Ministering to Skeptics in the UK

AiG friend and colleague Dr. Andy McIntosh (who resides in England) sent us the report below of a recent meeting he had with skeptics in England. Like Jesus, he went to reach the skeptics where they meet! Here is a university professor, who is a scientist and has received awards for his work, reaching out to skeptics with the truth of creation and the gospel. Yes, a real award-winning scientist who is a creationist!

Well – quite remarkable! The organisers estimated about 130 packed into the pub room which is right in the centre of Birmingham near Birmingham New St station. About 60 – 70 stood all the way through at the back as there were not enough chairs, and some were lined up outside with the door open. Not a place I would particularly choose! But that’s where the people are and that’s where they have the Skeptics meeting…. And they listened… I said that Atheism has no coherent answer to the science which distinctly points to Design (Romans 1:20 argument), no answer to rationality (where does logical thinking come from – not from molecules and neurons! That’s a more modern version of the argument that Schaeffer and C S Lewis used in their writings), and no answer to human corruption . Christianity properly joins the dots of human experience.

And then came the questions – loads of them. They would have gone on all night if they could….Questions on the science, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics etc etc and one question saying “…so this heaven – what are you going to do all the time?” After the expected smiles, I said when you get married you don’t ask what you are going to do, you just want to ‘be with the person you love’, so Christianity is in essence a relationship with the God of the Universe.

Then one very thoughtful one concerning suffering, where a father spoke of the loss his wife had suffered of an unborn child which had an abnormality – so where is God in this? I used that question to end the evening and rounded up the evening on the sin that has ruined the world – our forefather and ourselves are the cause, but the creator God has amazingly come into the world to take our sins on the Cross.

I offered Prof. Verna Wright’s booklet “The relevance of Christianity in a scientific age” asking them to come to me afterwards, thinking no one would take them in an audience like that – but they all went (15 or so) as person after person came up to have a discussion! None of these from what I could see were close to the Gospel itself – they were all near square one or zero. It was spade work turning over new ground, trying to get these people to see that there was no excuse to deny God’s existence. They were courteous and not rude. Most of them didn’t agree – I expected that, but they found the talk interesting. It was very much like the open air meetings a number of us do in city centres.

A Christian who was at the meeting wrote to me this morning and said “I think that the slight and pedantic nature of the questions that were asked was testimony to the force of your presentation. I thought that one question for me summed up the evening and I really hope that it did not go unnoticed- when the woman at the back started her question with the comment- ‘the first thing I’d like to say is that there is only a physical world and that’s that!’ The philosophical commitment informs the position not the science, and I think you did a great job at exposing and challenging that philosophical commitment. Thank you.”

And to cap it all – another person came up to say that he had become a believer….and he told me how…..through reading Dawkins “The God delusion”! He realised just how lacking in substance the opposition’s arguments really are, and turned to Christ.

I am very grateful for your prayers – please ask that the Lord would use the booklet to lead some of the souls there to Himself.

Pray for Andy and the tremendous work he is involved in as he defends the Christian faith. He is a professor (the highest teaching/research rank in UK university hierarchy) in Combustion Theory at Leeds University, UK. His PhD was in aerodynamics. A number of his students later worked for Rolls Royce, designing aircraft engines.

You can read a lot more about Andy, his background, and the awards he has received as a scientist (and again, he is an ardent young earth creationist) at this link.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken