In my travels through Cyberspace I’ve had the opportunity to engage in fervent discussion with several fellow travelers of the, shall we say Atheistic persuasion. And the one thing most of them seem to have in common is an arrogant disdain for anything Christian.
Why is that I wonder?
I am a Christian.
Have been for 21 years, actually August 11th 2009 was my 21st anniversary of receiving Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. It happened in my living room on a Thursday evening surrounded by my wife and three other really great friends, but that’s another story, for another time.
I wrote an article some time ago and published it on Gather.com entitled, “Speaking in Tongues: The Baptism of the Holy Spirit Pt 2” which is the second part of an article written to help Christians who may want to experience Holy Spirit baptism and begin speaking in tongues, but may not know how to go about it.
This article has spawned close to 100 comments so far, a lot of which were written by my fellow Atheist Cyber-pilgrims.
Why do Atheists feel they have to respond to everything Christian on the web? That’s the question that’s been needling me in the back of my head for a while now.
I wasn’t thinking about it consciously but this morning as I began waking up these thoughts were swimming around my mind and I decided to put pen to paper or more accurately finger to keyboard and share my thoughts with the Cyber-community at large and especially with my God-denying comrades.
So, here is a little bit of info about the God I know; the God with whom I have been sharing a personal and intimate relationship for the past 21 years.
You cannot prove God exists!!!
I’ve heard that famous Atheistic challenge spewed more than once.
The thing is I don’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone. Believe what you want, that’s your funeral.
However, I don’t just believe God exists I know He does! He’s my friend, we have a relationship.
I’ve been walking and talking with Him for 21 years. If I were to stand here and tell you that I only believe but I’m not totally sure He’s real I’d be a crazy man.
Whom have I been speaking with every day for 21 years of my life? Whom have I been having daily conversations with ever since I was first introduced to Him on Thursday August 11th 1988 at about 4:30PM in my living room?
I know exactly who He is He is the Lord Jesus Christ God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth! He is the Holy Spirit who lives inside me imparting eternal life moment by moment, He’s God the Father who shows me daily what a real father is supposed to be like.
There’s one other thing I find consistent with most Atheists. For the most part they seem to be highly educated and intelligent people. They can carry their own in almost any conversation and debate the issues with relevant points of reference.
I like that.
What I don’t like is when they assume that Born Again Christians are by definition mindless religious drones that have all been lobotomized and need to be viewed with patronizing scorn and treated with veiled contempt.
That rankles me – Especially when the Christian world-view is infinitely more sensible than the Atheistic.
It’s interesting to me that most of the Atheists I’ve spoken with seem to think there’s something inherently foolish in one believing in and worshipping God and believing in the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ when many of earth’s foremost scholars share these very beliefs.
For instance, when asked the question: “Do you accept the historical Jesus?”
Here’s what one noted scientist answered:
“Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”
This same scientist further stated:
“In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.”
Who was this scientist?
You may have heard of him, he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to Quantum Theory and for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.
He is one of the founders of modern physics and the author of the Theory of Relativity. In December 2000 he was named “the personality of the second millennium.”
His name is Albert Einstein; arguably the smartest man that ever lived, after King Solomon and Jesus, of course.
My Atheist friend, the next time you’re tempted to call a Christian by some derogatory name, make a snide remark about his faith or insinuate that he or she is not playing with a full deck, I advise you to think carefully before speaking.
There’s a saying that goes, “It is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt.”
“Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance”
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of His dominion He is wont to be called Lord God.”
This is the God I know, the same One who wakes me up every morning, the very One who protects me when I don’t even realize I need protecting. He’s also the same God with whom I get angry at times when I think He’s being unfair or moving too slow to bring me something I desperately want.
He’s the same God who sees me with all my human weaknesses and inconsistencies and loves me in spite of it all, He’s the One who respects me even when I don’t think I deserve respect, who always lifts me up and encourages me especially when I don’t feel like going on.
This is the God I know.
This is the same God who died for you and I so that each of us might have a chance at redemption.
