Why I Am Not an Atheist

Thank you for downloading from Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Support for this podcast comes from your generous gifts and donations. You can find out more about Ravi Zacharias and the team at www.rzim.org.

Hi, friends. This is Vince Vitale with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. And as this year draws to a close, I wanted to share with you about just one of countless ministry opportunities from this past year. This was a speaking trip that a colleague and I took to share the gospel at Harvard University and MIT.

Before we ever even got there, a guy on an airport bus came up to us to say that RZIM's podcasts had been a lifeline for his 14-year-old daughter. Then when we arrived at Harvard, we were greeted by a student who told us he had come back to Christ by watching RZIM's YouTube videos. Next, we met a student leader of the largest Christian group on campus. She was introduced to us as the boldest student evangelist at Harvard. And then she told us the story of how she had hid her faith at an elite Manhattan high school. But RZIM resources had given her the confidence to share Christ at Harvard, and actually she had invited one of her professors to come hear us speak that night.

Then after the event, we met with a professor at Harvard Medical School. He told us that the training he had received from RZIM changed the entire trajectory of how he approaches his profession and engages at the university. That is a glimpse of just one trip, and God was working powerfully in all of these varied ways.

We could not do this work without you. You make it possible for students to hear the hope of the gospel on university campuses all around the world. Life's big questions of meaning and purpose are uniquely answered in the person of Jesus Christ, and we simply cannot allow another generation to be lost. I want you to know that your support, first of the local church and then, if so blessed, of RZIM helps change the lives of countless students.

Thank you in advance for your generosity, and may God bless you and keep you as we place our trust in Him. Atheism as a system is self-defeating. Bertrand Russell recognized that, so he did a quick two-step on it. He moved to agnosticism, and agnosticism is very easy to defend.

All you've got to prove is that you don't know. There is no God. This claim has become increasingly prevalent among philosophers and scientists for the last 150 years.

Can God's existence really be proved or disproved? Hello, and welcome to Let My People Think. God seems to be an afterthought in our culture, and why wouldn't He be? For years, our schools have taught that man is a product of chance and that religion arose from man's fear of the elements. So where does that leave us? How can we defend our faith and belief in God against the onslaught of secular philosophy, science, and culture?

Let's join R.D.M. 's founder, the late Ravi Zacharias, for part one of this important series, Why I Am Not an Atheist, as he looks at the dangers of modern philosophies and provides for us an understanding of the truth. There are many, many arenas in which theism and atheism can be addressed. It can be addressed in rigorous philosophical terms. And I can do that.

I have done it. I have written on the subject, but I'll tell you what the problem with that is. It ends up pitting one person's philosophical mind against another person's philosophical mind, and it could end up making absolutely no difference in your life at the end of it. In fact, I have read through some of the most poignant philosophical debates and seen both scholars do extremely well, and at the end of it, it has changed nobody's mind. Dr. John Pokinghorn, one of the greatest quantum physicists of our time, and Stephen Hawking, who holds the location chair of mathematics at Cambridge University, the famed chair once held by Sir Isaac Newton. Both of these men are well recognized in their fields at Cambridge University.

Stephen Hawking is an agnostic, John Pokinghorn, a very avowed and a devoted theist. What does that end up proving? It basically ends up proving that there is intellectual material available for both sides on the issue.

Am I right? There is intellectual material available for both sides on the issue, and anyone who thinks that he has either avowed it or disavowed it purely for intellectual reasons betrays a prejudice and a lack of understanding of the subject. There have been giants in their thinking capacities who have been skeptics.

There have been giants who have been believers and those who are committed to the Christian perspective, which is what I want to ultimately address before this series is over. So how then am I going to come to you to make it relevant and meaningful so that we can interact on it? Let me give you my understanding of philosophy at three levels and tell you what level we will touch. Level number one in philosophy, I consider theoretical levels of philosophical thinking. They are categories of logic, of thought. They deal with formal fallacies and formal fallacies. They deal with the classical proofs of the existence of God and the classical arguments against the proofs of the existence of God and so on. So if you take Thomas Aquinas, you will look at the cosmological argument being defended.

If you look at David Hume, you will see him attacking the cosmological argument. So you've got here the theoretical level of philosophy. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle dealt at that level of thinking. And somebody has said all of Western philosophy is basically footnotes to Plato. So we can deal with it at a theoretical level. But level two is what I call drama, music, novel and the existential struggle in your imagination.

