4 Questions For Those Who Don't Believe In God
When it comes to the existence of God, it always seems that those who believe God exists must give persuadable answers to every question skeptics have. Otherwise, God certainly must not exist. But why should the burden of "proof" only be on those that believe in God?
It shouldn't.
The problem, of course, is that a non-belief in the existence of God also has some very difficult questions that must be answered as well. So in this post, I want to propose just a few of what those questions are. I am not saying that it is impossible to come up with viable answers to these questions, but simply to show that it is intellectually dishonest to not look at questions for the non-existence of God as well.
And maybe, just maybe, we will find that there is actually very good reason to believe God does exist.
1. Do you believe that everything came from nothing?
The science behind how perfectly all the conditions of our planet need to be to sustain life and how the entire universe began is so improbable, that by the very definition of the word, it is impossible that the cosmos as we know it could have begun.
We simply need to be honest that it is a faith position to assume that everything that we know of came from nothing.
Francis Crick, a molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and the co-author of the academic paper that first proposed the double helix in human DNA once wrote,
“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going. Every time I write a paper on the origin of life I always say I will never write another one because there is too much speculation."
Or to give just one more example. In writing about the improbability of the beginnings of our universe Oxford University Professor of Mathematics John Lennox quotes renowned Oxford University mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, and talks about how precise the creator of the universe must have been to make it happen. He concludes,
“His calculations lead him to the remarkable conclusion that the ‘Creator’s aim’ must have been accurate to 1 part in 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123, that is 1 followed by 10 to the 123rd power zeros... The number which it would be impossible to write out in the usual decimal way, because even if you were able to put a zero on every particle in the universe, there would not even be enough particles to do the job.”
In other words, what logical and believable explanation would you give for the fact that the universe does it exist if there was not a Creator behind it?
2. What do you think happened to Jesus?
When I am going through seasons of doubts and questions about my faith, the resurrection of Jesus is the biggest thing that keeps me going. We all have to deal with what happened to Jesus. And while him actually resurrecting from the dead is certainly an improbable feat (but then again, not if he is God), what is even more improbable is explaining it away.
1 Corinthians is a Biblical book in the New Testament written by a guy named Paul. It is significant because it is universally recognized and accepted, even by the most critical of Biblical scholars, to have actually been written by Paul in the early to mid 50's AD. In other words, within 20 years of Jesus' supposed resurrection.
Recently I preached on one of my favorite passages of Scripture, 1 Corinthians 15:1-19 (you can watch/listen to the message here). In it, Paul writes about the resurrection of Jesus and why, if Jesus didn’t actually rise, our faith is worthless and people ought to look with pity on Christians.
Again, Paul writes this letter within 20 years of Jesus’ death burial and resurrection. This means we cannot say that the early Christians made up this idea of Jesus’ resurrection way after the fact. It either happened or it didn’t. And if it did, it changes everything. Everyone must deal with the resurrection.
One Biblical commenter writing on 1 Corinthians 15 states,
"The alternative possibility [to the resurrection], is that [Paul] and the other Apostles were honest, but deluded witnesses, does not occur to him at all. The modern theory, that those who believed that they had seen the Risen Lord were victims of an hallucination, is wholly absent from his thought, even as a possibility."
To be clear, either Jesus did resurrect or at some point way after the fact followers of Jesus had to make it up (and even this is a dubious claim at best). The other theories that Jesus had a twin brother, that he didn't actually die, or that they went to the wrong tomb are historically impossible when you study what could have happened.
Have you spent any time actually studying for yourself what happened to Jesus? Why or why not?
3. Do you think there is such a thing as good and evil? Why?
If God does not exist and we are solely by-products of naturalism and naturalistic evolution, we can't actually say there are such things as good and evil.
In fact, pain and suffering are good and necessary as it helps weed out the weak and unneeded.
And yet for some reason, none of us actually lives like that. Regardless of whether you believe in God or not, all of us agree that there are such things as good and evil, right and wrong. But why?
Void of a Creator that can actually determine these things, we are only left up to our feelings. So just because we may not like something (like murder, child abuse, etc.) we cannot actually say that it is wrong.
What reasons would you give as to why you believe there are some things that are inherently good and somethings that are inherently bad? What gives you that idea?
4. Is your biggest concern with Christianity really an intellectual one?
In my personal experience, most people's true reasons for disbelieving in God has little to nothing to do with our intellectual questions about God, which has shown me that it isn't actually reason and logic that holds us back.
This isn't true of everyone, but I have found that the vast majority of people who reject God (and in particular Christianity) fall into one of two camps.
One, they haven't actually spent much time at all figuring out what happened to Jesus. It's easier to dismiss something if you don't have to deal with what actually happened. Whether it is simply due to apathy towards God or not even thinking about it, we all have to wrestle with what happened to Jesus.
If he actually rose from the dead, it means he has profound implications on our life. When you actually take the time to figure out what really happened it's not as easy to simply say Jesus' couldn't have done what he claimed to do.
Secondly, they (and maybe you) have been hurt by the Church or someone claiming to be a follower of Jesus. And so we figure that if God really cared or loved us, things like that would not happen.
And I get it, it can be really hard and painful when things like this happen. But if this is the reason you rejected or have walked away from God, then it means our problem isn't actually an intellectual one.
For now, I just want to say that I am deeply sorry, and I can understand your hesitancy when it comes to God and who he is.
My point in this post is simply to gently suggest we shouldn't claim our problem with God is intellectual if it is something else.
God is not anti-intellectual. After all, if he exists then he gave us our intellects as a reflection of his supreme wisdom and knowledge. And maybe, just maybe, it's not as crazy to believe God exists after all.