Evidence for God to Answer Challenges Archives

May 14, 2025May 13, 2025

Why We Have Four Gospels

When I was an atheist, it seemed ridiculous to me for there to be four accounts of the same story. Why not have one good account instead of four shoddy ones? The answer to why we have four gospels did not come to me for many years.

The old explanation that four different witnesses reported different things did not hold up well. Having one complete account made more sense to me. I finally came to see why we have four Gospels is because of the readers, not the writers. One of the problems that many Americans have with the Bible is that they assume it was written for Americans. The Bible is not an American book, and it is not about Americans.

We have three synoptic gospel accounts written by different authors, specifically designed for different groups of readers. In spite of that, there is an amazing accord between them. The synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke give a general view, or synopsis, of the events of Christ’s ministry.

The scholars who study the gospels tell us that 606 of the 661 verses of Mark appear in Matthew and that 380 of the verses of Mark are found in Luke. Mark is the oldest and shortest of the synoptic gospels. Matthew is very Jewish and contains much material that would be of interest to the Jewish culture, as well as covering the material in Mark. Luke was a well-educated Greek and a physician. His writing does not contain the Jewish slant of Matthew, and his approach would appeal to the Gentile, or Greek, population.

The Gospel of John is not synoptic but evangelistic. John’s purpose is to convince his readers that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God. The very nature of Jesus as the logos in John 1:1 is expanded and carried throughout the gospel. Much of the information in John is not in the other Gospels, because it has a different purpose and intent. It is an apologetic gospel to address the skeptic and the uninformed.

Suggesting that the reason why we have four gospels is to prevent details from being left out is a vast oversimplification. The four gospels together give us a logical, reasonable, and essential understanding of what and who Jesus was and what He came to do. The Bible gives us an accurate record of the gospel.

April 18, 2025April 18, 2025

Christ Has Indeed Been Raised from the Dead

Only one thing can explain the birth and growth of the Christian faith, and it is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The entire New Testament centers on the resurrection. As the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:14 and 20, “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith…But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

Factors that verify the truth of the resurrection story include the testimony of direct eyewitnesses recorded soon after the events, which include embarrassing details. The direct sources were the eyewitnesses, especially Matthew, Mark, and John. They were recorded soon after the events while other eyewitnesses would have been alive to refute the information, but they didn’t. Paul was also an eyewitness, and he wrote within 20 years of the resurrection and recorded an early Christian creed that believers were reciting perhaps as early as a few months after the resurrection. (See 1 Corinthians 15:3-7.)

What about the embarrassing details? They are details that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John included in their gospels that a writer making up the story would surely have left out because they reflect badly on the apostles. They include:

When Jesus was arrested, the disciples deserted in fear.

Matthew 26:31, 56; Mark 14:50-52

Peter denied three times that he knew Jesus.

Matthew 26:69-75; Mark 14:66-72; Luke 22:54-62

The disciples doubted the resurrection reports.

Mark 16:9-14; John 20:24-29

The disciples hid from the Jewish leaders.

John 20:19

Women were the first to testify of the resurrection at a time when the testimony of women was considered less reliable.

Matthew 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-11; Luke 24:1-12; John 20:1-10

Many other evidences support the truth of the resurrection story, but these embarrassing factors are worth considering. As Paul wrote, “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.”

April 11, 2025April 9, 2025

Does God Exist? Materials

We appreciate your following the DoesGodExist.today website, and we want you to know that we offer more services and materials free of charge. We have two video series available on doesgodexist.tv. Our basic “Does God Exist?” series with John Clayton includes 36 programs on evidence for God and the Bible. We also offer a series with John Cooper on archaeological evidence to support the integrity of the Bible. It is titled “Beyond Reasonable Doubt.”

We also offer three correspondence courses, each aimed at a different audience. Our basic course is very elementary, while our intermediate course is written at a college freshman level. The archaeological series is a 13-lesson course. These three courses, graded by John Clayton, are free and postage-paid. In addition to these three courses, we have nine others, including a substance abuse course.

