Be Ready to Give an Answer

Ask an atheist what faith is and you will not be surprised with their answer.

“Faith is a belief in the unknown that lacks any sort of evidence.” “It is a pious belief that came from a religion which is a great cop-out for the truth.” “Faith in God represents a belief in supernatural which is not natural. It cannot be qualified in the material world and therefore should be discounted.”

These are the answers that I used when I was an atheist and a public school science teacher for ten years before I became a Christian by the work of the Holy Spirit in 1978.

Richard Dawkins, the famous outspoken atheist and evolutionary biologist classifies the belief in God as a delusion. His book “The God Delusion” (2006) was an attempt to attack God and those who follow Him. He made his hateful and arrogant feelings known as he described God as,

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

These are such hostile words about the Old Testament God. Most Americans consider this a direct insult as 89% of Americans believe in God and 79% are certain that there is a God as reported in a Gallup poll in May 4-6, 2016. With the small percentage of Atheists in America there are enough to give Dawkins their devoted attention. Many evolutionists support him world-wide. His multimillionaire success has profited him in waging a war against God using the fictional tool of evolution. His book sales, lectures, television, and film appearances world-wide are supported by his enthusiastic followers who view Dawkins as their intellectual idol. His book follows his lifelong mission as he has quoted in many of his lectures,

“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is a belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”

Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” has sold over 3 million copies and been translated into over 31 languages since 2006, making it one of the most popular books ever sold. It directs a full attack on God and those who believe in a divine authority and Creator of the universe.

Blind Faith in Evolution

Dawkins, like many other evolutionary biologists, believes there are evolutionary changes in living forms starting from single cell bacteria to more complicated multicellular types like fungi, plant, and animal cells. These changes are so tiny and gradual that we cannot see them in the present. It would take long periods of time after many generations in order to see these small changes manifested so that we could see an upward movement into new species. Dawkins has been quoted, “Evolution has been observed. It’s just that it has not been observed while it was happening.”

If we cannot observe it in the present, how can we guarantee that evolution is real? Evolutionary scientists including Dawkins depend on fossil records, but these are, for the most part, incomplete to support Dawkins’ claims.

We do see change in the present, but it is not due to evolution. Changes take place in the creature’s breed and exchange of DNA. One of the best examples of this is in the canine family where we see much diversity in the dog kind. This is exemplified when one observes the Great Dane versus a Chihuahua. We have seen remarkable diversification in the breeding of the dog kind in the last decade.

It is interesting to note that the species wolves (dogs), coyotes, foxes, and jackals are said to have evolved from the Canis lepophagus which is an extinct species found in the fossil record dating about 3.6-5.3 million years old in evolutionary time. Again, this falls in the category of speculation because this extinct species is only found in the southern part of the current United States. Why are there not more fossils of this creature found throughout the world? Are there fossils that show us the transition? Now the evolutionary picture becomes fuzzy. Again the fossil record is incomplete here as presumptions are made by expert paleontologists of the origins of the extinct species because of their deep commitment to evolution. It is evolutionists, including their chief idol, Richard Dawkins, who have blind faith in the fossil record and push their godless agenda by making a mockery of science.

Evolution is not scientific

The foundation of evolution is long periods of time. Time is their god because it is given the power to make miracles happen. This is their key to get rid of the divine Creator of the universe.

Dawkins believes in a system like every evolutionist that is based on dogmatic belief that there were changes caused by nature, not God. They defy God and take His existence out of the equation. If God is out of the equation, so is His Word, especially the Genesis account where we are told that God is the author of everything, even animal kinds. The Bible gives us the foundation in which it states that the seed would produce after its kind on the third day of the creation week. In Hebrew, the word “seed” is interpreted as offspring, which today with a present knowledge is referred to genetics that is written in our DNA. The Bible emphasizes, “after (his, their) kind”, as it uses this phrase in different forms ten times in Genesis. Such emphasis gives no room for any kind of evolution to take place. It states in Genesis 1:11 (NKJV),

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the third day.

Today most students are taught that the universe came into existence 13.7 billion years ago without a definitive scientific explanation. How did the particles assemble themselves into the high order as observed in our current knowledge of Chemistry and Physics? We can observe an operating system working at a high level of precision, whether it be the subatomic particles or the galaxies producing physical constants that lead to the conclusion that there is divine intelligence behind all of this. At this point, secular science lives in a world of speculation as to how the universe came to be. They postulate that the universe came from a singularity which is defined as a point of infinite density and gravity. It came before the event of the Big Bang where space and time did not exist. In other words, we came from nothing. This theory was publicized by the popular physicist Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) who proposed that there was no time and therefore there wasn’t a need for a Creator. We understand from basic mathematics that “0” has no value. This irrational approach that we came from nothing demonstrates that men can become so foolish when they deny their Creator and Savior. Hawking’s conclusions demonstrate this as he states, “We are each free to believe what we want and it is my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God.”  

