The Case For God: Why The Christian Worldview Make Sense 2 by Pastor Dolapo Lawal: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Debunking Atheist Arguments: Human Reasoning as the Ultimate Authority

The fourth major argument to address is the atheist claim that human reasoning alone is sufficient to determine truth — that revelation must be rejected in favor of unaided human reason.

Human reasoning is not particular to any one person. It is, in most situations, shaped by experience, teaching, and social acceptance. The way people think is constantly evolving — and sometimes it is even subject to group influence. How impressionable the human mind actually is becomes clear when someone reads comment sections and finds their original opinion shifting simply because of what others are saying.

The Problem With Trusting Human Reason

The atheist trusts human reason completely, but there is a devastating question that must be asked: How do you know your reasoning is reliable?

The answer cannot come from reason itself — because the very instrument whose reliability is in question is being used to verify that reliability. The argument is circular.

This is like a man using a broken ruler to prove the ruler isn't broken.

Charles Darwin himself wrote in a private letter that the doubt always arises whether the convictions of a mind which has developed from lower animals are of any value or trustworthy at all. Darwin saw the problem clearly: if the human brain is simply the product of blind, unguided evolutionary processes — shaped not for truth but for survival — why trust it to discover ultimate philosophical truths?

The atheist argument destroys itself:

• Human reason evolved purely for survival, not for truth
• Therefore, human reason has no guaranteed connection to ultimate reality
• Therefore, the atheist's reasoning about God is unreliable by their own worldview
• Therefore, atheism built on human reason alone cannot trust its own conclusions

Reason is a magnificent servant and a terrible master.

The Bible says the mind is desperately wicked and continuously evil — it is the same mind that has produced biochemical weapons, that can be insane, and that can run mad without knowing it. A mad person does not know they are mad. That is precisely the point: the most faulty minds believe themselves to be the most reliable.

The Testimony of History: What Human Nature Produces

In 1961, a Nazi SS officer — the mastermind behind the Jewish Holocaust and the death camps — was put on trial. A death camp survivor named Yehiel Dinur was brought in to testify. When he saw the officer in the dock, he collapsed and fainted dramatically.

Twenty-two years later, when interviewed on a television program, Dinur was asked what he had been overcome with — hate? Fear? His answer was remarkable.

He said: "When I came in and saw him, I suddenly realized — this is not a demon. This is not a superman. This is an ordinary man just like me."

He then said: "Adolf is in all of us."

And finally, reflecting on what that moment cost him, he said: "I collapsed because I was facing myself."

Hitler himself said he wanted to raise a generation of young people void of conscience, imperialist, ruthless and cruel. One historian observed: with Hitler, the church came too late. The meaning is plain — the devil got to him before the church did.

In other words, anyone can become Hitler, given the right environment to expose the wickedness already latent within them. The jealousy underneath the surface can become murder in the right circumstances.

God told Cain directly: sin is crouching at the door and wants to have you. That jealousy became bitterness, and that bitterness moved toward murder. Every sin is a process — and if the right circumstances with the correct amount of pressure are applied at steps one and two, the end result can be catastrophic.

The Historical Witness to Christ

The historian W.H. Lecky, himself a skeptic, wrote in his book European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne that the character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue but the strongest incentive in practice — and that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the dispositions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.

Without the teaching of Jesus — the message of forgiveness, of kindness — the world would self-destruct. Remove the Bible. Remove the Ten Commandments. Remove every restraint. What remains is unguided human nature.

Why the Word of God Can Be Trusted

If human reason cannot be trusted as the ultimate arbiter, the question becomes: what can be? The answer is the Word of God. Three arguments follow.

1. The Unity Argument

   40 authors. One story.

   The Bible was written over roughly 1,500 years across three continents — Asia, Africa, and Europe — in three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Its authors include shepherds, kings, fishermen, tax collectors, doctors, and prisoners. Most of them never met each other.

   Yet the Bible maintains:

   • One central problem — sin and separation from God
   • One central solution — redemption through a coming or arrived Messiah
   • One coherent meta-narrative — creation, fall, redemption, and restoration

   No human editorial committee orchestrated it. The odds of 40 independent writers accidentally producing this coherence are almost impossible.

2. The Accuracy of Prediction — History Written in Advance

   This is perhaps the most empirically verifiable argument. The Bible contains hundreds of specific prophecies fulfilled in history.

   • Isaiah 53 — written 700 years before Christ. Isaiah 53 describes a suffering servant pierced for others' transgressions, silent before his accusers, buried with the rich. It was written centuries before crucifixion even existed as a method of execution.

   • Psalm 22 — David prophesied that his hands and feet would be pierced, and that soldiers would divide his garments by lot. Psalm 22:16 What are the chances that Roman soldiers — who had never read that prophecy — would cast lots for garments, fulfilling the exact detail written a thousand years earlier? They cast lots because it was a messianic sign they were unconsciously enacting.

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   • Micah 5:2 — Bethlehem specifically prophesied as the Messiah's birthplace. Micah 5:2 Caesar decrees that everyone must return to their hometown for a census. A young couple navigating a miraculous conception find themselves in Bethlehem precisely when the child is to be born — with no room in the inn, they settle in a manger, fulfilling not only the location but the imagery of the Lamb of God. God used the mind of a Gentile ruler, and a seemingly coincidental decree, to align with what a prophet had spoken centuries before.

   • Daniel 9 — A Mathematical Timeline

     Daniel 9:25 gives a precise timeline. The prophecy states that from the command to restore and build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be 7 weeks and 62 weeks — 69 weeks in total.

