Is God Real? Evidence for God

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In this episode of the Foundation Worldview podcast, we tackle a question that many parents face: how do we help our children believe in the existence of God? Join host Elizabeth Urbanowicz as she provides practical advice and resources for equipping your kids with rational reasons for belief in God. Discover how to affirm your child's questions and doubts, explore the evidence for a higher being, and dive into the attributes of God as revealed in Scripture.

Transcript

Note: The following is an auto-transcript of the podcast recording.

Hello friends, and welcome to another episode of the Foundation Worldview Podcast where we seek to answer your questions so that you can equip the children that God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the biblical worldview. I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz, and I'm thrilled that you joined me for another episode today. Today's question says, "My 7-year-old daughter is struggling with believing that God is real. She thinks he is just too awesome to believe in and is really struggling to believe he could be real." I love this question because this is a question that really gets to the heart of Apologetics, which those of you who have followed the Foundation Worldview ministry for a while now, you know that we're very passionate about apologetics and helping our kids understand the rational reasons for belief in God and specifically the God of the Bible.

Now, my first thought when I read through this question is, what a great opportunity to talk to your daughter about God. I mean, how incredible is it that this little 7-year-old is able to articulate her thoughts, her questions, her uncertainties, her doubts? This is a huge gift that you as a parent have been given. So the first thing I would encourage you to do is affirm her deep thoughts and questions because it is such a good thing that she is thinking critically and she's thinking carefully and that she is sharing her thoughts with you.

So you want to affirm that to let her know that it's so wonderful that she's thinking critically and that she's sharing her thoughts and her questions with you, because we want to make sure that we're keeping open communication with our children no matter what stage of development that they're in. And we also want our kids to know that having questions, having doubts, having uncertainties that is normal and healthy no matter what your worldview is, that no one is ever a hundred percent convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that their worldview is absolutely true, that we all have questions, we all have uncertainties, we all have doubts, and these are things that specifically the Christian worldview welcomes. And so we want to make sure that our children know that when they have questions, those questions are welcome.

So the next thing I would encourage you to do is to ask her some follow-up questions to determine what she means by too awesome. Does she mean that she just thinks that there is no way that there's a possibility that such a powerful being exists, that someone that's this powerful that could create the entire universe exists? Does she believe that God is just too morally perfect, that there's no way that there could be a being that it's this perfect that exists, or does she believe that there's just no way that there's a being that's this comprehensive that has all of these qualities could exist or maybe something else? Because anytime we're answering a question, whether it's for our children or for someone else, we want to make sure that we're actually addressing the question that they have.

I've said this before on this podcast, and this phrase did not originate with me, but I think it's an important one that the right answer to the wrong question is still the wrong answer. That if we go and provide someone with all this evidence for what we think their question is, but that really wasn't their question. We haven't really helped them, so we want to make sure we're identifying, okay, what is the actual question? What does your daughter mean by God is too awesome? So I would highly encourage you to just ask her questions to get to the root of what does she mean by that? And then once you've helped determine what she's saying, if this fits with what she's saying, if she just thinks there's no way that a being that's this great could exist, I think that it would be important to help her see that God is the best explanation for several foundational worldview issues. Several foundational worldview issues that any worldview has to explain. Now, these are not the only worldview issues that God is the best explanation for, but I think that these are ones that are really important for our children to understand.

One of these things is the start of life. That God is the best explanation for the start of life. Another one in a similar vein is the fine tuning of the universe, how the universe, how our solar system, and particularly planet Earth are just fine tuned in a way to support life. And then the third thing I think it's important to help our kids understand is that God is the best explanation for morality and the way that we find it playing out in real life. So with these three things, I'm just going to give you a basic overview of some things that I think that you can do to help your child or the children God is placed in your care, understand that God is the best explanation for these three things. This is a short podcast. This is going to be by no means comprehensive, so would just recommend that after you watch this podcast that you check out some more podcasts by the organization Mama Bear Apologetics because they have many great podcasts on different topics like this and how we can help provide our kids with rational evidence for the Christian faith.

We're just going to go briefly through these three topics and how we can help our kids understand that God is the best explanation for them. The first thing I mentioned is the start of life. The fact that there is life on planet Earth, that the best explanation for this is that there is some intelligent being outside of the universe that actually designed life. Because we want to help our kids see that design is found in life, and design always comes from a designer.

