Worldview #19: “What If I Don’t Need God?”

 While Mohammad Ali was on one particular flight, the plane experienced some significant turbulence. So the captain stated that everyone needed to fasten their seatbelts. Ali refused. When he was confronted by a flight attendant, Ali declared, “Superman don’t need no seatbelt.” At this the flight attendant replied, “Superman don’t need no airplane either.” :)

Some people openly declare that they do not need God, and many others declare this with the way that they live: extraordinarily similar to the atheist. There are 3 realities that these 2 groups of people need to address if what they believe is actually true.

First, without God, there is no moral law and thus no standard for right and wrong. Here’s a tip for those philosophy students. If your professors teach that there are no moral absolutes (things that are inherently right or wrong), then tell them that it is ok for you to cheat on your assignments and tests. :) If there is no moral law then it is wrong to have prisons for anything including rape, theft, and murder, for those things were morally justifiable to the perpetrators. Thus, for those who do not believe in moral laws, who are you to say that Hitler was wrong when he murdered 6 million Jews, or when terrorists attack, or someone robs you? 

Second, without God, there is no meaning in life. Just consider what a couple of the most respected atheists in the world have to say about purpose: Richard Dawkins said “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at [the] bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference” (River Out of Eden, p. 133). Alex Rosenberg is even more to the point: “What is the purpose of the universe? There is none. What is the meaning of life? Ditto. Does history have any meaning or purpose? It’s full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, pp. 2-3). Without God there is no purpose in life.

And third, without God, there is no hope. “If God does not exist, then both man and the universe are inevitably doomed to death. Man, like all biological organisms, must die. With no hope of immortality, man's life leads only to the grave. His life is but a spark in the infinite blackness, a spark that appears, flickers, and dies forever” (William Craig, “The Absurdity of Life without God” available from http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-absurdity-of-life-without-god#ixzz4ixvmwq1H).  Therefore, without God there is no hope.

Thankfully, the evidence for God’s existence and Biblical worldview is astounding as we have seen over the past several months (for more info see www.eugenechristianchurch.blogspot. com). Thus, since God does exist, there is a moral law protected mankind from right and wrong. There is great purpose to your life. And with God we can have great hope in spite of any situation that we encounter, including death itself.

In His service,

      Matt