The Reasonableness of Faith in God

Now, this morning I spoke to you on the fallacies: atheism, agnosticism, materialism, chance, and the like. Really, unbelievers are very vulnerable at that point. Christians waste their time arguing about whether or not a whale swallowed Jonah. You can get them on that point, the point of this morning. But what about the other side? Can you prove there is a God? It depends on what you mean by proof.

Now, if you mean by proof, scientific proof, I would say the answer is no. What scientific proof for God could you give? As I said this morning, what method would you use? If you mean philosophical proof, well, it's really one man's opinion against another. But I certainly contend that you can show that faith in God is most reasonable, that there's nothing more reasonable.

In South Africa one night, we took the town hall for a debate. I debated with the president of the Rationalist Society the topic that faith in God is most reasonable. In the vestry before the debate started, the chairman, who was president of the local Rotary Club, said, "Now gentlemen, do you wish me to put a vote to the meeting?" I said, "Well, I'm not insisting on that. My friends, I'm sure, will vote for my point of view, no matter how badly I put it, I suppose, and the same would be no doubt true for my opponent's friends." And he agreed quickly.

I said to the chairman, "I'm chairman of this debate and people are going to ask me, well, who won the debate? What am I to say?" And then he turned to my opponent. He said, "Mr. Smith, you are challenging Mr. Orr on his proposition that faith in God is most reasonable. To win the debate, you must prove that what he says is unreasonable, or that what you give as an alternative is more reasonable." But that he couldn't do. When I pinned him down, I said, "Do you see any purpose in the universe?" He said, "I don't know." I said, "The fact that the cells of your body are present, cooperating in a form to take part in this debate, that has no meaning to you?" He said, "I don't know."

I changed tactics and I said, "Do you believe that this universe had a beginning?" "Yes," he said, "I think so." I said, "What do you think was the cause of its beginning?" He said, "I don't know." Well, he was telling the truth, but it wasn't more reasonable. And he wasn't able to show that what I said was unreasonable.

Now, in order to conduct a debate, you've got to have a measure of agreement to begin with. When my son and daughter were teenagers, they used to argue about nothing. Both of them are in their twenties now, and so there's a kind of truce, although both of them sort of jump on the younger boy I have. But my daughter would say, "I tell you it is." And my son would say, "Well, I tell you it's not." She said, "But it is." He said, "But it isn't." So, you know nothing. He would say, "You know nothing. Listen to the copycat." He would chortle, "Listen to the copycat." Then she'd say, "Oh, shut up." He would say, "You shut up." I would say, "Both of you, shut up." They weren't trying to find out anything. Yet I'm sure that you've had debates with unbelievers like that, just trying to score points, not trying to learn.

I crossed the Pacific from San Francisco to the landfall at Guadalcanal with 8,000 American troops. Some silly fool was caught smoking on deck after dark. A submarine could see a lighted cigarette a distance of a mile. So the captain got angry and battened us down every night, crossing the equator. It was hot. We ran around in shorts and took salt tablets and perspired, and quarrels broke out. One night I got into an argument with an atheist from Brooklyn. Now I can stand atheists, and I can take people from Brooklyn, but atheists from Brooklyn are very hard to take.

He said, "Go on, chaplain, you don't believe all that, do you?" I said, "I do." He said, "I wonder if you do." I said, "I do." I said, "Do you believe the Bible?" He said, "The Bible's only a book." I said, "It's an inspired book." He said, "That's what you say." I said, "Do you believe in Christ?" He said, "Christ is dead." I said, "He rose again." He said, "That's what you say." I said, "Do you believe in God?" "No," he said, "I'm an atheist." I said, "What do you believe?" He said, "I believe religion's a racket." I said, "No, it's not." He said, "Yes, it is." I said, "That's just what you say." We were getting nowhere fast.

Now supposing we were to have here tonight, instead of Dr. Robert Cook, the well-known apostle of parliamentary good manners, Mr. Nikita Khrushchev. And I say, "Mr. Khrushchev, I understand you really enjoy a good debate." And he says, "God." Now I say, we could argue until we're blue in the face over the things we disagree about. How about the other way? How about trying to find out what we agree on? You're a communist, I'm a Christian. You're an unbeliever, I'm a believer. What's the first thing? I've written it on the board: the axiom of existence.

What is an axiom? Would someone like to tell me? Would you raise your hand? I don't mind homemade definitions. I asked this question at Baylor University in Texas and a big footballer spoke up and he said, "An axiom's a thing the wheel goes around." What is an axiom? A lot of murmuring, but speak up. That's right. It's a self-evident truth. A statement that's accepted as being true without submitting proof. Now I accept the axiom of existence. So does Mr. Khrushchev. I believe I exist, he believes he exists. Is there anyone not sure?

I asked this question at the University of Oregon last month and a girl raised her hand and said, "I don't accept this axiom." I said, "Do you mean you accept the Oriental idea that life is an illusion, that we are prisoners of our five senses?" She said, "Yes." I was trying to answer her without making her feel embarrassed by ridiculing her point of view. I said, "That's the point of view of some Oriental religions. There was a Chinese philosopher who dreamed he was a butterfly. In the morning when he wakened up, the dream was so vivid he didn't know whether he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man." But I said to the girl, "Do you see this lamp here?" She said, "Yes." I said, "What did I just do?" She said, "You switched it off." I said, "What did you others see?" They saw the same thing. I said, "We're all dreaming the same dream."

Now this is an axiom, it's something you can't prove. Now for instance, I might say, "What color of a suit am I wearing?" Somebody close might say it's a charcoal brown. But you have no means of proving to anyone that what you see is the same as what your neighbor sees. But you accept it, don't you? You call it the same name.

One of our planes crashed at Valley Papen, at Morotai, and I had to go and pray with the men who were burned. Some died. One fellow whose identification tags were missing was wrapped in bandages to the tip of his nose. I didn't know whether he was Jewish, Roman Catholic, or Protestant. And I thought I'd better read to him the 23rd Psalm. So I began to read, "The Lord is my shepherd." Right in the middle of the reading, he called out loudly, "Hey doc, doc, open the window doc, it's stuffy here." The poor boy was in an open-air casualty ward under an awning. In some considerable pain. He was blind, lost his sight. He was deaf, lost his hearing. Presumably, he'd lost his sense of taste and smell. He still had some sense of touch, but he was under heavy sedation. And later he went into a coma and died that evening.

While he was in a coma, life meant nothing to him. And in one sense, we are prisoners of our five senses, aren't we? But this problem doesn't bother either Christians or Communists. We believe we exist. I've never heard a Communist argue that we do not exist. I've met Oriental mystics who tried to pretend that life was an illusion. But Westerners who talk like that are just arguing a novelty. So we take the axiom of existence. Can we go any further? The fact of order. The universe runs like clockwork, and this is believed by Communists as well as Christians.

When the Russians sent up Sputnik, that was a great scientific achievement. But they based it upon the orderliness of the universe. I was in Tasmania when the first Sputnik came over. Saw it clearly. First night. I was in Adelaide in South Australia when the second Sputnik came over with the dog in it. And all the Australians were talking about it. I was sitting in a streetcar beside an old Australian lady. And she piped up, "You wouldn't catch me riding in a Sputnik. I'm just scared of dogs." If you go to the harbour master at the battery, he'll give you the tides for the next 50 years. It's like clockwork. If I, as a historian, go to an astronomer and say there was a battle fought in Asia Minor 174 BC, and there was a total eclipse of the sun according to what we know, could you fix the date for us?

He can turn up his tables and say it was the 23rd of April, Gregorian calendar, 9 o'clock in the morning. Just like that. And communists believe this, so do Christians. So Khrushchev and I are getting along like a horse and fire. How do we explain the order? Well, do you have to explain it? I mentioned the pilot this morning who said, do you have to have a philosophy? Can't you just accept it as coming about by chance?

