Debating the Existence of G-d

The New Atheists and their Old Argument


Honeysuckle outside the studio.

Suzanne Fields has This [click to read].

Fields writes: "I've spent several long summer afternoons reading the books of the New Atheists, looking for original illumination on behalf of godlessness, but finding instead smug, shallow and arrogant assertions. Atheists by definition believe in nothing, and anyone would find it hard to make something of nothing."

Hebrews 11 addresses the matter of faith:

"1Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
2For by it the elders obtained a good report.
3Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
4By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.
5By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.
6But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him."

So how does one step into faith. Surely it takes faith to assert there is nothing out there as much as it takes faith to declare G-d is. Romans 1:20 asserts:

"20For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:"

There is simply too much evidence of a Master's hand, seen in the beauty and complexity of nature, for me to accept the atheist arguments.

As a child I watched men launch rockets into space. They used the observations of Sir Isaac Newton and others to arrive at principles for how spaceflight would work. Trusting in their calculations based on these laws of physics, they travelled to the Moon. Faith was required on many levels in the journey. First, were the laws of physics consistant in outer space? Could the crew rely on the numbers provided by their computers [flying by the seat of your pants won't work in space] and could the astronauts rely on the machinery to perform as it was designed to do?

In a similar manner, can we observe evidence of the unseen hand of the Creator? Can we trust our collective observations and come up with some conclusion about the Divine? It is of note that some of the Divine's greatest apologists -- men like C.S. Lewis, for example, set out on honest quests to disprove diety. In the end they concluded that the evidence led them to belief rather than unbelief... "he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him."