A Strong Case For Christianity

Defending Your Faith Against The Militant Religion of Atheism

Romans 1:20 –22

20 For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

21 Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. 22 Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools.

Atheism Defined: 1. A disbelief in the existence of God. 2. The doctrine that there is no God.

1. There is no such thing as Atheism.

a. The Graph:

Doodle Area For Your Drawing Pleasure

The Atheist Mantra - “There is no God, and we hate Him”

Common Objections to the God/Christianity

A. Evil – “If God exists, then why do bad things happen to good people”

- Mark 10:18 – “And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except

God alone.”

- There are 2 types of Evil -

o Moral Evil is evil committed by people. Crime, cruelty, discrimination, genocide,

etc

o Natural Evil involve things that “just happen” for seemingly no reason. Natural

disasters, diseases, accidents, etc

o Sometimes these 2 things can coincide

Allot of times non-believers will bring up evil as a basis for disbelief in God. You have to

nail them down as to what they mean by “bad things.”

Moral Evil - The bible has a very coherent answer for that. Almost from the very beginning, the

bible makes clear the source for moral evil. It’s called sin, and we are all guilty of it. Romans

3:23 – “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.”

In His love, God granted everyone with Free Will – If God had made people that

resembled robots and forced everyone to do everything he wanted, He wouldn’t be

a God of Love.

**In other words: If God forced everyone to love Him & do good all the time, He

wouldn’t be a God of love because there’d be no freedom to choose. And yet,

when He doesn’t force evil people to do good, He’s not a loving God either?

There is moral evil in the world because people are sinful & disobey God.

God has already given an answer to everyone regarding moral evil:

1. A moral compass

2. Commands – True freedom is not doing anything and everything you want – for that

is called anarchy. True freedom is living within the confines of boundaries

(protection, consideration, etc)

3. Governing authorities – Romans 13:1-5

4. Jesus Christ – His life, death, and resurrection

5. The Word of God – I have never been misled by obeying the Word…Ever.

6. The Holy Spirit – convicts us of sin and righteousness

Natural Evil –Disease, Natural Disasters, Accidents, etc.

John 16:33 – “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will

have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

Disease – Can both be a moral & natural evil. Example: Chemical company dumps

chemicals in an area, and people get cancer.

The same water that refreshes you, can also drown you. The same fire that warms

you, can burn you.

Plate tectonics is required for life on earth – don’t build a city on a fault line! Don’t

plan to build a city below sea level. New Orleans location was planned due to a

crooked land deal.

Proverbs 19:3 – People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at

the Lord. “Where was God when I got busted with weed?” Financial decisions –

staying at a job that doesn’t pay enough. STD’s. Etc. My dad worked for an oil &

gas company his whole life, and died of cancer caused by being around oil & gas

chemicals his whole life.

Why did my niece die of cancer if there is a God? She died because she had cancer.

Every situation is very different. Chemicals in our food. Pesticides. Chemicals in our

livestock. Medications. Money & greed. Death Is a part of life. Why did someone

die is a question only a Christian can ask because you can’t say there is no God, and

then blame him for the bad stuff that happens to people. God is not intimidated nor

mad about our questions, or doubts.

We have told God, “Get out of our workplace, get out of our schools, get out of our

country, get out of our homes, get out of our entertainment, get out of our

decisions, get out of our lives, and then when tragedy strikes, we declare: “Where

was God when this happened?” May I suggest that He’s exactly where we told Him

to be?

Evil is a much bigger problem for the atheist to explain than the Christian.

Turn the question around on them.

Reply: The problem of evil is really a problem for the atheist. If we are here totally by

natural causes and are just reorganized molecules, than what is evil, and why does it

exist? And if we are just meat machines with no intrinsic worth, than why does it

matter what happens to people at all? Survival of the fittest right? Aren’t you happy

that natural selection took them out instead of you?

If there is evil, than there must be good. And if you can distinguish between the two,

than there’s got to be a moral law. And if there is a moral law, there has to be a moral

law giver, or we’d have no standard higher than ourselves to base the difference

between the two. And if there is a moral law giver higher than ourselves, than what are

we arguing about?

Pain – Why pain? Pain is a signal to our bodies and minds that there is something wrong.

Pain sets a boundary.

