Essentials of Apologetics - Lesson 3

A Thoughtful Spiritual Quest
Sean McDowell
Lesson 3
Essentials of Apologetics

So, our last session we looked at different worldviews. The question we want to ask now is, how could we know which worldview is true and how might we wisely go on a spiritual quest? This will help us understand some of the uniqueness of Christianity, which will give us hooks in conversation with people. A number of years ago, I heard surprising news about one of the most influential atheists for half a century. Some of you might remember the story of Antony Flew, who for probably the second half of the 20th century was the most widely-read philosophical atheist in the world. He first presented some of his arguments against God before C.S Lewis at the Socratic Club in the '50s. Well, he passed away in 2010, I believe it was. In 2007 he shocked the world by writing a book with the title There Is a God: Why the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.

Now, the New York Time. Tried very hard to marginalize this. He's getting old, losing his mind, but he wasn't. Very clear, very thoughtful, and argued for the truth of God. As far as we're aware never became a Christian, but he allowed N.T. Wright, one of the great New Testament scholars, to write a chapter on the resurrection in the back of his book. Now, he wrote something very interesting at the end. He said, "I think that the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honored and respected. There's nothing like the combination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like Saint Paul. If you're wanting to set up a religion, this is the one to beat." And I think he's right. So, here's a former atheist who became a kind of deist. He said he's open to Christianity, but as far as we're aware never made the final step.

He said, "There's something about Christianity that sets it apart." Now, I mentioned my father's story early on as an agnostic who set out to disprove Christianity. Was surprised by some of the evidence that we're going to get to and unpack his story a little bit more as well. But I also went through a period of serious questioning doubt when I was about 19, 20 years old. Earlier than that, I really thought if somebody wasn't a Christian, they just hadn't read my dad's book. Like, how hard is it? Here's the evidence. When you get older and you meet smart people and get a little bit more sophisticated, you realize, okay, things are not quite as simple as I thought that they were. But what's interesting is even when I thought, "I've got to read the Quran. I got to read the Book of Mormon," there was a sense in my mind like Christianity is the religion to most seriously consider and the one to beat.

I want to argue why a wise spiritual journey should begin by considering Christianity. I've spoken at Berkeley probably three or four times, and I spoke at this atheist skeptical club, which was really fun. I had a group of maybe 20 high school students and about a dozen skeptics, and I said, "All I'm going to argue is that if you're open to God, you should begin by considering the case for Christianity. I'm not even arguing for you that it's true. I think it's true. I think there's good evidence we could consider that. But all I want you to do an hour or an hour and a half later when we're done is think that if you're open to considering God, you should begin with Christianity." And I gave them four reasons why. Let's take a look at these. So, here's four reasons why a spiritual quest ought to begin with Christianity.

And as we do this, you'll begin to see why Christianity is unique, why somebody as prominent as Anthony Flew would say, "There's something about Christianity that sets it apart." Well, the first one is that Christianity is actually testable. Christianity invites investigation. In the early 2000s there was a movie with the actor Antonio Banderas, and the title of the movie simply was The Body. Now, this is kind of a B rated movie. I think I saw it first on an airplane, and it's probably on some TV shows at midnight. But what's interesting about this movie is Antonio Banderas plays a former Green Beret who becomes a Catholic priest. And in this fictional movie, they uncover a body that dates to the time of Jesus. It was crucified. They find a coin from Pilate in there and it was hidden behind a wall, and they think they found the body of Jesus.

So, it's fictional. It's done by Hollywood. The Catholic Church goes into kind of an uproar. They bring in Antonio Banderas to suppress the story and show that it's false. Well, what strikes me about this movie is that the idea of finding the body of Jesus could turn an entire religion on its head. It wouldn't matter if you had the body of Moses as far as Judaism being true or false. It wouldn't matter if we have the body of Joseph Smith or Krishna or Muhammad. But if you have the body of Jesus, Christianity is definitively false. You see, there's no other religion that stakes the entire belief system on a single testable historical event. That is unique to the Christian faith. It's rooted in history, just like Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Just like battles from the past. This is not a mythical claim. Christianity is rooted in testable history. But it's not only rooted in history.

