Can You Prove That God Exists?

Doug Batchelor: Evidence continues to mount that the mystery of life can only be explained by some intelligent, miraculous intervention. Now more than ever, modern science confirms the extreme complexity of life. With 21st-century microscopes, for instance, scientists understand that even the simplest cell is, in effect, a virtual factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of molecular machinery, far more complicated than the International Space Station, and functionally as complex as a small city at rush hour.

As we delve deeper into the cellular realm, science reveals a virtual Lilliputian world so intricate that if he could look through a modern microscope today, Darwin himself would likely to admit the theory of evolution was absurd. In spite of the mounting evidence that only a divine miracle can produce life, the modern world still refuses to accept the Bible account that God suddenly created life by speaking. And it's that same power of his Word that is recreating millions of hearts around the world today. So, join me now as we look at some of the fascinating Bible facts about the incredible evidence of God's creative design.

Doug: I remember hearing a story about a 2nd-grade teacher of an art class. She told her young students, "You're now free to draw whatever you want." She gave them their paints and they began to paint, and she'd go from one to another and give 'em a little advice and ask what they were doing. And she came over to this one boy and he was really goin' at it. He was painting furiously. You ever seen a kid when he's into it? And his tongue... kinda out of his mouth. And she was lookin' at what he was doin', and couldn't make heads or tails out of it, and she said, "What are you painting?" He said, "I'm painting God." She said, "Well, nobody knows what God looks like." He said, "Exactly, now they will."

And our message today is talking about a very important subject: "Can You Prove That God Exists?" "Can You Prove--?" This is the big question. This is one of the most important things that people could ever talk about.

Now, you may have heard of the Large Hadron Collider. The biggest and most expensive scientific experiment in the world is located 300 feet beneath the countryside on the border of Switzerland and France. And I've been in that region before. It is a 17-mile-long tunnel. They used the same boring equipment they used for making the Chunnel between France and England to bore this tunnel. It's an instrument, but it is composed of a tunnel 17 miles in a circle, filled with the most powerful electric-magnet accelerators that scientists can muster. It's operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research. And the aim of it all is they're looking for the mystery of the smallest part of matter that holds everything together.

They call it, named after some of the people who theorized it, the Higgs Boson. It's nickname is--who knows? The God particle. They've built this multi-billion-dollar instrument to discover the God particle. Well, they conducted a number of experiments between 2005 and 2017, and they say they believe that they've found it. With 99% accuracy, they believe they've discovered the smallest subatomic particle that allows all other particles in the universe to bond together. And they say, "If it wasn't for that particle, nothing would exist." And therefore, they call it, "The God particle." Man searching for God in the smallest matter.

But is there a God? Now, we're in church, so, you know, it's sort of a rhetorical question here. Do we believe there's a God? And if so, why? How do you prove it? Now, some of you have maybe seen some of the very beautifully produced BBC nature programs by David Attenborough. And because he often talks about evolution, some assumed he was an atheist. But when asked if he was an atheist, he said, "No, of course not." And they said, "Well, you know, all that you said about nature and evolution." They says, "You're saying you believe in God?" He said, "Well, I'm just sayin' it would be foolish for me to say because," he said, "the universe is so big," and I'm paraphrasing. "The universe is so big. It's millions of lightyears across. What we see is just so small, and we've learned so much in recent years. For us to say we know there is no God with the little perspective of the universe that we have now is like an ant on top of a termite hill saying, "I now understand the universe." Which I thought was a humble and appropriate response.

So, could be why the Bible says, "It's the fool who says, 'There is no God,' with some certainty." At least we should say, "Well, we don't know," or, "I may not know," or at least admit you don't believe, or say, "I don't want to believe." The Bible even says, if you want to use the Bible, it says, "You can look outside the Bible to believe in God." Psalm 19:1: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork." You can look up and see evidence for God. Recently, Eric Metaxas, he wrote a bold article for "The Wall Street Journal" titled "Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God." And he comes up with about seven different points where, in just the natural world around us, in the planet, in the solar system, we see evidence that there must be a design, or they'd be no life on earth.

