A year ago I read a story about how a former Seventh-Day Adventist pastor was going to try out atheism for a year, see what it was like to live without God. And to no one’s surprise after this year he’s declared himself an atheist. If someone is inclined to try on atheism, chances are their belief in God is already lost. Given the larger currents of American culture it’s not surprising that some people see God as implausible.
In 1967 sociologist Peter Berger wrote a book called The Sacred Canopy in which he described the idea of a plausibility structure, or something that seems true to a person. Whether it is true or not isn’t the point; the person may think sincerely what they believe is true, but they tend to think it’s true more based on it seeming plausible to them than on evidence. American and Western culture make belief in God less plausible, make God seem more like Santa Clause than the eternal creator and ruler of the universe. Why is this?
Unless children have a strong religious presence in the home (Notre Dame professor, sociologist and author Christian Smith has found through very extensive research that the religious orientation of the parents is the number one factor in whether children grow up to embrace religion or not), they will be influenced by an education system where under the guise of secularism God is persona non grata, and if they go to a typical college or university, they may get open hostility to God, as I did as an undergraduate at Arizona State. God is also typically not a big topic in Hollywood or entertainment in general, unless of course you are a Woody Allen fan (his latest Magic in the Moonlight was the most overt in your face metaphysical fight he’s had with himself in a movie yet), and American media in general is devoid of God as well.
So for many Americans these cultural influences build in them a plausibility structure where God is irrelevant if he even exists at all. Although I’ve been a Christian for a very long time, in my 40s I went through a bit of a plausibility structure crisis. I don’t call it a crisis of faith because believing that God doesn’t exist is simply impossible for me. I know deeply in my being what the Apostle Paul states in Romans 1, that “God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.” Everything in the universe shouts, God! I could no more doubt his existence than I could doubt my own existence.
Yet, I could see how others could see this God thing as kind of strange. You could probably say I could relate to someone like this newly minted atheist. But something changed for me several years ago when for Lent instead of giving something up I decided to commit to reading the Bible and praying every day. I haven’t done this perfectly, but it’s been pretty close. Then two or three years ago I found the Apologetics 315 website and started availing myself of all the apologetics resources there, especially MP3s I could download to my player and listen in the car or while I walked. I also started reading books defending the Christian faith. I’ve been amazed that even though I’ve known this all along, that God has given us an incredible amount of evidence for the veracity of Christianity.
Which leads me to a trope many modern atheists use in their polemics against Christianity. They are fond of saying that Christians believe what they believe in spite of the evidence, which is how they define faith. Nothing could be further from the truth. Biblically defined faith is having enough evidence to trust in the character of God, to believe in him, not just that he exists. Christian faith depends on evidence. Even a cursory reading of the Gospels makes this clear. When Jesus rose from the dead he showed himself to his disciples, ate with them, and famously invited the doubting Thomas to touch his wounds. Reading Acts and the other New Testament letters makes it even clearer.
Actually from the very beginning, God has been a God of evidence. I’ve found it interesting as I’ve been reading and writing my way through the Bible that God revealed himself to his people via physical manifestations, over and over again. He never asked the people of Israel to trust in him because he demanded it, but encouraged them to trust him, to have faith in him because of what he showed them, or the evidence. Read the Pentateuch sometime and see what I mean.
I recently read a book by Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek called I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, and immediately thought of the book when I read the piece about this newly minted ex-pastor atheist. He says:
I’ve looked at the majority of the arguments that I’ve been able to find for the existence of God, and on the question of God’s existence or not, I have to say I don’t find there to be a convincing case, in my view. I don’t think that God exists. I think that makes the most sense of the evidence that I have and my experience.
I’ve always thought that atheists do what they accuse Christians of doing, believing in spite of the evidence. I think a careful read through the Geisler and Turek book would likely fill this new atheist with profound doubts about his new-found faith.
So once again we have someone arguing for Christianity because the Bible says so. And of course the Bible is true, which we know because it says so in the Bible.
Ron,
Actually I did no such thing. In fact, if you got to the end of the piece, which you obviously didn’t, you would see that I link to a book called, “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist.” Check out that book if you want to see what I really believe, and it isn’t as simple as, the Bible tells me so. Maybe you didn’t even read halfway through because there I link to the Apologetics 315 website, where if you cared to be accurate you would see that there are a zillion different resources defending the Christian faith, and I’d wager very few stake their claims on, the Bible tells me so.
I am an atheist but am open to any argument for any god. If you believe Ryan Bell missed some evidence for your God, what is it?
You mention all the times God showed himself to the earlier people, why hasn’t he made himself available since recording devices have been invented.
Rover,
As I stated in my comment to Ron who obviously didn’t read the piece, I refer to the Apologetics 315 website, and the book of the title,”I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist.” The book methodically lays out the case for theism and Christianity. The 315 website is a fantastic resource for those seeking an intellectually credible case for the Christian faith. Many atheists today are fond of saying the Christians believe what they believe in spite of there being no evidence. They are simply being dishonest or don’t care to know the truth of the matter.
Your second question has a faulty assumption built into it. In order for you or anyone to definitively believe something it must be recorded. If that is your ground of trust in historical fact, let alone anything else, I would say you don’t have much of a foundation to believe anything. The burden of proof is really on you to prove that only things that are recorded have actually happened. No historian would buy into such a modern notion of what constitute’s “fact.” Even if we can’t know history definitively or exhaustively, anymore than we can really know the present, we can know like we know everything else we know: based on probability.
But there is something in Christian theology called progressive revelation. God’s relationship to his people Israel before Christ was completely different to his relationship to his Church after. We have a solid historical case that the followers of Jesus believe they saw him after he was raised from the dead. A bodily resurrection is the only answer that best fits all the facts. God has fully revealed himself in the risen Savior. The Apostles claimed to be eyewitnesses to this fact, and they gave their lives for it. Their words, and lives transformed by his mercy and grace, are powerful evidence that God has given more than enough evidence to believe and trust in him even without a recording.
Ron…that circular reasoning wasn’t used in the author’s article. However, Berger’s plausibility structures do point to the pre-conditions of the intelligibility of Christian theism and atheism. In other words, background beliefs will indeed impact whether we are even able to accept the Bible as true. In the atheist’s closed, materialist system there is no room for the resurrection of Jesus, among other things. As a scientist, I’m often asked how I square my Christian faith with the methods of science and my love for science. It’s actually quite easy. On the basis of science, I have no ground on which to exclude the possibility of God’s actions in history UNLESS I make science the sole epistemological basis for all knowledge. And this is where the modern atheist slays his own foot – to make science the sole epistemological basis for knowledge can only be done on something the atheist abhors…faith.
I encourage you to read the Gospels being open to the possibility that Jesus is trustworthy, that he is who he said he was (God), and that his resurrection has the power to bridge the gap between us and Gods that we could never bridge ourselves. May you find grace and peace in Him!