Ankerberg Show

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. For centuries, people have wrestled with life's greatest questions: Does God really exist? And if He does, can we know Him through truth, science, and history?

Today, we hear many voices in our culture insisting that truth is relative, science has made God unnecessary, and history cannot be trusted. University professors, media personalities, and social influencers often tell us that faith belongs in the realm of personal opinion, not objective reality.

But what if the evidence points in another direction? What if the universe itself reveals signs of design? What if the laws of science actually point beyond themselves to a Creator? And what if the historical evidence for Jesus Christ is far stronger than most people realize?

My guest today is Dr. Frank Turek, co-author of the bestselling book, *I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist*, who has spent decades answering some of the toughest questions asked on university campuses around the world. Together, we're going to examine whether truth really exists, whether science and reason point to God, and whether the evidence for Jesus and His resurrection can stand up to historical scrutiny.

If God exists and Christianity is true, that changes everything about who we are, why we are here, and where we are going. I invite you to join us for this edition of the *John Ankerberg Show*.

Welcome to our program. Let me ask you a question: Are you an atheist? I'm talking to a fellow that wrote a book, *I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist*. We're going to talk about the questions that maybe you have that you don't even know the evidence that would answer those questions.

We're talking about atheism and what some of our universities are teaching our students. We've both been to graduate schools, gotten our doctorates, so we've been through the grind of the universities. I went to a secular university, a big one in Chicago. We had about 40,000 students.

I can remember professors telling me there was no such thing as truth, that you could live any way you wanted to, that everything was relative. They had no answer for how I should live my life. Universities are supposed to be unifying students concerning the arts, philosophy, science—how you pull all that together so that you come up with one package that we call the box top that goes on a puzzle.

If you get a couple thousand little pieces of puzzle, you want to say, "How in the world am I going to put that together?" You look for the box top that gives you an idea of where you're going, and that helps you out. Do you get that at the university? No.

We're going to talk about that because Frank talks a lot about this. He was the mentor to Charlie Kirk, especially on apologetics, Christianity, and defending the faith. Frank, when you went on the university campus, what were some of the questions that students asked you at the end of those sessions?

Dr. Frank Turek: There are four basic questions that when we go to college campuses, we ask and we try and get students to think about. The first question is: Does truth exist? Because as you mentioned, there are many professors who will say there's no truth; you have your truth, I have my truth, and by the way, you ought not judge me for my truth.

The second question is: Does God exist? Everything changes if God exists, and everything also changes if God doesn't exist. It's the most important question to ask. The third question is: Are miracles possible? On the modern university, people don't think miracles are possible.

Then the fourth question is: Is there evidence that Jesus really rose from the dead? Is the New Testament telling us the truth about that? Because if He did rise from the dead, then you can show that Christianity is true. If He didn't rise from the dead, it's false. Those are the four basic questions that we try and ask and answer, and we get all sorts of objections when we say truth exists, God exists, miracles are possible, and Jesus rose from the dead.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Mortimer Adler was the editor of the 15th edition of the *Encyclopaedia Britannica*. What you just said makes sense because when you come to the question of God—Is there a God? Does God exist?—you have to have truth and facts that back up the fact of your belief.

Mortimer Adler said if you do the hard work and you look at it, what someone believes about God affects everything else that he or she believes, including origins, where do we come from; identity, who are we; meaning, why are we here; morality, how should we live; and destiny, where are we going? That includes all of us. We have to answer those questions. Frank, how would you start?

Dr. Frank Turek: I sometimes start with some college audiences by saying to them: Everyone you love will die. Everything you say will be forgotten. Everything you build will crumble. Everything you do will come to nothing. You and your identity will die and vanish unless God exists and the resurrection is true.

If there is no God, we're all just going to become worm food at one time, and it's over. It really, at the end of the day, doesn't matter if you live like a saint or a terrorist if there is no God and there is no afterlife. Nothing means anything unless God exists and the resurrection is true.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Now, some people say they look to world religions. We've got a whole bunch of them out there. One of the famous little sayings that everybody says is that all religions are true. What do you say to them when they say that?

