God's Not Dead: Evidence for God in an Age of Uncertainty (3 page)

We are called to follow God and love Him with all our hearts and minds. This means we have to think and investigate. Truth is another word for reality. When something is true it’s true everywhere. The multiplication tables are just as true in
China
as they are in America. Gravity works in Africa the way it does in Asia. The fact that there are moral
truths
that are true everywhere points to a transcendent
morality
that we did not invent and from which we cannot escape.
⁸

As Creator, God has placed not only natural
laws
in the earth but also spiritual laws. For instance, lying is wrong everywhere. So is stealing. Cruelty to
children
is wrong regardless of what culture you’re in or country you’re from. When these laws are
broken, people are broken. Not only does violating these spiritual laws separate us from God, but it causes pain in our lives and in the lives of those around us. The big question becomes, what can be done about our condition? When we break these spiritual laws, whom can we call for help? How can we be reconciled to God as well as break free from this cycle of pain and dysfunction?

I
S
A
THEISM A
R
ELIGION?

Within every human is a desire for God. We sometimes attempt to satisfy this hunger by practicing a religion, by having faith in something. Atheism, in all its railings against God, also has intrinsic beliefs, dogmas, and tenets that supposedly can’t be challenged. It is itself a belief system with all the markings of a religion. In an issue entitled “Forget the Church. Follow Jesus,”
Newsweek
magazine agreed, calling atheism a “belief.”
⁹
Atheism as a religion (a set of beliefs) is just as intolerant and closed-minded as the claims made against any faith system it assails.

With the fervor of the
religious fundamentalists
, these new atheists reject any competing ideas not just from religion, but also from philosophy. Stephen Hawking, in his book
The Grand Design
, declared that “philosophy is dead.”
¹⁰
However Daniel Dennett, one of the so-called
Four Horsemen of Atheism
, has admited, “There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.”
¹¹
Therefore, in their minds, science becomes the only source of truth; like a ruthless dictator in a third-world country, atheists must eliminate all competition. No deviations from the atheistic, Darwinian dogma tolerated. Want to lose credibility in these
secular citadels? Merely suggest that there might be something beyond nature that’s responsible for our existence. This skeptical overreaction is simply . . . unreasonable.

D
ELUSION OF
D
ISBELIEF

In his book
The God Delusion
, Richard Dawkins asserts that God must be a delusion because God couldn’t exist. Dawkins, who is perhaps the world’s most famous atheist, makes the claim that though the universe appears to be designed, it couldn’t have been because we are still left with the question “Who designed the Designer?” This is itself an example of the irrational, unyielding position of the atheistic mind. The truth is you don’t have to have an explanation for every explanation. Such a demand sets up an infinite regress where nothing would be knowable and science
and reason
would all break down (granted, that is a worse-case scenario).

If you were walking through the woods and found a turtle on top of a fence post, you could rationally conclude that it didn’t get there by itself. Someone put it there. Even if you didn’t have an explanation for who did it, you would be reasonable in assuming that time and chance wouldn’t eventually place a turtle on a fence post.

Sigmund Freud spoke of
religious belief
as a
wish-fulfillment
, the desire to have some “father-figure in the sky” who can straighten things out for us and talk to us when we are lonely. David Aikman, a former senior correspondent for
Time
and author of
The Delusion of Disbelief
, put atheism in the same category as religion, saying, “Atheism is itself a delusion,” the ultimate wish-fulfillment.
¹²
There are real reasons why unbelievers don’t want
God to exist or at least seek to reduce Him to a blind impersonal force. No God—no accountability. No God—no real
morals
. “If God is dead,” said Malcolm Muggeridge, “somebody is going to have to take his place,”
¹³
and that somebody else is usually man himself.

Think about it: more than 90 percent of the planet believes that God exists. To maintain that those who believe in God are deluded means atheists (or radical skeptics as I call them) believe the majority of the world is under some kind of mass delusion. In order to maintain this position from an objective intellectual standpoint, they would have to dismiss all evidence of God and then explain how everything we see around us arose on its own—by chance.

The taunt of the skeptic is that those of us who have faith have no real proof for that faith. Skeptics say it’s all based on feelings or delusions or due to our religious upbringings. One of the standard lines from atheists sounds like this: “When I’m asked to prove god doesn’t exist, I ask believers to prove there are no fire-breathing dragons living in the center of the earth.” Some of the other analogies commonly used are the tooth fairy and Richard Dawkins’s personal favorite, the “Flying Spaghetti Monster.”
¹⁴
They sit back as if this alone justifies their disbelief, but they are wrong. There are no good reasons to believe in a Flying Spaghetti Monster, the tooth fairy, or fire-breathing dragons in the center of the earth. There are good reasons to believe in God.

The real question is, how much proof is enough proof to convince you that God is real? Most of the time atheists haven’t thought about what it would actually take to get them to believe. When Dawkins was asked this during a public debate, he said, “That’s a very difficult and interesting question because, I mean,
I used to think that if somehow, you know, great big giant, nine-hundred-foot-high Jesus with a voice like Paul Robeson suddenly strode in and said ‘I exist. Here I am,’ but even that, I actually sometimes wonder whether that would . . . ”
¹⁵
He doesn’t appear to have given much thought to this trivial answer. In fact, if someone else claimed to see a nine-hundred-foot Jesus, he or she would be ridiculed. The truth is, if your mind is made up about what you don’t believe and won’t believe, then no amount of evidence will convince you. You will dismiss even the most devastating testimony against your position.

I have been challenged repeatedly on university campuses: “You’re going to have to prove to me that God exists and Christianity is true.” My response? “If I do, will you believe in Him and follow Christ?” When they say no I respond, “Your problem is not a lack of information. If you have all your questions answered and still don’t believe, then your real problem is
spiritual
, not intellectual.”