You might say, "Well, so are other religions rooted in history. The Book of Mormon makes claims about history." Well, in the Book of Mormon, the golden plates were taken up to heaven and you can't really investigate or confirm them. Christianity invites investigation of the very claims that it's based on. So, at the end of the Gospel of John, we have John say, "Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book, but these are written so you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and by believing you may have life in His name." Now, why did Jesus do miracles? One says because God is good, and He was showing that the kingdom of God is here, which involves overturning sickness and brokenness and demon possession. But the main reason was to show the authority that Jesus had, and that in a sense He spoke as and for God.

He did publicly testable events. We have eyewitness accounts of them that we can actually investigate. Now, compare and contrast this with the Quran. There are miracle stories attributed to Muhammad, but these show up really centuries later. The earliest accounts of Jesus have him doing supernatural public miracles. You cannot separate the identity and ministry of Jesus from the miracles that He publicly did. In fact, the one miracle really discussed in the Quran of how you would know if Islam is true is to ask the question, "Could you produce a surah, or their version of a chapter, as beautiful as the surah in the Quran?" Now, I do think beauty is objective, but that kind of test is very, very subjective. It's more internal. It's perspective rather than something objective we can examine and consider based on the facts. Compare and contrast that with, say, Mormonism. I had a chance to take a group of students to BYU and we have met with professors.

We knock on doors. We meet with students and just try to have genuine spiritual conversations. My son and I knocked on the door right around BYU and had a chance to meet somebody who had just graduated, and I said, "Hey, would you be willing to have a spiritual conversation?" He said, "Sure." So, he invited my son and I in and we sat down, hour, hour and a half, and just talked, compared and contrast our belief systems. And I said, "I'm curious, how would one know that Mormonism were true?" And he pointed me, as virtually every Mormon will, to a passage in the Book of Mormon, Moroni 10:4, which basically says, "The idea is if you read the Book of Mormon with an open heart and pray about it, God will impress upon you that it is true." In other words, the ultimate test for Mormonism is an internal subjective feeling.

That's the test for Mormonism. Can you see how different that is than Jesus and the apostles who say, "My miracles attest to me. The scriptures attest to me. Creation attests to God. The existence of right and wrong attest to God." This is a subjective internal test, which is very different. Now, my question back to him was, I said, "Okay, when it comes to things like scientific truth, you really follow the data and look for objective facts. When it comes to history, when it comes to math, when it comes to every discipline. Yet when it comes to the most important questions we can discover truth on, you rely upon a subjective feeling. Why?"

Well, take Buddhism, for example. I read this in Huston Smith's World Religions. Allegedly Buddha said, and I say allegedly because our documents of Buddha are hundreds of years removed, but allegedly Buddha said, "By this, you'll know that a man is not my disciple, that he tries to work a miracle." How different is that from the message of Jesus who did miracles? His apostles did miracles as signs and public attestation that Christianity is true. So, the first reason you should begin a spiritual quest with Christianity is it's based on testable claims. You can actually investigate and look into and consider the facts.

The second one is, salvation is free. Salvation is free. Now, probably a lot of your parents told me the same thing my mom told me is that, "Son, nothing in life is free," except the most valuable thing, which is salvation. It's only within Christianity that salvation is truly a free gift. So, here's my question. Why pay for something if you can get it for free? Now, I share this example with students. I said, "Imagine you're going to go get a car and you narrow it down to three options: $20,000, $10,000, and free. Now probably you think there's something wrong with a car that's free. You'd suspect some hidden motivation. But wouldn't you at least ask the question, 'Why is it free and should I consider that before I pay?'"

That's obvious common sense. It is only within Christianity that salvation is entirely a free gift from God. Every other religion, on some fashion or another, you have to work to attain it. So, Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast." Now, the next passage in Verse 10 says we're supposed to go out and do works not to save us, but as a result of God's salvation and creation of us. Now, how different is Ephesians 2:8-9 from 2 Nephi 25:23 that says, "It is by grace you have been saved after all that you can do." Now, my question is, have you ever done all that you can do? I played basketball at Biola University, and I know some of you are shocked to learn that by looking at me. The fact that I played at 5'9" only proves one thing: there must be a God.

