The problem of the universe (2)

It's remarkable how scientific discoveries simply confirm what the Bible has been saying for centuries.

People once had all sorts of strange ideas about what supported the earth - until scientists discovered that it floated in space. It says in the book of Job, one of the oldest books in the Bible: He hangs the earth on nothing (Job 26:7). 

It was once believed that the earth was flat. Aristotle (384 -322 BC) suggested it was round, partly because of the round shadow of the earth on the moon during a lunar eclipse. The fact of a spherical earth was finally demonstrated by Magellan in the 16th century. The book of Isaiah, written about 700 BC, says He. . . sits above the circle of the earth (Isa 40:22).

Only in comparatively recent years has it been discovered that the earth is winding down as energy reduces. The Bible has been saying so for centuries in at least three places:

Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will endure; Yes, all of them will grow old like a garment (Psa 102: 25, 26).

The heavens will vanish away like smoke, The earth will grow old like a garment (Isa 51:6).

You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of your hands; They will perish, but you remain; And they will all grow old like a garment (Heb 1:10, 11).

By the way, the Bible says that Jesus rose from the dead. Let me ask you something. Do please answer the question. Have you studied the evidence for His resurrection?
   

The problem of the universe (1)

The problem for people who want to pretend God doesn't exist is where the universe came from.

Some people say the universe was never created. It has always existed. But that won't do. Scientists have discovered that the world is winding down. It is now generally accepted that the world will have an end. If it will have an end, then it must have had a beginning.

Some would try to say that the universe created itself. This denies the law of cause and effect. Out of nothing, somebody said, comes nothing.

Some would say that the universe was created by chance. But that's not a valid argument. Chance is not an entity, with the power to create.

Some would even argue that the world is not real. Suppose the things of the world are just an illusion. But where did the illusion come from?

Go outside your house on a clear night and gaze up at the millions of stars twinkling above you. You'll find it difficult just then to say there's no God. You really will.

Psalm 19 says "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork." That's much easier to believe.

What do you think? 
           

Intelligence doesn't have anything to do with it

Stephen Fry is an actor, writer and television presenter. His face and fruity voice will be familiar to most.

Fry is a homosexual. He also claims to be an atheist. He has been in the news several times lately: first, because he "married" a young male writer and comedian; secondly because of his remarks in a television programme about the meaning of life. He was asked what he would say when he was confronted by God.

"I'd say bone cancer in children? What's that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world to which there is so much misery that is not our fault. It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil. . . That's what I would say. . . The God that created this universe, if it was created by God, is quite clearly a maniac. . . utterly selfish."

The arrogance of the man is staggering.

He has been voted the most intelligent man on television, which goes to show that faith in God does not depend on intelligence, or lack of it. Rather, it depends on an attitude of heart. "Unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt 18:3).

Objections to the existence of God by atheists are not intellectual in origin, but moral. People don't believe not because they can't believe, but because they won't believe. Like the men in the parable: "We will not have this man to reign over us" (Luke 9:14). When there's a clash between faith in God and lifestyle, some find it easier to pretend that God doesn't exist.

God made the world perfect, but He gave man free will. Man chose to sin, and through sin came misery, sickness and sorrow. But God didn't leave man in the mess he had made. He came into the world in the form of His Son, lived a perfect life, then suffered unto death that we might be freely forgiven. We didn't ask for it, we didn't deserve it, but He did it anyway. Amazing love. Amazing grace.

One can only hope that Stephen Fry finds repentance. Having found forgiveness ourselves, could we deny another the same experience?
           

Christians 'should speak out for their faith'

John Lennox was born in Northern Ireland. He is professor of mathematics at Oxford University. He is a Christian, and speaks five languages.

He travels the world speaking on a variety of subjects, and has debated his Christian faith with a number of the world's best known atheists.

One day he met bioethicist Peter Singer. "Were your parents Christians?" Singer asked. Lennox said they were. Singer said this was one of his problems with religious belief: children tended to adopt the faith of their parents. Lennox asked "Were your parents atheists?" Singer said that they were."So you adopted your parents' faith." "No," said Singer, "because atheism is not a faith. It denies faith." "Really?" said Lennox. "I thought you believed it."

People think Christians talk about faith in Christ because there is no evidence, but Christianity is an evidence-based faith, Lennox says. "The Gospels were written to provide evidence, as the beginning of Luke attests. The end of John's Gospel says 'These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.'"

