Teaching Tuesday | Lesson 7: Apologetics (God Exists) with John Cueo

Welcome to the July 2025 session of Teaching

Tuesday at Hub City Vineyard. Tonight, we've

got an apologetics presentation on why we believe

God exists. But you can also think of it as why

it's logical and rational. You might even say

that God existing is the only logical conclusion

given the evidence. We'll start by discussing

when and why this question might come up during

evangelism before jumping into that evidence.

Now, I'm not just doing this to give you more

tools in your apologetics toolbox. I've selected

arguments from a variety of disciplines because,

if we're honest, all of us have had doubts about

God in at least one area. This is as much about

strengthening our faith as it is sharing it.

Tonight's resource is a book called Darwin's

Black Box by Michael J. Behe. I used about a

dozen books to collect all of tonight's information,

but Darwin's Black Box is the biggest departure

from any of the books I've recommended previously.

We're going to look at it in more detail later,

but the general idea is that as we learn more

about what happens inside cells, we find mechanisms

and processes that are called irreducibly complex,

meaning they could not have evolved naturally

because they needed all the component parts or

steps to function. It put the nail in the coffin

for evolution for me, and I think you'll all

find it just as interesting. The argument presented

in Darwin's black box is one of many I'll be

presenting tonight as evidence that God exists.

But before we get into those arguments, it's

time for a brief history lesson. In Acts 17,

16 -33, Paul is telling people in Athens about

Jesus, and it's causing quite a ruckus. First,

he gets taken to the city council, then he gets

taken to the Oropagus or Mars Hill, depending

on your translation. He's face -to -face with

civic leaders and the greatest philosophers in

the nation. He begins his speech by mentioning

an altar to the unknown God, a God that the Athenians

thought existed but were otherwise ignorant to

its identity. Paul tells them that this unknown

God is actually the God, the Father, and proceeds

to deliver an evangelistic and apologetic message

on Jesus. Paul structures his presentation as

such because 99 .999999999 % of people in the

history of humanity up to the 1800s share a worldview

with two essential aspects. First, it's ridiculous

I even have to mention this. People believed

in objective reality and truth. The world is

real. We are real. And there are true facts about

the world that we can ascertain. Second, it was

obvious to everyone from observing the world

around them that there was just some sort of

god or gods. The supernatural was a fact of life.

There were just disagreements over the details.

Paul didn't need to argue for these two aspects

because everybody already accepted them. Well,

I mentioned the 1800s. And that's when the trouble

started. humanity started making rapid scientific

and philosophical progress in what we now call

the Enlightenment. Now, that part isn't necessarily

bad by itself. We discovered answers to many

of the greatest mysteries from the past. But

the problem happened when we decided that if

we could demystify those aspects of our existence,

we could do it for all of them. Belief in God

became an intellectual liability, a sign of low

intelligence and lack of trust in science and

human reason. We still see this attitude in universities,

media, and popular culture, with religious people

often characterized as unintelligent, ill -informed,

and gullible. Then the second blow came in the

1960s. One strength of the Enlightenment mindset

was that people believed in an objective reality,

the one that humanity was studying and mastering.

In what some people believed to be a movement

to deliberately sabotage Western civilization,

a new philosophy called postmodernism erupted

from the universities. There is a spectrum of

postmodern views, but it would be summed up as

a rejection of objective truth and reality. To

them, everything is subjective and nothing can

be said to be objectively true. And so the modern

Christian evangelist or apologist can't jump

right in like Paul did, because many people he

encounters will reject objective truth or the

supernatural or both. I need to spend a lot more

time studying postmodernism before I feel qualified

to talk about it, so tonight we're making the

case for the supernatural, in particular, that

God exists. Now, there are a ton of arguments

for God's existence, and apologists have come

up with just as many different ways to categorize

them. For the purposes of this presentation,

I'm using three categories. We'll call them philosophical,

scientific, and Christian -specific, and we'll

look at each one and why I've chosen to divide

them that way, as we go through the arguments.

