Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

Script:

That which you worship, then, even though you do not know it, is what I now proclaim to you. God, who made the world and everything in it …”

Acts, Chapter 17, verses 23 and 24, Good News Translation

VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re very grateful that you are joining us on Anchored by Truth as we continue the series which we are calling “Eternal Information.” Like several of the other series that we have done on Anchored by Truth this “Eternal Information” series pertains to a subject that has special importance in our day and time – demonstrating that the Christian faith has a firm basis in reason and evidence. Today in the studio we have RD who is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. RD, we spend a lot of time on Anchored by Truth discussing topics that don’t seem to be as relevant to the Christian faith as, say, family relationships, struggles with addiction, or even the wise use of money. Why do you feel led to go into what some may regard as side issues that don’t affect people’s daily lives?

RD: Well, that’s a very good question. But before I answer it I’d also like to thank everyone joining us on Anchored by Truth. The biggest reason I think we need to do series like “Eternal Information” is very simple. We need to return to the reality that the Christian faith isn’t just appealing or helpful – but it is true. We live in what many term a “post-modern” culture. The post-modern culture not only doesn’t believe that the Christian faith is true. The post-modern culture denies the existence of truth altogether. Post-modernism tells us things like “that may be true for you but that’s not true for me.”

VK: You might say that the primary slogan for our post-modern world is that “there is no such thing as absolute truth.” But as we have pointed out in previous episodes the statement “there is no such thing as absolute truth” is self-contradictory. The proponent of the statement wants us accept his proclamation as if it were absolutely true. So, anyone who bases their worldview on that proposition has a house built on intellectual quicksand. It’s not only not stable it’s deadly.

RD: Exactly right. But that mantra, that there is no such thing as absolute truth, surrounds us today and if we don’t begin to reverse the widespread acceptance of that silliness there is little to no chance we can reverse the decline in our culture. The only way we can begin to reclaim virtue for our society is to reclaim the historic reliance that western civilization placed on a Christian worldview and value set. We must start with the truth if we are going to repel the lies we are being told. And the truth is that the Bible is demonstrably the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God.

VK: That word “demonstrable” is important. In our day and time it’s not enough for Christians to just believe the Bible is the Word of God. That’s necessary but it’s not sufficient to impact our culture. The question “how can we be sure God exists” is a reasonable question. And so is the question “how can you be sure the Bible is God’s word.” And 1 Peter 3:15 commands us to be able to give reasonable answers to those questions.

RD: Yes. 1 Peter 3:15 is probably the most commonly cited Bible verse for why Christians need to obtain a least a basic understanding of what is usually termed “apologetics.”

VK: Apologetics is a broad umbrella term for the reason we thought this series about information is important. Apologetics can broadly be defined as “a defense for our faith.” Apologetics comes from a compound Greek word. Greek, like English, has compound words made of two or more other words. In this case the Greek words are apo, primarily used to mean “from;” and logos, primarily meaning, in its most generic sense, “word.” Logos is also commonly used in an expanded way to mean “reason, the mental faculty of thinking, meditating, reasoning, and calculating.” The Greek philosopher Heraclitus [HAIR-AH-KLEYE-TUS] first used the term Logos around 600 B.C. to designate the divine reason or plan which coordinates a changing universe. The Apostle John’s used that same word logos in John 1:1 when John said, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

RD: Right. So, on this episode of Anchored by Truth I wanted to just spend a little more time making sure that we connect the concept of information with this whole notion of the “defense of the Christian Faith.” So, one issue I would like to deal with right away is the whole notion that apologetics is really not necessary. We often say that God is the only One who can change a human heart. If that’s true then many people don’t see a need for us humans to actually try to defend the faith. After all, if conversion is up to God all we should have to do is just tell people about God and Jesus and that should be enough.

VK: And some Christians would say that in some of the best known verses about sharing the gospel there is no mention of apologetics. Romans, chapter 10, verses 14 and 15 say, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?” That’s from the New International Version. Those verses clearly talk about us sending and preaching so others can hear and believe but they don’t say anything about “defending the faith.”

