimately from those things. So there's lots to talk about. In my book, I interview Dr. Peter Kraft, who's actually a Catholic philosopher. He is so brilliant. He's awesome and so winsome and draws so many great analogies. And so I interview him.

And if people wrestle with this question, I think it's a chapter that they'll find helpful. Peter Kraft is one of my go to people on this because he has such a compassionate heart, philosophical mind, biblical fidelity. I love that you you chose to interview him. You know, he wrote a book called Making Sense Out of Suffering. And I've read all these big mega books about suffering, scientific or scholarly treatises on it and so forth. The guy I interviewed for the book, Chad Meister, has I think written five books on evil in the world and so forth. But I go to Peter Kreeft and I find his simple paperback book, Making Sense Out of Suffering. I hope it's still in print because I first read it in the 1990s.

That was probably the best single thing I'd read on the top. That is certainly up there on my list. I put Clay Jones' book, You Know Why It's Gotta Allow Evil is also phenomenal. Excellent book. But I agree 100% on Kreft's. I'm glad that you interviewed him again lee uh it's always good to have you on i probably should have been doing this but we mentioned a few times your book is god real is excellent i think if somebody asked me you know

where do you start reading lee strobel book obviously case for christ is a classic gotta read it one of the most influential apologetics books of all time, which is just so remarkable. But like I said earlier, you put your investigative hat back on, and this covers philosophy and history and science. It kind of brings together really the heart of what you do into one book. So it's also a wonderful place to start. Again, Is God Real? Lee, thanks for coming on and for writing another great book. Well, as we Texans say, I appreciate you. Appreciate you and what you do. And these podcasts you do are so awesome.

I'm going to be 72 years old. My IT department is my 15-year-old granddaughter. I'm not good with technology. I thank God for folks like you that are using new technology to engage with people on these serious and consequential issues. Well, happy to do it. We will have you back as soon as we can. And before those of you click away, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other shows coming up on all sorts of apologetics type topics you are not going to want to miss.

If you thought about studying apologetics, one option is to study with Lee Strobel. Wonderful program that he's a part of as well. Or join me at Biola University. We've got a fully distanced program and there's information below. Would love to equip you to be, as Craig Hazen says, a nuisance for Christ in your community, online, in your church. Information is below. Lee, thanks again. We'll do it again soon, my friend. Thanks. God bless, in your church. Information is below. Lee, thanks again. We'll do it again soon, my friend. Thanks. God bless you and your listeners.