I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist argues that Christianity requires the least faith of all worldviews because it is the most reasonable. The authors provide the evidence for truth, God, and the Bible. Here’s a valuable resource for those interested in examining the reasonableness of the Christian faith.
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Short Excerpt pp 28:
You may be thinking, “The atheist has to muster a lot more faith than the Christian! What possibly could Geisler and Turek mean by that?” We mean that the less evidence you have for your position, the more faith you need to believe it (and vice versa). Faith covers a gap in knowledge. And it turns out that atheists have bigger gaps in knowledge because they have far less evidence for their beliefs than Christians have for theirs. In other words, the empirical, forensic, and philosophical evidence strongly supports conclusions consistent with Christianity and inconsistent with atheism. Here are a few examples of that evidence that we’ll unpack in the ensuing chapters:
1. The scientific evidence overwhelmingly confirms that the universe exploded into being out of nothing. Either someone created something out of nothing (the Christian view), or no one created something out of nothing (the atheistic view). Which view is more reasonable? The Christian view. Which view requires more faith? The atheistic view.
2. The simplest life form contains the information-equivalent of 1,000 encyclopedias. Christians believe only an intelligent being can create a life form containing the equivalent of 1,000 encyclopedias. Atheists believe nonintelligent natural forces can do it. Christians have evidence to support their conclu- sion. Since atheists don’t have any such evidence, their belief requires a lot more faith.
3. Hundreds of years beforehand, ancient writings foretold the coming of a man who would actually be God. This man-God, it was foretold, would be born in a particular city from a particular bloodline, suffer in a particular way, die at a particular time, and rise from the dead to atone for the sins of the world. Immediately after the predicted time, multiple eyewitnesses proclaimed and later recorded that those predicted events had actually occurred. Those eyewitnesses endured persecution and death when they could have saved themselves by denying the events. Thousands of people in Jerusalem were then con- verted after seeing or hearing of these events, and this belief swept quickly across the ancient world. Ancient historians and writers allude to or confirm these events, and archaeology cor- roborates them. Having seen evidence from creation that God exists (point 1 above), Christians believe these multiple lines of evidence show beyond a reasonable doubt that God had a hand in these events. Atheists must have a lot more faith to explain away the predictions, the eyewitness testimony, the willingness of the eyewitnesses to suffer and die, the origin of the Christian church, and the corroborating testimony of the other writers, archeological finds, and other evidence that we’ll investigate later.
Now perhaps these three points have raised in your mind some questions and objections. They should, because we’re leaving out a lot of the detail that we’ll unpack throughout the book. The main point for now is that you see what we mean when we say that every worldview— including atheism—requires some degree of faith.
Even skeptics have faith. They have faith that skepticism is true. Likewise, agnostics have faith that agnosticism is true. There are no neu- tral positions when it comes to beliefs. As Phillip Johnson so aptly put it, “One who claims to be a skeptic of one set of beliefs is actually a true believer in another set of beliefs.” In other words, atheists, who are naturally skeptical of Christianity, turn out to be true believers in atheism. As we shall see, if they are honest with the evidence, they need a lot more faith to maintain their atheistic beliefs than Christians need to maintain theirs.
I’ll number my points to coincide with the author’s
1. Actually, seeing as how there is no direct evidence for either claim, then both claims are just as likely and just as unlikely. Also, emerging physics theory shows that the universe can be shown to be cyclical, meaning it contracted and then expanded via the “Big Bang”. So the “something out of nothing” isn’t really true. Also, atheists don’t claim anything was ‘created’, so saying “nothing created…” just shows a lack of understanding of the viewpoint which you are criticising.
2. RNA (the precursor to DNA found in bacteria and viruses) molecoles have actually been created in a laboratory using a chemical “soup” as theorized by evolutionary biologists. This direct, empirical (and other such large words the author uses to try and hide the fact that he’s making the evidence fit his pre-formed conclusions, rather than drawing conclusions from the evidence) evidence demonstrates that genetic material can in fact form from a random assortment of chemicals.
3. First, point 1 proved nothing (expect that the author doesn’t understand the link between evidence and conclusions). The lack of evidence does not suppport your claim any more than it would mine if I were to say something ludicrous like “this means pink unicorns created the universe”. This would seem highly improbable to you, and you’d want my proof. This is how we atheists feel about claims that a god created the universe, it just doesn’t make sense to us.
