Ravi Zacharias - Is Faith Delusional?
There are battles. Battles for ideas raging in our times reaching a feverous pitch. I just heard this afternoon that Richard Dawkins is planning a university tour of the United States covering this country within a matter of a few weeks and then planning a debaptizing service for the masses that come and want to renounce their faith and God and join themselves be force with a non theistic, atheistic, and what an effect Alla Dawkins is an anti theistic stridency, which is seeking to destroy everything that would smack of a transcendent belief.
Many of you have heard me quote this before but allow me to quote it to you again because this was given some 30 years ago by the famed Malcolm Muggeridge and he will help me to position what I want to say to you and there's a lot I want to squeeze in in the time we have. He said this, "It is difficult to resist the conclusion that 20th century man has decided to abolish himself, tired of the struggle to be himself, he had created boredom out of his own affluence, impotence out of his own erotomania, and vulnerability out of his own strength. He himself blows the trumpet that brings the walls of his own cities crashing down until at last having educated himself into imbecility, having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction, he keels over a weary battered old brontosaurus and become extinct". Boredom out of his own affluence, impotence out of his own erotomania, vulnerability out of his own strength. The strength of education has made us vulnerable to some extreme radical destructive views.
It was Victor Frankl who asserted that the views that were ultimately espoused by the Third Reich ought not to be blamed at some defense ministry portfolio or some ministry of defense but at the lecterns and desks of atheistic scientists and philosophers. One of the things I've noticed as a scholar on the comparative religious world where various world views, various religions is how little Richard Dawkins actually knows about world religions including Christianity. He is abysmally ignorant of the statements he makes. One statement he makes for example is this, "The chances of you believing something in a transcendent order, contrary to that which you were brought up with". The chances, says Dawkins are zero.
My, my, my. Has he read what's happening in China? Did he know what Mao Tse-Tung said when he burned the libraries and the seminaries of all religious world views? And there in 1966, in August, when these things were put into a bonfire and burned, he said the last vestiges of any belief in God are over. They're finished, never to come back to haunt China again. Mao Tse-Tung has come and gone. The church in China is the fastest growing church in the world today. With over 100 million they say. When I spoke at the prestigious Tsinghua University, which has produced all of their great scholars in their thinking of Marxist world view. It was not at all accidental to hear them asking, leaning forward, about God, about what this means, what it's intimations are, what it's significant is.
David Aikman in his book on "The Delusion of Disbelief" points out what's happening in the scholarly world today in China. So what I want to ladies and gentleman is start off with this. How does the naturalist compare to the theist in the way they come to know anything? How do you know anything of any order that is outside of you and consider it to be believable and credible. There really are actually three ways that we divide this up without getting into some rigorous study of the certainty of knowledge. Number one is this: to claim a total objectivity or a transcendence but that is physiologically, logically, and ideologically impossible. Let me explain that statement for you. Can you really get out of this box to a point of total transcendence where you mind is working with a 100% objectivity where you can make pronouncements about reality that are absolutely certain in a comprehensive sense about everything. But when you read some of their own statements, here's what you read. This is interesting.
Huxley writing in the 40's. I have motives for not wanting this world to have meaning. Consequently I have assumed that it has none and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in this world is not concerned exclusively with the problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why her personally should not do as he wants to do or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. For my myself personally, listen now please, writing in 1946 says Huxley, for myself personally the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political. To assume that this world has no meaning freed me from any moorings of any kind. I wanted this world not to have meaning.
Can a person like that be totally objective, totally transcending on pronouncements of ultimate reality. Listen for example to this statement that is given to us by Richard Lewontin, who is a geneticist. "We take the side of science in side of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs. In spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health in life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just so stories". But David Berlinski comes out with this question: why should any discerning man or woman take the side of science or anything else under these circumstances. Richard Lewontin goes on to say why he does not want anything outside of science. Here's his answer: because we cannot allow a divine foot in the door. He does not want a divine foot in the door.
