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Atheism
Dilemma
of Atheism
The atheist’s dilemma is that when he
feels very grateful and wants to give thanks
he has no one to give it to.
Response
to Atheism
The best reply to an atheist is to
give him a good dinner and ask him if he believes there is a chef who prepared
it.
Atheism’s Oversimplification
Atheism turns out to be too
simple. If the whole universe has no meaning
we should have never found out
that it has no meaning: Just as
if there were no light in the universe and therefore
no creatures with eyes
we should never know it was dark. ‘Dark’ would be
without meaning. ―― C.S. Lewis
Impact of Evolutionism
In commenting on the
medical challenges faced during the rapid urbanization of U.S. cities in the
late 1800s
Columbia University historian John Garraty said the following about
the negative influence of Darwinism upon medical science: “Efforts to do
something about high infant mortality rates in poor districts ran into
resistance from Darwinian evolutionists who argued that any attempt to reduce
infant mortality might lead to the survival of too many ‘weaklings’ and thus to
racial degeneration.”
Humanist Manifesto
”Humanism” is a term widely
used within the church to describe the prevailing philosophy of today-the world’s
mold that Christians have to resist deliberately. But what
specifically
is
“humanism”? Probably its clearest definition and most aggressive repudiation of
Christianity appears in the Humanist Manifesto II
which contains the
following basic tenets:
We
believe that traditional dogmatic or authoritarian religions that place
revelation
God
ritual
or creed above human needs and experience do a
disservice to the human species.
Promises
of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and
harmful. They distract humans from present concerns
from self-actualization
and from rectifying social injustices.
We
affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is
autonomous and situational
needing no theological or ideological sanction.
Ethics stem from human need and interest. To deny this distorts the whole basis
of life. Reason and intelligence are the most effective instruments that
humankind possesses. There is no substitute; neither faith nor passion suffices
in itself.
No
deity will save us; we must save ourselves.
Desire for Salvation
The well-known scientist
and author Carl Sagan
in a PBS documentary titled “Chariots of the Gods
”
commented on the new optimism that there is life elsewhere in the universe:
“It’s nice to think that there is someone out there that can help us.”
Unfortunately
this remark implies that for Sagan there is no God
and so his hope of help
from other beings is a blind hope
a hope that assumes that other beings exist
and that their race will not be affected with the depravity that is so evident
in all human endeavor. And that they would be interested in helping us.
Dilemma
of Atheism
The
atheist’s dilemma is that when he feels very grateful and wants to give thanks
he has no one to give it to. ── Michael P. Green《Illustrations
for Biblical Preaching》
Response
to Atheism
The
best reply to an atheist is to give him a good dinner and ask him if he
believes there is a chef who prepared it. ── Michael P. Green《Illustrations
for Biblical Preaching》
Atheism’s Oversimplification
Atheism
turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning
we should
have never found out that it has no meaning: Just as
if there were no light in
the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes
we should never know it was
dark. ‘Dark’ would be without meaning. ―― C.S. Lewis
Humanist Manifesto
”Humanism” is a term widely used
within the church to describe the prevailing philosophy of today-the world’s
mold that Christians have to resist deliberately. But what
specifically
is
“humanism”? Probably its clearest definition and most aggressive repudiation of
Christianity appears in the Humanist Manifesto II
which contains the
following basic tenets:
We believe that traditional dogmatic
or authoritarian religions that place revelation
God
ritual
or creed above
human needs and experience do a disservice to the human species.
Promises of immortal salvation or fear
of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful. They distract humans from
present concerns
from self-actualization
and from rectifying social
injustices.
We affirm that moral values derive
their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational
needing no theological or ideological sanction. Ethics stem from human need and
interest. To deny this distorts the whole basis of life. Reason and
intelligence are the most effective instruments that humankind possesses. There
is no substitute; neither faith nor passion suffices in itself.
No
deity will save us; we must save ourselves. ── Michael P. Green《Illustrations
for Biblical Preaching》
Desire for Salvation
The well-known scientist and author
Carl Sagan
in a PBS documentary titled “Chariots of the Gods
” commented on
the new optimism that there is life elsewhere in the universe: “It’s nice to
think that there is someone out there that can help us.”