We'll start with the philosophical category,

and these arguments are those that are made through

internal observation, things like logic, reason,

and contemplation. Because they can't be tested

scientifically, they are often very polarizing,

with some people finding them the most convincing

and others rejecting them totally. We'll start

with the moral argument, which follows a pattern

we'll see a few more times tonight. It starts

with an assertion or condition about reality,

makes an observation about reality, then uses

that observation to support the assertion. For

the moral argument, the assertion is that if

objective morality exists, then a source of that

objective morality must exist, something you

could call an objective moral lawgiver. Now,

the observation made is that objective morality

does exist. This may seem obvious to the Christian,

but atheists often push back against this claim.

So you can present them with some questions like,

Is it ever okay to kill an innocent person for

fun? Or is it ever okay to beat up babies for

fun? Obviously not. Opponents of objective morality

often argue that all morality is subjective.

So you could also look at an example from World

War II. When the Nazis were put on trial at the

Nuremberg trials, they acknowledged that their

actions were wrong, but claimed that they were

done to defeat a greater evil. Many defended

their actions by saying they were just following

orders. The tribunal did not agree. They argue

that individuals were obligated to disobey evil

orders because of their responsibility to a higher

authority. There is an inherent value to human

life that all humans seem to understand, even

if they choose to commit evil acts. And so, if

this objective morality exists, then an objective

moral lawgiver, the one we would call God, exists.

The next philosophical argument is called the

argument from reason. It says that if our sense

of consciousness and ability to think were products

of evolution, and operated solely on laws of

physics, that makes us just organic machines,

and our thoughts are nothing more than illusions.

But all humans have a shared experience of thinking

and inferring information, and although we're

not perfectly rational beings, our brains are

capable of drawing accurate inferences and displaying

creativity. We have idle thoughts and emotions

that are unnecessary for survival and reproduction,

so why would we have evolved this way? That seems

like a waste of resources. This collection of

attributes and our personal experiences of consciousness

that we assume everyone else has, they point

to our minds as something beyond the physical,

something supernatural in nature and origin.

To the Christian, our minds are exactly what

one would expect if people were created in the

image of a rational creator. Next up is the ontological

argument. This is easily the most polarizing

philosophical argument for God's existence. Personally,

I don't think it's a good argument. And I can't

imagine it convincing anyone, let alone an atheist.

On the other hand, several of the most skilled

contemporary apologists think that it's one of

the most convincing. God gave us all different

talents, passions, and styles of learning, so

if I can help someone somewhere, then I'm happy

to present it regardless of my personal opinion.

Either way, it goes like this. Think of God as

a maximally great being, something that is the

best in every possible aspect. That lines up

with the Christian conception of God. Now, if

you had one version of God that did not exist

and one version that did, the version that did

exist would be better than the one that did not.

Therefore, since it is possible that God exists,

it is necessary that God exists in order to be

maximally great. This next argument blew my mind

the first time I heard it. In the argument against

infinite regression, we both argue against an

infinitely old universe or an infinite series

of causes, and we set the stage for some of the

science -based arguments. Let's look at time

first. If, as many atheists claim, the universe

is infinitely old and our current version of

the universe is just one of an infinitely old

series of universes, that puts us on that circle

in the middle of the timeline. However, that

presents a logical problem. Many atheists will

call the present moment zero and then start counting

to infinity in either direction, arguing that

that's logically valid. But that's not an accurate

representation. If there were actually an infinite

amount of time before the present, we could never

have gotten to the present day. Similarly, consider

the series of events leading up to this moment.

I am teaching this class because 40 years ago

my parents watched a romantic movie. My parents

exist because 30 years before that their parents,

I guess, read a romantic telegraph? I don't know,

but the point is we can trace back to Adam and

Eve, the creation of the universe, and so on.

But at some point we run into a problem. If we

don't have a first cause, it's the same argument

we used against infinite time. We never would

have gotten to the present. So to summarize all

of this, we can say that logically, there must

be an uncaused first cause. And that cause is

what we would call God. But we can also go further

by building on that foundation. The Kalam Cosmological

Argument straddles the border of philosophy and

science, so it's a good transition between the

two. It's made up of three statements just like

some of the other arguments. First is the assertion

that whatever begins to exist has a cause of

its existence. Second is the assertion that the

universe began to exist. Therefore, we conclude

that the universe has a cause of existence. The

whole argument hinges on the assertion that the

universe began to exist. So can we justify that?