Berlinski responds by saying this: if one is obliged to accept absurdities for fear of a divine foot, imagine what prodigies of effort would be required were the rest of the divine torso to be found wedged at the door with some justifying irritation demanding to be let in. Berlinksi is a secular thinker. Lewontin is telling me that he would believe in the absurd because he doesn't want a divine foot in the door". He said, "What is Lewontin going to do if the divine torso itself is wedged forcing itself in demanding an explanation"?
So David Berlinski in his book, The Devil's Delusion and the jacket cover, and by the way he's had personal contact with John Lennox, his book, The Devil's Delusion, is worth buying, read it again and again, except for the last chapter, which I have some difficulties with in its comparison with written revelation and the book of nature. The rest of the book is a scathing critique of the pretensions of this atheism. In the jacket cover he says this:
Has anyone provided a proof of God's inexistence? Not even close. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Had the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good? Not even close to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify their claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.
So you've got the total transcendent objective way of looking at it. The second one is total determinism. Total determinism runs something like this: it is the idea that we are so locked into our DNA, so locked into our biochemical makeup, that whatever we do, whatever we think, whatever we reason is that locked in preprogrammed predetermined reaction to the hard wiring and the soft wiring that we have. Like a computer. If you press this button, that will emerge. If you press a combination of these buttons, that's the way it will be.
I remember when I was listening to Stephen Hawking speak. And Stephen Hawking was going to give a talk on his humanity determined or free. The auditorium was jammed. As you know, Hawking has suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease, is not able to speak, and therefore a cal tech scientist has made for him a fantastic computer that takes the letters that he puts in, forms the words, collates them into sentences, and then synthetically produces a voice, around the base of which he speaks. So he prepares this talk long before. There are two ways in which he controls it. Either by a one centimeter move of his index finger, which controls an infrared ray, or if that stops working, by the batting of an eyelid, this brilliant scientist is able to somehow communicate and speak to the audiences.
His whole talk was on this, is humanity determined or free. He said there was no escape from the fact that determinism was the inexorable flow of naturalistic assumptions. There's no way to break away from this hardwiring. But listen now to how Berlinski responds to one of the scientists who did this study. "After comparing more then," listen very carefully to this quote please, "After comparing more than 2.000 DNA samples, an American molecular geneticist, Dean Hamer, concluded that a person's capacity to believe in God, is linked to his brain chemicals". And he goes onto say, "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity," but listen now, "It is because he is hardwired by his brain chemicals, perhaps it will not be amiss," says Berlinski, "That Dr. Hamer has made the same claim about homosexuality. And if he is refrained from arguing that a person's capacity to believe in molecular genetics is linked to a brain chemical, it is no doubt, owing to the prudent since, that once that door is open, God alone knows how and when any one will be able to slam it shut again".
See what he's saying? That a person's belief in God is sort of ultimately produced by some kind of chemicals in the brain. He's wired and the chemistry produces that. He went on to say that, that's how homosexuality is ultimately produced. And Berlinski rightly raises the question, if all of our behavior and all of our thinking is so chemically engendered, what about the belief itself that it is all chemically engendered, is not produced by some chemistry.
And so as we move from total objectivity, to total determinism, we come to the third option, which is semi transcendence. This is the way I see it. Humanity is able to move outside of itself to a legitimate degree, and what it ends up doing really, in the ability to move out of itself to a legitimate degree, is able to then measure its pronouncements by external testing, by external verification, for correspondence and coherence. When you make a statement, you can check it out correspondingly to be true. When you build a system, you can look at it as a systemically coherent world view.
This is the way it is in our courts of law. This is ought to be the way it is in a scientific lab itself. When you make a statement, it's measured against the referent. When you put together a system, it ought to be coherent and brought together. Total transcendence is logically, biologically, and ideology impossible. Total determinism, is self-defeating. The semi transcendent way, is the only way we are able to half rise, outside of yourself, make meaningful statements about reality, and measure them up against the truth as they really corresponds. I will check this out against what Jesus taught and said as we progress along. But what we are told by the scientist is ultimately this, that we cannot get out from determinism, but they make positions of absolute statement all along vitiating that principle as it begins that they themselves are determined to say that.
