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Frank exposes several contradictions that are unavoidable if one holds to a materialistic, atheistic worldview. There seems to be a mismatch between their beliefs and reality, and we should point this out.
Learn more about this by reading “Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case” http://bit.ly/SFG-Book
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Frank interviews the co-author of the modern apologetics classic that started it all and is now completely revised and updated—the truth of the Bible doesn’t change, but its critics do. With the original Evidence That Demands a Verdict, bestselling author Josh McDowell gave Christian readers the answers they needed to defend their faith against the harshest critics and skeptics. Now, with his son Sean McDowell, Josh McDowell has updated and expanded this classic resource for a new generation. Sean shares how 70% of this books is now new information! Don’t miss this podcast!
Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World
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A virus has been spreading across America. Chances are you’ve already been infected without even realizing it. The virus is made up of dangerous ideas—worldviews that don’t reflect Jesus and biblical living.
According to a recent Barna study, less than one in five practicing Christians have a biblical worldview. Idea viruses—stemming from secularism, Marxism, postmodernism, new spirituality, and Islam—are rampant in our churches today.
But don’t give up—there is hope! The Secret Battle of Ideas about God is a manual for winning the battle of ideas that is raging for our hearts and minds. Join Dr. Jeff Myers on this podcast as he’s interviewed by Frank about his fascinating new book ➡️The Secret Battle of Ideas About God!
How does a man facing his own premature death exude an uplifting combination of grace, love and truth? My friend Nabeel Qureshi, who has done that for more than a year, died at age 34 on Saturday. In case you don’t know, Nabeel was a former devout Muslim who became a powerful defender of Christianity after a seven-year process of evaluating the evidence for Christianity with his friend David Wood. His first book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus is an international best seller.
Since being diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer last year, Nabeel has shared his thoughts, concerns and prayers through 43 video blogs on his YouTube channel. His last video, recorded from his hospital bed just seven days before his death, is a request for us to use his work and example to love others to the truth.
As you will see in his videos, Nabeel exhibited the love of Christ to the end. He never wavered in his confidence that God could heal him, but recognized that He might not. Nabeel understood that we live in a fallen world, and that God doesn’t promise any of us a long, trouble free life. In fact, Jesus promised more of the opposite. He said that we “will have trouble in this world, but take heart, I’ve overcome the world.”
Nevertheless, while it seems insensitive to ask this while we grieve, people are wondering why didn’t God heal Nabeel. After all, he was a brilliant and charismatic young man taken away from his wife Michelle and daughter Ayah, and the rest of us, far too early. Nabeel had so much more to give to his family and the Kingdom of God that his death seems senseless.
So why didn’t God heal Nabeel?
Tough Questions
Is it because an evil, such as a premature death, proves that there is no God? No, because evil wouldn’t exist unless Good existed, and Good wouldn’t exist unless God existed. Evil doesn’t exist on its own. It only exists as a lack in a good thing. Like cancer. So when we complain about evil we’re actually presupposing Good. An objective standard of Good is a standard that is beyond mere human opinion. That can only be God’s nature. So evil may prove there’s a devil out there, but it can’t disprove God. Instead, evil boomerangs back to show that God actually does exist.
Is it because the Muslim God is the true God, and He punished Nabeel for leaving Him? No, there’s excellent evidence for the Christian view of God (see Nabeel’s book No God but One). Moreover, Muslims who suggest this should be asked, “Why did your God wait until Nabeel had written three best-selling books, made hundreds of hours of videos, and helped bring hundreds of Muslims to Christ? Is his timing off?” Not only that, Nabeel’s work will continue to bring people to Christ, probably in an accelerated manner after his passing.
So why didn’t God heal Nabeel? What purpose could God have for allowing Nabeel to die?
Some might suggest that people like Nabeel who experience tragedy must be worse sinners than others. Jesus refuted that kind of shallow speculation directly in Luke 13, when he said, “I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” Indeed, we are all sinners who will perish and we need to repent before it’s too late.
Is it because Nabeel didn’t have enough “faith”? People who claim such nonsense don’t know Nabeel or correct theology. Nabeel’s trust in Christ was deep and unwavering. But the larger point is that faith doesn’t guarantee good health and wealth as “Word of Faith” preachers assert. In fact, their self-serving theology can be refuted by one simple observation: Jesus and the apostles weren’t healthy and wealthy. In fact, they suffered and died for their beliefs. Don’t tell me they didn’t have enough faith!
