Thursday, May 20, 2010

Aren't we born atheists?

Humans are the only species that are able to self examine. We ask ourselves “What is my purpose, and why am I here”? Assuming that people are born without the knowledge of God is not provable either. Infants are born without the knowledge of airplanes, but that has no bearing on the validity of airplanes whatsoever. We cannot ignore either the evidence in Scripture. Who are we as a species? The writer of Psalm 8 sees our potential and strives to give us honor and dignity and purpose by making us “a little lower than the angels.” Then how does an atheist reckon with the most powerful description of the gift of love? Concepts such as love, trust, hope, friendship, caring, respect, self-sacrifice and even humor, go to the very heart of our humanity. They are spiritual entities, not intellectual or physical. They introduce us to a sense of the presence of God every day. Life’s experiences are therefore not a matter of will. People get married, for example, not on the basis of arguments but on a determined desire to build a happy, meaningful and fruitful relationship. I do know that not all people get married for the same reason but traditional marriage is based off of these desires. Man and women engulfed in sin do marry for wrong reasons. So it is with our understanding of God. GOD made US. Technically speaking a skeptic says, “I doubt that God exists” and an agnostic says, I don’t know (or can’t know) whether God exists.” But an atheist claims to know or (or at least believe) that God does not exist, which would be a bold assertion whether it be an infant or a young adult. There are many types of agnostics (as I’m sure you know). Some of the types I believe are based off of apathetic ignorance and or arrogance. Some agnostics believe you can’t know anything hardly recognizing they just made a self-contradicting statement. Others believe there is either insufficient evidence or none at all; sadly simple ignorance is the reason for that belief. Socrates said “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing”. Wisdom is the knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action. So if the statement the typical agnostic makes is you can’t know truth then how do they know that’s true? Isn’t that a truth statement in itself? Could it be that we are born children of God but allow the convincing and deceiving world views shift the way we think. Many former Christians I have met made their transition to skepticism based off of weak reasons. There weak faith led to disbelief, disbelief to bias outlook, and bias outlook to their current stance on God.

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