Atheist Asks TOUGH Questions: EPIC Response! (Q&A)

As I understood it, you've argued that a painting, or a creation, to use the term painting, implies a painter, or a design implies a designer. But I must ask, who designed God? If no one designed God, if God is timeless, spaceless, and immaterial, and He existed eternally in an uncaused fashion, then why can't nature exist in the exact same way, in an eternal, uncaused, spaceless, timeless, immaterial fashion? Good question. Why can't our uncaused origins be as marvelous and precise as God, but immaculate cosmic? Excellent question, Carter. That's a very good question. You're right. Now, we have two options here. Either the universe is the uncaused first cause, or something beyond the universe is the uncaused first cause. The problem is, is that all the evidence points to the fact that the universe is not the uncaused first cause. And I didn't have time to go through that evidence tonight. That was part one. But I'll give it to you very briefly in an acronym, SURGE, S-U-R-G-E. S stands for the second law of thermodynamics, which says that the universe is running down. Well, if it's running down, somebody must have wound it up. We'd have no energy left right now if the universe was eternal. The U stands for the fact that the universe is expanding. Edwin Hubble detected that back in 1929, and shows that everything came from a single point. A point, actually, of infinite density, the singularity, which is actually nothing. So the universe had a beginning. The R in SURGE stands for the radiation afterglow. That's the remnant heat discovered by Penzias and Wilson in 1965, which is literally the smoking gun to the Big Bang. There's remnant heat from the Big Bang still out there, which shows that the universe had a beginning. The G in SURGE stands for the great galaxy seeds, which were very fine temperature variations in that radiation afterglow that allowed the galaxies to form in the early universe. And the E stands for Einstein's theory of general relativity, which shows that time, space, and matter are co-relative, that they came into existence together. That space, time, and matter literally had a beginning. Einstein knew this in 1916. Then observational evidence began in 1919 when Eddington did his test on the eclipse. And then Hubble discovered the expanding universe in 1929, and then on to the radiation afterglow and the great galaxy seeds after that. So the evidence points to the fact that the universe is not the uncaused first cause. So there must be something beyond the universe that is, and that thing that's beyond the universe must be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial. And if you're timeless, do you have a beginning? No. No, so God is not, he didn't have a beginning. He's the uncaused first cause. And look, Aristotle, Plato, they all knew this. They knew there had to be an unmoved mover. I believe you're drawing a false dichotomy, because we do not know that the original cause was God. There is no reason to say that an intelligent designer was the first cause, the uncaused first cause, the cause of everything else. I do not have the training or expertise to refute certain science. In fact, I accept your conclusion that the Big Bang happened again, and space, time, and matter came into existence from a point of origin. But we do not know that this point of origin is God. Calling it God is to make a false assumption. Another reason for the existence of everything might simply be that other dimensions have the power and the marvelousness and complexity to create a situation where the Big Bang could be brought into existence, and space, time, and matter could begin to exist without an intelligent designer having a hand. I've got to say really quick, before we get to Frank's response, I love this guy's humility, and I love his honesty, and I love that he basically is saying, I don't have answers to the scientific acronym that you just laid out. So he's granting that rather than just trying to double down or feel like he has to win the debate, win the argument, come up with something on the fly. He concedes that point, and then I love actually the philosophical point that he's making here, which is, how do you make the jump from whatever could have caused the universe? He's saying some sort of other dimensional winds or something that could have birthed this universe, which is an interesting question. I have thoughts, but let's let Frank Turk, let's hear his answer here. Well, Carter, what you just described there is what we would call God. God is in another dimension that has the ability to bring these dimensions into existence. So if you want to call it another dimension, you can call it that. But that's exactly what we mean by God. But then why is there a theology? Why do we worship God? You could easily call it another dimension. Excellent point. You don't have to worship God. In fact, Aristotle never worshipped God. In fact, the Greeks never got their theology and philosophy together. They knew that there had to be an unmoved mover, but they never put the two together and worshipped the unmoved mover. So you don't have to worship the unmoved mover. You don't have to. You can do whatever you want. That's why you have free will. God loves you enough to give you free will. You can love him or reject him. That's up to you. But on that point, you do have the free will to accept or reject God, but the obvious conclusion is that rejection of God will lead to eternal damnation and death. So in reality, we do not really have the choice to accept or not to accept God. We must ultimately accept God, assuming we choose to avoid perdition. Well, if you want to avoid... Good question. Well, let me back up for a second. There's only two possibilities if God exists. In eternity, you're going to be with him or you're not going to be with him. Right? That's logically the only two options. If you want to be with him, you will seek him out and be with him. If you don't want to be with him, God will not force you into his presence against your will. In fact, let me make the objection stronger than what you're making. You're very polite, but I debated an atheist who was a little bit more direct. And let me tell you, this man, he's a good man. I like him. His name is Eddie Tabash. He's an attorney from Beverly Hills. We debated at University of Michigan a number of