My brother believes in God, yet he keeps his beliefs private. He is not unlike many theists who choose to keep their relationship with God to themselves. He is amused by my Twitter account, since I’ve taken the opposite approach, choosing to let my “light so shine.” One day, after perusing my timeline, my brother tweeted, “I don’t believe in miracles, but if you change even one atheist’s mind, or vice versa, I will believe in one.” The tweet made me laugh, so I retweeted it. Who doesn’t appreciate my brother’s good sense of humor?
I am under no sort of assumption that my words will influence the conversions of atheists to theists, as only God can influence such a conversion. My intentions instead are to provide Christians with some tools that they can use to refute atheists’ arguments against God.
One atheist with many arguments against God is Matt Dillahunty. Dillahunty is the host of the “Atheist Experience,” which is a ninety minute show that airs every Sunday. The show features Dillahunty and other atheists who discuss atheism prior to taking calls and questions from theists and atheists. A handful of atheists on Twitter have suggested I call in to the show, so one day I watched it to get an idea of what a call would entail. In that particular show, I watched Matt Dillahunty dominate the conversations he was having with several Christians, which concerned me. I wondered why anyone would call in if not fully equipped for battle.
Accordingly, the intention of this blog is to offer Christians several rebuttals to some of Matt Dillahunty’s and other atheists’ popular arguments against God. Dillahunty has a Wiki site that documents his views, so I accessed his arguments from the site: =Main_Page. Yet note that in a conversation and tweets I’ve had with Dillahunty, he notes that many others have authored opinions on the site, so some of the opinions that I’m rebutting here may not be Matt’s.
Some of the topics I am refuting I have refuted in prior blogs. These include my arguments concerning the uncaused cause (the Cosmological Argument), intelligent design (the Teleological Argument), the absolute moral code (the Natural Law Argument), and the Problem of Pain (as examples), so please excuse redundancies if you have read those before. Additionally, I include my own personal testimony of several of the spiritual experiences I have had.
It is time to drown the iron chariots and watch them rust.
Dillahunty’s website opens with the following line: “Iron Chariots is intended to provide information on apologetics and counter-apologetics. We’ll be collecting common arguments and providing responses, information and resources to help counter the glut of misinformation and poor arguments which masquerade as evidence for religious claims.”
Broken Compass Argument
According to Dillahunty, the Broken Compass Argument “is a specific type of fallacious claim or assertion that starts with one premise and leads equally to many disparate (often mutually incompatible) conclusions. Since the many conclusions imply a contradiction or are absurd, the argument is either unsound or an incorrect premise has been used…If a person were to argue that the Christian God exists because when they pray they feel better, they have made a broken compass argument because any other praying member of any other faith could make the same claim for their deity’s existence following the same argument.”
Several points need to be made to address this:
- As Dillahunty noted, prayer makes people feel better. Five scientifically supported arguments in favor of prayer are: (1) prayer improves self-control; (2) prayer makes people nicer; (3) prayer makes people more forgiving; (4) prayer increases trust; and (5) prayer offsets the negative health effects of stress (Routledge, 2014). A 2013 Pew Research Poll indicated that 75% of Americans believe that prayer is an important part of their lives. Other polls indicate that people who are unaffiliated with a religion and atheists sometimes pray (Routledge, 2014). So, yes, people do feel better when they pray. We’re hard-wired to feel good when we connect with the spirit within us.
- Christians don’t argue that the Christian God exists because when we pray, we feel better. Christians instead argue that the Christian God exists and when we pray, we connect with His spirit, which makes us feel better. If we don’t include the connection to God by modifying the original statement, one could erroneously make the assumption that without prayer, God would not exist. The argument suggests a response (prayer) impacts the existence of the cause (God) instead of the cause impacting the response. A similar argument would be “the sun exists because when I go outside, its light makes me feel better.” If I go outside and see no light and don’t feel better, the sun does not exist.”
- It would be ethnocentric of Christians to assume that they are the only ones for whom God answers prayers. When good people of any faith pray sincerely to the God of their beliefs, God hears them and answers their prayers. This assertion doesn’t discount the fact that all paths lead to Jesus; it merely states that God is along the pathways of everyone who so desires. Everyone who desires the truth will eventually find the truth, which is Jesus. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the WORLD, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 highlights God’s focus on the entire world, not just on a particular population within the world.
