Logical atheism? No such thing!

Jonathan Skinner Jonathan is a British author, journalist, and Baptist minister. He is also a minister at Widcombe Baptist Church in Bath, England. He has worked for the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship.
01 December, 2004 1 min read

Yet atheists always assume they have the intellectual high ground – they give the impression they are the logical ones, whereas Christians are those who have taken the fanciful leap of faith.

One of Britain’s most distinguished writers and broadcasters, Sir Ludovic Kennedy, said he wrote his book All in the mind – A farewell to God ‘definitively to disprove the existence of God’.

But to ‘disprove’ the existence of God he makes a massive assumption – that we have minds capable of proving or disproving something. How can he make such an assumption, when he believes the universe is the product of random processes?

Accidents galore

The biologist (and atheist) J. B. S. Haldane once wrote, ‘If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true’.

C. S. Lewis put the point eloquently. ‘If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of man was an accident too.

‘If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents – the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms … Why should we believe them to be true?

‘I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.’

Solid ground

In other words, the atheist has pulled the logical rug from under his own feet. For him to be right, he has to think rationally. But his own theory does not allow any thought to be rational.

Why should his brain be intelligent and sensible when it was formed out of unintelligent matter and by random chance? It is an illogical leap to say that the raw, undirected elements of the universe can produce reasoning minds.

Surely those who believe in a creator God are on more solid ground. Human beings are designed – and designed to think. This is a far better explanation of the way things really are.

So when a Christian gives a reason for what he believes, he does so on the basis that reason really exists – and that he and his hearers can comprehend that reason.

Jonathan is a British author, journalist, and Baptist minister. He is also a minister at Widcombe Baptist Church in Bath, England. He has worked for the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship.
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