 If you look on a Missouri state map, in the southwestern part you'll find a small dot. What does this tiny town, liberal Missouri, have to do with morals and the existence of God? We'll find out what happens when you try to remove God from a culture. In this episode of Origins, you'll see not only the consequences and fruits of atheism, but also how you can prove that God really does exist. Coming up on today's edition of Origins, an experiment in infidelity with Dr. Brad Herob. Oh, and welcome to Origins. I'm Ray Hypole. It's an honor to be your host today. During this program, we showcase interesting guests who present evidence from science, along with other important facts, validating the truth of creation and the accuracy of the Bible. Today's guest, Dr. Brad Herob, holds a degree in biology and a doctorate degree in anatomy and neurobiology from the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee. Currently, he serves as the executive director of Focus Press and co-editor of THINK Magazine. Dr. Herob travels the world speaking on Christian evidences, fortifying the family, and cultural apologetics. Welcome to the program, Brad. Hey, it's great to be here, Ray. We are glad to have you. We're going to have an experiment in infidelity. That could mean a lot of things. Absolutely, absolutely. What are we going to be doing exactly? I want to take you to a little town called Liberal, Missouri. It is a real town today, population less than 1,000 people. A town that was founded in 1910, gentlemen by the name of George Walser, born in the 1800s. He actually founded Liberal, Missouri. When you go there today, you know, it looks like kind of typical small town rural America. You've got the downtown Main Street. You've got all the different aspects, liberal news. One of the interesting things when you start looking at the street signs, you're going to notice they're a little different than a lot of, you know, you don't see the General Maple Avenue or Main Street. Instead, you see Darwin or Ingersoll or all of these folks who were skeptics, unbelievers, evolutionists, that kind of thing. The reason why is because George Walser wanted a city without any kind of religion. And so he quite literally put out ads and newspapers saying, hey, we want anybody who doesn't like religion, doesn't want, you know, Christianity, no Bible in our city. And that's how they were founded. Wow. I've never heard of this. It's a fascinating. When you actually do the study, what you discover is they had lots and lots of saloons, lots of bars, as you can imagine, not a lot of things like hospitals, things that Christians are kind of known for as far as caring for people. At one point, they even put barbed wire around the city because missionaries were saying, hey, we need to go and convert those people. And Walser said, no, we don't want that. But when you read all of the history, what you discover is this was quite literally a failed experiment in infidelity. And what I mean by that is by the end, there was so much crime, so much just chaos that they were quite literally begging Christians to come in and start churches in their city. And so what you got is you have a real life example of what happens when you take God out of a city or a culture. George Walser, he quite literally showed us, if you remove God, you're going to implode. You know, that's fascinating because we are made in the image of God. We are moral creatures and to try to deny that foundation and not expect, you know, the immorality that came from it. I mean, absolutely. And think about this, Ray, when you look at what's going on in America today, with us removing God from schools and the town square and basically at this stage in our history, the only place that they want God is in a church building. And even then they're starting to kind of inch into that. And you start looking at what happened at liberal Missouri and you realize, wow, you know, how long until we implode or we start circling the drain, so to speak. Yeah, I think more and more that we are headed in the wrong direction and Christianity is not only ignored or not like, but actually attacked. I've seen that more and more across the board, as far as media and institutions. Christianity in a lot of ways and what the Bible teaches is considered evil or hate or something like that. Absolutely. You asked the question, what is the fruit of atheism? You know, what was it that George Walser and that little town, what did they discover with their experiment? Well, the fruit of atheism, if you stop and think about it, is the opposite of Christianity. Christianity is teaching things like love. It's teaching things like don't steal, don't lie. On the screen, you'll notice this is a crime clock that displays how often things are happening here. And, you know, ultimately, this is the fruit of atheism. This is the fruit of unbelief. You think about what does the Bible teach? The Bible says, don't steal. If you're in a town where there there is no God, there's no morality, then what makes stealing? Somebody's horse or somebody's car or somebody's phone. Ultimately, the Bible over and over is reminding us there is a God. There is a moral code. Ephesians chapter four, verse twenty eight, let him who steal steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands. What is good that he may have something to give him who has needs. So not only don't steal, but also take care of those who may not be able to provide for themselves. You know, evolution