Why are There Atheists?

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Apologetics 315 has posted an excellent review of R. C. Sproul’s book If There is a God, Why Are There Atheists.




The original book is, in part, an attack on the notion of Freud and Feuerbach that religion is just projection or wishful thinking. Here’s a taste of Sproul’s book courtesy of Apologetics 315:



The Christian God has some ‘attractive’ features that might incline a person to embrace God as a narcotic to help him face the threatening character of life, but these are overwhelmingly outweighed by the trauma of encountering God. Though man may desire and create for himself a deity who meets his needs and provides him with innumerable benefits, he will not instinctively desire a God who is holy, omniscient, and sovereign.

The Bible does not try to conceal the fact that, in spite of God’s love and mercy, He is an awesome, threatening Being, a Being that man would not instinctively search for. The psychologists continue to argue that men like to invent protective deities that will provide them with comfort and security. But they cannot argue that men would invent the intimidating Holy One of Israel.


Sproul’s book also provides one possible explanation for atheism:


The New Testament maintains that unbelief is generated not so much by intellectual causes as by moral and psychological ones. The problem is not that there is insufficient evidence to convince rational beings that there is a God, but that rational beings have a natural hostility to the being of God.


Here’s a link to another expression of the same thought from Sproul’s web site.

Comments

Anonymous said…
"... a Being that man would not instinctively search for. ... But they cannot argue that men would invent the intimidating Holy One of Israel."

Intimidating? HA. You've got the ultimate lazy religion. God is scary but easily placated by simply saying "I believe" poof you get a go to heaven free card.

Ok 2nd most lazy religion. Mormons are baptizing non believers in their name, and you can convert to their religion and be "saved" after you are dead.

"..rational beings have a natural hostility to the being of God."

Or that the idea of a god is inherently an irrational belief. Just like ghosts, goblins, talking snakes and talking flaming bushes.
February 05, 2010
J. K. Jones said…
Anonymous,

Are you Sunny Day from over at Unreasonable Faith?

JK
February 05, 2010
J. K. Jones said…
By the way, the name of this blog is fear and trembling. That is what the Christian works out their belief in.

No one enters belief in God without the threat of hell.
February 05, 2010
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