PILLAR TWELVE: NATURALISM IS THE HOPE FOR MANKIND

Atheists must, therefore, preach, evangelize, and proselytize to spread their belief in unbelief.

1. Christians, if they are right, give people a hope for a blessed afterlife. Atheists, if they are wrong, are leading people to hell—whether it is Sheol, Gehenna, or Hades. If Christians are wrong, they are still giving people hope, peace, and fulfillment in this life. If atheists are right, they are giving what Camus and Sartre say of unbelief: nausea, angst, and absurdity.

2. The success of the best-selling books by Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris have led to a virtual industry of Christian books that not only promote a rational defense of Christianity but point out the logical fallacies of the atheist books. Two books that do that quite well are John Lennox’s The Dawkins Delusion and Timothy Morgan’s Thank God for Atheists. There are also books by former atheists: There Is a God by Anthony Flew, the philosopher well known as a defender of atheism whose reason eventually led him to believe in God; The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel, an atheist legal journalist who interviewed scientists and Biblical scholars in an attempt to disprove Christianity and became a Christian as a result; The God Diagnosis by Greg Viehman, a dermatologist who made a systematic study of the Bible to show its falseness and became a Christian as a result; The Great Good Thing by Andrew Klaven, an agnostic Jewish mystery novel and script writer who became a Christian; Cold Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace, a former atheist homicide detective who applies police detective methods to proving Christianity; and Jesus on Trial by David Limbaugh, a thorough apologetic for Christianity by a former atheist lawyer. A very witty critique of the absurdities of atheistic reasoning is Andy Bannister’s The Atheist Who Doesn’t Exist.

3. Unbelief is not simply a lack of belief but a belief that there is no God. Christian belief is not simply a belief there is a God but a belief in Jesus Christ, a commitment to Christ, a transforming of one’s life.

4. It may seem too easy to get to heaven just because one “accepts Christ” or “believes in Jesus.” Beliefs, after all, can be false. They are opinions, and do not necessarily conform to fact. The remarkable thing, however, is that belief in Christ also becomes a fact. A person changes on the inside, and his behavior changes on the outside.

5. Think of how much of our lives are governed by our beliefs. We believe we will rise in the morning, we believe we will live through the day, we believe we will get to sleep at night. We have political beliefs, religious beliefs, scientific beliefs. Probably each person has one’s own custom made philosophical belief about life that is not quite the same as anyone else’s philosophical belief. Indeed the whole history of philosophy is one great philosopher telling how the previous great philosopher’s beliefs are wrong. My sister believed eating blueberries and taking dietary supplements would prevent cancer, but she died of cancer anyway. No scientific study is ever 100 percent; there are only tendencies: 75% of people wearing seat belts will avoid death or serious injury from an accident (I don’t know the actual statistic). So it is that not everyone who “accepts Christ” becomes truly “born again.” But it is a fact that many do. The problem is that we don’t have access to the heavenly records. But one can say 100% of those who deny Christ, who don’t believe in God, will not be “saved,” will not go to heaven. So what is the purpose of trying to get converts to the belief of atheism?

6. Atheists, who are a minority (maybe 10%) would prefer to be left alone, I believe. As a minority they are likely to be mocked, criticized, even persecuted. So why draw attention to themselves? Do they think the best defense is a strong offense?

7. Or do they really think naturalism is the truth about life? But, as we’ve already seen, naturalism excludes a big part of life--religious belief and the supernatural. And naturalism, which tends to attribute everything to atoms, DNA, and genes, and assumes consciousness exists in brain cells, says, in effect, we are at the mercy of our cells. This throws out free will and choice. We can’t help what we do. Yet we know this is not true. Morality, art, music, love, philosophy, conscience, etc., all argue against this. In fact, if my genes make me a Christian, how are your atheistic arguments going to change me? Are your genes stronger than my genes?

8. Atheistic books are mainly preaching to the choir anyway—not that atheists have a choir. It is unlikely that these books will serve much purpose in converting an already secular Western society to unbelief. The few Christian believers who buy their books are probably doing so for a Christian book club that is going to pound holes in their thinking anyway. I have read Dawkins, Hitchens, and Loftus (better than the first two) and find them frustratingly tedious and illogical, knowing, as I do, the other side of the story. Meanwhile Christianity is growing in Asia, Africa, and South America—apparently thousands of new converts daily.

9. So should atheists promote their atheism for the good of mankind? Atheism is supposedly a system of unbelief. According to their own way of thinking, therefore, atheists should not try to get others to believe in atheism. Atheists should be open-minded and tolerant of other people’s beliefs, which, after all, according to them, are relative (as is atheism, we assume) and a result of chance. Since atheistic secular humanism has legally been designated as a religion and, therefore, poisons everything it touches, it should not be spread to other people. Instead just let it naturally evolve until the whole world is, in a few million years, changed into atheism. After all, if there is no hell, what are atheists saving people from? Besides, to convert the world to atheism through the means of best-selling books would truly be a miracle, but atheists believe miracles don’t happen.