You don't have to choose between science and God. "Statements by scientists are not always statements of science. Stephen Hawking said 'Religion is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.' I said 'Atheism is a fairy story for people afraid of the light.'

"For an atheist, they might be missing the point, or evading the real issue." He advises Christians to ask the most important question: Suppose I could give evidence for God, would you be prepared right now to repent and trust Christ?

People often have an attitude that it is fine for you to be a Christian so long as you keep it to yourself. Lennox appeals to Christians to speak out. He points out that the verse - 1 Peter 3:15 - which says always be ready to give a defence to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, is preceded by a verse which says "do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled."

Many atheists, he says, do not support the ideas of militant atheists like Dawkins. "I have many atheist friends who thank me for taking Dawkins on."

The new atheist onslaught, says Lennox, is beginning to wane - "but Dawkins et al are still wreaking havoc in the minds of young people."

He is speaking in Northern Ireland this week, before travelling to the Faroe Islands and Eastern Europe. Wish him well.
        

Evidence of the existence of God

Norman Geisler has written or co-written more than 70 books. He has spoken in every state in the US and in 25 other countries.

Once he was taking part in a public debate with an atheist. Geisler asked the atheist this question: "If there is no God, why is there something rather than nothing at all?"

●  The Bible says (in Psa 19:1) The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows his handiwork. The sun, moon and stars are His handiwork. He made them and put them in place.

●  If we are just animals, how come every man has a conscience and an innate awareness of right and wrong. Who put them there?

●  The Bible says (in Heb 11:1) that faith is the evidence of things not seen. It is evidence of things that exist, not things that don't exist. If what you have is evidence of things that don't exist, then what you have is not faith. Faith is God-given.

●  The way to God is Jesus. He said I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  He also said The one who comes to me I will by no means cast out. If you want to know the truth, why not ask Him to reveal Himself to you? If you are serious, He will do it. If it's not true, nothing will happen. What have you got to lose?
 

Does biblical creation stand up?

America had the Big Debate two weeks ago.

Bill Nye, "the science guy," is an author, educator, television personality, inventor, executive director of the Planetary Society and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Ken Ham is a Bible-believing Christian, author, president of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum.

The event, which was widely publicised, was witnessed by hundreds in a packed auditorium and thousands on the internet. The subject: creation versus evolution, of course.

I have been slow to locate the video, but I have done it. You can watch the debate for yourselves - free of charge - here.

Very interesting stuff.

Five reasons for believing God exists

William Lane Craig, one of the best known Christian apologists, gives five reasons for believing in the existence of God:

First, God provides the best explanation of the origin of the universe.  Given the scientific evidence we have about our universe and its origins, and bolstered by arguments presented by philosophers for centuries, it is highly probable that the universe had an absolute beginning. Since the universe, like everything else, could not have merely popped into being without a cause, there must exist a transcendent reality beyond time and space that brought the universe into existence. This entity must therefore be enormously powerful. Only a transcendent, unembodied mind suitably fits that description.

Second, God provides the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe. Contemporary physics has established that the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent, interactive life.  That is to say, in order for intelligent, interactive life to exist, the fundamental constants and quantities of nature must fall into an incomprehensibly narrow life-permitting range.  There are three competing explanations of this remarkable fine-tuning: physical necessity, chance, or design. The first two are highly implausible, given the independence of the fundamental constants and quantities from nature's laws and the desperate manoeuvres needed to save the hypothesis of chance. That leaves design as the best explanation.

Third, God provides the best explanation of objective moral values and duties. Even atheists recognize that some things, for example, the Holocaust, are objectively evil. But if atheism is true, what basis is there for the objectivity of the moral values we affirm? Evolution? Social conditioning? These factors may at best produce in us the subjective feeling that there are objective moral values and duties, but they do nothing to provide a basis for them. If human evolution had taken a different path, a very different set of moral feelings might have evolved. By contrast, God Himself serves as the paradigm of goodness, and His commandments constitute our moral duties. Thus, theism provides a better explanation of objective moral values and duties.