Unfortunately
this remark implies that for Sagan there is no God
and so his hope of help
from other beings is a blind hope
a hope that assumes that other beings exist
and that their race will not be affected with the depravity that is so evident
in all human endeavor. And that they would be interested in helping us. ──
Michael P. Green《Illustrations for Biblical Preaching》
An atheist said
"If there is a
God
may he prove himself by striking me dead right now." Nothing
happened. "You see
there is not God." Another responded
"You've only proved that He is a gracious God."
Unknown
As Vice President
George Bush
represented the U.S. at the funeral of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
Bush was deeply moved by a silent protest carried out by Brezhnev's widow. She
stood motionless by the coffin until seconds before it was closed. Then
just
as the soldiers touched the lid
Brezhnev's wife performed an act of great
courage and hope
a gesture that must surely rank as one of the most profound
acts of civil disobedience ever committed: She reached down and made the sign
of the cross on her husband's chest. There in the citadel of secular
atheistic
power
the wife of the man who had run it all hoped that her husband was wrong.
She hoped that there was another life
and that that life was best represented
by Jesus who died on the cross
and that the same Jesus might yet have mercy on
her husband.
Gary Thomas
Christianity Today
October 3
1994
p. 26.
George Bernard Shaw is perhaps most
renowned as a free thinker and liberal philosopher. In his last writings we
read
"The science to which I pinned my faith is bankrupt. Its counsels
which should have established the millennium
led
instead
directly to the
suicide of Europe. I believed them once. In their name I helped to destroy the
faith of millions of worshippers in the temples of a thousand creeds. And now
they look at me and witness the great tragedy of an atheist who has lost his
faith." Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that
there is no God.
Heywood Broun.
Some years ago
when the news broke
out that Joseph Stalin's daughter had defected from Communism and Russia
many
people were startled. Her statement given to reporters who met her plane in New
York
told why she defected: "I found it impossible to exist without God
in one's heart. I came to that conclusion myself
without anybody's help or
preaching. That was a great change because since that moment the main dogmas of
Communism lost their significance for me. I have come here to seek the
self-expression that has been denied me for so long in Russia."
That woman's struggle was a terrible
one. To leave Russia
she had to leave two children in Moscow and realize that
it would be
as she said
"Impossible to go back."
Source Unknown.
Pascal said there is within every
person a "God-shaped vacuum." He's right. Historians Will and Ariel
Durant observed in their summery volume
The Lessons of History
that
There never has been a significant example of morality apart from belief in
God."
Morning Glory
February 5
1994.
Near the end of his life
Jean-Paul
Sartre told Pierre Victor: "I do not feel that I am the product of chance
a speck of dust in the universe
but someone who was expected
prepared
prefigured. In short
a being whom only a Creator could put here; and this idea
of a creating hand refers to God. Protested fellow philosopher and long-time
companion Simone de Beauvoir: "How should one explain the senile act of a
turncoat?"
HIS Magazine
April
1983.
Have you not heard of the madman who
lit a lamp in the bright morning and went to the marketplace crying
ceaselessly
"I seek God! I seek God!" There were many among those
standing there who didn't believe in God so he made them laugh. "Is God
lost?" one of them said. "Has he gone astray like a child?" said
another. "Or is he hiding? Has he gone on board ship and emigrated?"
So they laughed and shouted to one another. The man sprang into their midst and
looked daggers at them. "Where is God?" he cried. "I will tell
you. We have killed him--you and I We are all his killers! But how have we done
this? How could we swallow up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the
horizon? What will we do as the earth is set loose from its sun?"
Friedrich Nietzsche
1889
Nietzsche's point was not that God
does not exist
but that God has become irrelevant. Men and women may assert
that God exists or that He does not
but it makes little difference either way.
God is dead not because He doesn't exist
but because we live
play
procreate
govern
and die as though He doesn't.
C. Colson
Kingdoms in Conflict
p. 181.
According to the teaching of our Lord
what is wrong with the world is precisely that it does not believe in God. Yet
it is clear that the unbelief which he so bitterly deplored was not an intellectual
persuasion of God's non-existence. Those whom he rebuked for their lack of
faith were not men who denied God with the top of their minds
but men who
while apparently incapable of doubting him with the top of their minds
lived
as though he did not exist.
John Baillie
in Our Knowledge of
God.
