1.3.1-1.3.3 I don't have enough faith to be an atheist

Up at 4:30am working on Calvin. I am not the only one in my house that is up, and someone was kind enough to bring me coffee in bed so I didn't have to get up before reading a little Calvin. It has been a week since I started this blog. So far, I am not doing too badly. I am even a little ahead of schedule since I doubled-up on one day and the reading plan has me taking off on Sundays which I did not do.

I used the phrase "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" for years and then Norm Geisler wrote a book with that title. I really do believe it takes a lot more faith to believe that somehow randomly we sprang into being and evolved into what we are today having no guiding hand to create matter or life. That in itself to me makes absolutely no sense, but believing that a Supreme Being was there to create all of creation is the only explanation.

Calvin's reasoning for it being harder for me to believe in the randomness rather than God's order is because each of us has an innate belief in God. He has implanted in each of us a desire to know him before we are born. "...we conclude that it is not a doctrine that must first be learned in school, but one of which each of us is master from his mother's womb and which nature itself permits no one to forget, although many strive with every nerve to this end." This desire often becomes corrupt because of sin. We confuse idols for God, but we are still seeking God.

He also writes that "there is no nation so barbarous, no people so savage, that they have not a deep-seated conviction that there is a God." As Luke wrote "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:26-27 NIV). No humans have an excuse to say "there is no God" because God has given each of us knowledge of himself.

Calvin concludes this chapter with a statement saying that it is worship of God that separates us from the beasts. If someone does not believe in God, then his is in no way superior to the beasts. And it is because of our knowledge of God that we desire immortality.