Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1123: Is God Real? Lee Strobel

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Lee Strobel is a former atheist and investigative journalist, who came to faith by trying to disprove the faith, which is documented in his well-known book A Case for Christ. In his most recent book, Is God Real? Lee looks at the best arguments for the existence of the God of the Bible and responds to some of the best counterarguments to this.  In this conversation, we begin by discussing the historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ, and then we wrestle with the argument from design, specifically DNA, and the so-called problem of Evil.  Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in a Realm. My guest today is the one and only Lee Strobel, who is a former investigative journalist, former atheist turned Christian, documented through his very well-known book, A Case for Christ. He's written many books since then, including the about-to-be-released book called Is God Real? Exploring the Ultimate Question of Life, where he deals with some of the challenges to the Christian faith, both on a philosophical, theological, and one might say a personal or

relational level. Like if God is good and can stop bad things from happening to people, why doesn't he do that? We get into other questions around the significance of intelligent design and more specifically DNA, what that says about the possibility that God is the author of creation rather than not God being the author of creation. We get into lots of other questions that he deals with in his book. So I had a really wonderful time talking to Lee, very down to earth, very intelligent guy, but I just really enjoyed how raw and real and down to earth he was. And I think you're going to really enjoy this engaging conversation. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Lee Strobel. Lee, thanks so much for coming on Theology and Rob. I'm glad to be with you, Preston.

I'm glad I finally get to meet you. My son is a big fan of yours, and I know you both went to Aberdeen to get your PhDs. And so I've been looking forward to connecting. Well, I remember when Kyle showed up to Aberdeen, the word on the street was, dude, I think Lee Strobel's kid is studying here. You know, like, I'm like, no way. Wow. This is like famous. And then now, you know, as I, um, offline, you know, I said, you know, wow, it's really good to talk with Kyle's dad, you know? So I don't know if you enjoy being Kyle's dad or if he enjoys being Lee Strobel's kid, but either

way, yeah, you both are doing great work for those who don't know who Lee Strobel is, can you give a little backstory? And I would love, as it pertains especially to you were an atheist and then had a very interesting, I'll say conversion journey. Give us the backstory there. Sure. I was trained in journalism and law. I was an atheist. I was the legal editor of the Chicago Tribune. So I was covering major trials around the country, Supreme Court decisions, things like that. And my wife was agnostic, spiritually kind of confused. And she met a woman who was a nurse and a Christian, a neighbor. They became best friends. They began to have spiritual conversations. The neighbor brought my wife, Leslie, to church with her. And then she gave me the worst news I could get as an atheist husband. She said,

I decided to become a Christian. First word that went through my mind was divorce. I was going to walk out. But in fact, I don't usually say this, but the reality was when she told me she'd become a Christian, I was so mad. It was time for me to mow the lawn. I went out and she had just planted a beautiful flower garden. I mowed down the entire flower garden. I was a little angry at the time. But I thought, you know, if I could rescue her from this cult that she's gotten involved in, all I have to do is disprove the resurrection of Jesus. gotten involved in, all I have to do is disprove the resurrection of Jesus. So I spent two years investigating not only the resurrection evidence historically, but also science issues and philosophy and so forth. And finally, on November the 8th of 1981, coming to the conclusion that in light of the strength of the evidence for the truth of Christianity, it would have taken more

faith to maintain my atheism than to become a Christian. And that's when I kind of reached my verdict in the case for Christ and came to faith that day. And like my wife, my life began to change. I ended up leaving journalism a number of years later at a 60% pay cut to join the staff of a local church. And it's just been a great adventure ever since. Are there some big, like, what were some of the key intellectual arguments maybe for or against, so for the resurrection or for Christianity that really stand out to you as kind of maybe the tipping point? And again, that could be something where arguments you had against Christianity that you realized weren't as strong as you thought

or arguments for Christianity that you began to appreciate. You know, it's funny. When I was a little kid, I got a toy. It was a punching bag kind of a thing. And it was weighted on the bottom. It was a clown. And it was weighted on the bottom. It was inflated.

And so you'd hit the clown and it would go back. And then because it was weighted on the bottom, it was inflated. And so you'd hit the clown and it would go back. And then because it was weighted on the bottom, it would bounce back up. And it was a common toy back in the 50s when I was born. But the investigation I did into Christianity reminded me of that clown because I would hit it with an objection, with a question, with a doubt, a concern, a hesitation. I would hit it hard, I thought, and it would go back. But then I would find an answer. I would find something that satisfied my heart and soul. And every time I would hit it, it kind of got annoying after a while. I'd find an answer and boom, it would bounce back. I'd have to hit it again. And that was kind of the journey and took a year and nine months to do that. Now, back then, unlike today, there was not a proliferation on a popular level for people to read and analyze and so forth.

Back then, I mean, I'm in libraries using microfilm and microfiche, you know, and I remember going into one library and doing an interlibrary loan. Back in the 1800s, there was a famous lawyer who actually became one of the founders of Harvard Law School. And he wrote a book on the evidence of the Gospels, the accounts of the Gospels, arguing that they were reliable. And so I wanted to read it because he was a great legal mind. Well, I remember putting in a interlibrary loan, and then I forgot about it. And about six months later, I get notified about, hey, your book, and they had found it in some obscure library. It was held together by rubber bands. But that was the kind of research you were doing back then. In fact, somebody asked me recently, what books did you read in your investigation? I actually put together a little list. I'll read you some of them,

give you a sense of what I got into. But I read Bertrand Russell, several books by Russell, Albert Schweitzer, Anthony Vu, The Atheist, David Hume, of course, on Miracles, Albert Camus on Christian Metaphysics, J.I. Packer, read some early, early, to me, Christian stuff, J.I. Packer, Norman Geisler, to me, Christian stuff, J.I. Packer, Norman Geisler, John Stott, Basic Christianity. There was a book by a guy named Frank Morrison, who was also a journalist, although I think he was really in the advertising side, who wrote a book called Who Moved the Stone on the Resurrection many years ago, Evidence. I remember reading that. The book I referenced, Simon Greenleaf, Testimony of the Four Evangelists, Mere Christianity and Screwtape Letters by Lewis. Some stuff by John Warwick Montgomery.

