ASK Facilitator Guide ©2012 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries ASK Facilitator Guide Table of Content s ORIGIN 1.1 Something or Nothing - Andy Bannister To demonstrate that this universe and everything that is implies a first cause. 1.2 Cause and Effect - John Lennox To demonstrate that the stunning order of the universe around us implies an intelligent creator. 1.3 Reason and Order - John Lennox To demonstrate that the universe is at base a reasonable, rational world, in keeping with the rational mind of a Creator. 1.4 Origin and Evidence - Ravi Zacharias To demonstrate that it is impossible to live without faith and that faith in God is equally reasonable. MEANING 2.1 Big Questions - Stuart McAllister To demonstrate that meaning and purpose are inextricably linked to a Creator God. 2.2 Beauty All Around - Jill Carattini To demonstrate that beauty nourishes a Christian sense of meaning and purpose. 2.3 The Meaning of Stuff - Stuart McAllister To demonstrate that human beings with infinite longings and finite capacities need more than “stuff” to find meaning. 2.4 Living Purpose - Ravi Zacharias To demonstrate that purpose is the primary motivation behind everything that we do. ©2012 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries MORALITY 3.1 Whose morality is it anyway? - Stuart McAllister To discuss how examples of right behavior and wrong behavior point human beings towards an objective standard of morality and a moral Lawgiver. 3.2 Judge and Jury - John Njoroge To discover that an objective morality infuses our world. 3.3 War - Stuart McAllister To discuss the problem of evil and to explore the uniqueness of the Christian response to evil. 3.4 Moral Stories - Ravi Zacharias To explore how evil is the byproduct of the violation of God’s will. DESTINY 4.1 Imagining a Destiny Beyond the End - Stuart McAllister To explore the unique Christian vision of eternal life as the conqueror of death. 4.2 In The Marketplace of Ideas - Andy Bannister To understand that freedom is not simply the power to make choices but is the freedom to become all that God intends for those redeemed by Christ Jesus. 4.3 Your Life, Your Destiny - Stuart McAllister To explore the ways in which Christianity promises the believer salvation. 4.4 Destiny Matters - Ravi Zacharias To continue the conversation on how Christianity offers the best possible explanation and hope for our future destiny. ©2012 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries Origin Where do we come from? ©2012 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries Session Title: 1.1 Something or Nothing Key Concept: The question of why there is something rather than nothing requires more than a scientific answer. Key Verse: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." —John 1: 1-5 Objective: To demonstrate that this universe and everything that is implies a first cause. Discussion Setup: Science works in terms of cause and effect, examining an effect such as light, and tracing it back to a cause, such as the sun. Scientific laws like the sun rising in the east and setting the west are readily explainable in terms of the earth's rotation and relative position in space. What science cannot tell us is who or what created the sun and earth in the first place. There is good reason why theology was once called the Queen of the Sciences! This question is philosophical or theological in nature because it has to do with reality behind reality. If we saw a rabbit appear in front of us, we would not assume that it came from nowhere. As Christians we affirm with science that there must be a cause. We believe that matter was brought into being by an eternal God because contingency implies involvement. There is something rather than nothing because there has always been the eternal God whose good will it was to fashion our universe. The majestic opening to John's Gospel tells us that through Jesus Christ all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. ©2012 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries Q & A Summary: 1. Why is the question of the universe's existence so important? Dr. Bannister points out that this is one of the most important questions of all because our vast and diverse universe shouts for a cause to its effect. It seems counterintuitive to claim that it all just had to be this way, that the universe is simply a "brute fact." We can, of course, imagine the world and the universe to be different. We can imagine a world in which certain people don't exist, or where things work differently. This little mental exercise seems to imply that the universe is not, strictly speaking, necessary, but a result of will and intent. In other words, our universe isn't this way because it has to be; our universe is this way because someone chose for it to be this way. The answer to the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" tells us why we are here, not just why the universe is here, but why you and I are here. 2. Does our universe have to have a beginning? As Dr. Bannister makes clear, science works in terms of cause and effect, examining an effect and tracing it back to a cause. When it comes to our universe, this evokes the question: "What kicked everything off?" If we are at the end of a long chain of cause and effect, what caused it all in the first place? Atheists who deny a creator are forced to conclude that matter has somehow always been here, which requires a dismissal of what philosophers call the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Put simply, everything that is has some adequate and sufficient reason why it is. If we look backward toward the beginning, it's clear we need some sort of first cause that started everything. If we look toward the end, scientists agree that it's clear the world is winding down, that it won't be here forever. There is a beginning and an end. 3. If matter is present, where does it come from? Science is a fantastic tool; it does a wonderful job of explaining how the something we have now operates. But the question we are concerned with starts before this. The question of what lies behind reality itself is a philosophical or theological question and not one that can be answered by science alone. The answer the Christian posits as the reality behind reality is a spiritual, personal Creator who, unlike creation, is immaterial and ©2012 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries eternal. We believe the material of our universe comes from God, who was the first cause that got everything sta rted. 4. What does Christ have to do with creation? Dr. Bannister draws attention to the fact that there are indeed many other worldviews out there, some of which would agree with the Christian that there is a god lying behind everything. Muslims, for instance, believe in a creator. However, it is interesting to note that almost without exception, each of these alternative worldviews has a god who is distant and remote and ultimately far removed from creation. God is more of a principle than a person. Jesus, on the other hand, is a physical illustration that the God of the Bible does not remain distant from creation. So not only does Christianity explain that there is a creator God who is the reason there is something rather than nothing, but also this creator God is knowable because of what God has done in the person of Jesus. Jesus is not just responsible for creation but