Faith: For Christians and Atheists Alike

Atheists are very quick to point out that Christians use faith. This is true. Romans 11:6 says that it is impossible to please God without faith. Many atheists claim that this is why they are not Christians. They claim that having faith is not logical. Mark Twain once said, "Faith is believing something you know ain't true." Another quote says, "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." I recently came across an atheistic article by Jerry Wilson who says, "Faith is the act of treating something as factual when it is not backed up by any facts or empirical evidence." He goes on to say, "believing in something without evidence is childlike" and "Having faith isn't something to be proud of. It means you have left reason behind. It means that believing in something because you want it to be true is more important than believing in the truth." Well, isn't that just fantastic. Christians are stupid because we have faith, and having faith is "childlike". We might as well have faith in Santa Clause and the Easter bunny. I wish we were all smart and sophisticated like the atheistic community. They would never be so silly as to have faith in something. Or would they?

Let's take a look at how sophisticated atheists believe we came into being... A long time ago, there was nothing. Then nothing became something. Then something exploded. Then something became the entire universe. Then the entire universe was made perfect so that it could one day support life on this tiny planet called Earth in the Milky Way galaxy (by complete chance). Then on this tiny planet called earth there was a bunch of rocks. Then rain started falling on all these rocks and it formed a warm chemical soup. Then one day lightening struck this chemical soup and it formed life (we think). Then one day this tiny particle of life started evolving. Now after about 4.5 billion years, this one tiny particle of life is responsible for every single species on the planet. This process is called evolution. This can also explain consciousness, human rationality and morality. Oh, but it can't explain free will, so that must not exist. And they know all of this without using one bit of faith. Therefore, they must have "empirical evidence" to support this entire theory. Do they? Not even close.

Let's start from the very beginning. We have known for many years now that the Universe is not eternal. It did have a beginning. Scientists such as Alan Guth, who is an expert on the Big Bang, will tell you that at one point our universe was "literally nothing." This begs the question, how did nothing become something? Where is the "empirical evidence" for that? Have you ever, in your entire life, witnessed something spontaneously form from nothing? I think it's pretty safe to say that you have not. And you never will, because it does not happen. Atheists, on the other hand, believe that once upon a time it did happen. Why? Well, considering they have no evidence to back that up, I guess they just have faith. I think Frank Turek said it best when he stated, "Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could. If you can't believe that something came from nothing, you don't have enough faith to be an atheist."

Next up, is design. How do atheists explain the fact that the entire universe seems to be constructed to support life on earth? I mean, the chance of our universe supporting life is very small. Some physicists claim that the chances are one in ten raised to the 229. This is logically impossible. But atheists claim that, against all odds, it must have happened by chance. How is that even possible? Well, there are a few theories out there to explain the design that appears in the universe. One of those theories is the "Multiple Universe theory". This theory claims that there are an infinite number of universes. Basically, if the chances of a universe supporting life is 10 raised to the 229, then there must be 10 raised to the 229 universes. This theory is accepted by many big time atheists, including Steven Weinburg and Richard Dawkins. So what is the evidence to support this "Multiple Universe theory"? There is none. Weinburg admits, "These are very speculative ideas... without any experimental support." What was it called again, when one believed something without any "empirical evidence"? Oh yeah, faith.

Last but not least, the origin of life. The Law of Biogenesis states that life cannot form from non-life. But to be an atheist, one must believe that life formed from non-life, without any help from something supernatural. So, how did that happen? Well, they don't know. They never have, and they never will. Not only did life form on it's own, but it is also very complex. Richard Dawkins realizes this as he states that the simplest living cell contains more information than multiple sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica. So how does Dawkins, one of the world's most praised atheists, explain how life began? He says, "However improbable the origin of life may be, it must have happened, because we are here." Wow. It takes a lot of faith to believe things like this.

I hope that by now, you have seen my point. I didn't have to mention consciousness or morality, which an atheist can also not explain, because you can already see that they use faith every day. So the next time you hear an atheist harp about how Christians only want to talk about faith, just laugh and bring up some of these points. It should be very interesting to hear how they respond.