I don't know if you know him, but he's an interesting character. The Everlasting Man by Chesterton, Thomas Aquinas, Blaise Pascal, Francis Schaeffer. I read the Koran. I read the Book of Mormon. So that was kind of the process I went through. Quran. I read the Book of Mormon. So that was kind of the process I went through. And as I say, I'm envious of people that kind of do something similar today because there's a lot more available to them. It's overwhelming though. When I'm reading, as you can see, I got a lot of books behind me. I love to read and research, but the hard thing now is that I'll come across a footnote.

Somebody will quote something. I'm like, man, that's'll come across a footnote. Somebody will quote something. I'm like, man, that's brilliant. They'll footnote it. And within seconds, it's ordered. It's just in my Amazon cart. And then it comes. And then by the time I finish one book. Right before this call, I did that.

Yeah. I mean, for every one book I read, I feel like I've tried to order 10 or at least maybe for financial reasons, I'm staying. But then I've got stacks of books and I just can't get through them all. So it's almost this is a glut of information and I just can't consume it all that I want to. Literally right before we did this interview, um, I did the same thing and the book was like $27. And I'm thinking part of me thought, well, that's a lot of money should i but yeah what the heck and the nice thing about that it comes tomorrow you know because i know we just got an amazon warehouse here in boise so i've ordered stuff that has come later on that that afternoon wow yeah you guys are coming up in the world oh yeah good we're getting in and out here in a

couple months um you get electricity soon yeah yeah right yeah yeah my internet's still terrible but uh the resurrection so for me i when people rely on like the biblical evidence for the resurrection i'm always like well wait well hold on like if i was a skeptic i'd say you're using the very book that you're trying to prove is correct so don't don't give me like well you know passages in the bible but the big in my and i'm so I, I am not an apologist at all. So I may be saying something solely stupid or so obvious. So please forgive me. But the Bible, as far as we know, was written by men. And yet the testimony is mostly women. In fact, it was the guys who were doubting. So it's like, okay okay let's peel back to

curtain a little bit what are the odds if this did not happen that a bunch of male writers in a male centric world would go out of their way to fabricate all these women testifying to the resurrection what's the counter argument to this that just seems to me like at least that that's at least like well hard you know that they would do that good argument because you know historians use what's called the uh um criterion of embarrassment which means that if you're reading a claim made by an ancient writer josephus tacitus fitonius or whatever and they make a certain claim if the claim is embarrassing to them or hurts their own case they're probably telling the truth because if if, why would they do that? Not going to make up something that's going to hurt their own

case. And so we look at the empty tomb of Jesus and who discovered the tomb empty. It was women. And, you know, Josephus talks about in the first century Jewish and Roman culture, how women's testimony was generally not allowed in a court of law, was not considered to be credible. The Talmud talks about the shakiness of women's testimony and how maybe you shouldn't take it so seriously in some cases and so forth. So it was embarrassing to the gospel writers that women discovered the Tammuc, and yet they say it. Why would they do that? Because they're probably telling the truth. So I think where the circular argument comes around, I think is if we say, oh, the Bible says the word of God, therefore I'm going to trust everything in it as being the word of God. Well, that's, you know, but I

approached it not as being divinely inspired, not as being the word of God, but, or inerrant, but I approach it as just being a set of ancient writings. And I could take the same techniques like the criterion of embarrassment that I would use in analyzing any other ancient writing and apply them to the pages of the New Testament to try to determine, is it telling me the truth? So I think that's legitimate. And you've hit on something I think is a really good point. The criterion of embarrassment seemed to suggest that and well golly talk about criterion embarrassment jesus is crucified i mean that's a horrific awful terrible thing to even talk about that is an embarrassment in the first century right yeah that's not that's not uh the ingredients for a successful movement they say our leader was

crucified by the state for treason. Exactly. It's not something you would fabricate. If you're going to fabricate something, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be that. I feel like though, don't you think most even secular scholars would say he was crucified.

He was maybe accused or perceived to be a revolution. Like that's, it's pretty rare that somebody would say Jesus either didn't exist. I mean, very rare, right? They would say he didn't even exist. That just historically seems dumb. Crucified, most likely of secular testimony, several,

like you said, Tacitus and Josephus and others. Obviously, it's the resurrection that's the sticking point. What would be the counter-argument to that, the point I made about the biblical writers saying that it was women that? The, the, what I, the point I made about the, you know, the biblical writers testify saying that it was women that showed up at the tomb. Is there a good, is there a counter argument to that? Or is that just, it's kind of ignored or? I think people would just say it's not, it's not particularly strong evidence, but to me, it's part of the case. It is one element of the

case. You know, I don't look at the case for the resurrection or the truth of Christianity as being a chain with links in it. And if you take out a link, the whole thing becomes useless. I see it, and I think William Lane Craig uses this analogy more as chain mail, like an armor that ancient gladiators would use that's interlocked and so forth. And if you take out a link, it doesn't fall apart. locked and so forth. And if you take out a link, it doesn't fall apart. And so I think you'd say that the criterion of embarrassment is suggestive and interesting and provocative and useful, but not conclusive. And yet you're right. The question of whether Jesus was truly dead after

