We would agree that if God exists (especially the God of the Bible) it would have profound implications for our lives. This is one of the reasons people defer belief. We'd rather not deal with the reality of God. Maybe later on in life, just not now.
Through the years I've talked with countless people about God. There are very few "intellectual" atheists out there (i.e. people who just flat-out deny the existence of God for purely rational reasons). There are however, spades of "practical" atheists. People who may profess God but for all practical purposes live as if he doesn't exist. You can decide whether you are a "practical" atheist are not.
Practical atheists say, "I believe in God but..." But I won't forgive... but I won't worship... but I won't serve... love my neighbor... give generously... love justice/mercy... trust God with my needs... live pure/holy life, stop sinning... be accountable, etc.
{There is a great book called Christian Atheist that explores this idea in depth. Check it out!}
If you're a practical atheist, all the reasons, proofs, and miracles in the world will never be enough to sway you. Why? Because you don't have an "intellectual" problem... you have a "heart" problem! Maybe you want to keep God in a tiny box instead of releasing him to be the Lord of all your existence? There is little value entertaining thoughts of God if you're not also willing to entertain the rather profound and practical implications his existence has on our lives.
The Profound Implications of Not Believing
Just as there are profound implications for our lives if God does exist, there are profound implications should God not exist. And this is where intellectual atheists are the most hypocritical and insincere. Few intellectual atheists dare to live out the actual implications of being an atheist.
Take Richard Dawkins for instance, who arrogantly asserts that believing in God is nothing more than one mass delusion. He wrote a book called the "God Delusion" that has been circulated widely. My only purpose is to evaluate his thinking, not to appear to be attacking him personally. Like anyone he is on his own journey toward truth.
The Bible says, "A fool says in this heart there is no God. (Psalm 14:1)" But Dawkins believes that it's the fool who says in his heart there is a God.
He writes, "I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there." He is entitled to his belief. But does Dawkins truly live his life on the assumption God isn't there? Does anyone?
He goes on to say, "Faith can be very very dangerous, and to deliberately implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong."
If there is no God, on what basis can an atheist declare anything right or wrong? If there is no transcendent God, no objective truth, and no moral absolutes... how can the atheist turn around and moralize about anything? Much less the evils of religious indoctrination? Or, religious intolerance? Most Atheists don't really live their life on the assumption God isn't there. They regularly appeal to some transcendent moral authority or principle... the kind of transcendent moral authority they often deny can even exist!
Dawkins loves to quote the humanist Bertrand Russell. If you have taken a philosophy course in high school or college you have likely heard of Bertrand Russell. Consider how Bertrand Russell describes the implications of God's non-existence on mankind:
"Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving... [Man's] origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms... all the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all of the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system. The whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins." (Skeptics, p 138).
If Atheists are right, and God is a just a delusion, "Our life is but a spark in the infinite blackness (of universe), a spark that appears, flickers, and dies forever (William Lane Craig)."
All our hopes, fears, loves, beliefs, morality, knowledge, thoughts, feelings, achievements, labors, devotions, inspirations... if the Atheist is right... get flushed down the cosmic toilet of the universe to be recycled out into one great expanse of nothingness. Everything is coming to an end. From space dust we came and to space dust we return! So why bicker over the collocation of a few atoms? But not even Dawkins (for instance) thinks, writes, or lives that way.
William Lane Craig says, "If God does not exist, our lives are ultimately meaningless, valueless, and purposeless despite how desperately we cling to the illusion to the contrary." (On Guard, p. 30) Dawkins authoritatively appeals to the very delusions he seeks to dismiss.
Theologian and Philosopher Francis Shaeffer explains it this way... imagine you're living in a two story house. On the lower story of the house is the physical, scientific world of man. This is material world of space, time and matter. Now imagine the upper story of the house represents transcendent things like God, objective truth, morality, right/wrong, universal values, meaning, and purpose.
Even though atheists like Dawkins claim everything in the second story is only a delusion, they keep leaping to the upper story! Nobody "just lives" in the first story. No intellectual atheist consistently lives as if there is no God. Everyone leaps to the second story to assign truth, meaning, value, purpose, right/wrong, etc..
If you're truly an "intellectual atheist" you have to answer three questions ...
First, What is Meaning-Full?
This first question is Solomon's question. Do you realize that an entire book of the Bible is devoted to trying on the Atheist's paradigm?
In Ecclesiastes 1:2-11 Solomon writes, "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher."Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." 3 What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? 4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. 5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. 6 The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. 7 All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. 8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. 9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. 11 No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them."
In Ecclesiastes 2:11 he writes, "I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind."
So what activities on earth are significant? What's meaningful? What endures? What matters? At the end of the day... does it really matter if we had existed at all? This is Solomon's issue. Nobody's life is ever remembered (except his perhaps!)
"A World War II concentration-camp prisoner recounted the experience of Jews who were ordered to haul piles of rock from one end of their compound to the other, only to have to move them back the following day. Day after day they were ordered to do this and with disastrous results. Labor without meaning depleted their spirits. The men sickened and died in astounding numbers. Aimless toil became a curse on the human spirit." {from book, Skeptics}
If God doesn't exist, we're all just moving space rocks. We labor, we toil, we arrange, but none of it matters.
