Atheists
WELCOME TO ATHEISTS
Welcome to all who have taken the trouble to explore this far, especially atheists and agnostics. Thrice welcome to free thinkers and rationalists. This page (added 25.11.2013) and sub pages (to be added as I have time) are particularlywritten as an introduction to the site for people with whom I have disagreed on YouTube or other comment fora.
You may have come here after an invitation or challenge I posted as part of a YouTube comment. I genuinely do want to engage with people who are open minded about evidence, since I believe that the evidence points to God, to Creation and above all to Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and Saviour. Through Jesus, the friend of sinners, we can receive forgiveness for all thethings we have done wrong, new life in the Holy Spirit, reconciliation to God, adoption into God’s family and free entry to Heaven where we can experience eternal joy for ever. I don’t expect people to believe all that just because I say so, but because it is reasonable and well evidenced. That’s the whole message of this site, which by the way is is 100% funded out of my own pocket and written in my own time. Because I believe. But not blindly, as I will explain.
Do I hate atheists?
A few years ago in Northampton, after I had given a talk about why Darwinian evolution is bad science and terrible religion, a man asked me why I hated atheists so much. I replied that if I hated atheists, or anyone else, it would make me a very bad Christian as I am commanded to love people even if they hate me. I did not hate atheists, I said, but I hated lies and try to help people get free from them. I had certainly spoken very vigorously against Richard Dawkins(have you read what he says about people like me!?!) but I don’t think there was any hate in what I said. But he disagreed, so one of us must have been wrong. So there we have it: people sometimes believe themselves right when they are in fact seriously, dangerously and culpably wrong. I address this issue in my ‘Three Men in a Hut and other Essays: a study in disagreement’ which is still available as a Kindle download and is being piece by piece posted on this site.
Does it matter what we believe? Yes, so I believe! We should, in my opinion, strive to discover the truth. Since we disagree, some of us must be deceived and therefore to a greater or lesser extent basing our lives on lies. However, some people are very comfortable with the lies that define their world view and cultural space. They can get very unhappy when told their life is based on deceit. Hence the bitterness and name calling we almost always see when God, Christ and creation/evolution are under serious discussion.
Do men always seek truth?
The scene where Morpheus meets Neo in the first ‘Matrix’ film comes to mind, as does the stoning to death of my name saint Stephen (Acts of the Apostles chapter 7). Some truths are very uncomfortable and we may prefer to stay deceived. Jesus was killed by the religious authorities of His time as He told them truths that would have taken them out of their comfort zone if they accepted and acted on them. I get cursed, flamed, marked down and shouted at for preaching Christ and questioning Darwin. Goes with the territory; as Jesus said to his followers ‘if people hate you, it’s because they hated me first.’ (John’s Gospel 15:18).
Anyway, as I often post in comment sections, I want to engage people but my time is limited. So rather than respond to responses again and again, I suggest they come here where I have said what I want to say at length and careful thought. Many of the ‘arguments’ I hear against Creation, God and Jesus are tired, clichéd, abusive, wrong and ‘not even wrong’ assertions that I have responded to so many times that I’m really bored with responding to them again and again. I have a very full life and do not have time to get drawn in to endless rounds of angry exchanges with internet atheists. Some are sincere and reasonable questions that deserve a more throughtful and longer answer than I can post in a web forum. So I post my arguments, fuller responses and the reasoning behind them here. Plus some links and recommendations for further reading, based on the hopeful asusmption that some people really do want to search for the Truth even if it turns their life upside down.
I post here and elsewhere as when I give the account of my life to God, I want to be able to tell Him that I at least tried to tell some of my fellow humans the Good News about Jesus and the terrible danger they are in because of their sins, including their culpable unbelief. If that statement is capable of being represented as making me seem selfish, I can’t help that. And anyway I confess to being a sinner. Perhaps the greatest benefit of accepting Jesus as Saviour and Lord is forgiveness of ALL of your sins, and this applies even to a wretch like me (as John Newton, former slave trader, wrote in the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’. Which I am told is the world’s most popular song.
Dear reader, I pray that you may one day be able to sing that song with me.
Of course, if you are perfectly satisfied that you are right about everything, and that in particular ‘all religion is mumbo jumbo bronze age fairy tales that has been disproved by science’ etc, than I may not be able to help you. Sorry about that. I tried. Sin is a bigger problem than you think, and what’s more it stops you thinking straight about God as we read in John’s Gospel chapters 1-3. We read in this important passage of Scripture that although Jesus had come into the world as the Light of the world, ‘Men loved darkness rather than light and did not come to the light as their deeds were evil.’ (John 3:19-20).I must challenge anyone who thinks I am deluded for accepting Christ and rejecting Darwin to consider that if, as they believe, I can be deluded and wrong and not know it, perhaps the same might possibly be true of them……
Proverbs 14: 12 ‘There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.’
Psalm 14:1 ‘The fool says to himself, ‘There is no God’
Jesus says ‘Come to Me all you that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest… “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”
Romans 6:23 ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
May I wish readers all the good things that I hope for myself.