Fred Zaspel:
Hi, this is Fred Zaspel, editor at Books At a Glance we’re talking today to Frank Turek. He is the director of an apologetics ministry called Cross Examined. He’s also the author of Stealing From God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case. You have to love the title, Stealing From God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case. Good to have you with us Frank, thanks for coming.
Frank Turek:
Hey Fred, thanks for having me.
Fred Zaspel:
First, introduce yourself to our readers, tell us about your ministry, Cross Examined, what’s that all about?
Frank Turek:
Cross Examined. We started about 10 years ago because we recognize that about 75% of young people walk away from the church once they leave home and one of the reasons they do this is intellectually they don’t know why Christianity is true. So we try to provide them evidence as to why Christianity is true. We do that on college campuses, high schools, churches, obviously on the Internet. We have an app, the Cross Examined app, that has a whole bunch of quick answers on it for people.
And so we have been doing this for about 10 years now as I said, spending a lot of time on college campuses and high school campuses. Most of what we do is based upon Stealing From God, the new book or I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, a book I co-wrote with Dr. Norman Geisler.
Fred Zaspel:
Okay, tell us about this new book, Stealing from God; explain your title for us and your overall thesis.
Frank Turek:
First of all it’s not about tithing, Fred. (laughing) I always hear, “Is this about tithing?”
Fred Zaspel:
(laughing) I love it.
Frank Turek:
The subtitle which you mentioned earlier is important. The book is called, Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case. What I’m saying here is that atheists are using aspects of reality to argue against God, but these aspects of reality wouldn’t exist if atheism were true. They only exist if God exists. Let me give you just one real brief example: atheists often say there is too much evil in the world for there to be a good God. The problem is, for them to say there is too much evil in the world they have to assume there is good because evil doesn’t make sense unless there is a standard of good. But in order for there to be a standard of good, an objective standard of good, God must exist. So evil doesn’t disprove God. Evil may prove there is a devil out there.
Evil actually shows that there has to be a being called God by definition, God’s nature is the very standard of good. So in order to argue against God, atheists have to steal from God to say he doesn’t exist. They have to steal this concept of good in order to make sense of evil to say God doesn’t exist. And we do that for several other categories, several other subjects as well in the book.
Fred Zaspel:
That’s great. Yeah, who are you to come up with this idea of good if God is there.
Frank Turek:
Exactly.
Fred Zaspel:
Who is your target audience? Who is the book aimed at?
Frank Turek:
Well, obviously people who are interested in evidence and apologetics. We are trying to equip Christians, because the book is written at a very popular level. We’re taking what can be complex issues and try to present them in a popular way so we cover some major issues and there that you hear in the culture. The book is oriented around CRIMES. C-R-I-M-E-S, and each chapter in the book deals with a different one of these letters.
The C stands for causality. The R stands for reason. The I stands for information and intentionality. The M and crime stands for morality. The E evil, and the S science. These are things, Fred, that atheists often point to in order to say atheism is true, yet none of them would exist unless God existed. There would be no such thing as causality, reason, information, morality, evil or science unless God existed.
Fred Zaspel:
Well, I love the concept. Let’s chase it a little. You emphasize first of all that an atheist is not one who merely lacks belief in God. What’s your point there, and why is that important?
Frank Turek:
Well, because atheists try to get out of having a burden of proof for their position by simply saying, “Well, we just lack a belief in God as atheists, we don’t have any positive beliefs.” First of all that’s not true. They don’t just lack a belief in God, atheists have a positive belief in materialism. In other words they think everything is made of materials, everything is made of molecules.
They also quite frequently argue that there is no God because they have certain theories like quantum theory to explain the universe or evolution to explain new life forms or the multiverse to say that our universe doesn’t have to be designed, we just happen to be in the universe that by chance has these certain fine-tuned characteristics. So they come up with positive reasons to explain the universe in reality in the absence of God. They’re not just saying, “We don’t believe in God,” they are saying, “We believe in certain things like materialism.”
Secondly, the reason it’s important is if they are just saying they lack of belief in God then they are not really saying anything about the real world, there just saying something about their own psychological state. Well, so what? Rocks lack of belief in God. Outhouses lack of belief in God. Trees lack of belief in God. But that’s not really saying anything positive about the universe. That’s just saying something about their own psychological state.
I mean if I were to say to an atheist, “Well, look I just lack a belief in materialism.” Does that necessarily mean that I am making a positive case for Christianity? No. I have to give positive reasons for my positive beliefs. Likewise atheists have to give positive reasons for why they believe the universe can be explained in materialistic terms in the absence of a being we call God.
