God's Crime Scene Participant's Guide

A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe

J. Warner Wallace

• Publisher: David C Cook
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780830776603
• eBook ISBN:
  9780830776610
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Estudios bíblicos

Custom illustrated by the author, renowned cold-case detective, author, and speaker J. Warner Wallace, this exclusive participant’s guide engages the audience in the “investigation” into whether the universe as we see it just happened, or if there is evidence of a divine “intruder”—or rather, God.

Companion to the eight-part video series, participants will dive into one of the most meaningful and challenging questions: Does God exist? This highly visual guide helps the participant engage with the content to ultimately develop an investigative skill set similar to what a detective might use in investigating a homicide.

The interactive participant’s guide is created to be used with eight videos, accessible by DVD or streaming. To aid you in your planning, following are the session titles and video run times:
 
1          Session 1         10:59
2          Session 2         12:42
3          Session 3         12:55
4          Session 4         11:08
5          Session 5         12:06
6          Session 6         11:36
7          Session 7         12:15
8          Session 8         12:51

Session Eight / Closing Argument

The Evidence of Evil

Can God and Evil Coexist?

Jackie Corbin was eight years old in 1980 when she was kidnapped on the street in front of her home. Her parents were cooking Christmas dinner. They didn’t see what happened to her, and she couldn’t hear their calls as they desperately searched for her into the evening hours. Two days later, officers discovered her body lying in a field north of Los Angeles County. The murder mobilized everyone in our police department. Over four hundred leads were developed in the first two weeks. A suspect, Francis Denny, was ultimately arrested.

Denny was twenty-two years old at the time—a seemingly distant (and often quiet) loner, but acquainted with Jackie’s family. Denny was disconnected and dispassionate in his interviews, and this led detectives to believe he was hiding something. When they told him the gruesome details of Jackie’s death, Denny seemed unconcerned.

It’s difficult to understand how anyone could respond so calmly to the descriptions offered by detectives, and I can understand why investigators suspected Denny, given his apparently uncaring responses. But as it turned out, Francis Denny didn’t commit the crime for which he was accused. Detectives eventually discovered that Denny was attending a movie on the day of the murder and was unavailable to commit the crime. The murder of Jackie Corbin is still an open, unsolved case.

When I first started investigating the existence of God, I suspected the stubborn presence of evil and injustice would ultimately eliminate the reasonable existence of such a Being, in the same way Denny’s alibi eliminated him from suspicion. Perhaps the most obvious and pervasive reality of the universe is the existence of evil and injustice. Most of us, even as casual investigators, have had personal contact with this form of evidence. If we are prepared to look outside the “room” of the universe for a “suspect” to explain the seven pieces of evidence we’ve examined so far, we must also account for the presence of evil and injustice with this same “suspect.”

Cold-Case Approach:

What Is Exculpatory Evidence?

When assessing the involvement of a particular suspect in a crime, there are three possible forms of evidence related to the suspect’s guilt:

Inculpatory Evidence: evidence that tends to confirm the suspect’s involvement in the crime.

Exculpatory Evidence: evidence that indicates the defendant did not commit the crime.

Irrelevant Evidence: evidence that is neither exculpatory nor inculpatory (and is likely to be excluded from a trial).

There are many forms of exculpatory evidence, including testimony from someone supporting the suspect’s alibi and forensic evidence (such as fingerprints or DNA) eliminating the suspect. Exculpatory evidence may be direct or circumstantial, in the form of testimony or in the form of physical exhibits presented in court.

In this session, we’ll examine a potential piece of exculpatory evidence to see if it eliminates the “suspect” we’ve developed so far.

If the Creator of the universe is powerful enough to create everything from nothing, this Creator is most certainly powerful enough to eliminate all imperfection, including moral imperfection. Such a perfectly “good” Creator would, therefore, be a reasonable source for the moral virtues we recognize in our universe. But does the degree of evil we see inside the “room” contradict the nature of a Divine Creator?

If the morally benevolent, all-powerful Divine...

Table of contents

• Session One / Opening Statement
• In the Beginning
• Was the Universe an Inside Job?
• Session Two
• Tampering with the Evidence
• Who Is Responsible?
• Session Three
• The Origin of Life
• Does the Text Require an Author?
• Session Four
• Signs of Design
• Is There Evidence of an Artist?
• Session Five
• Our Experience of Consciousness
• Are We More Than Matter?
• Session Six
• Free Will or Full Wiring
• Are Real Choices Even Possible?
• Session Seven
• Law and Order
• Is Morality More Than an Opinion?
• Session Eight / Closing Argument
• The Evidence of Evil
• Can God and Evil Coexist?
• Notes