he crucified, because some people, you know, especially in the 19th century would claim that, oh, he swooned. He was not resurrected, but he was revived by the cool, damp air of the tomb because he wasn't really dead. I mean, that's ridiculous. If you look at, not only do we have multiple accounts in the New Testament that talk about his death, we have five ancient sources outside the Bible that talk about the death of Jesus. Josephus, Tacitus, Meribah, Scerafian, Lucian, even the Jewish Talmud. So, you know, you go to an atheist New Testament scholar like Gerard Ludeman, and he says the death of Jesus by crucifixion is indisputable historically. In fact, it's interesting. Several years ago,

some historians and physicians did an analysis of the death of Jesus. It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which is a secular, scientific, peer-reviewed medical journal. And they went through what happens during crucifixion. What does the historical record tell us about Jesus and his crucifixion and so forth? And their conclusion is they said, quote, clearly the weight of the historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead even before the wound to his side was inflicted. So here you have a secular, scientific, peer-reviewed medical journal confirming it. So, you know, I like to look at corroboration.

You know, I like to look at how to, not just an assertion, but is it corroborated? And I've tried to do that in all my books. That's good. That's good. And I know that one of the counter arguments with Josephus is that, well, Josephus' writings were preserved by Christians. And there's evidence that it's been kind of some of the manuscripts of Josephus have been kind of doctored up. And that passage where he talks about Jesus has been kind of embellished. And I think some of it has been, but there's been a lot of critical work done on that and saying there's enough of that passage that through critical, through textual criticism can be shown to be original. And there's enough there to testify that he did, you know, the actual Josephus did talk about the crucifixion.

You know, did he call him the son of God? Did he affirm that he did all these miracles? Well, that may have been added by Christians, but clearly there was a messianic claim that this historic Jesus made and he was crucified for that. Right. And he makes two references to Jesus. He made a reference to James, a brother who was killed. And in my book, The Case for Christ, I actually interviewed in a story. I'm trying to think if it was Edmund Yamauchi or if it was Bruce Metzger.

But one of the two, I talked to him about the Josephus passage and was it doctored and so forth. And the point was that he made, which I think is a good point. Okay, let's believe it is. Let's just give you that. And let's take out those things which were probably could have been inserted by later creation. Let's just give you that. And let's take out those things which were probably could have been inserted by later creation. Let's take those out. It still bears testimony to the identity of Jesus, the existence of Jesus, his death, and so forth. So without conceding that, yes, indeed, those details were later added. But would Josephus recall them,

the Messiah? You know, I mean, probably not. I think he probably, I think, yeah, I wish I had it in front of me, but I think he would have said he claimed to be. And I think maybe some manuscripts say Josephus says he was the Messiah. So this kind of difference is like, well, yeah, I can deal with that. You know, I don't know if you've read stuff by Peter Williams from Tyndale House. Yeah. read stuff by Peter Williams from Tyndale House. He's done some great recent work on the historicity of the gospels and brought in stuff that's like really fresh work. It's really, really good. Yes. Yeah. I like him a lot.

Yeah. All right. So you're forthcoming, but by the time this podcast is released, I think we're about two weeks out from the release of Is God Real? Exploring the Ultimate Question of Life. I confess I've not, well, I haven't read it yet because your publisher has not sent me a copy. I'm going to throw them under the bus. I don't know who published it, but that's fine. But here you deal with kind of a different, I mean, it's similar, but different angle, you know, questions like, the big one for me would be the problem of evil. If God is good and all-powerful, why does he allow these bad things to happen? He could intervene and chooses not to, even if he's not causing abuse and genocide and war and all. He certainly could stop it if he wanted to, but is choosing not to? I mean, this is a classic question, but I think in my anecdotal experience, this might be

one of the intellectual hangups people have with Christianity. Do you see this as being kind of one of the big ones? I mean... Yeah. You know, in my menu book, Is God Real?, first off, I build a case from science, history, and philosophy that, yes, God is real and that Christianity is true and that other worldviews, pantheism, atheism and so forth, fail the tests of scrutiny and that Christianity really does pass those tests. And so I build that case. But then, you know, I say there's there's at least two big arguments against it. One of them is, OK, if God is real, why is there suffering in the world? And then the other one, and which is the number one question? I did a survey, a national scientific survey through the George Barna organization a few years ago, and I asked

a cross-section of American adults, if you could ask God only one question and you knew he'd give you an answer right now, what would you ask? And by a factor of five or six, I mean, this question was the number one question. But then interestingly, I was kind of shocked by this. The number two question that philosophers say is being raised increasingly, especially among young people, is being raised increasingly, especially among young people, is, okay, if God is real, why is he so hidden? And so I deal with that in the book as well. So I try to tell the affirmative case, I try to deal with the challenges, and then let the reader make up their own mind. But consistent with my other books and my approach, since I'm not a theologian, is I seek out really smart people and talk to them. That's my great skill is talking to smart people. That approach, though, I think that... I know that was the way you went about your first book

back in 81 or 80, whenever you did the research for it. And that's probably an outflow of just your passion for being an investigative journalist. And that was just kind of who you were. But honestly, this kind of dialogical approach, I think actually will end up resonating a lot more with like younger millennials, Gen Z. I don't know if they want these kind of old white guys telling them, here's what you might believe.

