But I’m not sure there is a God!
Jim’s life was in a mess. He was very bright but since teenage years he had got in with the wrong crowd. He had started drinking, and then moved onto drugs. He had got his then girl-friend pregnant but had difficulty committing himself to anyone or anything. Keeping a regular job was a problem. He was outwardly confident but inwardly was hurting. He called himself an atheist, not from a detailed logical investigation, but largely because he reckoned this gave him license to live as he pleased. The problem he had was that living as he’d pleased had resulted in many of his problems. He knew his life was a mess but didn’t know what could be done. One day he met a friend he had known at school and shared his life’s problems.
“Do you think there is anything that can be done for me?” he asked.
“Of course there is. Have you thought of asking Jesus for his help,” came the reply.
This was a bombshell. He hadn’t been told that his friend had become religious.
“I’m not into church and that sort of thing.”
“Nor was I,” came the reply. “I used to think that church was for those ’nice’ people who have been brought up to live ‘the proper’ way. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I learnt that Jesus came for people who have made a mess of things. In fact Jesus was much more welcoming to people in need than to the posh religious people of his day. The Bible keeps calling him the ‘Son of God’ and ‘the Saviour’ and he can clearly only save people with a need. So why don’t you ask God to save you. It simply means asking him to help you start again and he’ll do that if you enter on his terms – he is God after all. He can forgive the past and enable you to live the sort of life we all know deep down is right.”
It was as a result of this conversation that Jim started to investigate who Jesus was. His friend invited him to a Christianity Explored supper where the claims of Jesus were discussed. Jim longed to be able to make a break with the past and start again but he still had some nagging doubts.
“Could this really be true, I mean really true?” he kept asking himself. “I’ve never seen God or had any experience that proves he exists. How can I be sure?”
Jim discussed this with the Christian minister his friend had introduced him too. He was told that there were both internal emotional reasons (subjective) as well as external (objective) reasons that point positively to Jesus as the answer to our needs.
We have innate needs.
Our desires point to what we are. Most people feel satisfied when enjoying the company of one or more friends. Sex is not the only reason that marriage is so popular. At heart there is a need for a stable companion. We are corporate beings. Yet the strange feature of us all is that at times we do things that damage these relationships, even to those who are closest to us. We repeatedly do and say unkind things to them or about them. It is stupid and destructive, yet we all do it. How we all love to be appreciated by others. We know what is right and good to do, yet for some reason we fail to act on this knowledge. We know we have needs, yet too often we cannot solve them. Our weaknesses are so strong that we cannot solve our own problems. It doesn’t matter whether we are sophisticated and educated or not, the deepest problems we all face require external help; we need a Saviour. The greatest problem is our inherent self-centredness; none of us naturally wants to live as God wants us to. We leave him out of our lives; most of us live as practical atheists even if we have a nominal religion.
Such evidence shouts out that we have all been created for a higher and more satisfying level of living than we achieve. The Bible teaches that God put an appreciation for these high values in each of us.
It has been suggested that those who turn to Christ have greater innate needs than the more independent tough people who really don’t need God. Of course we all have different motivations for our decisions; those who opt to reject God have their own psychological reasons for doing so. The rejection of God is just as much a matter of faith as his acceptance.
When the writer Aldous Huxley was an old man he was asked whether he had ever considered the Christian faith. He replied in a manner that only an older person could reply, honestly acknowledging that he had inner motives for rejecting God.
“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had not; and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning for this world is not concerned exclusively with the problem of pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to...For myself...the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political. ”
A prominent American philosopher, Thomas Nagle, wrote a book called ‘The Last Word’. He had a deep dislike towards certain aspects of established religion – for what they believe and do. However he goes on,
“I want atheism to be true, and I am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition . . . I am curious, . . . whether there is anyone who is genuinely indifferent as to whether there is a God.”i
Not only do people have emotional needs for God but we all have personal reasons why we want to reject him. If there is a God, he has the right to control how I should live! In a court of law a judge is not permitted to become involved in any case in which he has an interest because it is inevitable that there would be some bias in his judgment. Yet there is clearly much bias in the decisions people make about the place given to God and Jesus in peoples’ lives. As Timothy Keller says,
“We must be sceptical of our scepticism.”