The Ripple Effect
So why didn’t God heal Nabeel? What purpose could God have for allowing Nabeel to die? In answering that question, we need to admit that there can be no ultimate purpose to Nabeel’s death (or any event) if there is no purpose to life. But since God does exist, and the purpose of life is to be reconciled with Him though His son, Jesus, then even tragedies can help achieve that purpose. Perhaps more people will come to know Christ because of Nabeel’s death. It’s impossible for us to know the extent of that right now, but it’s not impossible for God.
We can’t see it fully because every event, good and bad, ripples forward into the future to touch countless other events and people. This ripple effect is also known as the butterfly effect. The idea is that a butterfly flapping its wings in South Africa, for example, could ultimately bring rain to a drought stricken portion of the United States. We can’t trace all of those ripples, but an all powerful God who is outside of time can. In fact, there have been billions of events in history, both good and bad, that helped make you who you are and helped put you where you are.
So we don’t know why God didn’t heal Nabeel, but we know why we don’t know. We’re finite and God is infinite. The good news is God’s character and power guarantees that He will bring good from evil “to those that love Him and are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). That may happen later in this life. It certainly will spill over into eternal life.
The ripple effect led Jacques Marie Louis Monsabré, a former pastor at Notre Dame in Paris, to trust God even when he couldn’t see any good coming from evil. He said: “If God would concede me His omnipotence for 24 hours, you would see how many changes I would make in the world. But if He gave me His wisdom too, I would leave things as they are.”
Indeed, God will redeem Nabeel’s death for good like he redeemed Nabeel himself. But while Nabeel is now with the Lord, Michele and Ayah remain with us. As Nabeel asked in one of his final videos, please pray for them as well as Nabeel’s loving parents. And If you can help Michele and Ayah financially, would you please do so here?
While we grieve let us be thankful for Nabeel’s eternally significant life. He did more for the Kingdom of God in 34 years than ten thousand people do in 80. And the ripples he created — waves really — will help carry people into Heaven for generations. Blessings to you Brother. See you on the other side.
If you’d had the knowledge and power to stop the terrorist attack in London, would you have done so? Of course. In fact, if you could have stopped it but didn’t, we would call you morally deficient. We would partially blame you for the attacks!
What does this say about the supposedly all-loving, all-knowing, all powerful God? He didn’t stop it. Some say it’s because He doesn’t exist.
When the attack hit, I was in London to speak at several churches on my book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. The morning after the attack I decided to change my topic to If God Exists, Why is There Evil in the World?
Evil Actually Shows God Is Real
While I can’t provide a complete answer to that question in this short column, the one thing the attacks cannot prove is that there is no God. In fact, if the attack was truly a grave injustice — if it was truly evil — it shows that God actually does exist.
How so? Because evil doesn’t exist on its own. It only exists as a lack or a deficiency in a good thing.
Evil is like rust in a car: If you take all of the rust out of a car, you have a better car; if you take the car out of the rust, you have nothing. Evil is like a wound in your body: If you take the wound out of your body, you have a better body; if you take the body out of your wound, you have nothing.
That’s why we often describe evil as negations of good things. For example, we say the attack on London was immoral, unjust, inhumane, not right, etc. In other words, there would be no such thing as evil unless good existed. But there would also be no such thing as good unless God existed.
If the attack was truly a grave injustice — if it was truly evil — it shows that God actually does exist.
C. S. Lewis was once an atheist who thought all the injustice in the world disproved God. He later realized he was stealing a moral standard from God in order to argue against Him. He wrote in Mere Christianity, “[As an atheist] my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”
As an atheist, Lewis compared this unjust universe to God’s perfectly just nature while claiming that God didn’t exist. In effect, Lewis was sitting in God’s lap to slap his face.
Later, while the Nazis were bombing London in WWII, the Christian Lewis was on the BBC saying things like,
The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something — some Real Morality — for them to be true about.
Likewise, to rightfully condemn the London attacks, there must be an unchanging standard of goodness, righteousness and justice that is beyond us, and beyond the terrorists, too. That standard is, by definition, the essence of the greatest possible Being, which is what we call “God.”
The very existence of evil boomerangs back to show that God exists.
Without God there would be no objective, authoritative, moral standard beyond humanity, which means human beings would have no moral obligations and every action or behavior would be merely a matter of human opinion. Do you think the London terrorist attack was wrong? Without God, that’s just your opinion against that of ISIS. The murder of six million Jews? It’s just your opinion against Hitler’s opinion. The sexual abuse of children? It’s only wrong if God exists.
If evil is real — as headlines from London plainly reveal — then God exists. The most evil can do is show there’s a devil out there, but it can’t disprove God. The very existence of evil boomerangs back to show that God exists.
But which God? The terrorists would claim that they were following the commands of Allah, particularly Suras 8 and 9 in the Qur’an. Ironically, though, Allah isn’t a viable candidate for the standard of Good because according to Islamic doctrine, Allah is arbitrary. Whatever Allah does is good. By contrast, the God of the Bible is revealed as the unchanging ground of all Goodness. He isn’t arbitrary — He is Goodness.
Still, if the God of the Bible actually exists, why would He allow evil to occur? There are several revealed and philosophical answers to that question which I cited in my presentation that Sunday at Kensington Temple in London (and more completely in my book Stealing from God: Why atheists need God to make their case.).
Regardless of the reasons, evil is a problem for every worldview including atheism. Christianity is the only worldview equipped to handle it. In fact, the entire Christian story is an answer to the problem of evil. God Himself provides the ultimate solution — He takes evil on Himself. Jesus attaches humanity to His Divine Nature and allows the creatures who introduced evil into the world to torture and kill Him so we could be reconciled to Him. He takes the punishment for our evil deeds and offers forgiveness as a gift.
Christ’s gift isn’t the subject of a fictional story — there’s very good evidence that the story is actually true. That means you have the real opportunity to accept that gift right now. When Jesus comes back to finally quarantine evil in a place called Hell, the time for choosing will be over. The Being whose essence is Justice has to accomplish final Justice at some point.
Relevant Podcasts on the topic of Evil
John Lennox: If God, Why Evil?
Stealing Evil From God
I was asked to participate in a meeting between Donald Trump and about 35 Christian leaders Friday night in Charlotte. There was no requirement for participants to endorse Mr. Trump. Instead, it was a chance to exchange ideas with Mr. Trump on issues especially important to the Christian community, such as life, judges, and the growing problem of the government coercing religious people to violate their religious beliefs.
As he did in a similar meeting I attended in New York a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Trump affirmed his commitment to protect life, appoint conservative judges vetted by the Federalist Society, and to work with Christians on religious freedom issues. While I don’t endorse candidates, I am encouraged by Mr. Trump’s willingness and openness to personally discuss these issues and express his agreement with the positions I support.
For those Christians who think it’s wrong to meet with someone like Mr. Trump, I ask them to take off their Pharisee robes for a minute to see whom Jesus met with and ministered to. Meeting with Mr. Trump is not only biblical, it’s an opportunity to do good. When one of the two people who will be President of the United States asks for your opinion, why wouldn’t you provide it? It’s a dereliction of duty to not speak the truth on issues that directly affect lives and our ability to preach the Gospel and live our faith!
Mr. Trump’s team reached out to me and other Christians. I’d meet with Mrs. Clinton if she requested my opinion (I’ve only heard crickets so far. And I doubt there are any evangelical Christians expecting her call since she wants to use the force of government to change our beliefs, and her party has demonstrated hostility to biblical Christianity for the past eight years).
For those of you who see no good choice in this presidential election, remember that you are not just voting for one person— you are actually voting for thousands of people that come along with the top of the ticket, some of whom will affect our country for generations. There are literally thousands of political appointees at several levels of government, including Supreme court judges and about 300 other judges, whom the President will appoint. Those people will attempt to make America in the image of their party platform. Those are two radically different images and two radically different futures for you and your children.
To see how radically different they are, take a look at this very helpful chart that quotes directly from the two party platforms. It shows where the Democrats and Republicans stand on issues important to most Christians. Given this knowledge, it is also a dereliction of duty when you fail to vote.
“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive,” said Blaise Pascal. Indeed, attraction, not reason, is the engine of the LGBTQ movement. Otherwise it wouldn’t be riddled with contradictions such as:
Except when we demand the right to marry people of the same sex because people of the opposite sex are just too different from people of the same sex.