That is level two. It is most intriguing to me that the moral philosophers of the late 18th century were really the romantic poets and the writers. If you were to read the romantic poets in the late 18th century, men like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and so on, it was Coleridge who resisted the liberal theologians coming in from the German vantage point at that point at that time in history and Coleridge was a poet. Andrew Fletcher once said, let me write the songs of a nation. I don't care who writes its laws. Let me write the songs of a nation.

I don't care who writes its laws. And so when Woody Allen, in a sense, pontificates as a self-styled philosopher, Woody Allen is coming from a kind of a level two philosophy, struggling with the arts and the imagination and the existential undeniable abilities of life. That's level two. And ladies and gentlemen, I want you to be sure in your thinking that when a teenager, be it 13, 14, 15, or for that matter, even when an 11 or a 12 year old turns on a television set or listens to a country music song or a rock music song or whatever, you can be sure in your mind there is a philosophy being carried in the process and a view of life being espoused by the listener. There is philosophy at level two. Let's not run from it. Level three is when your son or your daughter or a teenager sits across a kitchen table one night and says, you know, dad, today when we were in school, we were discussing a moral issue relating to such and such a lifestyle.

What do you think about it? And if the father says, you know, son, the Bible says from the apostle Paul's writings in the book of Romans Chapter one that such and such a lifestyle is wrong. The son is listening to his father and wanting to say, you know, dad, when you quote the Bible around the stable, it's very effective. But when I quote it at the school, it is completely ineffective.

You see what's happening? The father is prescribing a lifestyle at a prescriptive level of level three, when what the son is really saying is, I'm not asking you, dad, what Romans one says. I'm asking you why you believe Romans Chapter one, because while Romans Chapter one is plausible in our kitchen table, it is not plausible in the high school and university setting. The plausibility structure changes. If you really want to listen to level three conversation, turn on any secular talk show host where they are discussing ice cream parlors and human sexuality, five minutes apart with equal distancing or passion at the same moment. Pure prescriptivism, pure prescriptivism. When I used to teach courses on philosophy and so on, I said this. Always remember to argue at level one theory illustrate at level two and apply it at level three. If you don't go in that sequence, you end up with sheer prescriptivism. You prefer A, I may prefer B, and we end up sort of locking ideas on those differences, not knowing how to arbitrate on what is good and what is bad. Now, obviously, in two lectures, we can't do all three. So what I'm going to do, as was introduced, the social and personal implications.

I'm going to come at it from level two with that in mind and a pattern with which we'll be following. Let me give to you a fundamental response that I have entitled Why I am not an atheist. And it is basically a point form response to Bertrand Russell's book, Why I am not a Christian. Bertrand Russell wrote that many, many, of course, in his debate with the Jesuit priest Father Copleston. I'm not going to deal with the debate. I'm going to just give to you my response on the four existential struggles of life for which Russell has no answer. And he in so much admitted it in some of his other essays.

Here it is. The question then arises, may we define our terms? Atheism comes from literally the Greek alpha, the negative and theism, the word Theos for God, negative God. There is no God. That's what the word atheism really means. It is not saying I do not think there is a God. It is not even saying I do not believe there is a God. It is affirming the non-existence of God. It affirms a negative.

It affirms the non-existence of God. Now, you know, we don't need to take too long into that because anyone with an introductory course in philosophy recognizes that it is a logical contradiction. How can you affirm a negative in the absolute? It would be like me saying to you there is no such thing as a white stone with black dots anywhere in all of the galaxies of this universe. The only way I can affirm that is if I have unlimited knowledge of this universe. So to affirm an absolute negative is self-defeating.

Because what you are saying is I have infinite knowledge in order to say to you there is nobody with infinite knowledge. Atheism as a system is self-defeating. Bertrand Russell recognized that, so he did a quick two-step on it.

He moved to agnosticism. And agnosticism is very easy to defend. All you've got to prove is that you don't know. Now, you see, agnosticism actually sounds sophisticated when it comes from the Greek because the alpha is the negative. You know, it's good to know, and one who doesn't know.