Like that's kind of a turnoff these days, but, but, but an honest dialogue I think is, is way more approachable. It's why people can listen to a three hour Joe Rogan podcast or something. And it's just bantering around people. You know, it's like, I think people, they, they enjoy learning through dialogue, if not the same, maybe perhaps even more than just absorbing a monologue. So I love this. So you talked with, I mean, William Lane Craig about the cosmos requiring a creator. Can you sum up? That's a complex argument that's been around. I think Aquinas, yeah. Was that Aquinas that started that? Well, actually, there are a lot lot of he talked about prime mover and things like things

like that um actually it has roots in islamic theology oh yeah medieval islamic theology because islam also believed in the origin of the universe you know the popular opinion among scientists uh was that the universe always existed that it didn't have a beginning and uh christians and muslims uh would base their opinion that no no no there have a beginning. And Christians and Muslims would base their opinion that, no, no, no, there was a beginning based on scripture. But now, over the last 50 to 80 years, we heard a series of scientific discoveries that have made it clear that there was a beginning at some point in the past. And so the argument is, as formulated by the Muslim philosophers, so the argument is, as formulated by the Muslim philosophers, which is now supported by science,

which is whatever begins to exist has a cause. We now know that the universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe must have a cause behind it. So what kind of a cause can bring the universe into existence? It must be itself transcendent because it's separate from creation. It must be powerful given the immensity of the creation event. It must be smart given the precision of the creation event. It must be personal, had to make the decision to create. It must be immaterial or spirit because it existed before the physical world. It must be eternal or timeless because it existed before physical time came into being. There would be probably just one creator because Occam's razor says you shouldn't multiply causes beyond what you need to achieve an effect. So you go down that line and you got a pretty good description

of the God of the Bible. So there's a fair amount. And then when you couple that with the argument of the fine tuning of the universe, it forms, I think, personally, personally, if I were to redo my investigation from years ago as an atheist, looking at the current findings of cosmology and physics, a fine-tuning of the universe and beginning of the universe, that would be enough for me to know that God exists. And when you read through the evidence that I present in the book, I mean, it's clear. You know, talk about how the universe is fine-tuned on a razor's edge so that life can exist. You know, I'll give you one example. Picture a ruler that goes across the entire 15.8 billion

light years width of the universe. So, you know, broken down in one-inch increments. width of the universe. So, you know, broken down in one inch increments, that represents the range along which the force of gravity could have been set, could have been set anywhere along that continuum. And yet it's set at the exact right point so that life can exist. Now, what if you change the force of gravity one inch compared to 15 billion light year width of the universe? one inch compared to 15 billion light year width of the universe, intelligent life is impossible anywhere in the universe. That's just one of about 100 different parameters of physics and numbers that govern the operation of the universe that show that. And I interviewed a physicist with a doctor from UCLA who's a professor of physics and

does work at the big collider in Switzerland and has written 900 scholarly articles and been published. I mean, this guy knows his stuff. And I said, in light of the evidence and the fine tuning, I said, what are the odds that it could have happened by chance? And he looked at me and he said, well, we physicists have a term for that. I said, what? He said, ain't going to happen. Wait, was he a religious person or was he not? He's a Christian. Okay. Yes. He's from a secular university. Okay. So personally, I think the evidence of cosmology, the origin of the universe and the fine tuning, to me, that's enough. But then you couple it with a newer discovery. Again, this is stuff just within the last 50 years that shows that inside, we have a hundred trillion cells in our body. Inside every single cell is the famous

double helix of DNA. If you were to unwind it from just one cell, it would be six feet tall. And embedded in that DNA is a four-letter chemical alphabet that spells out the precise assembly instructions for every protein out of which we're made. Now, nature can produce patterns. We know that. If you go down a beach and you see in the wet sand ripple marks, you could say, okay, the wave action created those patterns. But if you're walking down the beach and in the wet sand, you see John loves Mary with a heart around it and an arrow through it, you wouldn't say, oh, the waves created that. Because whenever you see information, whether it's in a computer code, whether it's a book, whether it's a painting on a cave wall, always, always, always there's an intelligence behind it.

And the question that Stephen C. Meyer, who got his PhD in origin of life from Cambridge University, who I interviewed for this book, the question he asks is, in light of that, how do we account for, we have more information, more words spelled out by this four-letter chemical alphabet, just like we use 26 letters in English, use a four-letter chemical alphabet to spell out the assembly instructions. We have more words, so to speak, in every cell in our body than in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Where does that come from? So I think if you take cosmology, physics, and biochemistry, that is the biological information in cells, it makes a pretty good case for the God of the Bible. This episode is sponsored by Athletic Greens, which is now called AG1. So it's really hard to

get all the nutrients that your body needs without taking some kind of supplement. And I've tried many different supplements over the years. I've tried traditional vitamins, all kinds of green powders, and I found AG1 to be the absolute best nutritional supplement. It's packed with 75 high quality vitamins and minerals and whole food sourced ingredients, which it just saturates your body with all the nutrition that it needs. It supports your overall gut health, which is really important for your overall health. It aids in digestion, helps improve your immune system, mood, energy, mental clarity, and it actually tastes good. Like it's not overly sweet, but just sweet enough to make it an enjoyable experience when you're digging it. I've been taking it for over a year now and I can truly

notice the difference. I usually take it first thing in the morning, right before my coffee. Sometimes I'll take another serving in the afternoon if I'm feeling particularly run down or tired. But what I love most about AG1 is the sustained energy and mental clarity that I feel throughout the day. You can truly notice a difference. So if you want to take ownership of your health, try AG1 and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkag1.com forward slash T-I-T-R. That's drinkag1.com forward slash T-I-T-R. Check it out. This episode is sponsored by The Pour Over Podcast. Oh my word. I love the Pour Over podcast. It is a trustworthy news resource guiding people toward eternal hope. It's not Republican. It's not Democrat. It's not conservative. It's not liberal. Instead, it is a Christ-centered summary of the major events going on in politics and in culture. Uh, like most of you, I am so tired of news outlets that are so clearly biased toward the right or to the left. I want to stay informed with what's going on, but I hate how traditional

news outlets shape my heart and try to win me to a certain side. I mean, if you don't believe me, just ask yourself this question after listening to say, I don't know, CNN or Fox news for like 30 minutes, am I less or more or more motivated to love my neighbor and my enemy? If the answer is less, then Houston, we have a huge problem, a discipleship problem. This is why I'm so excited about the Pour Over podcast. Each episode is only about seven minutes long, and they just tell you about what's going on in the world. They don't tell you how to interpret the various events or how you should feel about what's going on. Instead, they just let you know about the facts of what's going on while reminding listeners that our ultimate identity and hope is in Jesus Christ. I've even met some of the people at The Pour Over and they are super awesome.

