Isn't this mean towards people of other faiths? I respect many people with whom I disagree. I love many people with whom I disagree. It is not mean to disagree. As a Christian, it is my duty to love and serve all people, regardless of their faith and whether we agree.
Isn't this old fashioned? In this day of modern Science, do we still need God? Modern science has brought us great knowledge and power, but not great love and morality. When modern science brings us nuclear weapons, I am certain I need God. When science provides efficiently deadly chemicals, I am certain I need God.
There is a logical flaw in believing that science superscedes faith. Science is knowlege obtained by experimentation and faith enables us to handle that knowlege. Today's modern culture often confuses the philosophical belief system of scientific naturalism with true science. Scientific naturalism is the belief that the experimental universe is all that exists. It is illogical to conclude that science, which deals soley with experiements, can demonstrate the validity of scientific naturalism, a system of faith concerning things beyond the experimental universe.
Is it hard for scientists to believe in God? In fact, many of the great scientists were people with strong Judeo-Christin faith in God. Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, the co-discoverers of calculus and much of modern mathematics, believed in a God Who ordered the laws of the unvierse. Albert Einstein, discoverer of relativity, also believed in a God Who set the laws in place. Blaise Pascal was a profound scientist-mathematician who set the foundations for fluid dynamics, modern economics and social sciences, projective geometry, and probability. Pascal fought in favor of the scientific method because of his faith in a God Who set deterministic laws over the universe. Galileo Galilei, famous for demonstrating the heliocentric universe and the scientific method, believed in a God that set forth the universe despite his persecution. Max Planck, founder of quantum theory, was a Christian who saw his faith as foundation for his understanding of a law-goverend scientific universe.
John Locke described Christianity as the most reasonable of all religions. He asserted that the basic tenants of Chrstianity, the existence of a God who created the universe and Christ as savior, are both reasonable concepts. Let us consider if they are still reasonable today.
First, the mere existence of our universe attests to a Creator. Science has done a wonderful job describing the laws by which our universe works. These laws suggest a lawmaker. Some assert that because we now understand how our universe works that there is no need for a creator. Much to the contrary, the extreme precision and order of our universe testifies to a designer. Claiming that the order of the universe implies the nonexistence of a creator is like finding a working watch on the ground in the woods and saying, “well it works so it must have come together by random chance.” Even worse, claiming that our abundant scientific knowledge universe implies the nonexistence of a creator is like opening up the watch and documenting all the gears and saying, “Now I know how it works. Hence it is logical so it did not have a creator.” Science has done much to describe the laws of nature, but has never created something out of nothing, and has never created life from dead matter. The existence of matter together with the law of conservation of matter says that either the matter is eternal or was created by a higher power. If matter were eternal then the first law of thermodynamics, the tendency towards entropy and disorder, would imply that there could not be any order in the universe since it has been in existence for an infinite amount of time. Thus, our universe without a creator is a contradiction. Hence, it is more reasonable to believe in a creator than to believe in universe without one.
Now consider Jesus. There is more historical evidence and documentation to the existence of a man called Jesus who lived approximately as the Bible claims than there is for William Shakespeare or Augustus Caesar. His teachings on love, forgiveness, and grace unquestionably have changed the lives of millions for the better and so it is reasonable to believe that he was, at the very least, a good man. Some say that he was just a good man, and not actually God. However, he claimed to be God. (Assuming that the gospels are reasonably accurate – see the following paragraph.) It seems unlikely that a good man would make such a claim unless he believed it. If he knew that he was not God then he was a liar, not a good man. If he believed that he was God and was wrong then he was a lunatic. Hence, it is reasonable that he was God.
Now consider the miracles that the Bible claims that Jesus performed, including rising from the dead. Now if these miracles are true then Jesus is God, or at least is a whole lot more powerful then any other human in history and is probably God. The gospels, written by first hand accounts of Jesus’ life, claim the miracles really happened. The gospels (along with numerous other letters) were written by early Christian believers soon after Jesus’ death. Some today claim that these miracles didn’t happen and that the early Christian letters are lies made up after Jesus’ death to promote their religion. However, many of the early Christians were martyred for their beliefs. If fact all of the original disciples except one were martyred. If Jesus did not perform the miracles and did not rise from the dead then all of the disciples, who claimed to be first hand witnesses and claimed to see him after he rose, knew that Christianity was a lie. But if they knew it was a lie then they all died for the lie. Most of them were put to death with the offer to deny Christ and live. It is quite unreasonable to believe that many would die for something they knew to be a lie.
I don’t claim to prove unquestionably the truth of Christianity the way one proves a mathematical theorem. Faith is not something that can be logically proven. Faith is to be formed upon a variety of evidence, both internal and external, the way a jury forms a verdict in a trial. I do believe, however, that the evidence before us says it is much more reasonable to have faith in Christianity then to have faith in the nonexistence of a creator.