Yes, both scientifically and philosophically.

Our previous argument was that we can't have

an infinitely old universe or an infinite chain

of causes. That's the philosophical answer. The

scientific answer comes in the form of the Big

Bang, a theory that was developed by a Christian

astronomer who was mocked by academics for suggesting

that the universe wasn't eternal. But it's now

the leading theory for the origin of the universe,

and it's fully compatible with Christian theology.

We observe that the universe is running out of

energy and expanding. Our telescopes show leftover

radiation from the Big Bang which could only

have come from a hot, dense origin. Einstein's

theory of general relativity shows that matter,

space, and time are interdependent and all had

a simultaneous beginning. And what's truly fascinating

about the Kalam cosmological argument is that

it doesn't just stop by saying that there is

a cause of existence. As I just mentioned, when

we say universe, we're talking about matter,

space, and time, all coming into existence at

once. So, whatever made the universe is spaceless,

timeless, and immaterial. Because the universe

was created from nothing, we can conclude that

whatever this cause is must have chosen to create,

meaning it is personal. And finally, given the

complexity and scale of the universe, this cause

must also be intelligent and powerful. The Kalam

Cosmological Argument is considered the gold

standard of Christian apologetic arguments, because

it gives us a picture of a universal creator

that sounds just like the Christian God. As I

mentioned, the Kalam Cosmological Argument is

our bridge between philosophical and scientific

arguments for God's existence. And now we're

going to focus on the purely scientific arguments.

These use observations and experiments to demonstrate

that God is the best. and the only explanation

for many aspects of our existence and the universe

in which we exist. Now this slide should look

pretty familiar. It's called the teleological

or fine -tuning argument, and this is one we

looked at when we did our introduction to apologetics.

This argument says that the universe appears

precisely designed for life, and the examples

that we looked at previously were the strength

of gravity, the expansion of space, and some

of the conditions specific to Earth. Now, these

are just three examples, but we find more and

more of these factors every year. And we find

that, for instance, if gravity was a minute percent

different in either direction, it would make

stars, planets, and life impossible. If the expansion

of space was minutely faster, it would prevent

galaxies from forming. If it was minutely slower,

space would have collapsed in on itself. On Earth,

for example, if the chemical composition of the

atmosphere, the amount of water, the rotational

period, Jupiter's exact size and orbit were different

by minuscule amounts, life would be impossible

on Earth. And like I said, we keep finding more

and more of these factors. And so scientists

currently estimate that the chance of life naturally

occurring on one planet in the entire universe

is 1 in 10 to the 138th. Now that is a massive

number. It's far too big for us to be able to

conceptualize. It means nothing to us because

it's such a big number. Now we can sort of put

it in context by saying that there are 10 to

the 70th atoms in the universe. And so you can

imagine that you set out and you had to search

for one specific atom in the entire universe.

And your chance of finding that one specific

atom by checking a random atom is 1 in 10 to

the 70th. But because it is 1 in 10 to the 138th,

If you imagine that there's an entire universe,

the size of our universe, inside that one particular

atom you were looking for and then you were looking

for a specific atom inside that universe that

was already contained in a specific atom, then

the chance of finding that specific universe

would be picking the one atom and then picking

another atom in that other universe. It is such

an incomprehensibly big number that keeps getting

bigger every year. it is just logically nearly

impossible that this happened by chance and that

it wasn't designed by a creator. So as we move

into the next argument, I'm not going to pretend

that I understand everything happening in this

diagram. There's a reason that I studied computer

science and not biology or chemistry. This stuff

just blows my mind. It's tough for me to understand.

