The (lack of) faith: Atheism

Written by Zhey Chua |Posted on May 17, 2008 | Comments

An email I received this morning brought me to two different blogs with different perspectives on faith and/or the lack of it.

Dean Lozarie, a member of the Iglesia Ni Cristo, tackles his take on atheism after reading an atheist’s post titled The Arrogance of Faith. Dean intelligently did an interweaving of having and not having faith by saying thus:

I only have one question about this whole “unprovable” system: the inability to definitively prove God’s existence does not eliminate its probability, right? It is impossible to prove God’s existence, says scientists. Does that automatically disprove it? Imagine you’re in a clearing in the forest, and the leaves are rustling, so there might be a wild animal nearby. Without any evidence (other than the circumstantial rustling of leaves), you can’t really prove that a hungry beast is looking at you and thinking, “Lunch!”, right? But that does not eliminate the possibility that there actually is a wild animal.

Just as no one can actually prove that they have brains inside their skulls unless they crack it open which would of course lead to death, no one can really prove God’s existence if we, as a people, refuse to see the miracles around us because we refuse to acknowledge that we can never really have everything we already have without God!

For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.- Colossians 1: 16-17

That is the problem with humanity; we are no different from scorpions or snakes: we like to bite the hands that gave us life because that is also a part of our complex sinful nature.

Atheists challenge the faithful with higher thinking, with hard evidence, fossils (or the lack of it), scientific discoveries or whatever, and when the faithful refuses to be swayed by their arguments, the faithful gets branded an arrogant. Well, one commenter on The Arrogance of Faith was right when he said that one man’s pride is another man’s arrogance. Who are we to say that a brother is at fault when we ourselves are at a much bigger fault?

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.- Matthew 7:3-5

Atheism is a revolution sparked by man’s struggle to prove that he is far above all creations, worst, even above God. It is in itself a blatant blasphemy and rebellion against the very God who has created him. Yes, atheism is just one of Satan’s cunning ploys to entice the human race to turn its back on the very air that gives it life. How pathetic! I read an atheist’s blog and how he ridicules Christianity with his natural flair for words and his exceptional intelligent arguments and I was just blown away! I had to shake my head in amazement, really, Satan morphs into all things beautiful and grandiose, elegant and rich, flamboyant and superfluous and it is no wonder why so many people get swayed so easily! It is just all so seductively dazzling that stepping into it all seems like “really living life”.

Seems like really living life. I get jolted even by the very fallacy of that phrase!

Atheists, or some of them at least, believe that the faithful exercise faith simply because they do not bother to use their brain-powers, that they just embrace whatever is handed down to them by their forefathers. They make the faithful’s faith sound pathetic, disgusting, and even hedonistic to a point. But is it? Perhaps to some.

To the true Christian however, life is nowhere near simple and fuss-free. There are daily struggles, potholes of sins of varying sizes to avoid, temptations to fight, a reward in the afterlife to work hard for. True Christians use their brains, stretching it to its limit, to understand fully and to obey God’s Word. Yeah, maybe it all looks pathetic and disgusting to other people but if being so means being given eternal life and walking with God at the end of days, then so be it.

I’d like to quote atheista.net here ,

Man doesn’t want to be alone, thus, he created god in many images. He refused to believe the more gloomy yet more likely reality that his god may not really be extant at all. Man is arrogant in not conceding to the depression of a lonely existence – and as we see now, faith is being used as an excuse for patronage for the ideal and exaltation for the divine. In the end, man is simply worshiping his own model – his own paradigm. And of course, he will never accept that reality.

And so I now quote Jesus Christ, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”