What the protests profess

Many cities across the United States and around the world have been filled with people protesting following the tragic death of George Floyd. The shocking video of his last moments has sent a jolt through the human consciousness, bringing out our innate awareness of a couple of huge realities.

Respect

I told you in a previous post about an atheist friend (Robert) I had a chat with. I want to focus on another aspect of our conversation. 

Dawkins fan?

I spoke to a man recently who told me he was an atheist and a follower of Richard Dawkins.

Making life worth living?

Stephen Fry has vented his fury at the idea of a God who would allow such suffering in the world. There have been a few very good responses (for example, here, here and here), I offer my own here...

There's something wrong with the world, therefore God does / doesn't exist?

Everyone can see it, there is something wrong with the world - the wickedness, the sorrow, the disasters etc. etc. Things should not be this way. This leads many people to conclude that God doesn't exist, but is that the sensible conclusion?

Living in cloud cuckoo land

The cuckoo apparently doesn't build its own nest, but waits for another bird to build one then hijacks it for itself. That's what came to mind when I heard about 'God' being dropped from the Girl Guides' promise recently.

This change was the subject of Nicky Campbell's phone-in show yesterday (19/6/13) on Radio 5 Live. The final call of the show was horrendous, but not as bad as Nicky's response!

I will paste my email I sent to the BBC today. In it you will get the gist of what the caller and Nicky said.

Further correspondence with the atheist

In my last post I showed you a letter I wrote to an atheist I had a conversation with a few weeks ago. He responded by totally ignoring what I said, and instead he sent me a list of "atrocities" and "contradictions" in the Bible. I will go through all that he sent in a subsequent post, but I'm going to let you see what I sent to him in response.

A letter to an atheist

I got into a conversation with a convinced atheist a couple of weeks ago. He brought up a few "atrocities" in the Bible, and God allowing evil in the world. When I tried to challenge him about what basis he, as an atheist, had for condemning any behaviour he ignored me and changed the subject. Thinking he might interact more coherently in print, I wrote him a letter which I have copied below. I will put my further correspondence to him in another post.

Why Sandy Hook makes me glad (and more sure) Christianity is true

The unspeakably tragic shooting in Connecticut leaves me praying for the families involved, but also praising God for the truth of the Christian worldview.

Still without a leg to stand on

I wrote last year about a man (Robbie) with whom I had a long and interesting conversation (see here, here and here).  Well, I just spoke to him again today, and sadly he still holds to the same denials of reason and reality, all the while denouncing those who disagree as unintelligent.

A fake realist

I've been away for the last two weeks and haven't been able to get email access - very therapeutic! However, on my trip I got into a very interesting conversation with a man who runs a chip shop.

Table manners and torture

I was talking to a really nice lady yesterday about a wide range of subjects relating to God (which I will hopefully write about here soon), and we got to talking about the basis of morality. I found it quite revealing. By the way, the conversation was robust and our disagreements were frank, but the tone throughout was respectful and friendly, which is as it should be!

Who cares?

It is a question asked by sulky teenagers, but it is also a question asked by broken-hearted sufferers - "Who cares?"

Steamroller approaching - reality beware!

He didn't need much time to get rolling, and once he got started it was well nigh impossible to get him stopped!

Without a leg to stand on, part three

There was one other subject under discussion in my recent conversation with the man who described himself as a "total atheist".

Who cares?

There are those who don't have enough faith to be an atheist, but they do wonder about the character of God, especially in light of the tragedies in the world - does He really care?

More questions from SU SU

Another rapid fire round of Q & A from Sullivan Upper Scripture Union...

Indifferent or incapable, or...something else?

I want to follow up on the previous post regarding the suffering in the world, and draw from an incident in the ministry of the Lord Jesus, as found in John 11. In this chapter we see the classic atheistic argument, that is, if God loves us and is all-powerful then why is there suffering?

The situation in the chapter is that one of the Lord's friends, Lazarus, was sick. Lazarus' sisters sent word to Christ to tell Him of this, and He delayed until Lazarus died, then went to the village of Bethany where all this happened. As the Lord witnessed the sorrow of the bereaved He wept. This baffled the spectators: as they saw the Lord Jesus weeping they said, “Behold how He loved him!” Then, “could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?” They saw His love and His power, so the question they arose – why didn’t He preserve Lazarus’ life? Surely He would, given His love, and surely he could, given His power. But the indisputable fact was that Lazarus was dead! The problem was, they supposed they were at the end of the story, but they weren’t! The story would end with resurrection, reuniting, greater glory to Christ, greater joy to His own, and an appreciation of Him that the avoidance of the sorrow would not have yielded. So it is with this world – we are not at the end of the story – this world will be free from the curse, and Christ will be glorified and His people blessed at the end of the story in a way that would not be possible if troubles had been avoided. You can book your place in that Paradise by receiving the cleansing and forgiveness that Christ provided by His death and resurrection and offers to the repentant.

If God's so good why is the world so bad?

"Things ain't what they used to be" - true - according to the Bible things used to be perfect, but they aren't (or ain't) now.  The presence of evil and suffering in the world is the number one (or only one?) argument atheists have against the existence of God.  It is an argument to be reckoned with, but it is an issue the Bible certainly does not duck, it faces it and deals with it.

There are a couple of things that need to be distinguished: the existence of moral evil committed by humans, and natural evil, or disasters, experienced by humans.

As regards moral evil, if we believe it really exists then we must believe that God exists, because if there is no God then there is no such thing as evil or injustice, for what determines that the acts are evil or unjust? By what immovable, unchangeable, transcendent standard can we say that certain actions are evil or unjust. If there is no God then there is no standard except ones we make up ourselves, and why should they be binding upon anyone? So the fact that we recognise things as really evil is an implicit acknowledgement of God's existence.