Introduction to Apologetics
Randy Peterman · Oct 2, 2005
Apologetics, No. 01
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262333122158

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're going to talk about apologetics this morning. Has anybody ever been in an apologetic course before? Tom has. Okay. You read a book. All right. Well, apologetics, as the subtitle says, why you shouldn't be sorry to be a Christian. Obviously, we've all heard apology. Apologetics does not have to do with being sorry for being a Christian. worrying about offending people, but we are going to take a look at what apologetics is. It's absolutely not a course in Buick Apollos. Sorry, I'm my father's son. I have to do these things. What is apologetics? We're not supposed to be ashamed of the Gospel. We're not supposed to be ashamed of being a Christian. So we're going to talk about specifically what is apologetics.

Two definitions that I found other people use, and then I came up with a third definition. It's the logical presentation and defense of the Christian faith. Apologetics is the field of study concerned with the systematic defense of a position that's more generic outside of theology. And this is going to be my working definition, and I think my dad, he signed off on this, so hopefully he'll agree with it at least roughly. Apologetics is the formal defense of Christian theology giving a reason as to why on a logical, philosophical, scientific, or historical level, Christianity is a true, accurate, and livable worldview.

Does anybody have any questions about that? I think that's pretty straightforward, but just in case it comes across as highfalutin. What are we defending against? This is probably the biggest issue because when you're dealing with apologetics, you need to have an answer because someone is going to be probably questioning Christianity. If you look at the, did everybody grab a handout real quick?

I just want to make sure that we've got that covered. This is the cover page. You'll want to grab this. This goes in your binder. If you didn't grab a binder, there's binders down here in a box. I should say that. And also there is, these are collated copies of the planned events for the semester. Did you grab some of those? Did you want to copy them? Okay. We're short on covers. Would somebody mind? Well, here, I'll read it just so it's on the microphone. I'm going to read, if you could just look at the cover of your binder, or at least the page that was supposed to be your cover. It's 1 Peter 3, 13 through 17.

But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you, to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. And keep a good conscience, so that in things in which you are slandered, those who revile you or revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame.

The idea on a scriptural level is that we're going to be defending against false ideas. So we're going to take a look at some of the things specifically we'll be defending against. Answering the skeptic. Sorry, there's my turkey buzzard. When somebody is a skeptic, they're obviously disagreeing with the Christian faith foundationally. So we're going to take a look at various types of skeptical attitudes. The idea that spiritual matters are a personal preference.

You probably have seen that a lot if you watch any television. Where's Grace? You're allowed to watch television. If you watch any television, you'll see a lot of relativism, the idea that there's no absolute truth, religion is a personal preference, and that, well, whatever you want to believe is okay.

You believe what you believe, I'll believe what I believe, as long as we're sincere in our apathy, we'll be okay. The idea that spiritual matters are purely emotional and has emotional value, but is not based on truth. Again, that's similar. Instead of just being apathetic, There's emotional value to it.

The sincerity of faith is important to the world, but it's not an absolute truth. We're going to talk about truth next week, and I promise that even though it sounds like it's a pretty simple concept, I'll try to make it complicated. The idea that truth is not absolute and was not revealed by God. If truth is not absolute, that's great, because that means that I can't prove you wrong.

If God didn't reveal truth, then the Bible is irrelevant. So you've got lots of double whammies. Yeah, Tom? If you don't like truth, you don't have to pay your bills. That's right. If you don't like truth, you don't have to pay your bills. You don't have to do anything. You just do what you want because truth is not absolute.

What are we defending against here? That the Bible is confusing, contradictory, and not reliable. I read a lot of different websites. I'm a web developer, so I guess I spend more time on the internet than some people. And one of them that I read is actually a non-Christian guy who really hates Christianity. And he makes accusations all the time about how unreliable Scripture is and how contradicting it is within itself. And that's a real problem. So we're going to spend a fair amount of time talking about the reliability of Scripture.

