Faith in God is not irrational, though some have claimed that. There is strong evidence to support belief in God, and I bring that to you sometimes. Atheists have their points to make as well. But neither view is actually proved.
A big part of your own decision to believe - or not -goes way beyond evidence and proof, though. Do you want there to be a God? Some decidedly don't. You can choose cynicism. You can choose to say Beauty and Goodness and Truth and Meaning are just illusions. Is that what you want?
The great Dr. John Lennox clarifies the two belief options:
You've seen images (image) of the DNA within each of our cells. It twists and coils tightly and then gets tangled in itself. It has to be opened up so it can be copied to build every new cell and every new living thing.
A special protein (an enzyme) in each of our cells does this specific untangling job. The protein is structured like a machine to snip and re-connect strands at the point of the super-coils, so that they can straighten out.
Some have to believe this incredible protein just developed by pure chance (because they must hold to their belief system). Does that seem likely?
Our bodies were designed on purpose by their vastly intelligent Creator in my opinion. Is that just faith, as materialists would claim? Yes, it is faith because it can't be proved--but there's awesomeevidence to draw me to this conclusion, and I love to put some of that on this blog for you.
Is it old fashioned and cringey to thank God on this national holiday like they did 404 years ago? It's antiquated in the view of many of today's Americans who believe there's no personal God. Maybe they'd like to change the name of our holiday from Thanksgiving Day to "Luck Day." But it would inspire nobody.
A choice to look for blessing and give thanks to God changes our mindset from despair to hope based on statements like Jeremiah 29:11 from the Bible:
Atheist (Boghossian) and Christian (Miller) are now friends, fighting on the same side. They have travelled together and spoken together on the same platform. What do they have in common? They both believe in freedom of speech and objective truth. Passionately.
Miller, like me and most believers, has always defended the rights of people who disagree with us to speak what they believe. It was no great leap for him to fight cancel culture on college campuses. But it probably was a leap for Boghossian because his own preferred politics on the left tends to silence dissenting opinions.
As a Portland professor, Boghossian invited a speaker to campus in 2017 to talk about possible biological gender differences. "Social justice advocates" on campus retaliated by tying his name to the Nazi swastika, by making threats and leaving a bag of feces. He says they silence and punish diverse views, becoming "what they claim to hate - thugs and bullies."
Like Robert George, Peter believes that speaking what you believe to be true in spite of danger . . is a moral duty. It's being suppressed where he worked, at Portland State University. So, putting his money where his mouth is, he resigned.
From his resignation letter: "Faculty and administrators have abdicated the university’s truth-seeking mission and instead drive intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions. This has created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly."
Some people like to fight. Conflict doesn't scare or intimidate them because they're just wired that way. You've probably met a few of them in your life.
The "new atheists" are like that. Evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins is their pace setter. He's famous for verbally taking the fight to religious folks.
Professor Peter Boghossian, too, is an atheist and a fighter. For instance, he preaches that there is no connection between faith and morality. He's on a crusade to wipe out the idea that people of faith are good people. He wants to "help people lose their faith."
But a fighting spirit may exist in Christians as well, one example being Corey Miller. He started a movement to make the case for Christianity on 150 campuses because, in his words, "The university is a battlefield for the minds and hearts of the future."
These men believe strongly in opposite things and are willing to go toe-to-toe with opponents.
But they have one important thing in common. So, amazingly, these "arch enemies" have become friends and allies.
If you literally are your brain, like some say, what hope would there be for a girl born with only half of a brain? A brain surgeon in the video below told her parents that there was little hope for her. But twenty years later, she is a vibrant young woman, functioning normally.
The neurosurgeon was at that time a materialist, like so many. It's not that he made a conscious choice, but rather that worldview dominates in our culture and you just pick it up from school and media. Over his professional experience of doing 7,000 surgeries, he changed his mind.
He believes we have souls or immaterial minds, and that they use the brain. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson says, mapping of the brain shows that the brain does control movement, sensory perception, emotion, and memory. But no part of the brain has been shown to control abstract thought (like doing math or understanding history) or your free will.
If someone denies the existence of God and everything supernatural, if he claims nothing exists but the natural world or universe, he or she is an atheist or materialist. Of course, that person must also believe that human beings have no immaterial soul.
