We have all heard about the “assumption of atheism.” It is the idea that, all things being equal, one is born with an assumption of atheism, and that this is man’s initial resting state, as it were. This post is not designed to be a logical rebuttal to this idea, as William Lane Craig has annihilated this premise here. But in thinking about this, it is difficult for me to imagine a world where atheism comes naturally, in fact. So what we have here is a tale of two worlds.
The first world is pre-industrial. You are born before the titans of industry, before the highways and automobiles and the airplanes and the digital age. Before the theory of evolution, before Einstein, before the professional naturalists and trained philosophers. All we had was common sense, accumulated wisdom in holy texts, and a wide array of philosophies in their infancy stages We herded sheep and made campfires. We sharpened sticks, slept on rooftops, and some even lived in caves.
In this world, superstition is prevalent.We know this as a historical fact. Hell, even cro magnum man and the neanderthals showed signs of having superstitious beliefs and afterlife ideas about death. I’m not sure that atheists will challenge this idea. If you were born in these times, it is likely you would believe in gods, the arrangements of funereal stones, the afterlife, and some form of magic or prayer.
It is interesting to note that we find religion appearing in different parts of the world, independent from each other.
So, let us fast-forward to today.
Atheists don’t see God anywhere, or room for superstition anywhere in our modern world of big tech, big science, theoretical scientists and modern philosophical thought. Though, to be fair, more than a billion people do. The common atheist line here is that the common man is uneducated, ignorant, clinging to his relics, religion, the bible, and his guns. The modern evangelistic atheist is an elitist, privileged to hold beliefs that the common man isn’t savvy enough to own, and capable of affording a belief system that the lumpen masses cannot.
Everything can be explained, they might say. They speak of the “god of the gaps,” which is the idea that in the gaps of our knowledge of how the world and the universe works, believers use God to fill in those gaps. They also claim that these gaps are becoming smaller and thinner all of the time. They speak of the march of knowledge, even.
But the point is, even in today’s world of science and discovery, there is a lot of room for belief in God. Because with the progress of science, theology itself has kept pace, arm in arm and neck in neck. Theology has evolved and matured with the advance of secular knowledge. In fact, in my opinion, they have not merely kept pace, but superseded the march of atheism.
Right off the top of my head, I can come up with 4 or 5 arguments for the existence of God, all taken seriously in academic, theological and philosophical studies. There are new arguments arising each year. Even old, antiquated arguments that are hundreds of years old are being constantly resurrected, updated, upgraded and being thrown back into play. I have two posts right here at John Claudio world where I creatively free write and document reasons to believe, some questionable and others not.
So basically, in all, when you consider all of the philosophical arguments, the prophetic evidence, the witness of personal testimonies, and all of the modern-day logical work, you find that, in some ways, faith in God is easier to justify today than it was 1,000 tears ago. 1,000 years ago, God only had gap-filling power, much like the theories of atheists today. In today’s world, you have a plethora of arguments in the positive for the existence of a God, that don’t seek to be explanatory, or gap-fillers, but seek to prove, through logic, philosophy and theological work, that God exists and Jesus is the Son of God.
There are more and better reasons to believe in God now, than there were in the old, ancient world.
The fact that the old philosophical formulas are still in widespread use today by theologians and philosophers are evidence of their natural, long-term immunity to serious critique. Instead of dying off, they have grown stronger and become more-defined through time. They have been strengthened by opposition, and some of their formulations have evolved under scrutiny, but still they persist to exist as a gadfly in the atheist’s ointment.
This is hardly an exhaustive list, but here are 8 arguments for the existence of God.
- The cosmological Argument
- The moral argument
- The teleological argument
- The Ontological argument
- The argument from Design
- The argument from Consciousness
- The argument from Testimony
- The Argument from Faith
Here is a small list of helpful philosophical resources:
William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith.
Inspiring Philosophy’s You Tube channel.
Christian Philosopher Robert Koons.
How an Atheist Argued His Way Back to Christianity
Reasons to Believe
A New Argument for the Existence of God