Dr. Frank Turek: Sometimes it's put this way: All religions teach basically the same thing. They teach you ought to love one another; they just disagree on these minor issues. The exact opposite is true. First of all, most religions may teach you to love one another, but that's not true of all religions. Satanism doesn't teach you to love one another. Islam, particularly the radical forms of Islam, don't teach you to love one another.

Actually, most religions do have some sort of moral code behind them, but you don't need religion for that; you can get that from your conscience. What I like to say is that all religions teach basically the same thing except for the nature of man, the nature of God, sin, salvation, heaven, hell, and creation. Outside of that, they're exactly the same.

The truth is religions fundamentally disagree, and they may agree on some superficial things. For example, New Agers, Buddhists, and Hindus think that there is no objective reality out there. In many cases, they don't think that there's one God out there who is the source and sustainer of all things.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims do believe there's a God out there who is the source and sustainer of all things. Both of those views can't be true. It can't be that God really exists and God really doesn't exist at the same time and in the same sense. These religions are mutually contradictory.

Even among theistic religions, Christianity believes Jesus died and rose from the dead, and Islam believes He didn't die and therefore couldn't rise from the dead. Both of those truths about Jesus can't be true. Either Jesus did die and rise from the dead, or He didn't, but not both.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Why is it the professors are the one thing they're certain about is there's no one exclusive truth in terms of religion? In other words, if you're a Christian, that's the one thing that you can't be because it only believes certain things; it's a narrow view, and the fact is they're sure that that one's not true.

Dr. Frank Turek: All truth is narrow. If I say two plus two equals four, I'm excluding every other number. If I say God exists, I'm excluding someone who says God doesn't exist. The same guy who says that all religions are true is claiming that I'm wrong by saying one religion is true. Every claim excludes its opposite. That person thinks he knows what the truth is about religion just as much as any Christian, Muslim, or Jew thinks they know what the truth is about religion.

Dr. John Ankerberg: When you talk about truth, the fact is it's absolute for everybody, so it's true all the way around the world.

Dr. Frank Turek: It's self-defeating to say there's no truth. When people say there's no truth, I say, "Is that true? Is it true that there's no truth?" Because if it's true that there's no truth, the claim there is no truth claims to be true, but it can't be true because at the same time it says there is no truth. It's like saying I can't speak a word in English.

Dr. John Ankerberg: I like to use one illustration that I always heard at the university, and that was the elephant and the blind men. They would say this is what all religions are like. You've got five blind men that are touching different parts of this elephant, and they all come up with a different feeling and a different word.

One says, "This is a spear" if they're touching the tusk of an elephant. Or the guy comes up against the side of an elephant, he says, "This is a wall." They've got five different opinions. Professors will say that's what religions are; everybody's got a part of the truth, but the fact is nobody's got the total answer.

Dr. Frank Turek: The easiest way to point out why that parable doesn't work is just to ask the professor who's telling the parable: What is the perspective of the guy telling the parable? He knows it's an elephant. Why can he know it's an elephant but not the blind guys touching it? If the blind guys take off their blindfolds, they can see it's an elephant too and they can see they're in error. The parable doesn't work because the professor, the guy telling the parable, has an objective perspective and says they're all wrong.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Also, the people who say we can't trust Christianity anymore or put our beliefs in Christianity because Darwin brought in evolution. That seems to be taking the top spot in terms of our thinking. You can have religion, but it's got to be scientifically tested, and we've got to have the results that are coming out of the laboratory. Some of the truths of Christianity aren't coming out of the laboratory; they're historical, they're way in the past, and so we can't really put our trust in Christianity.

Dr. Frank Turek: The problem with that is it's like saying all truth comes from science. That's basically what they're saying; it's called scientism. You simply ask them: Does that truth come from science? No, that truth doesn't come from science because it's not a scientific truth to say all truth comes from science; it's a philosophical claim.

