For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
ROMANS 1:21 NAS
. . .being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart. . .
EPHESIANS 4:18 NAS
I have debated whether or not I should write a series about atheism. This is because of the futility of the exercise. You cannot argue someone into faith. This is not because the Christian faith is not true but precisely because it is true. Faith is not the same as mathematics where someone can be brought to an answer by inescapable logic. Arguing for the veracity of faith is more akin to arguing for the veracity of mathematics and logic itself. If someone is committed to denying the truth of mathematics, how can you prove to them that it is true?
No sane person can deny mathematics and be consistent with it. But they can deny it for a time and live in defiance of it. This would be the person who enjoys goods and services before their check bounces. Similarly, atheists live on the borrowed capital of divine truth. They use truth to deny the source of truth. If this sounds absurd, you would be correct.
It is my contention that atheism is a self-refuting system of thought. By denying God, atheism destroys itself out of logical necessity. It has no foundation. This is because atheism denies that there is any such thing as truth. Some atheists may disagree at this point and claim that there is truth, and it can be known. But darkened in their understanding, they are unable to see why that claim to truth demands God.
The atheist does not deny the existence of God as a result of cold logic. The atheist denies the existence of God as a consequence of the hatred of God. This is why it is futile to debate with them because we are not dealing with logic or facts but with something more akin to mental illness. Christians know this phenomenon as the noetic effect of sin. The more atheists deny the truth the worse they become in their understanding, their behavior, and their morals. They become monsters afflicted by madness and debased into inhumanity.
I do not expect to convince a single atheist to embrace faith, and I do not care. I have lived long enough to know that apologetics is done not for the sake of unbelievers but for the sake of believers. Believers are the ones who question themselves and their faith. Atheists do not doubt. Doubt is an affliction of those that believe. Apologetics serves to soothe those doubts and reassure those believers that they are not deluded or crazy. Apologetics is simply showing a lie to be a lie, and there is no end to the lies. This is because it takes little to craft a lie. Truth takes work, so I will do some work in this regard and deal with the lies as best I can.
I must also confess that I was an outspoken atheist for at least a decade. I came to my atheism after a crisis of faith and became convinced that my faith was a delusion. That decade of doubt allowed me to experience and understand atheism in a profound way and to understand it from the inside out. My atheism came from a disillusionment and an anger with God as well as the rejection of what I now know was a heresy. This will become more important later as much atheism is often a rejection of a false conception of God.
I will go point by point in this series, and I will not cease until I have demolished every last argument that exists. The one thing that all those years in the darkness has given me is a firmer foundation in my faith. I just know better now, and I don't intend to let all those hard lessons go to waste.
I must also confess that I was an outspoken atheist for at least a decade. I came to my atheism after a crisis of faith and became convinced that my faith was a delusion. That decade of doubt allowed me to experience and understand atheism in a profound way and to understand it from the inside out. My atheism came from a disillusionment and an anger with God as well as the rejection of what I now know was a heresy. This will become more important later as much atheism is often a rejection of a false conception of God.
I will go point by point in this series, and I will not cease until I have demolished every last argument that exists. The one thing that all those years in the darkness has given me is a firmer foundation in my faith. I just know better now, and I don't intend to let all those hard lessons go to waste.
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