We have innate values
How we hate it when someone hurts us by stealing our belongings or reputation by malicious gossip. We all feel they are wrong to do this – it is obnoxious behaviour. Yet we have all do what we know is wrong. We know that God has put in us the difference between ‘Good and Evil’ and that these values cannot be arbitrarily redefined however much some leaders may want to do so. Communist and Nazi leaders have tried to alter such values artificially - and have invariably come to a downfall.
Jean-Paul Sartre was an existentialist who rejected the idea of God and any real meaning in life. However he did have an innate moral sense. When he spoke out against the atrocities occurring in Algeria in their fight for independence, that he considered to be immoral, his inner conflict came to the fore. His philosophy denied the presence of meaning, morality and purpose but his heart shouted out that there really is a right and wrong. He never wrote anything of substance after this.
The famous English poet, W. H. Auden moved to live in New York in 1939, when the second world war began. The war and the Nazi atrocities led him to think through the greater issues in life. The Nazis had rejected orthodox morality. They made no pretence to uphold values such as honesty and justice in spite of the occasional religious comments by Hitler and other leaders to give the appearance of normality. They ridiculed love, a basic principle of Christianity, as being a sign of weakness.
“ . . . to love ones neighbour as oneself was a command fit only for effeminate weaklings.”ii
They, being in one of the most educated countries of the world, were now denying so much of what the west had long regarded as decent, honourable and true. W.H.Auden came to realise that nobody could assume that traditional values of freedom, reason, democracy and human dignity were self-evident. He wrote,
“If I am convinced that the highly educated Nazis are wrong, and that we highly educated English are right, what is it that validates our values and invalidates theirs? The English individuals who now cry to heaven against the evil incarnated in Hitler have no heaven to cry to. The whole trend of liberal thought has been to undermine faith in the absolute. It has tried to make reason the judge. But since life is a changing process the attempt to find human space for keeping a promise leads to the inevitable conclusion that I can break it whenever I feel it convenient. Either we serve the Unconditional, or some Hitlerian monster will supply an iron convention to do evil by.”1
When W.H.Auden was young he had drifted away from the Christian faith but later he recognised that to make sense of life, a real God is needed and he has to be part of our world. This led him back to reconsider the place of Jesus Christ. He came to recognise that Jesus was indeed God incarnate. This change came about when he recognised that there was an absolute quality in the traditional values that held society together – they were God’s values that came from his character.
Without God, anything goes and the strong will control even the morality of society. It is only because there is a supreme being who will judge us all that the atrocities of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and the genocides in Ruanda, Sudan and Bosnia are wrong.
Nietzsche derided people as “odious windbags of progressive optimism, who think it is possible to have Christian morality without Christian faith.” In “Twilight of the Idols” he wrote,
“They are rid of the Christian God, and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality . . . when one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality from under one’s feet.”
This point was brilliantly put in a debate where an analogy between our reliance on God and air was made - both are invisible but are essential for life.
“Imagine a person who comes in here tonight and argues, ‘no air exists’ but continues to breathe air while he argues. Now intellectually, atheists continue to breathe – they continue to use reason and draw scientific conclusions (which assumes an orderly universe), to make moral judgments (which assumes absolute values) – but the atheistic view of things would in theory make such ‘breathing’ impossible. They are breathing God’s air all the time they are arguing against him.”iii
This pressure to leave God out of our thinking is very dangerous for ours or any society. Dostoevsky wrote in ‘The Brothers Karamozov’,
“Is there no God? Then everything is permitted.”
The atheist, Richard Dawkins, has said,
“ . . . a universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without.”iv
It appears that all people have an innate instinct that there is right and there is wrong. Love, honesty and kindness towards us are valued, yet there is also something we call ‘evil’ in this world. Similarly people do instinctively feel that their life has some value and purpose. Where do such values come from? These innate instincts do suggest that there is a ‘creative superintendent’. The Bible’s explanation is that we have all been made in the image of God. As he put these instincts into us so they are real and important. Without God such values must be artificial.