Except I can judge you for what you do. You’re an ignorant, intolerant bigot for supporting your political goals rather than mine, and for refusing to celebrate my same sex wedding.
Except me when I’m intolerant of you and your position.
Except when I discriminate against you. After all, I can refuse to bake a cake that’s against same-sex marriage, but you can’t refuse to bake one that’s for it. I’ll sue!
PayPal Founder Peter Thiel said this at the Republican National Convention: “When I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union. And we won. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom. This is a distraction from our real problems. Who cares?”
Except when we at PayPal care enough to cancel our business plans in Charlotte because to the company, it’s absolutely a travesty of justice to keep men out of women’s bathrooms and showers. (Apparently, it’s not a travesty of justice to PayPal when Islamic countries literally murder gays and transsexuals. It’s business as usual for PayPal in those countries.)
We at the NBA pulled our All-Star game out of Charlotte because it’s wrong to acknowledge and accommodate differences between men and women, especially by keeping them in separate restroom and shower facilities.
Except when we at the NBA acknowledge and accommodate the differences between men and women by keeping them in separate leagues, restrooms and shower facilities.
We at the NBA made our decision according to “the long-standing core values of our league. These include not only diversity, inclusion, fairness and respect for others but also the willingness to listen and consider opposing points of view.”
Except when it comes to “diversity, inclusion, fairness and respect” for the people of North Carolina who are being excluded because their diverse and opposing point of view is not respected by us at the NBA. You see, “Inclusion and diversity” to us and other liberals actually means exclusion for those who don’t agree with our approved views. (Whoops, there goes “diversity.”) But of course, you can see our point: it’s completely unreasonable for North Carolinians to want to keep biological men out of women’s shower facilities like we at the NBA do. After all, what could possibly go wrong? In order to rectify the situation, we at the NBA should move the game to New Orleans — a city with the exact same laws as Charlotte. That’ll show everyone that we stand on principle!
Truth is not the principle that the LGBTQ movement and their allies stand on. Truth is what corresponds to reality, and if anything obviously corresponds to reality it is that men and women are different. Humanity would not exist without those differences. They are not mere preferences; they are built into the very biological nature of the sexes.
Unfortunately, LGBTQ apologists are not concerned with the inherent contradictions in their positions. They are not on a truth quest but a happiness quest. Truth is being suppressed, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally, because it gets in the way of what they find attractive; what they perceive will make them happy. This is understandable. In fact, all of us are apt to suppress the truth on occasion to get what we want. Most of our problems are self-inflicted and exacerbated by our unwillingness to follow the truth where it leads.
Suppressed truth has terrifying implications because power rather than reason is the currency of influence for those unwilling to follow the truth. If you don’t think so, just begin to articulate a rational case against LGBTQ political goals. You won’t get any rationality back, just hysterical cries that you must be forcibly shut up because you are the next Hitler! That’s what we see out of many in the LGBTQ movement — from the bullying by the misnamed Human Rights Campaign on corporate and sports America all the way to the Supreme Court, which has ignored its oath to uphold the true meaning of Constitution.
HRC bullying is bad enough, but the illegitimate use of power by the Court is even worse. Five lawyers adopted legislative power from the bench to impose their own political views on over three hundred million Americans. Along the way they charged opponents of their views with “animus” against homosexuals. Animus? That’s not true. But even if it was, why does the Court think that voter motivation has anything to do with constitutionality? Even the Court succumbs to the tendency to impugn motives and call people names when it’s short on reason. In fact, when your position isn’t true, you can distract attention from your contradictions by yelling louder and bullying all opponents as the LGBTQ movement is doing.
Regardless of your political party, it’s time to stand up to the bullies, with truth. If you don’t, those with increasing power will use it someday to shut you up on something you care about. Then the ultimate contradiction will be complete — your right to free speech, religion and association guaranteed by our Constitution will not be guaranteed for you anymore either.
Resources for Greater Impact:
No puedes poner honestidad en un tubo de ensayo.
La ciencia por sí sola no dice nada, los científicos son los que lo hacen.
Estas son algunas de las reveladoras conclusiones que podemos extraer en el escándalo del correo de calentamiento global.
