Norman Geisler Quotes

Ronald Reagan once quipped, “I’ve noticed all those in favor of abortion are already born.” Indeed, all pro-abortionists would become pro-life immediately if they found themselves back in the womb.

So I cast my lot with him-not the one who claimed wisdom, Confucius; or the one who claimed enlightenment, Buddha; or the one who claimed to be a prophet, Muhammad, but with the one who claimed to be God in human flesh. The one who declared, 'Before Abraham was born, I am' - and proved it.

One who claims to be a skeptic of one set of beliefs is actually a true believer in another set of beliefs.

God has provided enough evidence in this life to convince anyone willing to believe, yet he has also left some ambiguity so as not to compel the unwilling.

Augustine was right when he said that we love the truth when it enlightens us, but we hate it when it convicts us.

A skeptic once said to me, 'I don't believe the Bible because it has miracles.' I said, 'Name one.' He said, 'Turning water into wine. Do you believe that?' I said, 'Yeah, it happens all the time.' He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'Well, rain goes through the grapevine up into the grape, and the grape turns into wine. All Jesus did was speed it up a little bit.

you ought not judge” is itself a judgment! (Pluralists misinterpret Jesus’ comments on judging [Matt. 7:1-5]. Jesus did not prohibit judging as such, only judging hypocritically.)

Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith. If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God.” —JAMES TOUR,

Contrary to what is being taught in many public schools, truth is not relative but absolute. If something is true, it’s true for all people, at all times, in all places.

natural selection may be able to explain the survival of a species, but it cannot explain the arrival of a species.

I found it (the word 'mercy') occurs 261 times in the Bible-and seventy-two percent of them are in the Old Testament. That's a three-to-one ratio. Then I studied the word 'love' and found it occurs 322 times in the Bible, about half in each testament. So you have the same emphasis on love in both.

If we admit God, must we admit Miracle? Indeed, indeed, you have no security against it. That is the bargain.” —C. S. LEWIS

A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.

Christians are not supposed to “just have faith.” Christians are commanded to know what they believe and why they believe it. They are commanded to give answers to those who ask (1 Pet. 3:15), and to demolish arguments against the Christian faith (2 Cor. 10:4-5).

Mark Twain had a point when he concluded that it was not the parts of the Bible he did not understand that bothered him—but the parts he did understand!)

Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living.

Even if there were doubt as to when life begins, the benefit of the doubt should be given to protecting life—reasonable people don’t shoot unless they’re absolutely sure they won’t kill an innocent human being.

If the Moral Law doesn’t exist, then there’s no moral difference between the behavior of Mother Teresa and that of Hitler.

any specific teaching that contradicts a teaching of the Bible is false.

If we teach students that there is no right and wrong, why are we surprised when a couple of students gun down their classmates or a teenage mother leaves her baby in a trash can?

a perfectly just God must punish bad deeds regardless of how many good ones someone has performed.

the Moral Law is not always the standard by which we treat others, but it is nearly always the standard by which we expect others to treat us.

The highest freedom is the freedom from evil, not the freedom of doing evil.

Truth is not affected by the attitude of the one professing it.

Truth is discovered, not invented. It exists independent of anyone’s knowledge of it. (Gravity existed prior to Newton.)

The truth of the matter is this: false ideas about truth lead to false ideas about life.

As we look at the evidence in the ensuing chapters, we’ll see that conclusions such as “God exists” and “the Bible is true” are certain beyond reasonable doubt.Therefore, it takes a lot more faith to be a non-Christian than it does to be a Christian.

In that thoroughly evil and violent and depraved culture, there was no hope for those children. This nation was so polluted that it as like gangrene that was taking over a person's leg, and God had to amputate the leg or the gangrene would spread and there wouldn't be anything left. In a sense, God's action was an act of mercy.

Christianity is one of the few worldviews that can justify absolute human rights because it affirms that those rights are given to us by God. As our founders recognized, governments aren’t meant to give or take away rights: governments are meant to secure rights that the people already possess. That’s what we affirmed in our Declaration of Independence.

In the Gospels—Jesus is the prophet to his people. In Acts and the Epistles—Jesus is the priest for his people. In the book of Revelation—Jesus is the King over his people.

In the Old Testament the Rose of Sharon is just budding, but in the New Testament it is in full bloom. The whole Bible is all about Jesus.

When the Roman governor Pilate asked Jesus “What is truth?” nearly 2,000 years ago, he didn’t wait for Jesus to respond.