Taken together, these arguments demonstrate the value of prayer in improving people’s health since prayer is humanity’s universal and natural response to God.
Dillahunty states “presuppositional apologists (primarily from the reformed school of theology) argue that circular reasoning is acceptable and necessary within a world-view and that circular reasoning is only unacceptable when it presents self-contradiction.” He presents this example of circular reasoning:
- We know God exists because the Bible says so.
- We know the Bible is correct because it is the inspired word of God.
I agree with Dillahunty that the two statements exemplify circular reasoning and that circular reasoning is faulty reasoning. In other words, each of the two statements should not be considered as proof for the other.
When the statements are considered independently, they are stronger, yet they are imperfect. The first statement is true in that God exists, yet if we merely rely on the words of the first statement, we must be open to an application to the holy books of other faiths, which point to the divinity of a different god or gods. The Bible is correct because it is the inspired word of God, as noted in the second statement, yet similar to the first statement, the words alone necessitate an openness to the application to the holy books of other faiths.
Therefore, we need to strengthen both statements. To do so, we should consider the overall purpose of the Bible in the context of our existence. All passages, verses, songs, and words within the Bible were written with the overall purpose of bringing us closer to our triune Lord. To bring us closer, The Bible teaches us a variety of lessons through examples, proverbs, psalms, and parables. The Bible gives us a glimpse of the way people lived thousands of years ago within sometimes disturbing cultural contexts. Biblical individuals and groups faced battles and had to overcome evil, temptation, suffering, lust, betrayal, and pride by drawing upon and elevating their love, fortitude, perseverance, purity, forgiveness, and humility. Such lessons explain our purpose on this earth, which is to overcome adversity to become stronger and more like Christ.
As C.S. Lewis said: “And what did God do? First of all He left us conscience, the sense of right and wrong: and all through history there have been people trying (some of them very hard) to obey it. None of them ever quite succeeded. Secondly, He sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men. Thirdly, He selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was – that there was only one of Him and that He cared about the right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process.”
The Old Testament demonstrated humanity’s failures under the Old Covenant, which is why God established a New Covenant, knowing that almost all of humanity would live under the New Covenant. (The Population Reference Bureau estimates that 98% of humanity – so far – has lived Anno Domini, AD). With the New Testament came New Covenant and the example of the way in which we should aspire to live: Jesus Christ. The New Covenant is God’s promise to humanity that He will forgive us of our sins and He will restore fellowship with those who desire His presence. Jesus Christ is the mediator of the New Covenant and His atonement through His death on the cross form the basis of God’s promise. The New Covenant was predicted by prophets such as Moses, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel while mankind lived under the Old Covenant (Enns, 2014).
At this point, one might comment that other religions endorse the same values as Christianity of love, humility, forgiveness and the like. Indeed, the world’s major religions all endorse such values, which further underscores the fact that God so loves the WORLD and wants all within the world to be with and remain with Him. Regardless of the vehicles employed, the outcome for believers is the same, which is the fullness of a spirit united with the triune Lord. All paths lead to Jesus.
What sets Christianity apart? Unlike pantheism, in which divinity is expressed as a passive form of nature, the Christian God is an active part of our lives. Unlike Islam, in which divinity is expressed as an active, yet aloof god, the Christian God is highly personal. In summary, the Christian God is the only choice when one desires a walk with a personal, active Lord. More on these points to come.
“Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of shit you’d expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. And just between you and me, in any decently-run universe, this guy would’ve been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago.” – George Carlin
Dembski (1998) offers an interesting perspective on intelligent design, which is the concept in which we were created by an intelligent Creator, God. “But design is not a science stopper. Indeed, design can foster inquiry where traditional evolutionary approaches obstruct it. Consider the term ‘junk DNA.’ Implicit in this term is the view that because the genome of an organism has been cobbled together through a long, undirected evolutionary process, the genome is a patchwork of which only limited portions are essential to the organism. Thus on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function. And indeed, the most recent findings suggest that designating DNA as “junk” merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function. For instance, in a recent issue of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, John Bodnar describes how ‘non-coding DNA in eukaryotic genomes encodes a language which programs organismal growth and development.’ Design encourages scientists to look for function where evolution discourages it. Or consider vestigial organs that later are found to have a function after all. Evolutionary biology texts often cite the human coccyx as a ‘vestigial structure’ that hearkens back to vertebrate ancestors with tails. Yet if one looks at a recent edition of Gray’s Anatomy, one finds that the coccyx is a crucial point of contact with muscles that attach to the pelvic floor. The phrase ‘vestigial structure’ often merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function. The human appendix, formerly thought to be vestigial, is now known to be a functioning component of the immune system.”
