Answering The Ultimate Question: Is God Real?
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The searches that you've had about God, how there can be suffering in the world, the really big questions our brains try to wrestle with and get around. You're probably already familiar with our guest today. Lee Strobel is a former award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune and New York Times bestselling author. He sold millions of books.

And he has such an interesting story about how all of this came to be, the study of faith, the deep dive. And he's got a brand new book that I found fascinating, Is God Real? It's one of the existential questions that people as human beings really struggle with. So Lee, thank you so much for joining us on Live in the Bream.

Well, I'm honored to be with you. I'm a big fan of yours because few people know, like you and I do, how difficult it is to cover breaking news at the Supreme Court. You're a fellow legal eagle, so you get it and you know the pitfalls and the drama of doing that.

It is one of the most challenging things a journalist can do to be handed a complex opinion live on national television and say, hey, what does it say? It is one of those things that you're like, am I crazy for doing this or is this just the most exciting? It's sort of like jumping out of a plane with your parachute. Like, is this a good idea? Am I too much of a thrill seeker? But listen, for folks who don't know, I would love for you to share a little bit of your backstory. How does someone go from being an atheist to

to writing the books you've written and this new one, Is God Real?, with a purpose of hoping as you lay out and we'll explain the different interviews that by the end of the book, people will say yes. How does an atheist write that book?

Well, you know, I'm trained in journalism and law like you are and was legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, an atheist, a skeptic. And everything was going along pretty well until my wife, who was an agnostic, met a Christian who shared her faith with her and took her to church. And then my wife gave me the worst news an atheist husband could get. She said, I've just become a follower of Jesus.

And my first reaction was divorce. I didn't want to be involved with that. And then I thought, well, maybe I could rescue her from this cult that she's got involved in. All I would have to do is disprove the resurrection of Jesus, because even as an atheist, I recognize that's the foundation of everything.

So I had to take my journalism training, legal training, and systematically investigate the historical data concerning the resurrection of Jesus and other issues involving the reality of faith and so forth. And so I spent two years of my life doing that until November the 8th of 1981, when I sat down to reach a verdict. And as I reviewed all the evidence, I said to myself, you know, in light of the avalanche of evidence that points so powerfully toward the truth of Christianity,

I realized it would take more faith to maintain my atheism than to become a Christian. So the scales just kind of tipped decisively in favor of faith. And that's when I put my trust in Christ and my values and character and morality and marriage and everything began over time to change for the better.

Again, we're talking to Lee Strobel. His brand new book, Is God Real? Exploring the Ultimate Question of Life. And I love how you go through this book. You spend time in each chapter with experts. And listen, some of it, I got to admit, I had to read it more than once because I went to law school because I'm not really good with math and science. But talking about the beginning of the universe, the fine tuning of the universe to really get some of these concepts.

I had to really dig in and spend some time with it, but it's absolutely fascinating. And you didn't just go find studies yourself. I mean, you went to the source with some of the people who are the pioneers, the recognized experts in these fields who get things that my brain can't compute. But let's start there because you say that you have to have faith one way or the other. So if the faith is, say, for example, the origin of the universe, that something or someone had to start it. I mean, let's just start at the very beginning.

Yeah. I interviewed Dr. William Lane Craig, who's got two earned PhDs and is the world's leading authority on this topic. And he makes this argument, which actually has its roots in medieval Islamic theology. And the argument goes like this. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. We now know, and every scientist virtually around the world admits, the universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe must have a cause behind it.

And then he asked the question, well, what kind of a cause can bring a universe into existence? Well, it must be transcendent because it exists apart from creation. It must be immaterial or spirit because it existed before the physical world. It must be timeless or eternal because it existed before physical time was created. It must be powerful given the immensity of the creation event. It must be smart given the incredible provision of the creation event. It must be personal because they had to make the decision to create.