So I've pinned this statement down. What the naturalists does is to claim total transcendence an impossibility while biologically driven to determinism, making a logically fatal move, by attacking the only meaningful option of semi transcendence and crucifying it with a physiological description of delusion. They look at you and me, and tell us, that we are ultimately deluded. So I want to move to this championing of their delusion cause and respond with the answers of Christ. The fact of the matter is this, that as we move and understand it, the term has taken on such coinage.
Richard Dawkins wrote The God Delusion. Our friend Alister McGrath from Oxford responded with the Dawkins delusion. David Aikman wrote The Delusion of Disbelief, and David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion. So the word delusion is floating around all over the place now, each one telling the other that he or she is completely deluded. I have a present in the audience, a psychologist who helped me get this from a book, the essentials of clinical practice. Here's the definition they give of delusion, and I want to show to you at the end of it, who is more deluded in their thinking.
Delusions are the most extreme deviation and thought content. They are defined as fixed false beliefs that are maintained despite objective evidence and logical argument to the contrary. Furthermore, the belief is not one ordinarily shared by others who have similar educational or sociocultural backgrounds.
We repeat some words here, they are the most extreme deviation in thought. They are defined as fixed false beliefs that are maintained despite objective evidence and logical argument to the contrary. Furthermore, the belief is not one ordinarily shared by others who have similar educational or sociocultural backgrounds.
Now, they tell us that our belief in God is delusionary, that our faith in God is that one of a delusion. So let me start off with positioning two possibilities and then move to the argument for existence from God and ultimately show why it is the Christ who reveals to us that which is true which is what the atheists are really resisting. Many, many years ago, when I was at university, and doing my studies at graduate work, the biggest named atheist then was Anthony Flew. At that time, we had to read everything Anthony Flew had written. Now of late of course Anthony Flew had disavowed his atheism and become a modified theist. He calls himself a deist. The irony of this is, had he changed his mind 30 years ago, it would have saved me an awful lot of reading and an awful lot of studies.
Now, he is writing against Dawkins. He's telling us that Dawkins has not done his homework philosophically. But Anthony Flew, 40 years ago wrote this, he would be embarrassed by it now, but this is what he said:
Once upon a time, two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer said, 'some gardener must tend this plot.' So they pitched their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. Ah, but perhaps a somebody, there is an invisible gardener, so they set up a barbed wire fence. They electrified it, they patrol it with blood hounds, for they remember about H.G. Wells and the invisible man. But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the believer is not convinced. But there is a gardener, I'm telling you there is a garner. He's invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks. A gardener who has no sent and makes no sound, but there is a gardener. This gardener comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.' At last a sceptic despaired, 'ah, but what remains of your original assertion? How just does this what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener, or even from no gardener at all?'
See what he's saying? There's the question. How does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all? That was the question Flew posed four decades ago. John Frame, the philosopher, responded with this parable.
"Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. A man was there pulling weeds, applying fertilizer, trimming branches. The man turned to the explorer and introduced himself as the royal gardener. One explorer shook his hand and exchanged pleasantries. The other ignored the gardener and turned away. "There can be no gardener in this part of the jungle," he said. "This must be some kind of trick. Someone is trying to discredit us from our previous findings". So they pitched camp. But every day this gardener arrives, tends the plot. Soon the plot is bursting with perfectly arranged blooms. Ah, he's only doing it because we are here to fool us into thinking there is a royal gardener. One day the gardener takes them to a royal palace. Introduces the explorers to a score of officials who verify the gardener's status. Then the sceptic tries a last resort. "Our senses are deceiving us. There is no gardener, no blooms, no palace, no officials. It's all a hoax". Finally, the believer despairs. But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does this mirage, as you call it, differ from a real gardener"?
