God, the Bible and Common Sense -- An Appeal to Reason

1. God, the Bible and Common Sense-- An Appeal to Reason Based on the book by Leroy Brownlow Isaiah 1:18 “Let us reason together” Acts 17:2; 18:4,19; 24:25

2. We live in a time that is skeptical of the Bible and of the very existence of God. • Once, we could just refer to the Bible. Now we have to go even further, to prove the Bible is the Word of God, and in the very existence of God. • We must be armed with the knowledge to show God exists. • We must be armed with the knowledge to show that the Bible is God’s Truth, His Word, which can be backed by history. • We must engage our “gentile” world like Paul did in Acts 17:16-22 • We must be prepared to give an answer to our faith-1 Peter 3:15 • We must show that the Bible produces faith through facts-Hebrews 11:1 • This lesson is designed to arm us with the knowledge of God’s existence. Future lessons will help to arm us to defend the Bible as God’s Truth. • For further research, I recommend getting “God, the Bible and Common Sense – An Appeal to Reason”, which this lesson uses many of the common sense arguments to prove the case for God.

3. God, the Bible and Common Sense-- An Appeal to Reason • Basic breakdown of book: • Common sense requires God • The common sense biblical account of creation • That God created man makes sense • Christ’s coming to earth makes sense • Common sense demands the Bible • Common sense requires right division of the Bible • The church makes sense • Gods’ plan of salvation is sensible • The common sense of Christian growth • Worship is sensible • Common sense at Random in the scriptures • Gods’ appointment of death is sensible • The judgment makes sense When reading this book, you will see how each step builds on the others.

4. Common sense requires God • We are going to take the first section and discuss how it makes sense to believe God exists, and that all good things come from him by looking at several things: • Evidence of him is everywhere in creation, physical laws • Basic logic that requires he exists simply from a “first cause” analysis • Then we’ll take a look at some of the popular arguments against him, and how to de-bunk them with scripture and common sense.

5. Common sense requires God • Hebrews 3:4 says: For every house is built by some man; but he that built all things is God. • No house ever built itself. It makes sense that there is a builder for every house & every thing we can observe. • This same thought process extends to all of creation. All created things imply there is a creator. All effects must first have a cause. That is to say, everything that occurs is driven by something that came before it. God tells us this through His Word: Ps 102:25, Is 40:21-22 & 44:24, John 1:1-3, Acts 17:24

6. Common sense requires God • Gen. 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. • Even atheists (those who believe there is no god) agree that something cannot come from nothing. • The bible repeatedly says God created all that we know. Isaiah 42:5, Col. 1:16, Rom. 11:36, Job 38:4-11, 29-30, 31-33, Job 41:11 • There is no explanation of creation apart from God as a first cause that stands the test of Common Sense.

7. Common sense requires God • Consider this syllogism (major premise, minor premise, conclusion): Something cannot come from nothing (premise) But something is or does exist Therefore, something always was. • In terms of creation or creating life, that something is either supernatural or lifeless matter. This is termed “first cause”. It existed before life as we know it. The atheists and scientists who attempt to prove creation apart from a first cause must assume lifeless matter. • Despite many failures, Scientists are confident that something will happen, and MUST happen because believing in God creating life is “unacceptable.” • It makes more sense to believe there is a God as the first cause for creation rather than lifeless matter. For all of the experiments and research that has been performed in this area, there are no documented cases in which life has sprung from lifeless matter. –None. –Ever. Col. 1:16-17 ..for by him all things were created.

8. Common sense requires God • The atheist will push back the first cause from a primordial soup, to clouds around a bunched up ball of gases to the big bang to a super-compressed / extremely high density ball of lifeless matter. At some point they must stop and admit they do not know where this came from. This is the point of first cause that cannot be explained apart from God. • What takes more faith? To believe what is written in scripture (always constant, always consistent, never changing), or to believe the amazing and at times absurd accounts presented to us by supposedly intelligent scientists. Note the scientific explanations have changed thru the years regarding where the first cause actually is, from the Steady State Theory to the Big Bang Theory. They don’t really know…

9. Common sense requires God • We must ask ourselves, is it easier to believe the complex and changing theories presented by scientists, or believe Genesis 1:1? Common sense says that when investigating a cause for an unknown action, the theory that is the simplest is usually the correct one. This is also a well known scientific principle. Why would we not believe what God says?