Second, “archaeology corroborates this” doesn’t make any sense in this context. Archaeology involves the study of ancient ruins and such, from which you cannot get any evidence about specific events. You can only hope to get a very general understanding that a civilization existed and the layout of said ruins. For example, the ruins of ancient Troy were found, but does that mean the Trojan Horse really existed? Who knows. Unless we find the Horse itself we have no way of proving what is historical fact and what is just a story.
Third, there is no proof of said prophecy being true. Stick with me for a second and I’ll explain:
a. The prophecy was transmitted by word of mouth for a while. I’m sure you all played “telephone” when you were a kid, the message never stays consistent and gets incredibly vague and distorted.
b. The aforementioned vagueness allows the prophecy to easily be fulfilled by someone with prior knowledge to it.
c. The aforementioned stories were but into one book (see:bible) hundreds of years after they occurred (by Roman politicians no less) and were then hand-written and translated by hand for centuries. All of this leaves considerable doubt as to the accuracy of these claims.
and d. Just because a lot of people in the ancient world believed something to be true doesn’t mean it was. These same people believed such things as “the earth is flat” and “sex with virgins removes STDs” while simultaneously having virtually no concept of things like gravity, medicine and basic sanitation.
4. My final point (linked to the final paragraph of the exerpt). The author seems to have no concept of definitions. Skepticism is not a “faith”. It is, in fact, the lack of faith in something until it can be proven to you. Agnosticism is similarly not a faith, it is a viewpoint saying “we do not know and we do not presently have the means to know” when it comes to a god. Atheism means non-belief in any god, and is in this way akin to skepticism. No faith is required here, only a questioning attitude (i.e. “does this make sense?”)
I, like virtually all atheists, would gladly believe in your god if you could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a god exists using real empirical evidence (sorry, the bible doesn’t count as empirical evidence as it’s a book filled with only stories) and that your version is better than Allah, Shiva, Buddah, etc.
Comment by darkside — October 22, 2009 @ 1:32 pm
Did you even read the book?
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Comment by Adam — December 14, 2009 @ 1:38 am
Darkside,
I, like virtually all Christians, would gladly believe in “no God” if you could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that “no God” exists using real empirical evidence (sorry, the Cosmic Rebound theory is disproven by the Second Law of Thermodynamics and stay with me I will use your own words against you here, I qoute:
“RNA molecules have actually been “CREATED” in a laboratory using a chemical “soup”. How does this disprove my theory of a “CREATOR”? Did the scientist not use “Inteilligent Design” to “CREATE” this molecule?)
PLEASE RESOND
Comment by morippy — January 24, 2010 @ 5:31 pm
Darkside
you are making the whole point and don’t even see it! RNA molecules were created by scientists they still had to have a creator!!! so who created the first!? oh the natural world forces that don’t exsist yet because natural world forces where made after the world thus you cant use those to explain how the world started! The “no God” is harder for me to believe than anything see do you go around cheating and stealing? why not MORAL where do we get this natural feeling of “right” and wrong otherwise like the book says who is to say that hitler was a less good person than Mother Tersa!? So you know what is right and wrong HOW exaclty more RNA creating in the labratory?? and your 4th statement is complete ignorance!!! no question It does take faith to believe in no god if your questioning attitude leads you to no god
Comment by Confused Responder — March 31, 2010 @ 12:29 pm
Darkside,
By stating that the universe began to exist, you are saying that at one point in time, matter, energy, and even time itself did not exist due to the fact that all 3 are connected. Now, last time i checked rocks dont just pop up in places and things dont just appear. Now relating to scriptures, if you ever have the chance to visit cambridge, head over to the archieves, there are over 6,000 copies of ancient biblical and non biblical sources that are dated thousands of years before christ. To be an atheist, Christian, agnostic, you must have faith in your decision even though you do not know all the facts. I am skeptical of buddism and athesim because it takes more blind faith to be either than a christian. Every conceptual worldview requires faith whether you like it or not.
Comment by Snowman Bob — October 5, 2010 @ 3:50 pm