But what it demonstrates is the central point

of the book I recommended earlier called Darwin's

Black Box. And that point is a concept called

irreducible complexity. Essentially, there are

a massive number of structures and processes

happening in our bodies which are made up of

pieces or steps that all had to be in place for

that structure or process to function. Additionally,

many, if not most of these pieces and steps have

no purpose other than being a part of the final

structure or process. Supporters of evolution

argue that everything in our bodies evolved naturally

over many small steps, but the discovery of these

irreducibly complex structures and processes

makes that logically improbable, if not impossible.

Looking at the example on the screen, which again

I will not pretend I fully understand, we can

see this concept illustrated in the blood clotting

cascade, which is how your body reacts when you

get cut to stop the bleeding. This process has

to be very precise. If clotting happened too

easily, your blood would clot when it shouldn't

and you would die. If clotting didn't trigger

properly, you'd bleed out and die. The series

of steps you see on the screen make sure that

clotting happens at exactly the right time and

under the proper conditions and only to the right

extent. However, all of those steps need to happen

in that exact order for the process to work.

It couldn't have evolved over time unless there

was intelligence guiding that evolution. And

we see a similar or greater levels of irreducible

complexity in a multitude of other places in

our bodies. It's as if God's signature is all

over the tiny machines that make our bodies run.

So go read Darwin's black box and hear it explained

by an expert. It's about a hundred times more

convincing. And speaking of experts, you should

also take a look at the book called Signature

in the Cell by Stephen Meyer, but I'll do my

best to explain why DNA and biological information

storage also point to God's existence. Most people

listening to this have heard of DNA and understand

the basic concept that DNA stores the genetic

information that determines the properties of

our bodies, such as height, hair color, eye color,

and even immunity or susceptibility to certain

diseases. This information is stored in sequences

of four different nucleotides, which we represent

as four letters. DNA gets unzipped, specific

sequences are read by something called RNA, then

it gets zipped back up, and the copied information

is used to create proteins, which are the building

blocks of various things in our bodies. So what

does this have to do with God? Well, first, the

entire thing is a shining example of irreducible

complexity. None of those parts, the DNA, the

RNA, The unzipper, the zipper, the protein factories

have an independent function. They all need each

other to function. So thinking that they could

have evolved independently makes no sense. Second,

let's grant that they evolved independently just

for the sake of argument. If so, where did the

DNA for the first organism come from? And that

points to the biggest problem of all. The closest

analogy we have to DNA is computer code. Who

designed the code and determined what the individual

nucleotides and sequences of nucleotides would

mean? The entire system and all the rules needed

to be implemented all at once. If we saw this

system anywhere besides the human body, we'd

insist that a computer programmer had created

it. So why do we make an exception for the DNA

system in our bodies when it's clear that it

also had a programmer? God. And then we'll wrap

up our scientific arguments with another bridge

argument, this time between the scientific arguments

and the Christian -specific arguments. In particular,

we see the confirmation of ancient scientific

assertions made in the Bible, which have only

recently been confirmed by modern science. One

of these examples comes from the book of Job.

And basically, near the end of the book, Job

questions God. And as part of God's response

to Job, he says, This happens in Job 38, 31 to

32. Now, This just sounded like, you know, big,

grand, cosmological language that didn't really

mean anything until modern science started looking

at these star clusters and constellations with

modern telescopes. Some of these things we've

only been able to confirm within the last couple

decades. And these are amazing. These blew my

mind the first time I heard them. For instance,

when God says, bind the cluster of the Pleiades.

Ancient people couldn't have known that the Pleiades

is a star cluster. They are bound gravitationally

to each other. They also couldn't have known

that Orion was not a cluster. So when God says

loosing the cords of Orion, the ancient people

couldn't have known that Orion isn't a star cluster

or isn't linked together and they're actually

starting to move apart. And finally, when God

says directing the constellations through the

seasons or guiding the bear with her cubs across

the heavens, Well, we didn't know until incredibly

recently that the bear or Arcturus wasn't a single

star, but it's actually 53. Well, that's the

bear and her cubs. Scholars believe that Job

is the oldest book in the Bible. It was passed

down by oral tradition before it was recorded.

