How can we build the right worldview? There is only one way and that is to start with the origins of this complex universe with its multitude of living things that require many scientific laws to make it function correctly. Those inter-related laws could not have constructed themselves. Science has discovered that DNA (complex information) controls all of the machinery in living cells instructing them what to do. Both the information and the machinery have to be complete and functional at the beginning. They cannot evolve. Moreover, information only comes from intelligence, not matter or energy, hence proof there is an Intelligent Designer. Even better still the Intelligent Designer has revealed Himself to us both by Word, and the person of Jesus Christ, God incarnate.
Down through the ages God has spoken to and worked with individuals so we know He created us in His image to be in a relationship with Him. As a result, we have His Word (Bible) most of which is now fulfilled prophecies so that we know it is God’s Word and that the many end times prophecies will also be fulfilled.
Why is church attendance decreasing SO drastically? In this presentation, Ken Ham discusses the mass exodus that churches are experiencing in Western society and what Christians can do about it.
A team of scientists has recently uncovered new evidence of how geckos can deftly scuttle around vertical surfaces without falling off. The animals studied to reveal this ‘new trick to their stick’ were tokay geckos (Gekko gecko).
The research article states that gecko feet, “possess the most hierarchically integrated natural structures that span seven orders of magnitude in size…” The images opposite demonstrate what that means. The ‘hierarchical’ structure of a gecko’s foot (fig. 2) is shown photographed by an electron microscope (fig. 3). Many rows of extremely fine hairs (setae) can be seen, about 1/10 of a millimetre long and densely packed, with 5,000 per square mm (three million per square inch). The end of each seta has up to 1,000 branches, ending in spoonlike structures (spatulae), approximately 0.2–0.5 μm (micrometres—less than 1/50,000 inch) long. All of this is constructed at the molecular level from proteins by molecular machinery, encoded on the DNA—an astounding biological fact!
When these microscopic structures come into contact with a surface, van der Waals (vdW) forces come into play. These are weak electrostatic forces that operate at very small distances. vdW forces are very short-range, decreasing with the sixth power of distance. This is why gecko feet, and gecko-inspired biomimetic sticky tape, need extremely fine hairs so the surfaces can be close enough for vdW forces to operate.
The fact that geckos’ spatulae are so numerous means that a huge surface area is available, producing an overall large attracting force. Tokays demonstrate this in that their entire weight can be suspended from a single, upwardly pointing toe, in contact with a smooth, vertical surface.
Terrific tokay technology
Previously, it was discovered that tokay feet and skin have superhero-like abilities to repel liquids, leading to new gecko-inspired materials. Gecko toe structures have inspired new materials (‘nano-tape’) that take advantage of vdW forces. Under normal conditions, the tape is completely non-sticky, but under shear force, the material’s engineered coating induces vdW forces, enabling the tape to stick strongly to any surface. This allows objects to be lifted or pulled, or surfaces to be climbed by robots (or people) using the tape. As soon as the shear force is reduced, the tape simply falls away from the surface in a similar fashion to how geckos ‘unstick’ their feet.
More evidence for intelligent design. How could this evolve by random chance. It is ludicrous to think that our schools and universities are teaching evolution as the means by which our complex information-based universe with such diverse living creatures came into being without having any possible plausible mechanism and explanation for how it could have happened.
Article in Journal of Creation Volume 37, Issue 2, 2023 by Carl R. Froede, Jr, and A. Jerry Akridge
Naturalists often confuse their worldview invoking eons of geologic time with empirical science. Many are so indoctrinated with the concept of deep time they overlook conflicting evidence. A recent article, published in the monthly open-access GSA Today, demonstrates this problem. The authors state: “Astronomy and geology require contemplation of time scales and length scales far outside those of human experience. Granitic plutons are intruded and crystallized at depths ranging from a few kilometers to tens of kilometers, over durations of 10–5 [100,000] to 10–7 [10,000,000] years, at temperatures comparable to the melting temperature of gold, from magmas at least 10,000,000 times more viscous than water. Human experience is not relevant to these conditions and can be highly misleading.“
This statement assumes the Genesis Flood never occurred and humans did not exist on Earth when granite formed in the subsurface or possibly later became exposed through the erosion of the overburden. Is this statement a matter of empirical science or the projection of a naturalistic worldview?