First point, our planet is as exactly the right distance from the sun so the temperatures on our planet are conductive to life." If we were a little close to the sun, we'd burn. There's no life on Mercury. It's too hot. We would be molten. You get too far from the sun, and you're a ball of ice, like some of the moons of Jupiter. And so we're just precisely the right distance so the oceans don't boil away, neither do they all freeze. There's a very precise balance.

We are the perfect distance from our moon, and it has the perfect orbit to create moving tides and circulation of the air to avoid the stagnation of the seas. And many plants and animals reproduce based on the lunar orbit. If the earth was a little too close to the moon as it swept around the planet, we'd have this one continual tidal wave, a perpetual tsunami wiping everything out. But it's just the right distance where there's a gentle motion of the tides that circulates the oceans and helps create the climate. And just, it's incredible the delicate balance that the planets have on earth. Metaxas argues: "This incredibly rare, outlandishly unexpected process, given all the facts needed to occur in just the right confluence of circumstances that at least our solar system must have been specifically designed and calibrated to give rise to us. Otherwise, the odds of us coming to be would be so infinitesimally small that it's unreasonable to believe it could have happened by chance."

And not just that there would be a planet with a piece of life, but look at the incredible diversity of life that coexists. You start doing the math on that. I'm getting ahead of myself because math is one of the reasons too. Dr. Arno Penzias, still alive today, Nobel prize winner for the discovery of microwaves, he said, "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions requires to support life. In the absence of an absurd, improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest, underline, one might say, there is a supernatural plan." Science really tells us.

You know, I always think it's funny if it wasn't so sad when you see a different nature program and they speak as though Mother Nature has a mind. "Look at how nature has designed this to happen and that to happen." And I'm going, "Does nature think? You're saying that there is something out there that's thinking and planning." Clearly, there's a plan involved. But they say, "Don't call it 'God.' Whatever you do, don't call it 'God.'" But obviously, I mean, just think about how evolution could explain the intricacies of our bodies and how a piece of skin would eventually start, through exposure to light, turning into an eyeball. Even Darwin said the eyeball mystifies him. He can't find any scenario or scheme where it would develop itself. And that's just one of many.

Abiogenesis, or informally, the idea of life arising from non-living matter such as simple organic compounds, has never been observed. There is not a single solitary--no matter what you've heard, there is not a single solitary case anywhere in the observable world where we have seen life arising from non-life. You cannot take a piece of rock and plant it and get a sunflower plant. Even a seed. You can't make a seed, something simple.

Now, when they first started teaching this idea of spontaneous generation, and the idea that life arises from non-life, they'd look at a cell and say, "Oh, you know, it looks like a little bit of--" They were looking under primitive telescopes, and all they saw was what you see in an egg. They saw there's this wall. There's a protoplasm. There's a nucleus. And they said, "Maybe that could happen by itself." But now, with their super microscopes, they look at a cell, and there's a virtual city of factories and activity and chemical reactions that are taking place, and all these machines that are in there. I'm using "machines." They're biological, but they're moving around, and they swim, and they propel themselves, and they talk. They have language where they're talking to the other machines and saying, "We need a little more of this. No, less of that." The cell has got so much going on.

The idea that lightning might hit a piece of water and develop one of those is beyond absurd. Biology in plants and animals is a miracle that makes it very clear that there was a design involved. There had to be a Creator. And you are composed of billions of those little things that are all talking to each other. And do you realize you could have one single fertilized cell--? The moment after fertilization takes-- you got one cell of life. Do you realize, in that one microscopic thing, it's saying, "This is gonna be Bill. He's gonna have red hair. He's gonna have green eyes. His teeth are gonna be strong. His heart is gonna be average. He's gonna be roughly this tall, and he's gonna be quicker than most." I mean, just all this interesting information, "And Bill's gonna have freckles." And it's all contained in the DNA of one single cell. All that information's stored.

