Belief in the God of the Bible is actually the only rational way to account for reality. Ultimately you accept the laws of logic and reason on faith, and on atheism you must attempt to anchor your commitment to the laws of logic in some completely unknown source that must derive from a universe of matter and motion. Is that logical? Who wrote the laws of logic and why do you ultimately accept them on faith? You defend reason by virtue of reason, which is circular.

Christian theism presupposes the truth of Christian theism. In fact every ultimate belief relies on circular logic, because ultimate principals can’t be proven. Faith is a logical necessity at the most basic level of every belief.

The reason Christianity is the only worldview that makes sense of the world is that it alone offers a rational explanation for our use of logic and reason. God is logical and created man in His image, according to the Bible. It’s accepted a priori, but makes sense of the world. Atheism assumes a priori natural cause to nature, an amoral source for objective morality, a non-intelligent source for the laws of logic, etc. This isn’t logical at all, and is therefore folly.

Psalm 14:1 states that it’s at the level of the heart, symbolic for volitional belief, where the fool has essentially convinced himself that God does not exist. The root cause for this self-deception is a sinful pursuit of autonomy and rejection of the Creator (Romans 1).

“There are none that doeth good” is the reality of the universal effects of sin. All humans sin. The good news is that all sin was paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s sinless Son, as a sacrifice for us.

The faiths manage to post proofs under argument and evidence, but this is always low quality proofs in induction and testimony. They will even manage to hybridize low quality proof (in inductive testimony). Search for a belief system that offers high quality proofs in deductive argument and physical evidence and don’t settle for the skepticism pervading much of outspoken atheism. You desire to continue but it must be reasonable in that it has nothing to do with magical wishing power. There is a way and may you find it.

You may find peace in learning that there is no reasonable argument for God’s non-existance not withstanding the protests of athiests. They are simply wrong. All of the arguments for God’s existance use logic and experience to show that faith is not opposed to reason but are in no way a cause of faith…despite the protests of some believers. Your faith is not something that you can be reasoned out of unless you desire to loose your faith in which case just about any athiestic argument will do. But if you desire to maintain your faith no amount of reasoning will be able to convince you that God is not real. I’m just trying to save you some leg work. I was loosly raised Christian, practiced Budhism (sp), went to college and became agnostic then spent years reading everything I could get my hands on to give me some reason to believe in God (or not) and nothing really convinced me one way or the other. But once I was given the gift of faith, nothing can convince me that Jesus Christ is not God.

I know this leaves you in a difficult situation; desiring to end your suffering by killing yourself but fearing at least in the back of your mind that you might spend eternity separated from God. I would encourage you to form and follow your conscience. You believe in God now so continue to pray for his help which you know to be the right thing to do. You believe it is wrong to kill yourself so do not, please, do not do that.

Peace be with you,
Alan R.

“Atheism is simply the lack of belief of a deity.”

Well, not “simply”… The lack of belief in something necessitates the belief in something else.

“You are an Atheist when it comes to other Gods and you do not believe life has no inherent value.”

Correct, but the God I DO believe exists is the one that makes sense of the world, while others do not. The Biblical account creation comports with what we observe about life, so the worldviews that I dismiss don’t affect that.

“I would argue that I was not speaking of value but instead meaning.”
“I was not trying to say that lives are worthless. I do not believe that there needs to be significance or a purpose to life in order for it to be valuable or important.”

I don’t think it’s that easy to separate value from meaning. Something is worth keeping because we value it, and meaning gives value to life. If meaning, significance or purpose doesn’t give life value, then what does? On atheism, if meaning or value depends on our own opinion or the opinions of others, life’s value goes away if those opinions change.

“I do not follow a Bible or believe in any God and yet I do not kill and rape people. I do not do this because I have no desire to. Not because I fear God or Hell or jail.”

