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Much of what is found in the anti-theism movement dubbed “The New Atheism” says very little about the existence (or, rather, non-existence) of God. One of the most cutting arguments presented against religion and belief in God is the awful practices of many religious people. Choose your religion, and you’ll find examples of atrocities done in the name or religion or in the name of God. The Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, terrorist attacks and the bombing of abortion clinics but scratch the surface. In light of this, it seems obvious (we’d be led to believe) that religion, and belief in God, is a pretty awful thing. Human beings become victims of God, or religious programs, and the best thing we can do is shed the chains of those bound and goad them into the freedom of Enlightened thinking. The argument doesn’t so much present human beings as evil and doing evil things, but human beings as decently good, chained by religion, and thereby doing evil things. The argument’s flaw is that it proves too much: if humans are the victims of religion, then why not of ideologies as well? Take any political ideology in the past 200 years, and you’ll find barbarism in its adherents. I’m at a loss as to how anti-theists can point to evil religious people and blame religion but somehow preserve non-religious ideologies from being stained by their evil practitioners. The evil acts people do in religion, I think (and psychology would agree), point to problems within humans more-so than in the faiths they profess. Do certain religions, or interpretations and misreadings of religion, advocate violence? Certainly. Some religions, and branches of religion, rightly fall under judgment. But the nature of human beings and the critique of religion must operate not on such a generalized basis: “Religious people are mean, therefore God doesn’t exist.” Condemning humans for their evil makes sense; condemning religion, or parodies of religion, that advocate evil makes sense; but a generalized condemning of religion, and an outright denial of the existence of God, all the while preserving the sanctity of humans in light of their victimization by religion and theism, simply doesn’t make sense, especially when the argument simply ignores and pushes aside all the beautiful, wonderful, and good things done in the name of God and religion. The most outspoken anti-theists have come under fire from their secularist comrades for their blatant disregard of all the good that’s come about because of religion. The New Atheism paints a portrait of religion and belief in God that’s one-sided at best, and the whole argument fails to say anything about the existence of God. Even if we were to foolishly concede that religious convictions and belief in God make people evil, we still haven’t said anything about whether or not God exists, and we’ve said still further nothing about his characteristics. The argument only works insofar as the buck can be passed: people do evil things, and in the name of religion and of God, and these people stand condemned. That is a valid argument. 

This isn’t to say that the New Atheism doesn’t bring uncomfortable things to the surface; but simply because something is uncomfortable doesn’t necessarily make it problematic. There’s much to be learned by dialogue between theists and atheists, but so long as the pool is so muddled by the logical fallacies, extreme prejudice, and straw man assaults on either side, we’ll be doing nothing but treading water. A very good case for the existence of God can be made, but in my own studies the most convincing proof is that of the Cosmological Argument. To put it simply, the cosmological argument understands that every effect is preceded by a cause, and you cannot have a cause without an effect. The interplay is like that of a change, but the interplay could only get started by an initial cause not actuated by anything outside itself. Follow the history of cause-and-effect events far enough back through history, and you’ll come to the Original Cause. That this argument is solid is attested to by its fierce opposition in the New Atheism camps. The only way out of the conundrum is to call into question physics itself, and this route’s been taken. String Theory and Multiple Universes, relatively new ideas that call into question everything we ever thought we knew about physics and the way the universe works, have come into vogue. But despite their popularity (a popularity mostly restricted to a few ambitious physicists and hordes of mainstream science pop-culture fans), most of the world of physics finds them laughable. One physicist commented that if people were to stop talking about these theories, they’d simply stop existing. There’s no real evidence, the ideas are largely founded on improvable assumptions and conjectures, and they pose more troublesome questions than they answer. But they’re the only way out of the Cosmological conundrum (unless, of course, you’re like some who advocate the existence of the universe to aliens; but the classic “argument against regression” so often imposed against theists easily comes into play). There are many more arguments for the existence of God, but my own desire to be brief rather than to write a 150-page book render dealing with them all a matter left to those far more learned than I. 