Brilliant isn't it? Absolutely brilliant. Now, what about the existence of God? See, these are the two points the atheists keep making. We can't devein them, but I want to at least tackle them in brief. The first argument that they make, is there's really no denotative proof of God. If Luigi made my pizza, I can point to Luigi and say, "Luigi made my pizza". But if you say God made this world, point me to God. Show me God. And so Berlinski takes on Sam Harris. This is brilliant.
Sam Harris argues, that to believe that God exists, is to believe that I stand in some relation to his existence, such that his existence itself is the reason for my belief. This sounds very much as if belief in God could only be justified, if God were to call attention to himself, conspicuously waving a finger at us, say by dramatically waggling that finger, or that hand. But if this is so, then parody of reasoning, one might argue, that belief in neutrinos, that neutrinos have mass, is to believe that I stand in some relation to their mass, such that their mass is itself the reason for my belief. But how does a neutrino waggle its finger? A neutrino by itself cannot function as a reason for my belief. It is a subatomic particle for heaven's sake. What I believe is a proposition of an abstract entity. That neutrinos have mass. How could a subatomic particle enter into a relationship with the object of my belief? But neither can a neutrino be the cause of my belief. I have after all never seen a neutrino. Not one of my neutrinos has ever gotten me to believe in it. The neutrino together with almost everything else, lies at the end of an immense inferential trail of complicated set of judgments.
Hear what he said? It lies at the end of a trail of complicated sets of judgments.
I believe what I do on the base of the fundamental laws of physics. And conjuries of computational schemes, algorithms, specialized programming languages, techniques for numerical integration, huge canned programs, computer graphics, intercalation methods, nifty shortcuts, and the best efforts by mathematicians and physicists to convert the data of various experiments into coherent patterns artfully revealing symmetries and continuous narratives, the neutrino, has nothing to do with it.
Do you know what he's saying? You're telling me you'll only believe in God in such a way if he actually waggles his finger at you? On that basis I would never believe in a neutrino either. He says it takes all of sciences research, all of the capacity of the mind, all of the data, all of the human experience, and so what want to bring to you as I tie this together is, how do we come to this knowledge of God? And what is it that Jesus actually says about himself?
Let me take you through three simple arguments. And they run like this. The first argument is this, if you take any physical quantity in this universe, any physical quantity in this universe, and section it, you will end up with a problem, the problem is this: no matter how you section it, you will never find the reason for its existence in itself. The reason for everything physical, however sectioned, however spliced, will ultimately point to a cause outside of itself. That's the first stage of the argument. No matter how you section any physical quantity, you will always end up with a state of affairs where it does not explain its own existence.
Then you get to the second stage of the argument. The second stage of the argument runs something like this: whenever you see intelligibility and specified complexity, especially in the nature of language and abstract reasoning — whenever you see intelligibility or specified complexity, especially in the nature of language and abstract reasoning, you always assume an intelligence behind it. You would never look at a sonnet by Shakespeare and assume that a million monkeys pounding on some typewriters or computers ultimately produced that sonnet. You will never look at a dictionary and say it could have developed because of an explosion in a printing press. Never. Whenever you see intelligibility or specified complexity, you always assume an intelligence behind it.
If you were to walk onto a planet that was totally foreign to you, and you saw one million pebbles in a perfect triangle, you can reasonably say that it happened over 15 billion years, it just came together. You can assume that. You can assume that, because it's an aesthetic design. But if you walked onto that platform and saw one piece of paper, and said, "Hello, John. I hope you brought some good Indian recipes with you," would you, for even one solitary moment, think that 15 billion years had put that sentence together? Tell me the truth.
You're looking at language. You're looking at sense. When a spaceship blows up, we say, what went wrong? When our astronauts landed on the moon, there wasn't a piece of paper there to welcome them, and yet the voice was heard across the tens of thousands of miles. What they saw was enough to prompt them to say the opening lines of the Word of God, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth". Not one of you, hearing the first words from the mouth of your child, "Mummy," or "Daddy," or the simple epitaph, "I love you", will think for a moment, it is a random qualication of atoms uttering to you some unfathomable mysteries. Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris had better beware, because the one question they are raising against the existence of God is that there's so much of evil in this world, which is such a self-defeating argument.
