How to NOT Believe in God

 MY RESPONSE TO AN ATHEIST:

You are raising the bar on God unreasonably high by demanding exhaustive answers for all of your challenges. In effect, you are saying:

• If God doesn’t answer all of my questions, I will reject Him.

Here are several problems with your demand:

1. If the same standard were applied to science, you must also reject science. Science cannot even answer the basic questions like, “What are space, time, matter, sub-atomic particles, light, and life.” In short, exhaustive knowledge about anything is not possible. We are limited creatures. We can only see and hear a very small band of vibrations. There is much more that we cannot perceive. This means that even the greatest scientists or theologians can only offer partial answers.

2. When we ask of God, we must remember that we are inquiring of the Creator of the universe, which makes Him far greater than His creation. (The artist is always greater than his art!) We should be ready to accept the fact that there is much that we will not understand, even more than what we don’t understand about the cosmos. He even warns us that much is above our understanding.

3. We believe in God, not because of the things that we don’t understand, but because of what we do understand. This principle is also true of science.

4. God can reveal Himself to us, and He does this in many ways. We don’t see because we are willfully blind (Romans 1:18-20). In a sense, we are trapped in the matrix of our own making and only look for those arguments that will support the matrix. We therefore need to pray that He will open our eyes. This is an offer that God makes throughout Scripture.