months ago, and he looked at me during the Q&A and he said, Frank, my mother was a survivor of the Holocaust. She lived an awful life. Somebody presented her with the gospel and she rejected it. Is she in hell right now? I said, Eddie, I don't know where your mother is. I don't know if she made a profession of faith in her last moments. But if she didn't, then God will not force her into his presence against her will. God is too loving for that. And I asked the audience this question. In fact, I'll ask you as an audience this question. Ladies, is there anybody in here who's ever had a man pursue you and you did not want that man to pursue you? You did not want to date him? Anyone in here? Of course. In fact, some of you are going, yeah, he's sitting right next to me right now. He won't leave me alone. I said, OK, ladies, suppose this man continues to pursue you and continues to pursue you. And you say, look, I only like you as a friend. Ladies, why don't you just take the knife, stick it in, and turn it? Because every man in here has heard this. I like you, but only as a friend. Well, suppose he continues to pursue you, continues to pursue you, and he gets to the point where he says, look, I love you so much, I'm going to force you to love me. Can he do that? No, he can't do that. Love, by definition, must be freely given. So if he truly did love you, what would he do? He would leave you alone. That's exactly what God does. He keeps sending us cards, letters, and flowers while we're here. And if we keep rejecting him, keep rejecting him, he gives us up to our own desires. And that ultimately is what hell is. Hell is separation from God. So you're free in hell. You can continue to reject God in hell. But you're confined to hell. In fact, hell is a quarantine of evil. That's what it is. And heaven, of course, is being in the very presence of God. God loves you too much to force you into his presence against your will. Thanks, Carter. If there is some uncaused first cause of the universe, an unmoved mover, why does that necessarily mean that he's worthy of our worship? And that is such a good question, because it is not just in the isolation of the modality of science that we understand who God is. That's really just a stepping stone. All these conversations about God as the creative force behind the universe, the intelligent designer of the universe, that's literally just like square one. That's a stepping stone that you have to step on in order to get further down the path. But it's only that. It's only a beginning point. Once you understand that, logically, there must be an uncaused first cause of the universe, like Frank Turk said, and that obviously that can't be the universe itself. Matter doesn't create matter. It takes an intelligence to create matter. It takes this idea of God to create matter. But let's get past that for a second, because I know some people get hung up there. It's this cumulative case for Christianity that compounds upon itself and becomes more and more and more compelling. And ultimately, it gets down to something that is incredibly personal. In fact, in the New Testament, Jesus' disciples asked him, why do you use parables? And he explained to them that he uses parables as his mechanism of communication because he's actually graciously and mercifully concealing information from people who don't have ears to hear, from people who are actually going to be resistant to his message. He actually doesn't want to incur on them a greater judgment. But if you do have ears to hear, if you do have eyes to see, if you want to know the truth, wherever it leads, then you take a step towards the possibility of God. And when you do that, God takes a step towards you. That's what it says in the Bible. It says, knock and the door will be opened to you. Seek and you will find. Everyone who knocks receives an answer. Everyone who seeks finds. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. There's this mysterious way in which God graciously conceals the full revelation of who he is from those with hard hearts. I know I'm using Christianese here, but he leans into those who actually want to know who he is. And so my challenge for someone watching this video is don't get locked up inside of the box of science where your only epistemology, if you will, which means just way of knowing, is through science. And if I can't put it under a microscope, then I can't possibly know if it's true or not. You don't actually do that when things go to the more personal level. I don't know that my wife, for example, loves me based on something that I can put under a microscope. I know that spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, and holistically at the deepest level of who I am because I actually have a relationship with her. And it's the same thing with God. I actually have a relationship with God. He walks with me. He talks with me. He is my friend. He reveals himself to me in scripture. He has forgiven my sins. That's the entire point of the incarnation is that God gave, he presented himself to us in a way that is knowable. He has been given a name. His name is Emmanuel, which is God with us. Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. You look to the life and ministry and death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus in order to answer the question of what is God like? What is his personality like? What are his motives? What does he care about? What is he for? What does his kingdom look like? What is his mission? You look to Jesus to answer those more personal and specific questions that this unmoved mover abstraction will never really get you to. So anyway, I digress. I ramble on. I hope you guys enjoyed it. For some of you that are still listening. And yeah, that's it. I just wanted to speak a little bit more from the heart because these conversations about God shouldn't just be theorizing. They shouldn't just be in this realm of the abstract. They should be, we should be able to talk about this properly, which is to say personally. So anyway, that's it for this video. I'll see you guys in the next one. Don't forget to like, subscribe, ring the notification bell. All of the things that tell the YouTube algorithm that this content is quality, which I hope that you find that it is. And if you do, then do those things and I'll see you guys in the next video. Thanks a lot. Peace. Bye.