Atheism

Many people choose to believe atheistically, given the following logical assumptions:

1. God is omnipotent.
2. God is good.
3. There is suffering.

Why, indeed, would an all-powerful, wholly-good God – the stereotypical Judeo-Christian God – allow suffering to occur in the world? If He created it, why would he leave it to war, poverty, disease and disaster? Why create man and subject him to loss and hurt, strife, pain, and death? This is a valid question for all of us to contemplate, and it could understandably lead one to reject the idea that God exists.

However, it is important to remember that this line of reasoning only applies to the rejection of the “good” god of religions like Christianity and Judaism. The argument that “suffering exists” cannot be used to dismiss the idea of a neutral “god” or a balancing force, as in the eastern belief systems such as Hinduism, Taoism, or Buddhism, because a neutral god wouldn’t care anyway, and it wouldn’t be an apparent contradiction of his nature. If indeed the atheist chooses to not believe in God because of this, it implies a rejection of God, not a god. That’s a subtle-but-important difference that gets lost in these discussions. I think a lot of atheists are atheists because they are rejecting the notion of God as opposed to accepting the idea that there is no god of any kind.

I want to show that rejecting a belief in God based on the existence of suffering is a flawed logical argument. (The choice of how to believe is left to other dissertations.) The problem is that He created people with a “free will,” and this free will allows people to do whatever they would like to do, to believe or not to believe, to do good or to do evil. It cannot be helped that people have made poor choices which have resulted in the suffering that we see today. We reap what we sow.

The most common example of the bad decisions people make that atheists like to talk about are wars, especially those that have been fought over “religion.” (All wars are actually about money, but people use religion as a way of generating sympathy for their side.) Surely any and all war is bad, right? How could a good God stand by and let someone murder millions of innocent people?

My favorite scripture makes the whole concept of the God of the Bible very clear:

Acts 17:22-28, “Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.”

The very idea of God as a benevolent entity must be founded on the assertion that He doesn’t force His will upon us, as that would be evil. Further, since God cannot contradict His nature, we are left to our own will, and we cannot blame Him for our poor choices.

Since the “evil” that we see is thus a product of ourselves, we cannot dismiss the concept of the Judeo-Christian God as contradictory. The alleged contradiction is, itself, fundamentally flawed. It misstates the nature of God. Yes, He is good. But He is not selectively good. He is no “respecter of persons;” He is fair. He doesn’t force anyone to do anything, or take away their choice to do so. When you read the entire Bible, what you find is that He already had angels to keep Him company. What He wanted was something more, a companion that would choose to be His friend. This whole creation would be for nothing if it didn’t allow people to “feel after Him” and seek the real truth. That’s the power of it; that’s the beauty of it.

Another standing argument against the concept of the Judeo-Christian God is the problem of babies being born with some sort of terrible disease. However, it was “original sin” which introduced corruption itself into this world.

Genesis 3:17-19, “And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

The other, very common argument that atheists like to put forth is that a “good” God couldn’t possibly subject innocents to disease, from a child that develops cancer to a baby born with a horrible birth defect. I know it sucks, but the Bible shows that this isn’t intended as punishment.

John 9:1-3, “And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”

It’s a consequence of original sin, and a chance for people to draw closer to God. Whether people feel that way or not, God didn’t cause it, He doesn’t take pleasure in it, and it’s not a contradiction of His nature that it happens.

Lastly, if there is only one God, and one way to believe, you’d think out of everything else, that would be clear, right? And if there were a “God,” He wouldn’t allow all the horrors of war, disease, famine, and pestilence to be committed against His creation, right? Wrong. To prove – beyond any shadow of doubt – that God was God, or God was Jesus, or God was Jehovah, or God was Buddha, or God was The Great Spirit would take the freedom of choice away. If there were only one way to believe, then there wouldn’t be belief; it would simply be fact, and this misses the point of religion being a walk of faith entirely.

I realize that this is a too-convenient cop-out in a logical sense, to say that God, by His own rules, cannot be proven to exist, but that’s the situation presented in the Bible. Whether or not you are comfortable with that notion is another issue. No matter; I believe in the God of the Bible. The onus is upon YOU to line up YOUR thinking to THAT standard, and come to grips with it. Even if I’m doing a poor job of represting that Truth, the ball is still in your court. I refuse to be boxed in to an either-or situation of man’s devising when the underlying assumptions don’t allow God to possess any more capacity than man can understand.

In our usual social convention, it would be appropriate to say something like, “I’m sorry that you don’t…,” but I can’t do that. I won’t apologize for what’s in the Bible. I understand that parts of it may be tough to believe. In fact, the Bible itself says that without the Holy Ghost to guide your thinking, you’re not going to be able to understand the deeper things of God. I didn’t write it; that’s just what it says. Logic and reason can only take you so far. This is a spiritual journey, and there is a lot more territory to be discovered outside of your brain, and your pride.