I saw the following quote posted in a “proof for the existence of God” debate recently. I thought it was a very kind and thought-provoking response:

“…to believe there is no God, or to lack belief in a God, still requires faith. You have to trust that the arguments of natural theology are false. You have to trust that the information in DNA arose without an intelligent mind. You have to trust that nature arose by natural causes (a self-contradiction).

You have to have faith that consciousness arose out of dead inert matter. The list goes on and on. It takes faith to look at the universe and all its creative wonder and come out thinking that atheism is a better explanation than theism.”

What the blogger is pointing out is that since it’s virtually impossible to know everything about a particular topic where the existence – or non-existence – of God is concerned, both theism and atheism require faith.

We all ultimately have faith in something – whether we want to admit it, or not.

Retired UC Berkeley law professor (and author), Phillip E. Johnson, astutely notes, “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, in this particular context, one who rejects faith in Christianity is, in truth, holding to faith in some other worldview – even if that worldview boils down to faith in believing that Christianity is a fairy tale.

In sum, the atheist, Albert Camus, represents the unavoidable faith required by atheism when he said, “I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.”

Soli Deo Gloria, Nick