A few days ago, an opinion article caught my eye.
"Is Atheism Irrational?"
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| c. dreamstime.com |
I immediately clicked on the article.
Gary Gutting (a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame) recently interviewed Alvin Plantinga, who is described by Time magazine as "America's leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God."
If you don't have time or don't wanna scroll through the entire interview (no shame), at least check this part out ~~~ I'm going to talk about two questions that particularly struck me.
G.G.: But isn’t there also plenty of
evidence against theism — above all, the amount of evil in a world
allegedly made by an all-good, all-powerful God?
A.P.: The so-called “problem of evil”
would presumably be the strongest (and maybe the only) evidence against
theism. It does indeed have some strength; it makes sense to think that
the probability of theism, given the existence of all the suffering and
evil our world contains, is fairly low. But of course there are also
arguments for theism. Indeed, there are at least a couple of
dozen good theistic arguments. So the atheist would have to try to
synthesize and balance the probabilities. This isn’t at all easy to do,
but it’s pretty obvious that the result wouldn’t anywhere nearly support
straight-out atheism as opposed to agnosticism.
Early on in my walk with Christ, I asked this question. (Albeit, whenever a friend asks this question, the concept of why there's suffering in this world is sometimes still hard to articulate.) Basically, why is there suffering in this world? Does God cause suffering?
Over time, I've asked other people this question and ultimately looked to the Word for some sort of answer. The Book of Genesis claims that when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, sin entered the world. With sin comes suffering, pain, and death. God gave Adam and Eve free will (and basically provided everything for them!), but they disobeyed God. They wanted something they couldn't have, which is basically saying they thought God wasn't enough...
This is where the next question of interest comes in:
G.G.: But even if this fine-tuning
argument (or some similar argument) convinces someone that God exists,
doesn’t it fall far short of what at least Christian theism asserts,
namely the existence of an all-perfect God? Since the world isn’t
perfect, why would we need a perfect being to explain the world or any
feature of it?
A.P.: I suppose your thinking is that
it is suffering and sin that make this world less than perfect. But then
your question makes sense only if the best possible worlds contain no
sin or suffering. And is that true? Maybe the best worlds contain free
creatures some of whom sometimes do what is wrong. Indeed, maybe the
best worlds contain a scenario very like the Christian story.
Think about it: The first being of the
universe, perfect in goodness, power and knowledge, creates free
creatures. These free creatures turn their backs on him, rebel against
him and get involved in sin and evil. Rather than treat them as some
ancient potentate might — e.g., having them boiled in oil — God responds
by sending his son into the world to suffer and die so that human
beings might once more be in a right relationship to God. God himself
undergoes the enormous suffering involved in seeing his son mocked,
ridiculed, beaten and crucified. And all this for the sake of these
sinful creatures.
There, I think, is the answer. Yes, there's a lot of tragedy and hurt in our lives and in this world. But God never intended the world to be this way. Out of His great love for us, He forgave and sent Jesus to die for us.
Ultimately, I don't fully know the mind of God or how He works, but to me, it seems more rational to believe in God than in nothing.
What do you think? Do you think atheism is irrational? Do you think any form of faith/religious belief is irrational?
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