So, you're just your material, physical brain (image) which is located in your skull. He thinks that is everything you are including thoughts, feelings, decisions, etc.
Avi Snyder was an angry man in his younger days. He didn't believe that God exists, and he hated what followed from that fact: his belief that everything is meaningless and there's no point to life at all.
He screamed at the ceiling, "How dare you do this to me??" The thought came back, "So you're angry. Who are you angry at? I thought you were an atheist."
There's more to his story, but all this is in the first 4 minutes.
Influencers who now express approval of Christianity or religion also include Tom Holland and Richard Dawkins (both are still atheists to my knowledge). It's good to see the tone of our culture pull back from hostility to God. It means less pressure against young people who want to believe.
Intellectuals who have actually converted to Christianity from atheism include Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her husband, historian Niall Ferguson, formerly British but now in America. They and their two sons were baptized in the Anglican Church in 2023.
"Though
Ferguson sees profoundly the crisis of our times . . brought about by the abandonment of Christianity, this is
not primarily a political conversion.
"He is, in his own words, a lapsed atheist. Much more important, he's a believing Christian. . . It’s a deeply personal and deliberate turn to faith by a man who was formerly a lifelong atheist . . ."
It's just not enough to claim that there's no God. That's atheism and materialism. It makes the claim that nothing except the material world exists, that our world and everything on it came into existence by natural laws, natural selection, random variations.
Human beings need more. Non-material things like love, purpose, and goodness drive our lives. Society needs more, too. The "vibe shift" in our country may includes not only political and attitude changes, but also a growing desire to look for God👍
Podcaster Joe Rogan (photo)used to mock Christianity, but just a year ago he said "We need Jesus." Last summer Elon Musk said "I'm actually a big believer in the principles of Christianity" and called for believers to bravely stand up for what is fair and right.
Atheists of today have been loud in their rejection (and here) of Christianity. I welcome the change of mind some of them have had (here,here).
Historian, atheist, and author Tom Holland (Dominion) changed his mind a few years ago from disdain of Christianity to surprised admiration. Now it seems like he has gone a step further, from admiration to something like faith. His understanding grows and grows.
He explains to this Jewish-and-open-minded interviewer (photo) how powerfully the life and crucifixion of Jesus changed the world. He says that even woke American ideologues are drawing from Christian values, but "they have cut themselves off from the scripture."
He even says that the doctrine of original sin is important. Without it, we may think we have the ability to be good on our own, that we're sinless.
He goes to church sometimes. Things about Christianity are really making sense to him. As in the theme of yesterday's post ("Lux Venit"), he says "the idea of light in the darkness is very vivid for me." Praying he goes the rest of the way.
Materialists deny life after death and the non-physical spirit of a human being, like they deny God's existence. But some may be becoming more open to believing in the human soul.
That's because evidence shows that consciousness may continue even after death.
A study was done on 567 men and women whose heart stopped in hospital and who were resuscitated by CPR. Some survived.
"Survivors reported having unique lucid experiences, including a
perception of separation from the body, observing events without pain or
distress, and a meaningful evaluation of life, including of their
actions, intentions, and thoughts toward others." They didn't seem to be hallucinating or dreaming.
As an ER doctor says, the conscious mind "continues even when the brain does not seem to be functioning.
Which raises the question that consciousness may be a separate entity
from the brain. It’s not magical. It’s just not discovered yet. But it
doesn’t die."
Brought up Muslim in Africa, she was taught to hate unbelievers, particularly Jews, whom they cursed every day. She feared going to hell, because she adored forbidden things like movies and music.
Atheism looked good to her (especially after the appalling 9-11 attack) because it offered "a simple, zero-cost escape from an unbearable life of self-denial and harassment of other people."
Life in Europe and later as an American citizen created in her a love for Western Civilization, which she believes is threatened by aggressive Islamism, China and Russia, and woke ideology.
She fears we could lose "everything," our whole Western way of life; and she identifies the reason we are losing to our enemies: it's that we have lost "faith in the Christian God." This she says in the first 6 minutes of this interview:
In a public discussion event with Richard Dawkins last fall she said:
"Like you, I did mock faith, in general, and probably Christianity in particular, but I don't do that anymore. ... I have come down to my knees to say that the people who always had faith have something that we who lost faith don’t have.”