So a great activity that you can do and if you've taken your kids through Foundation Comparative Worldview curriculum, this is an activity that we include in our third unit on life. And so what you have to do is just get a group of Scrabble tiles or bananagrams any kind of letter tiles, and while your child is not there, organize these letter tiles into two different groups. One group of letter tiles. Just take put 'em in a cup, like a red solo cup, shake it up, dump 'em out so they're arranged randomly. The next group of letter tiles spell out to make a sentence. I usually like in what we do in Foundation Comparative Worldview Curriculum is spell out the sentence, life contains information. And so then have your child come into whatever room where you organize these letter tiles and say, okay, we're going to talk through what we see here. And first looked at the ones that you just randomly assorted and say, okay, this group of letter tiles, does it look like it was it got this way accidentally or purposefully, and talk through that? It looks like it got this way accidentally because letters are just kind of jumbled. We don't see any words spelled. There's kind of no rhyme or reason, but then say, could someone have arranged these letter tiles this exact way?

Yeah, someone could have come in here and they could have put each letter tile in this exact way for a specific purpose. We just have no idea what that purpose is. Then look at the letter tiles that spell out a sentence and say, Hmm, these letter tiles, do they look like they got this way accidentally or purposely? Well, it looks like purposely. And then talk about why. Well, the letters are neatly lined up in a row. These letters come together to form words, and these words come together to form a sentence and say, these letter tiles give us information. So then say, "Hmm, do you think that this could have come about accidentally?" And if your child says yes, you can allow them to see if they can get those letter tiles to do the same thing.

So scoop those letter tiles back up into the red solo cup, allow them to shake it up, dump 'em out and say, "okay, do we see another sentence? No. Do we see any words? Well, we see those individual letters are words, but do we see any two letter words or three letter words that are evenly spaced out like before? No." Have them do it again, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times. And then say, "okay, in all of these times, we were never able to get a word that was spelled out where all of the letters were lined up neatly." And then say, "okay, what are the odds that you think we would get a whole sentence spelled out using all the letters in these cups? It's almost approaching zero, the probability that that would happen."

Then you can pull up a YouTube video on DNA for kids, just where you're learning about DNA and what it is, and then talk about how the information contained in our DNA is more than an entire library full of books and say, "okay, if we couldn't get one single sentence to be spelled accidentally, what are the odds that we could get an entire library full of books accidentally really small? Again, it's approaching zero." And then to talk about, "okay, so taking even the Christian God out of the picture, what does the evidence point towards? Does it point towards life starting accidentally or life starting purposefully? It points to life starting purposely, and that means that there was someone or something that had a purpose." So that doesn't automatically be like, therefore there's the Christian God. No. It doesn't even mean therefore there is a God. But it just points to the fact that there is some kind of being outside of us and greater than us who designed us.

Then when we're thinking about the fine tuning of the universe, the fact that the universe is finely tuned, the physics of the universe are finely tuned so that we can have life here on planet Earth exactly as we need it. A great resource to help our kids see, this is the book Cold Case. I'm sorry, not Cold Case Christianity. Cold Case. Christianity for Kids is a great resource, not for what I'm talking about, but God's crime scene, which is the second book in the Cold case series for kids, God's crime Scene by Jay Warner Wallace takes kids through just the skills that a cold case homicide detective would use to determine what happened at the scene of a crime, and then to look at, okay, how can we apply these same skills to looking at what we find in the universe and what does this point towards? And so the book, God's Crime Scene for Kids by Jay Warner Wallace just points to all of the different facets that we find in the universe that are pointing to a being outside of us, and it even looks at, okay, what are some of the characteristics that this being would need to have that fit the data that is provided?

So again, highly recommend that you check out the book God's Crime Scene for Kids by Jay Warner Wallace, and also the book that I accidentally mentioned before, cold Case Christianity for Kids. That's another wonderful book by Detective Jay Warner Wallace. That one is just more talking about the reliability of the Bible. So if you have a kid that has a question about the reliability of the Bible, check out Cold Case Christianity for Kids.

Then the third thing that I think is important for us to help our kids understand is that God is the best explanation for morality, for right and wrong. And so what we can do with our kids is we can discuss what are the different options for morals and where they came from. This again, is something that we do in Foundation Comparative Worldview curriculum.

First, we look at, okay, morals. They're not physical. I can't hold justice in my hand and look at justice. I can't hold truth or goodness or beauty or love or kindness or fairness or hate or any of these things in my hand and look at them because they are not physical. If they are real, they are metaphysical, they're beyond physics, they're spiritual realities. And so we need to look at, okay, either are they realities, they're metaphysical realities, or are they just made up? Are they things that we humans have tricked ourselves into believing because they help us live in a society in a way where we don't all kill one another?