Flood-formed granites
The formation of granite and granite landforms has been studied by many young-earth creationists (figure 1). Creationist research indicates that water-enriched granitic melts can form, move upward through the crust, and crystallize in days to weeks. This occurred during Creation Week (most likely Day 3) and also during the Flood—two periods of Earth’s past when geologic intense activity is expected based on the outline in Genesis.
The rapid creation, mobilization, and crystallization of granite would have been enhanced by aqueous conditions associated with the breaking up of the fountains of the deep with the onset of the Flood. Entrained water within the rapidly heating rocks and sediments would have decreased the melting temperature, increasing melt mobility, and enhancing its rapid crystallization.
In some instances, remaining latent heat within subsurface granitic melts/crystallized masses generated during the Flood would have allowed them to continue as heat sources up to the present age timeframe (figure 2). Today, hot springs and other geothermal areas may indicate these features.
The biblical outline of Earth’s history allows for this conceptualization and provides a framework to test our worldview relative to the development of granite.
The naturalistic perspective
While not within a period of time compatible with the Bible, some naturalists acknowledge the rapid formation, ascension, and crystallization of granitic melts is possible over short periods of time (<100,000 years). However, with little water in the slowly forming melt, naturalists envision the entire granitic formation-to-crystallization process would extend over millions of years due to the slow-moving tectonic processes essential in melt generation, movement, and eventual crystallization. During this lengthy time interval, most of the water / hydrothermal fluids within the subsurface rocks and sediments would be driven off, thereby reducing its effectiveness in generating a more mobile granite melt at lower temperatures. The naturalistic worldview imposes limits in both the conceptualization of granitic development and the empirical methods used to test its ideas.
Interestingly, pegmatites that cross-cut granites (figure 3) are postulated by naturalists as having formed and crystallized rapidly—”in days to months, not in thousands to millions of years as previously believed.” This view is not isolated, as many other petrologists invoke days to months for the formation and development of pegmatites. There is no current naturalistic model that emplaces pegmatites in a water-depleted environment. They are always associated with water-enriched feldspars, quartz, and minor trace elements within a slowly crystallizing granitic melt. Missing is the reasoning to minimize water and other hydrothermal fluids from the original granitic melt.
Battling worldviews
Understanding the conceptual geologic history of granites demonstrates the differences in worldviews between naturalists and Bible-supporting young-earth creationists. This is not a battle over empirical science, but rather over the framework of our ideas (i.e. philosophy/theology). These foundational assumptions drive the investigation of geologic features like granites. Oftentimes these foundational assumptions impede scientific progress because they limit possibilities in designing appropriate models for further testing.
Conclusions
Ultimately, through scientific testing, a dominant theory for the origin, movement, emplacement, and crystallization of granite will emerge. The naturalistic worldview rejects everything but the physical universe and its many geologic concepts operating over millions of years. Most young earth creationists accept both the physical and the supernatural—as conveyed through Scripture—in the scientific investigation of geologic features found across Earth.
Satan (the leader of a group of fallen angelic beings) wants to ensure humans leave God out of everything concerning the world he now controls due to Adam and Eve’s original sin. This is of cause absurd, Satan only rules because God has permitted him to do so within the parameters He allows. The Book of Job, given to us in God’s Word, is to show us that this is true. God has also given us the entire story of the world He created for His purposes, the Bible. Fulfilled Biblical prophecies, is all the proof we need, to know God has preserved its integrity.
