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The Urgent Question: Is God Real? Cosmic Evidence 0:02 When a culture begins to slide in that direction as our culture has, then people begin to say, woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Is there any hope? Is there anything I can0:14 grasp onto that can give me something beyond this world?0:26 Why as a human being would you not try to answer is God real? Which is the title of Lee's book. It's a great title Mhmm.0:33 Because0:33 it's the number 1 question when you look at searches, etcetera. Is God real? I would tell you, if you've never answered that question, get on a horse and start trying to find the answer. What I mean by get on the horse0:44 is get the evidence. Do the research. There's so many great resources now that can guide you in that way. It's not a brainwashing. This is factual data. Did Jesus rise from the dead? Yes or no.0:56 That kind of is the game changer. If he claimed to be the Messiah and died and was resurrected, wouldn't you wanna embrace that? And, that's what we're talking about. Is God1:08 real? All I could say is we're gonna do the best job we can to present the material, then it's up to you. And this is 1 place you should not hesitate to investigate and determine for yourself, yes, I1:19 believe in Jesus, or no, I don't. Alright. Let's get into this book, Is God Real? Yeah. I mean, that that's a heady title to be the author of. Yeah. And in that context, I mean, you really do believe if1:31 a person comes with an open mind, not not predetermined to battle you.1:37 Yeah.1:37 But even in that case, that's okay. But with that open mind, do you think a fair minded person will put the pieces together if they're seeking the Lord?1:47 You know, the Old Testament and Jeremiah, the New Testament and Hebrews both say if you sincerely seek God, you're gonna find him.1:52 That's exciting.1:53 Yeah. That's exciting. And I think the key is a open hearted, open minded investigation. When I started my investigation, I did a couple things. I said, number 1, I'm gonna do this like an umpire2:05 in a baseball game. I'm gonna call a ball a ball and a strike a strike and just let things play out the way they should. Number 2, when I have, gathered the evidence, I'm gonna reach a2:17 verdict. And I'm not gonna do this forever. When the evidence is in, I'm gonna reach a verdict. And the third thing I did, and this will surprise you, I think, I prayed. I was an atheist, and the prayer I prayed was,2:28 God, I don't believe you're there. In fact, I'm sure you're not. But if you are, I wanna meet you.2:36 Wow. That's great.2:36 I figured, what have I got to lose? 15 seconds, 10 seconds of a prayer? And if it's if God is real, then it changes everything.2:43 Lee, in that regard, why do you think, this question of God's existence is something humans have, A, pursued for so long, and I guess when I look at it, 1 of the2:55 most profound statements I've ever heard on that, you look at all of humanity around the world, and you find religion. Yeah. You find 5 major religions. Most of them, I'd say all3:07 but 1, are typically things you do to get to God. Right. You pray 5 times a day a certain direction, and Right. You know, you live a very kind of rigid3:18 lifestyle3:19 Yes.3:19 And therefore you will achieve heaven. I believe Christianity is the only religion, if we use that term3:26 Yeah.3:26 That is evidence of God reaching out to us. Yeah. That always convicted me. Yeah. And it seemed to be the right thing when God's the 1 doing it, not us trying to do it.3:36 Yes. Every other religion is based on the the, do plan. Do a bunch of things. Use a Tibetan prayer wheel, give alms to the poor, make a pilgrimage or whatever. You gotta do a bunch of things to try to earn3:48 your way to God. Christianity is spelled d o n e. It's done. Jesus said on the cross, it's finished. And it is a free gift of God's grace. That makes it distinctive among all the world religions.4:00 And, and and as you say, it it means that we can't brag about, look at all I've done and I've earned my way to heaven, you know. And the Bible says, so no 1 can boast. God offers forgiveness4:12 and eternal life as a free gift4:13 of grace.4:14 Well,4:14 and the positive construct there is that we're all looking. Yeah. You know, we're coming up these are isolated areas that maybe back when these religions were started, there wasn't a lot of exposure to Christianity, but4:26 but people's hearts are turned toward God. That's the fundamental truth.4:30 You know, it's funny. The reason I wrote this book is, my publisher actually came to me and said, we've discovered something interesting, our tech people. I said, what? He said, we've discovered that 200 people4:36 interesting, our tech people. I said, what? Said, we've discovered that 200 times a second, around the clock, someone on planet Earth is typing into a computer search engine, basically, the question, is God4:48 real?4:48 200 times a second.4:49 200 times a second. And I thought if there's then it goes with what you're saying. There's this there's this innate, desire in us to find what is our purpose? Who is our creator? Are we am I alone? Is there a5:01 future? Is there an afterlife? Is there more than this world that I see and touch? And, so I thought, my goodness. And yet, as you say, the percentage of Americans who believe in God is now down to its lowest5:13 ever, 81 percent. And yet at the same time, we're seeing, a lot of young people with curiosity about faith. With, I have a friend whose ministry is to5:24 travel the country and to speak