Thursday, January 11, 2018

Encountering the Atheist ~ a Lecture by RC Sproul



Theologian RC Sproul (who has gone on to be with the Lord in His Kingdom) essentially says that we are not singularities... we are not disconnected from the Creator and from each other as if we are islands of individuals of different minds and purposes; we are by design interconnected by the Creator to Him and each other. No one man is guilty of sin alone in a fallen world and no man is outside of the Creation ordinances even if he/she does not know Jesus Christ.

Marx and Freud thought and wrote that man needs God to drug himself/the masses so that they have a reason to live to have hope in a world full of disparity... and so thus they won't be fatalistic. Freud thought that man was afraid of nature and so man wants to believe in a God who can control nature... if we pray to God he will remove the threat of nature.  All in all, there are those that think religion comes out of psychological need. Thus, man chooses to believe out of fear, and to hold on to controlling fear, he created religion.

Well, even educated rational men act on fears, anger and disparity. When someone is accused of a crime the prosecutor has to prove that the someone is guilty and that it was their rational choice to commit the crime. They do so by attempting to discover the means/motives. Just because he/she proves that they had the means and motive does not mean that they are guilty. They/we could prove that many people wanted to do the same; but chose not to for a variety of reasons. Yes, our behavior and actions are choices made. In that respect, one could agree that human beings have the choice or the capacity to chose/invent religion and others choose not to. 

We can also agree on is that we are capable of projecting ideas, wishes and fantasies. It is theoretically possible that people could invent God. But, if they do, we could argue that their choice is a rational choice as it brings comfort or hope. The same reason could apply to someone who does not see the comfort or hope in choosing God. The same line of reasoning could be used by the one choosing to commit or not commit a crime; its a rational choice to risk or not for reasons that seem to be rational at the time.

But, its interesting that man invents rationales for his actions including God. That's quite intelligent and certainly the later more so than imagining man was crept out of the sea or was created by aliens that we can nor ever could see because we are human beings. 

Yes, we do have a psychological motive to invent God. Just because man has the ability to invent God does not necessarily tell us how the idea of God came about in his mind. The reason why the world is incurably religious is because of the existence of God. More important is that we have to realize that we do have a vested interested in believing but is the atheist willing to grant me the idea that they have a vested interested in denying God.

If there is such a basis for their interest; there is a strong reason why they would not want God to exist, is that they have sinned... they are guilty of abuse of their fellow man, verbally or physically or mentally and because of that they don't like the idea that they have to stand before the Creator and be held accountable. If we are going to debate the existence of God, then we must debate the psychological reasons to deny Him.

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