Here are some possible purposes of apologetics. Apologetics can be used for the purpose of defense when conversing with someone who is a skeptic. Obviously, we just talked about various things that people are skeptical about. It's important that you are trusting in the Lord during these times. Apologetics, as we'll look at in just a minute, is not just something that is about a generic rote answer. Being able to spout off some argument without knowing the person is probably a big concern.

So you're going to want to be able to have a defense, but you're going to want to be able to answer the skeptic with a reasonable and true answer. Apologetics can also be used to combat heretical teachings found in cults. Polemics is what that is often called.

We're going to go over that in another class in two quarters, is that right? That's going to be different. We're going to not touch on this so much this semester, but in two quarters. So we'll just skip over that one without talking about it. You'll have to guess. Then, other purposes for apologetics. Edification. Apologetic can be used as a personal faith-building tool and edification of the saints.

When I was young, in the ninth grade, I had a teacher that in my history class that asked a lot of things that were skeptical of Christianity. And I came home and asked my parents, I was like, how reliable is the Bible? How do I know that what books are in the Bible are the right books? And a lot of questions that were there. And my parents were able to give me decent answers that I felt, hey, I'm not having a faith in just some funky religion that somebody put together a long time ago. This is genuine.

The other thing is apologetics can be used, I said for evangelism, I would change that now to say in evangelism. Its sole purpose is definitely not just evangelism, and evangelism requires a relationship. Here's what apologetics is not. Apologetics is not an all-in-one, easy-to-use kit for personal and world evangelism that will often require a lifestyle and personal relationship in tandem with the drawing of the Holy Spirit.

Here you'll see some possibly familiar suits. The Mormons obviously train very hard to send out people to go out and they give them as good a toolkit as they can to go out there and make people understand Mormonism. Apologetics is not for that. It's going to take a relationship with people often because they're going to want to see in your life that Christianity is genuine.

Apologetics is not just philosophy. We will cover some philosophy, but we're not going to spend a lot of time dwelling on philosophy. Most people, when you say philosophy, their eyes glaze over. They're like, oh, I don't want to talk about what is is, as our former president once asked.

What are we going to cover? We're going to cover the tips of the iceberg, so to speak. There's going to be a lot of topics that we could spend weeks and weeks upon. If you'll go ahead and take a look in your handout, If you got one of these, it's going to give you a schedule of the various things that are going to be covered.

Obviously, this week is Introduction to Apologetics. We're going to be going over what is truth next week. The week after that, logic and worldviews. After that, relativism. Does anybody know what relativism is, if I say relativism? All right, it's not who you're related to, sort of. History. How do we know what we know?

The Bible. Evidence for Christianity outside of the Bible. Is the Bible just a collection of myths? The resurrection of Christ. We're going to spend two weeks on that. Archaeology in the Old Testament. By the way, you have Christmas off. I guess that's a good thing. Christmas will be on a Sunday this year. Archaeology in the New Testament. The Da Vinci Code. Is it for real? Dr. Luke. Was he a historian or a storyteller?

Then we're going to get into science. How many of you have been to a Rocky Mountain Creation meeting? I haven't even been yet, I have to confess that. They obviously spend a lot of time looking at science and how do we defend the Christian view from a scientific perspective. I'm of the opinion that science is actually based on a bunch of assumptions that before you can deal with science you have to deal with some other things.

Then we'll talk about some world religions a little bit, and then you'll see TBA, and that's not... Today, it is an OPA. Oh, okay. That's actually open there because we suspect that there will be questions that we're going to go over and... His last initial is L. Anyways, the world religions are Western religion and Eastern religions. We'll talk about that. to be announced. There's going to be questions, most likely, unless my dad and I do the best job on the planet, which we're going to do the best we can, but I suspect that you'll still have questions. In that case, there's some space open there. The last thing you'll see on this list here is home economics.

We're going to do some role-playing at times. We're not going to spend a lot of time doing role-playing, most likely, but the thing is that sometimes if you get to watch people engage in a dialogue, you'll see things. One thing that is important to learn is to be able to recognize when somebody comes to you with a skeptical position, the assumptions that are in their argument. So with role-playing, it's sometimes valuable to see somebody go, oh, okay, I hear what they're saying and now I'm able to identify those assumptions. So we'll do some of the role-playing.