"God said, 'Let the earth bring forth living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth, each according to their kind.'" Do we observe evolution in the world? Yes, microevolution, Darwin saw microevolution. He saw finches on Galapagos that developed their beaks differently so they could eat different kinds of food, but they were all finches. There is not a single example you can see anywhere in the world of macroevolution, where a cat turns into an alligator, because they are different kinds. There are little cats and there are lions. They're all cats. See what I'm saying?

Doug: Don't go anywhere, friends. In just a moment, we'll return for the rest of today's presentation.

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Well, let's get back to the rest of today's presentation and learn some more amazing facts from the Word of God.

Doug: Then you've got mathematics. Now, I'll admit, I'm a little bit out of my league now because it wasn't my best field going through school. I did very well in history, but not so good in math. But I do remember Isaac Newton, who was considered among the greatest mathematicians as well as physicists of the 17th century. Other physicists sought his help in finding mathematical equations that would help predict the workings of the solar system. He found these answers in mathematical laws, and he did that in the laws of gravity based on his discovery of calculus. All the space missions depend on Isaac Newton's science of calculus to predict how they can orbit these vehicles and use the gravitational pull of a certain amount of mass to then sling them back. Whether it's a satellite going off, like the Voyager 1 and 2 that have now left our solar system, they basically were able to sling themselves using the force of gravity after orbiting these planets. Or the lunar missions that return back to earth, all those mathematical equations, they give us great dependability to say, "This is the law. This is how the law works. It does not vary. It does not alter."

And, I mean, for me, deep math is what we call the multiplication table, but it still works there. Seven times seven, that's one I still remember because you need it for Bible prophecy, is always forty-nine. Do you know, it is the same in any language of the world. Doesn't matter your culture, doesn't matter your religion, 7 times 7 is 49. And so, there is actually great interest in math as explaining God because math is much deeper than the multiplication table.

The argument is that mathematical laws, in order to be properly relied upon, must have attributes that indicate an origin in God. They are true everywhere. That means they're omnipresent. They're true always. They are eternal. They cannot be defied or defeated. That means they're omnipotent. They're rational and they have language characteristics. That makes them personal.

Notice what I just said. Math is omnipresent, omnipotent, eternal. It's omniscient, it has a personal relationship. It sounds like it expresses the mind of God. Albert Einstein said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." I mean, even in the math that God has written.

Then you've got the concept of good and evil. Actually, this is the point that many people turn to to say, "There can't be a God." They say, "If there was a God, why do so many innocent people suffer? If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, why's there so much evil in the world? And evil in the world proves there is no God." And I'd say, "No, actually, evil proves there is a God, not that God is evil. But the reason you know that there is evil is because God is good. How do you know a line is crooked unless you knew what straight was? The reason you are even able to identify evil is because there must be a definition for good. And what is that definition? You know, the Bible says, Jesus said, "Only God is good."

Matter of fact, in English, we get the word "God" from "good." When you tell a person, "Good morning," it used to originally be, "God morning," because "God" and "good" are synonymous together. So, in order to protest against evil, a person must first have some transcendent idea of what is good. People around the world agree that evil must be restrained and punished. Even atheists agree with that, most of them. Why? If it is survival of the fittest, then what would it matter? Why is there any right or wrong? Is there any purpose to life? Why would atheists teach in a university? What good is knowledge? They say, "Oh, it's good to be informed." Why?

How do you have any definition of what "good" and "bad" is unless there is some moral value, unless there's a God? Do you see what I'm saying? So, all of it is going to eventually come back to there needs to be an original model for morals, for right and wrong, and that's going to indicate that there's a God, there's a Creator.

I was driving home from work two days ago, and during rush hour, and I came upon, at a light, a group of Geese. There were probably a dozen of them that were--I pulled out my camera and snapped this. It's very busy traffic. You can see, there was actually three--one of them's not in the picture. Three adult geese where shepherding probably eight or ten baby geese through very busy traffic. Now, at this point, you see the light is red. The light wasn't red the whole time. And yet, what do you think the cars did?