God overrules the evil intent of humans to accomplish His ultimate good.

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’” —C. S. LEWIS

Any denial of truth presupposes truth, so the existence of truth is inescapable.

in order to find truth, one must be ready to give up those subjective preferences in favor of objective facts. And facts are best discovered through logic, evidence, and science.

Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living.3

Truth is transcultural; if something is true, it is true for all people, in all places, at all times (2+2=4 for everyone, everywhere, at every time).

Beliefs cannot change a fact, no matter how sincerely they are held. (Someone can sincerely believe the world is flat, but that only makes that person sincerely mistaken.)

If something is true, it’s true for all people, at all times, in all places. All truth claims are absolute, narrow, and exclusive.

One who claims to be a skeptic of one set of beliefs is actually a true believer in another set of beliefs.” —PHILLIP E. JOHNSON

You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. 10

If God is love and humans are free, then there must be a hell. Not only would it be a contradiction for God to force people to love him, but it would also be hell for them to be forced to love the One they hate.

William Dembski points out, “If a creature looks like a dog, smells like a dog, barks like a dog, feels like a dog, and pants like a dog, the burden of evidence lies with the person insisting the creature isn’t a dog.

Why do we say, “That’s true for you but not for me,” when we’re talking about morality or religion, but we never even think of such nonsense when we’re talking to a stock broker about our money or a doctor about our health?

Andy Stanley put it well: “My high school science teacher once told me that much of Genesis is false. But since my high school science teacher did not prove he was God by rising from the dead, I’m going to believe Jesus instead.

And in our culture today, tolerance no longer means to put up with something you believe to be false (after all, you don’t tolerate things you agree with). Tolerance now means that you’re supposed to accept every belief as true!

J. dBudziszewski points out, “The motto ‘Reason Alone!’ is nonsense anyway. Reason itself presupposes faith. Why? Because a defense of reason by reason is circular, therefore worthless. Our only guarantee that human reason works is God who made it.

To say that evil is a privation is not the same as saying that it is a mere absence or negation of good. The power of sight is found neither in a blind man nor in a rock. But it is a privation for the blind man, whereas it is a mere absence in the rock.

if someone ever asks you, “Do you believe in evolution?” you should ask that person, “What do you mean by evolution? Do you mean micro- or macroevolution?” Microevolution has been observed; but it cannot be used as evidence for macroevolution, which has never been observed.

What amazes us is that parents all over the world are literally paying thousands of dollars in college tuition so that their sons and daughters can be taught the “truth” that there is no truth, not to mention other self-defeating postmodern assertions such as: 8220;All truth is relative” (Is that a relative truth?); “ There are no absolutes” (Are you absolutely sure?); and, “It’s true for you but not for me!” (Is that statement true just for you, or is it true for everyone?) “True for you but not for me” may be the mantra of our day, but it’s not how the world really works. Try saying that to your bank teller, the police, or the IRS and see how far you get! Of course these modern mantras are false because they are self-defeating. But for those who still blindly believe them, we have a few questions: If there really is no truth, then why try to learn anything? Why should any student listen to any professor? After all, the professor doesn’t have the truth. What’s the point of going to school, much less paying for it? And what’s the point of obeying the professor’s moral prohibitions against cheating on tests or plagiarizing term papers?

To tell you the truth: I don’t believe in God. I’m an atheist.” “You’re an atheist?” “That’s right!” “Well, are you absolutely sure there is no God?” I asked him. He paused, and said, “Well, no, I’m not absolutely sure. I guess it’s possible there might be a God.” “So you’re not really an atheist, then—you’re an agnostic,” I informed him, “because an atheist says, ‘I know there is no God,’ and an agnostic says ‘I don’t know whether there is a God.

The law of karma has made it so. According to classic Hinduism, if someone were to help those people by easing their suffering, they would be working against the law of karma. People suffer to work off their karmic debt, and if you helped them, then they would have to come back again and suffer even more to work off that debt. Plus, you would be doing something cruel by not letting them suffer, and you would increase your own karma problems. Helping

We should certainly honor the principle that all people are equal in God’s sight and entitled to equal protection of the laws as well as fair, courteous, and respectful treatment. But there is no moral imperative that we adopt the notion that all belief systems are equally true. There is a moral imperative that we do not.

