0:00:00 - 0:00:27 Question, how can intelligent people believe in God? I've spent a lot of my life in schools um K through 12 college as a student or a teacher. And I think that if my entire exposure to the school system was limited to kindergarten classes, I would be very dubious about the claims of those who have attended 0:00:26 - 0:00:51 middle school, high school or college. But because I have been through these sequential experiences of being in K through 12, of getting a bachelor's degree of getting a master's degree and of getting a phd and then being on the other side of that and teaching uh college students, whether they be bachelors 0:00:51 - 0:01:10 , students, masters or phd candidates. Um I have a very different lens on this. And so if I were speaking with someone whose entire experience was limited to kindergarten, I think that they think they would think that that I was crazy and I would struggle to convey to them the value or difference in 0:01:10 - 0:00:00 those um the sequential layers that they have never experienced. And um or even been around people who have so to me, this is a lot like religion just because most or even all of the people that you've ever met, who are religious, just because they clearly have not thought very much about what they, 0:00:00 - 0:02:03 uh, believe and they haven't discovered clear holes in what they believe. Clear limits. Um, just because they're not aware of things that have great value that you have discovered, that doesn't mean that there are not people who don't have those holes in what they believe or who have discovered the things 0:02:03 - 0:02:35 that you value and who have discovered far more than what you have. It's odd that we are so um quick to accept the fact that so many academic disciplines require 12 or 16 or even 20 years or more of dedicated study in order to have a um a mastery of them or in some cases, even just a film familiarity 0:02:35 - 0:00:00 with them. And yet we're completely unwilling to accept the premise that maybe religion requires at least that much effort to have any exposure to it, any real exposure. Now, what makes this incredibly foolish is that religion purports to contain all of those other topics. If God created all things, 0:00:00 - 0:03:36 then he also knows everything we know about anything. And if he knows all of those things, and if Christianity in particular purports to be this, this uh shared knowledge with and of God eternal life is to know Him. So how could you think that that contains, or, or would be a shorter path or an easier 0:03:35 - 0:04:05 path than knowing what it purports to contain. So, so this isn't logical at all. And again, if, if there were some demographic, some place you could go like a church where there were a bunch of um seeming advocates for education and yet they all were just kindergarten students. If you came away with 0:04:04 - 0:04:27 an impression that that's all it, it had to offer, you'd be sorely mistaken and you'd miss out on everything that comes beyond that. Now, education is not some magical thing. It's valuable, but it's not the end all be all and certainly degrees are not the end, all be all. But God is, this is serious 0:04:26 - 0:04:47 business. And if you really want to be able to say that you've looked into this adequately enough to have an informed opinion about it, the first thing you need to do is find yourself some people that actually practice what they preach, who don't just say they believe God, but they've actually exerted 0:04:46 - 0:05:11 a whole lot of effort in getting to know Him to try to understand what he's like, actually reading the scriptures and actually living what they say once you found a few of those and you've gotten to know those people, then you'll have a much more uh substantial basis to uh onto which you can build your 0:05:11 - 0:05:33 opinion of whether God exists or not. No. The funny thing about all this is that if you do that, it won't be an opinion at all because you'll know, you'll know that he exists, you'll know it just as sure as you know, anything else and you'll know it with greater confidence than, you know, anything else 0:05:33 - 0:05:48 and you'll know it in the same exact way that you know, anything else. It's a step wise, progressive process of learning and doing and seeing for yourself.