What we're not going to cover, this will not be an evangelism course per se, okay? We're going to discuss things that might be useful for evangelism, but it is not just about evangelism. Next thing that we will not be covering is, it's not going to be a Christian course on philosophy. I have some books on that you're welcome to borrow if you're interested in it, but one of them I never made it past the first chapter because it was just too intense. It's good stuff, but it's a little intense.

Now it's time for my dad and I to do a little sharing about why we may be appalling or doing apologetics. I just shared earlier about when I was in ninth grade, I had a teacher that was really skeptical of Christianity. Well, he wasn't skeptical of Christianity, he pretty much hated it.

And so he asked some questions that made me start thinking. And so then after some of those basic questions, I thought I was okay and everything, and then I got into college. And it's amazing what happens when you get into college and you deal with a lot of people with a lot of different worldviews and a lot of bit of craziness. And I studied one of my first books on philosophy from a Christian perspective. It's called Can Man Live Without God by Robbie Zacharias.

Definitely recommend picking that up if you have the financial resources and you're not familiar with it. So I went through that and then I moved down to Texas to go to seminary. And at seminary I was all excited about apologetics because I really stink at evangelism. Yes, Tom? Did you take the same classes at the same time you did? No. I was stinky at evangelism, so I thought I will take apologetics classes and I will brush up on everything and I will be a soul winning saint who's going to go out there and do amazing things. And as I said earlier, that's not what apologetics is for.

You can't just go out there and reason somebody to Jesus. You're going to have to build a relationship. They're going to have to see some genuine parts of Christ in your life. It's not going to be just something that you can logic somebody over. So at that point in time, I actually kind of got burned down on apologetics once I realized that. You mean I can't just take somebody from point A to point B and, you know, put another notch in the cover of my Bible or something, you know? And that was disappointing. So I kind of gave up on it for a while.

And then before I left Texas, which I praise the Lord for moving to Colorado because it's cooler here. But when I left Texas, before that I met a guy named Paul Hennebery who was a really brilliant theologian and also really knew a lot about apologetics. And he and I would drive about 45 minutes to church together with our families in the morning because we were looking for a new church home, and that's about as far radius as we could find before we were actually outside of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And we were looking for churches.

But those 45 minutes back and forth were a really great time for him to tell me and share with me about apologetical things that I'd actually never gotten seminary because a lot of those classes were kind of introductory, and he had thought a lot deeper. about things and read a really broad spectrum of books. So I learned a lot from him in those, I guess I would call them free apologetics classes, you know, about an hour and a half both ways there together.

And so when my dad said, hey Randy, you want to teach apologetics with me? I said, okay, fine. No, I said sure. So that's why I'm up here teaching about apologetics. I have a background more recently in philosophy, so I'm going to be spending more time in the first three weeks with some philosophical things, and then if we get philosophical questions later on, we may tackle those on at the end of the last six weeks.

With that being said, now it's my dad's turn to tell you why he feels, his testimony of apologetics, if you will. Thanks for the intro. One of the things that I think through this subject is that, you know, Randy's already underscored the great revelation. It's not magic in terms of, you know, say A, B, and C and everybody you talk to will become a believer. It doesn't work that way.

But it turns out that there are a few categories of conversations where it's helpful. One is if you get someone who is indeed quite skeptical and you can encounter people who are aggressively skeptical and have some solid answers for them. If that happens, especially in the context of other people who are listening and wondering what's going on, being able to have some answers is valuable because obviously they're asking the question, even if they're not skeptical with the same intensity. There may also be someone who actually is genuinely interested in the truth and would just like to have a few questions answered.

Later on, as we gather together, we're going to have different people come in who became believers later on in life. One of them, a fellow you know here, is Craig Case, and several years ago he was an atheist. In his looking at some of the very same things we'll be looking at here, it wasn't, at that point, it wasn't a matter of him aggressively attacking things, but just needing to work through the answers, and then once he'd had those, he was at a point of saying, yeah, this is indeed reasonable, and I want to put my trust in Christ. So you will have that. Then you have the other circumstance, a person who becomes a believer and then says, has what I've just done been a reasonable thing to do? Asking the question after the fact, and that may be the case.