Of course
like the wary schoolboy who
scoffs at ghosts yet whistles while passing a graveyard
some atheists would
seem to protest too much. The publications of an organization called Freedom
from Religion Foundation
Inc. include The Born-Again Skeptic's Guide to the
Bible; The Pillars of Religion: Ignorance
Inadequacy
Indoctrination;
Why I Am an Atheist; and its bestseller Atheism
The Case Against God
promoted as an excellent manual for beginners.
From Thinking and Acting Like a
Christian
D. Bruce Lockerbie
p. 27.
In the book Gaily The Troubadour
published in 1936
Arthur Guiterman wrote the following poem. Reading his
observations
you wouldn't guess it was written 60+ years ago.
First dentistry was painless;
Then bicycles were chainless
And carriages were horseless
And many laws
enforceless.
Next
cookery was fireless
Telegraphy was wireless
Cigars were nicotineless
And coffee
caffeinless.
Soon oranges were seedless
The putting green was weedless
The college boy hatless
The proper diet
fatless
Now motor roads are dustless
The latest steel is rustless
Our tennis courts are sodless
Our new religions
godless.
Arthur Guiterman
Gaily The
Troubadour.
Humans arose
rather
as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events
any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an
alternate pathway that would not have led to consciousness.
Dr. Stephen Jay
Gould
Scientific American
October 1994
p. 86.
The French
Mathematician
Lecompte de Nouy
examined the laws of probability for a single
molecule of high dissymmetry to be formed by the action of chance. De Nouy
found that
on an average
the time needed to form one such molecule of our
terrestrial globe would be about 10 to the 253 power--billions of years.
"But
" continued de Nouy ironically
"let us admit that no
matter how small the chance it could happen
one molecule could be created by
such astronomical odds of chance. However
one molecule is of no use. Hundreds
of millions of identical ones are necessary. Thus we either admit the miracle
or doubt the absolute truth of science."
Quoted in;
"Is Science Moving Toward Belief in God?" Paul A. Fisher
The
Wanderer
(Nov 7
1985)
cited in Kingdoms In Conflict
C. Colson
p. 66.
It is absurd
for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly
unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing
and then pretend that it is
more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into anything.
G.K. Chesterton
in The Quotable Chesterton.
Near the end of
his life
Jean-Paul Sartre told Pierre Victor: "I do not feel that I am
the product of chance
a speck of dust in the universe
but someone who was
expected
prepared
prefigured. In short
a being whom only a Creator could put
here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to God.
Protested
fellow philosopher and long-time companion Simone de Beauvoir: "How should
one explain the senile act of a turncoat?"
HIS Magazine
April
1983.
Do fish
complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did
would the fact not strongly
suggest that they had not always been
or would not always be
purely aquatic
creatures? If you are really a product of a material universe
how is it that
you don't feel at home there?
Bruce Shelly
Christian
Theology in Plain Language
p. 29.
I cannot make
peace with the randomness doctrine; I cannot abide the notion of
purposelessness and blind chance in nature. And yet I do not know what to put
in its place for the quieting of my mind. It is absurd to say that a place like
this is absurd
when it contains
in front of our eyes
so many billions of
different forms of life
each one in its way absolutely perfect
all linked
together to form what would surely seem to an outsider a huge
spherical
organism. We talk--some of us
anyway---about the absurdity of the human
situation
but we do this because we do not know how we fit in
or what we are
for. The stories we used to make up to explain ourselves do not make sense
anymore
and we have run out of new stories
for the moment.
Lewis Thomas in
Harvard Magazine
quoted in June
1981.
Three monkeys
sat in a coconut tree
Discussing the things that are said to be--
Said one to another: "Now listen you two
There's a certain rumor
but it can't be true'
That man descended from our noble race-
Why
the very idea; it's a disgrace.
No monkey ever
deserted his wife
Starved her babies and ruined her life.
Nor did ever a mother-monkey
Leave her babies with others to bunk
Or pass them on from one to another
'Till they scarcely knew who was their mother.
And another
thing you'll never see
A monkey building a nest around a coconut tree
And let the coconuts go to waste
Forbidding all other monkeys to have a taste.
Why
if I build a fence around a coconut tree
Starvation would cause me to distribute to you.
Here's another
thing that a monkey won't do:
Go out at night and get on a stew;
Or use a gun
a club
or a knife
To take another monkey's life.
Yes
Man descended
the ornery cuss!
But Brother
he didn't descend from us."
Resource
July/August
1990.