We have rational needs
Science originally meant the search for knowledge (Latin ‘sciere’ means ‘to know’). Today the word ‘science’ tends to be limited in its meaning to that area of knowledge concerning the natural world. The realisation that the universe works according to ‘natural laws’ initiated the investigation of all aspects of the known world. Science is limited to answering questions about ‘how’ something works. To be accurate, science works by disproving false hypotheses which then leaves a good working solution. However this solution may be superceded as more knowledge is obtained. Thus when Isaac Newton established the force of gravity it was thought that this was a definitive solution, but now, since Einstein discovered relativity, our understanding has altered. Science can never answer ’why’ questions definitively which is why it is absurd to say that science has disproved God.
However there are massive questions that science has raised.
There is much evidence that the universe began around 13.7 billion years ago. The universe is expanding at massive speeds away from a centre. This suggests that there was a finite beginning. The level of background irradiation exactly matches the calculations about what would be expected if there was an initial ‘Big Bang’. This raises many questions. How did nothing explode in such a way as to result in a world with human beings living on it?
Our experience teaches us that everything has a cause. This is why the Big Bang theory is so unsettling to many atheists. John Maddox used to be the editor of the elite scientific magazine ‘Nature’. He stated that the theory of the universe having a beginning was ‘thoroughly unacceptable’ as it suggested an ‘ultimate origin of our world’ and so giving those who believe in there being a creator God ‘ample justification for their belief’.v By such statements science he has relegated science to a place behind personal interest.
A crashing sound from the kitchen is usually caused by the dropping of some crockery or glass onto the floor – there is always an explanation or cause. It is similarly most unscientific to suggest that the universe appeared without a cause.
The physical constants of the universe had to set before the universe came into being. They control all physical, chemical and biological processes. Yet they are all set at precisely the right values for our world and the universe to exist and work.
One example is found in precise balance between the force of gravity and the electromagnetic force. If there were a change in that ratio by just one in 1040 (ten with forty noughts after it), planets would either be so small or so large that life could not exist. To get all the constants right if this is the only universe is impossible - unless there is a divine designer. To counter this problem it has been proposed that there might have been an infinite number of other universes – the ‘multiverse theory’. There is no evidence for this whatsoever; it is sheer speculation as the alternative is unwanted. Michael Hanlon wrote in ‘New Scientist’,
“When physicists whisk us into the realms of ‘multiverses’ and universe-gobbling particles, it is time to ask whether there is something amiss.”vi
It is far more reasonable to hold that a divine creator set these constants. The atheist astronomer, Fred Hoyle, once commented on the remarkable fine tuning of the universe,
“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”vii
There are many features of modern biology and biochemistry that are impossible to explain how they developed without a designer. For the eye to transform a photon into an electric impulse travelling along the optic nerve requires at least two hundred enzymes to be correctly placed in order. Any missing would make vision impossible. How could this mechanism have developed by random processes.
Professor Anthony Flew was a prominent atheist for more than 50 years. He used to be Professor of Philosophy at Reading University. In 2005 he publicly acknowledged that some intelligence must have been involved in the creation of the universe. Talking about DNA research, he said this “has shown by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved.” Following the evidence had led him to this conclusion.
There is something in our nature that demands rational integrity. The origin of this desire for intellectual integrity that includes all areas of knowledge is another problem that is hard to solve without invoking a rational God who has created us in his own rational image.
We have Jesus
When I was a school, a schoolmaster told our class that Jesus never claimed to be God. I don’t think he could have read the New Testament. Jesus made some astonishing claims. Everyone knew that the Jewish Scriptures, our Old Testament, are all about God who alone could give people life. When Jesus was summarising the evidence supporting his claim to have come directly from the Father, he said to the religious leaders, who claimed to be the authorities on Scripture,
“You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” John 5:39-40
After his resurrection Jesus talked with two disciples as they walked to Emmaus,
“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in the Scriptures concerning himself.” Luke 24:27
Nothing could be clearer than the discussion Jesus had with Jews who they asked him,
“Who do you think you are?”