Fred Zaspel:
Very good.
Frank Turek:
Also, let me mention one other thing. If the word atheist does not mean someone who says there is no God then what do we call people who say there is no God? If we don’t call them atheists what do we call them? I mean someone who says I lack of belief in God is just saying something about his own psychological state, he’s not really saying anything about the real world. When I say I have a belief in God and I think that reflects reality I am making a positive assertion that there is a being out there called God. Whereas atheists are also making a positive assertion when they say there is no God, they are saying that the world can be explained in these other means: materialism, evolution, quantum theory, all these other things. So we have an even playing field here. We both have the burden of proof to explain reality by our worldview.
Fred Zaspel:
Very good. Let’s take another sample from your book. You say, if atheism is true, there’s no way to know it with any confidence. In fact if atheism is true, there’s no way to know anything with any confidence.” Explain your point for us.
Frank Turek:
Yes, excellent question. Atheists claim to be champions of reason. They even often organize reason rallies. They had one back in in DC back in 2012 I think it was. And they claim to be freethinkers. The problem here, Fred, is there is no free nor is there thinking going on if atheism is true. Why? Because atheists claim that atheistic materialism is true. In other words, we are just molecular machines. We are nothing but moist robots. Every thought we have, according to the atheists, is the result of a previous natural cause. Just the laws of physics. So we’re not really free, and we are not really reasoning. We are no different from a Coke can fizzing, if materialistic atheism is true.
You see, the category of immaterial reality, and when I say immaterial reality I mean the laws of logic, I mean the fact that we have in mind and not just a brain, that’s not available to the atheist. But that’s what the laws of logic and our ability to reason require. I mean, if we are just molecular machines we’re not really reasoning, we’re just reacting.
Now on the other hand, reason and the laws of logic are well explained by a theistic God whose very nature is rational. I mean John’s Gospel declares, in the beginning was the word or rationality, the logos, from which we get the word logic. It opens up that way because his nature is the ground of logic, the ground of reason. And in fact you think about this, it’s ironic that atheists must rely on faith rather than reason. Because, since they are materialists, like Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, they claim that consciousness and free will are illusions. Now I wonder if they freely came to those conclusions while conscious, but I will leave that aside. (laughing)
If they are correct, Fred, that everything is just molecules, there is no immaterial reality, then you and I don’t really exist and neither do arguments. We are just molecular machines that are reacting not reasoning. That’s why I say, atheistic materialism has destroyed all tools necessary to make an intellectual case for atheism or anything else.
Fred Zaspel:
So logic itself is impossible.
Frank Turek:
That’s right, logic itself is impossible, reason is impossible. That’s why they have to steal from God to try and argue against him. They have to steal reason. They have to steal the laws of logic. They have to steal the fact that this is a rational universe while they try and make rational arguments that there is no God. And in order to do that, the only way they can do it is to accept it on blind faith.
Fred Zaspel:
So they can’t really live with their own assertions.
Frank Turek:
They can’t really live with it; they can’t make an intellectual argument for atheism without assuming rationality which can’t be explained by materialism, can only be explained by a theistic God.
Fred Zaspel:
All right, “the God of the gaps.” That’s an expression that has become very popular. What’s meant by that expression and what are some of the problems associated with it?
Frank Turek:
“God of the gaps” is when you try and say that you can’t find a natural cause for a particular phenomenon and so you plug God in the gap of your knowledge and say, “Well God must have done it.” For example, we used to think that maybe thunder was caused by the gods directly. You know, maybe they’re bowling up there, something like that. So we said, “Oh, God must be doing this,” and then we learned there is a natural explanation for this phenomenon known as thunder and so now we look pretty stupid by plugging God into the gap in our knowledge. But that’s not what we’re doing here and I guess you have to explain it by example.
For example, in the human genome we have a word that’s the longest word we’ve ever discovered. It’s 3.5 billion letters long. Now whenever we see a word or message we always assume that there must be a mind behind it. You don’t find random messages from natural forces. Natural forces themselves don’t create messages. And yet when you find a message that’s 3.5 billion letters long, you know there’s got to be a mind behind it.
If there’s a message there’s got to be a messenger. In fact Bill Gates said that the human DNA is like a software program but it’s far more complicated than anything we’ve ever created. Well if there’s a program there must be a programmer. And so when we say there must be intelligence behind the human genome, we don’t just lack a natural explanation for that. We don’t just have a gap in our knowledge, we see that the message always points back to a mind.
