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feast on unprepared religious people who unintelligently hold to beliefs they’ve merely inherited, who have only a secondhand faith.
The gospel is the good news that God became man in Jesus Christ. He lived the life we should have lived (perfectly keeping the moral law); He then died the death we should have died (for breaking that law). Three days later He rose from the dead, proving He is the Son of God and offering the gift of salvation to everyone who will repent and believe the gospel.
That weekend thirty years ago was a turning point for both Ben and me. He became a believer in Jesus Christ while he was trying to talk me out of “this born-again thing.” And since that day, I’ve devoted my life to getting people out of “this atheist thing.” I work primarily among university students
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.
The real question is, how much proof is enough proof to convince you that God is real?
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 spirit...
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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.
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.
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.
The experiment to build a society without God has been tried. It has failed.
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.
message is not missed or misunderstood. The good news announces that God became man in Jesus Christ, He lived the life we should have lived, and in our place He died the death we should
As I listened intently, a young man carrying a guitar with him asked me, “Why should we even be concerned with the question, ‘Does God exist?’ Does it really matter?” I asked him, “Have you ever written a song?” His facial expression changed instantly as it seemed I was changing the subject from God and to something he really wanted to talk about. He said yes, then I asked, “Why did you want to write a song?” He raised his hand to emphasize his passion. “I wanted to share my feelings with others, to create something they could enjoy as well as express my heart and my thoughts.” “What would you
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Richard Dawkins called for this bitter tone and tactic from all present. “Mock them, ridicule them in public, don’t fall for the convention that we’re far too polite to talk about religion. Religion is not off the table. Religion is not off limits.”12
MATHEMATICS The mathematical order in the universe was discovered, not invented. Even more basic than the order are the numbers themselves; they must be accepted as simply true. It’s because of this mathematical order that we can explore the world around us with such confidence. Mathematics allows us to send probes into outer space as well as into our own bodies. “The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid
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‘Science asks how things happen. But there are questions of meaning and value and purpose which science does not address. Religion asks why. And it is my belief that we can and should ask both
questions about the same event.’
Science basically tells us how things work. Religion and faith tell us why things are here and how we should live ethically and morally. Neither of these questions can be answered by science.
Albert Einstein gave insight into his view that both realms of religion and science are valid: Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: Science without religion is
lame, religion without science is blind.28
I mean, in a way, I feel that one of the reasons for learning about Darwinian evolution is as an object lesson in how not to set up our values and social lives. —RICHARD DAWKINS1
“How could something like this happen?” and “What is wrong with our world?” There are real answers to these questions. The short answer? Evil exists.
“No God—No Evil.” Borrowing the logic of theologian Cornelius van Til, I explained to him, “If there is no God, there is no such thing as evil.”6 You see, without God evil doesn’t really exist. The unbeliever can’t describe the world we live in without borrowing the biblical concepts of good and evil.
But if there is no God, there couldn’t possibly be a transcendent morality that everyone should obey. Good and evil would simply be illusions, man-made and arbitrary. Certainly without a transcendent God or source of moral authority, it comes down to whatever are the opinions of the majority. So from where does this universal sense of right and wrong come?
The real challenge is this: whether you are a believer or an unbeliever, atheist or theist, evil is not just around us—it is in us. That is why it is safe to say the existence of evil is not evidence of God’s absence in the universe but evidence of His absence from our lives. Rejecting God won’t necessarily make you some horrible criminal, just like saying you believe in God won’t automatically make you a saint.
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”16 This was what Kant called the categorical imperative.17 In other words, judge the rightness of your actions by asking this question: What if everyone acted this way? This truth is synonymous with what Jesus taught in the golden rule: “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31 NIV).
Historically the golden rule is a complete reversal of the survival-of-the-fittest mind-set of the past. Can you imagine Alexander the Great or Napoleon agreeing to live by that rule?
“DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.
If DNA neither knows nor cares, then how do you explain the fact that we can know and care?
WITHOUT GOD, ALL THINGS ARE PERMISSIBLE
It was precisely this fact of the logical movement of atheism toward violence and cruelty that made the twentieth century the bloodiest in history. The godless regimes of Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot eclipsed the horrors of previous centuries primarily because the moral restraint was removed when God was eliminated from their thinking. Without God, moral commands are met by the schoolyard cry of, “Says who?” Why should we obey any moral commands if they are simply one group’s opinion?
God created beings who had the capacity to fail. Failing meant making the choice not to do good. From the beings we call angels to the humans made in His image, God’s creations have real power to make real choices. If God created us without that right and ability, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
“That is why atheism is so bankrupt as a view of life, for it miserably fails to deal with the human condition as it really is.
The existence of evil is not evidence of God’s absence in the universe but evidence of His absence from our lives.
Stephen Hawking noted this discomfort in his bestseller A Brief History of Time: “Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention.
“Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. . . . Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”22
Dawkins to say absurd things like, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of being designed for a purpose.
“In a burst of creativity like nothing before or since, nature
appears to have sketched out the blueprints for virtually the whole of the animal kingdom.
So in the atheistic worldview: • Life came from no-life. • Meaning came from non-meaning.
twelve disciples, performed miracles, was crucified, and was resurrected. No