The Girl with CIPA –

CIPA is a disease where the brain cannot process pain signals, and so the person

with this condition is in a dangerous position in life, because they cannot tell when

they have been injured, or if there is anything wrong internally.

There is a girl that I know of that has this condition. When her mother was asked

how she feels about her daughter’s condition, she replied:

“I pray every night for my daughter, that God would give her a sense of pain.”

Why are there questions posed about pain within the context of morality? Why have

we blended the fact of physical pain with the demand for a moral explanation? Who

decided that pain is immoral?

Jesus didn’t excuse himself from pain & suffering. He jumped right into it – and for the sake of

others!

“Isaiah 53 – “Who has believed our message? To whom has the LORD revealed his powerful arm? 2 My servant grew up in the LORD’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. 3 He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.

4 Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows[a] that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! 5 But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. 6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.

7 He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. 8 Unjustly condemned, he was led away.[b] No one cared that he died without descendants, that his life was cut short in midstream.[c] But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people. 9 He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone…”

10 But it was the LORD’s good plan to crush him and cause him grief. (this is the only place in scripture that describes it as the Lords good plan to crush someone – never do you see this about anyone else except His own Son).

Hebrews 4:14-16 - 14 So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. 15 This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. 16 So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”

Phillipians 2:6-8 – “Though he was God,[a] he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. 7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges[b]; he took the humble position of a slave[c] and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form,[d] 8 he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.”

Question: “What about evolution?”

Answer: Do you mean Macroevolution or Microevolution?

Most of the time, they will not know anything about this concept.

Micro-Evolution: Minor changes involving the accumulation of variations in populations but staying

within one species. Micro-evolution does not mean that one animal changes into something different.

Macro-Evolution: Evolution that results in relatively large and complex changes even where one

species with a particular body type, can change into a different type of species with a different body-

type.

What is the fossil record? All of the found fossils and their placement within the earth's rock

layers. It provides information about the history of life on earth, for instance what the

organisms looked like, & where and when they lived (sort of)…

Layers of earth – the earth is made up of several layers.

“If my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was

deposited, long periods elapsed, and during these periods of time, the world swarmed with

living creatures. To the question why we do not find rich fossil deposits belonging to these

assumed earlier periods prior to the Cambrian, I can give no satisfactory answer.” –

Charles Darwin

150 years later, and we still haven’t found them.

Quoting the late evolutionist Stephen J. Gould of Harvard:

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology — we fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.”

And what about Lucy – the supposed missing link. This is a picture found in most science

textbooks of what Lucy looks like:

This picture of lucy is a recreation of what scientists say that Lucy looks like reconstructed from

the fossils they found.

This is what Lucy really looks like:

Wow, looks just like her! Ha!

One of the most important layers to the fossil record is the Cambrian Layer. This layer is

important because of the Cambrian Explosion. The term Cambrian Explosion describes the

geologically sudden appearance of multi-cellular animals in the fossil record during the

Cambrian period of geologic time. By the close of this event, as many as forty-one separate

phyla first made their appearance on earth suddenly with no previous ancestors.

Phyla constitute the highest biological categories or taxa in the animal kingdom, with each

phylum exhibiting a unique architecture, blueprint or structural body plan.

What is the Cambrian Layer? I looked online to find the different layers of the fossil record,

and there were no resources I could find that mentioned the Cambrian Explosion. You can find

the Cambrian Layer when searching for details about the fossil record, but I could find no

mention of the fact that most of the major animal phyla is found there suddenly with no

previous ancestors. I had to actually look up the term “The Cambrian Explosion” to find

anything, and it downplayed the significance of it. How can you downplay the importance of

the most important event for the fossil record?

For instance, look at this section in Wikipedia and notice the case that is trying to be made

about what Pre-Cambrian fossils being found so as to take the attention away from the

importance of the sheer number of fossils with no previous ancestral relatives in the Cambrian

layer, and what could have caused the explosion in the first place:

Here are some more examples from a site dedicated to evolution regarding their wishful

thinking/guesses about what the Cambrian Explosion happened:

Bummer dude. When it comes to dealing with the inconvenient truth about how the Cambrian

Explosion poses a huge problem with macro-evolution, it would appear as if evolutionists dress

up their total lack of an explanation with allot of maybes, coulds, mights, probablys, etc. That’s

allot of conjectures there. And they say they only believe in things that are verifiable facts.

