The Seven Most Googled Questions About God

KEVIN HARRIS: Some recent research reveals the seven most-Googled questions about God and the Christian faith. These questions are chronicled in a book by a Texas pastor, Bruce Miller, The Seven Big Questions – it’s how I became aware of these questions. Bill, you’ve spent a lifetime addressing these questions, but let's take a look at them. The questions are:

1. Why does God allow suffering and evil?
2. Does life have a purpose?
3. Does God exist?
4. Is Christianity too narrow?
5. Is Jesus presented as God in the Bible?
6. Is the Bible reliable?
7. Can I know God personally?

Is there anything that strikes you about this list?

DR. CRAIG: I am struck at how traditional this list is. These are the perennial questions. I would have thought that there would be more questions about LGBT or gender issues or hot button issues of that sort. That might be comprised under number four, “Is Christianity too narrow?” Maybe there they're talking about Christian attitudes towards sexuality and gender and things of that sort. It's hard to know what four means. But at least those questions don't overtly appear which was a little surprising.

KEVIN HARRIS: A few things I see. First, I wonder “If Jesus being God” is from Muslims Googling. Because this is from all over the globe, by the way. There our Muslim friends are intrigued by that question, and that may account for why it's in the top seven. Secondly, the question about life having a purpose is interesting. We did a podcast recently on Sam Harris saying that there's a crisis of meaning today. And, finally, people tend to think that they can just Google something and get an accurate answer in about a paragraph. Well, you know, maybe it's a start. But some questions don't have quick or simple answers.

DR. CRAIG: That's for sure. I have found in my experience that it's a lot easier to ask a very difficult question than it is to answer it. And these are profound questions that deserve, frankly, more than sound-bite-ish answers. And, yet, that's about all one can do in a Google search of this sort.

KEVIN HARRIS: Sure. Well, since we're doing a relatively short podcast, we'll need you to give some relatively short answers!

DR. CRAIG: Right!

KEVIN HARRIS: And, by the way, the value of short answers is that they can grab our short attention spans that unfortunately we tend to have these days and lead us to further study. The first question is, “Why does God allow suffering and evil?” It's also the number one most-Googled question in the list.

DR. CRAIG: Of course it's impossible for us to know why God permits any single instance of evil or suffering in our lives. We're simply not in a position to know that. But I think that we can speculate intelligently about why an all-good and all-powerful God would permit suffering and evil in general in the world. My conjecture based upon what the Bible teaches is this: God desires every person that he creates to come freely to a knowledge of God and to find salvation. I think that it's not at all improbable that only in a world which is suffused with moral and natural evil that the optimal number of persons would freely come to know God and find eternal life. So I suspect that evil and suffering in the world serve the providential purposes of God to bring as many people as he can freely to eternal salvation and incomparable happiness.

KEVIN HARRIS: I believe, as I understand, that these questions were compiled from what people were generally asking. In other words, “Does life have purpose?” – that comprises multiple ways that people ask that question. But they put it into concise bits like this. So that is the next question: “Does life have a purpose?”

DR. CRAIG: My answer to that question would be only if God exists. If God does not exist then I think life has no purpose. Mankind as a race, and indeed the entire universe, is doomed to extinction in the eventual thermodynamic death of the universe. As the universe expands, it grows colder and colder as its energy is used up. Eventually all the stars will burn out and all the matter in the universe will collapse into dead stars and black holes. Eventually the universe will just be a thin soup of elementary particles expanding into the infinite darkness of outer space. And there is no escape from that on a naturalistic view of the world. So what that means is that the purposes that we invent for our lives – the things we do, that we hope to achieve – are ultimately all evanescent. In the end they don't make one bit of difference. Not one bit. Everything will simply wind up the same no matter what we do. So in the absence of God there really is no objective purpose for living, even if we make believe and invent subjective purposes for our lives.

KEVIN HARRIS: The next question is, “Does God exist?” Wow. If Google had said, “yes” then there's a multitude of people who’d say, “Oh, OK. Well, fine” taking it on that authority.

DR. CRAIG: I want to say “yes” but then I want to add that there are good reasons to think so. In my philosophical work I've defended quite a number of reasons to think that God exists. Let me just enumerate them. Number one: I think that God is the best explanation for why anything at all exists rather than nothing. Secondly, God is the best explanation for the origin of the universe at some point in the finite past. Thirdly, God is the best explanation for the uncanny applicability of mathematics to the physical phenomena. Fourth, God is the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe for embodied conscious agents like ourselves. Fifth, God is the best explanation of the objectivity of moral values and moral duties in the world. Sixth, the very possibility of God's existence entails that God actually does exist. Finally, God can be personally known and experienced. On the basis of these reasons I think we have powerful cumulative grounds for answering this question in the affirmative.