     The Hebrew word for "weeks" here is shabim, meaning units of seven — not necessarily seven days. In prophetic context it refers to years. So:

     • One week = 7 years
     • 69 weeks = 69 × 7 = 483 years

     The prophecy begins from the decree to restore and build Jerusalem — found in Nehemiah 2:1–8, the decree of Artaxerxes in 445 BC.

     Converting 483 prophetic years (using the prophetic 360-day year standard):

     • 483 × 360 = 173,880 days
     • Converted to solar years = approximately 476 actual years
     • 445 BC + 476 years = 30 to 33 AD

     This is the precise period when Jesus began his ministry and was crucified. Daniel 9:26 adds that after the 62 weeks, the Messiah will be "cut off" — meaning Daniel not only prophesied the ministry, but the death of the Messiah, with striking precision, nearly five centuries in advance.

   • The Dead Sea Scrolls — When critics claimed the Bible had been altered over centuries, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 provided an answer. The original manuscript of the book of Isaiah was found and placed side by side with the modern text. They were the same. The objection was quietly abandoned.

3. Christianity Is the Only Worldview That Invites Reasoning

   Christianity does not simply demand belief — it invites investigation. No other religion has a formal tradition of apologetics in the same way. God himself says: come, let us reason together.

   When atheists say "set the Bible aside and let's have an objective conversation," and then proceed to quote scientists and philosophers as their own authorities, they are doing exactly the same thing as the believer quoting Scripture. Both are citing authoritative sources. The only honest thing to do is examine the credibility of each document on its own merits.

   As the early church leader Gamaliel observed: if this movement is of human origin, it will collapse on its own. But if it is of God, it cannot be stopped. Something that started with twelve people and has reshaped human civilization cannot be easily explained away.

Disbelief vs. Unbelief

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There is an important distinction that must not be missed:

• Unbelief — "I do not have enough proof."
• Disbelief — "In spite of proof, I choose not to believe."

When religious leaders witnessed a man rise from the dead and responded by paying people to deny it, the reason was not intellectual — it was economic and political. They said: if God has moved from the temple and now lives in people, our entire system becomes irrelevant. So we will lie.

That is how hard a human mind can be. And that hardness is not an intellectual position. It is a spiritual one.

Most Atheism Is Personal, Not Intellectual

Most people who reject faith do not do so because they have examined the evidence and found it wanting. They do so because something personal happened — and they were never given the full picture of what following Christ actually involves.

The false gospel that was preached to them said: come to Christ and your life will be better. Come to Christ and enjoy the blessings. But that is not the full truth. The manual says something different:

This is not lifestyle modification. It is transformation.

Paul wrote as someone having nothing, yet possessing all things — poor, yet making many rich. That is the life. Not a smooth-ride Christianity. Not a fix-me God. A partnership with a Father who, when he wanted to save his enemies, gave his own Son.

When God gave life to Christ, he did not excuse himself from pain. He does not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of human infirmity. Everything that is brought to him — betrayal, abandonment, injustice — he has already gone through.

The Danger of Offense and the Lying Spirit

Jesus told the disciples to tell John the Baptist: the blind see, the lame walk, the dead are raised, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And then: tell him not to be offended in me.

That is a critical statement. John was in prison. He had prophesied the Lord's coming. He had faithfully completed his assignment. And yet the circumstances of his life at that moment looked nothing like what he expected.

Once a person enters the posture of offense, they begin to distort reality. And once that distortion begins, they become susceptible to a lying spirit — a spirit that does not come upon one prophet, but upon many. It arrives with confirmation, with a community, with agreement, so that the person in error feels validated.

2 Timothy 4:3–4 — the time will come when people will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires will heap up for themselves teachers, turning their ears away from truth and toward fables.

The process of departure from faith is always a process:

1. Offense and hurt
2. Questions about doctrine
3. "Maybe Jesus is not the only way"
4. Agnosticism
5. Full atheism

What drives each step is not intellectual honesty — it is pain seeking validation.

The Resolve That Is Required

Daniel 11:32 describes a time when those who forsake the covenant are rewarded, while the sanctuary is defiled and the daily sacrifice is stopped. But then it says: the people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits.

That strength is not about activity. It is about standing. Even when the sacrifice is stopped, those who know their God continue privately. They do not stop. They ask: why should I praise a God who allowed all of this to happen? And then they praise anyway.

That is what is called being strong and doing exploits.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had every reason to question. God had watched Jerusalem be destroyed, the temple ransacked, and his people carried into Babylon. Now they were being commanded to bow to another god. And yet they said: even if he does not deliver us, we will not bow.

Even if God is powerless — I like it like that. Leave it for me.

That is the resolve that is required.

What Suffering Is Actually For

There are people God trusts with pain. Job was being laughed at on earth while God was bragging about him in heaven. His friends told him he had sinned. The way God answered his questions was by asking him greater questions. And in the end, Job said: I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.

Job did not know that God was using him to write Scripture. He did not know that the comfort he received would become the comfort of generations.

The comfort received is what is used to comfort others. That is not a formula — it is the very structure of how God works.

Anything bad that draws you toward God is a blessing. Anything good that takes you away from God is evil.

What put Joseph into trouble was the very thing that released him from it — the dream. The chief cornerstone is also a rock of offense. It is the same thing.

Salvation Is Not a Right — It Is Benevolence

If a person perishes, God does not lose. He is not looking for worshippers. Heaven is already full of them, worshipping him 24 hours a day. He came to save people because of his own kindness, not because he needed them.

Salvation is his benevolence. It is not anyone's right. Understanding that repositions everything — it removes the posture of entitlement and replaces it with the posture of gratitude and partnership.

The wisest possible response to this reality is to align. To not lose on earth, and then lose eternally. To pick the one loss if a loss must be taken — not both.