“Admitting design into science can only enrich the scientific enterprise. All the tried and true tools of science will remain intact. But design adds a new tool to the scientist’s explanatory tool chest. Moreover, design raises a whole new set of research questions. Once we know that something is designed, we will want to know how it was produced, to what extent the design is optimal, and what is its purpose. Note that we can detect design without knowing what something was designed for. There is a room at the Smithsonian filled with objects that are obviously designed but whose specific purpose anthropologists do not understand.”
Atheists discount intelligent design and often call on natural selection, chance, and the long history of the earth to explain the evolution of humans. Natural selection doesn’t explain the origins of life, however. It merely explains the evolution of existing life forms. According to Trevors and Abel (2004) “The constraints of historical science are such that the origin of life may never be understood. Selection pressure cannot select nucleotides at the digital programming level where primary structures form. Genomes predetermine the phenotypes which natural selection only secondarily favors. Contentions that offer nothing more than long periods of time offer no mechanism of explanation for the derivation of genetic programming. No new information is provided by such tautologies. The argument simply says it happened.”
According to Hugh Ross (2016), “Many suggest that earth’s life-sustaining features are just ‘amazing coincidences’ that somehow fell into place in a way that suits human needs and, at the same time, determines what life-forms exist…Ongoing research tells us that earth has been shaped not only by an intricately orchestrated interplay of physical forces and conditions, but also by its vast abundance and diversity of life-forms. By means that no depth and breadth of scientific research can explain, life arose early in earth’s history under anything but the benign conditions it would seem to require and somehow persisted through multiple mass extinction events, always appearing and reappearing at just-right times and in just-right forms to meet the needs and demands of the revised environment.”
“The more thoroughly researchers investigate the history of our planet, the more astonishing the story of our existence becomes. The number and complexity of the astronomical, geological, chemical, and biological features recognized as essential to human existence have expanded explosively within the last decade…Are we simply the result of a colossal matrix of innumerable, narrow coincidences, against all odds, or is there a more reasonable explanation?” (p. 14).
“Even if evolutionary processes are responsible for new life-forms, there must be an external intellect sustaining the material world to make life and evolution possible,” according to Frank Turek (2015 p. 82-83). “In other words, evolutionary processes themselves rely on the goal-directedness of the material world. Evolution could not work without a mind actively directing the repetitive and precise natural forces that keep life together and make mutation and natural selection possible! …Mutations may be random in the sense that they do not have any goal in mind, but the natural forces that produce the mutations are not random. Living and nonliving things continue to exist because the foundation of the entire material world is goal-directed, not random.”
In summary, the purposes and complexities of life forms on the earth, coupled with goal-directed non-random evolutionary processes, suggest the presence of an intelligent designer, an originator. Using the imperfections and failures of humans (e.g., Ku Klux Klan) to discount the possibility of an intelligent designer equates to pointing to cracks in a home’s foundation to claim the home had no builder. Such assertions obscure the purposeful intentions of the Creator who designed the universe and the free will He granted.
Scientists today support the Big Bang theory. The mathematical underpinnings of this theory include Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, along with theories of fundamental particles. According to this theory, the universe (space, time, matter) started approximately 13.8 billion years ago with a small singularity, ever inflating to the state which we know today (NASA, 2016). Events before the Big Bang are not defined and what powered the Big Bang, setting it into rapid inflationary expansion is not known.
Dillahunty states, “It is not necessarily impossible for there to be an infinite chain of causes and effects. Among scientists, it is widely agreed that our universe began with the Big Bang. But we don’t know what occurred in the first split second after the Big Bang, nor can we comment on anything that came before it, as no experiments have yet been devised that could test any hypotheses about these early moments.”
Some atheists are satisfied with “not knowing” what powered the Big Bang, which is the same answer they apply to questions of consciousness (non-physical), dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter and dark energy are prevalent within the universe, as scientists have discovered, yet no one knows anything about their properties. Despite a lack of knowledge about physical properties, atheists don’t doubt the presence of dark matter and dark energy.