on the other hand is teaching survival of the fittest. I love that passage in Ephesians, because I like to remind my congregants that, you know, the Bible actually commands us to be responsible for ourselves, to work, to provide our own living and even to the point where we can help others who are not able to for various reasons. But, you know, it's really the opposite of stealing. You are to provide for others rather than to take from others. Absolutely. So the question before us today is, is there a God? You know, should America be formed around this idea that God doesn't exist, that he's not real? Ultimately, this is probably the greatest question that both our culture and the world can answer because the answer to that single question affects everything else. If there really is a supreme being, then you and I are here for a purpose. Our life has meaning. If there's not a God, then ultimately we're just here by mistake. Yeah. How could anybody force a view on anyone else of morality of, hey, it's wrong to do that or it's right to do this? You know, we're all randomly generated accidents. Right. Right. Fortunate mistakes of countless biochemical morons. Yeah. So there is no good. There is no evil. You know, this piece of dust smashes that piece of dust, and that's what pieces of dust do. That's right. That's right. I want to go up to the board and talk a little bit about how do we prove there really is a God? You know, if I were an atheist, how would you prove that? Yes, there really is a God. And what I mean by that is. You can't measure him in a lab, so to speak. We know that atheists are evangelizing, so to speak, our young people. I grabbed this off of an atheistic website. Notice Ray says, no God, no guilt. The belief in God awakens fanaticism and guilt. Live free and responsible. Debaptize yourself. Wow. I mean, you think about how many 18, 19 year olds like that idea right there? No guilt. Just, you know, you can do whatever you want. But we only carry that out. No guilt for murder, no guilt for rape, no guilt for torture. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, if I were to ask you, can we prove that Abraham Lincoln really live? Because neither one of us saw him. We weren't alive at that time. Or if you've never been overseas to see the Great Wall of China, how do we know for sure that that actually exists? And the answer is we have evidence. We have images of Abraham Lincoln. We have his writings as far as the Great Wall of China. You put me on a computer that's got internet connection. And I can actually be looking at it from a satellite in three or four minutes. So we know we can prove these things. But let's be honest, God is a spirit. The Bible says those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. So we can't take him into a laboratory. A lot of times we hear about the scientific method, something being observable, measurable, repeatable. But if we can't use our five senses, if we can't see, taste, smell, touch or hear him, then how do we prove there really is a God? What I want to do is I want to give you three ways that hopefully the viewers can not only remember, but maybe share them with their children, their coworkers, their friends. Three things that we can use to basically prove there really is a God. First thing, we got to clear up. A lot of folks say, well, you know, if you can't measure in a lab, it's not real. But Ray, there's lots of things that we can't measure in a laboratory. I spent a lot of time in laboratories at Vanderbilt University, University of Tennessee. And one of the interesting things that I know from my background in neurology, all humans have a conscience. But you can't drop a probe into the brain and say, right here, this is where the conscience is. Now, we know it exists. Same thing with love. How would you measure love in a laboratory? We all know exist, right? I mean, you don't want to go home today and meet your wife and realize, tell her, hey, you know, I don't think love exists because I can't measure it in a lab. You're getting big trouble. We know that it does exist. The question is, OK, if that's the case, then how do we know or how can we measure these other things? Three ways that I would encourage you to maybe write down. Think about number one, the cosmological argument. And I would point out, don't get lost in the big words here. This is simply the cause and effect argument. The second one, anthropological argument, that is the existence of morals and last, the teleological argument, and that is design. If it were me and I was trying to prove the existence of God, I have four children, I would simply walk them outside, point up to the night sky and simply say, how do you explain all that? Because my children can see the moon. They can see the stars. They know that that stuff is real. And so then the question is, all right, where did it come from? Ultimately, there's only three logical possibilities. Possibility number one is that everything we see out there. All the stars, everything is eternal, meaning it is always existed and it will forever exist. The second option is that it's not eternal, but rather it popped into existence from nothing. The last option is that the universe is not eternal. It didn't pop into existence from nothing, but rather it was created. As we look at each one of those, the first one we know today is totally unscientific. And what I mean by that is we know the universe is not eternal. It's expanding. The two guys who proved that