On our DoesGodExist.org website, you will find booklets, pamphlets, charts, and archives of our “Does God Exist?” magazine. On that site, you will also find a catalog of materials you can request. Some of our materials are available for purchase on PowerVine.Store.

John Clayton welcomes your questions; you will find his email address on our websites. Our main objective in this work is to educate people and help them know why they believe what they believe. We want to convince anyone who will look at the evidence that science and faith are symbiotic and not adversarial.

April 7, 2025April 6, 2025

Life Isn’t Fair

I am sure you have noticed that life isn’t fair. When my daughter was young, she felt it was unfair for her friends to have so much in the way of clothes, cars, money, and food when we had so little. She was especially bitter when I plowed up our front yard so that we could raise enough food to make it through the winter. While her friends went to fancy restaurants, we ate at McDonald’s only on special occasions. We made applesauce with the Lodi apples from a tree we had planted in our yard and sweetened it with saccharine because my wife was diabetic. My daughter would say, “My friends buy applesauce at the grocery store, and we have to make our own. It isn’t fair!”

When my daughter was in high school, she saw her non-Christian friends driving expensive cars to school when she had to ride the school bus. The disparity in wealth has not changed, as the rich continue to get richer, often at the expense of the poor. Jesus Christ said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:13).

My daughter attended a Christian college in Texas, where she had professors who knew her by name and often invited her to their homes. Her friends attended private universities where they sat in classes with several hundred other students and had no personal relationship with their professors. They dealt with graduate students who were required to work with them as part of their stipends. Many of the friends who had money, cars, and fancy houses have had enormous problems with drugs, alcohol, broken marriages, and mental illness. Her friends find it incredible that our marriage lasted 49 years and only ended when my wife died.

In the “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus instructed His disciples not to worry about food, water, or clothing (Matthew 6:25-34) because God would provide for them. He began this discussion by saying, “You cannot serve God and money,” because holding to one means despising the other (Verse 24). Life isn’t fair, but God meets our basic needs. The reward for Christians is the fact that after this life, we will have an existence so wonderful that it will surpass anything on Earth.

Those who reject God have nothing when this life is over. In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus tells the story of the rich man and a beggar named Lazarus. When the rich man dies, he has nothing but suffering, and Lazarus is in Abraham’s bosom. The rich man wants Lazarus to help him, but he is told that life isn’t fair. He had good things in life, while Lazarus had evil things. Now Lazarus is comforted, and the rich man is in pain. The bottom line is that life isn’t fair, but Christians have the ultimate reward in eternity.

April 2, 2025April 1, 2025

Science Without God Is Nil

Is science without God possible? John C. Lennox is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College. In his book “God and Stephen Hawking,” Lennox says, “The more I understand science, the more I believe in God, because of my wonder at the breadth, sophistication, and integrity of His creation.”

Interestingly, science’s growth in the 16th and 17th centuries happened because men like Galileo, Kepler, and Newton believed the universe was built with an understandable, rational, and intelligent design. They didn’t think of science without God, believing the universe was understandable because it was created with purpose, design, and a discernible order.

An atheist must believe that everything that happened in the past and continues today is pure accident. Famous atheists, such as Stephen Hawking and Francis Crick, expressed this belief. Hawking maintained that humans are “mere collections of fundamental particles of nature.” Francis Crick had what he called an “Astonishing Hypothesis.” That is, “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”

Hawking and Crick possessed great talents in their chosen fields but seemed to lack any reason to trust their minds. Hawking’s “fundamental particles” and Crick’s “associated molecules” cannot be trusted to have any purpose or truth, so how can they contribute to the overall understanding of the cosmos? Science without God becomes an empty shell. We are talking about believing in a creator God who designed the cosmos and us with purpose.

The Psalmist said it well: “I praise you, God, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well… How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them.” (Psalms 139:14 and 17).

