Renowned atheist, journalist, and prominent liberal author, Christopher Hitchens, released a New York Times best seller in 2007 titled: God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Hitchens is one of several contemporary and atheistic apologists who promote science and rationalism as the answer that will bring ultimate good and freedom to mankind. [...]

Probably not, especially if you are a young college student sitting under the complexity of different worldviews at your university or college.  Almost certainly not if you were raised as a Christian but were never taught why faith must come to bear with reason, or in fact why you believe what you believe.  And absolutely not if the first 2 are true and you were also raised in the south.  

Developing a consistent worldview is one of the most important pursuits you will ever meet.  This is the heart of living, for failing here, we fail everywhere.  Everybody has a worldview.  It is part of who we are as intrinsic beings and developed, or assumed, by our cultural makeup.  But not many people can say with certainty that their worldview is consistent or that it is carefully constructed.  James Sire says this about the establishment of a worldview, “Few people have anything approaching an articulate philosophy – at least as epitomized by the great philosophers.  Even fewer, I suspect, have a carefully constructed theology.  But everyone has a worldview… In fact, it is only the assumption of a worldview – however basic or small – that allows us to think at all.”

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I was driving down the road a few days ago with my wife and I noticed a bright red bumper sticker on the back of a hybrid which said, “God is too big to fit into one religion!”  We ended up pulling into the same parking lot and to my dismay parked close together.  I really wanted to ask this person about their bumper sticker, and I wanted to kind of probe their thoughts on such an interesting statement.   I ended up not doing so for the sake of saying something I might regret later, as I’ve been known to speak my mind rather straightforwardly and frankly in these sorts of conversations, and rather truthfully, she kind of scared me.

This did get me thinking though.  What would she have said if I had asked her what her bumper sticker meant?  Well, I’m pretty sure I know what she would have said, as the meaning of the bumper sticker is quite clear, but if truth is relative could the meaning of a bumper sticker also be relative?

“Is there meaning in this bumper sticker?”

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Evil is not a theoretical problem for the atheist.  It is simply a dimension of the way the world is at its current state of evolution within the universe.  It could not have been different, so why complain?  Indeed, the reality of goodness is far more of a theoretical problem for atheism (i.e., much harder to explain).  It is not at all easy or obvious to provide an explanation for altruism, goodness, love, and other unselfish human attitudes and actions in purely evolutionary terms.  

But for Christians, evil really is a problem at every level.  

This is because of our commitment to biblical theism.  On the basis of what the Bible teaches – unequivocally and repeatedly – we Christians believe that there is one living God, the creator of the entire universe, who is personal, good, loving, omnipotent, and sovereign over all that happens.

-Christopher J. H. Wright The God I Don’t Understand, p 26-27.

Step Four – Historical event (Jesus)

Remember, each step thus far is a characteristic of every major religion; not so with step four.

Only Christianity possesses step four. Visions, dreams, revelation, etc are found in religions such as Islam, Mormons, Hinduism, etc., but only Christianity rests on the reliability of an historical person. Step three connected the dreadful awe of a numinous presence to the morality with which man abides. Jesus connected them too… but in a slightly different way.

Jesus was audacious with his claims. He said that he was the numinous presence we have been describing and feeling and that he was Lord over the moral system man is held accountable to. He said he was God, at the beginning of creation, God made flesh. There is this ever increasing notion that people want to respect or tolerate the historical Jesus that serves as example while politely denying the religious Jesus. IT’S NOT POSSIBLE! C.S. Lewis rightly observes that the historical Jesus can only be looked upon in two ways: 1) He was telling the truth or 2) He was a raving lunatic.

Let’s look again at what Jesus claims. He claims that he is God (cf. direct quotes of Jesus in John 17:5, 21 and an editorial comment in 5:18 concerning his pre-existence before creation and equality with God). And he claimed to be Lord over the Law (cf. Luke 6:1-11). If these assertions are false, Jesus is not respectable but a liar or mentally insane for believing them; definitely not respectable. The only other option is that they are true.

What have you to say then? Do you consider Jesus to be a lunatic or God; Christianity to be laughable or real; salvation and judgment to be imminent or imaginary? There is no middle ground.

“The Christian faith has the master touch – the rough, male taste of reality, not made by us, or indeed for us, but hitting us in the face.” – C.S. Lewis

With the close of the 18^th Century, we began to see a new form of philosophy begin to shape.  Scientific questions were then a form of the current metaphysical branch of philosophy, known as natural philosophy, which sought answers through empirical knowledge (epistemology).  With the development of modern science and the birth of the scientific method, natural philosophy simply became an empirical and experimental activity, unlike the rest of philosophy.  The birth of the scientific method therefore separated metaphysics from natural philosophy, and metaphysics became a sole philosophical enquiry into the non-empirical and non-experimental questions of life and the nature of existence.  As the scientific method has evolved, it has become the popular belief that metaphysics and the scientific method can no longer co-exist together to be reliable.  Herbert Fiegl contended in the 1954 Journal of Philosophical Studies that there are “no philosophical postulates of science.”  He continues to say that the “scientific method can be explicated and justified without metaphysical presuppositions about the order or structure of nature.”[1]   

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