God created and sustains all things. His every work bears His fingerprints and signature, giving such clear, comprehensive, and compelling testimony to His power and genius that all people are without excuse for not worshipping and giving Him thanks. Believers and unbelievers, alike, swim in a sea of evidence for God’s nature and existence. But, for the sake of argument, let’s ignore this basic fact for a moment and ask the question: How much knowledge is necessary for an atheist to know that God does not exist?
The short answer is knowledge of everything in the universe and beyond. In other words, one must have the omniscience of God to legitimately deny the existence of God. Or put another way, one must be God to deny God.
Yet, all people are subject to great human limitations. If I can’t know the contents of my neighbor’s garage without looking inside it, how can I possibly know what is beyond the three or four dimensions of my existence or on the other side of the universe?[1] Can we trust the opinion of people concerning ultimate realities when they have a hard time remembering where they put the car keys?
Atheism, therefore, rests on faith; faith in the authority of human opinion and faith in a presumed ability to know what cannot be known by people with great human limitations. Is it any wonder that Psalm 14:1 says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no God’”? God’s words to Job are instructive:
Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me! Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, who set its measurements, since you know?” (Job 38:1-5 NAS)
And as God’s words through Isaiah remind us:
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and marked off the heavens by the span, and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, and weighed the mountains in a balance, and the hills in a pair of scales? Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, or as His counselor has informed Him? With whom did He consult and who gave Him understanding? And who taught Him in the path of justice and taught Him knowledge, and informed Him of the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales…. All the nations are as nothing before Him, they are regarded by Him as less than nothing and meaningless (Isaiah 40:12-17 NAS).
Indeed, a proper view of God provides a proper view of our limitations, and the limitations of those who would deny Him: “Thou hast made my days as handbreadths, and my lifetime as nothing in Thy sight, surely every man at his best is a mere breath” (Psalm 39:5 NAS). And while all atheists will eventually meet the God they work so hard to deny, we need not be intimidated by their arguments of faith and unfounded opinion until they do. So, the next time you feel intimidated by the sophistication and confidence of atheists or the thickness of their books, remember that they don’t know what is in your garage, let alone what is on the other side of the universe.
[1] See Craig Biehl, The Box: Answering the Faith of Unbelief (Carpenter’s Son Publishing, 2015).
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© 2016 Craig Biehl, Adapted from Craig Biehl, The Box: Answering the Faith of Unbelief, Carpenter’s Son Publishing, 2015.
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