They're not some like closeted liberal or closeted conservative think tank. Like they're truly genuinely just trying to keep us informed while staying focused on Christ. So don't let traditional media outlets steal your affection away from loving people who might vote differently than you. Instead, check out and subscribe to The Pour Over Podcast in your favorite podcast app. I didn't even think about that distinction between just a – like I just look at the complexity of the human body, right? You got a beating heart, even our reproduction and brains. I mean, let alone the brain, right? And then everything else.

Right. That alone. But DNA is different because you're saying that that – I mean, that's like – that's actual information. It's not just, wow, these things happen to work together in ways that seem miraculous. Why does a heart keep beating? How does a brain do it? But this is actually coded information. It is information.

And what's important about that is, as I said, information always has an intelligence behind it. I mean, you can't find an example of it otherwise. So I think that's a really interesting discovery of modern genetics. And again, I think it points toward an intelligence that's beyond us. I don't know how you account for that. And by the way, to say that this code, this four-letter chemical alphabet is information or language is not reasoning by analogy. That's not an analogy. That is what it is. So you can't discount it by saying, oh yeah, analogies are weak because you can point to the positives and the negatives of analogy. No, no, this is not an analogy. This is actual

language. In fact, it's interesting when an evangelical Christian geneticist, Francis Collins, led the team that decoded the human genome. And that was announced by President Clinton. What President Clinton said, I don't know if he realized how right he was being, but he got up and he said, we have now discovered the language in which God created life. And that's exactly right. It's the language. So how do you do that by happenstance? And I go through the various other theories in the book about trying to explain it away. I don't find a logical counter argument to that. Well, that was my, yeah. And that was the title of Francis Collins' book, right? Wasn't it The Language of God? That's right.

I forgot. You're right. Oh, that's interesting. So he riffed on Clinton's. Yeah, that's right. And he became a Christian through studying DNA, I think, right? Or was he a part of that? I think he was a Christian when he went into it. Yeah, I think he was actually homeschooled growing up.

And I'm pretty sure he became a Christian at 17 or something like that. I've been to the pub in Cambridge where Crick and Watson, professors at Cambridge, discovered DNA or something. They would go to the pub, the Eagle. Everybody knows about the Eagle at Cambridge. And there's a big plaque there saying this is where Crick and Watson would do their after hours kind of like meetings and stuff. And they announced that, you know, they have. Right. I forget what they said.

His wife said that when he came home, Crick came home and said, hey, we discovered the mechanism of life, the DNA, the double helix. He said, we discovered this. And she said, I didn't believe you. And he didn't. She said, I didn't believe him. She said, I didn't believe him. And years later, she said, why didn't you believe me? And she said, because you were always coming home and saying stuff like that. I just discounted.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The professor who cried wolf. Yeah, that's right. He cried wolf many times. The way my brain works is I always think, okay, well, what's, what's the best, you know, steel man counter-arguing? Like, so what do people say? Is it, is it just, if someone's still an atheist, obviously they know about DNA. Do they just say, yeah, I mean, between God and, you know, chance or whatever, like, I

know this is extremely, nearly, you know, impossible, but I think God is more impossible, so I'm going to choose to believe something that— Well, they try to come up with different theories. One theory, and I analyze each of these in the book, but one of the theories that seemed to hold some promise to try to explain it away was, okay, what if there's a self-organizational quality to these entities, so to speak? What if there's something just in the way they exist that causes them to come together naturally in a way that forms these words and these instructions. And there's actually a book called A Chemical Predestination that was published by a professor of genetics and biology at San Francisco State University.

And he published this book with that theory that maybe there's a self-organizational quality inside cells that allows this to happen. Well, guess what happened? He ended up repudiating his entire book after it came out. And this was a book that when I was in college, this was kind of the big thing. And he came out at a conference in Dallas and said, I was wrong. There's some basic attractional qualities, but it's repetitive. It doesn't create information and is very basic.

And so he actually ended up reputing his own book. And he ended up saying, I quote him in the book as saying that he believes that the information in DNA is one of the strongest arguments out there for the existence of a supernatural creator. is one of the strongest arguments out there for the existence of a supernatural creator. So it's not just a general, you know, a universe that gives evidence of design most likely has a designer. That's a very general, which is, I think, very powerful in my opinion. But the DNA just takes those gasoline on that. It really does. I mean, you know, you go back and what was a famous argument made by, I'm trying to think of his name, theologian in the 1800s. He says, look at your hand. What was the argument? I think it was look at your hand and how, or no, look at your watch.

Would you say that this could have come together by chance? Of course not. But then look at your hand. Your hand is more complex than that watch. Of course not. But then look at your hand. Your hand is more complex than that watch. How could you say that it, you know? So there were arguments for design before the DNA argument, the design of the eye, for instance, and so forth. But I think the DNA argument takes it to a whole new level. Would you agree?

