Massacre in Newtown, Connecticut

Let’s imagine that God decided, through some form of supernatural coercion, to force human beings against their will to always obey his law. In other words, imagine that human beings were supernaturally prevented from ever behaving in ways that were violent, immoral, hateful, dishonest, greedy, envious, manipulative, unloving or selfish.  Imagine if we were all required to be generous with our money. Imagine if we were required to set aside one day a week to rest and worship God. Imagine if we were supernaturally prevented from ever giving our own comforts, entertainments, pleasures or pastimes a higher priority than God.

In such a world there would be no murder, rape, robbery, assault, immorality or dishonesty but in such a world there can be no doubt that most people would view God as a micro-managing tyrannical dictator and would hate him with every fiber of their being. They would only worship him out of compulsion, not love.

So God has taken the alternate approach—probably one of the worst things he could have done to us. He lets us have our way, or in Paul’s words, “God gave them up.” God gives us the freedom to gossip, lie, cheat, steal, slander, get drunk, take drugs, fornicate, commit adultery, rape, rob and murder. In other words, he gives us freedom and allows us to suffer the consequences for our sin. Humans then shake their puny fists in God’s face demanding to know why he allows such evil in the world.

But Christianity teaches that God then did the most amazing thing. He became human himself—a fact celebrated in the Christmas season—and entered the world of suffering that we largely created. He allowed himself to be mocked, beaten and tortured—all so he could deliver us from the consequences of our own sin.

At a time when atheists demand to know where God was during the tragedy in Connecticut we should note that if atheism is true there will never, ever be justice for the victims and their families. If atheism is true the parents will never, ever see their children again. There is no hope. There is no real comfort. There is only unfathomable grief and despair. 

The Bible teaches that the gunman will not escape justice, and holds out hope that through Christ the parents could see their children again at a time when “our present sufferings are not worth comparing” with the glory God has for us; a time when “the former things will not be remembered” and God will wipe away all tears (Romans 8:18; Isaiah 65:17; 25:8; Revelation 7:17; 21:4).

Our hope is that the tragedy in Connecticut will ultimately lead people to turn their hearts to God who is able to re-unite parents with their children and turn temporal tragedy into eternal triumph.

"Is God a Moral Monster"

I've been reading Is God a Moral Monster by Paul Copan. Overall a good book so far, but I'm wondering if some of his points are a bit wrong-headed.

I'm thinking specifically of his dealing with ceremonial purity laws in the Old Testament. Copan is reacting to what one atheist called, "The Bible's ubiquitous wierdness." Copan spends considerable space explaining why he thinks these purity laws were given and what the symbolism was behind these laws.

For example, Copan suggests that "Genesis 1 divides animals into three spheres: animals that walk on the land, animals that swim in the water, animals that fly in the air." He says that "animals that 'transgressed' boundaries or overlapped spheres were to be avoided as unclean." So eels or shellfish are unclean because they don't have scales or fins (80).

But eels and shellfish don't walk on land or fly in the air. Saying that they've "crossed boundaries" simply because they lack scales or fins seems to be a stretch.

Copan points out that according to Old Testament law, a "clean" land animal must be a "cud chewer" and have split hooves (80).  

True, but just because a land animal does not chew the cud or have split hooves, does not mean they have "crossed boundaries." They are still land animals. They don't swim in the sea or fly in the air.

Copan writes "swarming and slithering animals in any sphere (eels, snakes, flying insects) were reminiscent of the fall in Genesis 3 and of the cursed slithering serpent" (81).

I might be able to see Copan's point in the case of the slithering animals, but applying it to flying insects seems to be a stretch.

I agree with Copan that the purity laws in the Old Testament were intended to symbolize the importance of holiness or "set-apartness." God's chosen people were to have lifestyles that were markedly set apart from the degrading, immoral, and idolatrous lifestyles of their national neighbors and the all-pervasive nature of the purity laws were intended as tangible, daily illustrations of that fact.

Although many of Copan's explanations are quite good, for example, he did a good job debunking the theory that some animals were said to be unclean for health reasons (79-80), when Copan feels it necessary to explain why some things were declared to be ceremonially clean and other things were not, I think he has weakened his argument by offering explanations that seem to be scholarly conjectures at best. The fact is that the Bible itself doesn't explain why some things are said to be clean and others unclean.