Everyone has a sense of morality because we are all made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27) who wrote moral law on our hearts, of which our consciences bear witness (Rom. 2:15). We don’t need to be religious or read the Bible to have a sense of objective moral law, we only need to be born human. :) People are different and have different ideas about the details of moral law, but anyone who denies objective moral law affirms it by how they live.

“But being Christian depends almost entirely on being born into a Christian family. So anyone who was born into the “wrong” religion would automatically be doomed unless somehow they found God.”

Family and culture will usually have a strong influence (it’s called parenting :), but this is by no means exclusively true.

When I say the Bible provides the only basis for morality, that doesn’t mean we follow the rules perfectly. We CAN’T follow God’s law perfectly because we sin, and that’s the reason God sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sin. We can’t achieve righteousness on our own.

The Bible is a contains both prescriptive and descriptive content, and reading with consideration to historical context (just like you would read anything else) makes it clear that what happened in history is not necessarily to be carried out by followers today. God exacted judgment on evil nations and commanded the Israelites to carry out His judgment. Anyone who thinks this is instruction to kill shouldn’t be allowed to pick up any history book. I have debated many atheists on the OT accounts of violence and there are valid reasons for each, but to respond to each passage here would blow up this forum, so I’ll stay on the more relevant discussion. I recently debated a Muslim on his claims of Biblical violence here (http://callingchristians.com/2012/09/16/a-challenge-to-christians/) if you are interested. It’s quite lengthy though. :)

“How do you define reason?”

I define it as most people understand it and define it. I maintain that we have reason and value reason because God does. Without God, your highest commitment is human reason. My highest commitment is God and His word. We both presuppose these ultimate commitments because we can’t prove them—they are our most basic and foundational beliefs to be taken on faith. Is there anything that justifies your devotion to reason? Because it seems to work in the past? Faith in something because it’s worked in the foreseeable past is something else we can’t prove and must take on faith. So nobody can pretend that at our most basic beliefs aren’t based on faith. Ultimately, Christians hold to Christianity on the basis of Christianity, which is a circular argument. But likewise, the atheist holds to autonomous human reason on the basis of autonomous human reason. All reasoning about ultimate presuppositions is circular. What differentiates them is what makes sense of our view of reason (and other things).

On atheism, reason is an enigma. It’s sought after, used, loved, critical to any argument—yet it’s origin can’t be explained. All science is based on reason, yet there is no scientific reason for letting reason rule the show. At best, it’s philosophical, open-ended and relative (science is not supposed to be). Our logical arguments rest on reason, but what line of reasoning justifies reason as a basis? Reason is reasonable, therefore we reason.

On Christianity, reason is part of God’s very nature. Just like God, reason doesn’t have a cause or basis other than God Himself. Human beings are made to reason because our minds are created as a (limited) reflection of the mind of God.

Most atheists think this is crazy, but only on the presupposition that God doesn’t exist. If He did exist as the Bible describes, this is completely coherent. On your own worldview, there is no reason to rely on reason (you have to actually borrow from Christian Theism to do it).

“With Christianity there are no facts”

This is simply untrue and self-defeating. This statement is in fact a statement of fact about Christianity.

“My final question is, why do you believe in the Christian Bible? It is a book that has been written by humans that are supposedly speaking for God. If God is so powerful, why did he not write the book himself? Why wouldn’t he create a book that could not be altered or destroyed so people would know that no one has changed anything? The Bible has been translated, who is to say that the translation was accurate?”

The evidence for the reliability of the Biblical text is extremely compelling, but extremely lacking with other religious texts. This evidence is readily available, and I talk about manuscript evidence in the debate I linked you to above. Beyond the manuscript evidence (tens of thousands of very early ancient Biblical text from 3 continents, numerous languages, all of which textually agree more than 99%, and doctrinally 100%. There is also prophetic and archaeological evidence that other scriptures lack.

