Does God believe in atheists?
Intro: There’s a story told about a Professor of biology who was an atheist. Every year he began his lectures on evolution by asking if any of the students were religious. When they identified themselves he boasted that by the end of his course they’d all know evolution was the truth and would have become atheists. Over the years many a student lost their faith during his course.
One day our atheist professor was walking through the forest, marvelling at the wonderful world evolution has given us. His wondering was interrupted by a loud growl. He turned to see a large, hungry and cranky grizzly bear charging towards him. The professor began to run, but it was no use, the bear was too fast. The professor tripped and next thing he knew the grizzly was standing above him, one foot on his chest, his paw ready to strike. With terror in his eyes the atheist professor realised he was about to experience survival of the fittest first hand.
At that point he cried out "God help me!"
Time stopped! The bear froze. The forest was silent. A bright light shone down upon the atheist and a voice boomed from the heavens, "You deny my existence for all of these years, teach others I don’t exist, and even credit creation to a cosmic accident. Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to count you as a believer?"
The atheist professor looked up into the light, "It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a Christian now…but perhaps could you make the bear a Christian?"
"Very well," the voice said.
The light went out and the sounds of the forest resumed. And then the bear dropped its right paw, brought both paws together, bowed its head and spoke: "Lord, for this food which I am about to receive, I am truly thankful."
You know when push comes to shove atheists are few and far between there just surpressing the truth they know deep inside. That’s what I think any way a one time atheist.
Did you know that the first atheists were Christians? The word ’atheist’ today means one who denies the existence of God. But before that at the time of Christianity it meant one who worshipped one God alone rather than a diversity of gods.
Atheism has got a grip in the mindset of the UK today around 40% of the nation would adhere to being atheists. Its not surprising when we see the bias of the BBC towards evolution as fact and the liberal mindset towards morality ever decreasing. So unlike in the USA where God and issues of morality played an important role in elections in the UK it’s completely different issue!
One time press secretary Alistar Campbell announced on behalf of Tony Blair ‘We don’t do God.’
If I had £10 every time somebody said, ‘ I’m an atheist!’
It quite a bold statement to make ‘I’m an atheist!’ when you think about it you would have to been everywhere, seen everything, know everything, done everything to claim categorically there is no God
A new belief system
Richard Dawkins was recently asked “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?” “I believe but I cannot prove, that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection,’’www.edge.org
Romans 1:25.They exchanged the truth of God for a lie
Atheism has been a growing trait in the west since the enlightenment period of the 18th century. This is a period when the world view made a huge paradigm shift from a sacral worldview (God was behind everything) to a secular worldview system of thought that rejects all forms of faith or religion and accepts only what can be derived from the senses.
This has brought about modernism – the belief that reason and science have delivered humanity from medieval superstition and ignorance and given us the modern ‘progress’ whose benefits we now enjoy.
GK Chesterton said ‘when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing- they believe in anything.’
The Bible isn’t quiet about the atheist? Atheist- atheoi – godless ones.
Psalm 14. The fool in his heart says there is no God.
Prv14: 12. A way that seems right to a man but its end is death.
Job: 20.5. The joy of the godless lasts but a moment
Tit. 1v15. both their minds and their consciences are defiled.
Eph2: 12 without hope and without God in the world.
The atheist is without excuse
Rom.1:18-25. Ultimately God tells us that the atheist is without excuse in regard to belief in him because the evidence is overwhelming!
Ills Imagine a crime scene as the detectives reach the scene the incident has taken place but they can pick up evidence from the scene like circumstantial evidence, forensic evidence, eye witness accounts etc.
We also can seek out evidence which will substantiate the existance of God. The evidence is there we just have to be willing to look.
I can think of 7 good reasons why the atheist really needs to re-examine his/her worldview. And I challenge you tonight to engage your heart and mind.
1. The universe v20. being understood from what has been made.
General revelation
Since the creation of the world God has revealed himself to Humanity: The General revelation of creation. ‘In the beginning God created,’ this is a simple statement and yet profound it’s a challenging concept confronting the modern mind. That in the beginning the designer created the universe rather than chance!
Propagated by many is the big bang hypothesis
The likelihood of a Big bang is absurd, because information is always destroyed not increased.