And so we have to look at, okay, so if morals are real, if they are metaphysical realities, what does that mean? That means that there's some standard outside of ourself that we are obligated. We have a moral responsibility to follow. If morals are not real, then if we've just made them up as a human race, then we don't really have an obligation to follow them. It's just what our society has determined. Okay, so first we need to talk through that. So what does that mean? If morals aren't actually real, then it means that love isn't actually objectively good. It means it just helps us survive better. It means that justice treating others fairly isn't actually a real thing that we need to do. It just helps us live in society in a way that functions more easily. And so we need to help them think of these things. That also means that things like murder or hate or stealing, they're not actually really wrong. They're just things that make it more difficult for us to live in society.

And then if we think about morality, it's either objective or subjective. And if morals are real, if they are real truths, they're objective, meaning that they are outside of us, and that means they have to come from a source other than us. Where if morals are subjective, if they're not really real, we just make them up. Then we can just subjectively, individually follow our own heart and follow our own heart wherever it leads, or we can culturally, collectively as a culture decide what we want to be right and wrong. And then we can talk through the benefits and the drawbacks of both of those things.

When we have students do this in Foundation Comparative Worldview curriculum and talk about, well, what if each person just gets to decide for themselves because morals aren't real? Or what if the government just gets to decide or the community gets to vote on right or wrong? What kind of things could happen? Kids very easily pick up on what would happen that if we're just following our own hearts, there's no real right or wrong, but we just follow our own hearts, then our hearts are going to conflict with others all the time, and there's going to be tons of conflict. And if morals are just determined by a government or by voted on a group of people, then that means that when other cultures do things that we don't agree with, those things are not actually right or wrong, they're just what they are.

So when we look at situations like the Holocaust in the early 19 hundreds, the Nazis rounding up Jewish people and systematically killing them through forced labor, through gas chambers, through experimentation that wasn't actually wrong. That was just what we as a society over here have decided is wrong. But for the Germans, it wasn't actually wrong. It was just what they decided was good. As humans, we inherently know that's not true, that there is a morality that is outside of us. It is objective.

And so these three things that the start of life, the fine tuning of the universe and the fact that moral truths are real, these things don't automatically mean therefore the God of the Bible, but they are strong evidence that there is a higher being outside of us who has created us, who's created the universe and sustains the universe that we live in, and who has determined what is morally right and what is morally wrong, and the God of the Bible, then we can help our children see that the God of the Bible is the best explanation for this.

Again, in this very short podcast, this is not a slam dunk case for helping our children understand that God is real and that God is the God of the Bible. But again, would highly recommend that you check out the Mama Bear Apologetics Podcast because they have many episodes that talk about these specific topics and how we can help our children understand these truths.

Now, another thing that I would recommend for this parent to do is we want to help our children understand who God, the God of the Bible specifically is. And we want to help them understand that when we look at Scripture, Scripture has shown us that we are image bearers of God. We reflect, we bear God's image, and no one can strip us of that dignity, value and worth. We are also fallen because we rebelled in our first Father Adam, and as fallen beings, we're not always going to understand life in the world around us correctly. And so we want to help our kids understand that the God of the Bible says who he is in Scripture, and we want to understand who he is as he has revealed himself, not as we view ourselves or falsely view him. So that's where I would highly recommend that we root our kids in Scripture and we help them understand who God is as he has revealed himself in His Word. And then ask our children, okay, does this line up with reality, these things that God claims that he is? Do these line up with who this most powerful being would have to be these moral attributes of God that he shares with us? Do these line up with the morals that we find in the world around us, these objective moral truths that we inherently know everyone is obligated to follow.

And if you're not sure how to do that, highly recommend that you check out our Attributes of God Curriculum here at Foundation Worldview, because what we do is we systematically take kids through eight incommunicable attributes of God, the attributes that God alone possesses, and eight communicable attributes, the attributes that he invites us to reflect, and these attributes, the incommunicable attributes can help our children see, oh my goodness, the God of the Bible actually lines up with the being that we would expect based on what life is, the fine tuning of the universe, and then looking at his communicable attributes, the ones he invites us to reflect. These attributes reflect the morality that we find etched in the world around us.

Well, I hope that this podcast has been a helpful starting place. Again, this is not a slam dunk case. This is just a beginning, but hopefully you will take the resources that I suggested, the Mama Bear Apologetics Podcast, the God's Crime Scene for Kids and the Attributes of God curriculum, and that you will dive down deep into these resources to really begin equipping your kids to understand who God is and why we can trust that God is actually as he has presented himself in Scripture.

Well, that's a wrap for this episode. But as always, my prayer for you as we leave our time together is that no matter the situation in which you and the children God has placed in your care, find yourselves, you would trust that God is working all things together for your good by using all things to conform you more in any image of His Son. I'll see you next time.