So this might take, I know we kind of got off, well, we didn't get off track. We just went back to more of the beginning of their book, but the, the kind of moral arguments against God, like, um, because I, well, in your opinion is our people like with the first, let's see, four, let's say the first three chapters of your book, the cosmos requires a creator universe needs a fine tuner DNA demands and designer. Do you find those three are more readily accepted by people or believable? Those just seem so, I don't know, objectively powerful at the very least. It's more, I can, in my opinion, I think people, once they're there, then like, okay, but why would a good guy, they go to the moral stuff pretty quickly. Is that, is that in your experience? Do you find that or? Yeah. I i think i think people either consciously or unconsciously look for objections

um and i say unconsciously because you know romans 1 verse 20 says that um there's there's sufficient evidence in nature for us to see the divine attributes of God clear, in other words, without excuse, but we tend to suppress it. And I think people sometimes are looking for counter arguments or looking for ways to dispute something, not intentionally, but because there's something else driving. I'll give you an example. I think there's two trends in our culture today that I believe are causally related, although I can't prove it. One trend is the increase in fatherless families. It's going through the roof. Number of fatherless families in America is going through the roof. The other trend is the increase in spiritual skepticism. When I met my wife in 1966, 98% of Americans believed in God. 98%.

The number is now down to 81%. Okay. 81%. So historically lost. So we're seeing this increase in fatherless families. We're seeing this increase in spiritual skepticism. I believe there's a correlation. You know, if you look at, well, even Freud talked about it.

The idea that if your earthly father has abandoned you or hurt you in some way, you don't want to really know about a heavenly father because he's not going to be worse. He's not going to hurt you worse. And so you look for ways. You don't even realize you're doing this. You look for ways to fend off the evidence for God. Look at the famous atheists of history, Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche, Freud, Voltaire, Wells, Feuerbach, O'Hare. Every single one of them had a father who died when they were young, divorced their mother when they were young, or with whom they had a very difficult relationship. And even in my life, you know, I like to think, oh, I was an atheist because I was too smart

to buy into Christianity. Well, you know what? I had a terrible relationship with my dad. And he looked at me on the eve of my high school graduation and said, I don't have enough love for you to fill my little finger. So we had a difficult... Now, was that driving my, my, did that pave the road for me to go into atheism? I think it was a factor. I didn't realize it at

the time, looking back on it, I think, you know, so I don't, I don't want to ascribe necessarily evil motives to people, um, uh, who, who are fending off God. I think sometimes it's a, it's a condition that they're not even aware of, maybe tied to something like that. But so I think people tend to try to manufacture excuses or, like, for instance, give you an example. You had asked on the argument for cosmology, whatever begins to exist as a cause, the universe began to exist, there must be a cause behind it. Whatever begins to exist as a cause, the universe began to exist. There must be a cause behind it.

And then the fine tuning of the argument of the universe. Well, the counter argument that some scientists bring up is, well, what if we're just one of an infinite number of universes? What if there's actually an infinite number of universes that we don't even know about and in principle can never know about. And yet, if you spin the dials of physics in enough of these universes, you're going to eventually come up with one that all the numbers come up right, and that's our universe. We hit the jackpot. Well, I deal with that in the book because the problem with that is there is no evidence for that. I mean, I try to look at evidence, but there is no physical evidence whatsoever for that theory. In fact, I quote a prominent physicist, a German physicist, Sabine Hossenfelder, who says, basically, it's a waste of time scientifically. And she said,

by the way, there are very few scientists who really believe in the multiverse idea. But so I think people tend to manufacture ways in which they can fend off the evidence. Some ways are more logically coherent than others. Yeah, yeah. That's really helpful. I'm curious. So about the problem of evil question. evil question um yeah curious how you deal with that i i well yeah yeah and it is a you know it's it's one of those questions i say i try to resist

giving a 25 cent answer to a million dollar question yeah so in the book i interview dr peter kraft who's a phd philosopher boston, well-known. He's actually Catholic, is a brilliant, brilliant philosopher. And he had written a book on this topic that attracted me to go interview him. And so I spent the day with him. And so in the book, I think it's about a 50-page chapter that really delves into this issue. I think the short answer is that God is not the author of moral evil and suffering. He's not the creator of it. That God has existed from eternity past as a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in perfect loving harmony. And therefore, love is the greatest value in the

universe. And so when God decided to create humankind, he wanted us to experience the greatest value in the universe, to love each other and to love him. And to do that, he had to give us free will because love requires free will. There's always a choice. When my daughter was little, this dates me again, dates her too, but way back then they used to have a doll called Chatty Cathy. And it had a string on the back. And if you pull the string and let it go, the doll would talk to you. So she had this doll and she would pull the string and let it go. And the doll would say, I love you. That was as high tech as it was back then. So did that doll love my daughter? Of course not. It was programmed.

It had no choice. It had to say that. So love must require choice. And what has happened? We have chosen to turn our backs on God. We've chosen to hurt each other. You know, we grow enough food in this world to feed every man, woman, and child with 10,000 calories a day. But why don't we?

Because of our selfishness, because of our unconcern for starving people. I can take my hand and I can pick up a gun and kill an innocent person, or I can take that same hand and feed a hungry person. But if I pick up a gun and kill an innocent person, it's a little disingenuous to say, God, why do you allow suffering in the world? You know, the problem is us. And so I think that is a one kind of a summary of one way of looking at the evidence. I think too, that even though suffering is not good, God has a track record of using it to accomplish good. And we see that in a variety of different ways. Romans 8.28 says that God can cause all things to work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Doesn't mean necessarily in this world, it could be the next world or whatever, but he promises to draw good. And if we doubt that, if we say, wait a second, you know, for instance, my wife has a neuromuscular condition and she has been in pain for 20 years and she will be in pain every day for the rest of her life because this is an incurable condition that she has.