W
AR OF THE
W
ORLDVIEWS

No one comes to these discussions completely neutral or objective. In other words, reason isn’t always reasonable. Our reason can be compromised by our own selfish motives. People who act corruptly or destructively may think they have reasons that justify their actions. On top of that, they have a way in which they view the world. Their
worldview
consists of a set of presuppositions that bias reason.

The
theistic
worldview centers on God.
Theos
is the Greek word meaning “god,” therefore a theist believes in God and sees God as the creator and sustainer of life and the world around us.
The physical laws, the constants in nature, and the complexity of life all point to a rational intelligence. Theists push that
logic
, believing this intelligence isn’t merely an impersonal force but is conscious and relational as humans are conscious and relational beings. Just as we desire intimacy, trust, and love from the relationships we value, so does our Creator.

The
atheist
worldview, also described as
naturalistic
, centers on nature.
A-
is the Greek prefix meaning “absence,” therefore an atheist believes in the absence of God. Everything can be explained by natural causes and effects. As the lead singer for Bad Religion stated in his book
Anarchy Evolution
:

If people ask me about my worldview, I say that I am a naturalist. When most people hear that word, they think of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors watching birds and admiring landscapes—and I suppose that description applies to me. But I think of naturalism as a philosophy rather than a lifestyle. From a philosophical perspective, naturalists believe that the physical universe
is
the universe. In other words, there are no
super
natural entities or forces acting on nature, because there is no empirical evidence for anything beyond or outside of nature.
¹⁶

This worldview eliminates the possibility of God from the outset; therefore, no evidence for an intelligent Creator will ever be convincing.

The pretense of many atheists is that somehow they don’t really possess any of these presuppositions. They project this air of objectivity, arguing with Socrates, “Scientists follow the evidence wherever it leads.”
¹⁷
Unless, of course, it leads to God.
To say that nothing exists outside the physical world is a statement of faith. There is no way that anyone can prove that is true. Atheism and other worldviews are just ideas—big ideas—and as history has proven, ideas have consequences. For example, the naturalistic worldview stemming from Darwinian evolution has had disastrous repercussions when applied philosophically and ethically: millions died at the hands of atheist Communists and Nazis during the twentieth century.

“I
MAGINE
T
HERE
’
S
N
O
H
EAVEN
”

If there is an anthem of unbelief, it is no doubt the song “Imagine” written by the late John Lennon: “Imagine there’s no heaven . . .”
¹⁸
What if Lennon’s song were true? Would the world be a better place if there were no God? Let’s imagine.

If there is no heaven, then there is no God. If there is no God or heaven, then this life is all there is: when you’re dead, you’re dead. What John Lennon imagined, Vladimir Lenin had already built in the communist state of
Russia
. The godless world of
that
Lenin was a living nightmare of torture, genocide, and darkness. The twentieth century was the bloodiest century in history, thanks to the atheistic regimes of Hitler, Stalin,
Pol Pot
, and Mao Zedong.

If God is dead, then man is dead as well.
Utopian dreams of humanistic paradise seem ideal until one fatal fact is recalled: man is the true cause of evil. Without the restraint of God and His law, humanity is free to act out any impulse, desire, or passion. Nothing would be ultimately right or wrong. Imagine an announcement was made in any major city of the world that the
police were taking the week off. No crimes would be prosecuted, no laws enforced. What do you imagine would be the result? Peace and tranquility or lawlessness and chaos?

If there is no
heaven
, then there is no reward for any good deed done. Why sacrifice your life for your country or any other cause? If there is no hell, then there is no ultimate punishment for any crime. In other words, the terrorists who commit atrocities against their fellow men will, in the end, get away with it.

The experiment to build a society without God has been tried. It has failed. At the same time
religion
without God is equally disastrous. The prophets of old warned that people could worship with their lips while their hearts were far away from God. The warning is echoed in the writings of the New Testament, saying some people will be seen “having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). Looking back over our shoulders into history, it doesn’t take long to realize that some Christians have given the critics of faith a lot of ammunition. Most of the failures resulted from disobeying the commands of Christ to love, serve, and forgive. Jesus was totally against powerless, compassionless religion and called it hypocrisy; but make no mistake: religion has no corner on the market of hypocrisy.

U
N
-M
AHERED

During the last century, arrogance and ignorance hurt Christianity in public discourse with skeptics. In this century, however, the roles have been reversed. One of atheists’ favorite tactics is to use mockery and ridicule to attempt to discredit anything of a religious nature, particularly Christianity. Any
baseless claim is given credibility if it serves to undermine faith in God. If believers aren’t prepared, they can be wrongly influenced to think their faith is misplaced.

A student once told me he had heard this question in a philosophy class: If God is all-powerful, could He make a rock so big He couldn’t move it? He told me that when he couldn’t come up with the answer, he eventually backslid. My thought was,
If one riddle shook your faith, then you didn’t have far to slide
. We shouldn’t abandon truth when these
evangelists of unbelief
shout their confident lies at us. The question actually violates
logic
’s “
law of non-contradiction
.” And the answer to the philosopher’s riddle is simple: because God is all-powerful, He could not create anything He could not handle.

Other challenges are much more absurd. Late-night comic and professional cynic Bill Maher (pronounced like the verb
mar
) regularly uses ridicule to denounce religion. Most of his arguments are what philosophy calls
straw men
: false pictures of something that have been created only so they can be easily confuted. Maher often takes the worst parts of anything associated with religion (
suicide bombers
, priests who abuse
children
, and especially anyone who refuses to accept
evolution
as fact) and paints them all in the worst possible light. He then announces, “Religion must die.”
¹⁹