Can Christian faith stand up to hard questions about truth, science, suffering, and the existence of God? On this episode of In the Market with Janet Parshall, Janet talks with apologist and author Dr. Frank Turek about the updated edition of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, which he originally wrote with the late Dr. Norman Geisler. Their conversation follows the book’s path from basic questions about truth to the Christian claim that Jesus rose from the dead.
Janet begins by pushing back on the idea that becoming a Christian means setting reason aside. She wants believers to know why they believe and to speak with both truth and grace. Frank, president of CrossExamined.org, explains how the book aims to help readers examine evidence, answer objections, and share their faith with confidence.
Janet and Frank discuss why they believe Christianity welcomes careful thought, even when a conversation begins with doubt or pain. They also explain how the updated book moves step by step through questions that often come up when people consider the Christian faith.
Janet says some people reject Christianity because they think faith and reason cannot work together. She sees the opposite in her own life. Coming to faith in Christ, she says, helped her see purpose and order where she had not seen them before. For that reason, she urges Christians to study rather than assume that saying “I believe” is enough to prepare them for every challenge.
She also wants believers to be ready to explain their hope in a way that is winsome and truthful. Janet points to the call to contend for the faith in Jude 1:3. In her view, learning the reasons for Christian belief can strengthen a person during hardship and help them speak to someone who has sincere questions.
That is why she recommends building what she calls a “legacy library.” She encourages listeners to keep books that have helped them grow, mark important passages, and leave those books for children or grandchildren. She places I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist in that category, while noting that its size makes it a book readers may want to take one chapter at a time.
Frank describes how he came to know Geisler. After leaving the Navy, he and his wife moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, so he could study at Southern Evangelical Seminary, which Geisler was starting. The two later wrote books together, including Legislating Morality and I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Frank says the updated edition keeps the original argument but adds evidence. He also says Geisler’s son David read the new manuscript.
Before discussing evidence for God, Janet raises a question about whether people believe objective truth can be known at all. She says a Christian may present evidence and hear, “That’s your truth, not my truth.” If someone treats personal feelings as the final measure of truth, she asks, how can a believer begin a useful conversation?
Frank says the book starts with that problem. His response is to ask whether a claim about truth can meet its own standard. If a person says there is no truth, he asks whether that statement is true. If someone says each person has a separate truth, he asks whether that claim is meant to be true for everyone.
There’s not my truth or your truth. There’s just truth.
He compares truth to math, logic, and the laws of physics. People may disagree about an answer, he says, but that does not mean each person has a different set of mathematical rules. He gives another example: when someone says, “You ought not judge,” that person is making a judgment too. Frank’s aim is to help listeners recognize what he calls self-contradictory claims so they can move on to the questions those claims may have stopped them from discussing.
Janet then brings up five questions the book asks every worldview to answer: Where did we come from? Who are we? Why are we here? How should we live? Where are we going? Frank says the question of God’s existence shapes every answer. In his account, if God exists, people can seek a real foundation for identity, meaning, morality, and destiny. That is why the book spends time on these starting points before turning to its case for Christianity.
When Janet asks how to speak with someone who says God cannot be seen or touched, Frank says people can know a cause by looking at its effects. He argues that creation points to a creator, design points to a designer, and moral law points to a moral lawgiver. In the book, he develops those arguments through discussions of the universe’s beginning, its fine-tuning, life, and moral duties.
Frank stresses that he does not begin by asking someone to accept the Bible. He believes people can first consider what they observe about the world. He connects that approach to Romans 1:20, where Paul speaks of God’s invisible qualities being understood through what has been made. He also cites Psalm 19:1, which says the heavens declare God’s glory.
For Frank, those arguments lead to a creator with qualities he describes as powerful, intelligent, personal, and beyond space and time. He says that case alone does not yet tell a person that this creator is the God revealed in the Bible. The book then turns to the historical case for Jesus’ resurrection. Frank argues that if Jesus predicted and accomplished his resurrection, that event identifies him with the creator whose existence the earlier arguments support.
Janet sees this step-by-step approach as useful for people who are nervous about defending their faith. Rather than expecting listeners to master every subject at once, she encourages them to study the evidence and grow more prepared to talk about God and Jesus.
Janet asks Frank about a question that may be deeply personal as well as intellectual: If God is good, why is there evil and suffering? She recalls atheist Christopher Hitchens raising the suffering of a young child in debates. Janet says suffering can draw someone away from the cross or keep them from coming to it, so Christians need to respond with compassion as well as an argument.
Frank begins by asking what a person means by evil. In his view, calling something evil assumes that good is real and that there is an objective standard by which to judge what has happened. He argues that evil is a loss or destruction of good, not a thing that stands on its own. Janet connects that point to the desire for justice: when people call for justice, she says, they are recognizing that some actions are right and others are wrong.
Frank also acknowledges that he cannot explain why God allows every particular tragedy. He talks about being present when Charlie Kirk was murdered and asks how anyone could know all the later effects of such an event. Frank says he does not know why God allowed it. He believes, however, that God sees what people cannot see and can bring good out of evil. In his conversation with Erika Kirk, he says, they considered the people who may have turned toward faith or grown as disciples afterward.
Janet reflects on a related struggle for Christians. She says believers in the West may assume suffering should not be part of Christian life, while Christians in other places may understand it as something they must face. She points to Romans 5:3–5, where suffering is connected with perseverance, character, and hope. She does not suggest that pain is easy or that a person will always know what good may come from it.
Both speakers return to Jesus’ suffering. Frank says the cross is central to the Christian answer to evil because Jesus took the punishment for sin. He argues that Christ’s death shows God’s justice and love together: God does not ignore sin, yet he offers forgiveness to those who trust in Jesus. Janet contrasts that grace with the idea that a person’s good deeds could simply outweigh the wrong they have done.
Near the end of the hour, Janet asks about a chapter in the updated book on things Frank says atheists take on faith. He begins with the universe’s origin. Frank argues that the universe had a beginning and that its cause must be beyond the space, time, and matter that began to exist. He contrasts the Christian belief that God created the universe with the view that it came from nothing without a creator.
He then turns to logic and the fact that human beings can understand the world. Frank asks why the laws of logic hold and why thoughts formed in a human mind can help describe reality. He believes these features fit with a world made by an intelligent God. Janet raises a common claim that science, rather than faith, is the source of all truth. Frank replies that science itself depends on logic, math, and the ability to reason, none of which can be established by scientific testing alone.
Science doesn’t say a word, and it depends on the world view of the scientist as to how he or she interprets the data.
Frank’s point is not that scientists should stop gathering evidence. He says evidence must be gathered and interpreted by people, who bring assumptions to that work. He uses differing views about the origin of life as an example of how people can read the same kind of data through different starting beliefs. Janet agrees that faith and science should not be treated as automatic enemies. Throughout this discussion, she returns to her larger concern: she does not want fear of a hard question to stop a Christian from sharing the gospel.
As the conversation closes, Janet again recommends the updated book to believers who want to understand their faith and to seekers who want to examine its claims. She invites listeners to read it carefully and consider where they believe the evidence leads, rather than dismissing the questions before exploring them.
Frank says the purpose behind that work is more than winning an argument. He wants readers to consider whether the Christian message is true and whether they can trust their lives to Christ. For him, the aim of studying and speaking about these questions is to know God through Jesus and make him known.