Who Judges Right and Wrong: Evidence for God

SPEAKER A 00:00:01 – 00:00:30 What if the universe is not morally neutral? What if the very fact that humans debate right and wrong points to something built into the fabric of creation itself? The Bible makes a bold claim: there is a moral center to the universe, a universal standard, and a judge with complete knowledge, zero bias, and no higher court of appeal. Welcome to Faith and Science. I’m Kaysie Voklurka. Joining me to discuss this topic is Dr. John Ashton, Welcome to the program, Dr. John. SPEAKER B 00:00:30 – 00:00:31 Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER A 00:00:31 – 00:01:12 Dr. John has written this book, which is called The Big Argument: Does God Exist? And in today’s program, we’ll be looking at some insights from chapter 13, which is entitled, Who Is God and What Is He Like? So this chapter, Dr. John talks about God as being both the lawgiver and the judge. And that this unusual combination signals that there is a moral center to the universe, a universal standard of right and wrong. What implications does a morally centered universe have for how we approach science, evidence, and truth? SPEAKER B 00:01:12 – 00:01:38 Yeah, so this is quite an important question actually, particularly that last part that you alluded to, what is truth? And this is a question, of course, that is being, you know, argued And in our postmodern society, of course, we’ve come to, in my view, this crazy conclusion that, well, truth is relevant to the person. SPEAKER A 00:01:38 – 00:01:39 Right. SPEAKER B 00:01:39 – 00:02:20 And as a result of this, of course, we see that there’s a whole lot of confusion in society now over certain issues. Classic ssues, gender issues, for example, different other relationship ssues. These sort of things, politics. It comes into a whole lot of area, and particularly in areas of education as well. You know, what constitutes things that people should be learning. This is all dependent on this. But the Bible, of course, comes out with a very clear picture of a God who is both the lawgiver and the judge. SPEAKER A 00:02:20 – 00:02:21 Hmm. SPEAKER B 00:02:21 – 00:02:43 And this is quite an important point that a lot of people, I think, miss. That one day there will be a judgment. And I think there’s a sense of this, as you alluded to earlier, that we have a sense that there are certain things that are just wrong, you know, like it’s wrong to torture children. SPEAKER A 00:02:43 – 00:02:44 Mm. SPEAKER B 00:02:44 – 00:03:11 And, you know, people, when we think about some of the terrible things that have been done in the past, you know, related to things like the Holocaust and so forth, in more recent times, the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and so forth, things that happened there, we sort of have this incense that these things are wrong. So where does this come from? SPEAKER A 00:03:11 – 00:03:12 Yeah. SPEAKER B 00:03:12 – 00:03:54 And I think one of the things that comes out of this is that ultimately there must be a judgment. What about the people that have got away with doing You know, really, really bad, bad things. You know, for example, and I think I referred to this in another program just recently, one of— I was at a dinner and an older man spoke a little bit about his life story. And his daughter had gone off with her boyfriend to the Gold Coast. And over that weekend, she was stabbed to death by her boyfriend who fled the country and has never been prosecuted for that. SPEAKER A 00:03:54 – 00:03:54 Wow. SPEAKER B 00:03:56 – 00:04:22 So we have this sense that that’s wrong, you know, that— so where does this come from? And so there is this sense that there are some things that are right and there are some things that are wrong. And the Bible, I think, gives us this very important assurance that there is a God that has defined things that are wrong, and that’s programmed within us. SPEAKER A 00:04:22 – 00:04:23 Hmm. SPEAKER B 00:04:23 – 00:04:43 Because the Bible makes a unique claim that we’re actually quite different from the animals and insects and these sort of things, in that we’re made in the image of God. And hence, we have now this sense of good and evil that has come about. SPEAKER A 00:04:43 – 00:05:18 Yeah, so with our sense of innate sense of morality, we also have this really strong sense of wanting to see justice happen. When we see these examples, like you shared, of things that are just clearly wrong, they kind of make our blood boil. We really want to have someone, some higher being or power to bring about justice to us, don’t we? Because yeah, it’s just, it’s