And here are some pictures of the downplayed significance of the Cambrian Layer (no mention

of the Cambrian Explosion.

The Cambrian layer was actually one of the shorter layers, but in the above picture, it is shown

as one of the largest!

Above found on a children’s website… I love how they forced the tree in there! Ha!

After 150 years of exploration, and the Cambrian Explosion poses many very difficult to answer

questions for the evolutionist, but let’s take this allot deeper.

Your DNA , or deoxyribonucleic acid, contains the genes that determine who you are . How can

this organic molecule control your characteristics? DNA contains instructions for all the proteins

your body makes . Proteins, in turn, determine the structure and function of all your cells .

What determines a protein’s structure? It begins with the sequence of amino acids that make

up the protein . Instructions for making proteins with the correct sequence of amino acids are

encoded in DNA.

DNA – 3 billion bits of highly ordered digital code in a single strand of DNA. Where did this code

come from? Natural Selection has no way of generating this code, and with the massive

amounts of animals suddenly appearing in the Cambrian layer all at once with no previous

ancestors? It would be an absolute miracle for one of these animals to have DNA

spontaneously generated by accident, but multiply that by the very large amount of animals in

the Cambrian layer, and this is an impossibility.

DNA is an extremely complex digital code – way more complex than any program ever devised

according to Bill Gates.

Epigenetic Information – Genetic information (in DNA) is a type of digital code. Epigenetic

information is a type of analog code. Genetic information is like the building materials of a

house. Epigenetic information is like the blueprint. This means that you can mutate DNA all

you want, but the body type (body plan) of each animal is set and cannot be changed. You will

just have an organism that will die. This is the death nail in the coffin of evolution. In a very

simplified sense, epigenetic information says “ this is the body this animal will have” that’s it.

When Francis Crick (a devout atheist) was asked where did this complex genetic code originate

from, he proposed that it was probably from Aliens that visited the earth in space ships!

Sounds scientific….

What about the crusades? Are you insinuating that a belief system should be judged by its

abuses?

The crusades – 1 million people killed in a 177 year time frame.

Suppose you are at your house and you get a knock on you door. You open the door to find

that some police officers and the FBI standing there telling you that you are under arrest. You

ask why, and they tell you that your son went into a mall and gunned down several people;

killing them, and that you son said that you told him to do it.

If the same manner of judgement were placed on atheists, how well do you think they’d do?

Stalin – About 50 million people

Hitler – 16 million people

Mao Tse Dong – 45 Million People

Pol Pot – 2 Million

What about God ordering the Canaanites to be killed. – If there are children here, I wont discuss

the type of people the canaanites were.

The bible has been translated over and over throughout the years and is filled with

contradictions.

Answer: show me one. Actually, the bible is the most accurate set of documents ever

assembled.

Not translated as in a ladder, but the oldest and most accurate sources are translated from over

and over.

1 Corinthians creeds and others

Hymns kind of like amazing grace

They already had the old testament…filled with prophecies of the messiah.

Testimonies from disciples all over the world whom later were persecuted and killed for a lie?

Read Foxes Book of Martyrs

The dead sea scrolls.

The early church fathers.

Paul was converted about 2-3 years after Jesus resurrected.

Secular historian Josephus

Pliny the young’s letter regarding Christians

2 Outlooks on Life by diametrically opposed viewpoints:

Atheist Christian

You are worth nothing I am worth more than anything else

You are hopeless I have hope

When you die, you are just dead When I die, I will live in heaven

Your life has no meaning I have meaning

You are just a meat machine I am created in God’s image

No justice God will grant me justice

Do whatever you need to do to get ahead I put others ahead of myself

Sex is for consumption Sex is for connection

You have no reward in death I am a co-heir with Christ

Live for yourself Live for others

Great apologists to check out:

John Lennox

Ravi Zacharias

Dr. Stephen Meyer

Frank Turek

Greg Koukle

Jonathan Morrow

Lee Strobel

C.S. Lewis

Eric Metaxas

J. Warner Wallace

Clay Jones

David Limbaugh

Paul Copan