RD: True enough, but those verses are part of a larger discussion by the Apostle Paul about the difference between the Jews believing they can be saved by the law as opposed to being saved by faith in Jesus. The larger point that Paul was making was that Paul’s people the Jews were zealous in wanting to know God but they had drifted into thinking that a zeal for the law was sufficient for God to accept them. Paul was trying to clarify that no amount of zealousness for the law was sufficient to make us acceptable to God. To be saved by the law we would have to keep the law perfectly.

VK: Which no human being apart from Jesus has ever done, or could do.

RD: Right. No human being can be saved by our own works because none of us can keep the law perfectly. Jesus did keep the law perfectly which qualified Him to be a fit representative for those of us who can’t. So, the point Paul was making when he talked about sending and preaching was that all believers have a responsibility to share our faith with others. In those verses from Romans, Paul was describing the need for us to “preach” but he was not prescribing the content of our preaching. Elsewhere, as in Acts chapter 17 shows very clearly that he used logic and reason in his own preaching. In talking to the assembly on the Areopagus he began his message with an appeal for the Athenians to think about “The God who made the world and everything in it…” In effect Paul was using a form of what is often termed the cosmological argument.

VK: Wikipedia defines the cosmological argument as “… an argument which claims that the existence of God can be inferred from facts concerning causation, explanation, change, motion, contingency, dependency, or finitude with respect to the universe or some totality of objects.” So, in slightly different words the cosmological argument is an argument based on the existence of the cosmos.

RD: Yes. The cosmological argument is one form of what is sometimes termed “classical apologetics.” And I think it is likely the most common form of apologetic argument since it so easy to understand and it begins with a starting point that people have to agree with. We exist. The universe exists. Careful observations about the universe such as the Laws of Thermodynamics tell us the universe is not eternal. Basic reason tells us that anything that is not eternal cannot account for its own existence. Anything that is self-existent, that is which possesses the power of existence unto and all by itself, would have to be eternal because a self-existent entity cannot go out of existence. Since the universe cannot provide an explanation for its own existence, it is reasonable to go looking for an explanation for the reason the universe exists outside of the universe. At any rate, the point is that the Apostle Paul was clearly a skilled apologist and he used apologetics in his own preaching. So, in those verses from Romans that you cited Paul was not dismissing the need for apologetics. He was simply stressing the need for us to be active in spreading the gospel to bring salvation to as many people as possible. In Romans Paul was talking about the necessity for evangelism but not the content of evangelism.

VK: So, in this series, and in many of the others that we’ve done on Anchored by Truth, we are discussing the content of the evangelistic message. And the point we are making is that good apologetics should be one component of an evangelistic message. Evangelism cannot be limited to apologetics. Apologetics is primarily aimed at the mind. But good evangelism also has to address the needs of the heart. In some ways the heart’s needs are more urgent for most people. So, we must always be prepared to address those as well. People need to know that Jesus brings forgiveness of sins because without that people have no effective way of dealing with the guilt that we all feel. People need to know that Jesus loves them. The desire to be cherished and valued is basic to all human beings. And people need to know that God wants them to be included in His family. People need to know that they belong. All those and more are heart needs. And we certainly don’t want to minimize their importance. But just as it is important to address the heart needs we must also not forget about the head.

RD: Exactly. The church must address the whole person just as Jesus commanded in Mark 12:30 where he told his listeners that they must, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Jesus wasn’t trying to take an inventory of human anatomy and physiology there. He was telling his listeners that they had to devote all of themselves to God.

VK: After all, God devoted all of Himself to us when the 2nd person of the Trinity took on a human body and then sacrificed Himself for us.

RD: Yes. So, God gave His all to us and we must give our all to Him. It’s important to note that in his admonition Jesus included a reference to the “mind” as well as to the heart, soul, and strength. In looking at apologetic approaches that’s what we are doing. And that’s where I think that this discussion of information becomes valuable. I see it as a supplement to many of the other approaches that have been used throughout church history.

VK: I see where you’re going with this. There are at least three apologetic arguments that are termed classical apologetics. The cosmological argument is one of those. As you’ve said the cosmological argument is possibly the best known and easiest to understand. But there is also the teleological [TEAL-EE-AH-LODGE-EH-KAL] argument. The teleological argument is an argument based on design or purpose. The teleological argument demonstrates the existence of God by beginning with the observation of purpose in nature. The teleological argument reasons that design cannot exist without a Designer. And classical apologetics also includes what is called the ontological [ON-TOE-LODGE-EH-KAL] argument. But I’m not even going to attempt to explain that.