In truth, that's mine, my personal experience. I became a believer at four and a half. I hadn't yet learned how to read. I just put my trust in the Lord for salvation. really had no apologetic issues at that point in time. But later on they came on ferociously. One of the instances, you know, Randy pointed out is, you know, you get into the college classroom. I got into it before that actually with hippies.

We lived two miles back of dirt road. And way out in the boonies, we were the last house on this dirt road that had any connection with civilization. We had power and telephone and a bathtub. The people behind us had none of those. And so they would come to us when they had various things that they needed that required a bathtub and power and telephone, things like that. I was at the back door one day and there was a gal who was looking rather large and she said, could I take a bath at your place? I'm about to have a baby. Oh, okay. I showed her, you know, here's the bathtub and, you know, all that.

At any rate, that hippie commune that was behind us a few miles, they would kind of come to us whenever they needed something that civilization offered. And so I had quite a number of conversations with them, and a lot of them were into something on the order of Hinduism. Then, getting into college, there were people of all kinds of persuasions.

I had one instructor who started off the first class, he opened up his Bible, and read, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He put the Bible down, dropped it in the trash, and he says, That's enough of that bleep. I had another class on philosophy of Eastern religions and that instructor was extremely aggressive in his verbal persecution and at one point even struck me. So very aggressively against me.

There were other people who were of varying persuasion. So lots of opportunities for conversation. The truth is though, Our intent here is to make this a pretty practical apologetics course, because you will get various people that you will encounter, and you might run into them almost anywhere you can imagine, who will have different kinds of questions, a range of questions, and you've probably heard some of them already, or statements.

Oh, the Bible, it's just full of myths. It's just a bunch of fairy tales. Or God, I don't know how you can believe in a God who would allow whatever it is, fill in the blank. You'll have lots of questions like that come up to you. And you'll have people who don't know anything about the Bible and will challenge it.

On the other hand, you may have people that appear to know quite a bit and will challenge it. So essentially, as Randy characterized it, it's more of a Here's a toolkit, here's some answers. One of the points that for me was a very driving point was this. My older brother, he's three years older than me, when I was pre-teen, he, I remember, used to come into my room and he'd even show me things in the Bible, you know, and his intent was kind of to teach me. One point in time, he kind of turned and I would say took a left turn. And during the college years, he just kind of challenged me and said, no, this is really a bunch of junk. It isn't what it claims to be. And so that set me on a rather intense search in terms of looking for solid answers. And what I found was that there are some very good answers. some real solid answers.

And we want you to be able to have some of those tools available to you. Because whether it's relatives, whether it's somebody you encounter, Nancy's got a particular gift. Everybody she meets in the grocery store tells her their life story. So however you encounter people, you're going to find that there are some useful tools here.

One of the things that we'll also find though is we won't get every possible answer to every possible question. So what we want to do is also leave you with, where do I find out the answer to this? Because it is fair to come to somebody who you're having a discussion with, and if they hit you with something that kind of stumps you, to be able to say, you know, I don't know the answer to that right off, but let me check into it, I'll get back to you. And if they don't object profusely, then you know that's their permission for you to get back to them. So anyway, we want to give you some tools, we want to let you know where do I find some more, and to be able to have a conversation with people, whether it is a Christian that's doubting, whether it is an unbeliever who is questioning but would really like some answers, or whether it's someone who is aggressively contrary to where you're at. You may, in fact, find people who appear to be aggressively contrary and then come to a place of understanding. Sometimes that extreme aggression is just a signal that they genuinely are interested.