From the Latin, it sounds much more uncomplimentary because it literally is a one-on-one equation with being an ignoramus. One who doesn't know. Agnosticism, ignoramus, same idea. Now, let me clarify the point. It is foolish to say I know that you can't know. That is also self-defeating. But there are many honest agnostics who will say, look, I have honestly studied the subject on hand, and I am convinced with the evidences that I have studied and the philosophical issues that I have wrestled with, I don't believe it is really possible to know with certainty if there is a God. Now, that is a different and a respected type of position.

I meet many honest agnostics in my travels who will say to me, on the basis of my studies, an honest evaluation of that data on hand, I don't believe it is possible to really affirm the existence of God, and I move along with that type of soft agnosticism. One of my professors of philosophy used to tell this classic story about a fellow who woke up one morning and said to his wife, I believe I am dead. And his wife said, you know, that's a strange sense of humor.

It's all right, just go on to work and bring the paycheck home type of thing. And sent him on his merry way. But this impression in his mind lingered for far too many hours. Every evening he'd come back and munching on his goodies on his lazy boy there would say, you know, I really think I'm dead. Finally, his wife and his children decided he needed help. If he didn't get help, they would need some help.

So they sent him along to a team of doctors and psychiatrists, all of whom were trying to help him without success. So one doctor latched on to this idea to try to establish for him empirically that only living people bleed. Only living people bleed.

And he was trying to deny that, but they brought all kinds of evidence, overhead projectors, charts, and all the data on hand. Only living people bleed, only living people bleed. Finally, this man, after all of the evidence was weighed in, said, all right, I guess I'm going to have to admit to you that only living people bleed. As soon as he said that, one on the team of doctors there took a pin and plunged it into this man's veins. And the blood came spurting out and he looked at it and said, great Scott, I guess dead people bleed too. Do you realize that in many ways that man was really dead?

Because from all vantage points of evidence, there was nothing you could bring to get him to change his mind. I think it was Richard Weaver who taught English literature at the University of Chicago for years. And I encourage you to read his book because 40 years ago he wrote a book entitled Ideas Have Consequences. And Alan Bloom, who now teaches philosophy there, 40 years later has written The Closing of the American Mind. And frankly, it is almost based on the text and context of Richard Weaver.

And Richard Weaver said this many, many years ago. Nothing good can come if the will is wrong. Nothing good can come if the will is wrong. And to give evidence to him who loves not the truth is only to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. To give evidence to him who loves not the truth is only to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. What about the existential evidence in life? Let me look at four outworkings that atheism has to live with.

I cannot live with those outworkings. They are existentially unlivable. You see, if atheism is true, ultimately there is no moral law in this universe. If atheism is true, ultimately there is no moral law in this universe. And any moral pronouncement is either utilitarian, pragmatic, subjective, or emotive. It is either utilitarian, pragmatic, subjective, or emotive. There is no moral law reflective in this universe. And anything that deals with good and bad is purely the product of your environment and your culture.

And let me unfold this argument and tell you how it works. Listen to the words of Nietzsche, the German philosopher who I think was one of the most honest thinkers of the past century. Listen to what he says in his Madman. Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the marketplace and cried incessantly, I'm looking for God, I'm looking for God?

As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him then, said one? Did he lose his way like a child, said another? Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us?

Has he gone on a voyage or emigrated? Thus they shouted and shouted and laughed him to scorn. But the madman sprang into the midst and pierced them with his glances. Where is God, he cried, I'll tell you, we have killed him, you and I.

We are all his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea?

Who gave us a sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now?

Away from all suns maybe? Are we not perpetually falling backwards and forwards, sidewards and in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not more and more night coming on us all the time?

Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? God's decomposed too, you know, and God is dead. He remains dead and we have killed him. Now, how shall we, the murderer of all murderers, compose ourselves? That which was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood from us?

With what water can we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement? What sacred games will we need to invent? Is not this the greatest of deeds too great for us to handle? Must not we ourselves become God simply to seem worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed, you know, and whoever shall be born after us for the sake of this deed shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto. Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners.

They too were silent and they stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground and it broke and went out. I come too early. My time has not yet come. This tremendous event is still on its way.

Still traveling and it has not yet reached the years of men. Lightning and thunder require time. The light of the stars requires time. Deeds require time even after they have done before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the distant stars and yet they have done it themselves. It has been related further that on the same day this madman entered diverse churches and there sang a requiem, Eternam Dale, led out and quieted.