built inside us in our DNA almost that we would, we want to see this happen, which is very interesting, isn’t it? SPEAKER B 00:05:18 – 00:05:51 Yes, I think one of the scary things is how this applies to science and to education as well. And I’ve been helping a friend with a book who’s been doing quite a bit of research on claims that have been made by prominent scientists and educators supporting supposedly the theory of evolution, but these claims have actually been scientifically wrong. They’ve been false. Now I’m not saying that these people have done this deliberately. SPEAKER A 00:05:51 – 00:05:52 Yeah. SPEAKER B 00:05:52 – 00:06:11 They’ve misunderstood, but there certainly have been cases of fraud. In terms of evidence, for example, Piltdown Man is classic. That’s been well documented. And for people to still refer to this and not realize these things have been refuted, the same with Haeckel’s drawings and those sort of things. SPEAKER A 00:06:11 – 00:06:12 Mm-hmm. SPEAKER B 00:06:12 – 00:06:34 So this comes back to this issue of truth and the importance of truth, and that there is this law Thou shalt not lie. Truth is very important and is fundamental of underpinning the universe. We assume, for example, that the laws of physics are true and consistent in that way. SPEAKER A 00:06:34 – 00:06:59 Yeah, and certainly in some of our previous discussions, we’ve talked about the fact that the evolutionary worldview doesn’t really give account for the existence of morality and truth and all of that, like it doesn’t explain how we would experience a strong sense of that. Is that correct? SPEAKER B 00:06:59 – 00:07:09 That’s right, yes. And this is one of the issues too, and one of the theory of evolution is that it claims that the universe is morally neutral. SPEAKER A 00:07:09 – 00:07:10 Right, yes. SPEAKER B 00:07:10 – 00:07:34 These sort of things. And therefore you can arrive at truth through the vote, you know? And this has led to a lot of social and political problems in my view, in that voting for truth can lead to then a whole lot of errors that can have serious implications afterwards. SPEAKER A 00:07:34 – 00:07:35 Mm-hmm. SPEAKER B 00:07:35 – 00:08:00 And I think the refusal of people to acknowledge errors, for example, at the moment we know there’s no known chemical explanation for how life can arise. So the evidence is clearly that it’s impossible for a non-living organism to form, sorry, for non-living matter to form a living organism. SPEAKER A 00:08:00 – 00:08:01 Yes. SPEAKER B 00:08:01 – 00:08:27 And yet people are refusing, the education system in most secular countries is refusing to acknowledge this and make students aware of this important shortcoming. There was a very interesting article that was published in Scientific American a few years ago, I think it was about No, 19— 2017. And the February edition, I think from memory, was called Pop Goes the Universe. SPEAKER A 00:08:27 – 00:08:27 Okay. SPEAKER B 00:08:27 – 00:09:14 Or it might’ve been 2016, February 2016. But essentially, these scientists published saying that, hang on, the evidence underpinning the inflation theory, which underpins the Big Bang theory, just isn’t there. Now, there were a whole lot of scientists that wrote in and said, oh, hang on, you shouldn’t be saying this, you know, you can’t say this. And in the reply, they said, well, you don’t arrive truth by counting noses. You know, truth is truth. And I think what the Bible is saying is that the God who gave the laws, who created this universe, also created moral laws to govern that universe so that it functioned smoothly. And one of those was that there is this element of truth and people should be truthful. SPEAKER A 00:09:14 – 00:09:15 Mmm. SPEAKER B 00:09:15 – 00:09:25 This is a fundamental concept underpinning this. And we find that a lot of issues arise when people move away from that principle of truth. SPEAKER A 00:09:25 – 00:09:26 Principle, yeah. SPEAKER B 00:09:26 – 00:09:58 There’s another one, thou shalt not murder. And we know a lot of things, and you shall not covet, these sort of things. And when we trace a lot of the issues that are with countries fighting one another, different groups fighting one another, it all comes down to breaking these fundamental laws of morality that underpin the universe, that God said, no, these are things that we should not do, but humans choose to do those things. SPEAKER A 00:09:58 – 00:10:43 So continuing with this idea of God as the lawgiver, but he’s also the judge. Human judges have incomplete knowledge. They can be susceptible to bias and all of this kind of thing. But the chapter talks