Faith & Christianity
Thesis
Faith is an active trust in what you
have good reason to believe is true.
Faith & Christianity
Point #1
Popular view of faith: Faith is blind faith
devoid of reason.
Examples:
1) Upper story leap
2) Sam Harris
Faith & Christianity
“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on
him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible,
and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone
else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you
give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed
was written by an invisible deity who will punish him
with fire for eternity if he fails to accept every
incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to
require no evidence whatsoever.”
-Sam Harris, The End of Faith
Faith & Christianity
Point #2
Faith is an active trust in what you have good
reason to believe is true.
Examples:
1) Everyday life
2) Scripture
• Exodus 3-14
• Mark 2:1-12
• John 10:38
• Acts 1:1-3
• Romans 1:20
• 1 Corinthians 15
Two-Minute Review
1) “Bringing Christianity to Our Culture”
2) Goals of the Class
 To help others have a better understanding of
Christianity.
 To help us to become more like Christ.
3) Class #1
 “Religion is Nothing More Than Blind Faith”
 Faith is an active trust in what you have good
reason to believe is true.
Bringing Christianity to Our Culture
Class #2
 “There is no proof that God exists.”
Main Point
 The Biblical view of God provides the best
explanation for the various features of the
universe and human experience.
 Theism vs. Naturalism
Our Method/Approach
 Abductive Reasoning
 Inference to the Best Explanation
Things We Recognize, Observe, or Experience:
Christianity vs. Naturalism
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
The Universe
Life
Consciousness, Truth & Reason
Humans are special; humans are broken
Evil
Goodness & Beauty
Purpose & Meaning
Free Will & Moral Responsibility
Things We Recognize, Assume, or Experience
#1) The universe exists.
#2) Life exists.
• Genesis 1:1
• Psalm 104
• Job 38-41
• “The Universe is unlikely. Very unlikely. Deeply,
shockingly unlikely.”
-Brad Lemley, “Why is There Life?”, Discover Magazine,
November 1, 2000.
Things We Recognize, Assume, or Experience
#3) Consciousness, Truth, & Reason
• “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your mind.” -Matthew 22:37
• "The curiosity of Man, and the cunning of his Reason, have revealed
much of what Nature held hidden. The structure of space-time, the
constitution of matter, the many forms of energy, the nature of life
itself; all of these mysteries have become open books to us. To be
sure, deep questions remain unanswered and revolutions await us
still, but it is difficult to exaggerate the explosion in scientific
understanding we humans have fashioned over the past 500 years.
Despite this general advance, a central mystery remains largely a
mystery: the nature of conscious intelligence.”
-Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness
Things We Recognize, Assume, or Experience
#4) Human beings are special...and broken.
• Genesis 1-3
• Imago Dei
• The Fall
• "It is an unbroken torture to me that I am still so far
from Him, Who as I fully know, governs every breath of
my life, and Whose offspring I am. I know that it is the
evil passions within that keep me so far from Him, and yet
I cannot get away from them.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
Things We Recognize, Assume, or Experience
#5) Evil
• “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was
very good.” -Genesis 1:31
#6) Goodness & Beauty
•
“For I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of
Egypt to be your God; thus you shall be holy, for I am holy.”
-Leviticus 11:45
• “One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my
life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His
temple.” -Psalm 27:4
Things We Recognize, Assume, or Experience
#7) Purpose & Meaning
• And He said to him, “‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD
WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH
ALL YOUR MIND.’ This is the great and foremost
commandment. The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR
NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ On these two commandments
depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
-Matthew 22:37-40
#8) Free Will and Moral Responsibility
• Revelation 20-21
The Absurdity of Life Without God
Modern man thought that when he had gotten rid of God, he
had freed himself from all that repressed and stifled him.
Instead, he discovered that in killing God, he had also killed
himself. For if there is no God, then man's life becomes absurd.
If God does not exist, then both man and the universe are
inevitably doomed to death. Man, like all biological organisms,
must die. With no hope of immortality, man's life leads only to
the grave. His life is but a spark in the infinite blackness, a spark
that appears, flickers, and dies forever. Therefore, everyone must
come face to face with what theologian Paul Tillich has called
"the threat of non-being." For though I know now that I exist,
that I am alive, I also know that someday I will no longer exist,
that I will no longer be, that I will die. This thought is staggering
and threatening: to think that the person I call "myself" will
cease to exist, that I will be no more!
The Absurdity of Life Without God
I remember vividly the first time my father told me that
someday I would die. Somehow as a child the thought
had just never occurred to me. When he told me, I was
filled with fear and unbearable sadness. And though
he tried repeatedly to reassure me that this was a long
way off, that did not seem to matter. Whether sooner
or later, the undeniable fact was that I would die and
be no more, and the thought overwhelmed me.
Eventually, like all of us, I grew to simply accept the
fact. We all learn to live with the inevitable. But the
child's insight remains true. As Jean-Paul Sartre
observed, several hours or several years make no
difference once you have lost eternity.
-William Lane Craig
Why Don’t We Believe in God?