So we don’t just lack a natural explanation, we have positive, empirically verifiable evidence for an intelligent being when we see a message. So we are not arguing from gaps, we’re arguing not for what we don’t know, we’re arguing from what we do know. When we see a message it always points back to a mind. So this is not a “God of the gaps” argument. We are not making “God of the gaps” arguments here.
Fred Zaspel:
That’s an important distinction. All right, we are accustomed to hearing that modern science has disproved the existence of God. How is that claim impossible? And, to turn the tables, how is it that theism supports science and that without theism science is impossible?
Frank Turek:
Yeah, that’s a whole chapter in the book. In fact the title of the chapter is called, Science Doesn’t say Anything; Scientists Do. When I mean by that is… I always hear people in the culture saying, science says this or science says that. Even in the global warming controversy. Science says this… No. Science doesn’t say a thing. All data needs to be gathered. All data needs to be interpreted. And science doesn’t do that. Scientists do. And sometimes a worldview of a scientist will determine how he or she interprets the evidence.
And we see this in the macroevolution debate we see evidence pointing to an intelligence, the 3.5 billion letter genetic code in every human being, and yet scientists have already ruled philosophically that there can’t be an intelligence out there. So he or she always says it has to be a natural cause. Well that’s not a result of science, that’s the result of the scientists’ philosophical predisposition toward atheism.
Another aspect of this, Fred, it’s a big topic, but to say that science can disprove God is like saying that a mechanic can disprove the existence of Henry Ford. What I mean by that is (and this is an illustration I borrowed from John Lennox from Oxford University). He always asked to students, you’ve got a Ford motor car in front of you, say a model T, and he says I’m going to give you two possible causes of the model T: Henry Ford or the laws of internal combustion.
And the students always say, “Dr. Lennox you need both.” And he says, “Exactly.” You need Henry Ford to create the model T and then you need the laws of internal combustion to remain consistent and precise in order for the model T to work. If the laws of internal combustion changed every five minutes the model T would never work. And he said, I don’t understand why atheists don’t see this point.
You can study the natural universe and learn as much as you can about cause and effect by the natural laws and that should never tell you that you don’t need a creator or sustainer of those very natural laws. Just like you can study a model T and learn everything you can about it, about how it works, but that should never cause you to come to the conclusion that there was no creator of the model T. In fact the more you understand the model T, the more you realize that it had to of been designed. And this is the way we know God. We know God by his effects, we see the creation we know there must be a creator. We see the conscience we know there must be a moral lawgiver. So we are arguing from effect to cause.
One other aspect of this I think we need to point out is that science would be impossible unless the laws of nature were consistent and precise. I mean do you ever think about this? Why are the laws of nature so consistent and precise? Why do they do the same thing over and over again? It seems to me, the reason for that is, is because this is not a random universe, this is a rationally designed universe and there is a being holding together the very laws of nature we used to do science. If nature was herky-jerky or random we couldn’t study cause and effect.
So nature itself requires a being that we would call God to keep everything designed and goal-directed, and I spent a lot of time on this in the book in the chapter on Intentionality, that the universe is goal-directed and everything in the universe is goal-directed. That’s because goal-directed by a sustaining intellect we call God. This is, by the way, why Paul says, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” And the writer of Hebrews says that the universe is held together by His sustaining word. Because the universe is designed and goal-directed, and that’s what you need in order to do science. You couldn’t do science without God.
Fred Zaspel:
Excellent. Do you have any other new books in the making that we can watch for?
Frank Turek:
I am working on another book but it’s not going to be done for quite a while. We have a lot of videos and we have a lot of blog posts and other resources that people could get at crossexamined.org and our Facebook pages so we are putting out a lot of new information every day. We are learning that the young people that we are aiming at particularly are on their iPhones and their droids and so we put out a lot of short videos, Q&A videos and things that we take from our seminars on college and high school campuses. These things spread around pretty well.
Fred Zaspel:
We’re talking to Frank Turek. He is the director of Cross Examined. Check them out at crossexamined.org. We’re talking about his book, Stealing From God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case. You’ll enjoy the book; I encourage you to take a look at it. Frank, thanks for being with us.
Frank Turek:
Fred, a pleasure. Thanks for what you’re doing at Books At a Glance. I am a subscriber by the way.
Fred Zaspel:
Thanks a lot.