“¿Dices que la ciencia no es objetiva?” No, a menos que los científicos lo sean, y la mayoría de veces no lo son. No quiero impugnar a todos los científicos, pero es cierto que algunos de ellos no han sido completamente honestos. Algunas veces mienten para conseguir o mantener sus trabajos. Algunas veces mienten para obtener fondos. Algunas veces mienten para promover sus propias creencias políticas. Algunas veces no mienten intencionalmente, pero obtienen malas conclusiones científicas porque solo están buscando lo que quieren encontrar.
La mala conducta en los científicos es más común de lo que crees. Una encuesta realizada por investigadores de la Universidad de Minnesota encontró que el 33% de los científicos admitieron haber actuado mal durante sus investigaciones, incluyendo a más de un 20% de científicos, en la mitad de su carrera, que reconocieron “haber cambiado el diseño, metodología o resultados de un estudio como resultado de presiones recibidas por parte de los patrocinadores”. ¡Piensa cuántos más habrán hecho esto, pero no quieren reconocerlo!
Mentiras descaradas y engaño parecen ser el caso con el “Clima-gate.” Los correos expuestos revelaron la selección puntual de eventos, manipulación de datos y el trabajo tras bambalinas para censurar las opiniones opositoras; así como el dudar de las mediciones realizadas al no encajar en las conclusiones pre establecidas. Matt Drudge comentó acerca de esto como el “Mayor escándalo en la ciencia moderna.”
Actualmente considero que existe otro gran escándalo científico, pero estas tergiversaciones no son tan obvias. En este escándalo, en lugar de las mentiras descaradas, las conclusiones científicas son extraídas bajo la mesa por suposiciones filosóficas previas. Tal como en el caso de la controversia sobre el origen de la vida y de las nuevas formas de vida. ¿Fueron las fuerzas naturales actuando sobre mezclas químicas inertes las que produjeron vida, o fue el resultado de una acción inteligente? ¿Las nuevas formas de vida habrán evolucionado a partir de formas de vida inferiores debido a fuerzas naturales o fue necesaria la intervención de una inteligencia?
El Dr. Stephen Meyer ha escrito un fabuloso best-seller, en donde aborda estas preguntas, llamado La Firma en la Célula. Al haber obtenido su doctorado en la Universidad de Cambridge en Filosofía de la Ciencia, el Dr. Meyer está en la cima de la cadena alimenticia de la ciencia. En nuestra entrevista radial del 8 de agosto, me comentó que ha estado trabajando en un libro de +600 páginas –el cual no limita los detalles técnicos- durante más de una década.
¿Qué califica a un hombre con un doctorado en “Filosofía de la Ciencia” para escribir un libro acerca del origen de la vida o la macro evolución? Todo. Lo que algunos científicos, y muchos en el público en general, fallan en entender es que la ciencia no puede realizarse sin un fundamento filosófico. Toda la información debe ser interpretada. Y mucho del debate entre los exponentes del Diseño Inteligente (como el Dr. Meyer) y los Darwinistas (como el profesor de Oxford Richard Dawkins) no es sobre la evidencia –pues todos están viendo la misma evidencia. Es un debate sobre la filosofía. Un debate sobre qué causas pueden ser consideradas como posibles, incluso antes de examinar la evidencia.
Los científicos buscan causas, y lógicamente, solo hay dos tipos posibles de causas –una causa inteligente o una causa no inteligente (es decir, causa natural). Una causa natural puede explicar una maravilla geológica como el Gran Cañón, pero solamente una causa inteligente puede explicar una maravilla geológica como las caras de los presidentes sobre el Monte Rushmore. Asimismo, las leyes naturales pueden explicar por qué la tinta se adhiere al papel en el libro del Dr. Meyer, pero solo una causa inteligente puede explicar la información que allí se encuentra (es decir, ¡el Dr. Meyer!)
¿Cómo se aplica esto a la pregunta acerca del origen de la vida? Mucho después de Darwin, descubrimos que una “simple” célula está comprendida por miles de volúmenes de información en el ADN en lo que se conoce como complejidad específica –en palabras del día a día, sería como un programa de software o un mensaje realmente largo. ¡Richard Dawkins reconoce que la cantidad de información contenida en la mal-llamada “ameba primitiva” ocuparía 1,000 volúmenes de una enciclopedia!
