{"id":728,"date":"2019-04-08T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T18:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cjscf.org\/?p=728"},"modified":"2020-09-27T15:44:33","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T21:44:33","slug":"editorial-2016-not-an-atheist","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/cjscf.org\/editorials\/editorial-2016-not-an-atheist\/","title":{"rendered":"Not an Atheist 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

WHY I AM NOT AN ATHEIST<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

Bill Anderson PhD<\/span><\/strong>
\nbill.anderson@concordia.ab.ca
\n<\/a>Professor of Religious Studies, Concordia University of Edmonton
\n<\/span>Winter 2016<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I always wanted to be an atheist. I didn\u2019t grow up in a Christian home. I grew up in a working class Scottish home with lots of love, many benefits and much happiness! No philosophy was more drilled into me than this: Be your own man. Stand on your own two feet. Do your own thinking. And don\u2019t let anyone influence you\u2014no matter who they are. Being an atheist is the ultimate Scottish working class philosophy.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I got to my mid-teens, I started to philosophize about many things more seriously. I especially tried to figure out how I could reject any concept of God. But I got stuck. My limited knowledge of the universe led me to one firm conclusion: The universe is extremely complex and delicately balanced\u2014and could not have just \u201chappened\u201d by itself through numerous coincidences. This was an irrational idea that I could not intellectually accept.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, at the time, I didn\u2019t know that its technical reference was the \u201cTeleological Argument from Design\u201d. The Teleological Argument from Design is, in my view, the most powerful argument for the existence of God.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another argument that forced me to reject atheism was the Cosmological Argument. While I\u2019m an \u201carts\u201d person, I do know that for every effect there is a cause. This means that the universe must have had a First Cause, i.e., a Creator. I know that both of these arguments have been sorely tested in recent decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the way, I don\u2019t pretend that my arguments are as sophisticated as say, Professor Richard Swinburne of Oxford University, who will be our keynote speaker at our 2016 conference on \u201cAtheism and the Christian Faith\u201d here at Concordia University of Edmonton on May 6th<\/sup> and 7th<\/sup>. But they are so substantial and forceful that I cannot reject them on rational grounds.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, these arguments were not enough for me to become a Christian: You can\u2019t argue a person into Heaven. The question then became: Ok, now what? There must be a god, a creator, but he cannot be \u201cpersonal\u201d. I based this on the problems of evil and suffering, as well as unanswered prayers in my own life. Therefore a person cannot have a \u201cpersonal relationship\u201d with God. It took a literal, miraculous \u201cDamascus Road\u201d conversion experience on a construction site before I \u201csaw the light\u201d. Or as Jesus puts it in John 3: A person must be \u201cborn from above\u201d, i.e., by the agency of God\u2019s Holy Spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, that\u2019s not the end of the story. My faith has been tested many times over the past 36 years that I\u2019ve been a Christian. As a pastor, I\u2019ve never really fit in the church, seminaries or denominational offices. Moreover, I did my PhD under the atheist biblical scholar Robert Carroll at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. I learned a great deal from him and I am eternally grateful to God for him (though he wouldn\u2019t view it that way).<\/span><\/p>\n

As a professor, a recurring question that I ask my students is: \u201cWhen the atheist reads the Bible, they are objective\u2014true or false?\u201d My response is that its \u201cso false I can\u2019t even begin to tell you\u201d! Atheists, being human like myself, have baggage and are often prisoners of their emotions with political agendas too\u2014and these will skew our interpretations of texts and lead to Confirmation Bias.<\/span><\/p>\n

Confirmation Bias says that we will find what we are looking for regardless of the evidence or we will interpret the evidence in the light of our own biases and without full context or openness to alternative positions eg atheism. Psychologically and emotionally, atheism suits me: I just can\u2019t make a rational case for it. That is the necessity of keeping our emotions out of it and employing objective protocols when doing academics\u2014especially in biblical studies. Because if Christianity isn\u2019t objectively true, then I want out: It\u2019s not worth the hassle and humiliation in today\u2019s society.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course the title of my editorial is a pun on Bertrand Russell\u2019s classic treatise on atheism entitled \u201cWhy I am Not a Christian\u201d. But I think Andy Partridge says it more concisely and powerfully in the XTC song\/video \u201cDear God\u201d. In both works the \u201cusual suspects\u201d are rounded up as insurmountable problems to theism and the Christian Faith: Problem of Evil, Innocent Suffering and Theodicy (Justice of God or life isn\u2019t fair). Russell also attacks the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments in his treatise; where he ironically falls acutely into his own criticism of reductionism and lack of imagination.<\/span><\/p>\n

These problems can be summed up in Epicurus\u2019 syllogism \u201cInconsistent Triad\u201d which is picked up by the Scottish philosopher David Hume in Dialogues<\/em>Concerning Natural Religion<\/em>. There are many variations of this syllogism but it basically goes like this:<\/span><\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 God is all-loving but not all-powerful; or<\/span><\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 God is all-powerful but not all-loving.<\/span><\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Because evil exists, there cannot be a perfectly good, all-loving and all-powerful God.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am totally empathetic to these works and the problems they raise. However, existence, reality and theology are far more complex than this simplistic and reductionistic syllogism. But, as a PhD in Old Testament Theology, I know that there is no biblical answer to these genuine problems.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a pastor, however, I practice \u201cLived Theodicy\u201d. I agree with the atheist\u2019s legitimate complaints and simply come along side suffering people and empathize with them. I also know from the Book of Job and the example of Jesus that our sufferings are meaningful and purposeful. Indeed, all my sufferings in life have given me the experience and empathy to minister to people deeply.<\/span><\/p>\n

Having said all that, my faith is not based on what I do not know. I don\u2019t believe in blind faith. I know that I don\u2019t know much as a human being vis-\u00e0-vis an all-knowledgeably wise God. So my reasonable faith puts these problematics into suspension until I am received into the Absolute.<\/span><\/p>\n

My Christian Faith is based on what I do know about God. I know that there is a Creator and the evidence of the universe supports the Three Os of Theology Proper: God is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. The Three Os are also reasonable grounds for the belief in miracles. I know that God is<\/u> LOVE<\/em><\/strong> from the Bible (1 John 4.8), the example of Jesus and by living life in this beautiful creation (with all its downsides as well). I know from theology that God is holy (perfectly moral) and therefore cannot be unjust or unfair. I know that the Gospels are eyewitness historical documents as verified by archaeology (contrary to the very trendy and naughty documentaries to the opposite that are often based on conspiracy theories). I know that God became human in the form of Jesus and that the Gospels documented his good person, life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension. This eyewitness testimony is a substantial basis for Christian Faith. That is why I am not an atheist and why I am a Christian.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WHY I AM NOT AN ATHEIST Bill Anderson PhD bill.anderson@concordia.ab.ca Professor of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":739,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjscf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/728"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjscf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjscf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjscf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjscf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cjscf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":779,"href":"https:\/\/cjscf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/728\/revisions\/779"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjscf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjscf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}