On Christians and Atheists
Part One
I. God Made Nature Beautiful
How can God not exist? How can one not admit that, as seen in nature, there is a power greater than he? When a man gazes upon a pristine sunrise over a ocean, an image more majestic than any masterpiece, does he not feel an Artist at work? When he looks upon rolling mountains packed with trees of a billion shades of green against the sunlit sky, does he not appreciate the vastness and beauty of this unadulterated land? When clouds break up the sun’s omnipotent light into a thousand beams, scattering them onto the hills, houses, and people below, does one not ponder that another being is trying to touch us?
You say, It is all science. You say, the sunrise over the ocean is merely the refraction of light, and if we really wanted to, we could use our hi-tech computers to predict what the sunrise will look like tomorrow (as if the flight of seagull or the foam of a wave were predictable and able to be represented perfectly on a screen!)
Or you say, It is of necessity that nature exists, because without it, man could not survive. You claim that because humans live, it is necessary for nature to be the way it is, because if nature were different, we wouldn’t be the same creature. Therefore, the sun must rise and trees must be green and clouds must even sometimes scatter light. You may be right in those cases, but it does not capture the essence of the argument. It may be necessary for the sun to rise, but the sun must not rise beautifully. That a sun must rise to sustain life is irrefutable. But that a sun must shine light against an early morning sky and bounce light off at various angles and multitudes to the eyes of an onlooker is not necessary, but it is beautiful.
Whether we accept it or not, the issue returns to man and his construction. It is necessary for man to live under the sun, and one could argue that it is necessary for man to have the ability to see, but what, dear reader, makes man see beautifully? Why does man stand as the lone appreciator of nature? Why can man, along all the beasts, see the sunrise over the ocean as beautiful?
It is not of necessity that man sees beautifully, for man depends not on beauty to survive and sustain. Man was made to see beautifully because the Maker made a creation worth appreciating as beautiful. God made Creation not only to be useful, but to be beautiful. It is God’s way of saying, “I am pleased with what I have made; appreciate it with me!” That we see the sunrise, the tree-clad mountains, the sun-scattered landscape, the clear night sky and the eagle’s majestic flight as beautiful is not necessary, but a gift. It is the gift of communion with the unseen Creator, God.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” ~Psalm 19:1
II. A Battle for Nothing
If it is true, as atheists believe, that there is no God (or as agnostics believe, that it is impossible for man to know God), then why do they spend so much time and effort arguing against something that does not exist? Because there is nothing there in their eyes, they cannot be said to be fighting for anything.
It is as if they are telling a young boy that Santa Claus does not exist and then becoming offended when the young boy tells him that there is. And they do not get angry in the way one gets angry as if he is the only sane man on earth; they get angry in the way one gets angry as if what he is up against will annihilate his way of life if it is not destroyed. It is the killing of Santa Claus for fear that if enough people actually believe in him, the world will start wearing red velvet suits and pointed shoes with bells on the toes to work and expect everyone else to do so. He is fighting against what is to him, a fairy tale.
If the atheist or agnostic cannot be fighting for anything and against a mere fairy tale, what is the purpose of fighting at all? If God is merely a fairy tale created my man, what’s the harm in letting Christians believe in him; after all, eventually every kid “comes to his senses” and stops believing in Santa Claus, why not God?
The opposite side is this: Christians have something worthy for which to fight. For if they are correct about the existence and reality of God (and they are), there is a burden placed upon them. They have the truth; they realize that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one enters God’s promised Kingdom of Heaven except through belief in his death for man’s sins and resurrection to authenticate his claims. They know and posses what many men strive to obtain their entire lives but fall painfully short: the Truth. If Christians are correct, how ultimately important it is for Christians to talk to the atheist or agnostic (in love, of course, since that is something Christians have, or ought to have, given that “God is love.”) in the saving of their soul. Christ came “to seek and to save what was lost,” and every Christian has that same call to spread the Message of eternal life in Heaven with the world.
In summation, the Christian has everything to fight for; the atheist has nothing but the satisfaction of being right (that is, until he dies).
How can God not exist? How can one not admit that, as seen in nature, there is a power greater than he? When a man gazes upon a pristine sunrise over a ocean, an image more majestic than any masterpiece, does he not feel an Artist at work? When he looks upon rolling mountains packed with trees of a billion shades of green against the sunlit sky, does he not appreciate the vastness and beauty of this unadulterated land? When clouds break up the sun’s omnipotent light into a thousand beams, scattering them onto the hills, houses, and people below, does one not ponder that another being is trying to touch us?
You say, It is all science. You say, the sunrise over the ocean is merely the refraction of light, and if we really wanted to, we could use our hi-tech computers to predict what the sunrise will look like tomorrow (as if the flight of seagull or the foam of a wave were predictable and able to be represented perfectly on a screen!)
