I’m an Atheist!
When I invited a friend to come and join us at an Open Supper in our home he replied,
“Thank you for the invitation, but I won’t come because I am an atheist.”
I replied,
“That is an interesting answer as, if you don’t mind my saying so, it suggests two things, firstly that you have investigated the evidence for God thoroughly, and secondly that, as a convinced person you can persuade others by your arguments. However in my experience most who call themselves atheists have not done this in any depth”
To this he said,
“I am sorry to say that that is probably true for me.”
I did not add that there may be others reason he claims to be an atheist - it may mean he has been put of some who claim to be religious or it may mean that, under the umbrella of atheism, he allows himself to think and behave in any way he wants, so long as it is to his advantage.
There are many who claim to have a religion, whether Christian, Islam, Buddhist, Hindu or whatever but who live as practical atheists. Religious thoughts can save nobody before God, he is too mighty and holy for us so our attempts to please him are doomed to fail. Humanism is a bizarre faith in that it denies a creator but accepts those noble principles that only a creator can have put in everyone. Primordial soup cannot give us principles.
Most who call themselves atheists will admit that they have not studied the evidence in detail. It would be interesting to hear answers to the following arguments;
The Order and Design in the Universe
The Laws of Nature
The universe and science works according to basic laws. There is order and symmetry and the logic of mathematics can be seen everywhere. The atheist Richard Dawkins says that he cannot see this:
“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” Richard Dawkins, ‘River Out of Eden’ (1995)
‘Pitiless indifference’ should result in chaos, not the highly structured, intelligible laws we actually see. The atheist argument appears to be:
‘If the universe looks designed, and you have decided beforehand there is no designer, you are forced to call the design an ‘illusion,’ regardless of how complex it is.’
People talk of the ‘Laws of Nature’ but nature or science cannot make laws, a mind has to do that. Science works according to the rules. They would therefore be better called ‘the Laws of God’.
If our world developed as an accident, chaotically, out of ‘primordial soup’, why do we believe that logic and rationality are valid. That is a belief that cannot be proved yet we rely on it. This belief is somehow inborn in us all. It is strange that atheists try to use rationality to kill the concept of god when that rationality can only come from a creator.
Mathematics are not a human invention. The laws of maths controlled the universe well before man appeared on earth. If maths were just a human invention, it shouldn't be able to predict things we haven't seen yet, such Black Holes or particles, decades before they are observed. The universe ‘obeys’ maths, which implies an underlying rational structure. Which suggests a rational creator.
The origin of these ‘laws’ is very significant. While science explains how the laws work, it cannot explain why those laws exist instead of others, or even why there is "something rather than nothing." A 'Law' implies a ‘Mind,’ or ‘Lawgiver’ as laws are essentially mathematical or logical descriptions, which are products of consciousness. In the same way ‘logic’ or ‘reason’ requires a mind. - there has to be a creator and a receiver.
Most people when looking at a new born baby will admit that it is a miraculous creation that we could never create however many atoms and quarks were are given to play with.
b. On the "Fine-Tuning" (The Anthropic Principle)
This is the argument that the vast majority of the constants of physics (like gravity) are precisely right to allow for life on earth is very significant. If these were slightly different, life would be impossible.
The atheist, Victor Stenger, in his book ‘The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning’, has recognised this and this was his answer:
"The fine-tuning of the universe is not an argument for a designer, but a prerequisite for our existence. We are here because the conditions were right; if they weren't, we wouldn't be here to notice.”
Philosopher John Leslie has used the ‘Firing Squad’ analogy to counter this: If you are standing before fifty expert marksmen and they all fire and miss, you don't say, ‘Well, obviously they missed, otherwise I wouldn't be here to think about it.’ You ask, ‘Why did they all miss?’ Theists argue that the fact of our existence requires an explanation for the staggering improbability of the conditions.
2. Love
The classic theme for popular music has always been ‘love’. The timeless folk-pop classic ‘What the World Needs Now Is Love’ by Jackie DeShannon argues that the only thing truly missing in the world is love. There are thousands of songs that repeat this theme. We all know that life is more than matter and energy. The most wonderful experiences we can have come from loving relationships with family and friends.