If Copan's point is only that there may be valid reasons behind laws that may seem arbitrary and "weird" to us, I agree, but his argument has been weakened by not making that point explicitly.

I think I would approach the topic from a different angel.What if there is no reason why some things are declared clean and others are declared unclean? If God wanted to set before His people a symbolic but tangible reminder of how important holiness or "set-apartness" was to Him, why should we think that there must be a reason for why some things are "clean" and other things are not? 

For example, maybe there was nothing fundamentally holy about a cow or fundamentally immoral about a pig? (From a Christian perspective, this is supported in the New Testament by the fact that unclean foods are declared clean). The point was only to provide a daily, tangible reminder that separateness (holiness) was important to the God of Israel. God could just as well have said, you may eat green things which are "clean" but you must avoid red things (like red peppers or apples) which are unclean. My guess is that if God had said to avoid red apples someone would probably have conjectured that this was because it was reminiscent of the fruit that caused the fall of Adam and Eve!

My point is that the reason for clean and unclean animals did not lie so much in the animal itself, but in the illustration. The reason was to provide a daily tangible reminder of the importance holiness--something about which modern atheists (and many Christians, for that matter) seem to be clueless.

Finally, regarding what one atheist called, "The Bible's ubiquitous weirdness" I would answer that this smacks of ethnocentrism or cultural snobbery. Some condemn the "weirdness" of the Bible because it looks strange to them from the perspective of their own 21st century, Eurocentric culture. Although they may be very tolerant of all other cultures and are often blind to the weirdness of our own culture, they are very selectively intolerant of ancient Jewish culture.

I'm only up to chapter eight but so far the book has been excellent, notwithstanding my nit-picky criticisms.

Not enough faith to be an atheist

Some fascinating facts:

"The expansion rate of the Big Bang had to be accurate to within one part in [10 followed by 55 zeros--The actual quotes use scientific notation but as far as I know, that's not possible in blogger]. Any slower and the universe would have collapsed. Any faster and there would be no stars or planetary systems. In either case, life would not be possible."

"The force of gravity had to be accurate to within on part in [10 followed by 40 zeros]. Otherwise, stars could not form, and life would be impossible."

"The mass density of the universe had to be accurate to within on part in [10 followed by 60 zeros]. Otherwise, life-sustaining stars could not have formed."

This comes from The Making of an Atheist by philosopher James S. Spiegel (pg 46), quoting from former atheist philosopher Antony Flew. And all of this was just for conditions for the development of life to be theoretically possible! (Antony Flew was influenced by MIT scientist Gerald Schroeder). The actual appearance of life is much more problematic:

"...two scientists, Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, calculated the odds of life emerging from non-living matter to be on in [10 followed by 40,000 zeros]." To put this enormous figure in perspectice, consider that the number of atoms in the known universe is [10 followed by 80 zeros]--a paltry sum by comparison. Moreover, consider the fact that statisticians, as a general rule, consider any 'possibility' less than on in [10 followed by 50 zeros] to be impossible" (Spiegel, 48).I just don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

I just don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

The Science of God

Gerald Schroeder is a nuclear physicist with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has also done work in biology and earth sciences. He has the distinction of being instrumental in convincing the world-renowned atheist philosopher, Anthony Flew, that God—at least in a Deist sense—really does exist after all

The following comes from Dr. Schroeder’s book, The Hidden Face of God; How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth. As with any book on this topic (and as you can see from the Amazon reviews) some people love it, some hate it. Either way, it is a fascinating read.

The human body acts as a finely tuned machine, a magnificent metropolis in which…each of the 75 trillion cells, composed of [10 with 27 zeros] atoms, moves in symbiotic precision…

[These atoms] are organized by a single act when a protozoan-like sperm cells adds its message of genetic material into a receptive egg cell....

Until the mid-1970’s the accepted wisdom was that the origin of this organization that we refer to as life was the result of chance random reactions among atoms, gradually combining, one chance occurrence building upon another over eons of time until self-replication and then mutation produced the first biological cell. Three billion years were thought to have passed between the formation of liquid water on the formerly molten earth and the appearance of the first forms of life….

Two to three billion years were available for randomness to do its work. ‘Given so much time the…impossible becomes the possible, the possible becomes probable, and the probable virtually certain’…So wrote George Wald, professor of biology at Harvard University and Nobel laureate….