What’s the greatest problem in America today? Is it ignorance or is it apathy?” One time a student answered, “I don’t know, and I don’t care!

if there is no God, everything is lawful,

other

If for no other reason, God sometimes allows us to suffer pain so that we can comfort others suffering in a like situation.

A weak and dying Messiah is the very antithesis of a man-made cure.

Without an objective standard of meaning and morality, then life is meaningless and there’s nothing absolutely right or wrong. Everything is merely a matter of opinion.

There are none who are as deaf as those who do not want to hear.” —BARRY LEVENTHAL

we humans have a fatal tendency to try to adjust the truth to fit our desires rather than adjusting our desires to fit the truth. But

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive. —BLAISE PASCAL

difference between sociology and morality. Sociology is descriptive; morality is prescriptive.

(In fact, hypocrisy in the church probably repels people more than any other factor. Someone once said the biggest problem with Christianity is Christians!)

when truth goes, the authority of the gospel is undermined, because the gospel tells us all about the Truth.

C. S. Lewis put it, “If we admit God, must we admit Miracle? Indeed, indeed, you have no security against it. That is the bargain.

there aren’t missing links—there’s a missing chain!

Ideas have consequences.

self-defeating statement is one that fails to meet its own standard.

Augustine was right when he said that we love the truth when it enlightens us, but we hate it when it convicts us. Maybe we can’t handle the truth. In

contrary beliefs are possible, but contrary truths are not possible. We can believe everything is true, but we cannot make everything true.

Romans contains some seventy-four references to the Old Testament (mostly from Psalms and Isaiah). “It is written” occurs nineteen times in this book, more than half of all the times Paul uses the phrase.

Truth is unchanging even though our beliefs about truth change. (When we began to believe the earth was round instead of flat, the truth about the earth didn’t change, only our belief about the earth changed.)

We have so often heard certain things taught in a particular fashion that they have become part of the very fabric of our religious experience and belief. So when our personal traditions are challenged, we often respond with emotion rather than biblically-based thought and consideration. Love of the truth demands that we remember this: sentimentality is no replacement for doctrinal purity. To desire correct doctrine should be normative for every believer.

On the other hand, if there is no God, then your life ultimately means nothing. Since there is no enduring purpose to life, there’s no right or wrong way to live it. And it doesn’t matter how you live or what you believe—your destiny is dust.

Bad things will happen to good people, but a good God has for us a good end, for these bad things will bring about good results: “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

C. S. Lewis observed, if Christ is not God, then he could not have been an exemplary prophet or a great moral teacher, because he claimed to be God. If he was not who he said he was, then he was either a liar or a lunatic, hardly a great moral teacher or prophet.

skeptics are caught in a dilemma. If they say history cannot be known, then they lose the ability to say evolution is true and Christianity is false. If they admit history can be known, then they must deal with the multiple lines of historical evidence for creation and Christianity.

When one attends a university, he is supposed to be guided in the quest to find unity in diversity—namely, how all the diverse fields of knowledge (the arts, philosophy, the physical sciences, mathematics, etc.) fit together to provide a unified picture of life. A tall task indeed, but one that the modern university has not only abandoned but reversed. Instead of universities, we now have pluraversities, institutions that deem every viewpoint, no matter how ridiculous, just as valid as any other—that is, except the viewpoint that just one religion or worldview could be true. That’s the one viewpoint considered intolerant and bigoted on most college campuses.

There’s a difference between proving a proposition and accepting a proposition. We might be able to prove Christianity is true beyond reasonable doubt, but only you can choose to accept it. Please consider this question to see if you are open to acceptance: If someone could provide reasonable answers to the most significant questions and objections you have about Christianity—reasonable to the point that Christianity seems true beyond a reasonable doubt—would you then become a Christian? Think about that for a moment. If your honest answer is no, then your resistance to Christianity is emotional or volitional, not merely intellectual. No amount of evidence will convince you because evidence is not what’s in your way—you are. In the end, only you know if you are truly open to the evidence for Christianity.

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant. He grew up in another village, where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was 30. Then, for three years, he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn’t go to college. He never lived in a big city. He never traveled 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his garments, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave, through the pity of a friend. [Twenty] centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race. I am well within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned—put together—have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one, solitary life.29 If

There is great confidence in trusting God's sovereignty, especially when it comes to the fact that even Christians are willing to place their own supposed freedom and autonomy over the true freedom and autonomy of God. I have seen many precious souls struggle through these foundational issues and emerge changed, strengthened, with a new and lasting appreciation of the holiness and love of God along with a passion for His grace that cannot be erased.