In the Roman world, love and fairness were not universal. Slaves could be treated like cattle and disposed of in any way he wanted at their owners whim. Children counted for little, an unwanted baby could be killed without any blame, Women were owned firstly by their parents and then by their husbands. The concept that ‘God so loved the world’ was utterly strange to Roman society. The historian Larry Hurtado emphasises how strange this priority of love was to the Romans.
“. . . utterly strange, even ridiculous . . . in the Roman era.”
No religious group in the Roman world emphasised the importance of love. Jesus has changed all this, he not only taught them about ‘The Good Samaritan’ but gave himself for the benefit of others..
It was the Christians who established the priority of kindness because that was the nature of Jesus.
“But when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us, no because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us . . .” Titus 3:4-6
A Roman historian, Marcus Minucius Felix (died c 250 AD), complained about the Christians,
“You do not attend our shows, you take no part in the processions, you are not present at our public banquets, you abhor the sacred (i.e. gladitorial) games.”
The reason was that so many of these activities were devoted to the Gods or to a divine Emperor. Sometimes the Christians were executed or fed to the lions in the arena for such sacrilege. Around 400 AD a monk named Telemachus entered a gladiatorial arena and stood between two gladiators to prevent the killing. The crowd were incensed and stoned him to death. The Christian Emperor Honorius subsequently outlawed gladiatorial contests in 401 AD.
There was a nun, Macrina (330-379 AD) who used to search for infants that were left to die by being exposed on rubbish heaps and she brought them into her community. It was the Christians who made this stand against infanticide. It was the first Christian Emperor, Constantine who made infanticide of babies born out of wedlock a capital offence and later Valentinian I passed a law that compelled parents to raise their own children and forbade the killing of children.
It was the Christian church that emphasised the need of healthcare for all. When the city of Edessa was ravaged by plague it was a Christian Ephraim the Syrian (306-373 AD) who established hospitals that were open to all. Basil the Great established a hospital in Cappadocia with a ward set aside for lepers whom he cared for personally. St Benedict of Nursia (480 - 547 AD) opened a free hospital in Monte Carlo and made care of the sick a priority for his monks. A Christian noblewoman St. Fabiola (died c, 399 AD) established the first public hospital in Western Europe and despite her wealth and status often wandered around the streets looking for those who needed care. John Chrysostom (347 - 407 AD) funded several hospitals in Constantinople when he was the patriarch there. Hospitals were established all over Europe from the 5th century. In the Middle Ages the Benedictine monks ran over 2000 hospitals in Western Europe.
It was out of his love for people that Jesus was willing to die a horrendous death out of love for others. He could do this because he knew there was a better life to come. Such love was facing Roman and religious injustice. In the end God’s love triumphed over hatred and injustice. It was to a great extent the selfless love of Christians, emulating their Master, that brought about these changes.
3. Meaning
The vast majority of people report that they feel ‘meaning’ is important or that life, in a general sense, is meaningful. Most consider that life has a purpose. However it is very hard to derive this sense if mankind somehow developed accidentally our of primordial soup and that there is no creator who has put these characteristics into us.
According to existentialist writer, Albert Camus, ‘the Absurd’ arises from the tension between the human desire for meaning and purpose and the lack of any apparent meaning or purpose in the universe. So, where does that human desire come from? It does appear that humans are born searching for patterns in everything around them. Where does this instinct come from?
We are meant to learn from the ageing process. Psalm 90 reminds us that we are all getting older and that we fill our lives with careers, families and hobbies yet all this comes to an end when we face God and he can see what motivates our lives:
“If only we knew the power of your anger! Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due. Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:11-12
The author of the book of Ecclesiastes looked for the meaning of life in many vain pursuits. He describes the feeling of emptiness he felt:
“Meaningless! Meaningless! . . . Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless” Ecclesiastes 1:2
King Solomon had nearly everything this world could offer yet he recognised that these were all temporary and passed away. He then recognised that God had created us for something beyond what we can experience in this life. Solomon said of God,
“He has also set eternity in the hearts of men” Ecclesiastes 3:11
The search for meaning should lead us to Christ. God wants us to know the meaning of life. Jesus said,
“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” John 10:10
A ‘full’ life is one that is full of meaning and purpose, a meaning that stands even when everything around us is going wrong.
