Doubts are a funny thing. Every person experiences them but very few are willing to wrestle with doubts openly. Many people tend to think that admitting doubts is akin to weakness.
I tend to disagree. I think that the willingness to wrestle with doubts in community is a sign of strength and wisdom.
Every person, whether religious, agnostic or atheist lives in the tension between faith and doubt. Life is full of mystery and hypothesis.
As a follower of Jesus, there are a few realities that keep me coming back. There are phenomenon that overshadow my doubts. I’m confident that I’ll never walk away from Jesus because of explosions, blood, genocide and music.
EXPLOSIONS
Nearly everyone agrees that the universe began with an astronomically powerful explosion. I’m no astrophysicist but this makes a lot of sense to me. A massive explosion like this would have produced an immense amount of light. Light, in fact, that is still traveling outward. The book of Genesis describes it this way:
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (Genesis 1)
Here’s the thing, I just don’t understand explosions coming out of nowhere. I don’t buy the theory that particles, substances and gases simply existed. In the way I understand the universe, something or someone must have caused the explosion.
BLOOD
In my opinion, there are certain processes and mechanisms within the human body that demand intelligent design. One example is blood clotting. I’ve noticed that a leak in my skin is different from a leak in the oil pan of my car. If I cut my toe, my blood doesn’t all drain out. That would be a lame way to die.
What happens is that my body magically closes up the wound and I only lose a small portion of my blood. And yet, my blood clots only a tiny bit because if it clotted too much I would also die from a stroke or aneurism. So, too much clotting or not enough clotting on a minor wound would lead to death. How does something like this naturally evolve without someone designing or guiding the process? At every step in the evolutionary process of blood clotting humans would have died out.
GENOCIDE
If there is no God then there is no objective standard of morality. If there is no objective standard of morality then no one can tell anyone else what is right or wrong. The problem with this is that even those who only believe in naturalistic evolution don’t live like this. No one lives as if there is no such thing as right or wrong. We all are disgusted by injustice. Humans can’t live out Darwin’s “survival of the fittest. For example, anyone who believes genocide is morally acceptable is either insane or a monster.
The Nazis are universally reviled because what they did was morally wrong. We, as humans, can’t escape from a moral standard. It’s not that genocide feels wrong. It’s that genocide is wrong. The question is: why? Where did this come from? I don’t believe that mere evolution can explain this.
MUSIC
Why is there music? Why does art exist? How do you explain the creativity of humans? Throughout our history, we’ve never been satisfied with survival. As often as we can, we live with flair and expression. We don’t just build, we sculpt. We don’t just write , we employ rhyme and meter.
Art and music reflect the special nature of humans. We live with soul. How do you explain all this creativity and expression? It has nothing to do with survival. If we evolved naturally, where did music come from? In my opinion, we make art because we reflect a creative designer. He is infinitely artistic and He made us a little like Himself.
So, why am I not an atheist? The biggest reasons are that a purely naturalistic understanding of the world simply can’t explain explosions, blood, genocide and music. What are the realities that keep you anchored to your faith?