William Craig shares a "science-fiction story in which an astronaut was marooned on a barren chunk of rock lost in outer space. He had with him two vials, one containing poison and the other a potion that would make him live forever. Realizing his predicament, he gulped down the poison. But then to his horror, he discovered he had swallowed the wrong vial --he had drunk the potion for immortality! And that meant he was cursed to exist forever-- a meaningless, unending life. Now if God doesn't exist our lives are exactly like that... (On Guard, p. 33)
Second, What is Value-Full?
If the first question was Solomon's question, this second question is Mother Teresa's question. As she started her work in India, she experience what she would refer to as a "call within a call." She was called to be a Catholic Nun, but when she saw the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, she left the convent and resolved to live among them. In Calcutta she started tending to the needs of the destitute and starving. She had no income and had to resort to begging for food and supplies.
Though she experienced doubt, loneliness and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life... she persisted. She made it her mission to care for, in her own words, "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone." She and her sisters opened orphanages, AIDS hospices and charity centres worldwide, ... caring for refugees, the blind, disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless, and victims of floods, epidemics, and famine. {read more}
Value undergirds all human morality. But what happens when you take away the value of human life? What happens when the value of human life is measured purely in evolutionary terms?
Richard Dawkins says, "There is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference... we are machines propagating DNA... It is every living objects sole reason for being." Can you believe that? There is no evil or no good, unless of course you are indoctrinating children with religious ideas. That of course is evil to Dawkins. (Quoted from On Guard)
In Nazi Germany, Hitler decided to destroy bad DNA. The Jewish people were bad DNA. The gypsies were bad DNA. The mentally sick, and physically deformed, were bad DNA. The Germans didn't just eliminate other people, they eliminated their own people. But so what if we humans are just DNA?
I have no intention of railing against social ills this morning... but what's it say about our culture that we defend the aborting of the unborn as a woman's right? Or that we celebrate assisted suicides as a tender mercy? We practically have a race war unfolding over the value of "black life" vs. "blue life." We also have a holy war on our hands. Some Muslims devalue Jewish/Christian life. Some Christian people devalue the Muslim's life.
BUT... the very foundation of morality is that every life has value. Black, blue, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, young, old, unborn, etc. Destroy that foundation, and what's left?
Third, What is Purpose-Full?
If the first question was Solomons, and the second Mother Teresa, we'll call this third question... Rick Warren's question! Do you remember the book he wrote years ago called, "The Purpose Driven Life?" The subtitle of that book asks the question, "What on earth am I here for?"
The Purpose-Driven Life is the single best-selling, non-fiction book in American history. It's sold over 30 million copies, and is the second most translated book in the world second only to the Bible itself!
Perhaps it isn't an accident that the 1st and 2nd Best Selling books... and the 1st and 2nd most translated books in all the world are about living a purpose-full life? And how well has Dawkins book God Delusion done? The Bible has better answers than atheists on the purpose-full life.
There is a great article on WikiPedia that chronicles how people from the beginning of history have sought after the meaning of life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life
At the end of the Wikipedia article they give some examples of people who sought to answer the meaning of life. In Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, there are several allusions to the meaning of life. At the end of the film, a character played by Michael Palin is handed an envelope containing "the meaning of life", which he opens and reads out to the audience: "Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try to live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations." {watch}
In The Simpsons episode "Homer the Heretic", a representation of God agrees to tell Homer what the meaning of life is, but the show's credits begin to roll just as he starts to say what it is.[143] {watch}
In Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, the characters are asked how we should life our lives, and reply with a version of the golden rule `be excellent to each other' followed by 'party on, dudes!'. {watch}
At the end of the day, if you're an intellectual atheist, you have to answer these three questions in a compelling way, without leaping from the first story to the second story of the house. Good luck!
I would like to add one additional question.
Fourth, What is Ever-Lasting?
Before us this morning we have the question of faith, in God. Why does our Christian faith matter? What questions does it seeks to answer? So here is the biggest question facing us.
Paul Tillich says everyone must come face-to-face with the threat of their own non-being.
William Lane Craig says, "This thought is staggering and threatening... to think that the person I call "myself" today will cease to exist and I will be no more!" No matter how close or far off we imagine this to be, the thought overwhelms us."
Jean-Paul Sartre once said, "Several hours or several years make no difference when you have lost eternity."
For the Atheist there is no meaning, value, purpose, or eternity unless one leaps to the upper story. If you are a nothing more than a collusion of atoms... the threat of non-being is threatening indeed.
But for the Christian there is no threat of non-meaning, non-value, non-purpose, or non-being. Instead there is everlasting hope to all who believe.
I mentioned that Solomon tried on the Atheist paradigm. At the end of Ecclesiastes (in chapter 12), Solomon shares the results of his investigation.
Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, "I find no pleasure in them"--2 before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain; 3 when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim; 4 when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when people rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint; 5 when people are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags itself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then people go to their eternal home and mourners go about the streets. 6 Remember him--before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken;before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well, 7 and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. 8 "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Everything is meaningless!"
The Conclusion of the Matter
9 Not only was the Teacher wise, but he also imparted knowledge to the people. He pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs. 10 The Teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true. 11 The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails--given by one shepherd. 12 Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body. 13 Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.
The conclusion of that matter is that ultimate meaning, purpose, and value is found embracing the very profound and practical implications of believing in Creator God! We are to fear him and respond to him!