As for the mighty force that powered the Big Bang, believers offer the explanation of a supernatural being. This supernatural being would need to be spaceless, timeless (unbounded by linear time)(c.f., Hawking, 2017), and metaphysical to have been present prior to the Big Bang. This being would further need to be intentional and active or the Big Bang wouldn’t have been possible. In other words, this presence could not be a passive form.
Instead of accepting the possibility of a supernatural force, many atheists speculate that the multiverse is a possibility, which suggests that another universe was present before our universe, or that there are other universes aside from ours. Given the fact we have no (zero, zilch, zip) evidence of a multiverse, this argument seems silly since atheists demand evidence!
Given the answer to the question of what powered the universe appears painfully obvious (God). Excluding the possibility of choosing God as the answer by framing the choice as a God of the gaps fallacy equates to telling the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial of his former wife and friend that they will not be allowed to fill the gaps of their knowledge of whether he committed the crime with the glove, the weapon, and any blood evidence. We would never require that jury make a decision when not provided with all of the evidence, so why should we attempt to do the same in the present context?
- Our senses tell us that there is some motion in the world.
- All things moving must be moved by something else.
- Motion is the change from potentiality to actuality.
- It is not possible to be potential and actual in the same respect.
- Therefore, the mover cannot also be the moved.
- There cannot be an infinite regression of movers.
- Therefore, there must be a first, unmoved mover.
In summary, God is the only logical answer.
The Problem of Pain and Evil
Matt Dillahunty states, “As Epicurus pointed out: ‘Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?'”
“There are many counter arguments to the problem of evil. Arguments that justify the existence of evil are known as theodicies, a term coined by Gottfried Leibniz. A theodicy can generally be divided into four categories, each typically rejecting one of the four premises used to make the argument. The argument is, after all, not an argument for the non-existence of God but an argument for the non-existence of God with all three of the characteristics of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence in the presence of evil.”
“Many counter arguments rely on wild and unsubstantiated speculation: ‘So how do theists respond to arguments like this? [The Argument from Evil] They say there is a reason for evil, but it is a mystery. Well, let me tell you this: I’m actually one hundred feet tall even though I only appear to be six feet tall. You ask me for proof of this. I have a simple answer: it’s a mystery. Just accept my word for it on faith. And that’s just the logic theists use in their discussions of evil.’ (Smith, 1996)”
Some say that if God knew our every choice before we were born, knowing that we’d be going to heaven or hell, then we have no choices to make in our lives. We have no free will. Some question the character of God, wondering why a loving Father would be willing to allow some of His children not to choose Him. They state that God’s children shouldn’t be forced to choose God; they should be given free will not to choose Him. The bottom line with these issues is that some people feel that we don’t have free will if God truly has omniscience because God already knows our fates so we can do nothing to change fate.
To answer these issues, we have to discuss God’s unbounded time. God hasn’t already decided on our fate; He knows our fate but He is also with us as we make our choices, determining our own fate. He is concurrently in the past, present, and future. He’s watching His children make decisions, yet He’s already seen the decisions made. He knew from the beginning the choices made because He was just as present then as He is now. His presence is, was, and always will be – in the present. Accordingly, we are with Him when we make our choices, so we can always change our minds, and He already knows the outcomes of our “changed minds.”
To wrap our minds around this concept, try to unbound Him by time and remove any words or phrases that freeze Him in time. Eliminate words such as then, now, soon, before, after, and in the past or future. God simply is. So, instead of saying, “God knew back then what my choices would be today,” consider saying “God knew my choices and is with me as I make them.” Hopefully this helps to understand that we still have free will. We’re not locked into a life we didn’t intentionally choose.
Even so, some may wonder of the fates of those who do not choose to align with God. Given the fates proposed in the Bible, some wonder why God would permit them to even exist? Why would a loving God condemn anyone to hell?
Recall that our fate is our choice. No one goes to heaven or hell without choosing heaven or hell. But what is hell like, should that be the choice? Will it be all fire, as suggested in the Book of Revelation, or will it be more of a shadowy Sheol? The Bible says that it is a place of torment, which is attributable to the lack of God within those who have chosen that particular fate. Though God is present everywhere, including in hell, people in hell are not with God. God is no longer within those who have chosen that fate.