Or you say, It is of necessity that nature exists, because without it, man could not survive. You claim that because humans live, it is necessary for nature to be the way it is, because if nature were different, we wouldn’t be the same creature. Therefore, the sun must rise and trees must be green and clouds must even sometimes scatter light. You may be right in those cases, but it does not capture the essence of the argument. It may be necessary for the sun to rise, but the sun must not rise beautifully. That a sun must rise to sustain life is irrefutable. But that a sun must shine light against an early morning sky and bounce light off at various angles and multitudes to the eyes of an onlooker is not necessary, but it is beautiful.
Whether we accept it or not, the issue returns to man and his construction. It is necessary for man to live under the sun, and one could argue that it is necessary for man to have the ability to see, but what, dear reader, makes man see beautifully? Why does man stand as the lone appreciator of nature? Why can man, along all the beasts, see the sunrise over the ocean as beautiful?
It is not of necessity that man sees beautifully, for man depends not on beauty to survive and sustain. Man was made to see beautifully because the Maker made a creation worth appreciating as beautiful. God made Creation not only to be useful, but to be beautiful. It is God’s way of saying, “I am pleased with what I have made; appreciate it with me!” That we see the sunrise, the tree-clad mountains, the sun-scattered landscape, the clear night sky and the eagle’s majestic flight as beautiful is not necessary, but a gift. It is the gift of communion with the unseen Creator, God.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” ~Psalm 19:1
II. A Battle for Nothing
If it is true, as atheists believe, that there is no God (or as agnostics believe, that it is impossible for man to know God), then why do they spend so much time and effort arguing against something that does not exist? Because there is nothing there in their eyes, they cannot be said to be fighting for anything.
It is as if they are telling a young boy that Santa Claus does not exist and then becoming offended when the young boy tells him that there is. And they do not get angry in the way one gets angry as if he is the only sane man on earth; they get angry in the way one gets angry as if what he is up against will annihilate his way of life if it is not destroyed. It is the killing of Santa Claus for fear that if enough people actually believe in him, the world will start wearing red velvet suits and pointed shoes with bells on the toes to work and expect everyone else to do so. He is fighting against what is to him, a fairy tale.
If the atheist or agnostic cannot be fighting for anything and against a mere fairy tale, what is the purpose of fighting at all? If God is merely a fairy tale created my man, what’s the harm in letting Christians believe in him; after all, eventually every kid “comes to his senses” and stops believing in Santa Claus, why not God?
The opposite side is this: Christians have something worthy for which to fight. For if they are correct about the existence and reality of God (and they are), there is a burden placed upon them. They have the truth; they realize that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one enters God’s promised Kingdom of Heaven except through belief in his death for man’s sins and resurrection to authenticate his claims. They know and posses what many men strive to obtain their entire lives but fall painfully short: the Truth. If Christians are correct, how ultimately important it is for Christians to talk to the atheist or agnostic (in love, of course, since that is something Christians have, or ought to have, given that “God is love.”) in the saving of their soul. Christ came “to seek and to save what was lost,” and every Christian has that same call to spread the Message of eternal life in Heaven with the world.
In summation, the Christian has everything to fight for; the atheist has nothing but the satisfaction of being right (that is, until he dies).
III. The Phenomenon of Language
How does the atheist explain the phenomenon of language? This question, perhaps above all, stumps me. How is it that man has developed such a vast array of languages if it were not at Babel as described in the Scriptures?
The first conjecture one would make is that language is a product of a region or civilization. While it is true that languages are spoken in regions, it does not make languages products of those regions. Sure, the Eskimos have thirty names for snow, but it is not the snow itself that makes the Eskimos have so many names for it. People living in Japan are likely to speak Japanese, but the oddly-shaped island never made them do it. The idea that geography dictates language is silly. I may depend on an apple to live, but the apple never introduced itself to me.
Thus, the second conjecture: language is simply a product of evolution. On the surface, this seems reasonable. Man needed the ability to communicate more information to describe its surrounding and other life-essential things and thus created a series of sounds to symbolize these things. But what, dear reader, makes the sound systems, these languages, so different? If we are all human, as I can assume we are, then are we not all built the same? All healthy, breathing people have the ability to speak. If we were all crafted in the same image (and for Christians, that image is God), then we ought to have evolved the same; that is, if language is a product of evolution, we ought to have developed the same language. Our minds and bodies are the same, so our instinct (if it can be called that) to speak would be the same, and the language we create should also be the same according to this theory.