In the mid-1970’s came the seminal discovery of Elso Barghoorn. He, like Wald, was at Harvard…Using a scanning electron microscope…Barghoorn searched the surfaces of…stone taken from the oldest of rocks able to bear fossils. To the amazement of the scientific community, fossils of fully developed bacteria were found in rocks 3.6 billion years old. Further evidence…indicated the origins of cellular life at close to 3.8 billion years before the present, the same period in which liquid water first formed on Earth.

Overnight, the fantasy of billions of years of random reactions in warm little ponds brimming with fecund chemicals leading to life, evaporated. Elso Barrghoorn had discovered a most perplexing fact: life, the most complexly organized system of atoms known in the universe, popped into being in the blink of a geological eye (49-51).

And they call this science

Sir Fred Hoyle Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe and Francis Crick were all world-renowned scientists who were atheists. The following are excerpts from a book which discusses their work on the origin of life:

"Hoyle ran the numbers to determine the mathematical probability of the basic enzymes of life arising by random processes. They conclude that the odds were 1 to 1 followed by 40,000 zeros, or ‘so utterly minuscule’ as to make Darwin’s theory of evolution absurd.”

"In order to explain the creation of the universe while carefully excluding God, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe came up with a theory called ‘panspermia,’ which holds that life began in space and spread to Earth by a steady influx of microscopic infectious agents delivered to Earth on comets."

"Francis Crick, winner of the Nobel Prize for his codiscovery of DNA, also realized that spontaneous evolution of life could not be reconciled with the facts. As he said, ‘the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd.’ Consequently, Crick hypothesized that highly intelligent extraterrestrials sent living cells to Earth on an unmanned spaceship…”

"Ahh, but more recent evolutionists speak of computer simulations proving evolution to be true. “…in his book River Out of Eden, Dawkins blathers on and on about ‘computer models of evolving eyes.”

David Berlinski got to the bottom of the famed computer simulation, tracking down scientists alleged to have performed this wonderous feat, and discovered…it doesn’t exist.

"In The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, Tom Bethell quotes Berlinski’s summary of the evidence: ‘…There is no such model anywhere in any laboratory. No one has the faintest idea how to make one. The whole story was fabricated out of thin air by Richard Dawkins. The senior author of the study on which Dawkins based his claim—Dan E. Nilsson—has explicitly rejected the idea that his laboratory has ever produced a computer simulation of the eyes’ development” (All quotations from Coulter, Godless, 208, 210-211).

So there you have it. Honest atheists like Hoyle, Wickramasinghe and Crick realize that it is simply impossible for life to have originated spontaneously on earth by itself so they propose that it originated someplace else—some place that, conveniently, places it out of the reach of scientists to examine the evidence. And they call this science!

The Hidden Face of God

I recently finished reading The Hidden Face of God by Gerald Schroeder who received his Ph.D. from MIT. Reports are that Dr. Schroeder has even convinced the world-renowned atheist philosopher, Anthony Flew to change his mind about atheism. Even if you don’t understand the science below, you will understand the point at the end. Schroeder writes:

"When a specific protein is needed by a cell, a chemical messenger is sent from the outer cell, through a pore in the nuclear membrane, into the nucleus. How the messenger knows to go to the nucleus remains a mystery. This messenger finds the needed chromosome (one of the twenty-three pairs), locks onto that chromosome, and moves along, nucleotide by nucleotide, until it comes to the specific sequence of bases that marks the beginning of the gene that codes for the desired protein.

"At this stage, the signaling molecule changes shape, and in doing so allows—or causes—and enzyme called DNA-dependent RNA polymerase (I’ll call it RNA-P) to join the action."

"The RNA-P opens the helix, reads each nucleotide base, selects the correct complementary base from among the four types floating in the intracellular slurry, concurrently selects…the molecules that make up the spine of the lengthening strand of mRNA being manufactured, trailing behind the RNA-P, joins the just-selected base to the spine, takes the portion of DNA that has just been read and reseals it to the parallel DNA strand which it was separated, opens the portion of DNA to be read next, reads it, and continues the juggling act til it reaches a coded stop order…And RNA-P does this manufacturing at fifty bases a second…Keep in mind, this entire sequence is performed by molecules reading molecules, molecules selecting molecules, molecules walking along with other molecules. Don’t project too much brain power or body power into this system. It’s not little people in
there. It’s simply molecules that somehow seem to act like little knowledgeable people, as if they had a wisdom of their own. Which they do" (192-199).

