“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
So begins the 11th chapter of Hebrews, the “faith sermon,” one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. What I wish to consider today is the faith statements of those who deny the Christian faith.
There’s an atheist on my “Playground Player Chess Forum” who persistently refuses to answer the question, “So what do you believe in?” Why does he always duck the question? Search me.
“I believe in science” is a faith statement. Science provides the speaker with evidence for things he hasn’t seen for himself and probably can never see: things like the Big Bang, evolution, the structure of atoms, etc. These haven’t been directly observed by the scientists who write and lecture about them, either. They have faith in their computer models, mathematical calculations, experiments, and whatnot.
The point is, we all believe in things we cannot see. Christians believe in God because faith is the gift of God. We also approach Him indirectly by our experience of His creation all around us and by the testimony of the scriptures, which we believe to be God’s word.
A position of 100% pure skepticism is just impossible. We know our eyes can play tricks on us; we know our reason might come to wrong conclusions; we know the information that we have to work with is always, to some degree, incomplete or faulty.
Without faith we cannot “know” anything. So it becomes a matter of where you put your faith.
“I believe it because… I saw it on TV/ read it in The New York Times/ the president said so/ everybody says so/ I found it on the Internet…” All of these are faith statements. All seek to provide evidence for things we haven’t seen. Faith in Darwinism even provides a “substance of things hoped for”: they hope there is no God, so they can do what they do without fear of judgment.
To what dock do you moor your faith? On what ground do you make your stand?
I love Hebrews, too. I think my favorite chapter is number one: “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by his son whom he hath made heir of all things, by whom he made the worlds, being the brightness of his glory….”
However, the Scripture I quote the most is “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.” I’ve forgotten the address!
Not forgetting Proverbs 8, I Corinthians 1, I Cor. 13, Genesis 1… You know, this list could get pretty long.
Actually the atheist on your forum did answer the question: he believed in rationalism, and not the supernatural. But you refused to accept that answer & kept trying to get him to fine- tune his answer to suit your agenda.
I didn’t see “rationalism” as an answer to the question.
William James came to this conclusion at the turn of the 19th century. We all live by faith from the first day we are conceived in the womb. The atheist believes in his faith that there is no God. The Bible calls him a fool – and I concur. Man is without excuse for not believing in God.