This information would have been impossible for

these people to know unless it was given to them

by the very creator of the universe. So other

than that final bridge argument we looked at

with the confirmation of ancient scientific assertions,

the arguments for God's existence to this point

have been fairly general. They could apply to

any single creator God, not necessarily the God

of the Bible. Now, however, we're going to look

at arguments for God's existence that are specific

to the God of the Bible and allow us to make

the case that he exists as the one true God.

But it's also fair to say that these arguments

might be a little bit tricky. They may not necessarily

be convincing to non -Christians, but they can

act as a confirmation of faith to Christians.

A good example of this is the first one, which

is the personal witness of the Holy Spirit. Many

apologists will say that it is the best evidence

to an individual that God exists. Every single

Christian has had the experience of an interaction

with the Holy Spirit. It might be something small

like... a feeling or an emotion, or it could

be something dramatic, like God pointing you

or pushing you in a certain direction for your

life that was totally unexpected. It is impossible

to explain to people who haven't experienced

it, but every Christian has had this experience.

They have had a personal encounter and interaction

with God, and it is something that is unmistakable.

It is something totally distinct from any other

encounter that you've ever had in your life.

And this goes hand in hand with the second argument,

which is the radical transformation by the Holy

Spirit. These are extreme life and personality

changes that are unlikely or impossible to be

made by a person on their own, like breaking

an addiction or with no withdrawal. Now, skeptics

will often dismiss this as coincidence or a person

exercising their will, but the sheer volume and

the extent that we see these, even here in our

own church, is overwhelming. Let me share a personal

story for this one, because this is what convinced

me that God was real. You see, way back before

I was a Christian, back when I was a teenager,

I started having some very serious health problems.

It involved muscle pain, joint pain, muscle spasms.

Basically, over time, over the period of a couple

of years, my entire body was in extreme pain.

My parents got very concerned about this early

on when it started, and as it got more and more

serious, they went through a lot of trouble and

a lot of time to take me to a ton of different

doctors. I went to doctors at different hospitals

in different cities, and nobody could understand

what was going on with me. They did all sorts

of tests. They did blood work. They took samples

of everything you can imagine, and some of it

was pretty painful, and I probably went to 40

or 50 different doctors over the course of a

couple years. Nobody had any idea what was going

on with me. And finally, when I was about 18

or 19, my primary care doctor, he felt bad for

me. I was in constant pain all the time. And

he said, listen, they don't know what's going

on with you. I'm just going to give you something

to help you with the pain and to help you manage

the symptoms. Now, I hold no ill will against

him for this. He was simply trying to treat me

to the best of his ability. As many of us know,

painkillers and muscle relaxers tend to not work

as well over time. And so you have to keep bumping

up the dose. And so that's what got me hooked

on painkillers and muscle relaxers. And over

the course of many years, it went from one small

pill to a handful of pills every day. And I think

it's fair to say that I was pretty irresponsible

in it. I was using higher doses than I should

have just because I felt so bad all the time.

I started getting queasy to my stomach. I started

feeling depressed. It really changes your personality

a lot. I would wash these things down with alcohol.

And then I even tried other drugs, much more

severe drugs, to give me the energy back that

I was losing from these. And this went on for

a very long time. And so the day that I got saved,

I remember laying in bed that night and saying

to myself, God, there's obviously a lot of things

in my life that need changed. Please help me

make that change. When I woke up the next day,

it was almost like I was watching myself work

on autopilot. I remember waking up and getting

a trash bag and walking around my apartment and

throwing out all of those pills and all the alcohol

and all the other stuff. And I chucked it in

the trash. And what's remarkable and impossible,

unless it was God working, is that after almost

two decades of taking all these various substances,

I didn't have a single moment of withdrawal.