We, therefore, know that God made us in His image, to be in a relationship with Him. We also know that God gave us free will and that Adam and Eve chose to disobey God giving us a fallen world with Satan and his minions controlling the lives of most of its inhabitants. God’s redemptive plan is amazing and it demonstrates how important we are to God. The second person of the Trinity, God’s son, Jesus, became a human to pay the price for our sin of rebellion, death on a wooden cross. We now have a way back into a renewed relationship with God the Father.
“Jesus said to him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
Have you accepted the wonderful offer of eternal life made possible by Jesus’ sacrifice?
Jesus made it possible for our Heavenly Father to send the Holy Spirit to indwell the spirit of all those who do accept His wonderful offer. The Holy Spirit enables believers to live a life devoted to doing the will of God. He is your counsellor, teacher, and comforter. He produces the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) in your life and provides the gifts of the Spirit for ministry (1 Corinthians 9).
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Foresight, by Dr. Marcos Eberlin, is about the design of life, the fine-tuning of the universe, and the inadequacy of naturalistic storytelling. It discusses the origin of life, the limits of natural selection, and the naturalistic bias that permeates the scientific community. It includes many examples of fascinating designs in living things and explanations for why evolution cannot reasonably be invoked to explain these features.
Marcos Eberlin has a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Campinas. He boasts an impressive career with many accomplishments. He founded the Thomson Mass Spectrometry Lab, was the president of the International Mass Spectrometry Foundation, and won the Thomson medal in 2016. Eberlin stands as a great example of a highly qualified scientist who does not believe in evolution and believes that the universe was created by a supernatural designer. This allows the book to stand out among Intelligent Design (ID) books, as it argues for the existence of a supernatural creator, and against the General Theory of Evolution.
The book is rather short but packed full of information. It contains nine chapters with roughly half the book focusing on the intricacies of life at the cellular and molecular level. These chapters focus on biochemistry, organelles, proteins, and DNA. The second half of the book focuses on multicellular organisms such as insects, carnivorous plants, birds, humans, and special features found in specific multicellular organisms and features shared among many multicellular organisms. The first half of the book is fairly technical. Unless you are already familiar with organic chemistry and cell biology, there is a good chance that you will need to consult a textbook or utilize an internet search engine.
Evolution has no foresight
This communicates the core argument of the book. Foresight is something not present in differential reproduction. The only things selected are physiological changes that provide an immediate and substantial increase in reproductive success. A mutation that notably increases root length could help with gathering essential nutrients from poor soil; a mutation that causes defective leaf development can produce thorns.Display footnote number:3 Both relatively simple changes provide clear costs and benefits without the need for a developing structure to be almost useless over millions of years.
This shows an issue with the ‘why’ in evolutionary storytelling. It is often easy to see how a certain feature is advantageous, and thus why it would evolve. However, this exercise in imaginative storytelling breaks down when you ask, “why would natural selection favour defective structures that would be a detriment to the species for generations?”
A good ID book, but still an ID book
The book contains many solid arguments in favour of intelligent design and does a great job of exposing the unscientific nature of evolutionary biology. While it does rise above the standard ID offering by identifying the designer as a supernatural, transcendent creator, he provides a flawed distinction between historical and operational science. The book still contains the typical shortcoming of books on ID. By ignoring the identity of the Creator, this book will have a limited impact in spreading the Gospel.
Creation Ministries International (CMI) commonly receive testimonies from folk who have come to faith in Christ but then had a wilderness experience before finding their way to a confident faith. A major reason for this wandering is the doubts generated by the pervasive evolution/ long-ages mindset that crowds in upon the new Christian’s confidence in the Bible as the Word of God. Malcolm T. shared:
I became a believer in 1989 but in all of this time [20 years], I have been plagued by doubts caused because I couldn’t prove creation or doubt evolution. This had caused me so much trouble in my daily Christian walk and a lack of assurance. Recently, I came upon creation.com and began reading the articles every day and, praise be to God! I saw that creation is the truth and evolution is a lie and all my doubts and fears have disappeared …
Simply sharing a Creation magazine has led many to a restored Christian walk. Indeed, not just restored, but, like Malcolm, a much more confident and active faith.