"This is only one small part of a much more complicated process that takes place in what was once called the “simple cell.” At one time scientists used to imagine that, given enough time (billions of years) simple cells could evolve by themselves purely by chance or natural selection. The kicker here is that “it all developed so very rapidly, almost simultaneously with the appearance of liquid water on earth. We have absolutely phenomenal complexity, not after billions of years of evolution, but at the very beginning of the entire process" (193-194)!

Of course all of this doesn’t necessarily “prove” there is a God but it certainly takes an incredible amount of faith to believe that it all happened by chance, natural selection, or random mutations.

Personally, I don’t have that much faith.

Leading atheist finds God

Anthony Flew is “an Oxford educated philosopher described by some as ‘legendary.” For years he was one of the world’s leading proponents of atheism. Indeed, “His ideas paved the way for thinkers such as Richard Dawkins, the UK’s most virulent opponent of religious belief.”

In 2004 Dr. Flew changed his mind. He is now convinced of the existence of a personal God who created the universe, though Flew is careful to add that his view of God so far is more like that of Aristotle rather than the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. All of this according to a recent article by Hilary White. Excerpts of the article appear below but please read the entire article at LifeSiteNews.

Flew has emphasized that his “discovery” of a god who created life was a result of relentlessly “following the evidence”. “It was empirical evidence,” he told an interviewer, “the evidence uncovered by the sciences. But it was a philosophical inference drawn from the evidence.”

Flew told Dr. Benjamin Wiker that two factors in particular “were decisive”. “One was my growing empathy,” he said, “with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source.”

He told Wiker, “I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code.”

Flew answered Richard Dawkins’ argument that “the origin of life can be attributed to a ‘lucky chance.’” He said, “If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over.” Flew said, “I would add that Dawkins is selective to the point of dishonesty when he cites the views of scientists on the philosophical implications of the scientific data.”

Atheism and monkeys

Anthony Flew is a world renowned philosopher who has aggressively advocated atheism for more than 50 years. Recently he changed his mind. He says he is now convinced on the basis of reason alone that atheism is no longer a viable option. He has just published a new book entitled “There is a God; How the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind” (He notes that the title was not his idea). In this book Flew says,

“I was particularly impressed with Gerry Schroeder’s point-by-point refutation of what I call the ‘monkey theorem.” This idea, which has been presented in a number of forms and variations, defends the possibility of life arising by chance using the analogy of a multitude of monkeys banging away on computer keyboards and eventually ending up writing a Shakespearean sonnet.”

Schroeder first referred to an experiment conducted by the British National Council of Arts. A computer was placed in a cage with six monkeys. After one month of hammering away at it (as well as using it as a bathroom!), the monkeys produced fifty pages—but not a single word. Schroeder noted that this was the case even though the shortest word in the English language is one letter (a or I). A is a word only if there is a space on either side of it. If we take it that the keyboard has thirty characters (the twenty-six letters and other symbols), then the likelihood of getting a one-letter word is 30 times 30 times 30, which is 27,000. The likelihood of getting a one-letter word is one chance out of 27,000. (76-77)

Schroeder then calculates the probability of producing a Shakespearean sonnet. All sonnets are 14 lines long. The one he chose happened to have 488 letters in it. The chance that these monkeys would produce a sonnet like this by chance turns out to be a 1 followed by 690 zeros. If you wonder how big that is, Schroeder points out that the number of estimated particles (protons, electrons, neutrons) in the entire universe is only 1 followed by 80 zeros!.

Needless to say, the very simplest living cell is incalculably more complicated than a Shakespearean sonnet! Most of us simply don’t have enough faith to believe the universe originated without some kind of intelligent designer.

Imagine no religion

The Freedom from Religion foundation is now funding billboards in several cities that say “Imagine no Religion.”

Go ahead, imagine no religion. All you have to do is study Communism, since atheism is a foundation for Communism. The advertisement for The Black Book of Communism says,

As the death toll mounts—as many as 25 million in the former Soviet Union, 65 million in China, 1.7 million in Cambodia, and on and on—the authors systematically show how and why, wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established, it quickly led to crime, terror, and repression (Harvard University Press).