I have a wristwatch here. It has a seconds hand, a minute hand, an hour hand, and an alarm. If I set the alarm for a certain time, it will ring. Listen. I sometimes use this in children's talks. I was showing it in a Presbyterian church the other day, and a man came up to me and he said, I'm a member of the church session. How much do those watches cost? I told him. He said, we think we'll buy one for our minister for Christmas. If I told you that this watch was neither designed nor made, you'd laugh in my face. If I said, give me one good reason for supposing it was designed, you'd say, it's very orderliness. It's regularity. And it's purpose.

Well, is there any purpose in life whatsoever? Don't we build our life on purpose? When we moved out of Sansepur in western New Guinea, we left behind a jeep. A Papuan native came down the mountains, preceded by his wife. You know, in many countries, husbands and wives don't walk together as in western countries. Generally, the husband walks in front, followed by the wife. But in the war zones, it was the other way around because of the danger of landmines. And they discovered a jeep. This Papuan had never seen a jeep before. He had never seen a wheelbarrow before. He didn't know what it was.

His wife said, what is it? He said, I don't know. What do you call it? I don't know. Where does it come from? I don't know. What does it do? I don't know. One thing he recognized was the seat, so he sat on it. He turned the steering wheel, he blew the horn, he pulled the brakes on, put them off again, changed gear. Still had no idea what he was in. He happened to touch the self-starter button. It was left in gear, so it just rocked him, which made little sense. He tried it again, rocked him again. So he turned to something else, opened the glove compartment, closed it. But this intrigued him. He tried it the third time, and the third time he tried it, he had his foot heavily on the clutch pedal. So you know what happened, the engine started running up front. To him, it sounded like a great cat purring.

He decided to get out and run around the front and see what was making the noise. As soon as he did that, it stalled. He had enough gumption to know that taking his foot off this thing had something to do with it stalling, so he decided to take his foot off the clutch pedal slowly enough to give him time to run around the front and see what was making the noise. But the throttle had been left slightly in advance, and as he took his foot off the clutch pedal slowly enough, the whole jeep started forward with him. And that scared him so much he dived out and didn't come back for 20 minutes. But he was bold enough to come back. His wife was frightened, but he started it again. And he drove right across the clearing until he ended up against a big mahogany tree. Couldn't drive any further. In fact, it wasn't until the next day he learned to reverse.

But his wife said, what is it? He said, I don't know. Well, what do you call it? He said, I don't know. Well, what does it do? He said, it goes by itself. That would be a good interpretation of automobile. She said, well, where did it come from? He said, I don't know, but whoever made this must be a lot more intelligent than I am. I give that simply as a suggestion of how we look at the universe. As we look at the amazing universe, all we can say is whatever intelligence brought it into being is vastly superior to the whole human race put together. And from there we take a step and call that the great architect of the universe, the first cause, the supreme being, God. That's a hypothesis.

And of course, Khrushchev won't go as far as that. But his alternative is silly. Chance, or history, he might say. The hypothesis of a designer. You say, but you're weakening. You start with an axiom, and then a fact, then a hypothesis. My dear friends, every scientific discovery has been established by hypothesis. Now, sometimes the hypothesis has been slightly off, but it may have led to truth. For instance, when Columbus sailed west, he thought he was going to hit the coast of India or China. He discovered the new continent. But he had the right idea that the world was a sphere. That was a hypothesis. And we have a hypothesis of a designer.

So now we come to this point. If there is a supreme being, could he communicate with me? Well, the answer is very obviously, why not? And we call that the question of divine revelation. I believe that God has spoken to the human race in all centuries. And I'm going to say something bold. Through all religions, there's some truth in every religion. But primarily through the prophets, God-conscious men, through what we call Holy Scripture, and supremely through Jesus Christ. You say, what do you mean supremely? Well, from any point of view you'd like to mention, ethics, morals, insight, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ has never been surpassed.