Must be creative because look at the universe, my goodness, must be caring or loving because he crafted a habitat for us to flourish in. And the scientific principle of Occam's razor tells us there would be just one creator. So you go through that list, say transcendent, spirit, eternal, powerful, smart, personal, creative, caring,

I mean, that is a description of the God of the Bible. And by the way, that rules out polytheistic religions, which claim there are many gods, because if there's just one God, then that rules that out. It rules out pantheistic religions, which say that everything's God because the creator had to be separate from creation. This rules out the idea the universe is cyclical.

So that contradicts some Eastern religions. And the origin of the universe contradicts ancient religious assumptions that the universe is static. So you get a lot of mileage out of this very powerful argument for the existence of God. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. We know the universe began to exist. Therefore, there must be a cause behind it.

Well, and then from there to think about the fine tuning of the universe, you handle that in an additional chapter. And I just find this so fascinating that it just would take the tiniest variations in one way or another on so many different levels and planes that humanity as we know it wouldn't exist. I just found that chapter one that was mind-blowing.

It is fascinating. I mean, if you were to look up at the night sky and instead of seeing a bunch of stars, if you suddenly saw a hundred giant dials in the sky,

And each one can be calibrated to one of trillions and trillions of possible settings. And yet, each one of these dials is perfectly calibrated so that we have a universe where life can exist. And if you, as you say, if you just mess with those dials a little bit, intelligent life becomes impossible anywhere in the universe. I'll give you one of my favorite examples is the force of gravity.

If you imagined a ruler across the entire known universe, 13, was it 13 or 15 billion light years width,

a ruler broken down in one-inch increments. This represents the possible range along which the force of gravity could have been calibrated. And yet it's set at the exact right place along that ruler where life can exist. Well, what if you were to move it one inch compared to the 15 billion light-year width of the universe? Intelligent life would be impossible anywhere in the universe. That's crazy.

It is mind-boggling, and it rules out the idea that this could happen by chance. I interviewed a famous physicist about this, and he said basically, look, given the numbers, we scientists have a phrase to describe what are the odds it could happen by chance. And he said, ain't going to happen. I like that. A highly technical scientific term I can understand. Yes.

When you do start to put these to a number and to the whatever power and those kinds of things and you lose track of the zeros, they're running off the page. I mean, it really has to say a lot about the fact, like you said, when you came to sit down and kind of come to a verdict and

I firmly believe you gotta have faith in something, either that there is nothing, this is by chance, there's no afterlife. I mean, I do think that's a choice that, you know, obviously billions of people are going to make. And that to me is faith-based too. You either have faith in that or you have faith in some of the items that you outline in the book and everybody's free to make that choice. So what is it that you hope-

when people walk away from all of these different chapters and experts, what's kind of your closing argument to people about the evidence you found? Well, when I look at science and really a series of discoveries just over the last 50 to 80 years in cosmology, physics, and biochemistry, so I look at those and I think those alone are enough to convince me that a God exists.

But then you look at the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, and you see that we have powerful and persuasive evidence that Jesus didn't just claim to be the Son of God. He backed up that claim by returning from the dead. And if that's true, then the idea that God exists is not the only conclusion we can reach, but the conclusion is that it is the God of the Bible. It is the God of Christianity. And I think people can test that, and they can debate it,

But I think the evidence is clear and convincing that God is real and that Jesus is his unique son. We'll have more Live in the Bream in a moment.

Well, and that's a beauty of our society, among many things, that we can debate these ideas that in some places would be not up for debate and very controversial, but people have the freedom to read these things and come to their own decisions.

I referenced this in the opening, and this is the question I get the most from people who are really struggling to believe there's a God or that he's a good God. And you talk about this. Why is there suffering? I feel like that's the question just from my experience in talking with people that they struggle with the most. I mean, they've been hurt. They've lost someone. They see evil in the world, and they want to know why God isn't stopping it.

Yes, I knew I couldn't write a book about God being real without dealing with this question, if God is real, why is there suffering? And I also deal with if God is real, why does he seem so hidden? But the suffering question, you're right, number one question and objection that's raised. And I think, you know, every worldview needs to deal with this, not just Christianity. Atheism needs to deal with this issue as well. I mean, every worldview. And yet I think Christianity has the best explanation. And it's basically this.