I was in Minnesota three days ago, and the head of the Atheistic Association of Minneapolis came, and he was taking me on toe-to-toe, and the angriest he became was when he was talking about God! "God is the greatest abortionist". I said, "What's wrong with that"? "And what's wrong with that? You just said that you deny anything of transcendent value, except freedom. What's wrong with that"? The anger with which they speak about God, you would not speak against the tooth fairy! Something in the back of their minds tell them he's real, and we're angry. And so, as I pull it together, I want to say this. It better beware of the human condition.
Here's what Christopher Hitchens says. "How much self-respect must be sacrificed in order that one may squirm continually in an awareness of one's own sin"? I dunno why they say it in such a complicated manner, but here's what he says. "How much self-respect must be sacrificed in order that one may squirm continually in an awareness of one's own sin"? What he's really saying is why do I have to sacrifice all of this self-respect of mine to confess my sin? Berlinski says, "The honest answer to Mr. Hitchens is that for most of us, self-respect is possible only if the squirming is considerable".
So, I take you to the person of Jesus, and I show you what it is that he had to say about evil. Please follow me. Jesus described himself in the following titles. The first is the Son of David. This is an incredible title, and I'll just breeze through these ideas. One of the chapters that tells us about this is when a blind man, and our Bible is remarkable in what it says and what it doesn't say. He tells us there was a man, blind from birth, his name was Bartimaeus. Do you realize when you read that, he has no name? He was the son of Timaeus. He has no name, Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus. The only thing the Bible tells about him is these two things. He's a son of Timaeus, and he's blind.
Jesus walks over to him and says, "What do you want from me"? He says, "Rabbi, I want to see. I want to see". Jesus looks at him and pays him the compliment of his individuality, which had never been probably paid before. He says, "Great is your faith. Your faith has made you whole", and he gives the man back his sight. Here is the point of that faith. It was based on his knowledge that this man had done the miracles. That he was the Son of David and prophecy. And what is reMarkable for me is when Jesus affirms him in his individuality. Two things happen here. The great gift that Jesus gives to you and me is that individual respect and individual worth. I am the son of my Father. What a great privilege it is, but I have my own identity, my own D.N.A. God has made me an individual and when by faith at the age of 17 on a bed of suicide, I committed my life to Christ. The answer that God gave to me was not because the faith of my father, but it was because of the faith that I had placed in him. When you place that trust in him personally, he will affirm you and help you to redefine everything and see in a way you'd never seen before.
See in a way you'd never seen before. But here's the point I want to make. Do you know what atheists tell us about the heinousness of theism? Listen to what this statement is by Friedrich Nietzsche, "Equality is a lie concocted by inferior people who arrange themselves in herds to overpower those who are naturally superior to them. The morality of equal rights is herd morality because it opposes the cultivation of superior individuals. It leads to the corruption of the human species".
Mr. Dawkins may talk of all of the horrific things that religion has done. Nietzsche's writings were held by Hitler. Hitler personally presented it to Mussolini and then to Stalin, and the idea of equal rights, equal humanity was an anathema to the Nazi mind. They didn't believe humanity was equal. So, those of you who think the scientists and their secularism are leading you into a Utopia, this is the underpinning of one of those philosophers. His name is Nietzsche who ultimately leads in his own thinking through ethnic superiority to cultural superiority. It was Darwin himself and others who mused and wondered if their scientific theories were taken into metaphysical extrapolations whether we would see violence unparalleled. Think of all the killings that have gone on because of ethnic superiority.
Son of David, Jesus is the Lord over all ethnicity, over all of culture. But then he refers to himself as the Son of Man, and I just want to, this is my major point. I'd like to close. My time is gone. He refers to himself as the Son of Man 80 of the 82 times in the New Testament. Now, here's what I want to tell you. After they recognized him as a Son of Man, I can't go into the theological backdrop of this, he started to tell them that he was headed to the cross of what manner of death he was going to die. What manner of death he was going to die. You see, to them the Son of Man was going to be a triumphant demagogic figure. Jesus changed that and said no. He told them of the manner in which he was going to be suffering at the hands of humanity after they recognized him as the Son of Man. Here's the point I want to make in a hurry. Please follow. This is a linchpin argument for me.
