Richard Dawkins (noted atheist): “Christianity is a fairy tale for those who are afraid of the dark.”
John Lennox (noted theologian): “Atheism is a fairy tale for those who are afraid of the light.”
Dear Atheist,
You may not want me to, but I hurt for you. Your world has already been determined for you. Consider that within a monotheistic, mechanistic, accidental cause for the universe where ‘blind and pitiless chance’ molds and shapes our choices, determinism is the inescapable conclusion. With the absence of God, true freedom goes as well; thus, as [unapologetic atheist Richard] Dawkins says, we dance to our DNA.”[1] My goodness. What a worldview you hold. Tell me, what is the draw? With Dawkins’s reality, why should I ever want to be “converted” to atheism?
I have a heart for you dear Atheist who are trapped in your own DNA and a slave to it. You know not God. And, you truly do not know freedom. And your future is dark and ultimately desperate. Perhaps Easter is a good time to consider several truths that are absolute, regardless of your “wiring.”
A noted apologist describes atheists as hardwired to think in the terms that they do. Truth claims become invalid since atheists are not really free to think any other way. “Determinism removes the possibility of free options and can only result in preset conclusions—like [atheists] are really computers with prescriptive feelings for specific realities. With that hardwiring, even love becomes illusory and merely a mechanistic preference that is no choice at all, just an action.”[2] May I ask, is love illusory for you? When did love not matter to you anymore? When did it leave you?
Determinism sets you up as an affront to God, to be sure, but that means that the words love and truth are also supplanted with something undefined and nebulous. Is love a foreign concept to you? Determinism does that to you. Who in the Church has hurt you? Why did you let them get in the way of your relationship with God?
You may often use the notion of the existence of evil in the world to deny the existence of God. “In short, by denying God’s existence, the atheist doesn’t solve the problem of evil, he just uses the horrors of evil to deny its moral context, and if hate follows, so be it. In Christian terms, that very denial of evil has everything to do with evil. And that is just for starters. There’s more. The human scene is even more fundamentally flawed. You see, for moral reasoning to exist, one must at all times assume the freedom to choose.”[3] And if you have the freedom to choose for or against God, and you choose against God, then evil is the ultimate outcome of that choice. You are freed to choose for or against Him, but you are not freed from the consequences of that choice.
Your atheist friends “have made God to be evil and [yourselves] to be wise. This determinism has allowed [your friends] to freely reject God, [which are] the shackles that enslave them. They have become like God, determining good and evil, and they have accepted a lie and a [spiritual] death wish.”[4] Is that what you really want? With that reality, tell me please, what is the draw of atheism?
But, I believe, like my apologist friends, that what you are really running from is sin. And we ALL do it. But sin is a choice, too, that begins when you suppress what you know to be true in your own mind. That’s what the Bible says. Sin doesn’t begin when you have an illicit affair, or simply an inappropriate conversation with another over the water cooler at work. It begins when you determine in your own mind that you’re going to suppress—ignore—what you know to be true.
And the Bible says that we ALL have sinned. If a level-playing field with your spiritual friends is all you want to live out your worldview, then you won’t find a more level playing field than the human condition laid bare before an Almighty God. His message to you this week (and every day) is that He loves you and He has a purpose for your life. Love is defined on the cross of Jesus Christ. You don’t have to be a slave to your DNA anymore. If sin is a “violation of purpose . . . [and a]n addiction to the profane . . . .” then God has taken care of that on the cross and you need not be addicted anymore.[5] All you need to do is accept His free gift of love through Jesus Christ. It doesn’t make any of us any better, but those of us who know and love God know what love and truth is, and we have a purpose in life that extends well-beyond our DNA.
Let’s start a conversation about Him. Find out how I know He exists. What do you have to lose? What better time than this week, to overcome your DNA, and define love? I hurt for you because I love you. Please don’t turn me away because you do not know the definition of love. Let’s talk. Soon.
Thanks for reading.
[1] Zacharias, R. and Vitale, V. (2017). Jesus Among Secular Gods: The Countercultural Claims of Christ. FaithWords,, p. 38.
[2] Ibid., p. 39.
[3] Ibid., p. 38.
[4] Ibid., p. 39.
[5] Ibid., p. 40.