What's The Problem With Atheism?

The main issue that I have with atheism is that it is fundamentally irrational.

What do I mean by that?

Normally, a belief system would postulate the existence of something or someone and have some form of explanation or description of what is believed and why it is believed. Atheism, however, postulates the non-existence of something, without properly knowing what the ‘something’ might be the existence of which is being denied.

Huxley’s agnosticism is a far more rational and sensible approach to the question, and I would take the view that anyone who is in doubt as to the existence of a god, gods, or any other non-physical being or entity, would do better to adopt the humility of the agnostic position, which requires no evidence or proof.

Now, in my experience, the atheist would be inclined to say that unbelief is the default position and that it is up to the believer to provide evidence of what he believes.

For the agnostic, I would agree with that argument, but not for the atheist, because the atheist makes a definitive assertion: ‘there is no god’.

If you are going to make a definitive assertion, you need to have some evidential backup to support it. Telling the believer that he must provide the evidence is not good enough. If you claim to believe something, then it is incumbent upon you to provide the evidence.

But what sort of evidence can you provide to support the non-existence of anything?

We live in a universe that is ruled by the principle of cause and effect. This means that anything which exists, unless it is entirely inert, will be the cause of something.

For instance, I know that light exists because I can see. By the medium of light I am able to see the keyboard on which I am typing and the screen on which the typed letters are displayed.

If I were totally blind, I would not be able to see, but would I therefore be justified in claiming that light does not exist?

If everyone around me were also blind, then perhaps I would; but when I am surrounded by people who tell me that they can see, and that the problem is that I am blind, I am inclined to accept their testimony and concede that light probably does exist, despite my personal lack of experience.

So if we are to argue for the existence or non-existence of something which cannot readily be perceived, then we need to consider the effects that we might expect to see from its existence, or the lack of effects that we might expect to see from its non-existence.

For example, the Higgs Boson cannot be perceived under normal circumstances, but experiments carried out using CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland in July 2012 demonstrated the expected effects of its existence, so providing evidence of its reality.

Can we employ this same principle more widely to cover phenomena outside the bounds of physics?

I believe that we can.

Allow me to suggest two complementary formulae:

• a) If ‘x’ does exists, then we could expect ‘y’ to exist and/or ‘z’ not to exist.
• b) If ‘x’ does not exist, then we could expect ‘y’ not to exist and/or ‘z’ to exist.

Rejigging this to address the question of the existence of God, we could say:

• If God exists, then we could expect ‘y’ to exist, but ‘z’ not to exist.

This very formula is used quite often by those who object to belief in God – specifically the Christian God. For example:

• If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world?
• If God is righteous and holy, how come there are so many paedophile priests in His service?
• If God is so loving, why is there so much suffering in the world?

These are all important questions, and I have endeavoured to answer them elsewhere in this website. But for the moment, let’s deal with the fundamental problem with the questions themselves.

Each of these questions implicitly pre-supposes a definition of God, which may or may not correspond to reality. Specifically:

• A God who is good would not permit evil to exist.
• A God who is righteous and holy would not allow anyone to behave in an unrighteous or unholy way.
• A God who is loving would not allow the innocent to suffer.

Now, given the evidence of our everyday experience, it would be reasonable to conclude that it is highly unlikely that the God described thus does exist.

We can, of course, turn this around and use the same formula that has been used to test for the non-existence of God to test instead for the existence of God, but we need to be clear about what we mean by ‘God’. There are many different gods that people may believe in, but I am specifically and exclusively interested in the God of the Bible. I will allow the followers of other gods to speak for themselves.

So, if we are going to talk about the God of the Bible, then what does the Bible say about this God, and can we see any effects of His presence in our world?

1. CREATION

The opening words of the Bible are: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”. From this we can say: If God exists, we should expect the universe to have had a beginning.

Did it?