“What you value in Christianity is something that really is absolutely necessary to pass on to the next generation,” she said. “And we have failed the next generation by taking [it] away from them . . and telling them it’s nonsense and false."
She, like Dawkins, admires the Western Civilization that Christianity built. But more than that, she found in Christianity the answer to her question, "what is the meaning and purpose of life?"
"Fundamentally decent," that's his description of Christianity as opposed to Islam. He feels at home in the Christian ethos, he loves hymns (what?!) and Christmas carols. He thinks Britain is a Christian country: "If we substituted any alternative religion, that would be truly dreadful!"
Do I attack Richard Dawkins for doing something of a flip-flop? No. He learned there's goodness in Christianity, and that many of the good things he appreciates in his own culture come from that source. It's good that he's acknowledging the truth he learned.
Something unexpected has happened in the world of atheism. Richard Dawkins, that relentless enemy of religion, calls himself a "cultural Christian." 😮
It's not that he believes in God now or believes that Jesus rose from the dead. But it appears that he despises the faith a little less than he used to. Let's hear his 4-minute explanation:
Are Americans happy? It's a big-scale question that the United Nations analyzes periodically. According to their report published this week, we as a people are a lot less happy than we used to be. In just a year we dropped from 15th happiest country in the world to 23rd happiest.
That's a big drop in a short time. This week's report specifies generations for the first time, so the reason for it can be identified: young people (ages 10-29) are deeply unhappy, and they pull down our average.
Well, we know how they've been educated for years and that may have something to do with it. Human beings are not made happy when we're told that we're alone in the universe, that there's no God and no ultimate justice, no transcendent meaning to life, that we're nothing but more-evolved animals, etc.
Happiness is not trivial, as long as we don't define it with a shallow meaning. For our purposes on this blog, we're using the term as life satisfaction, peace of mind, a sense of well-being. For several weeks we're going to explore the subject every Friday. There is hope.
As this author says, "Only 4% of American adults follow a consistent biblical worldview." His message to American Christians is: Wake up! (For another author saying "wake up," see Letter to the American Church by Eric Metaxas.)
Along with falling church membership, the nature of America is corroding. The rich legacy of freedom and goodness that we've had since the founding is being squandered. It's never more than one generation away from extinction unless we genuinely pass it on to our kids and grandkids.
Memes are a visual way to look into popular opposition to Christianity. Are your kids/grandkids seeing these messages? Without a doubt. They are barraged with mocking atheism. Will they leave faith behind? They might - unless they also see answers to these memes, these mocking arguments.
You can help them get the answers they need, because they're online just like the memes are. Go to this article and start learning the answers for yourself, then share them.
Voices advocating for atheism are strong in our modern culture. Sometimes those voices go beyond reason to claim that "science has proven there is no god." That's just not the case, because it can't be done. It's an unscientific claim.
And . . neither can it be proved that God does exist. You have a personal choice to make, either for or against faith in God, even after all the breathtaking advances science has made to understand the material/natural world we live in.
From time to time I publish evidence that supports a rational choice for faith in the God of the Bible and I love to do that, to give you reasons to believe.
There's a new book on evidence that the human body and the natural world are engineered to work elegantly together. We'll be looking at it in weeks to come.
The point is, your free moral agency, your choice to believe or not, should not be bullied. If at Christmas or any other time you are moved to put your faith in God, you are rationally justified in doing that.
We human beings look for the meaning of things; we want to understand and know the truth. The search for meaning is a feature built into our very nature by our Creator.
But yes, it's possible as a human being to deny meaning and transcendence, to insist that there's nothing beyond the material. That's what atheism teaches.
Re-post from six years ago:
Atheists have a new billboard campaign for the season. Their theme is "Make Christmas great again. Skip church!"
So I wonder how this works. Was Christmas great in the past when God was no part of it? If we all skip church, will Christmas be great again? But there's never been a time when the season was empty of God. Since the beginning, its central core has been the birth of Jesus Christ on earth.
photo: mine
I'm glad if atheists can enjoy decorations and traditions. But the joy of Christmas would not last if God were taken out of the season. Eventually nothing would be left but cynical materialism.
There are lots of cynics who don't have a merry celebration. The good will and beauty of Christmas are just cloying if there's no meaning in it.