We have never observed gas clouds spontaneously collapse in their natural state to form large flat disks and then form spherical massive bodies which we call planets. Cosmologists assume that once this disc flattened, the tiny particles in this gas disk began to stick together to become larger particles from some unknown mechanism. There is no observable science to test this speculation, but cosmologists use this hypothetical explanation for star formation also. You can use your imagination in cosmology because there is so much mystery in space that we cannot fully comprehend it, so evolutionists certainly use this opportunity to describe their own paradigm in direct opposition to God.

When the first life forms appeared on earth, there is no record or known chemical pathway of how inert molecules formed complex and highly-designed bimolecular systems to produce the simple cell. There have been many attempts that have failed miserably in the past because the recent developments of molecular biology continue to make us aware that the chemical process is so fine-tuned that it could never have happened on earth. Francis Crick, Co-discover of DNA and 1953 Noble Prize Winner, stated,

“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now could only state that in some sense the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get going.”

The only conclusion about inert chemicals coming to life is that it is impossible. Life could only come from life. John states that Christ is the life and light of the world. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:4)

In science classrooms, students are told that the time it took for simple life forms to develop go into the millions and possibly billions of years. They are told that 750 million years ago, in evolutionary time, the ocean creatures like jelly fish and segmented worms existed because of the fossils discovered. But how did they evolve? The fossil record is void here because there are no transitions. According to marine paleontologists, they have never changed over time, much like the horseshoe crab which is dated in the fossil record 450 million years ago. Evolution predicts change over time but we don’t witness this with jelly fish, segmented worms, most insects, and almost all terrestrial arthropods, accounting for the majority of the animal species alive today. Evolution has no credible answer as to why there is very little change over time.

Another important fact is that many forms of invertebrates just suddenly appeared in the fossil record like jelly fish and segmented worms, which most paleontologists would agree with. According to James Valentine, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkley: “At the beginning of the Cambrian Explosion proper…one finds brachiopods (shellfish) and gastropods (another kind of shellfish) …We also found trilobites for the first time.” There were millions of invertebrates discovered in the fossil record that suddenly appeared without any evolutionary ancestors. This has been a constant challenge for evolutionary gradual change over long periods of time.

Lu J from the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Studies, honestly comments on the fossil record as he states, “Frustratingly, relevant fossils are still comparatively rare, most transitions have yet to be documented in detail and the mechanisms that underpin such events, typified by rapid large scale changes and for microevolutionary processes seem insufficient and are still unclear.”

Then we add the complexity of life to the equation with the way proteins are manufactured in three dimensional shapes designed for multifaceted function molecular machine. All of this is guided by a precise information system found in the DNA and RNA that control the protein production in a highly precise mechanism that controls all living processes.

The conclusion that any open-minded person reaches is that there is an unsurmountable amount of evidence that points to an intelligent designer and divine Creator. Perhaps evolutionists including Dawkins are the ones who have blind faith and believe in the spaghetti monster and fairy tales.

Faith and reason

Those who believe in God and His Word have not left their intellects behind. As a matter of fact, our faith is based on evidence. We have faith in a rational God as it states in John 1:1, “In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The Greek word for “word” is logos where we also derive the word reason. We also understand that the “Word” is God in the form of our Creator and Savior as it states later in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Our faith is not blind like Dawkins and other evolutionists, but is rational and in need of evidence.

Even in the definition of faith we witness the word “evidences” as stated in the NKJV Hebrews 11:1. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” As Christians, we must always be ready to present evidences for our faith. The apostle Peter reminds us to be ready at all times to give an answer (evidences) for our faith as it states, “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear;” (1 Peter 3:15)

Because of the hope of salvation, we should never be afraid to share truth with others. We have God, the rationale of the universe, on our side so we should be prepared to answer with the evidences of Creation as a reason for our faith in meekness and gentleness. Our faith is real and experiential because God has manifested His invisible qualities throughout Creation so that we can see Him. (Romans 1:20)

We are to follow our Savior and Messiah who presented himself with miraculous evidences so that man would believe that He was God as it states, “To whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” (Acts 1:3)