At the offset of the Quest, the blanket question cast over the Judeo-Christian worldview was, “Is this worldview justifiable given the quality and quantity of assumptions required to hold it up?” I’ve focused on what I believe are the three most crucial assumptions: the existence of God, the nature of God, and the historical resurrection of Jesus. Assuming that God exists is, I think, a justifiable assumption, if not more-so than that of atheism. Theism answers many of the questions we have about the universe, creating a coherent framework for understanding why things are the way they are. Atheism must not only wiggle around all sorts of things (such as the Cosmological Argument) but must also concede its own assumptions: the material world being all there really is, for instance. Naturalistic atheism can’t concede the existence of anything beyond the physical world, and the result isn’t just a scrapping of things like God, angels, demons, and ghosts, but also of consciousness, conscience, morality, virtue, and not least love. Much of atheism’s strength in recent decades has precisely been an attack of these things, relegating them to nothing more than biochemical, material processes in the brain. God’s existence says nothing, of course, about his character. We can’t simply point to the Cosmological Argument and say, “Look: we’ve proved that the Judeo-Christian God exists.” All you’ve done is warrant good reason to believing that something, or someone, of a caliber that we’d call “God”, lies behind the origin of the cosmos. This “God” could be just as capricious and violent as the pagan gods of old. Ascertaining the character and nature of God is, perhaps, something best left with theologians and philosophers. At the same time, we can look about the universe, at its intricacies and beauties and frightening displays, and see that it looks like a sort of mixed bag, a God with brilliance matched only by his mood swings. Here is where the argument from morality comes in: we can look at all the good and bad within the world, at all the good and bad within us, and we can say, “This God seems to be a melting pot of characteristics, both good and bad.” But our own revulsion at the bad, and our own praise of the good, points to something beyond the mere portrait of the world. There is within us a deep-seated disgust at what we call “pure evil” and much praise of what is “good”, with a lot of mixed feelings in the grayer areas. New Atheists, attributing morality to nothing more than brain impulses, simply can’t find a way to explain why we feel the way we do. The very systems of evolution seem to imply that in a world such ours, the survivalists would be the ones able to shut down those elements of the brain. But what we find is a continual, if not growing, revulsion to evil and praise to what is good. That this is universal tells us something more about the hidden secrets lying in human conscience; and that its imperfect tells us something about the way we work. The Judeo-Christian worldview, conscripting humans in “God’s image” and simultaneously in the image of evil speak to this condition of morality, as well as to the depths it can plunge. We are moral creatures, even if we deny it; we are repulsed at evil and in praise of what is good; we crave relationships and love and things like loyalty, fidelity, sacrifice and selflessness. There’s something quite wrong with the human brain if we are nothing but material creatures subject to natural selection and evolution; it’s a surprise we’ve gotten as far as we did. As I wrote back in May, I believe that the world we live in points not to an uninvolved Original Cause but to a creator who cares deeply about his world. If God is capricious, then why is there such things as love, justice, and a repulsion at evil? Deism seeks to skirt the problem of God’s character and the muddled sense of our world by shoving God to the far backwaters of the cosmos: he created us, then stepped back, and let it unfold without the slightest concern in the world. But, again, how can deism account for beauty, laughter, altruism, the human craving for relationships, our love of art and literature and music, not to mention those things like virtue, selflessness, sacrifice and justice? If God weren’t so bad to be evil, if he was simply disinterested and apathetic, there’s no reason for our world, despite its ugliness, to look the way it does. We must make sense of both the good and the bad of our world, and any philosophy or theology must make sense of both, and Christianity, with its declaration of an active God striving to rescue an evil-saturated world, does precisely that.

Is the assumption that God is GOOD a good assumption? Yes, in light of all this, I think it is. Pointing to evil people who do evil things in the name of God or religion as an argument against the character of God only backfires: we’re back to asking ourselves the question, “But why the hell do I care about it?” When it comes to condemning Christianity as an evil religion, as the New Atheists like to do, we’d do well to pay better attention to biblical scholars, historians, and the actual religious text itself. Reading the works of atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens when it comes to the character of Christianity and the God of the Old and New Testaments, I found myself no more than irritated: not because they were making good arguments against my religion, but because their arguments lacked no substance. Fiery rhetoric, rather than good exegesis and historical consistency, is the tool of those condemning Christianity as an evil religion. I find it sad, if only because of my beliefs, that such a portrait of God’s love and desire for justice as we have on the cross has become the epicenter of an attack against the one who seeks to heal his battered and bruised creation; but that is a personal, rather than intellectual, sadness. The New Atheists make no solid argument against Christianity as an evil religion, and thankfully, in less volatile passions, other atheists can concede that Christianity truly is a beautiful religion, even if they don’t ascribe to its premises. My readings of the New Atheists along with leading theists, coupled with lots of pondering and meditation, reinforced my belief in the existence of a good God. 

“Is belief in God a justifiable assumption?” Yes. 

“Is the assumption that this God is good a good assumption?” Again, Yes. 

The third assumption, that Jesus truly did rise from the dead as attested to in scripture, is also a good assumption (but that will have to wait for another time). Confronting some of these looming doubts has brought me a fresh wind, so-to-speak, in my devotion to God and my desire to be a part of what he’s doing. Thomas was skeptical, and Jesus invited him to get hands-on with his doubt, face it head-on, and the result was his gasping expression, “My Lord and my God!” I’m thankful I didn’t let these doubts fester any longer than they did, and I’m encouraged to face other doubts that may rise in my life. There are, of course, still some doubts that are more emotional in nature that need to be faced; but I’m confident that in facing them I’ll learn more about myself, about the world, and about God, and that I’ll find myself more deeply devoted to him and his enterprise.