Science doesn't say anything; scientists say things. All data needs to be gathered and all data needs to be interpreted, and who does that? Scientists do that. Too often scientists are bringing their philosophical presuppositions to what they're looking at.

In terms of evolution, we have two or three chapters on evolution in the book. We don't have time to get into the weeds, but let me just say this: If you're looking for causes, which is what science is doing, there are only two possible causes to life. Either life is intelligently designed or it wasn't; it's driven completely by natural law.

Here is the problem: Some scientists, when they look at the evidence, have already ruled out intelligent causes. They say we know there's no God; if there's no God, it can't be an intelligent cause. Is it any wonder they always conclude it's got to be a natural cause? That's the only philosophical option they've given themselves.

If you're going to rule out intelligent causes before you look at the evidence, you're always going to conclude it's a natural cause. We go through in the book reasons why it's not just that we lack a natural explanation for life or new life forms; it's that we have positive, empirically verifiable evidence for an intelligent being. Can I give you one illustration?

Dr. John Ankerberg: Sure, go for it.

Dr. Frank Turek: Let's say you're walking along the beach and you see in the sand, "John loves Darlene." Are you going to assume that the waves made that message or the crabs came out of the water and made that? No, you're going to say there had to be a John or Darlene here before I walked on the beach who put that in there because we know that messages always come from minds.

Here's the problem for the evolutionists: In every one of our cells, there is a message that's 3.2 billion letters long. In the simplest life we know, there's a message that's 1,500 books long of "John loves Darlene," just a lot longer. If "John loves Darlene" requires intelligence, how about a message that's 1,500 books long? Does that require intelligence? Of course it does. There's no known natural law that can create a message like that.

Dr. John Ankerberg: If you go to the library and you look at the *Encyclopaedia Britannica* and you look at all of the volumes that are there, you could put it into one cell of an amoeba. That's how much information is there as scientists have used microscopes to actually look into what's happening in all of the little engines that are working inside of it.

Dr. Frank Turek: In Darwin's day, they didn't know that. It was a black box. Michael Behe comes along in 1996 and he wrote the book *Darwin's Black Box* because now we can see inside the cell. It's like a factory of amazing precision and design with all sorts of information in it that to this day cannot be explained by natural laws.

It's not a "God of the gaps" argument. We're saying not only do we have no natural law or combination of natural laws that can create this; this factory, including all of the information in it, requires intelligence.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Statistics are telling us that a lot of college kids, even when they get to 22 years of age, have done it all, seen it all, they've gone to college, and they say there's no reason to keep on living. They commit suicide. Does anybody have the box top that tells us what is this puzzle of life all about that has meaning?

You came out of skepticism. You grew up as a Roman Catholic, but you didn't believe in God. One day you started thinking about it. Tell us what is the message that kept you going that you became a Christian. Why that box top that showed you that worldview?

Dr. Frank Turek: When I was in the Navy, I met the son of a Methodist minister. We were in flight school down at Pensacola, Florida, and I was always interested in God, but I just wanted evidence. I kept asking him questions, and he finally said, "Look, you just need to get Josh McDowell's books, *Evidence That Demands a Verdict* and *More Than a Carpenter*."

I read those books in the 1980s, and I realized that Christianity was true and I became a Christian as a result of it. After I became a Christian, I realized that the purpose of life is what Jesus says in John 17:3, where He says when He's praying for us believers: "Now this is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent."

When you add that to the Great Commission, you realize the purpose of life is to know God and to make Him known—to know God through Jesus and to make Him known. Not just know Him intellectually. Even the demons know that Jesus is the Savior intellectually, but they don't trust in Him.

The purpose of life is to know God through Jesus and to make Him known. And there's evidence for that. That's what this book, *I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist*, does. It takes you from a point of complete skepticism—"I don't even believe in truth"—to all the way to "the Bible is the Word of God."

