Is The Christian Faith Ridiculous?

A friend of mine on facebook recently asked me to respond to comments on one of her posts.  She had written a post about her Christian faith and a person replied to her post with remarks that seemed to indicate that the Christian faith is ridiculous.  Also, the comments touched on the issue of atheism and belief in the existence of God.

My response is not just a few paragraphs—when did I ever make a point with just a few paragraphs, huh?  But based on feedback that I’ve received, it appears that a few others may wish to read it.  So, what follows is my response (with a few edits from the original).  I hope you will take a minute or two to read it.

--Dan

To believe in Christianity is not ridiculous or foolish.  Many of the most brilliant thinkers in the history of the world, past and present are Christians, e.g., St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, Soren Kierkegaard, Michael Faraday, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and many others.  Notice that some of the greatest scientific minds of all time are on that list.  And there are others, too. Francis Collins, who was the head of the Human Genome Project, is a committed Christian.

There are cases of skeptics who carefully studied the evidence in order to disprove Christianity once-and-for-all and, at the conclusion of their studies, were instead convinced of the truth of Christianity.  These were not foolish, dimwitted people, they were smart people who came to a belief in God through an intellectual search.

When it comes to the origin of our universe and a belief in God, it really boils down to 2 basic options.  These 2 issues can be broken down in various ways and have been written about in voluminous detail but at the end of the day, they are fairly simple.

Since the science of cosmology tells us that the universe did indeed have a beginning (it has not always existed).  Then…

1) Everything that exists has come from some type of cause. (God?) Or;

2) “Nothing” has produced “something” through random chance plus time.  (No God.)

At the end of the day, those are really the two options.

The argument for the first point, above is called the cosmological argument.  And it can be stated like this:

1 Whatever begins to exist has a cause

2 The universe began to exist

3 Therefore the universe has a cause

4 This cause must be transcendent, immaterial, uncaused, eternal, and omnipotent

And, of course, the transcendent, immaterial, uncaused, eternal, omnipotent cause referred to in point #4 sounds a heck of a lot like God to many of us.

The Cosmological Argument is a valid philosophical argument that has been debated by many brilliant people.  A person may find it unconvincing, but I promise you, it’s not dumb.

The vast majority of people who have ever lived, both smart and not-so-smart, believe that there must be a cause for all that exists.  Again, a person may not like the belief, and that’s fair, but it is not an unreasonable belief.  Furthermore, many people find the notion that “everything ultimately came from nothing” is the more difficult belief to justify.

I don’t write this to attempt to put anyone on the defensive or to try to win an argument.  I’m not interested in arguments, I’m interested in the truth.  A person who is interested enough to read an article like this is clearly indicating that these issues matter to him/her.  So, if you have read this post, I’m assuming you must be interested in the truth, too.  I commend you for that.  Please understand that I do not mean this in a condescending way, but I hope your search for truth leads you to the one who is the Truth.

Blessings to you!

Dan