When people want to talk about atrocities committed by "Christians," one of the biggest examples is usually the Inquisition. Estimates for the number of people the Roman Catholic Church executed during the Inquisition range from 32,000 to 125, 000.

Even if we assume the higher figure is more accurate, and rounded the number of Inquisition deaths to 100,000, that would mean that in the 20th century alone, atheist-Communists killed about 1,000 people for every one person killed in the Inquisition !

So go ahead, imagine no religion. It’s easy if you try.

In the name of religion

There is an atheist billboard being posted in some U.S. cities that says, “Imagine no religion.” Last month Recliner Commentaries argued that in the last century alone, atheist communist regimes killed about a thousand people for ever one person killed during the inquisition.

A common atheist response to statistics like this is that while many people have been killed “in the name of religion” no one has been killed “in the name of atheism.” While that point could be debated, let’s turn it around.

All over the country there are thousands of schools, homeless shelters, hospitals etc. that were founded in the name of religion--Baptist hospitals, Presbyterian Hospitals, Catholic hospitals, Jewish Hospitals etc.

Not only that but for hundreds of years, thousands of Christians have gone all over the world--often at great danger to themselves--bringing not only the gospel, but food, clothing, education, housing, and medical care to people of every race and nationality all “in the name of religion.”

Although there are also many secular schools and hospitals, how many were specifically founded “in the name of atheism?”

Be good for goodness sake

“Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake." This is the ad that will be appearing on Washington DC buses next week (CNN).

So “Why believe in a god? One answer is that incredibly complex life forms began to appear within a very short time (geologically speaking) after the appearance of water on this planet. Some scientists and philosophers say that it is scientifically impossible for this degree of complexity to have appeared so soon by chance, random mutations, or natural selection alone.

By itself, that doesn't prove God's existence. But it does seem to disprove atheism (Atheism and Monkeys, Hidden Face of God, The Way of the Cell).

And “Just be good for goodness sake?” Are you kidding me? I am very thankful that many atheists have chosen to be “good” people, but that is not necessarily the logical outcome of their atheism.

Many atheists logically conclude that if there is no God, the only limitations on their behavior are their own desires and what they think they can get away with. If they really want to rape or rob someone, for example, and they think they can get away with it, why not? Who are you to judge them or tell them anything different? (In fact, I suspect that many atheists have chosen to be atheists because of the freedom they think it brings).

Fortunately, many atheists don’t think this way. Many humanist atheists think they should be good because it is good for society. But other atheists logically think, screw society! The only thing that counts is me!

Either way, the idea that we should “be good for goodness sake” is just silly.

The greatest mystery

Someone once said, the greatest mystery in the universe is, “why is there something rather than nothing.” He was right, of course. The simplest solution would be that in the beginning absolutely nothing existed, and absolutely nothing has ever existed. Since that seems rather absurd, consider some of the other options:

1) Stuff, or matter, always existed. The problem, of course is that it’s hard to imagine something that has just always been there. We want to ask, “but where did it come from?”

2) God always existed. The problem again is that it is hard to conceive of someone who has always been there. We want to ask, “where did God come from?”

3) Yet another option is to imagine that absolutely nothing existed--and then something came into existence all by itself and evolved entirely by chance into the astounding complexity that we see even in what used to be called a simple cell. There are, of course, other options as well but my point is that regardless of which option we choose, they all take a healthy dose of faith. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves

Leading atheist finds God

Anthony Flew is “an Oxford educated philosopher described by some as ‘legendary.” For years he was one of the world’s leading proponents of atheism. Indeed, “His ideas paved the way for thinkers such as Richard Dawkins, the UK’s most virulent opponent of religious belief.”

In 2004 Dr. Flew changed his mind. He is now convinced of the existence of a personal God who created the universe, though Flew is careful to add that his view of God so far is more like that of Aristotle rather than the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. All of this according to a recent article by Hilary White. Excerpts of the article appear below but please read the entire article at LifeSiteNews.

Flew has emphasized that his “discovery” of a god who created life was a result of relentlessly “following the evidence”. “It was empirical evidence,” he told an interviewer, “the evidence uncovered by the sciences. But it was a philosophical inference drawn from the evidence.”