March 24, 2025March 23, 2025

The Inconsistency of Atheists

In his book God and Stephen Hawking 2ND EDITION, Oxford mathematics professor John C. Lennox points out the inconsistency of atheists:

“[Stephen] Hawking imagines that the potential existence of other life forms in the universe undermines the traditional religious conviction that we are living in a unique, God-created planet. I find it faintly amusing that atheists often argue for the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence beyond earth. They are only too eager to denounce the possibility that there exists a vast, intelligent being ‘out there,’ namely God, who has left his fingerprints all over his creation. Hawking’s fusillade will not shake the foundations of an intelligent faith that is based on the cumulative evidence of science, history, the biblical narrative, and personal experience.”

An atheist must believe in naturalism, the faith that science can explain everything, and has a monopoly on truth. The fact is that in spite of quantum mechanics, cosmology, and physics, there are a vast number of things that science cannot and never will be able to explain. Why there is something instead of nothing, why morality exists, and how time and space came into existence are examples. There also are many things that science has no answer for, such as why there is color and beauty in animals and plants, sometimes putting the life form at risk while serving no purpose but aesthetic value.

The inconsistency of atheists affects individuals and the culture as a whole in a way that is 100% negative. Who takes care of people with Alzheimer’s? Who addresses the needs of those who are mentally challenged or paralyzed? As the father of a son who was blind, mentally challenged, and had muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, and schizophrenia, I found that the caregivers helping us for 50 years were deeply religious people who were living out their religious convictions.

Peter Singer, Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, has the only atheist solution. He advocates euthanizing all of these cases. He says there would be enormous financial gain by eliminating those in prison, mental hospitals, and care facilities. The question is whether anyone, even atheists, would want to live in that kind of world.

March 20, 2025March 19, 2025

Ten Excuses People Use

A friend in Dublin, Ireland, sent me a list of ten excuses people use. His article is titled “Ten Reasons Why I Never Wash,” but it is really ten excuses people use to avoid worshipping God and following Jesus.

1) I was forced to wash as a child, so I will not do it now.

2) People who wash are hypocrites who think they are cleaner than others.

3) There are so many kinds of soap that I could not decide which one was right, so I didn’t use any of them.

4) I used to wash, but it got boring.

5) I still wash on special occasions like Christmas.

6) None of my friends wash.

7) I’m too young to wash. When I am older and a bit dirtier, I might start washing.

8) I really don’t have time to wash.

9) The bathroom is never warm enough for me to wash.

10) The people who make soap push washing to make more money.

As I read through the Irish list on washing, I thought of what people would say to Jesus when the end comes. In Matthew 25:35, Jesus talks about people who need food or water, and we have to ask what excuse we will use for not helping people who lack food and water. In verse 36, He talks about people needing clothing, those in prison, and those who are ill. We must consider what excuses we will offer for not addressing those needs.

Humans rationalize their selfish inaction. This list of ten excuses people use should pry us from our inconsistent excuses and get us involved in following Jesus and addressing the real problems facing people today.

March 18, 2025March 17, 2025

A World of Skepticism

When I was a child, I lived in a country of integrity. I saw my father buy a car with a handshake, and no one had any doubts about the vehicle, the price, or the finances to pay for it. As a young man in wartime, I did not doubt the president’s integrity. What the president said was always true, politicians would do what they said they would, and people believed them to be honest even if they failed to deliver. Now, it is a world of skepticism.

In today’s world, to buy a car, you must wade through a maze of forms from the dealer, the government, and the insurance companies. No matter which political party is in control, they deliberately mislead us. I have a skeptical friend who researched the background of United States Congress members. He found that 36 have been accused of spouse abuse, 7 have been arrested for fraud, 19 have been charged with writing bad checks, 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least two businesses, 3 have done time for assault, 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit, 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges, 8 have been arrested for shoplifting, 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits, and 84 were arrested for drunk driving in 2023.

Those are just the ones for which he could find the data. How many have been involved in these and other vices but have not yet been caught? What do we expect in a world where people reject the Bible and God while living by the survival of the fittest philosophy? In the natural world, animals use deception to fool other animals, but that should not be true of humans. If you don’t believe in a higher power and your only goal is being the fittest no matter what it takes, that leads to a world of skepticism.

