Inside The Atheist Mind: 5-Day Devotional预览

     Believers make atheism possible. Not the true believers, not the ones who walk the walk and make the necessary sacrifices; not the ones whose belief is reflected in their behavior, but rather, the ones who “play” at believing; the ones for whom God has little or no relevance in life; the ones who reject the very dogmas they’re supposed to hold fast to.
 

    These are the so-called “Cafeteria Christians” who pick and choose the tenets of faith that are easiest to follow and most pleasing to them personally; the ones who end up promoting values just as secular as the secular culture in which they live. It is because of the prevalence of hypocrites such as these that the new atheism has flourished in recent decades, and its hopeless, death-centered agenda has been able to advance so far.
 

    Something similar can be said about those who identify themselves as agnostic. These indecisive, wishy-washy, modern-day Hamlets may not know it, but they, too, are enablers; they, too, are functional atheists. The agnostic position attempts to get around the responsibility and the obligation of making a choice about God.
 

    The only problem with this kind of thinking is that it goes against everything the Judeo-Christian God stands for. The personal God of the Old and New Testaments is all about freedom. Of course, He could make a huge, blazing cross appear in the sky, and then everyone would have no option but to believe in His existence. But He doesn’t want to force us to do anything.   
 

    Instead, He gives us all the evidence we need to make a free choice, all the evidence of nature, logic, common sense, reliable testimonies, and revelation. Then He leaves it up to us to decide. That’s why faith is not, ultimately, a feeling, but rather a decision: an informed, intelligent decision, but a decision nonetheless. The fact is, nothing you do or read in your life can give you anything resembling mathematical proof that either God exists or doesn’t exist. It always comes back to the necessity of making a choice. You must make a choice.