Why did the cars stop and let these dumb goose cross the road? Doesn't evolution teach survival of the fittest? Shouldn't we prove that we, with our cars, are more intelligent than they are and just, you know, render them extinct? Why did everybody wait? And I bet some of them were atheists. They waited for the goose to cross the road. [laughing] Because you know what? Everybody has sort of a built-in intrinsic understanding. There is a self-evident truth of certain things being right and wrong. And we all knew intrinsically it would be wrong to hurt those innocent creatures, and especially when you saw the parents putting their lives on the line to try and get their flock across the road.

Winston Churchill said: "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as though nothing had happened." The evidence is there if a person wants to know, "Is there a God?" And man, I think, is an example of that. "What a piece of work," Shakespeare said, "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express, how admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god--the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!"

Humans think in the abstract. We're able to record and communicate, now digitally record. We're free moral agents. We've got personalities. We're virtually unpredictable, unlike goldfish and ants. People are so unique because the Bible says, Genesis 1:26: "God said, 'Let us make man in our image,'" clearly, man is the dominant species on the planet. You can see what he's made from, the heavens. "Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all of the earth."

Man has learned more in the last 200 years. We didn't know about microbes and microwaves and radio waves and light waves, and there's so much that we've learned, to think that, just in this one generation. God also has made us for a relationship, which is proof of God, and God wants to have a relationship with us. Jeremiah 31:3: "The Lord has appeared to me of old, saying, 'Yes, I have you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.'"

But do you know what some of the best evidence is? It's in Jesus. I know he is a biblical character, but history also records Jesus. You will find him recorded in history. In our recent tour of Israel, our guide was an expert on Flavius Josephus, who quoted that Jesus was a real character who lived in a real time who was crucified. Now, if a person doesn't believe, and they're just believing a lie, and the apostles got together and said, "Here, I'll tell you what. Let's create our own religion. Maybe we can use it to raise money. And let's say this guy really rose from the dead, and let's say he did all these miracles. Let's make this whole thing up."

You know, if you get a few people that know that there is a conspiracy, it doesn't last long. Somebody leaks, somebody caves in. I remember a few years ago meeting Chuck Colson. He was part of the Nixon Watergate scandal. He was one of the insiders. And there was a conspiracy, and they admitted it. And Colson, who was also an attorney, he went to jail for his crime. He was converted in jail. And he tells how, as soon as they realized--they all said, "We'll stand for the president. We're going to deny everything." But as soon as they realized they were going to jail, and the attorney generals began to interview them, it didn't take very long for one of them to say, "I'll turn on all the others if you'll spare me." They were so ready to lie, and tell the truth, whatever they had to do to save their skin. They all ended up turning and confessing.

But with the apostles, they never changed their story. They were stoned. They were beaten. They went into strange countries. They were tortured. They came away from the torture and they kept saying the same thing, that Jesus was the Son of God, even to the point of being beheaded like Paul, or crucified like Peter. If it was a made-up story, all the evidence would say, "Wow, that is the best trick that's ever been pulled in civilization, that they could keep it together." Every one of them put their lives on the line that "we were witnesses of these things." And that's how John ends the Bible. He says, "I, John, saw. These things are true." So, if you believe the Bible, there's no question. But even if you're just going to look at history, Christ said, "The things that I teach, they'll never be forgotten. It's going to go into all the world." How did he know that? He was an uneducated carpenter. It happened, didn't it?

So, in Christ, the idea that someone would live a perfect, sinless life and show so much love, that's further evidence that God is a living God. And so, friends, I would like to submit to you that--you know, I would like to close actually with a Scripture: "Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you have formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God." God is eternal. Amen, friends?

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Announcer: What if you could know the future? What would you do? What would you change? To see the future, you must understand the past. Get this intriguing documentary hosted by Pastor Doug Batchelor explores the most striking Bible prophecies that have been dramatically fulfilled throughout history. Kingdoms in Time. For more information visit KingdomsinTime.com.

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