We subscribe to several skeptic magazines dedicated to exposing fraud while promoting naturalism and evolutionary thinking. They can offer no purpose for human existence and are very good at exposing religious fraud. The “Center for Inquiry” and the “Freedom from Religion Foundation” are leading organizations in the skeptical movement, and they sponsor workshops, tours, and lectureships worldwide.

Being skeptical when you deal with humans is essential, and that includes being skeptical of skeptics. On this website, we try to offer what the Bible actually says, not what some denominational leader might say it says. In a world of skepticism, we present facts to support and not destroy faith. We are certainly not immune to making mistakes, but if we are aware we have made one, we will try to correct it. Welcome to doesgodexist.today.

January 27, 2025January 26, 2025

Mark Twain Quotes Display Wisdom

These two quotes of Mark Twain have special relevance to several issues today.
“No amount of evidence will ever convince an idiot.”
“The truth has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie.”

One of those issues is the political situation in America, where people will follow their chosen political party no matter how many lies the leaders tell. A relative responded with, “I hold my nose and support him,” when I pointed out that what the person had said was a complete fabrication. Both parties have been guilty of falsehoods.

More to our point is the reaction of atheists, agnostics, creationists, and philosophers to what we try to present. If there is no evidence to support one person’s opinion, it has no validity. Many of the claims of evolutionary theory have no evidence to support them and a great deal of evidence against them. The same is true of many claims of denominational creationists. These competing claims are the source of most of the supposed conflict between science and faith.

Denominational creationists may claim that the flood of Noah produced the Grand Canyon, but that can’t be true. The rocks in the canyon are not flood deposits, and the fossil placement does not indicate violent water movement. Still, creationist groups claim that the fossils are evidence of a global flood. The point is not that the Biblical flood didn’t happen but that it did not produce the geological record of the Grand Canyon.

Evolutionists assume that no process operated in the past that is not going on today. This belief, called uniformitarianism, is a foundational assumption of evolution, but evidence from astronomy and the fossil record shows that uniformitarianism is not true. Many more facts give evidence against Darwinian evolution.

We are all guilty of holding to beliefs despite evidence to the contrary. Many proponents for and against climate change refuse to accept the evidence. This results in doomsday predictions on one hand and refusal to do anything on the other. Both those who deny global warming and those who say destruction is unavoidable are ignoring evidence.

Science is knowledge, and knowledge can never conflict with truth. The truth is that evidence supports the existence of God and the teachings and life of Jesus Christ. As the Mark Twain quotes said, we are fools if we ignore evidence, and all people will pay the price for that in the future.

December 30, 2024December 29, 2024

The Religion of Scientism

We get a lot of mail from skeptics and atheists who state that “religion is the opiate of the masses” and that they have no religion. Karl Marx made this statement, but it is not accurate. Britannica defines religion as “a human being’s relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of special reverence.” That applies to the religion of scientism, which says that science is the only source of knowledge.

Many people hold to a human system of belief. Scientist Stephen Hawking made science fit the definition of scientism. Hawking wrote that “scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery.” As a science teacher and a person trained in the physical sciences, I understand that science has taught us many wonderful things, but it does not have all the answers.

You can learn many wonderful things outside of what science can measure or discover. Why did the universe come into being? What is the meaning of human existence? What happens after we die? What is the basis for morality? Why is there something instead of nothing? How did gravity come into existence? These are all questions science can’t answer. John C. Lennox, in his book God and Stephen Hawking, points out that what is going on in our academic world today is not science versus religion, but rather it is theism versus atheism. Many have adopted the religion of scientism.

The dictionary defines science as knowledge. Wikipedia defines scientism as “the belief that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality.” We can be amazed by what science can do, but science cannot answer many essential questions.

Science has given us many ways to kill one another. War has affected us all, and science offers no answer as to how to stop it. In contrast, the teachings of Jesus Christ tell us how to stop war. Read Matthew 5-7 and ask yourself what the world would be like if everyone accepted and applied those teachings. Now, consider what the world will be like if we continue to allow greed, selfishness, and political ambition to control all of humanity.

Those who reject God and Christ’s teachings will embrace some other human belief system. Will we allow atheism and the religion of scientism to govern our future, or will we accept the message of Jesus Christ?