“I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by
the fact that some of the most intelligent and wellinformed people I know are religious believers. It
isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally,
hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope
there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I
don’t want the universe to be like that.”
-Thomas Nagel
For Further Study
1) Total Truth
(Nancy Pearcey)
 www.reasonablefaith.org
2) The Universe Next Door
(James Sire)
 www.paulcopan.com
3) Mind Your Faith
(David Horner)
 www.str.org
4) A World of Difference
(Kenneth Samples)
 www.bethinking.org
5) Tactics: A Game Plan for
Discussing Your Christian
Convictions (Greg Koukl)
 www.apologetics315.com
Christianity & Culture
Class #1
“Religion is nothing more than blind faith.”
Class #2
“There is no proof that God exists.”
Class #3
“All religions lead to God.”
C.S. Lewis: “The Weight of Glory”
“...to remember that the dullest and most
uninteresting person you can talk to may one day
be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would
be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror
and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all,
only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some
degree, helping each other to one or other of these
destinations. It is in the light of these
overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and
the circumspection proper to them, that we should
conduct all our dealings with one another, all
loves, all play, all politics.
C.S. Lewis: “The Weight of Glory”
There are no ordinary people. You have never
talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts,
civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to
ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom
we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and
exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting
splendors.”
Class #3
• “All religions lead to God.”
• Religious Pluralism
Point #1
• Religious Pluralism
is false
• The law of
noncontradiction
Point #2
Four Reasons Christianity
is a Wise Choice When
Choosing a Worldview
Reason #1
• Christianity is testable.
• 1 Corinthians 15:12-19
Point #2
Reason #2
• In Christianity,
Salvation is a Free Gift
from God.
• Romans 1-6
Point #2
Reason #3
•
In Christianity, You Get an
Amazing Worldview Fit.
1) The Universe
2) Life
3) Consciousness, Truth &
Reason
4) Humans are special; humans
are broken
5) Evil
6) Goodness & Beauty
7) Purpose & Meaning
8) Free Will & Moral
Responsibility
Point #2
Reason #4
• Christianity Has
Jesus at the Center.
Christianity & Science: Friends or Enemies?
What this class will not be:
1) Bashing science
1) Debate: Young-Earth Creationism vs. OldEarth Creationism
Christianity & Science: Friends or Enemies?
Conclusion: Friends!
Reasons for this conclusion:
1) The history of science
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Nicolaus Copernicus, astronomer (1473-1543)
Galileo Galilei, astronomer (1564-1642)
Johannes Kepler, astronomer (1571-1630)
Blaise Pascal, mathematician/physicist (1623-1662)
Robert Boyle, chemist (1627-1691)
John Ray, biologist (1627-1705)
Isaac Newton, mathematician, physicist (1642-1727)
Carl Linnaeus, botanist/zoologist (1707-1778)
Georges Cuvier, zoologist/paleontologist (1769-1832)
Michael Faraday, chemist/physicist (1791-1867)
Gregor Mendel, biologist (1822-1884)
Louis Pasteur, chemist/microbiologist (1822-1895)
Christianity & Science: Friends or Enemies?
Conclusion: Friends!
Reasons for this conclusion:
1) The history of science
1) The arguments from science
2) The philosophy of science
1) The limits of science
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ultimate questions
Aunt Matilda’s cake
Ford Focus
the truth box
miracles
Christianity & Science: Friends or Enemies?
For Further Study:
•
The Case for a Creator (Lee Strobel)
•
Understanding Intelligent Design (McDowell & Dembski)
•
God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (John Lennox)
•
Signature in the Cell (Stephen Meyer)
•
Darwin’s Doubt (Stephen Meyer)
•
www.discovery.org
•
www.answersingenesis.org
•
www.icr.org
The Problem of Evil & Suffering
1) We will not be able to cover all of the bases.
2) The problem spelled out, specifically…
3) Not complete answers, but rather insights...
4) The philosophical problem vs. the emotional
problem...
5) It’s everybody’s problem.
6) Evil as evidence for God’s existence...
7) The free will defense & the 12:01 argument...
8) Suffering makes more sense in a Biblical
worldview.
9) Evil in light of the full scope of the evidence.
10)The final answer to evil and suffering is the
Answerer.
The Emotional Problem
“Christianity is the
only major religion to
have as its central
event the humiliation
of its God.”
-Bruce Shelley
The Emotional Problem
For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited
and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the
honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever
game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own
rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He
has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the
whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of
family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack
of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat,
despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man.
He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well
worth while.
-Dorothy Sayers
The Emotional Problem
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first
heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was
no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming
down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned
for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold,
the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with
them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be
with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from
their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there
be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former
things have passed away.”
-Revelation 21:1-4
For Further Reading
Making Sense of Suffering by Peter Kreeft
Where is God When It Hurts by Philip Yancey
When God Weeps by Joni Eareckson Tada & Steven Estes
The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel
If God, Why Evil? by Norman Geisler
Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering
by Timothy Keller