to groups of high school and college students. He said, I've seen more teenagers come to faith in Jesus Christ in the last 3 years than in the previous 18 years of ministry combined.5:36 And why? It's because I think the emptiness that people feel when you extract the belief in God from a culture, you know, people feel that. And they5:48 say, Are we without an anchor? Are we without hope? Is this all that there is? Is there no ultimate right and wrong? Is it all just preference? I mean, there is so much hanging on this issue.6:01 You know, if God does not exist, if God is not real, we don't have free will. We have no afterlife, no hope for, anything beyond this world. There's all these implications6:13 that flow out of that. And I think people, when a culture begins to slide in that direction as our culture has, then people begin to say, Woah, woah, woah, woah, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Is there6:24 any hope? Is there anything I can grasp onto that can give me something beyond this world?6:31 Well, and in that context, I mean, we as Christians become very fearful when we see that slide, yet at the same time, it may be the very ingredients that God is going to use for revival.6:43 Exactly. Right?6:43 I mean, that's the irony. Exactly.6:45 But then God We're seeing these things around the country, these little little revivals breaking out.6:49 Colleges.6:51 Yeah. And we see it, I saw 1 ministry had 20 percent more young people come to faith last year than the previous year. So there are these good signs that are going on. And I think it's incumbent on us as7:02 followers of Christ to help young people recognize that we have a faith that is not based on make believe, wishful thinking, legend or that kind of thing. But it's it's built on a7:14 solid foundation of historical and scientific truth.7:18 Mhmm.7:18 That is what this book is about.7:20 As a journalist, I mean, you set up interviews probably over your entire lifetime, even after becoming a Christian. Right. So you're drawing from interviews that you've done over the decades. 1 person that caught me, and7:30 you mentioned in the book, PhD in philosophy, Bill Craig.7:34 Yes.7:36 And something that he called the Kalam or Kalam argument.7:41 Kalam Cosmological Argument. Sounds a fancy title, but it's a simple argument.7:44 Yeah. But I I love this. This is like Occam's razor. Yes. You know, take everything to the extreme, and is it positive or negative? Yeah. And that usually indicates, you know, what what is true. Right. So in that7:55 context, Cullum's, argument, what what is it? It's very powerful.7:59 And and I'll tell you what, Jim. If I were still an atheist, this single argument for the existence of God would convince me that God exists. This is all I need. Now I need the resurrection to teach me that8:11 Christianity is true, that of of the various options. But this would convince me. It's a very simple argument. Over the last 50 years or so, scientists have come to the conclusion that the universe had a beginning. It's8:23 not eternal. It has not always existed. Well, that leads to a very simple argument for the existence of God called the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It's very simple. It says this. Number 1, whatever8:35 begins to exist has a cause. Number 2, we now know the universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe must have a cause behind it. Now you think about that.8:47 What kind of a cause can bring a universe into existence? Well, number 1, it must be transcendent because they had to be a separate and apart from creation. Number 2, it had to be eternal or timeless because it existed8:59 before physical time came into being. Right. It must be immaterial or spirit because it existed before physical things were created. Must be powerful given the immensity of the creation event. Must be smart9:10 given the precision of the creation event. Must be personal because he had to make the decision to create. Must be creative because my goodness, just look at the wonders of this universe. Must be caring or loving because9:21 he fashioned a habitat for us to flourish in. And then Occam's razor, the scientific principle that says don't manufacture things to explain an effect. Don't manufacture9:33 causes to explain an effect beyond what you need. You just need 1 God, so there'd be just 1 creator. So what have we got? Transcendent, eternal, spirit, powerful, smart, personal, creative,9:45 caring, unique. That is a description of the God of the Bible. And you go, that's that this is such an airtight argument that no skeptic has been able to shoot it down. And and Bill9:57 Craig, who is popularized, he has 2 PhDs, 1 of the top philosophers in the world, He's done debates with major philosophers around the world on this topic. And it10:09 is a powerful argument that again just became particularly potent in the last few decades because it used to be that until now, scientists thought the10:21 universe always existed. Yeah. But but Christians always oppose that and said, no. No. No. Wait a minute. According to the Bible, it began to exist at some point in the past. And that's exactly what science tells us.10:31 And it is both interesting, and it should not be alarming that the deeper science goes, the more that we see10:39 of10:39 God's nature and God's universe10:41 Exactly.10:41 It does lean and push us toward believing that there is a creator. I think If you're fair minded about it. I saw the Time magazine when the big bang was, you know, finally kind of resolved.10:53 Yes, there was the big bang, and they