This God is real and has a plan for each of our lives, one that if followed will reap for us both temporal and eternal benefits.
This is the God I know.
By the way; that entire quote above from the words, “Atheism is so senseless” to “He is wont to be called Lord God” aren’t my words.
Those words were actually spoken by Sir Isaac Newton.
In case you don’t know who he is, let me introduce you.
Sir Isaac Newton was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian. He’s the founder of Classical Physics and Infinitesimal Calculus.
His “Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica” published in 1687, is said to be the greatest single work in the history of science. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries and is the basis for all modern engineering.
He’s the one who said, “Atheism is senseless!”
What do you think about that? Is Sir Isaac Newton a mindless drone who can’t think for himself and needs religion to comfort his feeble mind? What say you?
Call me stupid for being a Christian and believing the Bible but if I were you my Atheist friend, I would pay attention to who’s agreeing with Christians, before I open my mouth.
In his book Pensées, Blaise Pascal wrote: “Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.”
“We know God only by Jesus Christ. Without this mediator, all communion with God is taken away; through Jesus Christ we know God. All those who have claimed to know God, and to prove Him without Jesus Christ, have had only weak proofs. But in proof of Jesus Christ we have the prophecies, which are solid and palpable proofs.
And these prophecies, being accomplished and proved true by the event, mark the certainty of these truths and, therefore, the divinity of Christ. In Him, then, and through Him, we know God.”
In reference to the prophecies Pascal mentioned let me explain that the Old Testament has over 300 prophetic references to the Messiah and every one of them was fulfilled by Jesus Christ, conclusively establishing Him as the Messiah, the Son of God.
By using the science of probability we find that for just eight of these prophecies to be fulfilled in one man it would take a probability of one in 100 trillion!
Let’s put that into perspective, shall we?
If we took 100 trillion silver dollars marked only one of them and laid them on the ground they would cover the entire state of Texas two feet deep. Now, mix the whole pile up and instruct someone to find the marked one – Blindfolded.
What chance would he have of picking the marked one?
The same chance the Bible writers would have in having 8 of these prophecies fulfilled in the life of one man if they weren’t divinely inspired by God.
What about having 48 of these Bible prophecies fulfilled in one man’s life?
The chance of any one man fulfilling all of 48 prophecies is one in ten to the 157th power.
The electron is about as small an object as we can get. If we had a cubic inch of these electrons and tried to count them, it would take us (at 250 per minute) 19,000 times 19,000 times 19,000 years to count them. Now mark one of them, mix them up and have our blindfolded guy find the right one.
What are his chances?
The same chance as one man fulfilling 48 of the prophecies about Christ without Him actually being the Son of God!
Now here’s the clincher, Jesus Christ fulfilled not 8, not 48 but all 300 prophecies in His life!
Now, you tell me, is He worthy to be worshipped as God Almighty or not?
Am I stupid for trusting and relying in the truth of the Bible?
(The above illustration is paraphrased from an article by Dennis Crawford)
Pascal went on to say:
“Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves. Thus without the Scripture, which has Jesus Christ alone for its object, we know nothing, and see only darkness and confusion in the nature of God and in our own nature.”
What I glean from Pascal’s words is simply this; in order to understand the nature of life and the world around us, to find true purpose and gain the ability to fulfill such purpose one must come into intimate contact with the Author of it all, The Lord Jesus Christ, who is the central object of the Holy Scriptures.
One must submit and receive the free gift of eternal life, only then will we be able to understand clearly enough to make the necessary adjustments in our lives and achieve true lasting success!
But who is this Blaise Pascal and why should we listen to him anyway?
He was a physicist and philosopher. A child prodigy and mathematician of the first order who helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science.
His earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
I have much more to say but won’t weary you with more verbiage at this time. Let’s save some for later, shall we?
For now, I trust that this article will provide some food for thought for all my fellow Cyber-travelers and especially for my Atheist friends.
May God deliver us from our ignorance and bless us with divine wisdom!
Rick Warren is the founding pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., one of America’s largest and most influential churches.
Does Christianity Make Sense? 