Fourth, God provides the best explanation of the historical facts concerning Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  Historians have reached something of consensus that the historical Jesus thought that in Himself God’s Kingdom had broken into human history, and He carried out a ministry of miracle-working and exorcisms as evidence of that fact.  Moreover, most historical scholars agree that after His crucifixion Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty by a group of female disciples, that various individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive after His death, and that the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe in Jesus’ resurrection despite their every predisposition to the contrary. I can think of no better explanation of these facts than the one the original disciples gave: God raised Jesus from the dead.

Fifth, God can be personally known and experienced.  The proof of the pudding is in the tasting. Down through history Christians have found through Jesus a personal acquaintance with God that has transformed their lives.

The good thing is that atheists tend to be very passionate people and want to believe in something. If they would only put aside the slogans for a moment and reexamine their worldview in light of the best philosophical, scientific, and historical evidence we have today, then they, too, would find Christmas worth celebrating!

Something to think about as we enter a new year.

Evolution versus God

Evolution and Christianity are incompatible.

Richard Dawkins, the high priest of Darwinian evolution, rejects every form of religion out of hand and believes evolution is the answer.

"There is no doubt in Dawkins's mind." writes Marilynne Robinson, "that the evils of the world are to be laid at the doorstep of the church, mosque and synagogue, and that science must be our salvation. . . It is the 'God delusion,' which has afflicted almost everyone almost everywhere through the whole of recorded time, that has made us behave so badly. And Science (by which he really means his version of Darwinism) is our potential rescuer. He has a simple-as-that, plain-as-day approach to the grandest questions, unencumbered by doubt, consistency, or countervailing information."

Consider Henry Morris, director of the Institute for Creation Research:

"The evolutionary system has been entrenched for so long that many people who otherwise accept the Bible as infallible have deemed it expedient to compromise on this issue. Thus, evolution has been called, 'God's method of creation'; and the Genesis record of the six days of creation has been reinterpreted in terms of the evolutionary ages of historical geology. These geological ages themselves have been accommodated in Genesis either by placing them in an assumed 'gap' between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 or by changing the 'days' of creation into the 'ages' of evolution.

"Theories of this kind raise more problems than they solve, however. It is more productive to take the Bible literally and then to interpret the actual facts of science within its revelatory framework. If the Bible cannot be understood, it is useless as revelation. If it contains scientific fallacies, it could not have been given by inspiration. . .

"All such theories which seek to accommodate the Bible to evolutionary geology are invalid and, therefore, should be abandoned. . .

"It is impossible to devise a legitimate means of harmonizing the Bible with evolution. We must conclude, therefore, that if the Bible is really the Word of God (as its writers allege and as we believe) then evolution and its geological age-system must be completely false. Since the Bible cannot be reinterpreted to correlate with evolution, Christians must diligently proceed to correlate the facts of science so with the Bible."

A video, Evolution vs God, has had hundreds of thousands of views and prompted thousands of comments in a short space of time on YouTube.

"Darwinian evolution has nothing," says evangelist Ray Comfort, who made the video by interviewing scientists who claimed to be atheists. "It's unprovable. It's unproven. It's unscientific. It's unsubstantiated, and there's not an ounce of evidence. It was just amazing to watch these four experts in their field groping and grasping like fish on a hot desert floor."

Watch the video for yourself. You can see it here.

Bending the truth about Jesus

Reza Aslan, brought up a Muslim, converted to evangelical Christianity in his teens, and later reverted to the Muslim faith. He has written a book, Zealot: The life and times of Jesus of Nazareth.

Lauren Green used the occasion to interview him on Fox News.

"Is this the most embarrassing interview Fox News has ever done?" wrote someone. The interview was "absolutely demented," wrote the New Yorker's TV critic. "This may be the single most cringe-worthy, embarrassing interview in Fox News history," wrote someone else.

The book rose to No 1 on the list of best-sellers on Amazon, allegedly on the strength of the interview.

Matthew J. Franck, writing at First Things, said Aslan misrepresented his credentials.

"I am a scholar of religions with four degrees including one in the New Testament," said Aslan. "I am an expert with a PhD in the history of religions . . . I am a professor of religions, including the New Testament - that’s what I do for a living, actually . . . To be clear, I want to emphasise one more time, I am a historian, I am a PhD in the history of religions. . . I’m actually quite a prominent Muslim thinker in the United States.”