said all of matter may have existed in the size of a golf ball. And what was interesting is that scripture talks about the entire universe being in the hand, and we're made in11:05 the image of God.11:06 Yeah.11:07 So, I mean, you could put that together.11:08 Of of course.11:09 A very subtle point, debatable, of course, but that in the palm of God's hand, whom we are created in the image of, everything existed.11:17 Yeah. It's remarkable. And and then you look at the way the universe is finely tuned in a way that that, defies the explanation. Oh, it's just a coincidence. Oh, it just happened by chance.11:28 No. It didn't. I List some of those things11:31 because it's11:31 pretty remarkable. Well, I'll give you11:32 a couple that are my favorite. The force of gravity. We all know what that is. You drop something, it's gonna hit the floor. But the force of gravity could have been set anywhere along a continuum. If you pictured a11:42 ruler across the entire universe, like 20000000000 light years broken down in 1 inch increments, that represents the plausibly the range along which the force of gravity could have been11:54 set anywhere along that ruler. And yet it's set at the exact right place so that life can exist. What if we change it? What if we change the force of gravity 1 inch compared to the12:05 20000000000 light year width of the universe? Intelligent life would be impossible anywhere in the universe. That's just 1 parameter. It would be like you go out, you know, here we're in Colorado. It'd be like on a12:17 summer night. You're up in the Rocky Mountains and you go outside and you look up at the sky and you expect to see stars in the sky. But on this night, you don't see scars. On this night, you see 50 to 100 giant dials in12:28 the universe. And each dial could be calibrated to 1 of trillions or trillions of possible settings, And yet every 1 of these styles is exactly perfectly12:40 calibrated so that life can exist. That is the picture that modern physics gives us of our universe. I'll give you 1 other example that is probably this this 1 just blow your mind. It's the ratio of the electromagnetic12:52 force to the gravitational force. Now that's a complicated deal, but here's what you need to know. That is finely tuned to 1 part in 10000 trillion trillion trillion.13:04 Unbelievable. Unbelievable.13:05 Now, how do you how do we visualize that? Well, the astrophysicist, Hugh Ross, said, here's an here's an illustration. Imagine a continent the size of North America piled with13:17 dimes all the way to the moon, 230000 miles. Okay? You got that picture? I got it. Okay. Now picture 1000 North Americas with dimes piled up to the moon. Okay?13:29 Now picture 1000000000 continents the size of North America with dimes piled 238000 miles up to the moon. Now take 1 dime13:41 and spray paint it red, and mix it among the billion continents piled up to the moon, and then take 1 person, blindfold them and say, you can want you can travel among us.13:53 You need to you can reach in 1 time and you can pick out 1 dime. What are the odds it would be that dime that have been spray painted red? The odds are 1 chance in14:04 10000 trillion trillion trillion.14:07 I mean, some people, and I'll get your response to this, most rational people will go, okay, that's overwhelming evidence for order and intelligent design and creator.14:20 There will be someone, a skeptic, that says, yeah. So we found the 1 dime. I mean, that's almost insane.14:26 I asked this I asked a scientist that. He's a PhD from UCLA and a professor of physics at a major university in the Midwest, secular university. And I asked him, what are the odds that this14:38 could have happened just by happenstance?14:40 That 1 dime.14:41 That 1 dime. And and he looked at me and he said, well, we scientists have a term for that. I said, what? He said, ain't gonna happen. It's just imp when you reach numbers like and14:52 remember, keep in mind, that's just 1 dial. There's 50 to 100 of these dials. And when you get to those numbers, you could say it is impossible. It is impossible. And so if you just take15:04 the, the origin of the universe that we talked about, if you look at the fine tuning of the universe, how does anyone who studies this come to the conclusion that there is not a supernatural creator15:16 behind? I don't know. Yeah. It would convince me to be15:18 You know, it's interesting. I remember when we did the truth project, we filmed, doctor Berlinski, I think he was mathematics, at Stanford University at the time. But he said, you know, the dirty little secret between15:29 the biology department and the math department is we don't eat lunch together because we don't agree with their models like evolution. Just mathematically, there was never enough time for that to occur.15:41 Yeah. And I thought that was And he said15:43 That's interesting.15:44 People will say to me, oh, that you have that bias because you're a religious person. He said, I'm not. I'm agnostic. But there is no way, mathematically speaking, that that happened. It kinda points to your15:56 Exactly.15:56 Truth seeker. Yes. Speak to that for a moment, though, in this culture where herd mentality Yes. Seems to have consumed us now with technology. You had the quarantine.16:08 You had you know, people just moved in a herd.16:11 Yes.16:11 And when it comes to worldview and understanding things, it seems like we've lost so many people saying, wait, wait a minute. What about Yeah. You know, kind of the skeptic Yeah.16:21 Yeah.16:22 In all areas.16:23 Right. And that's true. And it is easier today to come out