And so, and she's a strong follower of Jesus. And someone like her could say, wait a second, I've been in pain for 20 years. I'm going to be in pain every day for the rest of my life. I don't think you could possibly, God, draw any good from the suffering I've gone through. And I think the answer to that is that God took the worst thing, the worst thing that could ever happen in the history of the universe, which is the death of the Son of God on the cross. And from that, he has drawn 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 turn it into the best thing in the universe, I think we can trust that he can take even the suffering, even the difficulties

that we endure and draw some good for it. Use it to draw us closer to him, use it to sharpen our character and so forth. And, you know, the Bible says the day is coming when suffering will end and evil will be judged. Well, golly, then why doesn't he do it? And the day is coming when suffering will end and evil will be judged. Well, golly, then why doesn't he do it? Why doesn't, and the answer is he's holding back the consummation of history. He's holding back final judgment because there's still yet some people who are coming into the kingdom of God who haven't yet. So I think it's out of his love that he's holding back his ultimate resolution because in time, all evil will be judged.

All suffering will be, you know. And in light of heaven, what was a famous quote by St. Teresa of Avila, who said, in light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth would be like one night in a bad hotel. That's basically what she said. like one night in a bad hotel. That's basically what she said. After you're in heaven for 829,263,483 days in the presence of God, in the perfect joy and bliss and wonder and adventure of heaven, to say, oh yeah, I did suffer in my life before I got here. I did. But in light of that, as Paul says, our light and momentary struggles take on a whole different perspective. Yeah. I feel like that's probably the most coherent and believable response to the problem of evil. I still have, I don't know, is it okay that I still have like question marks? And I'm a Gen Xer raised in conservative evangelicalism.

So I take a kind of a Job approach of, you know, why God and God says, who do you think you are? I'm like, I'm sorry. And I'm like, okay, you're a creator. I'm not, I'm actually, I'm okay. Like that's, that possible options of a deity. You know, I look at other options. I'm like, no, the biblical story makes the most sense, the most beautiful story, really. Not that there's not question marks there, but of all the options, I think this is the best we got.

So I don't need to have everything ironed out. But with the problem, so the love part, that is, if God created a bunch of people that couldn't have sinned, then that would be very real. But the whole idea of love would not be. And here's the one for me. Okay, so he allows evil to run its course, but he could intervene. But that, would you say that that would be, here's a two-part question. Would that be a violation of free will and love? But then are we not talking out of both sides of our mouths when we do pray, God intervene and God intervenes and saves us from cancer? We say, oh God, so good. Hold on a second. That other person died of cancer, so he can intervene.

He can violate free will when he wants to. Do we just shrug our shoulders and say, sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't and we don't know how it works out. If that's the answer, I'm actually, I'm okay. Not having it all ironed out, but it still doesn't. I don't know if I was, if I was going to sell a skeptic, I'd be like, yeah, you're, you're right to have some question marks here. I don't know. You're right.

It is all right that everything does get neatly tied in a bow. But I actually did a book called The Case for Miracles where I document credible, corroborated cases where God did intervene. And I did a study where I asked a cross-section of Americans, have you ever had an incident in your life you can only attribute to a miracle of God? And 38% of American adults said yes. So does God intervene sometimes? Yes. But if he intervened every time, we couldn't do science. How could we live? There's no predictability. Science is based on repeatability. And you would have to take that away and say, no, no, God's just going to intervene left and right every day here and there and everywhere and override our choices and override things. It just creates a it would create chaos. So I think there's a practical problem there. Yancey deals with that, Phil Yancey, in his book about suffering.

And then you could say, well, why so much suffering? Why, you know, could he not throttle back some of it, you know? And I think, and I deal with that in the book. I think the answer, and Peter Crave does a better job of laying this out, but I think the answer is, at what point does it become too much? what point does it become too much? You know, I don't, we can, we can say if you put a kettle on a, on a stove, when the fire heats it up to, what is it? 212 degrees, whatever. I don't know. When is it? When it turns to steam, it will turn to steam.

But you can't say, Oh, if you had this amount of suffering and you added one more case, Oh, then it's too much. You just there's no way to measure that. But, you know, I'm OK with some ambiguity here. I'm OK with questions. I'm OK with doubts. Yeah. I have doubts about a lot of things. You know, I put my hand up in heaven and say, hey, how does this Calvinism and Arminian thing fit together? Because I don't get it.

It's okay that we have questions. John the Baptist had questions when he was sitting in jail and had to have his buddies go ask Jesus, are you the one we've been waiting for? Are we to wait for somebody else? And Jesus didn't get mad at him for asking questions. So why doesn't he prevent more evil? That's a little ambitious to me because we don't have access to how many times God is behind the scenes preventing evil from happening. We don't know how many genocides would have broken out were it not for God behind the scenes stopping them. Like what if for every one genocide, there was 99, then he stopped? That one genocide is still horrible, and not to downplay

that, but that would put it into bigger perspective. You know, why did this person die of cancer and this person didn't? We don't know how many people God prevented from getting cancer in the first place. And, you know, so yeah, that one's not too, there's so much we don't know that we're not even in a good spot to kind of offer maybe critique. I guess it's, it's still the, yeah, the thought of God having like to me saying, well, he doesn't cause evil, but he does allow it to happen. I'm like, I don't know. Like if I, um, if I ran over my kid in a car on purpose, we would all say that's evil. But if I was watching my kid wander out into the street and I saw a car coming and I had time to run and grab my kid, but I simply allowed it to happen. We would probably still call that kind of

evil. Like, wait, did you see it coming? Like I did. Why didn't you stop it? Well, because I want my kid to have free will. And those are the ones that kind of trip me up. And then when God does intervene and grab the kid and rescue, we praise God, you know, like, he rescued the kid from evil. Well, he did the other kid. And what do we do with that? And I don't know. Like, I kind of keep asking the same, but... Here's how I look at it. There are about 20 lines of evidence and argument that I believe point toward the truth of Christianity. And I kind of picture it like a current on a river flowing in a direction. And then we have stuff like the problem of evil and the problem of the hiddenness of God and so forth that are kind of coming upstream a bit. Well, they don't negate the other 20 lines of argument.