God has existed from eternity past as the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, in a perfect love relationship. And so when he decided to create humankind, he wanted us to experience the greatest value in the universe, which is love. Well, the only way he could do that would be to give us free choice.

Because love always involves a choice. It's like when my daughter was little, many, many years ago, they used to have a doll called Chatty Cathy. And you pull the string on the back of the doll and let it go, and the doll would talk to you. So she would pull the string and let go, and the doll would say, I love you. About as high-tech as it was back then. Right. Now, did that doll love her? No, of course not. It was programmed to say that. It had to say that. You have to have the choice to love or not to love.

in order to experience love. And so God gave humankind this free will to decide. And so what did we do? We walked away from God, we hurt each other. And, you know, so basically I could take my hand and I could feed a hungry person, or I could take that same hand and make the decision to pick up a gun and kill an innocent person.

But if I pick up a gun and kill an innocent person, it's a little disingenuous to then say, oh, God, why do you allow suffering in the world? We're the problem. We've introduced suffering and pain and death into this world for humankind. This moral evil and natural evil entered into the world as this unfolded.

So I think God did not create evil. He is not the author of evil. But did he create a universe with the potential for evil to enter it? Yes, because it's the only way that we could experience love is if we have free choice. And it's our choice which way we go.

Yeah, and we do have the ability to sift through these things and think through these things. And I mean, for people to recognize that there's evil, as you've talked about, I mean, it really begs the rest of the question, well, what is that being compared against? Is there good? Is there pureness? Are there absolute truths out there? So all of that, you've spent a lot of time exploring. Again, we're talking to Lee Strobel. The new book is Is God Real? Exploring the Ultimate Question of Life.

Talk to me a little bit about DNA, too. This is another chapter that I had to sort of say, let's underline some things. Let's go back. Let's make sure that we get this because there was so much meat there.

Oh, this is so fascinating. I interviewed Stephen C. Meyer, PhD from Cambridge University, who was the world's leading expert on this topic. And here's the deal. We have 100 trillion cells in our body. If you open up any cell at random and unflural, so to speak, the DNA, you know, the double helix of DNA in any one of those cells, it would be six feet tall.

And embedded in that DNA is a six-letter chemical alphabet that spells out the precise assembly instructions for every protein out of which we're made.

and the question is this is information where does information come from there's always an intelligence behind information you know nature can produce patterns so if you walk down like i live in houston and if i go down to galveston uh on the gulf of mexico and and the sand is wet in the early morning and i see ripples sand i would say very logically oh the waves made those ripples in the sand because nature can make patterns

But if I'm walking down the beach and I see John Loves Mary with a heart around it and an arrow through it, I wouldn't say, oh, the waves created that. Why? Because whenever we see information, whether it's a book, a computer code, a painting on a cave wall, there's always an intelligence behind it. There are more words, so to speak, in every cell in your body than you would find in 200 years of the Sunday New York Times.

I mean, it's just, it's absolutely mind blowing. To just digest those numbers is, wow. Yeah.

it's it would be one science writer said you know if the encyclopedia britannica suddenly fell out of outer space onto the earth and we looked at it we would not say oh nature created that um well there's more information in every cell in your body than an encyclopedia britannica so where the logical assumption is there must be an intelligence behind creation

So what do you say to skeptics, though, who say, listen, I'm a man or a woman of science, and I believe that through evolution and through other mutations and things that have happened over time, that that explains where we've gotten to. That explains how we've advanced and animals and plants and all of these things have morphed into different species. And, you know, that there's a way to explain these things that doesn't have to rely on anything divine being involved. Right.

