Debating An Atheist: The Burden of Proof

One of the favorite tactics of atheists is to say their is no evidence of God. Of course we know there is a wealth of evidence that they refuse to acknowledge but those proofs will be dealt with at a later time. Let’s start a step earlier.

Why must the burden of proof be on believers to prove the existence of God? The burden of proof comes from presumptions. In criminal law a person is innocent until proven guilty. Why is the presumption that there is no God? There is no logical reason why that should be. It is equally as logical to start from the presumption that there is a God and force the atheist to prove there is not.

You cannot accept their premise. If an atheist is intellectually honest at all they must at least start from the premise that we do not know whether there is a God or not and argue each side from there, but to accept their false premise plays into their step upon step of illogical house of cards.

Carl Sagan a world famous scientist and religious skeptic said the “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. He spoke of our impatience with ambiguity. For example the newest discovered star existed before it was discovered. Gravity existed before it was discovered. The western hemisphere existed before it was discovered. Further there IS a cure for cancer. People have been searching for it for millennia and the fact we have not yet found it does not mean it doesn’t exist.

But of course there IS plenty of evidence of the existence of God, just don’t accept the logic of the atheist.

Guilt By Association

There is a lot of guilt by association going on these days. Liberals prescribe motives and actions to conservatives. Conservatives do the same to liberals. Christians do it to atheists and atheists do it right back. It is a red herring and it is dividing us and it is wrong.

While it is true that you can generally prescribe tenants of the belief to a particular group, that is about as far as it goes. For instance, by definition atheists do not believe in God. However, it is not true that by definition they are bad people. There are definitely bad people who are atheists, but there are also bad people who do autrocities in the name of Christianity. Likewise there are good and pleasant and funny people who you would like as human beings who are atheists.

Please do not take this as my acceptance of atheist (or any other) belief. It is merely a recognition that we cannot impute motives or actions to an individual just because someone we associate them with takes those actions or has those motives…even if it is someone we associate them closely with. It is also a recognition that doing so is in direct contravention of God’s specific requirements that we not judge others lest we be judged.

Take the example of a family. There is a judge here in St. Louis that is Jimmy Hoffa’s daughter. That also makes her Jimmy Hoffa Jr’s sister. Those names conjure up specific images to many Americans. There is an immediate, and perhaps justified, rush to judgment when either male Hoffas are mentioned. But does that make the judge bad? Does that make her unfair? Corrupt? Of course not. She is none of those things. She is a good judge. Even though she lived years with men who conjure up many negatives, it is neither fair nor correct to impute things to her because of your views of her infamous family.

Why do I bring this up? God is after us individually and wholly. He is about the business of exposing our prejudices and biases to us so that we can be more fully like Him. We are at a time in this nation where it is not good enough to walk the Christian life we have always walked. As the old saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing things the way you have always done them and expecting different results.

Christianity can no longer be about us. It must be about God. It is time that we fall on our faces before the Almighty who loves us and gave Himself up for us and ask Him to gently reveal every area that keeps us from Him. We must yield our thoughts and our feelings. We must walk by faith and not by sight. And in doing so, in setting aside our rights and our presuppositions, we will find the peace and love of God that passes all understanding. In yielding to whatever His plan may be we will find true freedom, true power and true authority. And when we do that we will change the world. People will want what we have. When the atheist is your friend and you are walking in complete surrender to God you have knocked down barriers, maybe it is THE barrier that keeps them from God. Radical surrender is freedom. Radical submission is authority. Radical weakness is strength.