They don't negate them. They raise some questions that need to be dealt with and wrestled with, and hopefully someday we'll have better answers in eternity to those questions. But they don't negate the affirmative evidence. in eternity to those questions, but they don't negate the affirmative evidence. It's interesting when John Steingart, the vocalist for the Christian band Hawk Nelson, deconstructed his faith back in a few years ago and it became a big deal. He walked away because he said God was too hidden to believe that he really existed. And yet in an interview, he conceded that, you know, this doesn't negate all the other evidence affirmatively for the existence of God. And so you would have to come up with a theory that somehow accounted for all of these 20 lines of

evidence and dealt with those in order to also say that, you know that the case is too weak for anybody to really buy into. So it's fair to say, I mean, just cumulatively, the evidence would point to the Christian God as revealed through Scripture, again, in light of all the other possible options. And that's where I, when I go through my periods of doubt or like, is this whole thing, you know, I go back to that, you know, God, no God. And for me, the case for God far outweighs, you know, and then I go, okay, which God? And then I look at all the options and I think, you know, the Christian God makes the most sense cumulatively. Is it also fair to say with the problem of evil that the problem of evil is a problem for everybody, for every worldview. Every worldview has to deal with it. You're exactly right. And, you know, what is the atheist going to say to a dying child at his bedside to comfort that child? There's nothing he can say.

You know, you're an insignificant blip in the history of the cosmos. And, you know, it's, you know, he has nothing to say at that point. Indeed, truly, atheism cannot really make a judgment on what is morally evil and what is morally good because there's no foundation for it. You know, God provides that foundation for what is good and what is evil. And so, you And so the atheist can't even claim that there's an objective good that's being violated by a child who's dying of cancer. So you're right. Every worldview has to wrestle with this. And I think Christiane has the best answer.

Does it satisfy us completely? Probably not. But that doesn't negate all the other evidence. And so I think it's entirely appropriate for someone to reach a conclusion based on the affirmative evidence that God exists and hold intention certain other issues that, you know, most of them are secondary, you know, but to hold these intention and say, someday I hope I'll get an answer. Well, Christianity is the only one, right? Or maybe other forms of Christianity. Just that God chose to identify with suffering. I don't think that Saul, that doesn't answer all my letting a car run over my child kind of analogies with the problem of suffering that problem of suffering that I still, you know, don't have a perfect answer to, but that, that does create a lens. It's like,

he's not looking at God, the Christian God isn't looking at this question from a distance. He chose, he had not identified with it, but he chose, he didn't have to orchestrate things that way. He could have come up with another plan. He could have, you know, clapped his hands three times and, you know, provided redemption if you want to do, but he actually entered into the worst possible suffering like that, that at least colors the question a little bit differently it says a lot i mean john stott said at one point um you know i can go into a temple and see a uh a statue of buddha um and he has kind of a slight smile on his face, a little bit. And you go, I can't worship a God like that. My God, the Christian God, the true God, entered in his own choice, entered into our suffering.

He partook of it. He suffered worse than I'm ever going to suffer. And why did he do it? Out of love to redeem us so that we can spend eternity with him forever. And you go, yeah, that's true. That, you know, the question, Krebs put it this way, said, you know, the question mark that is raised by the issue of the suffering in the world is overlaid by the cross of Christ. That tells us that we have a God who loves us enough to enter into

our world, into our suffering, and thereby procure redemption for those who follow him. Lee, you made me excited to read your book, so I can't wait to get it. This is really fascinating. This is an area, like apologetics, it's not an area that I've read very widely at all. I did early on in my Christian journey. I feel like especially a lot of early converts, that's pretty typical. And I just got lost in other things.

So I would almost like if I was put on stage and said, all right, can you defend a faith against this? I probably wouldn't be very good at it. So I definitely would love to work through your thoughts here. But anyway, thanks for coming on Theology in a Row. This has been a super fun and engaging conversation. I really enjoyed it. So I definitely would love to, um, yeah, work through your thoughts here, but anyway, thanks for coming on Theology Journal. This has been a super fun and, uh, I've really enjoyed it. Great to get to know you for us. And I've read some of your stuff, um, and been very impressed by it. Very, in fact, I quote you in the book, I think. Oh, really?

Quoted you in my heaven book. I wrote a book on the case for heaven. Oh, no way. Okay. And, uh, I quoted you on the- Would you argue against me? I think it was good. I quoted you book on the case for heaven. Okay. And, uh, I quoted you on the, I think it was good. I quoted you on annihilationism and, um, I deal with that. And, um, I was so happy because I was interviewed by someone recently on another topic. And he said off the air, he said, incidentally, I, I believe in annihilationism and I thank you for being in your book, spelling out the case for it accurately and fairly. And I think the case is stronger than most people realize until they really delve into it.

But I thought you had some very profound comments in that area. Oh, cool. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate it. Yeah. Well, have a good one. Yeah.

Tell Kyle I said hi. I will do that. Awesome. Thanks, cool. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate it. Yeah, sure. Well, have a good one. Yeah. Tell Kyle I said hi. I will do that. Awesome. Thanks, man. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.