For a long long time, scientists believed that the universe had always existed more or less as it is today, that it had no beginning, and would probably have no end. In line with this, what was known as the Steady State theory was formulated by Fred Hoyle and others in 1948.

Subsequently, however, the so-called Big Bang theory, which was first proposed by the Belgian cosmologist Georges Lemaitre in 1931, gained traction throughout the scientific community, and is now accepted by just about everybody, as far as I am aware.

My understanding is that the term ‘Big Bang’ was coined sarcastically by Fred Hoyle, who famously said that it would be more feasible for a whirlwind in a scrapyard to produce a Boeing 707 than for a ‘big bang’ to produce a universe.

However, the point I am trying to make is that if the God of the Bible exists, we would expect the universe to have had a beginning, and most, if not all, scientists now are convinced that the evidence indicates that it did.

2. GOOD AND EVIL

In the third chapter of the Bible, the first two human beings ate “the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”.

Whether you consider that account to be a myth, a fable, a fairy story, a parable, a prophetic vision, or a literal history is not the point. The point is that this is telling us that from the very beginning of human existence, both good and evil have been essential elements of our experience of everyday life.

Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people, the innocent suffer and the guilty walk away scot-free.

Should this happen if the God who made us is just and righteous?

The Bible tells us that God is both just and righteous, but also that He permits cruelty, injustice, and unrighteousness to co-exist with justice, righteousness, goodness, mercy , and kindness.

He will, of course, deal with it all conclusively on the Day of Judgement, but until then we should expect things to continue much as they are and not be surprised about it.

3. ISRAEL

The Bible tells us that about 4,000 years ago God spoke to a man called Abraham, who hailed from Ur of the Chaldees, which is in modern-day Iraq, promising him that his descendants would live in what was then known as the land of Canaan, which we know today as Palestine (Genesis 15:7).

Abraham had two sons: one, Ishmael, by a concubine Rahab, and the other, Isaac, by his wife Sarah. Ishmael became the forefather of the Arab nations, but God’s promise was to be fulfilled through Isaac, who was the ‘child of promise’. Isaac’s son Jacob, who was later renamed as Israel, became the father of the twelve patriarchs – the forefathers of the twelve tribes of the nation of Israel.

The promise of God was that Israel would forever be a nation, and that their ancestral home, the land of Canaan, would be theirs forever (e.g. Jeremiah 31:1-8, 35-37).

If the God of the Bible exists, we should therefore expect that the nation of Israel would exist today, as they did in Jeremiah’s time (between 500 and 600 years before Christ) and that they would be living in their ancestral land.

Which they are.

However, this has not always been the case. There have been three exiles of the Israeli people and two returns to their land.

The first exile (of the northern tribes) was under the Assyrian empire (approx. 720 BCE), the second (of the southern tribes) under the Babylonian empire (approx. 590 BCE), and the third under the Roman empire (70 CE).

The first return was under the Persian empire (538 BCE) and the second, known generally as the Zionist Movement, began in the early years of the twentieth century and is ongoing today.

Of course, you can argue that this might well have happened anyway, but you cannot deny the fact that it was predicted in the Bible and that it came to pass.

4. A SUFFERING SERVANT AND THE INCLUSION OF GENTILES

Have a look at these two passages from the prophecy of Isaiah, written some time between 740 and 700 BCE:

Traditionally, the Israeli people considered themselves to be a people set apart from the nations, and that God’s salvation was for them alone. The idea that ‘gentiles’ could be saved was foreign to them. However, through Isaiah God began to indicate that the gentiles were going to be brought into the fold, as it were.

Did this ever happen?

Indeed it did.

Isaiah prophesied about a ‘suffering servant’ in chapters 49, 50, 52, and 53, who would be despised and rejected, persecuted and killed, but through whom God would not only establish a new covenant with Israel but would also bring salvation to the gentiles.

These prophesies were fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who was rejected by the Jews as being a charlatan and a blasphemer, but through whom the Gospel message was spread not only throughout the tribes of Israel, but throughout the nations of the world.