¿Cuál es el origen de todo esto? Aquí es donde entra la filosofía. El Dr. Meyer está abierto a ambos tipos de causas. Richard Dawkins no lo está. En el libro del Dr. Meyer se explica cómo las fuerzas naturales no parecen tener la capacidad de realizar tal trabajo, solo la inteligencia la tiene. Sin embargo, Dawkins y su Darwinismo presionan filosóficamente para descartar causas inteligentes antes de examinar la evidencia. Por lo tanto, para ellos no importa cuánta evidencia apunte hacia causas inteligentes (como lo hace un mensaje suficientemente largo), siempre concluirán que tuvo que ser algún tipo de causa natural. En otras palabras, su conclusión es el resultado de sus suposiciones filosóficas previas.
Mientras Dawkins no tiene una explicación natural viable para el origen de la vida o el mensaje que esta contiene, él asegura que no puede ser el producto de inteligencia. Esta suposición filosófica conduce a lo que parece ser una conclusión increíble: El hecho de creer que 1,000 volúmenes de una enciclopedia son el resultado de fuerzas naturales y ciegas es comparable a creer que la Librería del Congreso es el resultado de una explosión en una imprenta. Yo no tengo tanta fe como para creer eso.
“¡Este es un argumento del Dios de las brechas!” podría protestar Dawkins. No, no lo es. Simplemente no carecemos de una explicación natural para una forma de vida “simple” – cuya información equivalente a 1,000 enciclopedias, esto es evidencia empírica y verificable para creer en una causa inteligente. Piensa en la causa del libro El Espejismo de Dios de Richard Dawkins, por ejemplo. No es simplemente que carezcamos de una explicación natural para el libro (pues sabemos que las leyes de la tinta y el papel no escribieron un libro). Es también el hecho que conocemos que mensajes solo provienen de mentes. Por lo tanto, podemos confiadamente postular a un autor inteligente, en lugar de un proceso natural y ciego.
¿Por qué es tan difícil para Dawkins y otros Darwinistas reconocer esto? Tal vez porque se rehúsan a hacerlo. Y así, como los “científicos” del calentamiento global, ellos tienen sus razones políticas o morales para negar incluso lo obvio. O tal vez nunca se han percatado que no pueden hacer ciencia sin filosofía. Como Einstein dijo: “El nombre de ciencia es un pésimo filósofo”. Y un pésimo filósofo de la ciencia puede llegar frecuentemente a conclusiones científicas equivocadas. Esto se debe al hecho que la ciencia no habla – los científicos sí lo hacen.
El Dr. Frank Turek (D.Min.) es un galardonado autor y frecuente orador universitario que presenta un programa de televisión semanal en DirectTV y un programa de radio que se transmite en 186 estaciones de todo el país. Sus libros incluyen I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist (No tengo suficiente fe para ser ateo) y Stealing from God: Why atheists need God to make their case (Robando a Dios: ¿por qué los ateos necesitan a Dios para presentar su caso?).
Traducido por Erick Jimenez.
It’s about 2 a.m. on an August morning in 1979. A beautiful young nurse by the name of Lynne Knight is living in a bungalow behind a larger house in Torrance, California. As two police officers approach her door, they notice a chair overturned in the entryway and bloody footsteps leading back to the rear bedroom. Each officer has his gun drawn, not sure what to expect.
When they switch on the light, they witness the worst murder scene of their careers. Ms. Knight is lying on her bed, undressed. Her throat is deeply severed, and her lifeless body, which had been stabbed repeatedly, is covered in blood.
Under her body is 18 inches of twisted wire strung between two small pieces of wood that had been sawed off from an old broomstick. Although they’ve never seen one in person before, the officers immediately know it’s a garrote—a homemade weapon used to strangle someone in order to commit a murder quietly.
The killer tried to murder Lynne with the garrote, but couldn’t complete the evil act because she fought back. So the killer stabbed her to death and left the garrote behind in a panic.
Could the garrote lead the cops to this monster? Not soon enough. For nearly three decades, the case went cold until cold case homicide detectives J. Warner Wallace, and Rick Glass got involved in 2007. They dusted off the evidence left in a box at the Torrance PD, and Wallace made it his personal mission to analyze every aspect of the garrote. It turned out to be the key to the murder trial that took place last summer in the same LA courtroom where O.J. Simpson was tried. And there was a familiar face in this trial. The defendant, Doug Bradford, hired O.J. lawyer Robert Shapiro to be his defense attorney.
