Battle Log
Saturday 10 January 2009
Posted 13 January 2009, 11:21 PM by Ryan Hemelaar. PermalinkAndrew Hsu was out of town over the weekend, so I knew it would just be me leading the team for this week. But thankfully we still had enough team members for the outreach. Witali and Jason were back again this week as well, and they were a blessing to the team.
Once we had set the Bible table up, David Strachan stood up to preach. He was heckled a bit by Alex, but stood faithful in preaching the gospel. A few people stopped to listen to what he was saying. After he got down, Kevin had a turn preaching. Kevin pointed out that the Bible says that the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing, so it is no wonder Alex does not like to hear it. Alex agreed it is utter foolishness.
After preaching the wonderful news of how one can be saved, Kevin tagged me in deal with Alex. From the start, Alex kept repeating his famous line, "There is no God!" But his arguments this week were once again very foolish. He kept trying to say that it is impossible to prove God, I would ask him to substantiate that statement, but each time he couldn't. Instead he would put the burden of proof onto me to prove God. While I agree the theist is under the burden of proof to provide evidence for God, but if Alex wants to make the absolute negative that it is impossible to prove God, he now has assumed a massive burden of proof that he must bear.
In response to my argument for God that I presented, Alex denied the second premise by saying that the universe is eternal. I showed him that both science and logic demands that the universe have a beginning. But his argument went on the lines of this: "Since the sum of all the matter and the anti-matter is zero, the universe is in exactly the same state as it was at the singularity. Thus the universe is eternal." This argument is clearly fallacious (even assuming the Big Bang theory is true), as there is a major distinction between what the universe was like at the singularity and is today. I pointed out that if matter and anti-matter come together, they cancel out; they both cease to exist. He agreed on this point. So on the Big Bang theory point of view, there was absolutely nothing at the singularity. But at t=1, there was now something. Nothing becoming something means that that something had a beginning. He kept trying to get around this by saying that the sum of the universe is still the same though. But I responded, "So what? The universe exists now, and did not exist at the singularity, so thus the universe must have had a beginning. An analogy paralleling this is if we imagine that we have a scale with two things balancing each other out exactly, so that they are the same weight. But on one side is a bar of gold, and on the other side is a pile of dirt. Even though the sum of the mass of the two items on the scale are exactly the same, there is a distinct difference between a gold bar and a pile of dirt.
So Alex then proceeded to say that he disagreed with the first premise of my argument - "Everything that has a beginning has a cause". So I asked him to give an example of something that goes against this premise. He said that fluctuations within the Quantum vacuum are examples of things that go in and out of being uncaused. At least the example he gave is better than what he used to say, that the universe is evidence of something that had a beginning without a cause. For that is clear circular reasoning. But even virtual particles in quantum mechanics do not provide an example of something that arises without a cause. For they rely on the quantum vacuum for their temporal existence. The quantum vacuum is actually a sea of fluctuating energy, and the virtual particles borrow the energy for their existence from that. So I pointed out that Alex still had not provided an example of anything that goes against my first premise.
However, Alex didn't want to give up his argument. So I proceeded to talk about the judgment to come and the standard at which God will judge the world. Alex clearly did not like hearing about this, and would just keep repeating his line, "There is no God". It seems as though he thinks that the more times he says it, the more chance it will come true one day.
After presenting the law and the gospel to Alex and the crowd, who were still intently listening, I stepped down after almost an hour of preaching. Jason was the next preacher up, and being the first time he has preached with us, he apparently did very well.
I was unable to listen because I was having a dialogue with two Muslim fellows from Saudi Arabia who had been listening to my preaching. We chatted about the distinct differences between Islam and Christianity, and I was able to present the gospel to them. I pointed out that in the Qur'an, Allah is presented as a deceiver. "As in Surah 4:157, he made it appear as though Jesus died on the cross, when really he really didn't, according to the Qur'an. To make someone believe something that is not true, is deception. Moreover, these fellows agreed that Jesus' followers were called Muslims. And so, not only was Allah deceiving Jesus' enemies, He was also deceiving the Muslims at the time into thinking that Jesus did really die. So if Allah did that back then, how do you know that Allah has not deceived you in giving you the Qur'an?" They were unable to respond, but wanted to dialogue more about this, so we exchanged email addresses.
Dave finished off the preaching for the night, calling all people everywhere to repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ.
Below is some video footage of Alex heckling me while preaching on Saturday night:
Soli Deo Gloria.
View previous Brisbane (QLD) report (3 January 2009)
Brisbane Team (Night) (QLD)
Meets Fridays (7-10pm) & Saturdays (6-9pm) & Sundays (7:30-9:30pm) in King George Square.
Contact Ryan Hemelaar for more information.