Aslan does have four degrees: a BA in religion from Santa Clara University; a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard; a Master of Fine Arts in fiction from the University of Iowa; and a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"None of these degrees is in history, so Aslan’s repeated claims that he has 'a PhD in the history of religions' and that he is 'a historian' are false," writes Franck. "Nor is 'professor of religions' what he does 'for a living.' He is an associate professor in the creative writing program at the University of California, Riverside."

Some people just say that Aslan is dishonest.

He says Jesus made no messianic claim throughout the entire Gospel of Mark (Mark 14:61, 62 give the lie to that). "Every word ever written about the historical Jesus, every gospel story, every claim about Him made in the New Testament was written by people who didn't know Jesus while He was alive. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John..."

The important point is not that a man named Jesus lived and was crucified. The important point is that He was - and is - the Son of God, He died for your sin and mine, and after He died, He rose again from the dead.

A dead Saviour couldn't transform lives. A dead Saviour couldn't answer prayer. He said "Come to me. . . and I will give you rest" (Matt 11:28).

Try it and see.

For God so loved the world

When man sinned, God had a problem. God is not only love, God is also just. He has to punish sin. We are all sinners. We have all done things we shouldn't have done, and not done things we should have done.

God's infinite justice demands that He punish our sin. God's infinite love wants to find a way to avoid punishing us. The only way round the impasse would be to find someone who was without sin who would take our punishment for us. Someone who voluntarily chose to do that.

That someone was Jesus, who came down from heaven, lived a life that was without sin, then allowed His life to be taken in your place and mine.

 The greatest fallacy that man believes is that he is good enough to be forgiven - good enough to get to heaven. That if he does enough good deeds, the bad deeds will be overlooked, and he will somehow be allowed in. It isn't true. If man has sinned against an eternal God, he deserves eternal punishment. Heaven is perfect. Heaven is where God is.

 Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). That's because it's true.

If it were possible to get to heaven by any way other than by trusting Jesus, then God had Him die for nothing.

But here's the thing. God loves us so much that He won't force us to accept Christ. Despite all that it cost, He holds out the offer, but gives us the right to refuse.

The choice is yours - and mine.

Is atheism reasonable?

Atheists will find it difficult to convince other people that there is no God. For two very good reasons.

First, the Bible says (in Psa 19:1): "The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows his handiwork." The best evidence for the existence of a Creator is His creation. And the evidence of His creation is all around us.

Atheists see the structure and beauty and the order and influence of the heavenly bodies, says Matthew Henry, but say "There is no God." They see the effect, yet say "There is no cause." The heavenly bodies could not exist from eternity, he says, because succession and motion must have had a beginning; they could not make themselves, which is a contradiction; they could not be produced by a random hit of atoms, which is an absurdity. Therefore they must have a Creator.

If you stand at the back of your house on a clear night and look up at the millions of stars shining above you, you might have difficulty supposing that God doesn't exist.

Second, the Bible says "Since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse" (Rom 1:20).

Deep down in every man there is an awareness of God. Atheists might deceive themselves into thinking it is not so; but deep down in every man that awareness is there.

I am no scientist, but the people who claim to know these things tell me, as evidence of the existence of a Creator, that there are more than 120 anthropic constants in the universe. (An anthropic constant is something that has to exist to allow life to be possible on the earth, like an exact quantity of oxygen in the atmosphere; an exact amount of atmospheric transparency to allow the correct amount of solar radiation to reach the earth; the exact degree of tilt at which the earth rotates; the exact force of gravity on the moon compared with the force of gravity on earth; an exact amount of water vapour in the atmosphere; etc.) The lack of any one of these constants would be expected to make life on earth impossible: but every one of the 120-plus constants is in place.

Donald Page, of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, has calculated that the odds against the universe randomly taking a form suitable for life are 10¹²⁴ to one. The figure of 10¹²⁴ is a figure so large it is practically impossible to imagine.

Atheists would say it all happened by chance. They would argue that there might be an infinite number of universes, and this one might be the only one where conditions for life were right. There's one thing wrong with that argument: there is no evidence of any other universe.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, took part in a debate with Britain's best known atheist, Dr Richard Dawkins, at Cambridge University two weeks ago. Dawkins sought to prove that "religion has no place in the 21st century." He described religion as "a cop-out."

"It is a betrayal of the intellect, a betrayal of all that's best about what makes us human," he said. "It's a phony substitute for an explanation, which seems to answer the question until you examine it and realise that it does no such thing. . . it peddles false explanations where real explanations could have been offered."