4. Morality
The ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement stemmed from Christian ethics. When Martin Luther King was being held in a Birmingham jail he wrote a remarkable letter to the clergymen of Alabama who were opposing his stance. He insists that the basis for morality is the nature of God and nothing less.
“How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”
“There is a law above the law of the great state of Alabama. And according to that law segregation is evil. For racism is evil. For all human beings are created in the image of God. And justice is defined by the character of God. You know that and I know that.”
The only way there can be moral absolutes is if there is some mind outside the human mind that has created it and defined what is right and wrong.
There have been some, such as Nietzsche, who have argued that traditional morality had become stagnant and that a truly liberated individual - the Übermensch - could create their own values rather than following the ‘herd’. Significantly both Hitler and Stalin saw themselves in this role. It was they who decided what is best for their society and this was their justification for the extermination of Jews, Romanies and other ‘undesirables’. Even such men will be subject to a higher judgment as well as the judgment of history.
5. Value of Life
The American Declaration of Independence (1776) says:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
It was Abraham Lincoln later quoted this declaration when referring to the plight of slaves:
“Nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded , and imbrued by his fellows.”
Dictators, such as Hitler, reject this thinking and are willing to kill in order to remain in power. They all think that they and their types are the best. The Nuremberg trials rejected the defence that those accused of serious offences on the grounds that were simply obeying the authorities. The courts concluded that there is a higher law - a moral law and that all people have a sense of what is right and wrong. This sense or conscience cannot be derived from primordial soup. It is part of the way God has made us as human beings and what God says is more important than the state if it tries to impose wrong moral laws.
If God is rejected anything becomes acceptable. The atheist Yuval Noah Harari has said,
“Most leave the world today are based on a believe in human rights. But what are human rights? Human rights . . . like God and heaven are just a story that we've invented. They're not on the objective reality. They're not a biological fact about Homo sapiens. Take a human being, cut him open, look inside; you'll find the heart, the kidneys, neurons, hormones, DNA. But you won't find any human rights the only place you find rights is in the stories that we have invented and spread . . . over the last few centuries. They may be very positive stories, very good stories. But they're still just fictional stories that we've invented.”
The horrors of despotic regimes all come from the rejection of a God who has made all people and who cares about how we live. Freidrich Nietzsche recognise this in his book ‘The Antichrist’. He wrote:
“Christianity has taken the part of all the week, Low, the botched; it is made ideal as a antagonism to all the self preservative instinct that sound life.”
Nietzsche derided people as ‘owned bags of progressive optimism, who think it is possible to have Christian morality without Christian faith. In ‘Twilight of the Idols’ he wrote,
“They are rid of the Christian God, and now believe all the more family that they must cling to Christian morality. When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality from under one's feet.”
The battle is on, atheism with its associated inhumanity or Jesus Christ with his love and the basis he, as our creator, gives to values and rationality.
6. Jesus
The arguments used above are largely subjective and philosophical but are none the less valid. Jesus stands as another strong argument for the reality of God. The four records of the Gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all major on the question ‘Who is Jesus’? This extraordinary person performed amazing impossible miracles, the dead were raised and chronically sick healed. Even his enemies admitted he was doing these miracles. His teaching was so profound, he stressed that God sees what is going on in out hearts and that outward religion is no protection from the judgment of God that is to come. He fulfilled the 330 prophecies about the Messiah who would be a Jew, a direct descendant of King David, who would be born in Bethlehem, would be crucified as the ultimate sacrifice for sin and would then rise from death. There were many witnesses to all this. This is what he said about himself:
“I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never go thirsty.” John 6:35
“If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” John 7:37-38
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” John 10:11
“I and the Father are one.” John 10:30
“I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
His closest disciples became convinced that Jesus’ claims about himself were true and committed their lives to telling the world that this Jesus is God’s Chosen King, the Messiah, who had come to be sacrificed and so carry the sins of the world and then rose again. Reject God and you have to be able to explain away Jesus. Many sceptics who have investigated the evidence have had to change their minds.The books by the sceptics Simon Greenleaf, Frank Morrison, Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel are all very convincing as it was the evidence about Jesus that convinced them too.