My coach is actually the fourth all-time winningest coach in the history of college basketball. He's a phenomenal coach, and I only mention that to give some authority to what he says. He would say, "People say, 'Go out and give 110%.'" He said, "Mathematically, you can't give 110%." He goes, "You can't give 100%. The question is, 'How close can you get to 100%?'" And I would think back on games and say, "Did I take one defensive assignment off? Did I dive on that loose ball? Did I mentally... How close did I get to that?" But the reality is, there's always more that you can do. No one plays a perfect game. If your salvation relies upon doing all that you can do, can you imagine the weight of that? It's not possible. How do you know you've done all that you can do?

That's the difference between a religion of grace and a religion of works. Again, you see this similar in Islam. Surah 17:13 says, "For we have made every man's actions cling to his neck, and we will bring forth to him on the resurrection day a book which he will find wide open." In other words, will your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds, and your salvation rests largely, yes, upon Allah's mercy, which is rooted in your works that you do tied to the five pillars. When my son was 10, we were visiting a mosque and we were walking around a city near here where there's many Muslims, just looking to have conversations with Muslims about faith.

And we saw these three, what we thought were Muslims, having a debate outside. So, I walked up and I said, "Hey, I'm here with my son. We're just wondering if any of you, we're Christians, would be willing to have a spiritual conversation." One guy goes, "Oh, don't talk to him. He's a bad Muslim. Talk to Ahmed. He's a good Muslim." I was like, "Okay." So, we sat down and we talked to Ahmed. And I just started to say, "Hey, what do we have in common with our faiths and where do we differ?" And he made it very clear that you have to follow certain things within his understanding of Islam to be saved. It's not a religion of grace.

Religion is about man trying to get to God. Christianity is about God coming to man. Now, this is somewhat simplistic, I realize that, but every other religion are things that we do to try to earn and merit salvation. Christianity says, "You can't. All your righteous deeds are like filthy rags. But if you're willing to humble yourself and accept God's grace, salvation is a free gift." So, number one, Christianity is testable. Number two, salvation is free. Number three, you can live like Christianity is true. One of the tests for a worldview is, is it livable? Now, Darwin made a very interesting observation in one of his writings. He said, "The horrid doubt always arises whether the conviction of man's mind, which developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust the conviction of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"

Now, what was Darwin saying? He's saying, if my theory is true, that we are the result of a blind material purposeless process. This raises a troubling question. How do I know I can trust anything that my brain tells me is true? Because my brain was not designed. It's not placed here purposefully. It's just the result of an accidental purposeless process that allows me to survive. And frankly, you can survive on false beliefs as long as you just get your body in the right place at the right time. So, ironically, what Darwin noticed is, if his theory were true, it would undermine any basis and confidence he could have in concluding that his theory were true. I think this is a massive problem for an atheistic naturalistic worldview, which not all, but many will tend to pride themselves in their thinking and their reason and their rationality.

In fact, one atheist by the name of Daniel Dennett said, "We should no longer call ourselves as atheists. We should call ourselves brights," which implies that those who are not atheists are dim. Now, not all atheists are that way. I have many friends who approach it differently. But you see the point? If you use your mind and trust reason, and yet your very worldview undermines the adequacy of reason, then you're not able to live out the implications of your worldview. It was C.S. Lewis who said, "If the value of reasoning is in doubt, you cannot try to establish it by reasoning." And you'll see the same thing. Many atheists will claim that there's objective morality. Some will say there's no such thing as objective morality. I had a radio debate with a former Christian evangelist and he argued that morality is subjective. And I decided to cut to the chase. I said, "If that's the case, then you cannot condemn the Holocaust as being wrong."