Jesus replied,
“Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad”
“You are not yet fifty years old.” The Jews said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”
“‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus answered, ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’ At this they picked up stones to stone him” John 8:57-59
They wanted to stone him for blasphemy; Jesus had dared to use the divine name for himself.
Jesus claimed he had the right to forgive people their sin against God, which only God can do. Jesus said to a paralysed man,
“Son, your sins are forgiven.”
This created uproar amongst the rabbis listening.
“Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Mark 2:5,7
This Jesus, who made such outlandish claims, also healed the sick and even raised the dead. He repeatedly taught his disciples that he would be executed but would rise again after three days. This he proceeded to do! It was the mass of evidence accumulated from living closely with Jesus over three years that convinced his disciples that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. Why else would they give their lives telling the world that God had visited this planet as a person and had been crucified so that men’s rebellion against God could be forgiven? The convincing evidence for his resurrection combined with the astounding, well documented growth of the early church is impossible to explain without Jesus’ claims being true.
A leap of faith?
We know the sort of world we live in. There is much dishonesty, gossip, pride and selfishness. It is as if this is one bank of a river where we rule. On the other side is an ideal world where God rules. There people care for each other and have ideals that they live by. It is as if the people there have a different spirit in them.
Across the river that separates these two worlds are stepping stones. Each stone represents the different kinds of evidence that can safely take people across the river.
How did nothing transform into something?
How did intelligent life come from inanimate matter?
The laws and constants of science strongly suggest that a brilliant mind was behind the formation of this universe.
It is very hard to explain how the irreducibly complex biochemical mechanisms seen in nature can have developed without a continuing designer at work.
It is difficult to conceive how the detailed DNA code that distinguishes an ape from a human could have been programmed without a mind being involved.
The plethora of remarkable physical features that enable man to live on this planet, the so-called ‘Anthropic Principle’, cannot be readily explained. Statistically a planet suitable for human life is so improbable as to be impossible.
We have instinctive values that appear to be real. Where do they originate from?
There is evil in this world. If there is no God, what is evil?
The 330 Old Testament prophecies about the Future Messiah are remarkable. His family background is there, his birth in Bethlehem, his death by crucifixion, his character and much more are all pre-recorded there.
The evidence for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is overwhelming.
Jesus’ miracles and essential features of his life are recorded not only by his disciples but also by opponents.
The humble loving character of Jesus combined with his awesome authority is astounding in itself. His nature draws people to him as no other leader ever has.
The disciples really were convinced about him. So much so that they committed their lives to telling the world about Jesus. Would they have done this if they weren’t convinced – would they have died for a lie?
The early church spread at great speed in spite of opposition from governments. Something must have been behind this.
Commitment to Jesus does have very beneficial effects in people’s lives. People become more altruistic and kinder. How many other creeds have changed peoples’ lives for the better? Atheism certainly doesn’t. What other creeds have resulted in a strong desire to educate and mission hospitals. The search for truth is only encouraged by those who know they have found the truth. The concern for the sick and unloved comes from an understanding that Christ has done this for us.
I have personal needs. How can my guilt be assuaged? How can I find a purpose that is meaningful even when I am dying?
Fear of death is real. The prospect of judgement of wrong doers after death is welcomed but how will I escape such a judgment?
It is possible to get this far across the stepping stones and baulk at making a commitment to God as revealed in Christ. Some would like to stay vacillating on the stepping stones but life moves on. The current of life will eventually remove us from any quest for understanding and life.
Others complain, ‘I cannot make such a leap of faith’ and move on from the stepping stones into a commitment to Christ.
No! To think like that is to misunderstand the big picture. The leap of faith is to leap back to the godless selfish world you came from. To make such a leap is irrational. Rationally to return to that world should be associated with answers to all the evidence of the stepping stones. Together the case for Christ is overwhelming. It is only a small step of faith, based on strong evidence, to move off the stepping stones and accept Jesus Christ and become one of God’s family.