Richards Dawkins was asked the question very plainly what he thought about God. You heard this. It is quoted in many books and David Aikman in his book. Listen to this. It's a mouthful. "What do I think about God? The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Jealous and proud of it. A petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak. A vindictive, blood-thirsty ethnic cleanser. A misogynistic, homophobic racist. Infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully". I guess he doesn't like God. Listen to it. He's jealous, petty, unjust, unforgiving, vindictive, blood-thirsty, misogynistic, homophobic, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Now, he's just finished telling us he's a fictional character. That's half of the point. The other half of the point is when you ask him what he thinks of humanity. He goes on to say that he believes basically in the goodness of humanity without God watching over. Now, I don't know if I'm confused or he is. If God doesn't exist and all these descriptions apply, who did these things? A person is deluded when they believe something contrary to all the evidence. Who is deluded? Who wrote the Old Testament if God didn't inspire the words? Humanity. That would be his answer. And who ordered all those things? Humanity. Why or not how you're so big on humanity and so small on God? When humanity manufactured the God that you deny? Has anybody asked him this question?
Let me read this, move to my final two statements here. In the First World War, humanity killed 15 million. Russian Civil War, nine million. Stalin's regime, 20 million. Second World War, 55 million. Chinese Civil War, 2.5 million. People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, 40 million. Tibet and still counting, 600.000. Congo Free State, 8 million. Mexico, 1910 to 1920, 1 million. Turkish Massacres of Armenians in 1915 to 1923, 1.5 million. China, 1917 to 1928, 800.000. Chinese National, 3.1 million. Korean war, 2.8 million. North Korea, 2 million. Rwanda and Burundi, 1.35 million. Second Indo-China war, 3.5 million. Ethiopia, 400.000. Nigeria, 1 million. Bangladesh, 1.25 million. Cambodia Khmer Rouge, 1.65 million.
I have two pages of statistics here that I could read for you. Berlinski ends that section by saying this, "In considering the assessment that we are better off than we were before, the only conclusion one can profitably draw is that such an excess of stupidity is not often found in nature itself".
Son of David. The Son of Man. Thirdly, I bring to you the Son of God. Here he brings to you carefully and closely the relationship. God is a being in relationship and what God wants from you and me is a relationship with him that then brings us into a relationship with our fellow human beings. I have never had more love and respect for humanity and my love for humanity is based entirely upon my love for God, who created us in his image. Moses wrote 613 laws. David reduced it to 15. Somebody else to 11. Micah to 6. Someone else took 3. Jesus reduced it. No, not to one. He reduced it to two: that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind and your neighbor as yourself. On these two hang all of the laws and the prophets.
Did you hear that? He told me to love him with all my heart and soul and mind and strength and my neighbor as myself. On these two pegs hang the entire corpus of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of laws. That challenge given by God shows me of his love for you and for me. You know, the Bible talks about the Trinity. Berlinski says light is both particles and waves in the famous debate that Einstein had with a fellow scientist. They couldn't conclude it. They agreed that light shows both the properties of particles and waves and so they call it a wavicle. The secular Jew said, "Has it occurred to anybody that for the Christian might not be a problem because of the Trinity". That God can be one and three at same time if light can be particle and a wave at the same time.
If you take a woman who has just been impregnated by her husband, within that moment of conception even unknown to her you've got her, you've got the husband's D.N.A., every blood there flowing and then you've got that little child. Three entities in one being. In an incredible way and a mystery, we think we understand it, we really don't. We just describe it. Even one woman can be three persons distinctive as it were. Is it impossible for God to be three persons in one essence in an infinite scale of transcending all of humanity?
