Christian Apologetics - If God Exists, Why Would He Care?

Christian Apologetics is about creating a 'defence' of the Christian faith. How would you respond to the following statement (posed to me about 12 months ago):

"Even if a creator God does exist, the chance that He has any interest in us is highly unlikely. We are the human inhabitants of a speck of dust, revolving around a tiny star which is one of hundreds of billions in an insignificant galaxy, which is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe."

Christopher Hitchens once said Christians were ‘self-centered’ and that there was an ‘extraordinary arrogance’ to say all of this creation was for us. 

The start of the universe, and the development of consciousness,  according to Richard Dawkins is a ‘one-off’ event triggered by an ‘initial stroke of luck’.

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Let us start by looking at what some of the Scriptures say:

Psalm 139:1-4  O LORD, you have searched me and you know. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.

James 4:8 – Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.
1 John 4:9-10  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Christians could all probably share stories of what they believe wholeheartedly God has done in their lives. The experience I have had in relation to experiencing the immanence of God, through the work of the Spirit, could be enough for me to offer a valid argument towards the overall question at hand. Though, again, knowing the sceptics a little, this would not be enough to convince them, that there is a God who not only created us, but loves us and cares for us.

Now, to simply quote scripture as above is not enough, as any unbeliever would question the validity of the Scriptures and so this would not be an argument in itself.

In the ‘Five views on Apologetics’ one of the five views is the Reformed Epistemology Method, and ‘they argue that belief in God does not require the support of evidence or argument in order for it to be rational’ (: 20). Calvin said that we have an innate sensus divinatis (a sense of the divine), so, a God that loves us, may seem to be irrational, but we have a deep sense, that the idea of a God loving us is true, based not so much on evidence or argument but on experience.

William Lane Craig says that, ‘the proper ground of our knowing Christianity to be true is the inner work of the Holy Spirit in our individual selves...’ (: 28).

And as William Lane Craig says, we can have a self-authenticating religious experience. Robert Oakes defines a self-authenticating religious experience, as a ‘veridical experience of God which is sufficient to guarantee that the person having that veridical experience could never in principle have any justification for questioning its validity’. Now this self-authenticating religious experience, is not necessarily proved by reason, but rather through our own experience. 

William Lane Craig explains, ‘that such a person does not need supplementary arguments or evidence in order to know and to know with confidence that he is in fact experiencing the Spirit of God’ (Five views on Apologetics, : 29). Well William Lane Craig goes on to say that in certain contexts the experience of the Holy Spirit will imply the apprehension of certain truths of the Christian religion, like the biblical quotes mentioned before, e.g. ‘you have searched me and you know me’. So, we know that through the inner working of the Holy Spirit, that the truth that God loves me, and that he sent his son Jesus into the world, so that I might be saved, and that such a God cares for me, is a truth that I can claim for myself, because of the inner working of the Holy Spirit.

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Christian Apologetics - Developing a defence for the Christian Faith. 

Other posts on Christian Apologetics:

• The Teleological Argument for the Existence of God
• The Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

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SOMETHING TOTALLY DIFFERENT:

• The Differences between Leaders and Managers

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The New Atheism - Should Christians be concerned?

The New Athiesm - Should Christians be concerned? What is it?

Since 2004 there has apparently been a resurgence of Atheism; well that's according to David Steele writing in Philosophy Now - May 2010. This is what some would call, The New Atheism. The debates between Atheists and Christians have been around for years, but the discussions have hit the ears of many in the last few years, especially with the vocal advocacy and authorship of people like Christopher Hitchens (God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything) and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion).

So firstly what is an 'atheist'? Or what is atheism? Much seemingly pedantic discussion is made about what the true definitions of these terms are, but firstly the narrow view of atheism is this: a-theism (a - from the greek meaning  'without' and theism/theos from the greek meaning 'deity'). The narrow view is thus labelled as without a deity, or rather, a belief that there is no God. This definition is saying that Atheists do not believe there is one God; one who supremely cares for this creation. They do not believe in what is called monotheism. Ernest Nagel (1901 - 1985) says in relation to atheism, 'I shall understand by 'atheism' a critique and a denial of the major claims of all varieties of theism' (cited in Philosophy Now - May 2010, p.6). The reason this is labelled a narrow view of atheism, is because this labels those that are polytheists (many gods) as atheists. A hindu would be far from labelling him/herself an atheist! So the definition of atheism has broadened over the years. In the broad sense atheism, according to Michael Martin, standardly refers to the denial of the existence of any god or gods and this therefore encapsulates the Christian monotheism and also polytheism. This type of definition of atheism tends to be the one that the general public hold to.

Michael Martin says, 'In Western society the term atheism has most frequently been used to refer to the denial of theism, in particular Judeo-Christian theism. This [theism] is the position that a being that is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good exists who is the creator of the universe, and who takes an active interest in human concerns, and guides his creatures by revelation' - and all the Christians read this and say, 'Yep! Amen!'

Exhaustive empirical evidence does not exist to prove the existence of such a wonderful God - only faith. Faith that comes by hearing the Word of God, and a relationship that forms because of someone acting on that faith/trust and believing that Jesus is who he says he is, and does what he says he does.

Christians know there are questions that are unanswerable and discussions that are hard to 'win'. The fact is though, that failure to respond adequately to an intellectual argument about faith does not render the faith inadequate; it merely means someone is unable to respond with theological prowess that dumfounds the other! The questions exist, no Christian doubts that:
* If God knows the future, how can we have free will? (Cicero)
* What was God doing before He created the world? (Augustine)
* Must God, if he exists in the mind, also exist in reality? (Anselm)
* Can an omnipotent being be constrained by justice and goodness? (Al-Ghazali).
* Why does a loving God allow suffering to good people (the general public ask this one!)

So this new atheism, or the old, same atheism revamped in the eyes of some... Tim Madigan says this apparent resurgence in atheism is due to a variety of reasons and some of these being, the collapse of the Soviet Union, revulsion against religious fundamentalism, a concern over collusion between church and state, and the growth of the internet and the dissemination of ideas and 'free' thought that this enhances (Philosophy Now - May 2010, p. 4). Whatever the reasons, the good news about Jesus remains the same. God sent his one and only son [Jesus] into the world, not to condemn the world, but to save it, through him.

Turn to Jesus today. 

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