“I Need More Evidence!”

“I’m sorry, but I am not convinced by your arguments, and I find myself unable to believe something without evidence. I’m sure if there is a supreme being as described by the average Christian, he or she would know that my “belief” was false and based on fear tactics. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Also, being an atheist just means you don’t believe in a god, other than that atheists are as different from each other as strict Geek (sic) Orthodox adherents and snake handlers.”

From time to time I get something in my inbox telling me that someone has made a comment about one of my videos. The paragraph above is the latest of these efforts and was motivated by a video I did some time back reviewing a website called “Infidels.org.” As one can imagine, the website is dedicated to denigrating religion in general, especially Christianity, and for the average atheist to bask in the glory of their supposed superior intellect. After all, who but a complete ignoramus would be so gullible as to believe that there is a God and, even worse, that He came to earth and died and rose again.

As one can see, this particular commentator just can’t bring himself to believe something “without evidence.” I attempted to contact him or her through the comment function of the videos, but to this day I have not received a reply. And that is not all that surprising. The great majority of these folks are not interested in reasoned, rational dialogue. They are simply interested in making their point, however irrational or foolish, and then moving on. There is a name for such folks in today’s internet: trolls.

But the comment does give me an opportunity to reply and refute this person’s musings, hopefully to the benefit of all those who read this blog. In that spirit, then, here are some issues that our correspondent seems to ignore.

Anyone who has read articles written by atheists, or debates between believers and non-believers, will likely find that the atheist often makes the case that there is no evidence for the existence of God. And this they declare loud and often, just as our correspondent has done here. He simply cannot bring himself to believe that God exists in the absence of evidence for such belief.

What is the first and primary problem with this attitude? You probably guessed it: no amount of evidence is ever enough. Although Romans 1 tells us that God has given us ample evidence for His existence, there are still people out there who insist that there just is no evidence or that the evidence that does exist, is not enough. But when they are presented with the evidence that leads any rational, logical individual to believe in an ultimate Cause, an unmoved Mover, they walk away as though they had seen nothing. “Move along, nothing to see here.” Of course, those of us who believe understand that such an attitude is par for the course for the unbeliever. Without the Spirit of God working on the heart of the individual, he is as blind as the proverbial bat when it comes to spiritual matters. If any more evidence must be presented, here are a couple of points that would give any sincere seeker something to think about.

Nothing comes from nothing. If you search on YouTube or Google, you can likely find renown atheist Laurence Krauss discussing how nothing is really something. According to Krauss, although nothing is nothing, nothing is really something. That is why the universe did not come from nothing, the position that ultimately the atheist must take, but it actually came from something because, wait for it: nothing is something. So, all we have to do is redefine our terms and, presto it all makes sense. We know from evidence, yes that word again, that nothing comes from nothing. There is no evidence available to anyone, anywhere in the world to lead us to believe that something comes from nothing. There is no scientific observation, no one has been able to recreate such an event and no one, obviously, has been able to falsify such an occurrence. It is simply irrational, illogical, and unscientific to say that something comes from nothing.

Yet, the atheist continues to believe that such is the case. In order to move away from having a God who created all things, he will go down to the depths of irrationality and tells us that something could actually come from nothing. Allow me to use another example. The recently departed Stephen Hawking once said that, because there is such a thing as the laws of nature, then the universe could have created itself. Well then, why not say so in the first place? Everyone knows that the universe could have come into existence from nothing because, well…there was something. Again, let us just redefine our terms and we can make the utterly irrational sound rational!

Every effect has a cause. It is a well-established scientific axiom that every effect has a cause. There is nothing that can be observed as an effect that does not have a corresponding cause. Now, the atheist may at this point make the same mistake as famed 20^th century atheistic philosopher Bertram Russell. He may ask the question, then what caused God? The issue here is not that everything has a cause, but that every effect has a cause. Since God is not an effect, He does not have a cause. And it is clearly rational to believe that such a being, the unmoved mover in the words of Anselm, exists.

Nevertheless, our atheist friends will continue to insist, against all evidence (yes, the evidence that they so adamantly protest must exist for them to believe in God) that the universe is an effect that does not have a cause. Furthermore, the universe, somehow, someway found a way to bring about all that came after it brought itself into being by magic: stars, moons, suns, galaxies, planets, etc., etc. You may hear someone say “well, there probably is an effect that does not have a cause, we just have not discovered it yet.” Well, why is that a problem? Simply because this individual is going back to the issue that brought all this about: the lack of evidence. Evidence that you hope someday you’ll find is not evidence at all. I could make the same assumption about God’s existence that the unbeliever does about his non-existence. Why is his “evidence” better than mine?

The bottom line is that the atheist, however much he may protest to the contrary, goes about holding his unbelief the same way I hold my belief: by faith. His presupposition is that there is no God; therefore, he will go about finding evidence for his non-existence. And no amount of evidence to the contrary will shake him from his unbelief. He may be knee deep in the evidence which is all around him, but he will fail to see it because he simply does not have the eyes to see with. A dead man cannot do anything; he cannot believe, he cannot see, he cannot understand. And that is the tragedy of it all. So, in the end, we should not be angry at someone’s atheism and their ridicule of the faith. Rather, we should be saddened that such irrationality is seen as the height of education and reason.

“Woe to those who call good evil and evil good, who put light for darkness and darkness for light, who put sweet for bitter and bitter for sweet” (Isaiah 5:20).