He is said to have retorted each time. What are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchres of a dead god? We have killed him. Any time I hear a man lambasting or criticizing religion for having caused bloodshed, it is a legitimate criticism because it is unfortunate, but there is an answer to that.

I won't go into the answer to that, but let me just say this. The same people often forget of the bloodshed that has been shed in the name of atheism. Stalin was an avowed atheist. He used to be a seminary student preparing for the ministry when he lost his belief in God and Lenin singularly selected Stalin because of his hatred of things religious. He read Nietzsche. Adolf Hitler personally presented a copy of Nietzsche's writings to Benito Mussolini. Hitler took Nietzsche's thinking and gave it a kind of a military interpretation and we tend to forget that the most intelligent nation of the world at that time were the ones who designed the concentration camps also set enthralled before the music of Wagner for their entertainment, but Hitler took Nietzsche and translated it into his political theory. The Superman getting it right out of Nietzsche's writings. But what Nietzsche is pointing out here is which way are we going to turn? We have wiped away the horizon.

Is there any up or down? How are we going to recognize what is right and what is wrong? You must understand when Aldous Huxley was writing his book Ends and Means, a book that is really worth reading, Aldous Huxley said this, I wanted to believe the Darwinian idea. I chose to believe it, not because I think there was enormous evidence for it, nor because I believed it had the full authority to give interpretation to my origins, but he says in his book Ends and Means, I chose to believe it because it delivered me from trying to find meaning and freed me to my own erotic passions. You may also know that Karl Marx and Engels had read the Darwinian hypothesis.

They wanted to dedicate one of the translations of it to Darwin and Darwin declined the offer because atheistic economic theory saw some of its underpinnings in the essential definition of man in trying to break us away from any divine origins. There is a connection and ideas do have consequences. There is no moral law to which we can reflect. Let me illustrate this in the classic illustration of the Holocaust. At the Nuremberg trials, there was a fascinating dialogue going on all the time on how these judges were going to defend themselves. And basically the man defending them was in the summoned substance trying to argue for their protection by saying they were operating according to the law of their own land.

They were operating according to the law of their own land. Finally, in frustration, somebody said, but gentlemen, is there not a law above our laws? Is there not a law above our laws?

And the answer of Nietzsche would be no. There is no law above our laws. And if you examine the ramifications of this, you begin to see it in some enormous manifestations, particularly in the Western world today. One philosopher of ethics has put it this way. Ours is an age where ethics has become obsolete.

It is superseded by science. It is deleted by psychology, dismissed as emotive by philosophy. It is drowned in compassion and retreats before relativism. The usual moral distinctions between good and bad are simply drowned in a maudlin emotion in which we feel more sympathy for the murderer than for the murdered, for the adulterer than for the betrayed, and in which we have actually begun to believe that the real guilty party, the one who somehow caused it all, is the victim and not the perpetrator of the crime.

Tell me, is there some confusion going on here? How do we explain that to our teenagers? How do we give them a moral basis for decision-making? And those who study these subjects deal with it, and there's a constant contradiction in the value systems.

And I'll say this as kindly as I can. The last 22, 22 years of my life have been spent in the West. The equal amount in the beginning was spent in the East. And Western civilization is being rocked at its foundations because Western man does not know the point of reference for the value system that he wants to espouse right now. See, the Middle East still espouses Islam. There's some transcendental leverage to the culture. The Far East or in India, they've still got some transcendental leverage to the culture. We in modern times are daring the lines in the West, and we actually think we can survive without the espousing of a moral law. History cries out against the experiment.

I wonder how many are aware of the true danger that atheism poses to our culture. You've been listening to part one of a message from RZIM's founder, the late Ravi Zacharias, titled Why I'm Not an Atheist. And you can listen to this episode again by visiting our website at rzim.org and clicking on the Listen tab. If you're listening in Canada, that web address is rzim.ca. You can also purchase this entire series by calling us at 1-800-448-6766. RZIM and this radio program are possible because of your generous support. If you have questions, prayer requests you'd like to share, or you want to donate to our ministry, you can call us or write to us at RZIM P.O. Box 1820, Roswell, Georgia, 30077.