Any person who has a preconceived belief that there is no God will automatically deny what Jesus taught about himself and the origin of the values that are in all people.
A leap of faith?
We know the sort of world we live in. There is much dishonesty, gossip, pride and selfishness. It is as if this is one bank of a river where we rule. On the other side is an ideal world where God rules. There people care for each other and have ideals that they live by. It is as if the people there have a different spirit in them.
Across the river that separates these two worldviews are stepping stones. Each stone represents the different types of evidence that can safely lead people across the river.
How did nothing transform into something?
How did intelligent life come from inanimate matter?
The laws and constants of science strongly suggest that a brilliant mind was behind the formation of this universe.
It is very hard to explain how the irreducibly complex biochemical mechanisms seen in nature can have developed without a continuing designer at work.
It is difficult to conceive how the detailed DNA code that distinguishes an ape from a human could have been programmed without a mind being involved.
The plethora of remarkable physical features that enable man to live on this planet, the so-called ‘Anthropic Principle’, cannot be readily explained. Statistically a planet suitable for human life is so improbable as to be impossible.
We have instinctive values that appear to be real. Where do they originate from?
There is evil in this world.
The 330 Old Testament prophecies about the Future Messiah are remarkable. His family background is there, his birth in Bethlehem, his death by crucifixion, his character and much more are all pre-recorded there.
The evidence for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is overwhelming.
Jesus’ miracles and essential features of his life are recorded not only by his disciples but also by opponents.
The humble loving character of Jesus combined with his awesome authority is astounding in itself. His nature draws people to him as no other leader ever has.
The disciples really were convinced about him. So much so that they committed their lives to telling the world about Jesus. Would they have done this if they weren’t convinced – would they have died for a lie?
The early church spread at great speed in spite of opposition from governments. Something must have been behind this.
Commitment to Jesus does have very beneficial effects in people’s lives. People become more altruistic and kinder. How many other creeds have changed peoples’ lives for the better? Atheism certainly doesn’t. What other creeds have resulted in a strong desire to educate and mission hospitals. The search for truth is only encouraged by those who know they have found the truth. The concern for the sick and unloved comes from an understanding that Christ has done this for us.
I have personal needs. How can my guilt be assuaged? How can I find a purpose that is meaningful even when I am dying?
Fear of death is real. The prospect of judgement of wrong doers after death is welcomed but how will I escape such a judgment?
It is possible to get this far across the stepping stones and baulk at making a commitment to God as revealed in Christ. Some would like to stay vacillating on the stepping stones but life moves on. The current of life will eventually remove us from any quest for understanding and life.
When people complain,
‘I cannot make such a leap of faith, I cannot move on from the stepping stones into a commitment to Christ.’
To think like that is to misunderstand the big picture. The real leap of faith is to leap back to the godless selfish world they come from. To make such a giant leap is irrational, to return to that world should be associated with answers to all the evidence of the stepping stones. Together the case for Christ is overwhelming. It is only a small step of faith, based on strong evidence, to move off the stepping stones and accept Jesus Christ and become one of God’s family. These arguments have been expanded in my book ‘Stepping Stones’
Why do so many want to stay in a godless world when the alternative is so attractive and rational? Do they want more light? Jesus said ‘I am the light of the world’. An honest investigation of Jesus can do no harm and may lead to a deeply satisfying life, based on truth.
The Bible is clear,
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
Are these claims a lie or are they the very words of God? Why is Jesus so attractive? How can all the evidence of the stepping stones be explained away?
It is as if people are blinded for some reason, blinded both to th significance of the evidence and the importance of the decision. The apostle Paul astutely concluded:
“The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:4
Who is going to be the judge? Am I to judge the Almighty God or will we each be judged by the same Almighty God. Jesus warns us that our decision will not only control how we live now but will also be the basis for our eternal fate.
BVP
