Apologetics
When Bad Philosophy meets a Brutal set of facts
I witnessed a young Palestinian child on TV who had lost both parents during a recent Israeli-Gaza conflict crying her lungs out. She wept bitterly as she demanded in frustration, ‘why does God allow all these bloodshed to go on?’
To the atheist, he glees rubbing his palms cheerfully when he poses the question of evil, suffering and wickedness of man and progresses to answer this question by insisting there is absolutely no God. It is quite simple to answer anyone who holds such view.
Atheism negates theism and so denies the existence of God. ‘Naturalism’ tries to describe everything in human experience exclusively through empirical inquiry in the sciences. So while the first clearly rejects God, the second finds the idea of God irrelevant, since God cannot be subjected to standard scientific inquiry. The fundamental difference between both the naturalistic and atheistic worldviews and the religious worldview is the moral framework. While a naturalist or an atheist may choose to be a moral person, their worldviews provide no compelling rational reason why one should not be amoral. Reason simply does not dictate here.
There are two approaches in addressing the atheist who claims there is no God. The first approach is to point out the self-defeating claim in his philosophy. Anyone who makes the bold claim, ‘there is no God’, is in fact saying that, he is all knowing as he has knowledge of all of history and all events in the present, past and future, all-powerful to have travelled throughout the entire universe to have come to the conclusion that there is no God in the universe. What such a person is actually saying is that, he or she is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, but this is exactly the nature of the Christian God. In other words, this person maintains that he is a God, whiles denying the existence of a God anywhere in the universe. This is self-defeating. It is like saying, ‘I cannot utter a single word in English Language,’ whiles expressing this position using English Language. That is why the Psalmist, emphasized in Psalms 14:1a that, ‘the fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.’
The underlying purpose is not only to expose the absurdity in the logic of the man who maintains there is no God. The purpose is to capture the entire being of the person for Christ therefore the need to go a step further in addressing the atheistic world view.
Whenever the question of evil is raised in this world, we then have to assume that there is something like good or a desired way to live life. Now, once we agree to the existence of good and evil, we must as well presuppose there is a moral law on the basis of which to determine good and evil. The question then becomes, who provides this moral law that serves as a yardstick to determine good and evil? The Christian’s response is that, it is God. The question of evil in this world always points us to God. The atheist may argue that governments determine what is good and evil as stipulated in the constitution across nations, but the challenge with this position is that, how then do you question or find fault with the actions of a Hitler or a Stalin whose governments decided to commit all those atrocities in the name of racial purifications? Or how do you question governments that teach their young children that Israelis are pigs and must be slaughtered at all cost? How do you question the constitution of governments that recognise Jihad as a religious venture? Government decisions are always changing and so does the atheistic position. He again argues that, morality is determined by man. The challenge with this position also is that how can you complain of injustice, if your neighbor considers it expedient to slaughter you for his own personal advancement. How then can we question the actions of Osama Bin Laden if morality is relative and man ultimately makes the rules and decides what is good for him and how he should conduct his life? The man who puts his trust not in God and neither believes in him has no reasonable justification as to why his brother must live a moral life. He has no point of reference. He is a ‘Self Made Man.' What a tragedy!!!
To better understand the question of accountability and justice. It is important to understand attempts made by man to live in a society devoid of the hand of God. The foolish man believes that once God is ‘killed’ through human philosophy, he can live whatever life he prefers, accountable to no one. In fact Friedrich Nietzsche was audacious enough to declare that, ‘God is dead!!’ The last time I checked Nietzsche has been dead for decades. Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden.
End of Part 1
By G. K. Sarpong,
Email: [email protected]
Author of books Answers to Life’s Foundational Questions and Develop the Master in You found on Amazon at,
http://www.amazon.com/Answers-To-Lifes-Foundational-Questions-ebook/dp/B00R3H3UH8
http://amzn.com/B00VEFXAPM
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