Brad Alles

Do you want to know the truth about God?  Let’s talk theology.  Theology means “the study of God.”  This series of blogs will address atheism, pantheism, and arguments for God’s existence.  Before we study God, we have to know some concepts regarding beliefs about God.

There are basically four beliefs about God: theism, pantheism, atheism, and agnosticism.  The Theist believes that God exists.  The Pantheist believes that God exists as everything.  The Atheist believes that no God exists.  The Agnostic doesn’t know or says we can’t know if God exists.

The key to all of these is the assumption—either God is or isn’t.  It is as simple as that.  Whether people admit it or not, that’s where we all begin when we develop a view of reality, or a worldview.  We all start with the presupposition about God’s existence.  And the truth of the matter is that either God exists or He doesn’t.

The Humanist Manifesto II states outright, “We find insufficient evidence for the belief in the existence of a supernatural; it is either meaningless or irrelevant to the question of the survival and fulfillment of the human race.  As non-theists, we begin with humans not God, nature not deity.”    Corliss Lamont, author of The Philosophy of Humanism, declares that “Humanism…considers all forms of the supernatural as myth.”  He goes on to say that anything outside of nature “does not exist.”

We must understand that every worldview starts with an assumption—and this one does loudly and clearly.  Author and professor Nancy Pearcey sums it up: “Secularism itself is based on ultimate beliefs, just as much as Christianity is.”  Yet the danger of failing to remember that every worldview starts with a presupposition leads to the notion that atheism is somehow “neutral”, without bias, while Christianity is solely based on private opinions.  Pearcey continues: “It is impossible to think without some set of presuppositions about the world.”  Translation: no one is neutral.   And that’s why asking the question, “How do you know there’s no God?” helps expose the starting premise of this worldview.

Notice that the atheist states there is no god.  The question to ask is, “How do you know?”  If someone has been everywhere and studied everything, then they might be able to say that.  But simply asserting that there is no God isn’t enough.  How does one explain the existence of miracles, events beyond the scope of the natural realm, when people are healed?  Or take the visitations by angels or demons that people have experienced.  If there is no supernatural realm, how is this possible?

Clearly, the Bible teaches the existence of God.  It states His reality in the first verse, Genesis 1:1.  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”  While it also an assumption that God exists, it makes more sense to believe in God, given the evidence of the supernatural, such as miracles or spirits.  Moreover, the ultimate proof of God’s existence lies in the Bible and the reality of Jesus of Nazareth, true God and true Man, Savior of the World.  More on those topics to come, as well as the next entry on pantheism.