He failed to convince his audience. The motion was defeated by 324 votes to 136.

You can see a report of the debate here.

Are you looking for freedom?

If there is a God, people say, and God wants people to know Him, why doesn't He show Himself? Why doesn't He appear clearly to people, so they would have no doubt about His existence?

I think the answer is that God has given people a free will. There is ample evidence that God exists, in the sun, the moon, the stars and the wonders of nature. And God has promised that those who seek Him will find Him.

But God forces Himself on no one. People have a free will; the power to choose. If they choose to live all their lives without Him, they can. But if they live all their lives without Him, they mustn't expect when their lives end to find God there waiting to welcome them. If they live all their lives without Him, they will live in eternity without Him, by their own choice.

Sometimes people don't want anyone to rule over them. They want to decide for themselves, free to do what they want to do, free from moral restraint. But freedom isn't freedom to do what you want to do. That's not freedom. Freedom is freedom to do the right thing.

I ran my own life for 24 years, until I realised I'd made a mess of it. I realised there was Someone who not only could run it better than I could, but had my own very best interests at heart.

The man who is in Christ is free - free from the things that drag a man down, free to live the life he was made for. The Bible says that he whom Christ sets free is free indeed.

That's freedom.

How can I prove the existence of God?

The atheist says there is no God. But he can't prove it. And where the atheist really comes unstuck is when he can't explain how the entire universe came into existence out of nothing.

The agnostic concedes that there may be a God, but suggests that it's impossible to know for sure.

Is it possible to prove the existence of God?

Yes, it is. A preacher named Peter Grant has a good way of illustrating this.*

Suppose you decide to go to the office to see if your boss is in. You see his car in the car park. You ask his secretary if he's in. "Yes he is," she says. "I've just been talking to him." You see the light underneath his office door. As you get nearer, you hear what sounds like his voice talking to someone on the telephone. All this would be good grounds for concluding your boss is in his office.

But there's one more thing you could do. You could open the door and meet your boss face to face. At that point, the other things would still be valid, but would become secondary, because now you've met him face to face.

If you want to find out if God is real, you can consider stories of answered prayer; hear evidence of changed lives; read others' testimonies; study examples of fulfilled prophecy. All these things would be valid. But there's something more you can do. You can have something more personal than that.

Jesus said "unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." "Born of water" is evidently a Hebrew expression for natural birth. In other words, if you want to enter the kingdom of God, it's not enough to be born naturally, you also need to have a spiritual birth. Jesus called it being "born again."

Don't laugh. Don't mock. Don't jeer. That would be allowing your prejudice to make the decision without putting it to the test.

Repent of your sins. (We're all sinners. We've all done things we shouldn't have done and not done things we should have done.)

Tell Jesus you're sorry for the things you've done. Tell Him if He's alive and He's who He says He is you will yield Him your life and follow Him. Ask Him into your life. 

As He comes in He'll do a work in your life by His Spirit. You will enter into a personal relationship, and you will know that you know that you know that you know that God is real.

Jesus said "The one who comes to me I will by no means cast out." He keeps His promises.

* Described by Lee Strobel in The Case for Faith. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2000, p85.

Just in case you needed to know

I understand from the news tonight that scientists may have found the God particle.

I don't know much about the God particle, but I do know that God exists.

I've just been talking to Him.

God's silent witnesses

Atheists try to tell us either that God doesn't exist or that they find it impossible to believe in a God.

The Bible says (in Psalm 19):

The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows his handiwork.
Day to day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.

Think about it. The nearest star to the earth is so far away that it takes light from that star, travelling at 186,000 miles a second, four years to get here. Some stars you can see with the naked eye are 4,000 light years away. Light arriving on earth from those stars just now left when Abraham and Sarah got married.

It would take light (travelling at some 670 million miles an hour) more than 100,000 years to travel the length of our galaxy, the Milky Way. There are billions of galaxies. There are about 200 billion billion stars in the known universe.

If the sun were hollow, 1,300,000 planets the size of the earth could fit inside it. There is one star which, if hollow, could fit 64 million suns inside it. There is a star in the constellation of Hercules which could fit 100 million of those stars inside it. The largest known star, Epsilon, could swallow up several million stars the size of that one.

Could you stand somewhere unpolluted by smog on a cloudless night, look up at all of that and pretend it came there on its own?

