This was my contribution to a blog dealing with belief in God vs. atheism.
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If you are an atheist, there is no reason to believe that reason should exist, and, if it did, why it should make sense, and if it seemed to make sense, why it should be trusted. There would just be a black nothingness. So why bother to reason, write, and post?
As for "evidence", I don't need to meet Charles Shultz to know he existed; Peanuts is ample evidence. Likewise, the created order spilling over with obvious design, beauty, and wonder, yet marred by evil, is more than ample evidence to believe both in a divine Creator and the contaminating, corrupting existence of evil.
Cartoons are two-dimensional characters, and yet their existence compels us to believe in a cartoonist. The creation is about a billion times more complex than a cartoon, and human beings are infinitely more complex and wonderful, and yet we still manage to convince ourselves we just happened out of nothing. Not because the evidence necessarily supports this, but because this is our preference.
Atheism is a faith-based choice, one that you have to work really hard to maintain, when God's fingerprints are everywhere. Creation. Conscience. Consciousness. Reasoning ability. Creative ability. Intrinsic understanding of God. The concept of eternity. The indignity and pain of separation of death. Love. The wondrous development and birth of a child. The words of Jesus Christ. The actions of Jesus Christ. The Spirit of Jesus Christ knocking on the door of the human heart. The empty tomb.
2 comments:
You're right. The Bible is a nice story, obviously made up by an imaginative creator - mankind.
I don't need to see the authors to know that. It's quite clear from reading it, who created it.
Simon,
Thank you for your post.
My argument was that just like you cannot have a cartoon without a cartoonist, you cannot have a creation without a creator. I pointed out, arguing from the lesser to the greater, that the creation is infinitely more complex than a cartoon, and yet we stubbornly refuse to acknowledge a Creator.
You dodged this argument, based entirely in reason rather than revelation, and, instead, shifted the debate to the authorship of the Bible.
I'm glad you are interested in and are reading the Bible. Maybe your mother gave you a Bible? Or maybe you grew up in a church, but found, shall we say, "other activities" more to your liking?
Our response to its message governs where we will spend eternity, and you are under no compulsion whatsoever to believe its message. If you choose to reject its message that you are a sinner, and God has provided you a Saviour, that's entirely up to you.
Of course the Bible was written by humans. It wasn't written by aliens. And, unlike the Book of Mormon or the Koran, it was not, as Joseph Smith and Mohammed insist, the product of divine dictation. It was written by human beings, fully alive and in possession of their faculties, but under the guiding direction of God's holy Spirit. And that is why we say that the book is "God-breathed".
It testifies of man's sin, and the resulting darkness of his intellect. As, does your post, although this was probably not your intent.
May you wake up soon, realizing that a good man died, and rose again, for you.
And may your mother's prayers for you be answered.
Thank you again for your contribution to this blog.
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