KEVIN HARRIS: The next question is, “Is Christianity too narrow?” As you pointed out, that can mean several things. What do you think is the gist?

DR. CRAIG: I assume that the gist of this question has to do with the old problem of how Christ can be the only way of salvation. Don't all roads eventually lead to God? How can Christians say that through Christ alone we can find salvation and eternal life? What I want to say there is that salvation, I think, is only available through Christ's atoning death. Only Christ died to pay the penalty for our sin and to satisfy divine justice. So apart from Christ there is no salvation. Having said that, however, that doesn't imply that a conscious knowledge of Christ or belief in Christ is necessary for salvation. It's possible to be a beneficiary of Christ's atoning death without being aware of it in the same way that you might be heir to a fortune from an uncle that you never knew about who put you in his will. Now, clearly there are persons in the world who are saved through their response to the light that God has given them even though they've never heard of Christ. People in the Old Testament were like that. And there are people in the Old Testament who were not even Jews, not even part of the covenant family of Israel, who evidently had a personal relationship with God. People like Job who was a Gentile, not a Jew. What they did was they responded in an affirmative and appropriate way to the light that God had given them. I think that if a person responds to the light that God gives him then God will accord to him the benefits of Christ's atoning death even if he doesn't have a conscious knowledge of Christ. Moreover, I think that it's possible that God has so providentially ordered the world that no one is lost because of the accidents of history and geography of just not having heard about Christ. I think that everyone who doesn't respond to God's general revelation in nature and conscience but would have responded to the Gospel had he heard it does and will hear it so that no one is lost because of the accidents of geography and history. Everyone who wants to be saved will be saved. So our destiny is truly in our own hands.

KEVIN HARRIS: The next most Googled question: “Is Jesus presented as God in the Bible?”

DR. CRAIG: I've studied this recently in working on the doctrine of the Trinity, and I think that it's striking that in the New Testament Jesus is not only accorded unique divine titles, properties, and honors, but in at least seven places various authors of the New Testament explicitly refer to Jesus as God. In the Greek that is, ho theos. So it is, I think, indisputable that Jesus is presented as God in the Bible.

KEVIN HARRIS: And the next question: “Is the Bible reliable?”

DR. CRAIG: That depends on what we mean by reliable. It seems to me that as I reflect on it, “reliable” means ‘dependable.” This is something you can depend on, and reliability is relative to the purpose that you have in mind. For example, my watch is perfectly reliable for my needs in knowing the time during the day. It keeps accurate time. But my watch would not be reliable when used in an atomic accelerator to measure quantum interactions. There you would need an atomic clock with fantastic accuracy. So reliability will vary from purpose to purpose. And when we talk about the reliability of the Bible, the purpose of the Bible (according to itself) is to make us wise to salvation, to communicate to us those truths that we must believe and trust in in order to find forgiveness of sins, a personal relationship with God, and salvation. So I think the Bible is perfectly reliable to do that. It communicates to us accurately and clearly and thoroughly all that we need to know in order to find salvation.

KEVIN HARRIS: And the final question: “Can I know God personally?”

DR. CRAIG: That was the seventh of my reasons that I listed for how we know that God exists. This is the most wonderful truth of all – that this is not just a philosophical conclusion that one reaches, but that one can have a relationship with God. By placing one's faith in Christ for forgiveness of sins and for pardon, the obstacle between us and God that is created by sin is removed. Through Christ's atoning death, our sins are forgiven, and we are cleansed morally of that wrongdoing that has alienated us and estranged us from God so that God can become a living reality in our lives. I hope that anyone who's listening to us today who hasn't made that personal decision to trust Christ as his personal Savior and to invite Christ to come into his life through the Holy Spirit to regenerate him and renew him to new spiritual life and forgiveness and moral cleansing will do so as a result of hearing our podcast today.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we wrap up, and I'm looking at this list of questions, I can't help but think that Reasonable Faith is on the right track even though we go really deep in some questions. You go really deep-dive on some topics, but you also cover these basic questions.

DR. CRAIG: If these are the questions that people really are asking today then Reasonable Faith is as relevant as ever because this is the bread and butter of the kind of questions that this ministry addresses. So that is a tremendous encouragement that we are on the right track.

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