also stepped into his creation. And this brings a whole new radically personal slant to the question of who created the universe. We are not only able to recognize that God is here within creation but we can know God because Christ took on flesh and walked as one of us in creation. Further Study: James Sire, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009). Key Terms: Matter/Material: In this section these terms are interchangeable. Both denote the material universe surrounding us. For our purposes, the most notable fact about matter is that it implies involvement. Everything that is has some adequate and sufficient reason why it is. Contingency: In philosophy, contingency describes something that does not exist in and of itself but depends for its existence upon some other being. The universe itself has no sufficient reason for existence in and of itself; it is not self- explanatory. Something from outside the universe, whose existence is not contingent but necessary, must have acted to sustain the universe. ©2012 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries Session Title: 1.2 Cause and Effect Key Concept: The universe around us is filled with a stunning order that implies a first cause. Key Verse: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible attributes, God's eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made." —Romans 1:20 Objective: To demonstrate that the stunning order of the universe around us implies an intelligent creator. Discussion Setup: The content in this session hinges on the order and cause of creation. The human genome is one example of that order, the precise molecular message that codes for the proteins out of which the body's cells are made. In practical terms, it only takes the half dozen letters of our name written in the snow on the side of a mountain to convince us that a personal intelligence is behind the message. Our universe is also fine-tuned to accommodate life. As Professor Lennox points out, even the slightest divergence in either position or chemical makeup would render carbon-based life on earth impossible. If the earth were slightly closer to the sun, we would perish from extreme heat. If the earth were farther away, we would succumb to the arctic temperatures. If the earth spun faster we would lose the benefit of gravity and be hurled into space. If it spun slower, we would boil by day, freeze at night. These provocative facts are at the center of the question of the universe's design. Generally speaking, when we come across sophisticated machinery or technologies, we trace them back to a cause. Similarly, our universe displays a staggering level of design and intricacy. Far from lazy thinking, to view the universe as effect and God as cause is a reasonable assumption based on the order with which we are surrounded. ©2012 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries Q & A Summary: 1. Is it fair to view the universe as an effect that can be traced back to a cause? Science concerns itself with causes and effects within the universe. Should it not also ask about the whole show? Some are content to say that the universe is simply a "brute fact," and that any attempt to explain its origin is futile. Others have relied on scientific laws, such as gravity, to explain the universe's supposed ability to create itself from nothing. But as Professor Lennox makes clear, a law nature cannot create or cause anything. The sun rising in the east and setting in the west is an example of a natural law, but this scientific law does not cause the sun to rise in the east or set in the west, anymore than it creates the sun. The beginning words of the Christian story on the other hand—"in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"—offers an answer to the question that science cannot. 2. Can the universe be explained by time and chance and matter? The basic elements of time and matter and chance are often named as the initial cause of the universe we now see before us in its complexity. These elements will certainly do something, Dr. Lennox notes, but there are problems with leaving the creation of the universe up to this equation. For starters, the initial matter has to come from somewhere too! But more than this, the nature of the universe is full of such precision and complexity that it's hard to imagine matter and chance and time being enough to cause the actual universe we see in all its sophistication. 3. What role does order play in this discussion? If you found the letters of your name written in the snow on a mountainside, you would immediately conclude that whatever machinery was used to write this, there was an intelligence behind it. The nature of the order we see around us is like this. When we have a message as specific and as exact as the coding we find in human DNA—3.4 billion letters exactly in the right order—we immediately conclude that there is an intelligence behind it. To call this accidental is puzzling. And yet, the atheist philosophy, which demands an explanation that starts with matter and time and nothing more, does exactly this. ©2012 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries 4. We might concede there was a creator who made the universe, but why do Christians insist it was a personal creator? The notion that God created the world but then stepped back from it only to remain uninvolved and indifferent to it is called deism. A few former atheists have eventually been persuaded to admit there may be a God who created the world, but they reject the notion that God is personal and present. The philosopher Antony Flew, who was formerly one of the most influential atheists, was convinced of this view because of the complexity of DNA. But Christianity goes a lot further than deism. Christianity looks around the world and sees evidence of intelligence, evidence of design, evidence of power, and evidence of persons—and we can't imagine our origins as being less than personal. But beyond this, the central Christian claim and argument for God's personal involvement with us is Jesus Christ who became human. This is a vast miracle and a fantastic claim that needs to be examined for it's own validity, but once we have this, we see very clearly that God is personal and then we can also talk in categories of love and relationship. Bonus Material: 1. Is it just lazy thinking to say that God is the creator of the universe because we're not sure how it all came together? Some offer the critique that belief in a creator is lazy thinking because we simply don't want to spend the time finding the real answers. This is often called the "God of the Gaps" theory—namely, we can't explain it, therefore God did it. Professor Lennox notes that as a scientist he is quite sensitive to this critique because he doesn't want to be accused of lazy assumptions. Far from it, Lennox insists that his work within his field and belief in God in fact coincide rationally. As he says, "I do not believe in a God of the Gaps; I believe God is the God of the whole show." He then uses the famous scientist Isaac Newton as an example of a scientist whose work also encouraged his beliefs. When Newton discovered the law of gravity he didn't immediately abandon his belief in God in favor of the law he had just discovered. Far from it, he saw the explanation of gravity as a tremendous example of the explanation of God ©2012 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries