Why are there so many Atheism Blogs?

Why are there so many atheism blogs? I saw recently how one guy collects them all in one place so you can “feed” on a life without God, literally hundreds of blog links, enough reading for several years.

My question is: Why? Why this persistent, diligent pursuit to prove or convince themselves and others that there is no God. Something I read some time ago seems to address this question.

Charles Colson tells about Irina Ratushinskaya, a young girl in the Soviet Union years ago. She was trained in Communist schools and indoctrinated in atheism. She said she could never figure out why her teachers all pitched such a furious battle against someone they said didn’t exist. “God doesn’t exist.” Irina began to question: “Can’t they tell they are giving themselves away? Adults tell you there are no gremlins or ghosts. They tell you once or twice, and that’s it. But with God, they tell you over and over again. So He must exist – and He must be very powerful for them to fear Him so greatly.”

You see, something inside is telling the atheistic bloggers – God really does exist. Rather than yield to his love, the atheist will convince himself/herself that God doesn’t exist and in so doing, proves that he in fact does exist, but that they are unwilling to acknowledge it. The sheer volume of atheistic blogs testify to the existence of one they refuse to acknowledge due to mulish pride.

How Do I Miss God? – An Ancient Poet Answers

The fool [a fool is one who convinces himself that he knows more than he really knows and doesn’t really need to ask questions] says in his heart, [This is not a private conclusion that he/she comes to and keeps to themselves; it is an act of the will that he continues to say over and over again.] “There is no God.”

God will have no place in my life. A person can ask “Is there a God?” and not be a fool. A person can ask “If there is a God, can I know him?” and not be a fool. A person can go through extreme heartache, and wonder if there is a god. These are legitimate questions. But a person who looks around them and still they conclude as an act of their will that there is no God, that person is a fool, according to an ancient poet (Psalm 14:1). A fool is not stupid or intellectually dull; he’s self-willed, despite the evidence. If you think believing in God is by faith, try disbelieving in Him based on all the evidence. It takes a far greater faith to do so. People often ask the question, “How do I find God?” The question that I want to ask is “How do you miss Him?”

The First Cause and the Imagination

Henry Morris talks about the First Cause. Everything that exists is the result of a chain of events which has its root in some omnipotent First Cause. Furthermore, by studying the effects or all that we see around us, we can draw some implications about the First Cause. Simply put, says Morris “…Since the universe appears almost limitless in extent, the First Cause must be virtually infinite. Since the universe appears almost endless in duration, the First Cause must be virtually eternal. Since the universe pulsates with energy, the First Cause must be virtually omnipotent. Since the universe in phenomenally complex and contains intelligent life, the First Cause must be virtually omniscient. Since the universe (namely man) contains feeling and emotions and love and human relations, the First Cause must be personal. Since the universe contains goodness and righteousness and love and justice, the First Cause must be moral.”

“Thus reasoning from cause-and-effect leads us to conclude that the great First Cause of all things is an infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, personal, emotional, moral, spiritual, living Being. (Morgan, Beyond Reasonable Doubt!: Evidence for the Truth of Christianity).” This first cause is a Creative Artist who goes beyond the functional into the imagination and delights in it.

The Ten(der) Commandments?

God has given to us some boundaries that steer us away from the dangerous precipice and that help us to do relationships and life. And they are Ten(der) Boundaries. They are not harsh, nor are they unnecessarily restrictive. Some people know them as the Ten Commandments. But they are really the Ten(der) Commandments (to grab a line from Ron Mehl). In fact, it has been illustrated time and time again that we don’t break these Ten(der) Boundaries; they break us. When we break or violate them, we break a heart – God’s heart, and we break a life – our life. When we throw ourselves against them and the kind of life they advocate, our lives are shattered and our culture crumbles. When we ignore the boundaries we pay a price, and people we love pay a price, and people we don’t love pay a price. God gave us boundaries not to hurt us but to help us; not to hamper us but to release us; not to punish us but to protect us; not to nag but to enable us.

Ceasing to Believe in God

G. K. Chesterton said that when people cease to believe in God, it is commonly supposed that they believe in nothing. But it actually is far worse than this, asserts Chesterton. “They believe in anything.”

The Search For Meaning – Answer with Your Life

Man’s Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, argued that no human being should ask what the meaning of life is, but must recognize that it is each of us who is asked, and we can only answer with our own lives. We do not question life, but rather life questions us. The responsibility to find and live a meaningful life requires that we commit to a worldview. You’ve got one shot at this deal called life. You are going to give yourself to something in life. All people give themselves to something. They give themselves to pleasure or possessions or popularity or bank accounts or power, but always to something. What is that great something going to be for you? If you are searching for a worldview on which to base your life, then I humbly submit the Christian worldview. In this worldview, that great something is actually a Someone and eventually He answers all our questions. But in the interim, He simply offers Himself as the answer to life’s purpose and meaning.

What is my life purpose?

I remember hearing of a young lady from Fremont, California who scored a perfect score on an SAT exam, a test often required of those who are planning on going to college. She never missed a question. And she also scored a perfect score on the rigorous University of California acceptance index. Some time later, they asked this intelligent, bright young lady, “What is the meaning of life?” She replied: “I have no idea.” With no disrespect intended for this gifted young lady, she is characteristic of her generation. Millions of young Americans have grown up in America and have been given material blessings, educational opportunities, fantastic medical care, entertainment visual affects, and yet we have failed to teach them who they are and what they’re put here to do.

Here’s the question I would like to ask John, and Barak, and CEO’s, and celebrities, and political figures, and religious leaders…

What do you think the purpose of life is?

Why do we have a Bible?

The Bible is an anthology – it is a collection of 66 books into one book. The Bible is given to us for three primary reasons: to record the facts of history, to help us re-experience story, and to teach us theology.

First, the Bible records the facts of history. What we read in the Bible really happened. It’s not a book of fiction. It is not an attempt to fabricate the truth. Its purpose is not to deceive. When the Bible talks about places and peoples, these are confirmed from extra-biblical sources through archeology and other discoveries. There are ancient manuscripts that have survived the centuries and they are consistent with what we have in our Bibles today. There really was a guy named Jesus who lived, died, and rose again. It is an accurate representation of what happened and of what happens over and over again in human history. We don’t just read the Bible; it reads us. It tells us who we are and what we do.

Second, the Bible helps us to re-experience story. It is full of settings, and characters, and actions. Some characters, we want to be like. Others we want to avoid. But all of them speak to our stories and the Bible never airbrushes out the flaws of its characters (you read about King David’s adultery and the flaws of the apostles; this lends to its credibility). By the way, you are writing a story with your life; Someone out there is bringing the pieces of that story together. And you can bet, if there is a larger story in our lives, there is a Story-Teller. God is writing a story and it hangs together. All of these 66 books move the story along a bit, pushing the plot toward its final completion. For all its peculiarities and unevenness, the Bible has a simple story, among what appears to be several disconnected stories. It was written over a 1500 year period by forty people in three different languages and yet there is a consistency to the overarching story. God made man. Man rejected God at Satan’s prompting. God won’t give up until He wins man back through Jesus. God returns man to his original plan. That is the larger story. “The dogma is the drama,” said Dorothy Sayers. The Gospel has all the elements of a great story. The Bible begins with the creation of all things, it takes a plunge into evil (Genesis 3), it meanders through fallen human history, and tells of one who disguised himself (Jesus) in order to win the love of a girl (the Church). By the time we get to the end, we have a king on a white horse who rides in to rescue the girl just in the nick of time. He conquers all evil, gets the bride (the Bride of Christ) and lives happily ever after in a new city with a new garden in a palace decorated with jewels. What is there that is boring about this story! If we lose the dogma of solid biblical teaching, we lose the drama. Instead of being confronted and changed by the truth, we wallow in therapy with no larger story to live for. Salvation is essentially a story of restoration. You’re invited up into it. It answers our deepest God-Questions: where we came from, what went wrong in the world, what God is doing to fix it, and how we factor into that plan. The Bible reveals a sacred story. In the beginning, God created us good. Something went drastically wrong and we sinned. But God has sent a Rescuer to deliver us from ourselves. The Bible is a love story, a sacred romance, where Jesus gets the girl.