- Colton

Just Plain Common Sense

Does God exist? Yes, he does. The book of Genesis explains to us very clearly that there is a God, and that he created the universe in six days. The skeptic will disagree. The skeptic will say that I have no proof for this claim. I do have proof. As a matter of fact, I will show that all I really need is just a little bit of common sense.
What is my proof? How can I use common sense to prove that God really does exists? Well, let me explain. Let's say you come over to my house, and you see a painting on my wall that you really like. You then ask me, "Who painted it?". I say to you, "Nobody. I just got home one day, and that painting was just sitting there." Would you believe that? Of course you wouldn't. Because we all know that if something is designed, it obviously had to have had a designer. Hopefully, nobody would disagree with that. This is common sense. So, if I could prove to you without a shadow of a doubt that the universe we live in was designed, you would have to admit that it had a designer. I don't see how anyone could disagree with that.
So is the universe designed? Yes, it is. How can I prove this? By using the Anthropic Principle. The Anthropic Principle is the mounting evidence that has many scientists believing that the universe is extremely fine-tuned (designed) to support human life here on Earth. Let's look at some of the Anthropic Constants.
Anthropic Constant 1: Oxygen level. The oxygen level on earth is at 25 percent. If it were altered in anyway, life on earth would be impossible. Anthropic Constant 2: Jupiter. If Jupiter was not in its current orbit, the earth would be bombarded with space material, and life on earth would be impossible. Anthropic Constant 3: Gravity. If the gravitational force were altered by .00000000000000000000000000000000001 percent, life on earth would be impossible. If these three constants aren't proof that the universe was designed, I don't know what is. But it just so happens that these three aren't the only constants in the Anthropic Principle. Actually, there are 122 of them. What are the chances that all of these constants could have occurred by chance, without design? Astrophysicist Hugh Ross has calculated that the probability is once in every 10 raised to the 138. That's the number 10 with 138 zeros behind it.
There is absolutely no way that anyone who has looked at all the facts could say that this universe was not designed. As we have already stated, anything that is designed must have had a designer. So based off of what we just saw, we can establish that the universe had to have had a designer. It's just plain common sense.

- Colton Scott

"Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith. If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God." - James Tour, Nanoscientist

Why Do I Believe in God?

Why do I believe in God? I remember the very first time I asked myself that question. I was around twelve years old, laying in bed late at night, and the thought just hit me. I mean, my parents have always told me that there was a God, but how could I know for sure? How could I know that they weren't mistaken? I had never heard any good reason to believe in God outside of the bible. God had never talked to me. I had asked God to let me see a miracle so that I could believe, but he never did. As far as I was concerned, there wasn't one good reason for me to believe in God, or anything supernatural for that matter. It was a very scary thought. I didn't like it. But it was there, and I couldn't get rid of it.
I struggled with that thought for years. When I was sixteen, I finally put the thought behind me. I was at a christian youth camp (Camp Wiregrass) when I finally decided that there just had to be a God. I saw so many young people worshiping God with all their hearts. I could feel the emotion for myself, and I just knew that this "God thing" had to be legit. I was baptized into Christ later that year for the remission of my sins, and I put all my worry and doubt of God's existence behind me for good. Or so I thought.
It wasn't until after I graduated from high school and was getting prepared to start my adult life when the question struck me again. Why do I believe in God? The doubt had taken its a game to a whole new level. Now I was old enough to understand the theory of Evolution, and that most scientists believed it to be a fact. Now I understood that there are many other religions out in the world, and that the followers of those religions believe that there religion is true, just like I do. What gave me the right to believe that I was right and they were wrong? What really hit me the hardest, was the matter of Hell. I knew what God commanded us to do in order to go to Heaven, and based off my own personal observations, I came to the conclusion that about 9 out of 10 people, including many of my loved ones, weren't living the way God had commanded. Did this mean that around 90 percent of people on earth, including people I loved dearly, were going to Hell? I just didn't want to believe that. As a matter of fact, I refused to believe that. If God loved us so much, why would he allow that to happen? What gave God the right to send so many people, including some who I would consider to be really good people, to an eternity of torment? These are the kinds of questions that I could not seem to get out of my head, and once again, my faith had been rattled.
I finally decided that it was time for me to make a decision. I wasn't going to play the fence any longer. Was I going to believe in the God of the Bible or not? I started investigating for myself. I wasn't to going to shy away from things like evolution anymore. I was going to study it, with an open mind, and see what kind of facts that it really had. I was going to do more in depth studies of the bible to see if it really would prevail as the inspired word of God. I was going to take to look at history to see if the bible's accounts of Jesus really were true. So what did I find?
In all the research that I have done, I have come away with the conclusion that the God of the bible is the one true God. I don't understand how anyone who has taken a look at all the evidence could come away with anything else. Over the next few weeks, I am going to be answering the question, "Why do I believe in God?". I am going to discuss why evolution is a theory and not a fact, and I am going to inform you why some of your science text books lie to you. I am also going to talk about how we know that Jesus Christ really did live on this earth 2,000 years ago, and how we can know for sure that the bible is 100 percent accurate. The goal of this discussion is to help you grow in your faith, and to better equip you to defend the reason for what you believe in (1 Peter 3:15). I am going to do my best to explain these topics in a way that a college or high school student can really understand. If you would like to study these topics on your own at a higher level, I would suggest that you visit www.apologeticspress.org. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know, and I will do my best to answer them. - Colton