There are many diluted souls of this age who in their ignorance (i.e. lack of quality knowledge) profess that there is no God. To some, unbelief is a mark of intellectual sophistication and they frankly contend that faith ought to be relegated to the realm of superstition. Others, though not approaching that extreme, feel that faith is, at least to a certain degree, unprovable. That it is without the sort of basis that one might call reasonable; rather, it is alleged to be a mystical experience, a “leap in the dark,” the result of some better-felt-than-told subjective experience. Of course there is really nothing new about this, but it is receiving more attention these days than ever before.
I do not subscribe for a moment to either of these views. It is my unflinching conviction that God exists, that he is our Creator having endowed us with living bodies and rational minds. Further, I am equally certain that our divine benefactor has provided adequate evidence of himself which commends itself to the human mental faculty, so that, upon a foundation of reasonable evidence, we may “believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those that seek after him.” (Heb. 11:6)
The atheist claims simply that there is no God. The skeptic is not so bold; he suggests that he simply “doubts” the Almighty’s existence. The agnostic shrugs his shoulders and pleads that he doesn’t know one way or the other. A deist professes to believe that there is a God, but the God of his fancy is far removed from any interest in man.
The Austrian psychopathologist Sigmund Freud taught that atheism is a characteristic of the normal, well-adjusted mind. He felt that faith in a supreme being was simply a hold-over of childhood fears, hence, an adult abnormality. I do not hesitate to say that Freud’s theory is based upon preconceived assumptions resulting from anti-religious bias. And the facts that oppose such may be developed along several lines of reasoning.
First, a disposition to believe in some sort of supernatural power is a well-established fact. The universality of this tendency argues for its normalcy and not against it. In actuality, the very mental phenomenon of believing appears to be a psychological necessity. Doctors J. A. Mendelson and Wayne Oates conducted a nine-week study at the Kentucky State Hospital. They made a study of religion in the lives of 68 mental patients, and by far the largest group of several categories, 51.5%, “reflected an absence of religious influence in their present thought and life activity…” Dr. Oates concludes that “much that is called mental illness today is the end result of a lack of wholesome moral education.” Dr. Orlo Strunk, Jr., affirms that the opinion that atheism is the “result of deep and complex emotional problems – is undoubtedly true to a great degree.” (The Choice Called Atheism, p. 54)
There are several psychological factors which may pave the way for unbelief. One of the most dangerous contributions a parent can make toward the spiritual delinquency of a child is a failure to instill within them a wholesome respect for authority. Another factor is an unhealthy lust for power. This disposition sees God as competition, hence, rejects him. A third motivation is the desire to be free of moral restraint. Aldous Huxley, a professed and proud atheist in his article “Confession of a Professed “Atheist” openly admitted that he rejected belief in God and morality because he did not want his sexual freedom hindered. The logic being: If there is a God, I must be morally responsible to him. I will not be so restrained.
Thus, there is no God. Finally, for some, atheism is the result of disappointment by someone who professed to be a devotee to God. It is only realistic to recognize that a man is just a man and a fallible man at that. It is folly to blame deity for the blunders of humanity. There are many others. The bottom line is that one of the key reasons why men refuse to accept the Christian faith is because the very principles of their lives are in every way contradictory to the ethical principles of the Bible, and, determined to remain in the lawlessness of their own sensuality, they could not possibly embrace anything that could get in the way of their selfish conduct.
In conclusion, I feel compelled to call attention to the atheist’s smug self-image of his totally “scientific” and rational outlook. He or she feels that faith is irrational, and thus, allegedly disassociates himself from such. The truth is, however, it actually requires more faith, and that of an unreasonable variety, to accept atheism than theism. The atheist does indeed have faith!
James D. Bales discusses some of the articles of faith in the atheist’s
creed in his book, Communism: It’s Faith and Fallacies. The following is an adaptation of some of his points.
(1) Though the atheist cannot prove it, he believes that God does not exist. “To know that God does not exist one would have to know everything and to be everywhere, for the thing which he did not know might prove God’s existence. He would have to know all the causes which have ever operated, for the one cause he did not know might be God. The person who possessed such characteristics would be a god himself! Thus an atheist, to be consistent, must be an auto-theist, a self-God. There are no real atheists, only self-worshipping idolaters who have deified their own beings. “The atheist cannot reverse the argument and say that one must know all in order to have sufficient reason to believe in God. Several lines of evidence show that it is rational to accept God and irrational to reject God. We need to know at least some of the evidence, but we do not need to know everything.”
(2) The atheist ridicules the concept of an Eternal God, yet he himself believes in the eternal existence of matter. His belief in the eternal existence of matter is not only without reasonable evidence, it is contrary to one of the best established scientific laws, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which demonstrates that the universe is “running down” and hence had an origin. Likewise, it is much more reasonable to believe that a Mind (God) produced matter, life, and human consciousness, than to believe that matter created mind, consciousness, and intelligence.
(3) Atheist believe that life spontaneously arose from non-living matter. Again, this is contrary to the evidence suggested by the Law of Biogenesis which affirms that life can only come from pre-existing life. The theory of spontaneous generation, as one unbeliever candidly admitted, “is far from proven, and it is improbable that satisfactory proof will ever be forthcoming.” (Alford M. Elliott, Zoology, p. 33)
(4) Atheists believe that the order and design found in nature are simply the results of non-intelligent, non-conscious fate or chance. “Atheists usually concede that there is at least ‘apparent design’ and order in nature,” which they attribute to irrational forces. This is totally contrary to all our experience which reveals that design is the result of intelligence.
(5) The atheist believes that consciousness evolved from a fortuitous combination of non-conscious molecules. There is no proof for this incredible view.
(6) The atheist believes that non-moral matter created man with a moral sensitivity – a sense of obligation or duty. I appeal to your good sense, does it seem reasonable to believe that primeval slime could evolve into a morally sensitive man?
(7) The atheist, to be consistent, must believe that man is merely a “matter-machine without any power of choice, and thus without any real responsibility for his conduct. How could matter, regardless of how refined it might be, decide between alternatives and be responsible for that decision?!” When an atheist acts as if he were a morally responsible being, he negates his own assertions.
(8) Atheist, if consistent, must beleive that all thought is irrational, for it is all assumed to be the inevitable by-product of irrational causes. According to atheism, mental processes are wholly determined by the physical movement of atoms in the brain. A couple of years back, I had a discussion with an atheist who contended that belief in God was not reasonable since such belief was only the result of a human brain that had evolved from matter. It had apparently never occurred to him that if his reasoning was valid, the very atheism he was urging me to accept, also was the product of an evolved brain of pure matter and therefore unworthy of my consideration! Talk about devastation to his argument. How strange it is that those who claim the name ‘rationalist’ and maintain that theists are not rational, should end up with a position which implies that all thought is irrational.
God is real not from the imaginations of those who believe but by the very foundations of the earth in which we live. For the rational mind, it is harder to prove the lack of God’s existence than to prove His existence. Science and biology cannot disprove God and in every case, proves more of His existence to the studied mind who doesn’t get their information from agenda-based readings or the television. In any case of science that attempts to support the position of evolution, a diligent individual will find that everything from the geological timetable to every aspect of the theory of evolution is based on supposition and baseless assumptions wrapped into a meaningless formula ultimately designed to make one comfortable in their sin.
May the Lord Our God be Glorified!