A few of you were in the Acts class, so I'll just tell the story and apologize. Yes, that's right. Apologize is apologetics. I was in a class called Phenomenology and Metaphysics, and it was a class that has to do with, you know, all right, I'm seeing things, I'm hearing things, how does that correspond to reality? You know, all sorts of philosophical speculations about that. The instructor had a final in which he had Each student given a different oral question and in the midst of the whole class you were to answer that question, you got five minutes or less if you felt you could answer it in less. The instructor went around to the various students and he got to me and he says, Mr. Peterman, it's apparent from the things you've written that you believe in God. You have five minutes to tell us what difference that makes in your life.

What an opportunity. Well, I hadn't really had any intense conversations with any of the people in the class. It was interesting. A lot of classes afforded that opportunity, and this one just hadn't. But as the final let out, a fellow pursued me rather, you know, intentionally. Came right up behind me. I hadn't got but maybe 10 feet outside the door, and he tapped me on the shoulder.

And he introduced himself. His name was Vince. And Vince said, well, I'd like to have a chance to talk with you. I'm an atheist. I said, well, that's great. Why don't you come over for dinner and let's talk about it? So he did come over that very night. And we had dinner. I think what I prepared was edible. And we talked for a few hours.

And then he walked down the stairs and left. And I never saw him again. Until about a year later, I was in church one Sunday evening, and about, like from here to Randy, I looked over and there's Vince. So anyway, I was just about jumping out of my pew, and when the service was dismissed, I ran over and I said, Vince, what are you doing here?

You know, and he says, well, I'm a former atheist. And I didn't sit there and inquire and ask him exactly what made the difference. But the point is, sometimes the people that are asking questions are asking because the Lord's working on them. The Lord's touching that point. I have had conversations with some atheists where they have said, I want to talk to you about this or that or the other thing." And I said, well, let me ask you this.

Why does it make any big difference to you? A hundred years from now, it won't matter whether you're an atheist or not if you're correct. So if you think you're correct on that point, why bother talking to me? And in truth, I never have had one really give me a good reason why an atheist should care about anything. why it should matter at all, and why they should talk to me.

So there's plenty of opportunity, there are a number of them out there who are questioning, and maybe the intensity of their questioning is only revealing the fact that the Lord is working on their hearts, and that's what is getting their attention. That's why they're even concerned with the subject, or even willing to call themselves something.

Let's see. We've got some time here. Now, we've got obviously a number of things we want to answer as time goes on. There's about six spaces there for additional questions. So one of the things we want you to be thinking about as we go through here is what kind of subjects would you like us to address additionally? There may be a number of them. We may even run out of time here. We'll give it our best shot. But at this point, what questions do you have? Yeah, Tom.

In creation? Okay. topic on evolution and creation, there may be some additional things because obviously people have spent a lifetime studying that one issue. If you would like, we can address specific points within that. Other questions or thoughts? Yeah, Cheryl? If you have a conversation with someone who is of a Roman Catholic background, not always, there are certainly exceptions, But often it's something where they have been brought up in it and often it has cultural significance to them that may be pretty deep-seated, pretty deep-rooted. And that's certainly one we can talk about and get into some more detail. Yeah, good. Others? Yeah, Debbie. Gay, okay. Okay. Yeah, what kind of an answer do you have for them? Yes. Okay. Okay. Oh, yes. Thank you for pointing that out. Isn't that an amazing thing?

A great many of them A great many gays do have the idea that Christians hate them, God hates them, or at least that's what the Christians are saying. And how do you get that all reconciled? It can be really a rough road. It's interesting, I've had two friends die of AIDS. I currently have a couple of friends who are former gays. One of them is full-time involved in a ministry of getting people out of the gay movement. Yes, they would, and it is no small issue. The truth is there are quite a number of them. They are often very vocal, sometimes aggressively, sometimes out of sheer pain. And having some good answers is real important. And interestingly, I know Bob Eccles shared recently, he had some associates, one of whom was from a gay background. And just like you shared, similar impression.

Shocked to find out that Christian, here's a Christian who doesn't think that God hates gays, eh? Yeah. You can, just a side note, I used to have a gay co-worker, he was let go. But it wasn't for that. He and I agreed on one thing and that was that we didn't want to go to Hooters for lunch. The thing is that, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be crass, but the thing is that you can actually, there's an opportunity to say, you know, we're both minorities if you want to use that.

