MY RESPONSE TO A SKEPTIC REGARDING THE BIBLE’S TEACHINGS ON HELL

First of all, please understand that I do not believe that the Bible is God's Word because I understand everything about it (or that it all comports with my wisdom and understanding) and can reconcile all the problems, but rather because I have many over-riding reasons to believe it. Likewise, scientists believe in science, not because they understand everything about it, but because they too have over-riding reasons to believe in it.

Scientists do not even understand the basics - the nature of light, time, space, and matter. Nevertheless, they believe in science. Therefore, when you raise a question that cannot be answered entirely, it doesn't mean that we are stubbornly clinging to an insupportable belief.

One other point: I am guessing that you too believe in science despite these glaring gaps in scientific understanding. I respect that, as someone who has a high respect for science. However, if you are willing to make such allowances regarding the scientific investigation of the creation, you should also be able to appreciate our allowances in regard to what is even more glorious – the Creator.

You raised the issue of "hell." Therefore, allow me to commend this essay to your reading:

http://mannsword.blogspot.com/2016/12/are-we-self-condemned.html

DIALOGUING WITH THE MILITANT ATHEIST

The Bible provides the militant atheist (MA) with a big juicy target. Meanwhile, the MAs conveniently deny that they have any target at all, and that they merely believe that there is not enough evidence to believe in God. They will not even declare that God does not exist, lest someone might counter, "Prove it."

This puts the Christian exactly where the MA wants him to be - on the defensive. And MAs have many challenges in their arsenal:

1. What was God going before He created?

2. How could God be good if he destroyed the Canaanites along with their children?

3. Why doesn't God save everyone?

4. Why does the Bible condone slavery and even rape?

If you are talking to an MA, you need to recognize this. Why? You need to know that your answers will never be able to satisfy him. Besides, we cannot answer these questions, and many like them, comprehensively.

Of course, the MA will triumphantly proclaim:

·       "You see, you cannot make sense out of what doesn't make sense. Therefore, your faith is bankrupt."

How do you respond? First, you need to see it is their conclusion that is bankrupt. How? It assumes that understanding must be complete in order to be viable.

This is not true. In all areas, we only understand in part. Take science where we admittedly don't even understand the basics, like time, space, matter, and energy. However, despite our uncertainty about these things, no one would reject science.

To apply this principle to Christianity -- it is not at all reasonable to reject it because there is much we don't understand. However, this should not become an excuse to not have to seek wisdom as we ought.

Here is a similar challenge. The MA will hurl at you many alleged Bible contradictions, and when you can't reconcile them, the MA will taunt you:

·       "You see, the Bible must be the errant words of men."

Here is the simplest way to respond:

·       "Can you prove that this alleged contradiction cannot be resolved?"

Of course, they cannot prove anything of the sort. But beware, they will try to shift the responsibility for proof back on you to demonstrate that these verses cannot be reconciled.

Nevertheless, for our own edification, we should meditate on Scripture until we can possibly find a solution. When we leave many loose ends untied, it becomes difficult to form a cohesive Christian worldview at the expense of our confidence.

CAN SCIENCE PROVE GOD?

While most atheists acknowledge that science cannot disprove God, they claim that neither can it prove Him.

Since "proof" seems to convey finality or certainty, I will use the the more modest term "evidence." Yes, science does provide evidence for an intelligent Designer.

Had science revealed a world of chaos instead of order and design, I think that the atheist and science would be able to discount the existence of an intelligent Designer. However, all of the findings of science tell us just what our senses have always told us - that this cannot possibly be a world fashioned by chance.

In fact, science has taken us further than our immediate senses have. Science has shown us that life is more than a haphazard ball of jelly. Instead, it is a collection of cells, each containing an irreducibly complex array of machinery. Even the molecular components - proteins and DNA - are so complex and functional that they laugh at any naturalistic explanation.

Science has also revealed the fine-tuning of the universe, its constants calibrated just right to support life.

Even the exercise of science depends on the bedrock of the immutable, universal, and elegant laws/forces of science. Without these wonderfully designed laws, there could be no science at all. Consequently, the very fact that we can do science and accumulate knowledge depends on a God who has designed it all - the very God we stubbornly deny.

And what immutably maintains these laws/forces in a world of molecules-in-motion?

Everything we observe cries out "design," even the "natural" laws we now look towards as our Creator-substitutes.

Does science prove God? Science cannot utter a syllable without God. All of its findings should be labeled, "Disclosed and Made by the Designer."

In fact, the evidence for the Designer is so compelling, that it has compelled many to abandon atheism as a failed hypothesis. Former atheist and astronomer Alan Sandage wrote:

·       "As I said before, the world is too complicated in all of its parts to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. . . . The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some kind of organizing principle—an architect."

In "There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind," Antony Flew concluded that DNA requires an intelligent cause:

·       “It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”

·       “I now believe there is a God…I now think it [the evidence] does point to a creative Intelligence almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together."

Flew had become a theist based upon the evidence of science. Meanwhile, science offers no evidence in favor of non-design, especially at science's most seminal levels.

If science offers no evidence against the existence of the Designer, why is His existence denied? Purely by choice!

To this, the atheist responds:

·       "Science doesn't have anything to say about the non-existence of the good-tooth-fairy or the spaghetti-monster either, nor should it."

This objection misses the point. The spaghetti-monster is not a concern of science unless the atheist claims that this is the name of the Intelligent Designer.

Science, in regards to ID, is addressing a fundamental question of origin - did the world come into existence by itself or was it designed by a transcendent being? Besides, is it possible to invoke natural causation if the natural hadn't already existed?

To these questions, the spaghetti-monster is irrelevant.

THEISM AND SCIENCE

Does belief in God stimulate or stifle science. Atheist Peter Atkins believes that to invoke God is both lazy and detracts from the work of science. Lennox counters with the example of Isaac Newton, for whom a belief in God did not stifle his scientific curiosity:

·       After uncovering the workings of gravity, Newton didn’t say, “Now that I understand gravity, I no longer need God.”

Instead, Newton understood that the source of science, the elegant, immutable that made discovery and science possible rested upon its Creator.

NATURALISM VS. THEISM

Atheist Peter Atkins claims that a belief in God(s) is not only wishful thinking but that it also adds unnecessarily to the elegance and simplicity of science by introducing an external and foreign agent.

However, doesn’t the addition of “naturalism” equally introduce an external and foreign agent – a kind of God-substitute?

Instead, it would seem more reasonable to ask:

·       Which of these explanations (theories) of origins and causation better explains the facts?

NATURALISM VS. THEISM

Atheist Peter Atkins claims that a belief in God(s) is not only wishful thinking but that it also adds unnecessarily to the elegance and simplicity of science by introducing an external and foreign agent.

However, doesn’t the addition of “naturalism” equally introduce an external and foreign agent – a kind of God-substitute?

Instead, it would seem more reasonable to ask:

·       Which of these explanations (theories) of origins and causation better explains the facts?