I shared a post recently about Martyn Isles, an Australian evangelist that was being used mightily to share the Gospel in all States of Australia under the banner of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL). Martyn has now moved to Answers in Genesis. This move was orchestrated by God and proved to me the importance of both Answers in Genesis and CMI. God is using both of these organisations to restore faith in the Bible (God’s Word) from Genesis to Revelation. You need to get behind and support both these organisations.
Another great article in Creation Magazine 2023, Vol 45, Issue 2, this time by Peter HoweDip. Th., B.Th., M.A.A trained primary school teacher, Peter pastored several churches as an ordained minister in the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australia.
Evidence of design
Flicking through a magazine one day as a child, I came across a photograph of Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, with the unmistakable likenesses of four American presidents carved into the rocks. Knowing nothing of how these came to be there, I remember thinking, “How strange! These can’t have happened by accident.”
Precisely! No one could seriously suggest that these shapes resulted from wind or rain or glacial erosion. These carved faces are clearly the result of creative design and effort.
Though not professing a commitment to anything like the God of the Bible, Paul Davies, former professor of theoretical physics at The University of Adelaide, writes in his book The Mind of God:
“Through my scientific work, I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact … I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama.“
The humblest believer in God as Creator must exercise far less credulity, and has far less explaining to do, than the most ardent evolutionist materialist.
Of course, fallen humanity has devised many increasingly sophisticated speculations of how nature could nonetheless have made itself. Ministries like CMI provide people with specific answers to such challenges. Even so, it pays to step back and contemplate the ‘big picture’ of what is claimed, and its affront to common sense itself.
The evidence within
Another signpost is human nature. We have been made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Thus, we have spiritual capacities that cannot be explained apart from God. Language, reason, ambition, creativity, humour, wonder, worship—all these have no counterpart in the natural world. These qualities mark us out as different from the rest of God’s handiwork. This is another way of saying that our Creator has endowed us with the capacity to relate to Him at a personal level.
Within human nature, conscience is another sign pointing to God. Proverbs 20:27 says of the human spirit that it is “the lamp of the Lord, searching all [man’s] innermost parts.”. Our conscience is responsible for our intuitive knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil. The Apostle Paul states that even those who don’t have God’s law in written form still have a conscience that commends them when they instinctively do what it commands and accuses them when they don’t (Romans 2:14–15).
Even without a ‘book of rules,’ we know it’s wrong to lie, steal, covet, and murder. Conscience ‘puts a pebble in our shoe’ whenever we violate it. The standard it sets and the guilt it inflicts point us to God—the Source of all good and the Judge of all evil.
Eternity in our hearts
Our longing for eternity is another pointer to God. Somehow, we know and feel that this life is not all that there is. Archaeologists have discovered how carefully and elaborately the ancient Egyptians prepared for the afterlife, and they had no Bible to tell them about a life to come. Where does this longing for eternity come from? Everything on Earth is subject to change and decay:
“Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.” Psalm 102:25–27
These ‘immortality longings’ we all feel at various moments are pointers to the God who created us in His own image.
Hunger of the soul
Another signpost to God is our longing for meaning and purpose. We always knew when our cat Simba was hungry and wanted to be fed. (Any cat owner knows that dogs have masters, but cats have staff!) He would eat his prescription dry food and go away content; his next meal seemed to be the limit of his horizon. But we can’t live at that bare, subsistence level—at least, not for long. We crave meaning and purpose in our lives; we long to enjoy significant and satisfying relationships.
