The very public debate between atheists and Christians can be more heated than illuminating. One problem is that there is a huge communication obstacle: both sides have very different views of how humans know what they know.
Christians claim to know God. This is, we admit, an extraordinary claim. Often it is misunderstood. Christians are not simply claiming to know that God exists. Nor are we claiming mysterious experiences of the supernatural. For a Christian, to know God is to believe or trust God. We have heard a message that has come to us in the Bible. It is the message about Jesus Christ: who he is, what he has done for us, and what he will yet do. This message claims to be God’s word to all people. We have come to believe the message, and therefore to trust the one whose message it is. To believe or trust God is to know God.
Some Christians have come to believe God on the basis of extensive investigation. They have looked into the evidence supporting the historical reliability of the Bible. They have examined the historical person of Jesus. They have weighed alternative explanations for his teaching, miraculous works and resurrection. They have concluded that there are very substantial reasons to believe that the gospel is true. Other Christians have found the message credible without necessarily investigating so thoroughly. Having found the message believable they have chosen to accept the invitation to trust God. The end point is the same: believing God.
Christians understand that God himself is at work in this experience. We thank God whenever the Word of God brings about conviction in its hearers, for this is the work of God’s Holy Spirit (see 1 Thess 1:2-5; 2:13). When a person believes God it is never merely a matter of human investigation and reasoning.
The atheists (at least those with the media attention these days) do not understand this. They claim to know (or at least to have a very high level of confidence) that God does not exist. In simple terms their claim seems to mean that they can adequately understand the world and human life without any need for a god. To them everything “makes sense” and can be adequately explained through scientific enquiry and sound reasoning. If science and reason enable me to explain and account for everything that I experience or observe, then (they say) there is no need for God. Hence, although there may remain the theoretical possibility that God (or a god) exists, humans do not need that hypothesis to live full and happy lives in this world. Certainly no one could know that God exists. Atheists choose to live on the basis of the very high probability (as they see it) that there is no god.
Some atheists have come to their atheism on the basis of much thought and enquiry. They understand the various explanations of how the world came to be without a creator, how the apparent order emerged without a designer, and how human life arose without any purpose. Some have examined the claims of Christianity and remain unpersuaded. Others have rather more simply found the atheist view of life credible, and perhaps attractive. They have chosen to accept the atheist view. The end point is the same: believing that there is no god.
When a Christian finds him or herself in dialogue with such an atheist – particularly if this is under the pressure of public debate – the two are unlikely to communicate well. The atheist thinks that we only know what we can prove through science and reason. Some (like Richard Dawkins) go so far as to say that any questions that cannot be answered by science and human reasoning are meaningless questions. Questions that many humans have always asked, such as the meaning and purpose of life, are dismissed as “meaningless”. However the Christian is not claiming that science or reason can “prove” that there is a God. The Christian claims to have heard a message from God, which he or she believes.
It is not that the Christian is opposed to scientific enquiry or the rigorous use of human reason. It is simply that Christians claim that what humans know is not limited to what they can prove scientifically or logically.
The weakness of the atheist case (at least in some of its contemporary presentations) seems undeniable. A great deal of what we humans know comes from trusting a source we regard as reliable. Only rarely do we think things through for ourselves from first principles, conduct the scientific experiments directly, or make the observations personally. We learn many things from reliable teachers and other sources. This does not make our knowledge uncertain. It just means that a great deal of what we know is because we trust a source. The truth of what we know depends entirely on the reliability of the source from which we learnt it.
This means that the Christian’s knowledge of God is far less unusual than the atheists seem to think. We, too, have come to trust a source: God’s own Word. We have trusted Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as reliable sources of information about the person of Jesus Christ. We have believed their testimony. More than that we have come to believe the message of the whole Bible as God’s own reliable and good word to us. It is simply beside the point for atheists to claim that science does not need God. Our knowledge of God has come from another source.
Feature photo: Ian Muttoo
