Worldview #1 - Atheism:
"There is no God!'
The word "atheism" comes from two Greek words, "a" and "theos", which mean respectively "no" and "God". So quite literal sense atheism is the definite and positive denial of the existence of God. Don't let anybody fool you into thinking that atheism is simply "the lack of a belief in any God." This is a recent attempts by some newer atheists to avoid having to justify their worldview, and explain it logically. Once properly understood "atheism" means a person claims to have positive knowledge and a definite belief that "God doesn't exist."
Some of the frequent statements of atheism in our culture, would include the following:
"No God, infinite or finite, exists!"
"Evil and suffering are strong evidence against God!"
"Miracles are not possible!"
"God is either an illusion or a psychological projection."
If we survey Atheism then, we can come up with the following summary of beliefs:
- There is no God at all.
- The universe came from nothing, without an ultimate cause or purpose.
- Everything that exists in reality is simply re-combined matter.
- There is no ultimate meaning, value, or purpose to human life.
- Since the natural is all that exists, supernatural events, like miracles, are not possible.
- Science is the only reliable form of truth to teach us about reality.
- All biological life arose spontaneously, randomly, and without intelligent guidance.
- Evil and suffering are real and count as very strong evidence against God's existence.
- There really is no ultimate standard of "right and wrong" in reality.
- All human feelings, such as love and beauty, are reducible to chemicals and matter.
- The concept of "God" is simply a psychological "crutch", invented to cope with reality.
- There is no ultimate solution to the problem of evil, except to bravely keep living.
- At the point of death, a person simply ceases to exist - period.
- Eventually, our sun will burn out, earth will be void of life, and the universe as a whole will become a cold, barren wasteland, empty of any heat or forms of life.
One of the most famous modern-day atheists is a man by the name of Richard Dawkins, who used to be the professor of biology at Oxford University. Throughout history the famously atheist would include Lucretius, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the well-known Sigmund Freud.
So if we examine the worldview of Atheism, how does it stand up? After all, you would think that it would have to be pretty impressive intellectually with all the press and headlines that it seems to receive in the popular culture and news media, right? Actually, as we investigate it, the worldview of Atheism is one of the weakest and intellectually absurd that there are.
First of all, there is no positive evidence at all for Atheism. The atheistic would quickly say that a huge amount of evil and suffering in the world counts as evidence against God's existence. But in reality, "evil" presupposes that God exists. The concept of "evil" assumes that there is some ultimate end objective standard for "good and evil" and "right and wrong." But if there really is an objective moral standard within all of humanity, a universal moral law, the only thing that is a sufficient explanation for that would be the existence of an Ultimate Moral Lawgiver - God.
Once evil is moved off the table as possible evidence against God's existence, there is nothing else that the atheists could muster to prove His nonexistence. This could never happen scientifically, because no matter how you try to define or explain physical reality, you will always end up needing an explanation that is outside of reality and transcendent to it - God.
The only way this could be possible is if a person possessed absolute infinite knowledge, of all reality. Only then would a person be in a position to say with absolute certainty "God does not exist." But obviously, this wouldn't work either, because if a person possessed absolute infinite knowledge, by definition that person would be God.
In addition to this, there is strong evidence against the worldview of Atheism. Though these will be addressed in other chapters, they would include certain arguments for God's existence which are very strong and compelling intellectual evidence. These include the cosmological argument, design argument, moral argument, ontological argument, and various other arguments that appeal to the real existence of beauty, logic, mathematics and humanities "God hunger", as strong pieces of evidence that points to God's existence. For atheism to be successful as a worldview, it would have to take on each of these arguments individually, defeat them step by step, and in their place construct its own arguments proving why God cannot exist. Atheism has never been successful in doing this, and will never be.
As if this wasn't enough already, Atheism is a spectacular failure, intellectually and logically. The reason I say this is because the worldview of atheism demands that you believe certain things are absolutely against all good common sense, and solid intellectual reasoning. Here are some of the outrageous beliefs of the atheistic worldview, called by some "the 6 Miracles of Atheism":
1. Everything came from nothing.
2. All life arose from non-life.
3. Human Intelligence appeared on non-intelligent matter.
4. Human consciousness arose on non-conscious matter.
5. Immaterial realities (information, logic, math) arose from simple matter.
6. Complex Order and Beauty arose from Chaos.
Not only do these "Miracles of Atheism" go against our common human experience, but they also violate many well-known and accepted laws and principles of logic, science, and will be generally perceived to be true about reality. If believing such things is the "intellectual price tag" of Atheism, then I'm afraid it's too expensive for my tastes. I prefer my worldview to be intellectually strong, logically sound, and not an outrage against my common sense perceptions of reality!
Finally, many of the world's most famous and renowned atheists have admitted their private "hunger" for God and the eternal. This would include Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, and Auguste Comte. Some of these thinkers, such CS Lewis, Lee Strobel, or Henry Morris, after having examined the evidence of God's existence, the proof of the Bible's reliability and inspiration, and historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, have since become committed followers of Christ.
When examined as a worldview, although it presents a strong face in our current culture, Atheism possesses no positive evidence to show itself true, has very strong arguments against it, and even commits incredible logical and philosophical blunders. For these reasons, Atheism has frequently been abandoned by many of it's strongest thinkers in recent years, such as Dr. Anthony Flew and Dr. Francis Collins.
For all of these reasons, and many more, I simply don't have enough faith to be an Atheist!
- Pastor J.
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