This sense of longing is often called ‘the homesickness of the soul’—and rightly so, for that’s precisely what it is. The true object of our longing is God. The words of the psalmist reflect this truth:
“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” Psalm 42:1–2
Of all the signposts pointing to God, the Bible is by far the clearest. When a British monarch is crowned, he or she is given a copy of the Bible, and told, “This Book is the most valuable thing that this world affords. This is the royal law; these are the lively oracles of God.” When we read the Bible with a humble and teachable attitude, we find it to be a source of supernatural wisdom and power. The psalmist prayed: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). Paul reminded his young associate Timothy that Scripture provides the wisdom and instruction that leads to “salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15).Scripture’s major theme is Jesus Christ, God’s only Son. As “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), Jesus is the clearest and most compelling witness to the existence and greatness of God the Father. Jesus Himself said: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). He is the perfect transcript of what God is like.
But the supreme demonstration of God’s love and care is the sending of His Son into the world to suffer death on the cross, to save us from our sins, and to reclaim us for Himself. The Cross is more than enough to convince us that God loves and cares for lost people (Romans 5:8). Jesus Himself said that He came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
To help us find our way to God, there are signposts everywhere, but the most vital one is Jesus. He said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
The information in this post was largely extracted from an interview with Dr. Sarah Fay Buckland titled GEOGRAPHY EXPERT FOR CREATION (Jonathan Sarfati chats with Dr. Sarah Buckland) in Creation Magazine 2023 Vol 45, Issue 2.
Dr. Sarah Fay Buckland earned her doctorate in geography from The University of the West Indies (Kingston, Jamaica) with high commendation. Dr. Buckland, who is a lecturer and published researcher, also holds a certificate in Bible evidence from the Creation Apologetics Teachers’ College (USA) by the Creation Training Initiative. She is the founder and principal director of Chosen to GLOW Ministries, which seeks to amplify the Christian voice in the public sphere and equip more youths to defend their faith.
Dr. Sarah Fay Buckland explains why it is imperative we believe the Genesis account of origins.
Evolution undermines the reliability of biblical history:
Evolutionary theory posits that human ancestry cannot be traced directly to only one man, contrasting with the biblical account of a literal Adam and Eve. This compromised belief undermines Jesus’ entire genealogy, as recorded in Luke’s Gospel. Jesus’ human ancestry traces back to Adam and the patriarchs. So how much of the Bible, therefore, would be deemed trustworthy? As Jesus asked:
“If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” John 2:12
Evolution undermines Jesus’ authority, omniscience, and thus His deity:
In several Bible passages in Luke, Jesus refers to real events that occurred in Genesis. He specifically referenced patriarchs and events, including the murder of Adam’s son Abel.
“Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’ so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. ” Luke 11:51
Also in Luke, Jesus uses the time of Noah and the Flood to reference the time of His soon-coming return.
“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.” Luke 17:26-27
Once again in Luke, Jesus makes it clear that God made Adam and Eve at the beginning of creation they were not the product of evolution over millions of years.
“But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”Mark 10:5-9
Genesis clearly states that all human beings were created in God’s image. All persons being created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights has formed the foundation for most positive anti-racial campaigns, including those by William Wilberforce and Dr Martin Luther King Jr. The Bible clearly teaches that God created humanity from ‘one man’ (Acts17:26). While many secular movements depict Christianity as racist, the evolutionary worldview inherently has the most racist roots, both philosophically and in practice.
For instance, biological evolution requires an evolutionary ‘progression’ from the first ‘primitive’ humans to modern man. Unfortunately, Darwin and the early Darwinians point to an African origin of the most ‘primitive’ humans. Conversely, Europeans were considered the highest-evolved race. This philosophy influenced some of the most racist movements, including Hitler’s Nazism. It even filtered into early practices under the guise of ‘science’. African Pygmies were even caged in zoos.
Once again, the Bible’s unchanging doctrines always provide the most ethical basis for all aspects of life, in contrast to the ever-changing story of evolution.
