Welcome back to our series based on Josh McDowell’s apologetics book, More Than a Carpenter. Let’s continue discussing why atheists believe society is better chucking religion, particularly Christianity.
Let’s start with this assertion: Atheism is more reasonable than Christianity. True?
Is Atheism More Reasonable Than Christianity?
Atheists assert that atheism holds the rational higher ground. The late atheist Christopher Hitchens noted that religious belief requires faith, but atheism doesn’t, because it relies primarily on the empirical evidence of science. But didn’t Albert Einstein state that the most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is incomprehensible?
Einstein understood a basic truth about science: that it relies on certain philosophical assumptions about the natural world — including the existence of a real external world that is orderly and knowable, and the trustworthiness of our minds to grasp that world. Science cannot proceed apart from these assumptions.
This raises a thorny dilemma for atheists: If the human mind developed through the blind, material process of Darwinian evolution, is it trustworthy? Charles Darwin himself pondered this problem: “The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.”
Atheists place enormous trust in their personal powers of reason. Yet their worldview undermines the basis for such confidence. If Darwinian evolution is true, our cognitive faculties are the result of an unguided, irrational process, which should make us distrust them.
“Science is based on the assumption that the universe is thoroughly rational and logical at every level,” notes prize-winning physicist Paul Davies. “Atheists claim that the laws [of nature] exist reasonlessly and that the universe is ultimately absurd. As a scientist, I find this hard to accept. There must be an unchanging rational ground in which the logical, orderly nature of the universe is rooted.”
Atheism undercuts any such rational ground, while theism does provide a foundation. We can expect a rational universe if God exists.
In her article God Versus Science: Atheists Aren’t as Rational As You Might Think, Lois Lee notes, “The problem that any rational thinker needs to tackle is that the science increasingly shows that atheists are no more rational than theists. Indeed, atheists are just as susceptible as the next person to ‘group-think’ and other non-rational forms of cognition. For example, religious and nonreligious people alike can end up following charismatic individuals without questioning them.”
Is atheism more reasonable than Christianity? What might lead an atheist to change his or her mind? What are your thoughts? We’d love to hear them!
Next week we’ll look at another atheist assertion: Atheism is more scientific than Christianity. See you then!
Jesus: He’s More Than a Carpenter!
> FREE download: Read the first chapter of Josh’s bestseller, More Than a Carpenter. You can buy the book here.
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