Because an actual Bible-believing Christian who thinks that the Bible is God's word and applicable to life and is useful for something more than just being religious and a zealot, It actually gives you an opportunity to love them and say, you know what? Jesus died for all sinners. And the thing is that sin is not just your sexuality.

It's going 56 in a 55-mile-an-hour zone. You missed the mark, okay? We all sin. We could probably do a whole class on that. But anyway, I just wanted to point that out because it's one of those things. Other questions, things that you've been asked? I thought that was important. Yeah, that's good. Okay. Right. Yeah, I know what you mean. I was a representative to the California and Nevada Convention of the Methodists in 1969. Yes, marvelous folks.

We'll be probably looking more at that under the polemics part of it, but we don't want to set aside that you will have people of all kinds of persuasions, both within Christendom and without, and really we need to have an answer for both, don't we? Yeah, another hand went up here. Yeah, Art? I think in days ahead, we'll all have opportunities to approach Muslim people that are all around us and they're pretty hardcore. I was just wondering if there's any ways to be helpful in addressing that. Yes, yeah. Okay, Art's bringing up the question of how do we address Muslims?

There are, I think the figure is something like 7 million in the United States is the figure, which sounds like a lot of people. They're variously distributed more intensely in some places than others. But I've encountered them. And yes, you definitely have to have your ducks in a row because they've got some concepts already.

The Quran does talk about Jesus. It's Isa is the idea. Muhammad. will lead the second coming, and Jesus will be subservient to him. So, I mean, their perspective that Jesus is not out of the picture, he just has a very different place than we would understand, and obviously a much more important place for Muhammad. But yes, very important question. Thank you. Others? Yeah, to Dale.

What other worldviews will we be looking at? Let's see, Randy is going to be talking about some philosophical worldviews here. Regarding worldviews, I was going to make that slightly more generic at first because there's a potential going into a lot of different things. Particularly, I know when I was in college, the two most prominent philosophical views, and I apologize if any of you want your eyes glaze over when I talk about this briefly here, but I'll try to be nice about it.

Relativism, humanism, or there's three. Relativism, humanism, and then more recently is postmodernism. To describe those briefly, relativism, I talked about earlier, is there is no absolute truth. Humanism is that humans will be able to find truth on their own. We don't need God to reveal it. We'll find it and discover it on our own.

And postmodernism is beyond there is no absolute truth. There is no reality. There is no anything. everything is all up to you. One example of postmodernism that just blows me away, I actually have a relative who doesn't believe that the Holocaust happened because she wasn't there to see it.

That's an extreme thing, but they don't even address history accurately because there is no history, because you see, and I'm guilty of this, there's graphical modification of documents I can go into my Photoshop software, my computer, and put about anybody's face in any situation. And so it could be doctored. It's not accurate. We can't trust it, so we really don't know if the Holocaust really happened. Those kinds of things.

So those will be three secular perspectives that we'll address relatively lightly, because obviously there's a lot that could be gone into there. And then we'll try to really clarify the Christian worldview, explain that foundation, because without that you're not armed necessarily to look at the other ones. So I think that will, hopefully that's a good start, but if you've got certain things that you've run into. Believe it or not, the Jewish and Muslim worldview is closer aligned to a Christian worldview than some of the other ones.

Obviously there's a difference in doctrine. We'll go over that as well, probably more in the polemics class. I have a question for today. Are you thinking of something in particular? Yeah. I'm just wondering how in-depth you would go into atheism. Oh yeah, that's...

I'm going to give you a quick answer on atheism and then we'll talk about it. Oh, the question is how in-depth are we going to go into atheism as a whole. Atheism is actually a completely untenable position. If you listen to a debate between a Christian and someone holding a non-Christian view, they will have to admit that you cannot absolutely be an atheist. You can be an agnostic. I've got a debate on CD that you're all welcome to ask for and borrow that is between a guy named Greg Bonson, who is a Christian, and Gordon Stein, who is from the University of California somewhere, who plays the agnostic role, and he really is an agnostic But he admits full well, he said, listen, I cannot make an absolute statement about God's existence because I'm not everywhere and all places at one time to be able to say absolutely that God does not exist. So that's the short answer. The long answer is going to be, we'll look at that in more depth and talk about why that is. It would be great if I knock myself out here. It would be great on the recording. So that's a short answer.