Flew told Dr. Benjamin Wiker that two factors in particular “were decisive”. “One was my growing empathy,” he said, “with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source.”

He told Wiker, “I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code.”

Flew answered Richard Dawkins’ argument that “the origin of life can be attributed to a ‘lucky chance.’” He said, “If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over.” Flew said, “I would add that Dawkins is selective to the point of dishonesty when he cites the views of scientists on the philosophical implications of the scientific data.”

Atheism

I’m still mulling over the “Imagine no Religion” billboards by the Freedom from Religion organization.

So imagine no Religion. Just imagine all the people who would no longer benefit from the money raised by Christian Aid Ministries ($211 million), Samaritan’s Purse ($237 million), Food for the Poor ($643 million), WorldVision ($804 million), Habitat for Humanity ($902 million) Feed the Children, ($958 million), Salvation Army ($3.1 billion), Catholic Charities ($3.1 billion, and, yes, the last two were billion with a B). And this doesn't count the the hundreds, if not thousands, of other smaller ministries, like homeless shelters, pregnancy centers and all the mission agencies which help the poor and sick.

I heard an atheist recently state that if we just gave up the idea of God, everyone would still give money to all these charities anyway. Unfortunatly, he demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of genuine Christianity. People who are truly Christian, don’t give money to charity because we think we are such good people.

On the contrary, we know we are not good people and that it is only because of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ that we are accepted by God. The good that we do is out of gratitude for the grace God has shown to us. Without God, there is no guarantee at all that Christians would continue to give so generaously to strangers.

So go ahead. Imagine a world without religion. It's easy if you try. Just imagine what would happen to all the homeless, sick, poor, even starving people in the world if all the billions of dollars in Christian giving suddenly dried up.

Why doesn't God heal amputees?

Recently someone sent me a link to an atheist website and asked for my response. The website demanded to know, if God exists, why doesn’t he heal amputees?

Wow! I guess they’ve finally got us! The fact that God does not make missing limbs grow back must absolutely prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that God does not exist! I guess its time to close down our churches, hospitals, clinics, homeless shelters, pregnancy centers, schools, charities, youth programs, drug rehabilitation programs, orphanages, and mission agencies!

But wait! Not so fast. If God actually did a genuine miracle—let’s say, parting the Red Sea or raising a dead person back to life—would His failure to do other similar miracles constitute proof of his non-existence? To think so would be silly.

If God actually caused amputated arms and legs to grow back on occasion would the atheist then be convinced of God’s existence, or would s/he just dismiss the evidence as a genetic anomaly and pose some other hoop for God to jump though?

For example, the atheist might ask why God doesn’t enable people to walk on water today, or why doesn't He heal quadriplegics, or people whose heads have been removed by terrorists. The possible scenarios are limited only by the imagination of the atheist!

And when God doesn’t jump through their hoops like some kind of trained dog, atheists can then puff out their arrogant little chests and imagine that they’ve positively disproved God’s existence.

On the other hand, if Christians were to provide documented medical evidence of people who had scientifically been proven to have had serious diseases such as cancer which had just disappeared, would atheists believe then? Of course not! Atheists have remarkable faith that God does not exist, and absolutely no evidence will be allowed to threaten that faith.

The fact is that evidence of remarkable healing does exist--in fact there have been so many cases that doctors even have a word for it: “Spontaneous remissions.”

Although “spontaneous remissions” occur regularly, such things are always capable of multiple interpretations. When someone is diagnosed with a serious disease like cancer, and their church prays, and the cancer just disappears, Christians believe this may possibly be the work of God. Atheists are just as convinced that whatever happened, God is not involved. Both positions are matters of faith!

The fact is that Atheists are committed as a matter of faith, to the proposition that God does not exist and no amount of evidence will be allowed to stand against their faith.

It was the same way in Jesus’ day. Jesus enemies said his “miracles” were done by the power of Satan or through sorcery (we have no record of anyone denying that he did such amazing works). Others thought he did such things by the power of God, saying, “no one has ever done stuff like this before!”

According to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, the letters of Peter, an editor of Josephus, the writer of Hebrews, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus and other ancient writers, Jesus did come back from the dead! In fact, early Christians were so convinced of this fact they were willing to suffer torture and death. But atheists won’t believe unless they see an amputated limb restored!