about God from a biblical perspective as being complete in knowledge, both of the law itself and for all of human conduct, such that the judgment of God, in it there is no possibility for error or bias. And I guess the question is, what should that do for us in seeing a judge with those attributes? SPEAKER B 00:10:43 – 00:11:05 I think it should make us aware that one day we will be judged, because it talks about that. There is going to be a judgment. We are going to one day be accountable for everything we have done, good and bad. Now, the encouraging thing is that this judge is fair, that he knows everything. SPEAKER A 00:11:05 – 00:11:06 Yes. SPEAKER B 00:11:06 – 00:11:43 He’s very— there’s nothing hidden from him. So, and this judge is a judge who’s set out that truth is a fundamental principle. So it’s going to be fair. But the wonderful thing is that, of course, the Bible has the message that this judge himself came and took our place in the judgment or offers to take our place in the judgment, in that He came as Jesus and died in our place. Now, this is a big, hard thing, a hard thing for many people to accept, that God the Creator came as a human being. SPEAKER A 00:11:43 – 00:11:43 Yeah. SPEAKER B 00:11:43 – 00:12:24 That Christians refer to as Jesus Christ. And so, this then becomes a separate issue. What is the evidence that Jesus was God, was this judge? And I think there’s a couple of things that are interesting. Examples on how Jesus told stories about judgment and so forth. But there is also the powerful evidence that people witnessed His resurrection and ascension. And this was an eyewitness event, and the Bible records this. So this is— it’s quite fascinating that this comes in. But this is a hard concept for people to accept, particularly people that have a worldview that there is no supernatural, that there is no Creator. SPEAKER A 00:12:24 – 00:12:24 Yeah. SPEAKER B 00:12:25 – 00:12:54 But when we think about it, when we think about the big picture, we see there’s some— as you pointed out earlier, there’s this innate feeling that we— when people do really bad things to innocent other people, we feel that is so wrong, that, you know, shouldn’t have happened. And I think this is powerful evidence that this whole concept of a lawgiver, that there are laws, and that when those laws are broken, we have this sense that— SPEAKER A 00:12:54 – 00:12:55 It’s wrong. SPEAKER B 00:12:55 – 00:13:02 But something has gone wrong that needs to be corrected. There needs to be an account for that, the judgment. SPEAKER A 00:13:02 – 00:13:30 And really, I guess, it gives us a sense of hope, doesn’t it? If you believe that there is someone who is absolutely unequivocally fair and all-knowing in judgment and you experience some of these injustices, knowing that no matter what, even if humans don’t instigate, you know, appropriate justice, ultimately one day God will. SPEAKER B 00:13:30 – 00:13:31 That’s right. SPEAKER A 00:13:31 – 00:14:09 And so that can give hope for people who have, like the example you shared earlier, experienced injustice that’s completely been let go. Like, there’s no accountability for that. And I guess, at a personal level, the idea of a judge who is always going to be fair and knows everything, that really gives us something to think about in terms of our own actions, doesn’t it? It definitely does. Or, you know, because we— I guess it develops this sense of accountability, even though God has given us a freedom to choose. SPEAKER B 00:14:09 – 00:14:32 Yes, yes, yes. And I think it’s David Belinsky, the mathematician, that points out in one of his books that the main thing that is going to deter people from doing bad things is that ultimately there is going to be a judgment and there will be a consequence for those bad things. SPEAKER A 00:14:32 – 00:14:44 Yeah, same thing applies to children, doesn’t it? If you have a firm disciplinary process at home or school, you know, they soon learn where the boundaries are. SPEAKER B 00:14:44 – 00:14:46 Yes, that’s right. And generally they benefit from that. SPEAKER A 00:14:46 – 00:14:47 Yes, that’s true. SPEAKER B 00:14:47 – 00:14:53 That’s the positive thing as opposed As opposed to chaos and crime and violence in the classroom. SPEAKER A 00:14:53 – 00:15:16 Yeah, and generally those rules are for well-being, for the well-being of the whole community. So those are important things to keep in mind. Well, thank you for sharing on that topic, John Ashton. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God’s existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments. We’d love to hear more about your journey.