You know, there's a bird that's called a Manx shearwater, and after this, my thought will be brief. A Manx shearwater is a bird that comes on land in wales to lay its egg at the bottom of s rabbit burrow. And so, scientists were trying to see what they could do change this routine. So, they took one of these Manx shearwaters and took it to Cambridge, 250 miles away. Seven hours later, that bird flew back to wales to lay its egg in that little rabbit hole. They were still not convinced this is true. They took another one and placed it at Boston's Logan airport 3.000 miles away. Twelve and a half days later flying 250 miles a day, the Manx shearwater came back to that little island in wales to lay its egg. They could not stop it from coming back.
There's a homing instinct in the bird. There's a homing instinct in you and me. He has made us for himself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in him. And so when he says he's the Son of God, he wants you to become a child of God and find that relationship. And lastly, he is the Savior who offers the greatest hope and the greatest possibility of rescue.
I want to do two things here. Tell you a little story and show you a picture and then close. You know what your biggest problem is and mine and Dawkins and Dennett, Hitchens? It's what goes on inside here. My problem is not Mao Tse-Tung. My problem is what goes on inside here. What I don't need is a better education or more money or more friends. What I need is to find a way to be forgiven for life that's blowing it again and again and again. What I need is for somebody to pick me up and make whole and help the battles that rage within me and rage within you and so when Jesus describes himself as soter, Savior, he's calling you to the cross to tell you that forgiveness is real and in that forgiveness is hope of a life that lives more victoriously and less defeatedly.
I was watching the news about this carnage of how they emptied out their machine guns and filled scores of people there, and there was an Indian-born British actor being interviewed. And he told his story. He was in that restaurant invited by friends, and they were enjoying a beautiful dinner when he heard the bub, bub, bub, bub, and he thought maybe it was just some kind of fire crack works going on outside when suddenly the sound got closer and closer, and they knew as men and women were screaming that it was gunfire. He said I felt two arms just grab everybody on each side, and we were forced under the table and the bullets were flying, bombs, and the grenades and all.
People screaming looking around. Limbs scattered all over the place, and I heard the footsteps of one of them come within about three feet of me and aiming the gun firing at random. The interviewer said to him how come you're still here? He said I don't know how to explain it. All of my friends who were pulled with me, including my host, were dead. He said I'm the only one survived. And she said how come? He said I don't know. All I know is when I got up the silence was there. I was so covered with blood, with someone else's blood, that they must have taken me for dead and spared me because I was covered with another's blood. That's the Gospel. Covered by another's blood.
You have three ways of looking at it. Think you have you have total objectivity? No. Totally determined? No. Semi-transcendent? Yes. I want you to take a look at this and with that we will close. I'm going to show you two pictures on the screen. On the left, you're looking at The Rose Window at the York Minster Cathedral. Beautiful geometrically designed. Every piece among the thousands of pieces perfectly placed. You think it's spectacular? Yes, it is. On the right, you're looking at a section along the Axis of the human DNA Double Helix. It was given to me by Francis Collins, the director of the Human Genome Project. We spoke together at Johns Hopkins, and I use it with permission from him. And this was shown at Johns Hopkins. The left one was shown first. Right one was covered. And the right one was shown and explained what it was. An audible sound went through the audience primarily of skeptics, wow.
Do you know you're looking at that because of which you can look at it? You're admiring that because of which you can admire it. You're thinking and all because of which. You're seeing that which is awesome. It's that semi-transcendent gift to you that God has poured into your individual life that gives you knowledge, all wonder beauty, hope, forgiveness, truth. You're not deluded. You're looking at the handiwork of God and admiring it. Glorious things of thee are spoken.
That is my God. That is my Savior, and in semi-transcendence I say glorious things of thee are spoken. When I see the heavens in the work of your hands, what is there in man that you are mindful of him because the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which is lost. Son of David, Son of Man, Son of God, Savior. That's the truth he gives to us showing the Creator and showing the human heart. I'm not deluded. To deny that takes a greater amount of faith and that's why I'm the side of reason and the faith combination. God bless.