God saved me from that. And that is the type

of radical transformation that we see all the

time here in HCV and millions and millions of

Christians see around the world. In 1 Corinthians

15, 14 -15 in the NIV translation, Paul says,

And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching

is useless, and so is your faith. More than that,

we are then found to be false witnesses about

God. We have testified about God that he raised

Christ from the dead. According to Paul, Jesus'

death and resurrection are the critical element

of Christianity. They prove all of Jesus' claims

correct. If the resurrection happened, Christianity

is true. If the resurrection didn't happen, Christianity

is false. Because of Christ's claims, if Christianity

is true, then God exists and everything that's

written in the Bible about God is true. Consider

this a preview of an upcoming session, because

this topic deserves its own session, and there's

so much material here that we could spend a couple

hours on it. But let me give you two important

pieces of evidence. The first is this. When we

look in the Bible, the Jewish authorities accuse

the apostles of stealing Jesus' body. They don't

deny that the tomb is empty. They don't deny

that the body is missing. Had the Romans or the

Jews taken Jesus' body, they could have produced

it and debunked the entire argument. but they

knew that the body was missing. Church tradition

holds that all of the apostles except for John

were martyred for maintaining the truth of Jesus'

resurrection. History puts us fairly certain

that four or five of them were, and we don't

know about the rest, but the point is that the

one group of people who would know for sure whether

Jesus had died and come back to life were all

willing to die for their belief that Jesus did

come back to life. If they had stolen the body

or were in any way involved in some sort of conspiracy,

they wouldn't have allowed themselves to be tortured

and killed to maintain that story. And that's

just barely scratching the surface of the evidence

we have for Jesus' resurrection. And like I said,

we'll tackle this in a future section. And then

we come to the argument from fulfilled prophecy.

You probably heard Chris talk about this several

times at Easter. I know this is a big focal point

of when I tell the Easter story to the kids.

Now we have to acknowledge that almost every

religion offers prophecies, and occasionally

they get one correct. But on the low end, the

God of the Bible has fulfilled at least 300 prophecies,

with many scholars putting the number significantly

higher. Even more importantly, he has never been

wrong. It would be one thing if the Bible made

millions of predictions and got 300 correct,

but got thousands of them wrong. But that's not

the case. No prophecy or information contained

in the Bible has ever been found to be incorrect.

And so who else will be able to tell the future

accurately? other than the God who is outside

of time and is able to see that future exactly.

And our final Christian -specific argument is

the unique and exceptional history of Christianity.

This is another topic that deserves its entire

discussion, so let me just give you the 30 -second

version. The basic premise is that what started

as a small, heavily persecuted sect of Judaism

not only survived, but became the official religion

of the Roman Empire and the dominant religion

of the world. But this wasn't done through military

conquest like Islam, but through peace and charity.

People converted to Christianity because they

saw that radical personal transformation of the

Holy Spirit. The people in Rome were blown away

by the charity shown by Christians. You see,

there was a common practice in Rome called exposure,

where when people had a baby and they didn't

want it or they thought something was wrong with

it, they would just leave it outside at night

and the wild dogs would, you know, get the baby.

Now, Christians were vehemently opposed to this

process. So they would go around at night and

pick up these exposure babies. Christians started

the first orphanages to care for these babies.

They started free hospitals. They did free meals

for people. They took care of orphans and widows.

They showed people that life didn't have to be

the way it was. And then they told people that

the motivation for that change was Jesus. It's

one thing for Islamic soldiers to ride into a

village, force people to convert at the point

of a sword, and kill anybody who doesn't, versus

people willingly converting when they see God

transforming lives. The timing of Jesus' life

and death and the way that Christianity spread

and the speed that it spread and the method that

it spread are nothing short of miraculous. And

like I said, we'll examine this in a lot more

detail in a future session. I became a Christian

when I was 34. I spent between 20 and 25 years

as an atheist. I knew for a fact that we either

could or would explain every aspect of our existence

scientifically, and that God was an unnecessary

human invention meant to fill gaps in our knowledge.

I've come to realize that the opposite is true.

It's not just irrational, but an act of great

self -deception to look at the world and conclude

that God does not exist. He has made his presence

known in many ways. And I pray that you'll use

these arguments to break down barriers and open

doors for evangelism and apologetics, but also

to eliminate doubts within yourself and to draw

people to God through Jesus. Thank you for listening.

Here's the resource again, my contact information,

and a link to the slideshows and videos. God

bless, and look forward to next month's session.

We start part one of a two -part session on salvation.