In fact, Jesus Himself said that “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).

If the God of the Bible exists, we would expect to see the fulfilment of these predictions – which we do, even to the point where “kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves”. The first ‘king’ to do so was the Roman emperor Constantine, but he was certainly not the last.

5. MIRACLES

Before He left this earth, Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12 ESVuk) and “… these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17-18 ESVuk).

What is a miracle?

The simplest understanding of a miracle is an occurrence or a phenomenon which is not possible according to the laws of physics, but which takes place in response to prayer or authoritative command.

The Bible contains many reports of miracles taking place, but if the God of the Bible exists, we would expect to see miracles happening today. And do we?

Yes, we do.

I can personally testify to having been healed of arthritis in my hip joint in 2007, and in 2023 being healed of an unidentified pain in my upper arm which had troubled me for many months.

On St. Patrick’s Day (March 17th) 2024, our church held a healing service. The two-year-old son of one of the ladies in the congregation had from birth been beset by a number of food allergies, so that his mum had to take extreme care in feeding him, as he might go into anaphylactic shock.

The little boy had no understanding of what was going on while he was being prayed for, but his mum knew in her heart that he had been healed. When she got him home, she tried him out on a morsel of one of the foods that was problematic for him. There was no adverse reaction.

The following day, she tried another couple of foods that should have thrown him into convulsions. Again, there was no adverse reaction. She phoned the pastor and discussed the matter with him. His advice was to continue quietly proving the healing, but tell no-one outside of the immediate family until it was established beyond doubt that the healing was real.

Since that day, that boy has been able to eat anything. He was healed, through prayer to God in the name of Jesus, from a condition that is currently beyond the power of modern medicine to cure. He is the recipient of a miracle.

Now, someone will object: “If God does miracles, why doesn’t everybody get healed? Why don’t you go down to the hospital and heal all the patients there?”

There are two separate questions here, which must not be conflated:

• a) Does God perform miracles today?
• b) Why does healing not take place every time we pray for it?

Question (b) does not negate a positive answer to question (a).

This issue will be addressed elsewhere on this website. It is a big question, and this is not the place to deal with it.

At this point, the question is, “Does God perform miracles today?”, and the answer is, “Yes, He does”, which is what we would expect if the God of the Bbile exists.

Here are two examples that I can think of to satisfy the formula: “if ‘x’ exists then ‘z’ should not exist”:

Firstly, if the God of the Bible exists, there should never again be a world-wide flood that would destroy all life.

This is the promise that God made to Noah after the original deluge (Genesis 9:11,15).

Secondly, if the God of the Bible exists, there should be no record of the mutilated corpse of Jesus of Nazareth ever being found.

Think about it: Christianity stands or falls on the truth or falsehood of the resurrection of Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:1-18, espec. v17). If you want to disprove Christianity, it’s very simple. All you would have to do is produce the body, or some other convincing evidence that Jesus did not rise from the dead.

The Jewish authorities and/or the Romans could have nipped Christianity in the bud by producing the body, but they didn’t.
Why not?

If you say, as they said, that the disciples stole it away and hid it somewhere, or, as has been suggested, that Jesus didn’t actually die at all, then what was it that transformed this band of ragamuffin fishermen and religious zealots into a movement that turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6)? That question would demand a satisfactory answer.

I have presented a number of examples of our formula in relation to the existence of God.

So, if an atheist wants to provide evidence for the non-existence of the God of the Bible, he should produce evidence of at least one, but preferably more, of the following:

• (a) Something that should exist, and does, if God does NOT exist, or
• (b) Something that should NOT exist, and does NOT, if God does NOT exist, or
• (c) Something that should NOT exist, but does, if God does exist, or
• (d) Something that should exist, but does NOT, if God does exist.

But the criteria used must be in line with what is revealed about God in the Bible, and not something made up, such as, “If God exists then evolution would not exist”.

More on that subject in the next section.