Why do so many want to stay in a godless world for eternity when the alternative is so attractive and rational? Do you want more light? Jesus said ‘I am the light of the world’. An honest investigation of Jesus can do no harm and may lead to a deeply satisfying life, based on truth.
Jesus claimed,
‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well.’ John 14:6-7
Are these claims a lie or are they the very words of God? Why is Jesus so attractive? How can all the evidence of the stepping stones be explained away?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia and raised by a pious mother and grandmother as a Muslim in Saudi Arabia. In 1992, to escape from fundamentalist Islam and an arranged marriage, she sought asylum in the Netherlands. She started life there with a cleaning job but later became a Member of Parliament in the Dutch Parliament. After 11 September 2001 she turned her back on Islam and began to teach why the teachings of the Qur’an are wrong. She then became a leading voice of the New Atheism movement together with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. The “New Atheist” label was given to these critics of religion and religious belief. She was chosen by Time magazine as one of the hundred most influential people in the world and became a fellow of Harvard University.
However in 2023 she openly acknowledged that she had become a Christian. Six months after ‘coming out’ as a Christian she appeared in a debate with Richard Dawkins, with whom she was and remains very friendly. He asked her,
“Seriously Ayaan, are you a Christian?”
She then briefly explained why she had changed her mind after recognising the emptiness of atheism. She had been suffering from depression and anxiety and nothing helped this, her atheism could give her hope. Then one of her therapists suggested that she might be ‘spiritually bankrupt’. This caused her to turn to the God of the Bible for help. She realised that the cultural values of the west are the fruit of a spiritual movement, belief in the God revealed in Jesus, and that the enlightenment was the child of Christian traditions. She recognised that the values of love and grace, emphasised in the Bible, are what society needs. When reviewing her time with the New Atheists she stressed,
“The biggest mistake we made was to equate Islam with Christianity.”
When reviewing what is happening in prestigious places of learning she says it is obvious that reason alone cannot supply a basis for a good satisfying life. Something is missing and it is this that Jesus has given her and to many others.
Neither Islam nor atheism can give what people most need. Reason that excludes God excludes the basis for moral values and purpose, whereas Islam lacks an intellectual basis for saying it is true and can lead to radicalism with ruthless cruel consequences.
As a new Christian believer she argues forcefully that it is foolish to insist, as many political leaders are now doing, that the violent acts of Muslim extremists can be divorced from the religious doctrine than inspires them. She insists that people must confront the fact that extremism is driven by and cannot be divorced from the political ideology embedded in the Qur’an and the Hadiths that inspire the radical Islamists. She argues this powerfully in her book, ‘Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now’, published in 2015. She advocates that a Muslim reformation is the only way to end the horrors of terrorism, sectarian warfare and the repression of women and minorities.
What she is advocating is that all people need to rediscover the original Jesus by reading what his apostles said about him and what the Old Testament prophesies said God’s Messiah would be and do. Jesus is truly like changing.
BVP
i Thomas Nagel, ‘The Last Word’ cited by Timothy Keller in ‘Encounters with Jesus’ Hodder and Stoughton 2013 p. 86
ii W.H.Auden ‘Modern Canterbury Pilgrims’ ed. James A Pike (New York: A.R.Mowbray, 1956 p. 41 cited by Tim Keller in ‘Encounters with Jesus’ Hodder and Stoughton 2013 p. 13-14
iii Greg Bahnsen, ‘Prepositional Apologetics Stated and Defended’, American Vision, 2010
iv Richard Dawkins, ‘The God Delusion’ Bantam Press, 2006 p. 55
v John Maddox, ‘Down with the Big Bang’, Nature 1989 340:425
vi Michael Hanlon, ‘Reality check Required’ New Scientist 2008 Feb p. 22
vii Fred Holyle ‘The Universe; past and present reflections’, Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics 1982, 20:16
