How Can an All Loving, Good God Allow...
By
Philip du Nard
Sooner or later, many people realize that religious indoctrination does not provide the basis for a living faith in the reality of God. When a“faith” that is based on that and nothing more is challenged by circumstances or general observations about the world in which we live, it not uncommonly will fail.
People who are self proclaimed atheists will sometimes testify to being brought up by religious parents and slowly become transformed into atheists. More often than not, they will cite the presence of evil in the world as a contributing factor in their developing skepticism and ask rhetorically how a good God can allow this.
But they fail to realize that acknowledging its presence is a bigger problem for atheists than for believers, more particularly Bible believing Christians. If there is no God, then there is no law of God to concern ourselves with. If the law of nature and survival is the only law there is, then how can we call anything good or evil? If human beings are nothing more than animals rather than being made in the image of God, how can we condemn animal like behavior on the part of humans? If the family cat kills a mouse, we say “Good kitty.” The cat is following its instincts which supposedly evolved. But if a human kills the son of an atheist, we call that evil and even the atheist expects the civil authorities to do something akin to what they were commissioned to do by God under the Mosaic law.
Atheists and agnostics will protest, of course, that general morality and unbelief are not mutually exclusive ideas. Furthermore, they will assert that Christianity in particular is not the necessary bedrock of civilization. Witness all the non-Christian civilizations that exist and have existed. None other than St. Paul himself says much the same thing. In Romans 2:14-16, he writes thus: (... For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.
In other words, the conscience which even unbelievers and people from non-Christian cultures display was put there by God and is inconsistent with evolutionary notions or the idea that man is but an animal, accountable to no one.
By
Philip du Nard
Sooner or later, many people realize that religious indoctrination does not provide the basis for a living faith in the reality of God. When a“faith” that is based on that and nothing more is challenged by circumstances or general observations about the world in which we live, it not uncommonly will fail.
People who are self proclaimed atheists will sometimes testify to being brought up by religious parents and slowly become transformed into atheists. More often than not, they will cite the presence of evil in the world as a contributing factor in their developing skepticism and ask rhetorically how a good God can allow this.
But they fail to realize that acknowledging its presence is a bigger problem for atheists than for believers, more particularly Bible believing Christians. If there is no God, then there is no law of God to concern ourselves with. If the law of nature and survival is the only law there is, then how can we call anything good or evil? If human beings are nothing more than animals rather than being made in the image of God, how can we condemn animal like behavior on the part of humans? If the family cat kills a mouse, we say “Good kitty.” The cat is following its instincts which supposedly evolved. But if a human kills the son of an atheist, we call that evil and even the atheist expects the civil authorities to do something akin to what they were commissioned to do by God under the Mosaic law.
Atheists and agnostics will protest, of course, that general morality and unbelief are not mutually exclusive ideas. Furthermore, they will assert that Christianity in particular is not the necessary bedrock of civilization. Witness all the non-Christian civilizations that exist and have existed. None other than St. Paul himself says much the same thing. In Romans 2:14-16, he writes thus: (... For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.
In other words, the conscience which even unbelievers and people from non-Christian cultures display was put there by God and is inconsistent with evolutionary notions or the idea that man is but an animal, accountable to no one.