10. Common sense requires God • Consider this, if dead, lifeless matter somehow produced life; how did it get moving? What was the catalyst that spurred it to action? There would have been nothing to make it get started. Again, we are forced to admit something else was there. Matter has never moved of its own accord. Newton observed this in his first law of motion. • “A body in motion remains in motion unless it is acted on by an external force. If the body is at rest it remains at rest unless acted upon by an external force.” • Note, we are back to having to explain where first cause is…

11. Common sense requires God • The book “Evolution and Animal Life” by Jordan and Kellogg, page 41 states “All life comes from life. The biologist cannot admit spontaneous generation in the face of the scientific evidence he has.” Lyman Kellog was a noted entomologist and biologist and wrote this in 1907 in his work to defend some of the weak points of Darwin’s theory of evolution. ---Sort of ironic that we use it today to help make the case for the existence of God. The writer is quoting the scientific Law of Biogenesis, which has been proven over and over again. • There is no scientific way to account for life without a pre-existing or beginning life.

12. Common sense requires God • Psalms 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament (expanse) shows his handiwork. Rom. 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. • Consider the stars. With the aid of a high powered telescope there are roughly 100,000,000 (one hundred million) stars visible on a clear night. The Hubble telescope has revealed billions upon billions more within over 100 billion galaxies. Did this all spring from a super-compressed ball of very high density matter that just exploded? • Does this even make sense to anyone? What if I told you that the Brenham phone book being published was the result of an explosion in a newspaper and ink factories? • Doesn’t it make more sense to say that God created this just as David stated in Psalms 19 or that Paul did in Romans 1? Doesn’t it show the power of God to have created all this?

13. Common sense requires God • Consider the grouping of the stars. Job 38:31-33. They are not just randomly scattered about. They hang in an ordered set of groups called galaxies, clusters and constellations. Was this just an accident? Did it just happen? The odds of this actually occurring by chance are astounding. • Take the alphabet. A-Z, 26 letters all in a particular order. If I took 26 little plastic letters –all the letters of the alphabet and threw them up in the air, what are the odds that they would land on the ground in the order we know them in (a,b,c,d,e,f,g….z)?

14. Common sense requires God • This could occur once for every 500… million… million… million times I threw them in the air. • For every 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 throws it would happen only once (1). The odds are then 1 in 4E26 (400 million… million… million… million). But at this point, who cares. The point is it is a really big number and it doesn’t matter anymore. The number is an impossibility as defined by the Law of Probability. • Now apply this logic to the ordered groupings of the one hundred million stars that we can see and more, and you begin to see an impossible picture. This was no accident. “…he that built all things is God.” It makes sense to believe that God hung them there. It is simply easier to digest.

15. Common sense requires God • Let’s look at the law of gravity. Gravitation exits. We have lived with it all our lives. Not one scientist past or present can explain why it exits. • If this is a constant known law throughout the entire universe, why can no one explain where it comes from, why it behaves the way that it does, what causes it? • We can describe how it works by observation (32 feet / second / second, moon’s gravity is 1/6th that of earth’s and so on), but no one can explain why it is there. Does it make sense that some being / creator put it there because it makes the rest of his design work better?

16. Common sense requires God • Orbital mechanics are based on this. The earth orbits the sun. The moon orbits the earth, etc. This law is what made the Apollo moon shots possible, and what keeps the International Space Station from wandering off or crashing down. We use it all the time, but we cannot explain what causes it or why it exists. • The scriptures attribute this to God: II Pet 3:7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store. There simply is no other explanation of why gravity exists. • There are MANY more things we can use to explain that God must exist, including other Laws of Physics, the fine tuning of the forces of Nature, and very existence of life itself. What has been discussed should be enough. • Now let’s look at some common arguments for the case that God is not real.

17. Common sense requires God • If God is real and religion came from him, why are there so many different religions? • Eccl 7:29 “God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions”. • Consider; man is a free moral entity. He can make a choice. Gen. 3:6-7 In religion, that choice has been to consistently corrupt what was made perfect on the first Pentecost after the crucifixion of Christ. • From then on, the religions have been splitting, and multiplying because of man’s choices. • This does not come from God, but from man.

18. Common sense requires God • There are about 21 major world religions today. About 1 billion people do not profess belief in any religion.1. Christianity 2.1 billion2. Islam 1.3 billion3. Secular/Irreligious/Agnostic/Atheist 1.1 billion4. Hinduism 900 million5. Chinese traditional religion 394 million6. Buddhism 376 million (see also buddhism by country)7. Primal indigenous 300 million8. African traditional and diasporic 100 million9. Sikhism 23 million10. Juche 19 million

19. Common sense requires God • 11. Spiritism 15 million12. Judaism 14 million13. Bahá'í Faith 7 million14. Jainism 4.2 million15. Shinto 4 million16. Cao Dai 4 million17. Zoroastrianism 2.6 million18. Tenrikyo 2 million19. Neopaganism 1 million20. Unitarian Universalism 800,00021. Rastafari movement 600,000 • Source(s): • wikipedia

20. Common sense requires God • Just as an aside, let’s do some numbers: say there’s around 4 million people in Houston. • There are about 250 Christians at the Fry Road Church in Katy. Let’s be generous and say there are 15 sound churches in the Houston and surrounding area for a total of 3750 people. Let’s round the number to make the math easy and let’s use 4000 Christians in a city of 4 million. • 1/10th of 1 percent of the population of Houston is Christian… • That’s a very small percentage. Matt. 7: 21-24 is demonstrated here.