We will be taking a look at atheism, why is it untenable, as a logical position. But we're going to talk about truth and logic and worldviews in the next two weeks. So hopefully we'll be able to cover that soon and then you can ask all the questions you want. We'll either deal with them then or in the TBA session.

Yeah, I can say one more thing on that. If you feel like we haven't touched on the function enough, if you don't say so, or if there's some aspect of it, you'd like to hear addressed more, say so. All right. Actually, the next slide is what we're doing. But I decided to change it, you know, the PowerPoint slide.

Are there any other questions, like if you're at work or some people I know here at church are married to unbelievers and things your spouse is getting Yes, the distinction between agnosticism and atheism is that an agnostic says, I don't know. An atheist says, I know. The agnostic says, I don't know if there's a God. The atheist says, I know there is not a God. But the problem is that an atheist can't say that absolutely based on science and human rationalism.

You cannot absolutely say that because you're not at all places at one time. Practically, you can't be at all places throughout all time, which would be proving something. I'll be reading a quote out of a book that says this more clearly. Someone who doesn't believe in absolute truth or an atheist can never say that there's no unicorns. because they're not on all the planets in the universe where they suspect there's life, and they're not throughout all of history.

So hopefully that gives you kind of a perspective between agnostic and atheist. An agnostic says, I don't know, I can't tell, because I'm not at all places at all times. And the atheist says, I know, and they don't care. So they're actually just walking in as much faith as a believer in any religion. It's just their faith is in themselves. So hopefully that clarifies that some.

Any other questions that you get asked or things that you would like us to cover? We're probably not going to spend a lot of time talking about the Moonies or the Raelians. If you're not familiar with those, those are strange religious cults. Even when we get into polemics, we probably won't talk about those a lot unless you guys are really hungry about cloning. I don't know. Sorry, the Moonies aren't cloners, but the Raelians claim to be.

Anything else? We probably won't talk about defending against Michael Jackson or any other, but there may be current events or things that come up that you see. More recently, anybody heard of the spaghetti monster controversy? No? Okay. How about the, you heard about the scopes or the brown or the monkey trials, the scope trials back last century? Okay. Those things are coming back again in Kansas.

We've got another lawsuit, and I think in Pennsylvania as well, where people are actually arguing from a non-Christian perspective that no one can prove about creation and you can't disprove their belief in the universe being created by the spaghetti monster. It's a mockery of Christianity, was really what it is. I saw one guy that talked about the website that I read. He said he would offer anyone $250,000 if they could disprove the spaghetti monster theory. It's just a mockery.

He's just saying, you know, we weren't there, we can't really know, which is, you know, what the Christian perspective is. Okay, we weren't there, we can't know, but God says, we can't know by science, but God says this happened. The scientist says, Well, we can't know, but we'll try to figure it out. But we're sure as heck not going to believe that God did it. So, well, not the scientist, a person who disbelieves. He's going to be a Christian scientist.

Did you have your hand, Steve? Oh, Pastafarians, that's what it is. That's right. I forgot about that. So that's hilarious. Let's see here. Okay, any other questions, anything else before we just close here? All right. Well, everybody get ready, put your philosophy hats on for next week. Actually, don't wear hats if they're really tall. If you get in front of the person behind you, you'll be all irritated. But we're going to talk about truth next week, and I promise that we won't be too heady, or I won't be too heady.

With that in mind, let's close in prayer and be dismissed. Heavenly Father, thank you for this time that we've had together. Thank you for the truth of your word. Thank you that you give us answers. And our faith is not in nothing, but our faith is in something that's reasonable and true. We ask that you'd prepare our hearts and minds as we continue forward. And we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.