Unfortunately many popular Christians can not answer Bill Maher’s challenging question about faith. Can you? Find his question and the Bible’s answer here.

<p>Unfortunately many popular Christians can not answer Bill Maher’s challenging question about faith. Can you? Find his question and the Bible’s answer here.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Heavenly Valley SDA Church

Gabriel Arruda

Could You Answer Bill Maher’s Question About Faith?

Our Father in heaven, Lord, we're about to enter into the sermon time, and Lord, what we need is a message from heaven.

We need to hear from none other than God himself.

And so we're asking that you would please speak to us through the Word.

Illuminate your Word, give us the Holy Spirit.

If we have done things this week that would keep us from understanding the Scriptures, that would prevent us from receiving your blessing, bring that to our minds.

Help us to confess it and to remove it from our hearts and to give ourselves to you fully that we may receive the full abundant blessing that you're wanting to give us.

Help it to be meaningful, practical, and powerful.

We ask all these things in the precious name of Jesus, Amen.

So, this morning's sermon's gonna be about faith.

And I thought it was really interesting how we were discussing that concept in Sabbath school.

We kind of ended with that theme about faith, how important faith is.

And I'm gonna start by talking about a gentleman by the name of Bill Mayer, just by, I'm just curious, by show of hands, who has heard of Bill Mayer?

And he's a television host for an HBO political talk show called Real Time, a very popular talk show.

He also has a late-night show called Politically Incorrect.

He's not at all concerned about stepping on toes.

And he frequently loves to bring on notable Christian figures on his show and give them a hard time.

And he likes to ask the hard questions, he likes to delve into the controversial issues around the Bible, around the Christian faith, and it's very sad to see how weak and unreasonable are the answers that come from many of his Christian guests.

He has them squirming in their seats and they give him these really quite pathetic answers and he loves to point out quickly the weaknesses of their answers and sometimes the ridiculousness of their answers.

But sometimes these people are a blessing for us.

I don't know if you've ever had someone like this in your life, a real skeptic, a real critic, they can really get you on your toes.

Maybe we haven't been studying the Bible like we should have.

Maybe we've been satisfied with just the generic, canned Christian answers, but we haven't really put these things to the test.

We haven't really seen, can this pass the test of real scrutiny, real critical thinking, really analyzing what these things are saying.

And so I'd like to eventually play for you a clip where Bill Maher asks a question about faith that stumps people over and over.

You say the right, They've hurt religion because they've made it anti-intellectual, right?

I'm not insulting here, I'm just saying...

It is, by its very nature, anti-intellectual.

Why is the purposeful suspension of critical thinking a good thing?

It's just asking questions and bringing up issues that maybe you never hear.

In the church, there are some questions that are so simple, so foundational, we never ask them.

But we just say it, and it's just assumed.

And then sometimes people like this come into our lives and they ask these questions and they're so foundational, but we really don't know the answer.

And the sad thing is, I have not, he asked this to several people, Christian hosts, I'm sorry, Christian guests that come in his program.

I haven't seen 1 that's been able to really answer this question, like really give a good answer.

And so it caused me to think deeper about faith.

And I realized, you know, there's a lot of common misconceptions about faith in the church.

You know, it's kind of like, oh, I'm really going out on a limb here and I'm risking it.

Have you ever heard the saying, you need more faith to believe in evolution than you do creation?

When you really think about that, what's that implying?

The idea is that there is more evidence for creation than there is for evolution, right?

So you would actually need more faith to believe in evolution than you would in creation.

It sounds really good, but what is the implication?

If there's less evidence that something is true, then you need more faith to believe in it.

Is this biblical use and definition of faith?

Is faith the thing that we use when we don't have evidence?

Is faith the thing that we use when something does not make sense?

But that is the impression that a lot of people, as you saw Bill Mayer on national television blasting out to the country and the world, is giving about Christians.

And many Christians don't know how to answer it.

So what this definition of faith is actually saying is, you know, I really don't have evidence.

Imagine a doctor sitting down with a woman and he says, Ma'am, I'm sorry to report to you, you have cancer.

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Could You Answer Bill Maher’s Question About Faith?

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