as an atheist than it is to come out as an evangelical Christian, for sure, in our culture.16:32 Because there's so much support for us.16:33 There's so much16:33 support for us. Pat's on the back.16:34 Exactly. When I was an atheist, you never told people you were an atheist back then in the 1970s.16:40 You're kidding.16:41 Oh, people would think you're a pedophile or something. You just didn't say that. Now it's the in thing. And so our kids go off to college and they hear things and are are challenged in their faith by a16:53 professor, and they come home at Thanksgiving and say, I'm not so sure I believe this stuff anymore.16:57 Lee, we had painted the picture. Let's go you know, we talked about the universe and all of that. Let's go microscopic Jean did chemistry degree, my wife.17:06 Yeah.17:06 And this morning, early when I was reading the prep and going through the book, 1 of the things you captured in there, which is stunning, and of course my wife said, Yeah, I knew that. Yeah. Which is in every17:18 cell in the body, 100000000000000 cells we have, generally. I'm not counting your cells, John, but you can do that later. 100000000000000. But within each cell, there's 6 feet17:29 Yes.17:29 Of DNA.17:30 That's right. I was like, that blows17:32 me away as an NBA.17:33 Yes. Yes. It's it's remarkable.17:35 I said back to Dean. She goes, oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm like, that's unbelievable.17:39 It is unbelievable. You open any cell in your body, a cell, and unwind the DNA. It's 6 feet tall. And here's the thing, embedded in that DNA is a 4 letter chemical alphabet17:51 that spells out the precise assembly instructions for every protein out of which you're made. So in other words, just like English uses a 26 letter alphabet to spell out words, DNA uses a 4 letter18:03 chemical alphabet to to explain how to create us. How to How18:08 to make a heart, how to make a liver,18:09 a skeletal system. And it's just there is more information. There are more words in every cell in your body than in 200 years of the Sunday New York Times. In every cell in your body. And the question18:21 is, where did that come from? Because every time, without exception, when we see information, there's always an intelligence behind it. So nature can produce patterns.18:33 We know that. I live in Houston a lot of times, a lot of my time. And if you go down to Galveston Beach on a morning and the sand is wet, you can see ripple marks in the sand. And18:45 it is logical to say that the waves made those ripple marks. Why? Because nature can produce those kind of patterns. But if you're walking down the beach in Galveston at dawn and in the wet sand, you see John18:57 loves Mary and a heart around it and an arrow through it, you wouldn't say, oh, the waves created it.19:02 Correct. Those are smart waves.19:03 Yeah. Those are smart waves. They're intelligent. That's right. There has to be an intelligence behind us. So whenever there's a computer code or a book or a painting on a cave wall, there is always, always, always an19:15 intelligence behind it. And again, this is just a discovery over the last few decades that help us understand how this points toward an intelligence beyond us.19:25 So this argument of prebiotic soup. I mean, I heard this when I was in school. I did too. And the kind of the science classes I had to take at university. Right. So, you know, we were just a bunch of mud, and then19:37 lightning hits this mud in just the right way, it creates the right temperature, and then all of a sudden all these complex proteins, boop, they're there. Now they're making livers and hearts and skeletons.19:48 It's just ridiculous. I mean,19:49 it takes19:49 a lot of faith. It takes a lot of faith. I mean, first of all, there is no evidence that there was ever a prebiotic soup. We we think there was. And and and You19:58 think you could recreate it if there was.20:00 Exactly. It's20:01 only soup. That's right.20:02 The Campbells would work it out.20:04 Some kind of mud.20:05 Yeah. But, you know, scientists to this day have no they cannot spell out how you can take dead matter and create, through20:16 through evolutionary processes, living matter. There there's just no explanation that any scientist have been able to come up with. They don't know how the universe originated. They don't know how20:29 life originated. And they don't know how human consciousness originated.20:33 All big ones.20:34 All big ones. And guess what? There is an explanation, and it's God, that explains everything. You know, I deal with the prebiotic soup issue in the book and talk20:46 about the lack of scientific evidence that it ever really existed and the problems, the steps that would need to take place in order for nonliving mud to become living cells20:59 is it's mind blowing.21:00 Well, plus seriously, if you're limited to those elements, you could do that in a in a lab. You can go get mud at the death valley or find some place.21:09 And here's the other thing.21:10 Zap it with lightning.21:11 Here's the other thing. If we did it in the lab, that would be a sign of intelligent design because we would have intervened and and made the conditions right so that Now21:21 we're talking about a good new movie.21:23 Yeah. There you go.21:24 But you say Easter, basically, the resurrection of Christ is the defining moment.Show more In this video 0:00 The Urgent Question: Is God Real? Cosmic Evidence21:26 Biological Marvels, Resurrection Proof, and Revivals35:11 Confronting Evil and Suffering with Hope
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