I said, “Can I ask you a question? On every university campus I visit, somebody stands up and says that God is an evil God to allow all this evil into our world. This person typically says, ‘A plane crashes: Thirty people die, and twenty people live. What kind of a God would arbitrarily choose some to live and some to die?’” I continued, “but when we play God and determine whether a child within a mother’s womb should live, we argue for that as a moral right. So when human beings are given the privilege of playing God, it’s called a moral right. When God plays God, we call it an immoral act. Can you justify this for me?” That was the end of the conversation.
Ravi Zacaharias

Atheism is Worse Than Magic

How Does Atheism Answer Our Most Important Questions?

Atheist professor Alex Rosenberg provides the following summary of atheism’s answers to life’s most profound questions (as quoted from the Reasonable Faith website):

Is there a God? No.

What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is.

What is the purpose of the universe? There is none.

What is the meaning of life? Ditto.

Why am I here? Just dumb luck.

Is there a soul? Are you kidding?

Is there free will? Not a chance!

What is the difference between right/wrong, good/bad? There is no moral difference between them.

He concludes, “So much for the meaning of history, and everything else we care about.”

Rosenberg left out other depressing atheist answers like the following:

Will there be justice for all those who have been wronged? No way.

Is there life after death? Are you joking?

Where did mankind come from? A prebiotic slime.

Wow! What a positive outlook on life! No wonder more people don’t become atheists. It casts such a stunning vision for mankind, doesn’t it?

Source: toughquestionsanswered.org

For if naturalism was true, the probability that our cognitive faculties would be reliable is pretty low. For those faculties have been shaped by a process of natural selection which does not select for truth but merely for survival. There are many ways in which an organism could survive without its beliefs’ being true. Hence, if naturalism were true, we could not have any confidence that our beliefs are true, including the belief in naturalism itself! Thus, naturalism seems to have a built-in defeater that renders it incapable of being rationally affirmed.
William Lane Craig, “Humanism for children”

Source: Washington Post

Atheist Quote of the Day

“It is important to recognize the limits of reason, and also to acknowledge that atheists have no monopoly on it. The new atheism, however, tends to claim reason as a decisive combatant on its side only. With its talk of “spells” and “delusions”, it gives the impression that only through stupidity or crass disregard for reason could anyone be anything other than an atheist. “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence,” says Dawkins, once again implying that reason and evidence are strangers to religion. This is arrogant, and attributes to reason a power it does not have.”

— Julian Baggini

Atheist Quote of the Day

“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”

— Richard Lewontin

FAQ on Christianity for the Unbeliever

Originally posted by Frank J. Fleming:

How long have Christians been around?

While many people see Christians as a brand new and quite scary thing, records show Christians have been around since at least the 1950s, and maybe even much earlier.

—

What are their beliefs based on?

It’s a book called “The Bible.” It’s full of thousands-of-years-old religious writing, which Christians believe to have been written by men inspired by God. It’s very long.

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I see many Bibles are labeled “Holy Bible.” What if I got a non-holy version?

Immediately return it for a refund.

—

The Bible is full of really old values, with lots of outdated views on things like sex. Do Christians actually follow this thing?

Indeed they try. Their view is that while society and technology change, the fundamental nature of man doesn’t, and neither do the values God gave us. Thus, the Bible is something they find relevant and expect people to read and follow many years into the future, like Harry Potter.

—

Don’t Christians know how weird and old-fashioned following the Bible makes them? Everyone else is fine with swearing, sex on TV, and abortion. Why do they have to be so different?

To Christians, following the ways of God is more important than fitting in with societal norms. Thus they are gladly counter-cultural.

—

So they’re like hipsters?

Yes, except everything they do is unironic.

—

There’s some really weird stuff in the Bible, like [quote of strange-sounding rule from Leviticus or Deuteronomy]. The Bible sounds stupid, and people shouldn’t listen to it.

Parts of the Bible can sound weird in isolation, but it takes lots of study to understand the Bible and how the Old Testament relates to the New Testament.

—

But don’t Christians just pick and choose what parts of the Bible they want to follow? Like [quote rule from Leviticus or Deuteronomy that Christians are unlikely to follow].

Christians do not follow much of what is known as the “Mosaic Law.” Much of the reasoning for this is addressed in the book of Hebrews.

—

Okay, so if I just check that out, I’ll find the answer and… wait a second! You almost tricked me into reading more of the Bible! I only need to know enough about it to mock it!

Almost got you. When trying to trip up Christians with quotes from the Bible, just be aware you’re unlikely to find anything they aren’t already aware of, since they read that thing religiously.

—

And don’t Christians know we now have science, which has replaced religion, and that there is no more need for Jesus, since we have lasers and rockets and other science stuff?

Science covers physical and temporary things, while religion covers spiritual and eternal things, so Christians still feel religion is very important — even more important than science.

Read More

Source: pjmedia.com

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