Early in the book of Romans, Paul seeks to establish that all of us are sinners - Jews, Gentiles, you, me, whoever - in order to demonstrate that we all need a Saviour. (Either we accept the price He paid for our sin or we pay the price ourselves, which would be fearsome.)

But what, you might say, about those who have never heard the gospel? Those who haven't heard the gospel, says Paul, will be judged according to the knowledge of God they had. He explains it like this (in Rom 1:20):

For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

Immanuel Kant wrote:

It is impossible to contemplate the fabric of the world without recognising the admirable order of its arrangement and the certain manifestation of the hand of God in the perfection of its correlations. Reason, when once it has considered and admired so much beauty and so much perfection, feels a just indignation at the dauntless folly which dares ascribe all this to chance and a happy accident.

The Bible says (in Psa 14:1):

The fool has said in his heart,
"There is no God."

The word used for fool in the Bible does not refer to someone who is mentally deficient, but someone who makes foolish decisions. (It infers a malicious refusal to acknowledge the truth.)

Deciding there is no God and trying to prove to oneself that that's true is a foolish decision indeed.

'Putting the fear of God' into atheists

William Lane Craig is research professor of philosophy at Talbot Theological College in California. He is also a renowned Christian apologist who has debated some of the world's best known atheists. He comes to England this month to lecture on the rational grounds for the truth of Christianity and to debate the existence of God with leading atheists.

He will speak between October 17 and 26 in public meetings in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cambridge, Oxford and Southampton. You can find details of his meetings at www.premier.org.uk/craig.

Atheist Sam Harris describes Craig as "the one Christian apologist who seems to have put the fear of God into my fellow atheists." Professor Richard Dawkins, arguably Britain's best known atheist, has declined to debate with him, and offered a variety of weak excuses for doing so.

(Newspaper columnist and president of the British Humanist Association Polly Toynbee agreed, to many people's surprise, to debate him in London, but later withdrew, saying "I hadn't realised the nature of Mr Lane Craig's debating style, and having now looked at his previous performances, this is not my kind of forum.")

The invitation to Richard Dawkins to a public debate in Oxford remains open. If he fails to turn up on the night, the meeting will go ahead, but an empty chair will be placed on the platform and allowed to remain there through the meeting.

You may remember that two years ago increasingly aggressive British atheists paid for posters on the sides of buses saying "THERE'S PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE."

The organisers of the meeting in Oxford have now put posters on the sides of Oxford buses saying "THERE'S PROBABLY NO DAWKINS. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY OCT 25TH AT THE SHELDONIAN THEATRE."

I like it.

Is the Bible true?

Is the Bible true? Is Jesus the Person the Bible says He is?

Matt 1:1-11 refers to the genealogy of Jesus. Dr Chuck Missler points out that in those 11 verses in Greek - the language in which the New Testament was originally written - the number of words is divisible by seven; the number of letters is divisible by seven; the number of vowels and the number of consonants are both divisible by seven; the number of words that begin with a vowel and the number of words that begin with a consonant are both divisible by seven; the number of words that occur more than once can be divided by seven; the number of words that occur in more than one form is divisible by seven; the number of words that occur in only one form can be divided by seven; the number of male names can be divided by seven; and the number of generations is divisible by seven.

No man could have engineered that. The chance of those verses conforming to all the above by chance is one in 40,353,607.

The Pope, religion and society

Pope Benedict XVI told UK politicians gathered in Westminster Hall that religion needs to have a central place in public life.

Religion was not a problem for legislators to solve, but "a vital contribution to the national conversation."

"I cannot but voice my concern," he said, "at the increasing marginalisation of religion, particularly of Christianity, that is taking place in some quarters, even in nations which place a great emphasis on tolerance.

"There are those who argue - paradoxically with the intention of eliminating discrimination - that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their conscience.

"These are worrying signs of a failure to appreciate not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, but also the legitimate role of religion in the public square."

He invited his audience to seek ways of promoting and encouraging dialogue between faith and reason at every level of national life.

It was, said one newspaper, the first time in many a year that religion and its role in modern society had been raised so forcibly in the UK.

Isn't it a pity that someone had to come all the way from Rome in order to say it? It is sincerely to be hoped that politicians will take notice.

On a papal visit in times past, the focus would probably have been the difference between Roman Catholic and Protestant faiths. The focus on this visit seemed to be Christian unity in the face of militant secularism.