Some atheists state that the world is unjust. They question why some are blessed with much while others suffer so. To understand this issue, we need to examine purpose of good and evil. The world isn’t a perfect place because if it were, we could never grow the sorts of characteristics needed to be more consistent with the example of Jesus Christ. We’re here to grow and learn from our mistakes, because learning from our mistakes is what helps us to grow. We’re here to persevere through pain, to show empathy around those in need, to demonstrate faith when tested. In other words, we’re tested in all sorts of ways to grow characteristics like determination, faith, perseverance, empathy, and love. How could we ever truly understand love if we hadn’t experienced its counterpart? How could we ever develop hope if we never had anything for which to hope? How could we ever develop humility if we had never been humbled? So, the fact that the Lord has put us into a world with all of these yin and yang sorts of good and evil characteristics is to improve us and make us more like Jesus Christ, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.
This world is but a stepping stone to the next one, equivalent in time to a speck of sand on the beaches of heaven, so we must invest our time wisely. We’re put here to advance our souls by capitalizing on the spiritual gifts with which we’ve been bestowed. Similar to the Parable of the Talents, we are instructed to invest well in our talents. To those to whom much has been given, much is expected. God holds us accountable, so ignoring one’s spiritual talents will not be viewed favorably. Yet God doesn’t leave us behind either. He wants all of His children to succeed and prosper. Indeed, they are given free will not to choose Him and many make that choice. The Parable of the Lost Sheep states that God goes to great lengths to keep His children from making that choice, yet some resist His calls.
Argument from Personal Coincidences and the Argument from the Efficacy of Prayer
“[After feeling threatened] I decided to ask Archangel Michael to send us protection to get the girls safely home. Within seconds I looked up in disbelief as a police officer walked through the door! I quickly go the girls out of the store. I knew that we have just been saved by God and Archangel Michael, the patron saint of that police officer and others everywhere. Heaven worked to protect us, and I’m grateful.”
After reflecting on the quotation above, Dillahunty asks “How does the apologist know that God is arranging these occurrences, rather than aliens, the illuminati or the abominable snowman? Because other causes, including unknown factors, have not been ruled out, this is an argument from ignorance…. It is also an example of god of the gaps.”
Let’s unpack this assertion. When we develop and test theories in my academic field (business management) and others similar to mine that employ primary data (such as marketing, behavioral economics, and psychology), we aim to explain relationships between independent variables (such as personality factors or religious beliefs) and dependent variables (such as church attendance, volunteering activities or subjective well-being).
We develop theories based on the extant literature, which help us to identify the variables others have found to be relevant to our particular line of inquiry. We integrate findings from previous studies to form hypotheses, which we test using a variety of methods, such as structural equations modeling or hierarchical multiple regression.
Next, we gather data (which includes relevant demographic variables as controls) and enter it into a statistical package, such as SPSS. Then we run our analyses. Support of our hypotheses is provided when the results of our analyses are statistically significant. Statistical significance is obtained when the variance explained by the regression equation that we developed to explain the relationships between the independent variables and dependent variable is significant. Note that the variance explained is never 100%. We can never fully account for all factors that determine an outcome in the social sciences. In other words, results always include “gaps” or “unknown factors.” Despite same, we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and toss our findings into the trash, as Dillahunty would suggest we should do. Instead, we publish the knowledge we have, which we hope others will build upon to more fully explain variation.
To speak to Dillahunty’s assessment that people’s spiritual beliefs are merely arguments from ignorance, I suggest he question the prevalence of these so-called arguments from ignorance. Is it merely a coincidence that millions of people claim to have had spiritual experiences? We could test these empirically by collecting the testimonies of a few hundred people and applying a content analysis to identify recurring themes. We could also simply listen to their stories and make our own assessments of honesty.
I was raised in a Catholic family with my sister and two brothers. We went to a Catholic grade school and frequently attended church. Church was a solemn experience, with formal dress, hymns, liturgy, and rituals, so I found myself frequently checking my watch and growing bored.
One night, while struggling to get to sleep in college, a woman wearing a blue gown appeared to me on my bed. Mother Mary. She touched my shoulder and comforted me, telling me that everything was going to be okay. I have always struggled with skin issues, and on that particular night I had reached a particularly high level of anxiety. When I awoke the next morning, I felt cleaner and more refreshed than I had ever felt. The colors of the flowers and the lawns of Florida State University seemed particularly bright and it felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from me. Within a few weeks, a book arrived in the mail (sent by someone anonymously), which offered tips for people with my particular skin condition. I changed my diet and my condition improved greatly.