He's like, "Well, that's not what I mean." I said, "Well, that's what you said and that's what your worldview implies." But within Christianity, because we can trust our reason, yes, we've been affected by sin, but we've been designed by God to live and operate in the world and discover truth. There is a grounding for right and wrong. It's not that every Christian lives out their worldview, but in principle it's possible to live it with consistency. The last reason a spiritual quest should begin with Christianity is because it has Jesus at the center. Now, at this point, these atheists at Berkeley were like, "Really? You're a Christian preacher. We should have seen this coming." And I said, "Well, let me make my point for you before you write this off." At first glance we might tend to look at Jesus and say, "Well, there's Buddha. There's Muhammad. There's other religious figures," and put Jesus in the same category.

But just from a religious historical perspective, Jesus is the only religious figure that transcends all of these categories. What do I mean? Basically, nobody claims Buddha outside of Buddhism. Nobody claims Muhammad outside of Islam. Nobody claims Joseph Smith outside of Mormonism. But everybody wants Jesus. Mormons want to claim that they're the Church of Jesus Christ. Hindus will claim that Jesus was an avatar. Buddhists will claim that Jesus was an enlightened one. Read the Quran. According to the Quran, Jesus was a virgin born, sinless, miracle-working prophet. Even many atheists or former atheists like Anthony Flew say there's something about the life of Jesus. There's no one who's ever lived who's had more influence on art, more influence on literature, more influence on government, more influence on film, more influence on music. There's no one who more people call their savior who has ever lived than the person of Jesus.

And what's remarkable about this is Jesus only lived until his lower thirties. Yes, the Bible's inspired, but he wrote no independent books. He didn't have any political position, no military power. Probably traveled a hundred and some miles in his entire life and was in the middle to maybe lower class. And yet more people call themselves followers today of Jesus than anyone who ever lived. If you're on a spiritual quest, doesn't it make sense to at least begin by considering the person of Jesus? I came across this billboard. It said, "Muslims love Jesus too." I thought, "Well, we have a different understanding about who Jesus was, that's for sure." But even Muslims want to claim Jesus. A spiritual quest should begin with Christianity. It's testable. Salvation is free. You can live like it's true, and it has Jesus at the center. One or two questions that I could potentially help with?

Does Islam believe that Jesus lived on and married, and is buried next to Muhammad, which is unbelievable?

So, according to Surah 4, Jesus was not crucified, because God would not allow one of his prophets to undergo such a shameful, dishonorable death. This is one of the linchpin reasons why I think Islam is false. If there's anything we know historically about Jesus, it's that he was crucified. We know this from all four gospels, from the rest of the New Testament, early church fathers, Tacitus, an early Roman writer, Josephus, an early Jewish writer. By the way, the Christians, if you're trying to invent a savior, you don't invent the most shameful, dishonorable death imaginable. Why would they make this up? And the reason is, it's actually true.

Now, there are some Islamic interpretations that will try to interpret Surah 4 differently, but as far as I understand, the majority interpretation is that Jesus was not crucified and of course didn't need to be resurrected. God had a substitute for the person of Jesus. Maybe it was Simon who carried the cross. Maybe it was Judas or somebody else. Which interestingly enough makes God a deceiver, doesn't it? God had somebody crucified who looked like Jesus and convinced everybody it was Jesus. So, if God deceives there, I want to know where else God would deceive. So, theologically and historically, that is one of the linchpin's reasons why I think Islam is false. Great question. Go ahead.

I've heard that Darwin, when he was at the end near his death, that he couldn't explain the evolution of the eye and that gave him some second thoughts.

You've mentioned this, but there's a couple of myths about Darwin. One is that Darwin recanted on his deathbed. Not true. I haven't seen any good evidence that that's the case. The eye, Darwin did write, that it kind of made him shudder. Like how could something as sophisticated as the eye develop? But then he went on and he gave an explanation for it. So, at times he would admit certain things. Like he admitted the fossil record during his day didn't match his explanation. So, according to Darwinism, there's a very gradual, slow development over millions and millions of years. And yet in his time it seemed like things appeared suddenly. Well, now, 150+ years later, we actually find more sudden appearances, called the Cambrian Explosion from around the world, which actually raises greater doubt for Darwin. So, no, I don't think he recanted, but at times he gave us indications of things that would call his theory into question. But as far as I'm aware, he believed it to his deathbed.