The Faith of Atheism

In Conversations with Carl Sagan, Tom Head records Sagan (astronomer, astrophysicist, and ardent agnostic) as saying,

“An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence.”

It is no secret that, despite the reasonable evidence, ultimately, belief in the risen Christ is by faith – we’re told this repeatedly in scripture (cf. Ephesians 2:8)

My only objective here is to remind everyone that atheism also requires strong faith. In fact, atheist Michael Ruse, in his review of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and similar books,

“The material being churned out is second rate. And that is a euphemism for ‘downright awful’.”

The existence or non-existence of God cannot be proven in a laboratory. This is by God’s own design. Dr. Andy Bannister rightly stated,

“The claim ‘only science can discover truth’ is self-refuting, as the statement itself cannot be verified using science.”

I think Ravi Zacharias, echoing a quote by 17th century French physicist, Blaise Pascal, said it best:

“I often put it this way: God has put enough [evidence] into this world to make faith in Him a most reasonable thing. But He has left enough [evidence] out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason alone. Faith and reason must always work together.”

nw

NOTE:  The quote referenced by Pascal in the above blog:

“If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason; to admit nothing but reason.”