Imagine if I decided to stick a ton of dynamite under McDonalds (which I am not) and blew it! Would it create a chain store of further burger bars I think not! No matter how much time you gave it!
The universe has intelligent design written all over it.
Psalm 19.1. The heavens declare the glory of God: the skies proclaim the work of His hands.2.Day after day they pour forth speech night after night they display knowledge
Did you know this vast galaxy we live in is spinning at a speed of 490,000 miles an hour but even at that speed it would take 200 million years to make one rotation.
Did you know there are over 1 billion galaxies just like ours in the universe.
Did you know astronomers have found a wall of stars 40 billion light years long. 20 billion light years wide and 10 billion light years deep and 1 light year is equivalent to a trillion miles. And they can’t see past it!
Did you know the sun is 93 million miles away…. Yet if it was any closer we would frazzle any further away life just would’nt exist. Look at the 9 planets in our solar system, yet planet earth is unique the only planet which sustains human life.
Sir Isaac Newton said, ‘this most elegant system of suns and planets could only arise from the purpose and sovereignty of an intelligent and mighty being.’ He rules them all as the Sovereign Lord of all things.’
2. Humanity. V20 being understood from what has been made
We have designer hallmarks all over us the Bible says we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Yet the atheist propagates that you long lost ancestor was a product of primordial soup, which means: Through the Ghew, through the zoo, to you! Are we just apes in designer clothes?
Voltaire once exclaimed that men are ‘tormented atoms in a bit of mud, devoured by death, a mockery of fate. This world, this theatre of pride and wrong, swarms with sick fools who talk of happiness.’
You are amazing your brain can take on board more calculations in a split second than any Cray super computer. At birth, a baby’s brain contains 100 billion neurons, roughly as many nerve cells as there are stars in the Milky Way
The human eye can distinguish 6 million different colors it is made up of 5 sub systems. The human eye could have never evolved over a piece meal step by step random chance process.
Charles Darwin page 75 Origin of Species says,
To suppose the eye with all it’s intimate contrivances for adjusting the focuses to different distances. For adjusting different amounts of light and for the correction of spherical chromatic aberration. Could have been formed by natural selection seems I freely confess absurd in the highest degree.
Mousetrap illustration: For the mouse trap to work all the parts need to be present and functioning, its the same with the eye.
Information sciences
Take human DNA the chromosomes of information, which make up who we are! It has a specific order and a specific job to do it’s not random.
If we to unravel out our DNA. Steve Jones says, ‘The human DNA is long enough in your own body to go to the moon and back 8,000 time’s
Bill Gates said, “Our DNA is like a software program only much more complex than any we have been able to write.” (All Software has a programmer.)It all points to you having a designer!
Ills; Imagine for a minute your fridge magnets found on the floor when you came home from work but those fridge magnets left a message ’Honey Ive gone to the mall I will see you later.’
Straight away as soon as you see that message you infer straight away some intelligence has gone into leaving that message it didn’t just happen. The same is true with our DNA its a code its a message left by an intelligent designer.
3. Spirituality v22 v25
Pascal said "there is within every person a ‘God shaped vacuum." Spirituality can be found anywhere from the darkest reaches of Papa New Guinea to the techno age of Western Europe you will see people worshipping.It could be the gods of nature to the demi-gods of consumerism. (Shopping malls of the west have become consumer temples)
Another paradigm shift is taking place today from a secular modern worldview to a post-modern worldview. Objectivity is the premise for modernism in post modern culture subjectivity comes to the fore, people are beginning to realise that modernism with mans reason with its only guiding principle do not suffice in brining meaning to ones life!
Truth has become subjective seen in many pop songs sung today like the British band the Manic street preachers who sing about ’ You tell me your truth and I’ll tell you mine.’
So people are searching for spirituality, (New age shops spiritual programs are increasing just go down to Covent Garden in London and see the new age shops).
We see this amongst the rich and famous. Tom Cruise and John Travolta with scientology: Madonna and Kabballa: Kylie Minogue, Drew Barrymore with a New age Hinduism.
Pick and mix spirituality:
Kylie Minogue said ‘The soul is the endlessness of our beings. The soul is infinite and were just passing through. I have lived before but I’m not very advanced in my series of lives. I’m not even in double figures.’
Drew Barrymore said ‘Either I am the reincarnation of my grandfather or he is in spiritual limbo and won’t pass on till he knows I’m okay.’