Shortly before the Pope's arrival in the UK, the Guardian published a letter signed by 50 people, many of them left wing atheists, protesting at his visit. Some of the people who signed the letter have said some pretty awful things about the Pope.

Atheist Richard Dawkins called him "A leering old villain in a frock. . . whose preaching of scientific falsehood is responsible for the deaths of countless Aids victims in Africa." Vice president of the British Humanist Association Claire Rayner called him "this creature."

Why are atheists so vituperative? I came across a quote by Christian apologist Dinesh D'Sousa that I found interesting.

He says: "One reason I think is that they are God-haters. Atheists often like to portray themselves as 'unbelievers,' but this is not strictly accurate. If they were mere unbelievers they would simply live their lives as if God did not exist.

"I don't believe in unicorns, but then I haven't written any books called The End of Unicorns, Unicorns are not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion.

"Clearly the atheists go beyond disbelief; they are on the warpath against God. And you can hear their bitterness not only in their book titles but also in their mean-spirited invective."

Do you think this might be the reason atheists speak the way they do?

What it takes for a miracle

In a new book, Professor Stephen Hawking says that modern physics leaves no room for a Creator and that science can explain the origins of the universe.

"Because there is a law of gravity," he says, "the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist."

And who, might I ask, put gravity there?

While we are about it, who made man's mind, his personality, his ability to understand right and wrong, his ability to love others? Did gravity create those too?

Until his retirement, Stephen Hawking was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a post previously held by Sir Isaac Newton, who believed the universe must have been created by God because it could not have emerged out of chaos.

Stephen Hawking is a man with a brilliant mind. He is also wrong.

In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth. He created man in His own image. Man disobeyed God, and sin came on all men. God so loved the world that He sent His Son to die to bear the punishment for man's sin. When a man receives Christ, a miracle occurs, and he comes into a personal relationship with God.

I have discovered that knowing God doesn't depend on an intelligent mind. An intelligent man can miss it. And a little child can have it. All it needs is a sincere heart and the grace to believe.

It stands to reason. Doesn't it?

I wrote here about Jack Kinsella's suggestion that if you are in conversation with an atheist, he is likely to challenge you to prove that God exists, lest he is asked to prove that God doesn't exist (because he can't).

Jack Kinsella is at it again. Seeking to disprove atheists' arguments, that is. One of the most formidable obstacles atheism must contend with, he says, is the existence of its principal tool - the ability to reason.

Knowledge is attained by reasoned thought and by reasoned thought, the atheist has concluded that he knows there is no God. . .

What is the evolutionist's explanation for the ability to reason? They argue it is the result of chemical reactions in the brain. But chemicals react - they don't think, or reason, or plan.

It is a bedrock principle of science that an effect cannot be greater than its cause. A chemical reaction cannot generate morality, immorality, reason or rationality.

A reaction is the result of an action. Reason, on the other hand, is the analysis of that action. . .

The ability to reason can only come from one of two sources. It was either the product of intelligent design or it was the result of mindless chance.

Since the mindless cannot create the mind, there is only one reasonable explanation - that the mind was created by intelligent design and implanted with a divine moral code.

Just as a chemical reaction cannot explain reason, reason cannot explain a moral code. . .

If a deer population in a particular area grows too dense, conservationists will hold a 'deer cull' - a special hunting season on deer to reduce the population and ensure the survival of the species.

The morality of taking a deer's life is not at issue when the alternative is the needless suffering, starvation or death of the whole population. Why is it immoral to do the same with human beings?. . .

Even if a chemical reaction could explain how we know right from wrong, it doesn't explain why culling deer is right and culling humans is wrong.

What is the objective standard? Upon what basis do we form such profound judgments?. . .

If they are nothing more than the mindless product of random chance chemical reactions in the brain, how can we KNOW anything?

We can't. The effect cannot be greater than the cause. Knowledge is greater than random chemical reaction.

You can't be an atheist without having faith in your own reason and judgment, but the basis for your faith cannot be explained apart from the Creator God that you are sure (based on your God-given ability to reason) does not exist.

Of course, recognizing intelligent design is not the same thing as recognizing a loving God Who sent His only begotten Son to atone for the sins of mankind at the Cross.

But it's a start.

Sounds reasonable to me.