A sergeant said to me, what do you mean by the revelation in Scripture? He said, I don't get it. I said, when I was in Soviet Russia in 1935, a man could get married, take his wife to a hotel for the honeymoon, kiss her goodbye two days later, 48 hours later, go down to the divorce bureau and divorce her. He didn't need to go back and tell her if it was embarrassing, because the office sent her a postcard. That was Soviet Russia in 1935. Twelve years later, a professor from behind the Iron Curtain came to visit me at Oxford, and he told me, it's difficult to get a divorce in Russia today. I said, why? Well, he said, girls were committing suicide, and babies were being abandoned, and venereal disease was increasing, and the children were turning into beshperzoni, juvenile delinquents, by the million. So he said, Stalin put a stop to it. But the scripture says, thou shall not commit adultery.

When I was in Soviet Russia in 1935, they didn't keep one day in seven as a holiday, but one day in six. The sixth, the twelfth, the eighteenth, the twenty-fourth, and the thirtieth of each month. He said, what was the big idea? That meant that only eight Fridays a year were free for young Muslims to go to mosque. Only eight Saturdays were free each year for Jews to go to synagogue. Only eight Sundays a year free for Christians to go to church. But they're back to one day in seven. Why? The other didn't work. During the French Revolution, the French deists tried the same sort of thing, one day in ten for a holiday. Didn't work. During the Blitz, the Royal Factory Commission in Britain, trying to find out how Englishmen could work their maximum to beat Hitler without breaking down, discovered that a man that worked for six days and then had a complete day off did better work than a man working any other way. But the scripture says, six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work. The seventh is the rest of the Lord thy God.

A GI said to me in the Pacific, yeah, but this war we're fighting, we wouldn't know one day from another if it wasn't for the chaplain's announcements. I said, that's true, but do you miss your Sundays? He said, oh boy, you miss Sunday. But that's in scripture. And the scripture speaks to us of other things that we can't put to the test. So it brings us to the question of divine revelation.

My tent mate on Morotai was a medical doctor from Philadelphia, an obstetrician. Of course, he didn't practice that in the Air Force. The Japanese were bombing us about five times a night. To keep our mind off the raids while we're in foxholes, we would argue about political science, philosophy, art, music, and of course, religion. This doctor said to me, go on chaplain now, he said, God is nothing more than an idea in people's minds. He said, you go to the Solomon Islands, go to the island of Malata where there are still savages. Talk to a savage there. Boom, boom, he hears a thunder and he says, that's God. Just to cover his ignorance. But go to an Indian peasant. He knows what thunder is, but when an epidemic breaks out, he thinks the gods are angry and he rushes to the temple to burn incense. You go down to Australia. The educated Australian says to you, oh, we know what epidemics are, we know what thunder is, God is the first great cause. But isn't the Australian doing the same thing as the others, using God to cover his ignorance? As we push back the frontiers of science, we'll be able to dispense with God. I said, that's anthropomorphism. You mean that if the human race were wiped out by a catastrophe, there wouldn't be any God? I hadn't thought of it that way. I said, let me tell you what's wrong with your analogy.

Go to a Solomon Islander and say, have you ever heard of King George? He said, me British subject, me belong King George. Have you ever seen King George? No, him very far away. Well then, if you've never seen him, how do you know there is such a person as King George? He said, me British subject, me belong King George. You Melican soldier, you no belong King George. You can't argue with him. But you have a right to say, well, what do you think King George is like? He says, well, King George, in the Solomon Islands, the chief of a village has four wives, and the chief of an island has 400 wives. So he says, King George, very big chief, 4,000 wives. A rather primitive idea of constitutional monarchy.