For almost a century, the field of evolutionary biology has been dominated by the neo-Darwinian research program. The primary hypothesis of this program holds that all species have originated through natural processes by descent with modification from only one common ancestor. On the other hand, the creation science framework postulates independent origins (‘creation’) of baramins with built-in flexible genomes (coined ‘baranomes’) to vary, adapt, and speciate. From the start, baranomes contained a limited number of VIGEs—including ERVs and LINEs. In distinct baranomes, VIGEs may have been located on the exact same position in the DNA (the T-zero position), which then explains why some VIGEs can be found in the same location in genomes of modern organisms independent of the assumption of common descent, for instance in great apes and humans.
New studies reveal a high level of complexity of DNA
The functionality of LINEs is very important to discern between the neo- Darwinian and the creation science framework. If LINEs were without function, and if they were integrated randomly in genomes, common ancestry of the neo-Darwinian framework would be strongly supported. If, on the other hand, LINEs, as shown to be the case, are functional and their genomic integration is strongly regulated and controlled, the argument for common ancestry is nonexistent. The presence of the same VIGEs on the same location in the genomes of distinct species would then boil down to merely an argument of ‘nested hierarchy’, i.e. groups within groups within groups. These groups are based on suites of similar traits, and it is a different way of presenting evolutionary ‘tree thinking’.
The evolutionary explanation for the multitude of ERVs and LINEs present in genomes is that they are supposed to be the remnants of retroviruses that invaded the genomes millions of years ago. Italian brain researchers (1 &2) now provide further evidence that LINEs operate in genomes as VIGEs. That they originated in a distant past as viruses is merely belief, not science.
That we find LINEs with the exact same function in both vertebrates and mollusks is a strong argument that shared retrotransposons, even if they are present in the exact same location in the DNA, do not necessarily imply common ancestry. Rather, their functional presence argues for a front-loaded modular design system to induce controlled and regulated variation. Such mechanisms, which are increasingly identified in the genomes of organisms, witness to the greatness of the Creator, who foreknew the Fall of man and of the worldwide Flood. In His immeasurable goodness, He designed His creatures in such a way that they could rapidly adapt to entirely novel environments and fill every corner and crevice of the earth.
When it is obvious that intelligent design is the only explanation for the existence of this universe then the belief it came into existence by random chance is absurd and only leads to poor science.
1. Terborg, P., The design of life: part 4—variation inducing genetic elements and their functions, J. Creation23 (1):107–114, 2009.
2. Terborg, P., The ‘VIGE-first hypothesis’—how easy it is to swap cause and effect, J. Creation27(3):105–112, 2013.
The human genome is much more complex than anyone imagined. In fact, the level of complexity argues directly against any sort of evolutionary origin for the code that makes us. This episode features Dr Rob Carter and Gary Bates. This a must-watch video, just 19 minutes, particularly for young people to show that there is a master designer that has produced this incomprehensible complex universe. To my mind, no rational person could look at this video and think we were created by mutation and natural selection. And no one who is intellectually honest could do anything but be in awe of the genius of God.
The ‘no evidence for God‘ claim is an interesting one. It often works to frame the discussion in such a way that only creationists have a burden of proof. It allows the unbeliever the comfortable position of the skeptic: they get to poke holes in our case without ever having to make a case for anything themselves. Plus, skeptics regularly demand airtight arguments practically anyone would have to accept before they would believe in God (Agnosticism). As such, we almost certainly won’t convince them. But then that supposedly means that our faith in God isn’t reasonable. The game is rigged from the start. Heads, the skeptic wins; tails, we lose.
How should we respond?
CMI suggests you flip the script. Instead of you presenting a case for God, make them present what they think a case for God should look like. The simplest way to do this is to ask them: ‘What sort of evidence would you expect God to give?’
Many skeptics will say things like, ‘Well, none of the arguments I’ve seen convince me.’ Or they may just continue to demand that you convince them. Don’t let them off the hook. Hold their feet to the fire. Say something like: ‘Well, if I don’t know what would convince you, why should I bother trying? How do I know that anything I might say wouldn’t just fall on deaf ears?’