the universe is expanding, Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble of Hubble Telescope fame, they showed that the universe is actually growing, which means it had to have a beginning. And in fact, even evolutionists today will admit this fact. Robert Jastrow says the lingering decline predicted by astronomers for the end of the world differs from the explosive conditions that they have calculated for its birth, but the impact, he says, is the same. He says modern science denies an eternal existence to the universe, either in the past or the future. And so basically, option number one, it's no good. We got to throw it out. What about option number two? Well, what about this idea that it just spring into existence from nothing? As crazy as that sounds, realistically, that's evolutionists only options. I was having a Bible study with a gentleman one time and long story short, he said, you know, I believe that there was nothing here. And when I asked him, OK, what went bang, he looked at me, he said, the nothing went bang. So again, kind of illogical, what they do is they try to shrink it down to a single point of singularity. You see right here, this red ball, they say this is basically the universe at 10 to the minus 34 seconds before it exploded. I do want to blow this up so you can see it. Take a look at the subheading. The universe burst into something from absolutely nothing, zero nada. As it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere, not exactly science right there. But at the end of the day, that's their option, the best option. The option that makes logical sense, Ray, is that this universe was created. And so we see here very plainly, one of the ways that we can prove the existence of God is just the fact that matter exists. There had to be a cause for it. The second way is the existence of morals. In fact, NASA astronomer John O'Keefe, he put it this way. He said, we are by astronomical standards, a pampered, cost-ed and cherished group of creatures. He says, if the universe had not been made with the most exacting precision, we could have never come into existence. It is my view, these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in. And, you know, obviously when you look around, you realize there is design. The other thing that we know is morals. Morals actually prove there's a God. Think about liberal Missouri for just a moment. When I put these words on the screen, hopefully most of the viewers out there look at those and they think, hey, those are wrong. But in order for something to be wrong, that means there has to be ultimately a standard. And so the question is, what is that standard? Who came up with that standard? This time, we only have two options. Option number one is that we got our morality, our ethics from God. Or option number two, they came from man. Now, what's the problem with us saying that they came from man? Obviously, an atheist, they've only got that one option. They have to say, yeah, morals exist. But man evolved them. Well, then the question is, what man gets to decide? You know, is it Hitler? Is it a serial killer? You know, ultimately, who gets to say what is right and what is wrong? Ultimately, the problem was saying that man evolved ethics. Morals is that every single person would view it a little bit differently. And so the only option that makes logical sense is that we've adopted God's unchanging standard for right and wrong. The Bible describes God as eternal, holy, just, righteous, forever consistent. In fact, whatever he commands or approves, whatever he does is ultimately for our good. I want to stop you right there, Brad. We have to take a break. Stay with us. We'll be right back after these messages. We hope you're enjoying Origins TV. It all started at Cornerstone Television in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We've been producing new episodes for over 37 years now. We praise God for the success of the program and are excited to introduce you to Origins and to us. If you're interested in watching more episodes of Origins, you can find them on our YouTube page. Simply go to YouTube and search Cornerstone Television Network. Click the like and subscribe buttons, then you'll find the best episodes of Origins in our playlist. You can also visit our website at ctvn.org slash Origins. One more way you can stay connected with us is to subscribe to our free monthly Hope Today newsletter, which you can do from our website. And if you have any questions, call us here at Cornerstone Television at 888-665-4483. We'd love to connect with you. Thank you for watching. Welcome back to Origins. We're talking to Dr. Brad Herob, who's been sharing about an experiment in infidelity. Brad, we've gotten past the infidelity part. We've been talking about the fidelity part that we can know there's a God. I find this fascinating. In fact, I love this part of apologetics that it's not even probability. We know he's there. We know. We talked a little bit about cause and effects. We talked a little bit about morals and how we use those to prove there's a God. I want us to talk a little bit about design because to me, design is probably one of the, if not the best arguments. If there is design that demands there is a designer. Absolutely. I like to tell the kids I teach at the Christian school, if you see a pie, there's a pie maker. Absolutely. If you see a universe, there's a universe maker. Absolutely. When we look at the universe, the design in the universe, think