But go to the Indian peasant. He doesn't think of King George as a polygamist. He thinks of the neighboring Raja, and the Maharaja in the next state, and the former Mughal emperor. So he says, King George, British Raj. That's his idea. Talk to an Australian. The Australian says, you Yanks don't understand. King George doesn't rule us. He reigns. He's a symbol. Talk to a Londoner and he says, I went to Cambridge University with King George. He's a very human being like myself. Spoke with an impediment. Talked to Queen Elizabeth, now the Queen Mother. She says, he is my husband. Talked to the Princess Elizabeth, now Queen Elizabeth. She says, he's my daddy. Talk to an American. He says, well, it's all right for the limeys to have a king. In fact, we'd rather admire him, but we don't need one. Talk to a Russian, and he says he is a cat's paw of the capitalist system, and when we take over, we'll destroy him.

Now, I said there are seven different ideas of King George, but they don't change the character of King George if there is such a person. And I said there may be a thousand and one ideas about God. The Aborigines of Australia think God is a snake. Christian scientists talk about divine mind. Everyone's got his definition, but it doesn't change the character of God if there is a God. There was a long silence, and then the all clear sounded. Then the doctor said to me, well, and he said, how does anyone know anything about God? I said, we only know what he has revealed of himself in Christ. I'm not giving you arguments for a God, to prove there is a God. I'm trying to show you that faith in God is reasonable. In fact, most reasonable. In fact, there's nothing more reasonable, and I'm prepared to go ahead from that point.

Now, if any of you would like to refresh your mind on this, I have found there's practically no literature on the subject that you could sit down in a bus and give a fellow to read. For instance, you get textbooks on apologetics in the beginning. The ontological argument for the existence of deity has now been relegated to the limbo of obscurity, or something like that. Or else the book is so pious that an unbeliever won't read it. So I wrote a little book. It's been published in this country by Judson Press. It's called Faith That Makes Sense. It was written from this point of view. If you'd like to refresh your mind on it. I think it's at the door tonight. I had some sent up here. This book, it's paperback, and it sells for $1.45. I didn't fix that price. The publishers did.

I have another book there called The Inside Story of the Hollywood Christian Group, telling the conversion of Colleen Townsend and Roy Rogers and all these others, because I was chaplain of that group for the first two years. It's $1.55. But because students, what I was going to say, are always broke, that's not the truth. Students don't have money for very long. Put it that way. But because students don't have money for very long, I don't like to make any money out of them. So if you want to have both those books, that's $3 worth, you can have them for $2. They're probably out on a table there. Somebody put a plate, and if you take two, two different ones, put in $2, and you can have them. And if you have any friends who are skeptical and you'd like to send this to them, here's for that. Of course, if two girls or a fellow and a girl or two boys want to buy the two books between them, you can do that equally well. But you must take the two to get them for $1 each. Otherwise, you have to pay the regular figure.

Now, tomorrow morning, I'm going to continue my discussions. I'm not trying to put anything over on you. I'm not trying to work on your emotions. I haven't given an altar call yet, have I? Why should I? I'm speaking to your minds. And the scripture says, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy strength and all thy mind. And as Charles Finney said, some believers think once they trust Christ for salvation, they're excused from exercising their brains after that. I've had people come up to me after I've spoken to sheer pagans on the lines of this morning's address and say, well, that wasn't the gospel. I said, it didn't say it was. But it says, must first believe that he exists and that he rewards them that diligently seek him. So there are often what you might call prerequisites for the gospel. If a man believes in God, you don't need to convince him there is a God. But if he doesn't, you ought to be able to give a reason for the things that you believe.

I know that most of you believe in God, so what I'm saying to you is just to refresh your minds. The trouble that kids face today in college is this. They're brought up through Sunday school with the saying, Jesus loves me, this I know. And that's true. And then they come into conflict with the world when now they're young people. And they put this against that. And they say, well, this doesn't compare with this. They don't seem to realize that the Christian faith can be stated on this level and that it makes sense. That's why I've spoken to you along these lines. Thanks for listening. Good night and God bless you. Class dismissed.