The problem is this: there are too many and too different languages in the world today. If you’re still on the evolution bandwagon, let me offer you a situation. If man started in Mesopotamia (for example), then man’s first language was universal. As the land became more populated, people spread and encountered new things and these new things needed new words. So man created them. As time went on, man created more words for more things, but by now, there need be no further explanation for I can make my point here and now. Man started with a universal language; and as time expired, he took the freedom of creating new words. Cultures and peoples used these words, but they merely adapted their previous language base in doing so. In other words, if man started with a universal language base, there ought to be some evidence of it. But there is not. Linguists can prove that some languages are “related” to others, but they have not discovered an Alpha-language.
And they will not. Evolution cannot and will never explain why languages are so diverse. No matter how long something is drawn out over a seemingly infinite period of time, it does not make a thing any less miraculous; nor does it provide an explanation for the facts. A fact is that German, Japanese, Afrikaan, and English are incalculably diverse. No span of time can explain the changes in words, sounds, and sentence structure exhibited by these languages. No linguist can trace these languages to the Alpha-language. It seems as if only a super-human force could have caused such a multitude of languages.
There is a much better answer to our predicament. The third and final conjecture can be the only true one. It states that man did once possess one universal language and a common speech; and then encountered one jealous super-human force that changed the course of speech forever. The story is that of Babel as explained in Genesis 11. Man had one language; but then sought to become like God and reach heaven. Their vision was to build a tower larger than that the world has ever seen, but their motive was prouder. They sought equality with God. They desired the ability to boast that they could do all things without God. After all, it is the oldest sin in the book, dating back to Adam and Eve, and their craving for the knowledge of God. God knew that the people’s universal language was what was uniting them to this cause – so he “confuse[d] their language so they [could] not understand each other” (Gen. 11:7).
Babel fulfills both of our logical requirements: first, that man had developed a universal language; and second, that something greater than man had to have made such a vast assortment of languages with seemingly no relation to each other. The one-then-many through evolution hypothesis fails the second requirement, for mere geography or time could not have made language so diverse. Only God could have created such a queer mix of symbolic sounds for such a queer creature, and I can but smile knowing God put our mouths into such a curious mess.
~end part one~
On The Marriage Protection Amendment
A few weeks ago, my first couple weeks back from school, I had heard all of this glorious dialogue about a Marriage Protection Amendment. I am not even sure of my opinion, and I will give the following arguments for my indecision.
First, I believe that same-sex marriage is an obvious assault on the institution of marriage. Biblically speaking, marriage is between a man and a woman. Additionally, homosexuality is a sin (Rom. 1:26-27). That’s further from the point. The family is the basic foundation of any society. A basic family is a mother, father, and their children. If it can be broken down further, it may be said that sex (respectably used), is the foundation of family, for families could not exist without sex. The qualification of that statement deserves an essay itself, but that will wait for another time. Families have been damaged by the improper and disrespectful abuse of sex. To “fix” the problem (that is defining the problem as that of families and not of the abuse of sex), society has attempted to redefine the family, or at least what is left of it. It should go without saying that families today are in the worst shape they have ever been. Divorce and single-parenthood (including absentee parenthood) are at an all-time high and a traditional family is not too traditional anymore. Our perversion has led to an increased interest in same-sex relationships based on a confused view of sex. Instead of checking our definition of sex, we have attempted to redefine family, and thus the attack on marriage. Marriage is between a man and a woman; don’t shape the definition of family around your wicked desires.
Second, I am quite sure that governments should not be the ones attempting to redefine marriage. While the definition sounds like the Christian (and correct) definition, I firmly believe that government should not see themselves as able to protect marriage, for doing so would mean the government has the authority over marriage, which it does not. The only solutions are local solutions. No problem will ever be fixed completely by government legislation, it takes the actions of individuals, families, and communities for any real progress to be made. Marriage, no matter how much legislation protects it, will never be safe as long as sex remains to be practiced outside of it. Is this saying that marriage will never be safe? On this earth, probably. But individuals and families can influence communities to practice love inside the institution created by love.
On another note, I often wonder why atheists or agnostics marry. If they don’t believe in God, who created marriage, then why would they indulge in joining into them? It must be purely for economic or social status reasons, but that is pure cowardice.
Okay, I’m done. It was fun. Hope to hear what you think!
Later Days!!
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2 comments:
Whats up Tippy
Hooray for blog posts, especially insanely long ones. Some of your assumptions dont make sense. The part on language is the weakest. (sorry, but it is.) They certainly gave me something to think about. Keep posting or else ill make fun of your beard.
-austin
Thanks for reading it...and at 2:00 am, haha. I'm glad you're being honest about it though and not simply reading it passively without caring about what it really says. Keep stopping back, I'm updating like a wildebeast now.
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