Here’s a list of some of the most popular excuses you’ll hear from unbelievers:
- There is no evidence for God.
- If there really is a God, then He would feed the starving kids in Africa. He would heal cancer patients too.
- All religions lead to God, and we should all just love each other.
Two articles about the scientific and logical evidence for God:
1. Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God
2 . This is the Best Proof that God Exists (in My Opinion)
What do these names have in common?
- Charlie Campbell
- Frank Turek
- J. Warner Wallace
- Marilyn Adamson
- Philip Vander Elst
They are the names of well-known Christian ministry leaders who used to be atheists. The articles that these authors have written have brought thousands of unbelievers to Christ, and helped remove doubt from the minds of many believers.
I heard the story of a man, a blasphemer...an atheist, who was converted singularly by a sinful action of his. He had written on a piece of paper, "God is nowhere," and ordered his child to read it, for he would make him an atheist too. The child spelled it, "God is n-o-w h-e-r-e. God is now here." It was a truth instead of a lie, and the arrow pierced the man's own heart. Charles Spurgeon
How do the atheist and the theist answer the question of purpose?
Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for. Viktor Frankl1
Have you ever asked yourself, “Why am I here?” It seems everyone does at some point. Even the most non-philosophical or irreligious person at one time or another wonders what it’s all about.
What’s my purpose? What’s the meaning of it all? Why am I here? Where am I going?2
Various Perspectives
Our answers to these questions depend very much on our worldview.
The atheistic or naturalistic explanation of the world is that there is no higher reason we’re here. The universe and everything in it—us included—happened purely by accident.
Thus, we should all “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”3
Embodying this perspective is a small but vocal minority of the population.4 Some of the more evangelical advocates of this view call themselves the “New Atheists.” Differentiating themselves from other skeptics, they argue that “religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises.”5
In other words, they have become missionaries for the view that we are here by coincidence—the chance combination of gases, random mutation, and natural selection.6
Philip Vander Elst describes his journey from atheism to Christianity via the apologetic works of C.S. Lewis.
From beThinking
Do you find it difficult to believe in God or accept the claims of Christianity? I did, when I was an atheist, but I changed my mind, and my reasons for doing so may be of interest to you in your own personal journey and attempts to make sense of life.
I am a freelance writer and lecturer. Since graduating from Oxford in 1973, with a degree in politics and philosophy, I have spent most of my professional life in politics and journalism, loving, as I do, the world of books, ideas and debate. Two questions in particular have always interested me. Is there a God? And, if there is, what is the connection between God and freedom?
Growing up in a non-Christian family with intellectually gifted but unbelieving parents, I used to think that belief in God and the supernatural had been discredited by the advance of science, and was incompatible with liberty. Religious faith seemed to me to involve the blind worship of a cosmic dictator, and the abandonment of reason in favor of ‘revelation’. Why, in any case, should I take religion seriously, I thought, when the existence of evil and suffering clearly discredited the Christian claim that our world owed its existence to a benevolent Creator?
I heard a story from a man who was once an atheist. He said that one night after falling asleep he had a dream that was so real to him. He was standing on a fence, and on one side was Jesus and all of His followers. On the other was satan and all of his followers. He said that all of a sudden they all vanished and he was left standing on the fence alone. Then shortly after, satan reappeared and came towards him saying, "there you are, I've been looking for you." The man replied that he wasn't on either side and that is why he chose to stand on the fence in the middle of them all. Then satan looked him in the eyes and replied, "I own that fence..." The man said he woke up and asked God to forgive him.
My skepticism and hostility towards Christianity, which developed in my teens under the influence of thinkers like Ayn Rand and Bertrand Russell, grew even stronger while I was at Oxford. Then, at the age of 24, I met my future wife, who turned out to be a Christian. Shocked by the discovery that this highly intelligent and beautiful woman was ‘one of them’, I determined to find out whether there was any good evidence for the existence of God and the truthfulness of Christianity, making it quite clear from the outset, however, that I was not prepared to become a believer just to cement our relationship!
But if, on the other hand, we refuse to accept this conclusion, insisting, for example, that it is always and objectively true that you should love your neighbor and you shouldn’t torture children, we are led away from atheism. The presence within us of an objective moral law ‘written on our hearts’ points instead to the existence of an eternal Goodness and Intelligence which created us and our universe, enables us to think, and is the eternal source of our best and deepest values. In other words, C.S. Lewis argues, atheism cuts its own throat philosophically, because it discredits all human reasoning, including the arguments for atheism. “If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.” (Mere Christianity). Only by acknowledging that there is a God, he concludes, can we hope to make sense of human existence, the world we inhabit, and, paradoxically, the problem of evil.