There are some things even God cannot do. He cannot force anyone to freely accept Him. Forced freedom is a contradiction in terms. This is why Jesus said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. (Matthew 23:37) So the only way God could literally destroy all evil is to destroy all freedom.

I confess to your Charity that I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it (Ibid., 82.1.3).

It is true that God desires all men to be saved (2peter 3-9), but that they have to choose to love him and believe in him. Now God cant force anyone to love him. Forced love is a contradiction in terms. Love must be free: it is a free choice. So in spite of God's desire, some men do not choose to love him. All who go to hell do so because of their free choice. They may not want to go to hell, But they do will it. They make the decision to reject God, even though they don’t’ desire punishment. People don’t go to hell because God sends them; they choose it and God respects their freedom.

Third, the prohibition against questioning religious beliefs is also an absolute moral position. Why shouldn’t we question religious beliefs? Would it be immoral to do so? And if so, by whose standard? Do pluralists have any good reasons supporting their belief that we ought not question religious beliefs, or is it just their own personal opinion that they want to impose on the rest of us? Unless they can give us good reasons for such a moral standard, why should we allow them to impose it on us? And why are pluralists trying to impose that moral position on us anyway? That’s not very “tolerant” of them.

The Saudis may be teaching that Jews are pigs, but in our country, by means of a one-sided biology curriculum, we teach kids that there’s really no difference between any human being and a pig. After all, if we’re merely the product of blind naturalistic forces—if no deity created us with any special significance—then we are nothing more than pigs with big brains. Does this religious (atheistic) “truth” matter? It does when kids carry out its implications. Instead of good citizens who see people made in the image of God, we are producing criminals who see no meaning or value in human life. Ideas have consequences.

The incredible specified complexity of life becomes obvious when one considers the message found in the DNA of a one-celled amoeba (a creature so small, several hundred could be lined up in an inch). Staunch Darwinist Richard Dawkins, professor of zoology at Oxford University, admits that the message found in just the cell nucleus of a tiny amoeba is more than all thirty volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica combined, and the entire amoeba has as much information in its DNA as 1,000 complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica!2 In other words, if you were to spell out all of the A, T, C, and G in the unjustly called primitive amoeba (as Dawkins describes it), the letters would fill 1,000 complete sets of an encyclopedia! Now, we must emphasize that these 1,000 encyclopedias do not consist of random letters but of letters in a very specific orderjust like real encyclopedias. So heres the key question for Darwinists like Dawkins: if simple messages such as Take out the garbageMom, Mary loves Scott, and Drink Coke require an intelligent being, then why doesnt a message 1,000 encyclopedias long require one?

Your righteousness is everlasting and your law is true (Ps. 119:142). Yet

One beauty of God’s creation is this: if you’re not willing to accept Christianity, then you’re free to reject it. This freedom to make choices—even the freedom to reject truth—is what makes us moral creatures and enables each of us to choose our ultimate destiny. This really hits at the heart of why we exist at all, and why God might not be as overt in revealing himself to us as some would like. For if the Bible is true, then God has provided each of us with the opportunity to make an eternal choice to either accept him or reject him. And in order to ensure that our choice is truly free, he puts us in an environment that is filled with evidence of his existence, but without his direct presence—a presence so powerful that it could overwhelm our freedom and thus negate our ability to reject him.

Neither can we deny that free will (the power of free choice) is a good thing.

The fact is, it’s good to be free. No one ever marches against freedom, chanting, “Down with liberty! Back to bondage! I want to do only what the government tells me to do!

(Isaiah 14:12;

Surely, no one who believes in an all-good God, who wants all to do good, could consistently claim that God gave Lucifer the desire to rebel against Him. Perish the thought!

Since God by His very nature (love) cannot force anyone to love Him, it would be highly improper to think of a heaven where people were forced to be there.

Forcing people to “freely” believe is a contradiction in terms. God is love (1 John 4:16), and love cannot work coercively – only persuasively.

not that he is totally deprived of all creaturely good metaphysically.

Yes, God is the author of everything, including evil, in the sense that He permits it, but not in the sense that He produces it. Evil happens in His permissive will, but He does not promote evil in His perfect will.

There are some things even God cannot do. He cannot force anyone to freely accept Him. Forced freedom is a contradiction in terms.