Third, the Bible teaches us theology; it teaches us about God and truth. When we say that God is personal, we mean that He communicates with us. He has spoken to us, revealing Himself and how He wants us to live. There are two things that stand out about God. He is a self-concealer as well as a self-revealer. God is a self-concealer. He hides – and seems at times – shy to intervene in our world. God must hide in order for a free-will world to be possible. The direct presence of God would inevitably overwhelm our freedom. God gives everyone the room to either choose or reject. He’s a hidden God and He will not force love. Those who want to find Him or be found by Him can, and those who want to reject Him can do that as well. But God wants you to see Him and know him. That’s why we can say that God is not only a self-concealer… God is also a self-revealer God communicates who He is and how He wants us to live. There are two primary books that God uses to communicate and self-disclose or reveal Himself. One is the book of nature. God reveals Himself through His world and what He has made. The other is the book of His Word – the Bible. Looking at God’s world is like looking at a painting that the Artist has painted. Looking into the Bible is like an actual conversation with the Artist Himself. God loves to communicate. He talks through burning bushes and braying donkeys. He sends messages through storms and rainbows and earthquakes and dreams. He whispers in a still small voice. And he also speaks to human authors who then under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote God’s message to us. The Bible is a book of ancient, proven, trustworthy words. Jesus quoted from the Old Testament and endorsed the writers of the New Testament. Prophets predicted things years before they happened and they came to pass. Archeological discoveries have confirmed its accuracy. There are ancient manuscripts to verify their reliability. More than anything else, the Bible is about a Person. In the Old Testament – someone is coming. In the Gospels – He is here. In the Epistles – He is coming again! The Bible is held together by a Person. God creates the world, the world gets lost, and God seeks to restore it in Jesus. That means the Bible is about you and me, whom God also made and lost and seeks. We are not alone on this planet. Someone is out there and He reveals what kind of story we’ve fallen into. And he graciously seeks us out. I guess you could also say that this story holds us together – this Person holds us together. You must have two things in life: a person and a story, and even the story must be about a Person, said one author. God packages theology in story, rather than just raw facts. Don’t make theology into a religion of facts and miss the romance. Stop reducing the text to formulas for personal growth and how I can get rich.

What went wrong in our Universe? A Theist Answers

Eons ago, the earth was a wasteland, a cosmic garbage dump. Everything was sort of floating together in a formless mass. It was a swamp. Some would contend that this was Satan’s doings. He makes a garbage dump of what God had made up until this point in this specific area of the universe. Wherever Satan rules, he creates chaos. Earth was a “Silent Planet” in a vast universe that echoes cosmic praises. Earth was a place in God’s great universe that refused to sing anthems of praise to our one true God. The universe awaits how the one true Trinitarian God, full of love and grace, justice and righteousness, will respond to the rebellion. What will he do with this Satanic holding area known as Earth?

Here’s what God does. God stepped into the chaos of Satan’s earthly realm in Genesis 1 and does the unthinkable. 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” It’s as if He said to Satan, “I am going to create a creature of less beauty than you Satan and even though this creature (mankind) doesn’t have your angelic ability or power, if he lives in a trusting, obeying relationship with me, he/she will be far greater than an angel who chose to rebel against me. A lesser (man) living in dependence upon God is greater than an angel (Satan) who is living in independence of God. God announced to Satan in Genesis, “Satan, in your realm, in your house where I allow you to exist and operate, I am going to create something beautiful out of the chaos. Furthermore, I will put man in charge. He will rule your house – the birds and fish of the sea that I will create will sing my praise in your house.” “Satan, I’m going to clean up your garbage dump. I’m going to make it beautiful and demonstrate my glory there. I’m going to create mankind, and they will rule your house!” The planet Earth will be silent no more. No longer will it be a place where Satan and his angels are constrained to a formless, dark mass. This place will erupt with life, my kind of life. The planet will be silent no more because I’m giving it over to God-glorifying human-beings (for more see the book by Tony Evans).

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