If the purpose of life is to know God and to make Him known, everyone has to make a decision. Everyone has to decide whether they are going to trust in what Jesus has done on the cross. What He did on the cross was He took our punishment upon Himself so that when you repent and trust in Him, you're not only forgiven but given His righteousness.

People will say, "Why do you need Jesus for that?" I happen to be with Charlie Kirk when he was murdered. I helped bring him to the hospital. His eyes were fixed in the car. He wasn't looking at me; he was looking past me right into eternity. He was already gone. From the moment that bullet hit him, he was with Jesus.

How do I know that? Because there's evidence that Jesus came to earth, lived the perfect life in our place, took our punishment upon Himself, and I know Charlie personally accepted that pardon that Jesus provides. So the moment that he died, he was with Jesus.

At the memorial, I said there are only two things you can get in the afterlife: You can either get justice or you can get grace. I always ask audiences, particularly on college campuses, "You guys are all about justice, right? Do you really want justice from an infinite being?" No, I don't want justice. If you keep asking for justice, watch out—you just might get it.

I don't want justice; I want grace. The only way an infinitely just being can allow unjust creatures like me and you and people watching out there—the only way a completely infinitely just being can not punish you is if He punishes an innocent substitute in your place. Where is He going to find an innocent substitute? Not in any one of us; we're all fallen.

What God does is He adds humanity to His deity. He comes to earth. He allows the creatures that rebelled against Him—that includes me and you—to torture and kill Him so He could take our punishment upon Himself. Then when you repent and trust in Him, you're not only forgiven but you're given His righteousness. The purpose of our lives is to repent, accept that, and when we love Him, we'll try and obey His commandments with the Spirit's help.

That's the purpose of life: to know God and to make Him known—to know God through Jesus and to make Him known. So my question for you out there: Do you know Jesus? Have you repented of your sins, and are you now on a mission of adventure to show people the truth about Jesus so they can become Christians and join God's kingdom?

Dr. John Ankerberg: There are people that are watching this program right now in different parts of the world. If you go into Africa, into the Congo, you've got a war going on there. The number of people—it's not reported in our news—but I'm telling you, this world's a mess.

If people are living in that situation and they're saying, "I want to know Christ right now," would you say a prayer that they could invite Christ in? This might be the only chance they've got. They're saying, "I can't wait a week because I might get shot, or the Russians may bomb another one of our apartment buildings that I'll be in." They're thinking of life and death. Let's give them a chance to invite Christ into their life.

Dr. Frank Turek: Yes, you can invite Christ into your life by repenting of your sins and accepting what He's done. So let's do that right now. Just say: "Father, I know You exist. I know that You sent Your Son Jesus into this world. He went to the cross because He took my punishment upon Himself, and I want to appropriate that to myself.

I want to repent of my sins. I want to accept what Jesus has done, and from now on, out of love for what He's done for me, I want to tell the world about what He has done for me. I want to obey Him and obey His commandments because that's what love does. Father, I repent of my sins and I accept Your sacrifice for me through Jesus. Give me opportunities now to become a disciple and to bring other people into Your wonderful kingdom. In the name of Jesus who died for us, Amen."

Dr. John Ankerberg: Amen. Look, we're talking about Frank's book, *I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist*. We just gave you the start of how you can know truth and you can know Christ, and you can invite Him into your life and He'll come in and forgive you.

Next week, we're going to talk about this thing of truth that you can bank your life on. A lot of professors at our universities are saying there is no such thing as absolute truth, no truth that you can be certain about. Can we be certain about facts about Christianity? We're going to talk about that next week. I hope that you'll join us. But stay tuned, because I've got a personal word for you in just a moment.

Thank you for listening to the *Ankerberg Show*. We're a listener-supported ministry, and your gifts help us continue to share the Gospel with millions of people worldwide. To learn more about our resources or to support our mission, visit jashow.org or please call us at 1-800-805-3030. If you're in Canada, please visit jashow.ca or call us at 1-866-746-5803. Or you can subscribe to us on YouTube. Your support makes a difference in spreading God's Word.