The view that humans do not have inherent value is consistent on atheism, but I don’t think that anyone can truly live that out. You say that Mark’s (or anyone’s) value is determined by what they think of themselves or what others think of them. Now, if Mark had no family or friends that cared about him, and if Mark didn’t think his own life had value (thankfully Mark is not one of those, but there are people like this), would you honestly say that person was of no value? I would argue that if we were standing in front of a person we didn’t know who had no caring family or self-esteem who was about to kill themselves, there would be a great compulsion within us to stop him from doing it. Wouldn’t you agree? Similarly—and perish the thought—but if you died and your son was left to the state without family or friends to care for him, would his life cease to have value if he lost his own sense of self-worth (or was too young to develop it)? Perhaps this wouldn’t be the case for your child, but for others it is. Do they have no inherent value?

I think you have done as many do when they realize the implications of talking about morality. In order to avoid the necessity of an objective source for moral obligations, such as the one that tells us we ought to regard human life as valuable and that it is right to love and protect others, we have to redefine it as something subjective/relative to the individual. But nobody actually lives as if morality can change or is different for different people. Everyone assumes that moral law applies to everyone, everywhere, at all times. To clarify what I said about morality being subject to change (as it would have done if it evolved within humans), it would help to consider this:

Is murdering a child wrong?
Was murdering a child wrong 1,000 years ago?
Was murdering a child wrong 10,000 years ago?
Would murdering a child be wrong in the future?

If morality evolved within humans, there is no basis for saying yes to any of those questions beyond the 1st one, because murdering a child would necessarily at some point be right. And really, on atheism, question 1 should be answered “no” because children have no inherent value—just the opinions of others and themselves. There is nothing about human evolution that would demand our moral sensibilities be the same in every person (in fact, most people different their ideas of what should be moral), yet when we have discussions like this or make any kind of argument at all, we are assuming that others should see the moral truth behind what we are claiming. Also, the very first evolved moral act or thought, whenever or whatever it was, would logically require a pre-existing moral standard by which we measure it. That’s why our source for morality cannot logically be evolution, but must have a source outside of human convention (A post I wrote on this is here… http://wp.me/p2jkYM-H).

I believe that the Bible provides the only basis for the morality we can observe and use everyday. Likewise, and to clarify #4, I think Christian Theism provides the only basis for our use of reason. What is there on Naturalism that says we should regard reason as our highest authority? Reason is what we base science, debate and all rational thought upon. But why should it be so, especially if the universe is merely the product of matter in motion? The Bible describes a God who uses reason as a part of His nature, created man in HIs image to use reason, and invites him to use it. That’s why I say the use of reason isn’t really justified on atheism, but Christianity alone makes sense of it. (more on this point here… http://wp.me/p2jkYM-66)

Hopefully that is clearer. :)

2. Mark’s life means nothing to me, I did not even know of his existance until this post. I assume he has family or friends that care about him which would mean that they would be hurt by his death. I believe that humans create the “meaning of life”. Which could be what one decides for themself (my life means something to me) or what another perscribe ones life (what my son’s life means to me). If my son or I were to die the Earth would not stop turning and the universe would not collapse.

3. I was wrong to say it is immoral and I do believe that people have a right to end their life. I was saying that I disagree with that decision. Anyway, I am a little confused by what you have said. You said “If morality evolved within the human mind and is thereby subject to change, how can you morally judge the act of suicide,” I am confused because I do not understand why morality being subject to change would mean that you cannot judge something as moral or immoral?

4. Can you rephrase this beause I do not quite understand what you are asking?

My beliefs are flawed and I am trying to improve them. Thank you for the complex questions because they really forced me to observe my beliefs. I do not think I contradicted myself. My belief that life is meaningless and we are just matter and have no effect on the universe does not contradict my belief that our brains appoint ourselves and others with meaning. I love my son and his life’s meaning is limitless but in the universe he is meaningless.
A US dollar is worthless and yet is worth a dollar to people in the US. Just because the dollar is worth something to John Doe, it does not mean that it actually is worth something.