While Bradford was a former lover of Knight, there was no eyewitness or DNA evidence to link Bradford to the murder. And there were several other suspects in the case, some of whom had since died. Wallace, Glass, and LA District Attorney John Lewin had an uphill battle to convince a jury of twelve that Bradford had indeed committed the crime. There would be no conviction unless all twelve agreed.
But Wallace, Glass, and Lewin had been down this road before. They earned convictions on every cold case they had brought to trial so far. Three of those cases were so intriguing that NBC’s Dateline featured them. This case was no different: Keith Morrison and his Dateline crew were filming the case in an episode they called “The Wire.”
Although Dateline didn’t know it going in, their confidence was rewarded: on August 14, 2014, this LA jury returned a guilty verdict. Robert Shapiro, perhaps aware he had been out argued, didn’t even show up for the verdict. Doug Bradford is now serving a life sentence after being free for 35 years.
How did they get the conviction?
They began by asking the question, all detectives ask at a death scene: can this death be explained by staying inside the room, or does it require us to look outside the room? Obviously, this death was a murder and required a suspect outside the room. Had this been a suicide, natural death, or accidental death, the event could be explained by staying inside the room.
Then Detective Wallace used some very ingenious methods to link the garrote back to Bradford. (You can watch the entire Dateline explanation here.) He linked the effect (the garrote) back to the cause (Bradford).
Now Wallace is employing the same investigative principles he uses to solve cold case murders to eight of the greatest questions we ponder as human beings. He does this in his insightful new book, God’s Crime Scene. In the book Wallace seeks to discover if we can stay inside the room (the natural world) or must go outside the room (the supernatural world) for the causes of the following effects:
Each of the eight chapters starts with the details of a real criminal case and then applies the principles to the question at hand (the Lynne Knight case is in Chapter 4).
Wallace was a committed atheist until age 35. Now he is a highly skilled author and speaker who presents a unique case for the Christian worldview across the country. Columnist Mike Adams and I have recently teamed with J. to equip Christian youth and their parents with the case for Christianity through a dynamic new College Prep program. I can tell you that audiences are captivated by the way he applies forensic principles to build the case for Christianity.
But don’t think Wallace just tows the party line. Since he is a cold-case homicide detective, Wallace presents you with the evidence pro and con, and then leaves you to draw your own conclusions. He does a masterful job of laying out the evidence and even illustrates that evidence with over one hundred of his own drawings, which clarify and summarize some potentially difficult subject matter. (Who said a serious book can’t have pictures?)
God’s Crime Scene is an engaging and very readable work that investigates some of life’s most important questions. I highly recommend you get it regardless of your religious viewpoint. I can’t guarantee you’ll be convicted, but your thinking will be challenged.
Dr. Frank Turek (D.Min.) is an award-winning author and frequent college speaker who hosts a weekly TV show on DirectTV and a radio program that airs on 186 stations around the nation. His books include I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist and Stealing from God: Why atheists need God to make their case.
We’ve been told that people who want to maintain the man-woman definition of marriage are “on the wrong side of history.” Perhaps they are correct. Maybe “history,” which is determined largely by how people behave, will continue to move toward defining marriage as genderless in the 90 percent of governments that still maintain the natural definition. But what’s the take-away? Jump on the bandwagon?
Remember, Moses was on the wrong side of the golden calf. And Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was on the wrong side of Dred Scott — the 1857 Supreme Court decision that declared blacks were “so far inferior that they had no rights.” Being on the wrong side of some popular moral assertion doesn’t mean your position is wrong.
Now that five judges say that same-sex marriage is a new “right,” let’s ask a more foundational question. Where do rights come from? Specifically, where does the right to same-sex marriage come from?
If you say that rights come from governments or constitutions, how can they really be rights? Isn’t a right something you have regardless of what a government says? For example, if same-sex marriage is really a right, then you actually possess that right even if you live under a government that doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage. You may not be able to exercise it, but you have it nonetheless.