You want them to give you something concrete. But, failing that, your goal is to make them feel the irresponsible dogmatism of their skepticism. If skeptics hate anything, it’s looking like a gullible dogmatist. If they continue to avoid the question then walk away. The Holy Spirit may prompt you to pray for them but otherwise do not waste more time.
But if they do give you something concrete, then play the skeptic. What you want to do is to show them that even the case they expect would convince them has the same sort of holes they think exist in the case we make for God exists.
EXAMPLES:
Many skeptics will say things like: ‘Well! if I saw an amputee healed in response to prayer, that would convince me.’ Response: ‘Really? How do you know God would’ve done it?’ ‘The prayer’, they’ll respond. Your response: ‘That could just be a coincidence. Besides, it’s just a one-off event. What if it never gets repeated?That doesn’t sound scientific. Plus, how do you know something other than God didn’t step in to heal the amputee? Maybe aliens did it! At least we know aliens can exist, since we exist. But God? You’re just linking events that have no demonstrable link and labelling it with ‘God did it’ to cover for your lack of a scientific explanation.’ This sort of response is a real stinger because it’s exactly how most skeptics respond to cosmological and design arguments for God.
Some of them might say, ‘Well, if God appeared to me right here and said, “Here I am, believe in me!” then I would.’ Response: ‘So, you’d bow the knee at a vision that may very well just be a dream? How would you know for sure you didn’t hallucinate?’
Some might say, ‘If the stars read “God exists. Worship him”, I would believe.’ Response: ‘That would only be useful to people who knew the language the message was written in. Nevertheless, how do you know the stars don’t say that in a language you’ve never encountered? At any rate, why not other beings that want to deceive us? It’s not something we could say that only God could do, so why should we trust a message in the sky with practically no context? Besides, why should you expect God to arrange the stars just to sate your curiosity about his existence? Is that really reasonable to expect of God? Are we the centre of his universe?’
With such responses, you’re not trying to show that God doesn’t exist. Rather, you’re trying to show that we can always come up with reasons to doubt that will sound plausible to someone, no matter what evidence is put forward. And if they say, ‘Well, that’s what would convince me.’ Respond with: ‘So what? You can’t guarantee that it would convince every rational person. You didn’t say, “There’s no evidence for God that convinces me”; you said, “There’s no evidence for God”, period. If all you’re aiming to do is convince yourself, how can anyone else be sure that you’re really looking for the truth? And this isn’t just about trusting you. This is also about whether you’re even competent to look for the truth about God.’
At this point, they might start saying things like, ‘Well, all I can do is look at the evidence and do my best to figure out the truth. You have to do that for yourself, too.’ At which point you can respond with: ‘Exactly! That’s all I’m trying to do, too. But I genuinely think that things like the following are best explained by the existence of God (click on the links for a detailed explanation of each).
‘I see those things and more as evidence for God. I’m not saying that other explanations can’t be offered, or even that smart and sane people can’t disagree with me. Maybe you don’t find these to be conclusive proofs, but it’s a gross overstatement to say that they don’t qualify as evidence. Furthermore, when I look at them as honestly and critically as I can, I still think God is the best explanation for them. But when you say, ‘there’s no evidence for God’, you seem to imply I’m less than rational and/or honest when I say that. Is that fair?’
After all, that’s the real effect of this ‘no evidence for God’ claim. If they hold it consistently, they have to admit that you’re essentially irrational just for being a theist. But hopefully, by this point, they feel the unjustified dogmatism of their view, and walked it back a bit to admit that theists aren’t necessarily failing to reason properly when they believe in God. If you manage to do that, then you’ve won a huge victory. And that might be a good place to end the discussion for the time being. People often need time to process these sorts of things, so bombarding them with everything in our arsenal all at once is just unhelpful. For a start, they are probably not ready to hear most of it with an open mind. Rather, we try to deal with the person where they are at and try to nudge them a little bit in the right direction.
This information was assembled by Shaun Doyle of Creation Ministries International (CMI) in answer to the many queries CMI receives on how to answer skeptics’ arguments. http://www.creation.com
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 