RD: Yeah. I don’t blame you. The ontological argument is probably the most esoteric of the classical arguments. Ontology is the study of “being.” If something exists it is sometimes said to have “ontological status.” I think the easiest way to think about ontology is to just distinguish between the real and the imaginary. So, the ontological argument is based on the idea that anything that is real is better than something that is imaginary.

VK: I think there are some people in the movie business that might disagree with you.

RD: True. But even movie makers make real movies. An imaginary movie might be great but it doesn’t sell any tickets. And that’s the essential idea behind the ontological argument. We can conceive of a perfect being. Now our individual ideas of the perfect being might vary a bit but we can all conceive of a perfect being. But if that perfect being were only imaginary it wouldn’t be nearly as good as a real perfect being. Furthermore, it is obvious that all human beings as well as every other living creature are dependent beings. We depend on air, water, food, sunlight, etc. for our existence. The same thing is true for inanimate structures like stars. They depend on the availability of fuel to continue to burn. Well, there must be an ultimate source which supplies what all those dependent entities need to maintain their existence. That Something or Someone must be completely independent of need. Philosophers refer to that entity as a Necessary Being. That Necessary Being then would be perfect because it (He) would be able to provide for the existence of everything else. So, the ontological argument essentially recognizes that that Necessary Being is the Perfect Being that we all conceive of. And again, an imaginary perfect being would not have any ontological status so it couldn’t supply the needs of anything. There have been many different formulations of the ontological argument down through the years and they can get pretty esoteric. If someone wants to look further I would suggest they look an Anselm, Descartes, or more recently the American philosopher, Alvin Plantinga.

VK: As you said, that’s all pretty esoteric.

RD: But it does point out something important. Despite the claims of the evolutionists life on this earth cannot account for its own existence. The universe cannot account for its own existence. The 2nd law of Thermodynamics tells us that someday the universe will burn itself out. And even those people who believe in the Big Bang have no explanation for how the original singularity came into existence. So, they usually resort to saying things like, “the laws of physics tell us how something can come from nothing.” Well, no they don’t. Because if there was ever time when nothing existed there wouldn’t have been any “laws of physics.” And that’s the problem with all explanations for existence that attempt to exclude God. They always wind up in a place where they have unanswered questions and their advocates tell us that we just have to live with those questions.

VK: And therein lies the role for apologetics. Apologetics leads us through the questions and ultimately supplies the answers to those questions that can’t come from anywhere else. Now we can live our whole lives and never ask the questions. Or we can live our lives and simply suppress our desire for the answers. But ultimately neither one of those approaches satisfies us. God built human beings with an innate curiosity because that curiosity will always lead us back to our need for Him.

RD: I agree. And that is what our examination of information does. It leads us back to God. As we talked about in our first two episodes in this series, information is a non-material component of the created order that is not generated by, dependent upon, or impacted by matter, energy, time, or space. Because information is non-material and is unaffected by matter or energy it is logically impossible to attribute the presence of information to matter or energy. But that’s all atheists or anyone who denies the existence of God has to work with. For them they’re surrounded only by physical phenomena so they must find some way to attribute everything that they come across in their experience to an origin in matter or energy. In a previous episode we saw that there are actually laws of information that act exactly like other natural laws with which we’re more familiar like the law of gravity or the Laws of Thermodynamics. But these other natural laws can be framed in terms of matter and energy. Information cannot.

VK: So, the atheist is now stuck with a conundrum. How can material phenomena produce a non-material phenomenon that can describe the material but remain unaffected by the material? For Christians, and even other theists, the conundrum doesn’t exist. God produced the cosmos ex nihilo – from nothing other than his own ineffable power.

RD: Yes. The nature of the physical universe itself points us to a power that must lie beyond the universe. Information is another one of the many attributes of the universe that supports that basic line of reasoning. In that sense it forms another and very powerful argument for the existence of God.

VK: Which is what all apologetic approaches do. But that does not mean that all apologetic approaches are equal – or equally suitable for use in evangelistic settings. And we haven’t touched on all the apologetic arguments that are out there. We’ve only touched on a few.