Yeah, you know, there are Bible-believing Christians who have a variety of beliefs in terms of how the universe came about specifically. I mean, there are theistic evolutionists who believe that God is behind evolution, that he orchestrated it. There are others who believe the universe is much younger and that God created it in six literal 24-hour days. There are people who believe that

in intelligent design, which is God intervened at various times to create and then allow natural processes to diversify life. I mean, there's a variety of assumptions there. You don't have to walk away necessarily from any kind of belief in evolution to be a Christian, but

I would say evolution presents problems in its own justification. In other words, it can't show the origin of life. Evolution doesn't explain where life came from. You know, Darwin speculated that maybe there were some warm ponds of chemicals on the early Earth and somehow they morphed together and created the early life.

But scientists are now showing this is not possible. In fact, I have in my chapter on DNA, I look at those possibilities and the evidence rules them out. So, you know, neo-Darwinism cannot explain the origin of the universe. It can't explain the origin of life and it can't explain the origin of human consciousness.

So there are some limitations to what evolution can tell us. Do I think that evolution is true? Well, of course. That's why we have 200 varieties of dogs, you know. But that's microevolution. That's evolution within a certain kind of creature. If you're looking at macroevolution, which is the origin of life somehow coming into being and then all created,

emanating from that original accident, so to speak, of creation of life. There, I think you just don't have the evidence to prove it.

So I want to follow the evidence, and I encourage anyone who's scientifically oriented to look at the evidence. Because, you know, just as I say, over the last 50, 60, 70, 80 years, we have these new discoveries in cosmology and in physics and in DNA that I think are very powerful in pointing toward a supernatural creator. Well, I wanted to ask you about that because you do talk about, obviously, as technology advances, discoveries advance, we have more information, we have better tools for science.

analyzing it and breaking it down, discovering new things. Do you feel that the more we're finding, the more it does point to the theories that you believe? Or do you feel the scientific community agrees with you on that? Or are they coming forward to say like, maybe I was a skeptic, but I have to say by our own discoveries that maybe I do believe there's something divine here.

Yeah, I mean, I think that all science is provisional, that, you know, we may have discoveries later that cast new light on certain things. But we have to go with where the evidence points today. And I think it points powerfully toward the existence of a creator. Is it convincing scientists? Well, I had the privilege of interviewing probably

probably the greatest philosophical atheist in the 20th century, Anthony Flew, who taught atheism for 50 years at major universities around the world, who wrote the book, "The Presumption of Atheism" and many others.

and was considered the greatest atheist on the planet, who later in his life came to believe, wait a minute, I was wrong. Made the front page of the New York Times. And I remember reading it where it says, Anthony Flew says, oops, I was wrong. There is a creator. And I thought, I'm not going to believe this. So I tracked him down and I sat him in a chair and I said, Dr. Flew, you're the greatest atheist on the planet.

Are you telling me that, oops, I was wrong? He said, yeah, I am. I said, well, why? Why do you believe all of a sudden that you were wrong and that there's a creator? And he said, um, um,

And basically, basically, it's the kind of evidence that I was just talking about, that the evidence of modern science points increasingly toward the existence of a creator. So, I mean, there you have, you know, probably the greatest skeptic on the planet coming to believe that a supernatural creator existed.

Well, if you have these same questions or somebody in your family, your friends struggles with these as well, and there are times even as people of faith are going to struggle with these questions too. Gosh, Lee Strobel is so good at getting to the heart of this. And in each of these chapters, you're going to hear from an expert on all of these different areas. It is so fascinating. The book is Is God Real? And you can get it anywhere, I assume. Lee, why don't you tell us a little bit more where to find it and find out more about what you're working on. Sure.

Yeah, you find it any place that books are offered for sale. My website is LeeStrobel.com and I have some information there as well. And we have a new center at Colorado Christian University called the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics that offers accredited degrees in this kind of area, which is looking at evidence for the truth of the Bible and the reality of God.

Well, from atheist to evangelist, Lee Strobel has an amazing story. Thank you for coming to share part of it with us in your new book on Live in the Brain. Well, thank you, Shannon. So wonderful to be with you. Listen ad-free with the Fox News Podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.

Jason in the House, the Jason Chaffetz podcast. Dive deeper than the headlines and the party lines as I take on American life, politics and entertainment. Subscribe now on Fox News podcast dot com or wherever you download podcasts.