Years passed and the memories of that episode slipped into the back of my mind. By my late twenties, all but my sister had left the Catholic Church for various reasons. Friends of mine were exploring eastern faiths, particularly Buddhism, so I started gravitating towards such faiths. I read books by James Redfield, Deepak Chopra, and the Dalai Lama and found their ideas to be fascinating. I wondered whether we were souls within a great soul, which whistled into the cosmos. What I learned at that point was that the faith I was exploring considered God to be a passive part of nature.
More years passed and I waffled about wandering into churches every so often, yet finding none that suited my particular needs. I got married and had two kids, completed a terminal degree, and moved to a different city with my family. As my kids grew, they noticed that the neighbors were attending church on Sunday, so my sons asked me why we weren’t attending church, which made me feel very guilty.
One night in the month of March four years ago, I sat in my bed struggling to get to sleep. Instead of being met by the warm embrace of a loving woman in a blue gown, I was met by a dark spirit, which attempted to strangle and suffocate me. I have never felt such pure, cold evil in my life and I was scared beyond words and completely frozen. In desperation, I did all I knew to do: I said the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary, over and over and over. With each repetition I felt the spirit being lifted, until it was finally pulled from me. God became of a priority at this point. I realized that He is not a passive part of nature, but an active, personal God. The only God with such characteristics is the triune Lord.
My family decided to check out a quaint Baptist church, which was popular with my neighbors. When I walked through its doors, something moved me emotionally and ignited a passion within. We spent the first half hour of the service singing praise through upbeat, contemporary Christian music. I recall Matt Redman’s “Bless the Lord, O my soul” and Chris Tomlin’s “How Great is Our God” and felt tears as they streamed down my cheeks. The pastor spent the next forty minutes explaining certain verses in the Bible in such a way that my interest in learning more was greatly stimulated. My family decided to join the church and we began regularly attending services. I was baptized for a second time a few months later by full immersion in a tank of water.
I was on a path, yet I still had some unresolved questions. One big question related to the way God ordained men to lead the churches. I’m an advocate for female empowerment and leadership, so the second class treatment of women bothered me. A second question related to the way billions on the planet don’t worship Jesus. What sort of fate do they face? Will they be denied entrance into heaven?
The answer to my first question came at church when the pastor shared that Mary Magdalene and other women were the first to discover the empty tomb. Jesus gave the privilege of discovering the empty tomb, which is arguably the most important discovery in the Bible, to women, who were treated like dogs in those days! Jesus loves women. By reading the Bible, I discovered many other examples of strong women. Three standouts are Ruth, who exemplified tremendous loyalty, Esther who demonstrated courage, and Mother Mary, who showed great faith.
The answer to my second question on the fate of people of other faiths came in an unexpected way. I was standing in an airport when I noticed a tall, slender man standing in the queue next to an attractive woman. Something about the man caught my eye as he seemed to be radiating light. When I took my assigned seat, I was delighted when the man sat down next to me and his wife next to him. He struck up a conversation and I soon discovered he was a pastor in a church about an hour from my house. I told him that I wanted to write a children’s book similar to the books by C.S. Lewis. He instructed me to read C.S. Lewis’ adult books, like Mere Christianity and the Great Divorce.
The books by C.S. Lewis made all of the difference, as they inspired me to learn more and to become an apologetic. They also taught me that no matter the religion into which we’re born or the vehicle we choose to enhance our knowledge of the world around us and God, all paths eventually lead to Jesus.
Since reading many of Lewis’ books, I’ve developed a passion for more knowledge. Lately, I have read books by Turek, MacDowell, Strobel, Platinga, Ross, Tozer, Guinness, Bannister, Lanza, and Warren. I’ve studied many articles by William Lane Craig on his website as well.
Over the past few months, I’ve grown closer to God than ever. When I pray, I often feel complete joy. When I listen, I’ve heard His words. For these reasons and more, I’ve given my life over to Jesus Christ and nothing will prevent me from sharing His message of light and love with others.
I have had more spiritual experiences than the ones I have identified here, which I will share when I feel comfortable sharing. It isn’t easy to open up, particularly when accusations of “ignorance” or “hallucinations” are likely to come.
“People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight. Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give the best you have anyway.
You see, In the final analysis it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway.” – Saint Teresa
Thank you for your time.