RD: Yep. Besides the cosmological, teleological, and ontological arguments – which are considered “classical apologetics” there are people who favor a moral argument. Others prefer a historical approach to demonstrating God’s necessary existence.

VK: The moral argument was used by CS Lewis in his classic work Mere Christianity. It essentially says that we all feel the presence of certain obligations that should govern our behavior – moral laws if you will. But the existence of a law requires a Law Giver. Historical apologetics points to events in world history, such as the resurrection, as evidence that the God of the Bible is actively involved in our world and its affairs. For instance, regarding evidence for the historicity of the resurrection, British historian, A. N. Sherwin-White has written that “For Acts, the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming. … any attempt to reject its basic historicity, even in matters of detail, must now appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken it for granted…” Many other historians have come to similar conclusions about parts of the Bible as diverse as Isaiah, Daniel, Kings, and Chronicles.

RD: Yes. And there are still other forms of apologetics such as pre-suppositional apologetics and transcendental apologetics that we don’t have the time or need to cover. But all apologetic approaches share something in common. They start with an observation about the universe or world history that can’t be reasonably denied. Then they proceed to look for an explanation of the attribute or phenomenon they have observed. Inevitably they find that a satisfactory explanation cannot be contained within the four corners of the visible universe. So, as we have said, we can simply throw up our hands at that point and proclaim that there is no possible explanation or we can follow the considerable affirmative evidence, such as the reliability of scripture that points to the existence of God.

VK: Apologetics is a little like the classic murder mystery where the murder was seemingly committed in a locked room where there is no immediate evidence of any way the murderer could have entered or left. Then the clever detective arrives and finds that there’s a previously unknown, hidden panel that they discovered by a careful analysis of the room’s dimensions. Or there’s a bit of wax on the floor that shows where the window latch dropped back into place after the murderer left through the window. Or a scratch on floor shows that the key on the inside was really on the outside when the door was locked. The detective always finds the clue overlooked by everyone else to divine the truth.

RD: Yep. Except that in this case the evidence isn’t hard to discern. It’s out there in plain sight for everyone to see. It has to be. If God had hidden evidence of himself people might have a legitimate excuse for their unbelief. But they don’t. Romans, chapter 1, verses 18 through 20 say, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

VK: And Psalm 19, verses 1 and 2 say, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.”

RD: So, as in your detective example, the universe contains clues, more than clues really, that point to the fact that there is a God who made everything, sustains everything, and governs everything. Information is one more phenomenon within creation that points out that the universe cannot be explained simply by its material elements – matter, energy, time, and space. The universe exhibits design in its smallest elements such as the atom to its largest structures such as galaxies. Design needs a Designer. The universe needed a power source to get it going because it is steadily running out of power. The laws of thermodynamics tell us that. Life would not exist at all if DNA did not contain an embedded program that tells the various base pairs, genes, and motors how to operate to both operate and replicate. The program embedded within DNA is another form of information. In fact, DNA is most sophisticated data storage and use structure we know about within the universe. But how did that information get into the DNA? The cells’ protein machines can’t explain the information because without DNA the cells wouldn’t know how to make the machines. But without the machines to build the DNA it couldn’t hold, store, or transmit the information. The answer of course is that God created everything, installed the programs, and continues to sustain all that He created. We can accept or reject that conclusion but we can’t avoid the facts that point to it.

VK: So, again, the big idea that we are discussing is that information is another line of evidence that proves that if God did not exist the universe could not appear as we see it. Information is non-material and information always exhibits order, organization, specificity, and purpose. And those things require intelligence. Well, our thought-provoking journey continues. This sounds like a great time to pray. Today let’s listen to a prayer that our nation would experience a renewed hunger for the One who formed the universe and who put His presence into both its largest and smallest structures.

---- PRAYER FOR RESTORATION OF THE WORSHIP OF THE ONE TRUE GOD

VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”

If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!”

(Bible Quote from the Good News Translation)

Acts, Chapter 17, verses 23 and 24, Good News Translation

Laws of information 2 (creation.com)

We are less than dust (creation.com)

https://www.josh.org/what-is-the-design-argument-for-gods-existence/