4. Morality and justice v28 He gave them over!
Where has our morality come from? Why do we think the way we do? Why do we act the way we do? If we have just evolved what’s the accounting for morality and justice in this world? If we had just evolved we have no right to cry out against evil and injustice its just nature, it’s the way we’ve evolved (the survival of the fittest!)
Jeffery Darmers killed 17 homosexuals, and ate them! In a statement before his death he said, "If man is a product of blind chance and there is no God and there is no meaning to life then who are you to tell me what is right and wrong?"
Why is it our hearts are grieved at immorality and injustice? Like Murder, rape, child abuse, Paedophilia, violence, muggings, theft, genocide, and such like. Why do we cry out injustice!
I mean come on, there is a difference between peeling an orange and a couple of men opening a woman’s inside up to see the sex of a baby for a bet?
Because we are made in the Image of God and are of fundamental worth, we all posses a conscience we have a conscience, unlike all other creatures on the face of the planet. Yet the reason for a spiraling evil is that all of humanity is given over to a depraved mind v28.
What is conscience?
It is the inner aspect of life of the individual where a sense of right and wrong is developed. It enables to react to a code of morality, which has been given to us by God. Rom 2v15 Gods Law written upon our hearts.
5. The existence of the Bible
We live in an age where 200 million emails criss-cross the planet every day, where the form of communication is ever changing and yet people are still willing to hear the voice of God through the Bible. (Best selling Book year in year out it kicks the Da Vinci code into touch.
Why is the Bible so unique? Tim 3v16. All Scripture is God breathed.
Ills. Anything worth while in life a manual book generally comes with it. You know a new Car, phone,computer and so on and its the same with life. God has not left us gropping around in the dark. hew has given us a life application book for seeing us through this life and into eternity.
No to mention over 300 Prophecies fulfilled about Jesus about locations about times etc. How could that happen? Whats the probability?
Evidence of the Manuscripts of Antiquity.
(40 authors 1600 years covering 3 continents 3 languages) To get these authors to concoct such a fabrication would be impossible! Manuscripts backing the authenticity of the NT alone, over 24,633 copies no other historical document begins to approach such number.
Isaac Newton said, “the Bible is a rock which all the hammers of criticism have failed to chip.”
How can we trust the accuracy of the Bible?
In 1947 Dead sea scrolls were found, 500 parchments in caves at Qumran, they dated back to 250 BC within those scrolls many older copies of OT books were found, even a complete version of Isaiah. Identical in copy to the Massoretic text AD100.
Theologian Augustan said; ‘if you believe what you like in the Bible and reject what you like, it is not the Bible you believe in but yourself.’
6. Jesus Christ his death and resurrection
FF Bruce scholar of Biblical criticism said…. The historicity of Jesus Christ is as axiomatic as the life of Julius Ceaser.
But its actually not the historical certainty of Jesus that s amazing its the fact that He came He came to deal with the human condition of sin and open up peoples lives to a real and vibrant relationship. Jesus has the power to take hold of our lives and transform in a way you couldnt possible imagine and always for the better!
7. Changed lives
Does atheism change lives? Where does it take you? It’s a dead end! It leaves us feeling bankrupt and empty! And yet when people encounter Jesus Christ and trust him they undergo an amazing transformation.
Over the year’s millions of people who were deeply sceptical and yet at some point have come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.
G. Bernard Shaw is most renowned as a free thinker and a liberal philosopher. In his last writings we read ’The science to which I pinned my faith is bankrupt.
It counsels, which should have established the millennium, led, instead, directly to the suicide of Europe. I believed them once. In their name I helped to destroy the faith of millions of worshippers in the temple of a thousand creeds. And know they look at me and witness the great tragedy of an atheist who has lost his faith’. Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.
Near the end of Jean Paul Sartre Life he told his friend Pierre Victor. ‘I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being that only a creator could put here: and this idea of a creating hand refers to God.
Friends atheisim is a continual dead end, just say the atheist is right? Okay what have I lost as a Christian who believes in a designer and purpose. Nothing because there is nothing right? Now put the shoe on the other foot say there is a designer God who created you and sent his Son to die for your sins and who rose again. Yet you have rejected His offer your destiny is hell (can I assure you I get no pleasure in saying that) and thats eternal, full stop!