21. Common sense requires God • I don’t believe in a God I cannot see. • This is inconsistent from the outset. • Do you see pain? Love? Hate? • We can certainly see the results and effects of them, but we cannot actually see these things. • Do we not believe in these? The atheist would be forced to say he does not based on this logic. How about an energized electrical wire? • Do we believe in electricity? We can’t see it, but the effects are amazing if we touch a hot wire. • How about the wind? Can we see it? No, but we can see the effects the wind causes.

22. Common sense requires God • I won’t believe in a God whose existence cannot be proven by science. • Based on the previous examples, we need God to prove the validity of science, not the other way around, but let’s humor this position for a bit. • The scientific method relies on proposing a premise, forming a theory and then gathering evidence to prove that theory based on OBSERVATIONS.

23. Common sense requires God • Premise: we and everything around us exist. (this is a little silly, but it serves the point here) • Theory: all things that exist were created by God. • Observations: stars, gravity, trees, sky, earth, living creatures, life itself, a baby being born. • Do all of the observations fit the theory proposed? Are there any that do not? Can we come up with anything that was not created by God? --Even one will disprove our theory. Col. 1:16 says no.

24. Common sense requires God • Consider another competing theory: All things that exist were random and brought into being by some non-living thing. • Do observations support this theory? I think we have covered this pretty thoroughly. Common Sense in action here… • Another valid point is that NO ONE can be proven to be who they say they are using just Science, not even the atheist. The Historic/Evidence Method used by historians, lawyers, and archeologists can prove the existence of a historic figure. Abraham Lincoln’s body can only be described by science alone as a human body. To figure out the body is Abraham Lincoln, one needs the Historic Method. The Biblical record of witnesses prove the existence of God.

25. Common sense requires God • If there is a God, why does he permit war and natural disasters? • He does not permit them, but rather they are a result of man’s actions and choices. • Recall what he said about creation after each aspect was brought into being… God said it was good. Gen. 1:31 • It went down hill after man began making choices to disobey God’s law. War’s and natural disasters are not caused by God, and to say that they are is inconsistent with the nature of God. He only wants what is best for his people. II Pet. 3: 9, the whole chapter of Luke 15. They are a direct result of man’s disregard of God’s law beginning with Adam and Eve in the garden so long ago. • God uses these events man brought about to teach us valuable lessons.

26. Common sense requires God • Conclusion: why it makes sense to believe there is a God. • 1. Facts are facts. Anyone can doubt them, but that doesn’t make them untrue. • Just like telling a lie over and over again doesn’t make it the truth, and arguing louder doesn’t make your point any clearer. • What we do with the facts determines the conclusions we make. If we believe them and use common sense, we can only come to the conclusion that God exists. Consider the parable of the sower (Matt. 13: 3-9) Same seed, the Word, 4 different results. • No other conclusion makes sense.

27. Common sense requires God • 2. The underlying reason for atheism (a belief that there is no God) is not a lack of evidence (for it is all around), but rather a self centered desire for pre-eminence. • This position (atheism) is not supported by a common sense approach to facts that are obviously clear. • 3. It makes more sense to believe the historical account of creation than to put your trust in a series of disjointed, contradictory, implausible theories for our existence apart from God. In fact it takes less faith to believe God exists than to believe he does not. Even scientists declare their faith in something- • Common sense in actionconfirms God’s existence. “We do not know how exactly it happened. Yes, at some point one must have faith.”-Professor Holman

28. Conclusion and Invitation • We can see how common sense proves that God is, and is a rewarder of those that seek Him-Hebrews 11:6 • By what process do we seek Him? The Lord Jesus tells us. • 1. Hear-Mt 13:23 2. Believe-Mk 1:15 3. Repent-Lk 13:3 4. Confess-Mt. 10:32 5. Be Baptized-Mk 16:16 Once we enter His service, The scriptures tell us what to do once we slip from the path Christ has set for us: Repent & Pray Acts 8:22, II Cor 7:10, Js. 5:15,16