Defending the Faith
Posted: July 22, 2019 Filed under: God, Universe | Tags: apologetic, atheism 2 Comments
Defending the Faith
If you’re a Christian, there are times when you are challenged by others for your beliefs… being accused of believing in child-like fairy tales and wishful thinking. How do you respond? How do you stand up to such ridicule? In this month’s Life, God, and the Universe blog entitled Defending the Fait, we discuss ways to address these challenges.
Life, God, and the Universe 
“Lastly, one of the best suggestions I heard in responding to an atheist claiming an all-powerful God doesn’t exist is to do the following. Draw a large circle and tell them that everything in this circle represents everything there is to know about everything. Ask them what percentage of this circle represents what the human race currently knows and understands. They will throw out a number…maybe something like25%. As soon as they say ANY number that is NOT 100%, you’ve got them. If, for example, they were to give an answer like 25%, that leaves 75% of knowledge/things we have yet to know and understanding… leaving room and opening the door for the existence of an all-powerful God.”
That’s an extraordinarily poor argument. All you have is an attempt to claim your god exists because we don’t know everything. Now, since your god is described fairly well in the bible, and events are claimed to have happened that would leave evidence, we can know that your god doesn’t exist by the lack of evidence for it, and by the existence of evidence for entirely different events. Your argument only works if your god is some vague thing without attributes, which isn’t your god at all. Your argument also can be used by any theist, including those you are sure aren’t right.
Many ideas in science don’t have these “major holes” you claim. And what indeed are these major holes? Evolutionary theory is shown to work. Physics shows that it is possible to have a universe without any god. And we are constantly finding out more about how abiogenesis may have occurred. In any case, all you have is a god of the gaps argument, and the gaps are always closing.
as for your attempts to insist that atheists are really looking for god but they don’t, that’s just an attempt by a theist to claim that everyone “really” agrees with them, despite the atheists being quite sure that they aren’t looking for a god, especially the pitiful Christian god, at all. You want to close your eyes like a child and pretend that something that shows you are wrong, doesn’t exist. One mere happy atheists shows that no god is needed, and many Christians don’t like that at all.
If you’d like to avoid arguments resulting in your being called “child-like” and “wishful-thinkers” then stop pushing your mythology on others. That is what I as an atheist resent the most. Faith is nothing more than the belief in something for which there is no evidence, ergo, you believe on faith and faith alone. Blind faith is the belief in something for which there is not only no evidence, but for which there is even contrary evidence. This is where religion falls in my mind. The Biblical scholars of the last two or three centuries have really taken the Bible apart in terms of how, when and where it was written. The mystery has been removed, the “Wizard” behind the curtain has been revealed and they are men. The Bible was written by men for men. You choose to continue to believe in the mythology, that is your business and it bothers me none. However I do not want to hear about it or have it intrude into my life, or be told I’m lost without it or I’m going to hell. This makes no argument to a rational, logical, sentient being. And I certainly don’t want it introduced into my schools or government. That is when the fight begins and, ultimately, things get ugly. It’s a simple request: keep it to yourself and we can all be good neighbors.