about the positioning of things like the earth, the sun, all the different aspects that have to be just perfect in order for life to exist. You've got, for instance, the location, the orbit of the earth, the rotation, the makeup of the earth, the distance from the sun. All those things have to be precise or else you and I are not here today. Again, we're talking just really small deviations from that would eliminate life. Absolutely. In fact, I want to share with you the statistical odds of having a heavenly body in just the right place in space. Now, I'll go ahead and admit to you Ray right up front. I didn't care for math much in school. Had to have calculus to get through medical school. But God and I, we've kind of got an agreement that unless there's a math test to get into heaven, I'm done with math. But if we were to look at statistically, what are the odds of, for instance, being in the right type of galaxy? We know today we are in a spiral galaxy. The odds of that about one in seven, but not only the right type, you have to be in the right location in that galaxy. Can't be too close to the center or too far out on one of those spiral arms. The odds of that are about 0.05 to the fifth billion. But not only that, you have to be near the right sun. Now, this would be the right age sun, one that's not flaming up or flaring out. Odds of that about one in a hundred. You have to also be the right distance from that sun. So again, one in 40. The odds of being at the right rotation rate, one in four, the right tilt, one in 360, you add all of these up and the number you see right here at the bottom of the screen, that is the statistical odds of having a heavenly body in just the right place in space. Statistically, it's impossible. Yeah, I don't know what that number is either. I went to seminary. There you go. There you go. Here's the ironic thing. We still don't have life yet. You know, you, you still have to add water because we know without water. Ultimately, you're not going to get off the ground. It, it makes me laugh when I ask atheists, Hey, where did water come from? According to your theory, you know, my belief, very firmly God created water on the very first day. The spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. I've actually had university professors heckling me saying, Oh, it's a water cycle. And I'm always like, wait a second. In order to have a water cycle, you first have to have water. It's interesting in 2009, evolution has published a paper that gives their explanation for our water. And they would say that water was actually delivered here by meteorites. Yeah, yeah, comments. I've heard that. Yeah. And I'm thinking, wait a second. First off, we've never seen them in the water delivery business. And second, think about what happens when they hit our atmosphere, it would burn up and the water would go away. So they, they were big enough. There would be these craters everywhere, right? I mean, it would be like Swiss cheese. The planet would be decimated. They can't even explain water. You add to that the sun. You know, I know that you are a preacher at a local congregation. There is always somebody at local congregations that has a job that I do not envy and that guy's job is to control a little box on the wall. And you and I both know he can make the ladies happy and have guys just sweating or he can make us happy and have the girls just freezing to death. And yet God set the temperature for the sun. Ninety three million miles away, just perfect for life. Are we really to believe that the earth's atmosphere, the tilt, the rotation, the distance to the moon, distance from the sun, the orbit, the placement that all of that is simply a product of evolution. I don't think that's where we are. Design demands a designer. Michael Murray said this, he said almost everything about the basic structure of the universe, for example, the fundamental laws and the parameters of physics, the initial distribution of matter and energy is balanced on a razor's edge for life to occur. And he's absolutely correct. Design demands a designer. God is the ultimate cause. God is the ultimate source of good and evil. And God is the one who has designed all things. Wonderful program, Brad. Thanks for being with us. Absolutely. Thank you, Ray. Thank you for being with us. On today's program, we saw the real life consequences of intentionally living without belief in God in liberal Missouri. It was an unmitigated disaster. The fact is all human beings know God exists. They know him as the necessary cause of this universe of effects. They know him as the necessary source of all of our conviction of good and evil, and they know him as the necessary architect of all of this precisely designed and ordered universe. It just goes to show you that we do know that the Bible is true and the proof is all around you. If you enjoy origins, we sure could use your help to keep this creation television program on the air. Your support, both prayerfully and financially, make a big impact. So let's work together to reveal how awesome our creator truly is. And we'll see you next time right here on Origins. Thank you for watching this edition of Origins. For a DVD of this series, you can order online or send a $12 donation to cover shipping and handling and write to Origins program number 2308 Cornerstone Network, Wall, Pennsylvania 15148. This presentation was made possible by the faithful prayers and financial support of you, our Cornerstone family.