The Many Faces, and Causes, of Unbelief - Apologetics Press

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was present. So profound was his grief and disappointment at the failure of God to cure him overnight that from that point forward he pledged never to believe in God again. In the mid-1960s, a devoutly religious young man from Chattanooga, Tennessee, was a role model for all of his classmates. He led a prayer group, and planned to become a foreign missionary—until his sister died of leukemia and his father committed suicide. The boy’s belief in God collapsed, and he subsequently became one of America’s most outspoken unbelievers, humanists, and pro-abortion advocates. That boy’s name?—Ted Turner, founder of world-famous CNN, the Turner Broadcasting System, and other well-known media enterprises. But, of course, it is not just the famous who abandon their belief in God because of evil, pain, and suffering in their lives. The “man (or woman, as the case may be) on the street” is no less affected. A case in point is that of Judith Hayes, a senior writer for The American Rationalist. In 1996, Mrs. Hayes authored an acrimonious tirade titled, In God We Trust: But Which One?, in which she explained why she left the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) and became an atheist. First, as a youngster she had a good friend named Susan who was a devout Buddhist. Judith, however, simply could not accept the teachings of Scripture that Susan would be lost if she did not obey the biblical scheme of redemption set forth so plainly in God’s Word. Thus she made, not a rational decision based upon the evidence, but an emotional decision based on her own “inner desires.” Neither Christianity, she said, nor its God, could be accepted as true. Second, Judith eventually married. But the relationship soured and disintegrated due to the fact, Mrs. Hayes reported, that her husband became verbally abusive. Instead of considering the possibility that she had made a poor choice of mates, or that her husband had misused his own personal freedom of choice, Judith blamed God. “[H]ow could I possibly have wound up married to a tyrant?,” she wrote. “Why had God forsaken me?” (1996, p. 15). -99
Again, time and space would fail me were I to attempt merely to enumerate, much less discuss, all those who have abandoned belief in God because of evil, pain, and suffering in their lives or in the lives of those close to them. But what shall we say in regard to their accusations against their Creator? How shall we respond to their recalcitrant charge that— as a result of such epidemic, universal suffering—unbelief in God is both justifiable and justified? Briefly, I would like to respond as follows. At the end of His six days of creation (Genesis 1:31), God surveyed all that He had made, and proclaimed it “very good” (Hebrew terminology representing that which was both complete and perfect). Pestilence, disease, and death among humans were unknown. Man existed in an idyllic paradise of happiness and beauty where he shared such an intimate and blissful covenant relationship with his Maker that God came to the garden “in the cool of the day” to commune with its human inhabitants (Genesis 3:8). Additionally, Genesis 3:22 records that man had continual access to the tree of life that stood in the garden, the fruit of which would allow him to live forever. The peacefulness and tranquility of the first days of humanity were not to prevail, however. In Genesis 3—in fewer words than an average sportswriter would use to discuss a high school football game—Moses, through inspiration, discussed the breaking of the covenant relationship between man and God, the entrance of sin into the world, and the curse(s) that resulted therefrom. When our original parents revolted against their Creator, evil entered the world. Moses informs us that as a direct consequence of human sin, the Earth was “cursed” (Genesis 3:17). Paul, in Romans 8:19-20, declared that the entire creation was subjected to “vanity” and the “bondage of corruption” as a result of the sinful events that took place in Eden on that occasion. Things apparently deteriorated rapidly. Just three chapters later, Moses wrote: And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented - 100
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APOLOGETICS PRESS
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CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPT
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For example, when Joshua—who had
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the truth, but they will not. The s
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obliged to acknowledge that it was
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2 THE MANY FACES OF UNBELIEF Throug
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Impossible task, that—since one w
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Neither of these tasks is simple (n
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foundation, not in divine guidance,
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are monkeys” (see Leonard Huxley,
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Such a premise is flawed internally
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The development, over the past four
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Thus, in the end the skeptic does n
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le plethora of men and women who ma
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include “Hell” and “Some Mist
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In fact, in the late 1970s, while I
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future state of rewards and punishm
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tion to function on its own; some b
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Deism...refers to what can be calle
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a God strong enough to create the w
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ecomes indistinguishable from evil.
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Ryerson who allegedly was able to
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...Every action, under certain circ
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tes 12:7). The writer of the book o
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the Lord struck him, because he did
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Page 109 and 110: Just as suffering is real, so are t
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Page 124 and 125: 4 CONCLUSION Every person familiar
Page 126 and 127: This latter observation needs a lit
Page 128 and 129: REFERENCES Abelson, Phillip (1964),
Page 130 and 131: Durant, Will (1980), “We Are in t
Page 132 and 133: Huxley, Thomas Henry (1896), Darwin
Page 134 and 135: Raymo, Chet (1998), Skeptics and Tr
Page 136: Watkin, Edward I. (1936), Theism, A
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The Many Faces, and Causes, of Unbelief - Apologetics Press

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