Lee Strobel and Shannon Bream Discuss Why God is Real
By Movieguide® Contributor
Author and speaker Lee Strobel talks about how creation points to the existence of God in his new book, “Is God Real?: Exploring the Ultimate Question of Life.”
He opened up with Fox News anchor Shannon Bream about how, as a former atheist, he got into proving that God exists and how amazingly planned out our existence is.
“How does someone go from being an atheist to writing the books you’ve written?” Bream asked Strobel.
“I’m trained in journalism and law, like you are, and was legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, an atheist, a skeptic,” Strobel shared. “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.’
The author instantly thought of divorce after his wife told him the news. But first, he attempted to “rescue” her from the “cult” she had gotten sucked into. So, he sought to disprove Jesus’ resurrection.
“Because I even as an atheist, I recognize that’s the foundation of everything. So I did 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,” he shared.
“I spent two years of my life doing that, until November the 8th of 1981, when I sat down to reach a verdict, and I, 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 realize would take more faith to maintain my atheism than to become a Christian,” he explained. “So the scales just kind of tip decisively in favor of faith.”
So, he converted to Christianity, and his “character, morals and marriage” shifted for the better.
Strobel recently shared another thing that helped his atheism dissipate: discovering why God loved him.
“I came to realize that God didn’t love me because I made myself valuable through service; on the contrary, I was valuable because I was loved by God,” he said. “I could stop working like a slave to justify myself; I just needed to recognize — and celebrate — my adoption as God’s child. My desire to love and serve God in a healthy way would flow from that.
Since his conversion, Strobel has helped author over 70 books about the scientific and historical basis for Christianity. Movieguide® recently reported on “Is God Real?: Exploring the Ultimate Question of Life:”
[Strobel’s publisher] said, ‘We found that 200 times a second, around the clock, someone on planet Earth is typing into a computer search engine, basically the question: ‘Is God real?” And they said, ‘Why don’t you do a book addressing that?’” Strobel said.
The writer loved the idea and began researching the science, history and philosophy that “points toward the truth of Christianity.”
“When I have a topic I want to research, I look at several things,” Strobel told Christian Headlines. “First, I look at the personal life of my research sources. I want people who are authentic. Secondly, I want scholars. I want experts. Most of the people I interviewed have at least one PhD. I want people who have thought deeply about these issues. I’ll generally read ten books or major articles they’ve published to understand where they’re coming from and who they are. I also want people who can articulate why they believe what they believe, can point to evidence and not just opinions, and back up their assertions with scholarly data.”
Strobel shared with Bream how the existence of everything is planned out in minute detail.
“I mean, if you were to look up at the night sky, and instead of seeing a bunch of stars, if you suddenly saw 100 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…If you just mess with those, with those dials a little bit, intelligent life becomes impossible anywhere in the universe,” he explained.
“I’ll give you one of my favorite examples is the force of gravity. If you imagine a ruler across the entire known universe… 13 or 15 billion light-years width, a ruler broken down in one-inch increments,” he continued. “This represents the possible range along which the force of gravity could have been calibrated.”
Gravity’s creation rests at the only spot where it, and therefore life itself, could have ever been created.
“Well, what if you were to move at one inch compared to 15 billion light-year width of the universe? Intelligent life would be impossible. It’s just…mind-boggling,” he said.
“And it rules out the idea that this could happen by chance. You know, I interviewed a famous physicist about this. And he said, basically, look, if given the numbers, we scientists have an X, a phrase to describe what are the odds that could happen by chance, and he said [it’s] ‘Ain’t gonna happen,’” Strobel said.
Along with writing books and attending speaking engagements, Strobel directs the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University.