It is important to note that the atheist’s question seems to assume that our faith is based on reports of healings or miracles happening today or throughout history. This is a false assumption. Although I am convinced that God heals today--that would be hard for me to deny since I was once miraculously healed--I am personally very skeptical of the many healing and miracle stories I hear.

My faith is not based on such stories. It is based, rather, on the historical evidence that the earliest Christians were absolutely convinced that Jesus had 1) fulfilled Old Testament prophecies, 2) did signs and wonders that no one had ever done before—something his enemies tried to explain away but never even attempted to deny and 3) was seen, touched and actually even ate with people after his death.

Early Christians were so convinced of these facts that they were willing to suffer imprisonment and horrible deaths for it. This is confirmed by various historical criteria, for example, through independent attestation of multiple sources and by the fact that Christianity, unlike any other early messianic movement of the time, did not die out after it’s “messiah” died. Further, I’ve read probably thousands of pages of skeptical, counter-arguments and find none of them to be convincing. In fact, I’ve published and refuted several of them.

This evidence does not constitute absolute proof, of course, but absolute proof does not exist for any religion including atheism.

The Bible says that without faith it is impossible to please God. God often provides evidence or traces of his existence but for whatever reason, he never “proves” his existence. There is always a leap of faith. But it is no more of a leap of faith than believing that the universe exploded into existence all by itself.

It is quite illogical for anything to exist at all, in other words, it is illogical to think that something just popped out of nothing—but the universe exists!

That doesn’t prove that God, or the gods, created it, of course (after all, where did God come from)? But the idea that that the universe just sprang into existence by all by itself is so illogical that it ought to alert us to the fact that there just might possibly be more to this universe than materialism, or atheism would suggest.

And belief in God takes much less faith than believing that micro-organism more complicated than modern laptop computers—developed and evolved all by themselves!

Atheists have an enormous amount of faith in the power of science to prove there is no God. There is no doubt that science has done some remarkable things, but we’ve come a long way from the time when Darwin might have imagined “the simple cell” filled with some kind of simple protoplasm.

We now know that even the simplest living micro-organisms are more complicated than the laptop sitting on my desk—and evolutionists believe these micro-organisms appeared on this planet shortly (in evolutionary terms) after the appearance of water on earth.

Even if you believe in macro-evolution and natural selection and the tooth fairy, there simply was not enough time for so many incredibly complicated organisms to have developed so soon all by themselves. It is scientifically impossible! But atheists would rather believe the impossible, than believe in a God to whom they would be accountable.

I started reading a huge book on cell biology (a cell biologist recommended it to me saying that it was like the “Bible” of cell biology). I found it humorous how often the authors had to admit that they had no clue how or why so many of the cell’s basic functions actually work.

Science has taken enormous strides since Darwin, but it seems like the more we learn, the farther we are from having a solution—at least from having an atheist solution. But atheists have enormous faith that we will some day find out--even though the more we learn, the farther away we seem to be from finding a solution.

If there is one person in the world who should have an answer to this question, it might have been Francis Crick, an atheist and Nobel Prize winning geneticist. His solution: Panspermia, i.e. life originated somewhere else in the universe and was deposited as spores here on earth!

Why would a Nobel Prize winning geneticist--someone who knew more about the basis "stuff" of life than just about anyone else on the planet--propose such a far-out theory?

Could it be because he knew that there was no possible scenario in which life could have developed on earth all by itself so he had to move the problem to another place in space where the conditions for life to have developed must have been different (and where it can't be studied)? Let’s be honest. This is not science. It is faith.

Atheists like to imagine that they have science on their side. But all science is based on philosophical assumptions and presuppositions. The atheist who doesn’t know this is simply ignorant of the facts.

It is a choice of faith whether to believe that life on this planet came into being and evolved all by itself, or under the guidance of God, but failure to recognize that faith is involved in both cases is simply ignorance—often willful ignorance. As for me, I just don’t have as much faith as the atheist.

Anyway, getting back to the original topic, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus did heal an amputee. Peter cut off some guy’s ear and Jesus put it back on. But atheists just dismiss this as fiction. Nothing can be allowed to stand against their atheist faith.