Moreover, if there is no overarching moral standard that transcends human governments, then how we could prosecute Nazi soldiers for violating the rights of others? The Nazis were just following their government.
The truth is, rights don’t come from men or governments. Instead, “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,” as our Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence. In fact, that was the entire point of the Declaration — the government of King George was usurping the rights of colonists, so we declared our independence.
Some argue that evolutionary theory provides us with a right to same-sex marriage, but one doesn’t even have to challenge evolutionary theory to see that something is wrong with that argument. If natural selection has a goal of survival and reproduction, then how could same-sex marriage help with that? Such marriages are an agreement to stay in a sterile and medically unhealthy relationship — the exact antithesis of survival. In fact, if everyone lived faithfully in same-sex marriage, the human race would end quite quickly. (I’m not saying that same-sex marriage laws would accomplish this, just that the observation shows a real moral and consequential difference between natural marriage and same-sex marriage).
An even more basic problem with the evolutionary argument is that moral rights don’t result from evolutionary processes. Rights are prescriptive and come from an authoritative person. Evolutionary processes are descriptive and have no authority to tell you what to do. How does a mutating genetic code have the moral authority to tell you how you ought to behave or how you ought to treat others?
The truth is, just as history describes what does happen and not what ought to happen, biology describes what does survive, not what ought to survive. Why should humans survive as opposed to anything else? And which humans? Mother Theresa? Hitler?
Those who want to follow evolutionary theory are led to a dark place. Murder would be OK if it helped you survive, thrive and better reproduce. Rape would be OK because if it helped propagate DNA. And a society might justify exterminating the weak and undesirables to improve the gene pool and help the desirables survive. In fact, Hitler used evolutionary theory to justify just that. Homosexuals were many of his victims.
So if rights don’t come from governments or evolution, then where do they come from? To truly be rights, they can only come from an authoritative being whose nature is the very standard of perfect Goodness. That’s what we mean by God.
Without God, there is no authoritative moral standard beyond humanity, which means that every action or behavior is merely a matter of human opinion. The murder of Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals? It’s just your opinion against Hitler’s opinion. Child crucifixions? It’s just your opinion against that of ISIS. Freedom of speech? That’s just your opinion against that of a dictator. Gay bashing is bad? Again, just your opinion.
The same holds true with any supposed right, including the right to same-sex marriage. While you can get five judges to assert it is a right, without God, it is just an opinion (thus the Court’s judgment is aptly named).
But couldn’t God approve of same-sex marriage?
The major religious books state just the opposite. So does the Natural Law derived from God’s nature. Thomas Jefferson called this “Nature’s Law,” from which we get “self-evident truths,” including the truth that people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Same-sex marriage is not one of those self-evident truths. In fact, Jefferson and other politically incorrect Founding Founders called homosexual acts “crimes against nature” because such acts go against the natural design of the body and frustrate the goal of perpetuating humanity. This observation is not based on bigotry but on biology. (It’s ironic that our Founding Fathers were more apt to follow science than today’s secular left who ignore science when they insist that biological gender is changeable and sexual behavior is not. The exact opposite is true!)
The issue of slavery does not invalidate Jefferson’s judgment. Jefferson understood that slavery was wrong and admitted so, even if he succumbed to the temptation to keep his slaves throughout his life (it was Darwin who believed in the “favored races”). Simple observation tells us that every race of human is fully human. And nature tells us that mixed-race marriages lead to healthy offspring. Indeed, experience has shown that bigger gene pools are healthier than smaller ones. The natural law that points away from homosexual relationships also points away from racism.
Since real rights can only come from God, if you want to insist same-sex marriage is a right then you must assume that God is for same-sex marriage. But then you must also assume the implausible notion that God wants you to harm your own health and that of the human race by contributing to its extinction. How’s that for love? Don’t be fruitful. Don’t multiply. Don’t survive. Same-sex marriage is not only on the wrong side of God and nature; it’s on the wrong side of humanity.
So if not from governments, evolution or God, where does the “right” to same-sex marriage come from? Our imaginations. Perhaps well-intended imaginations, but imaginations nonetheless.
Dr. Frank Turek (D.Min.) is an award-winning author and frequent college speaker who hosts a weekly TV show on DirectTV and a radio program that airs on 186 stations around the nation. His books include I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist and Stealing from God: Why atheists need God to make their case.
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