In June, the Kingston Whig Standard received and published a piece by Stephen Skyvington (you can see it here), to which the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada asked us (I work for Bethel Church Kingston) to publish a reply. We did, but probably a little too late to appear in the Whig so they didn’t publish it. However, I can always publish it right here in my own blog, for those who may be interested. Here it is.
“In his piece on June 15th (“Embracing Atheism), Stephen Skyvington says that “the time has come to do something about the root cause of all this evil.”
While I certainly agree with him that evil is present among us, unfortunately, he, as an atheist, cannot make that argument. By denying the existence of God, atheism must also deny the notion of objective morality (that is, the notion that there exist universal rights and wrongs, rooted beyond our own internal subjective opinions). For Mr. Skyvington, as an atheist, we regret to say that there can be no such thing as objective morality, and therefore, no such thing as evil, only his opinion. With respect, and to quote the title of a recent book by Frank Turek, by saying religion is “evil”, he’s “Stealing from God”, an interesting position to hold when one thinks there is no God in the first place. Objective moral laws can only exist because of an objective moral lawgiver.
Mr. Skyvington also suggests that “only a fool believes everything he or she reads.” Again, I can only agree with him, and certainly far too many people are guilty of simple “blind faith”, i.e. not really knowing what they believe or why they believe it. However my own walk as a follower of Christ (as someone who originally trained as a lawyer) began with a careful investigation of the evidence for the historical nature of Christianity, both using outside historical sources (documentary and archaeological) and the “internal” historical documents which now form the book we call the Bible. Since he states that the Bible is only a “story”, I certainly hope his conclusion is based on that same kind of investigation. If not, may I recommend “Cold Case Christianity (A Homicide Detective investigates the Claims of the Gospels)” by J. Warner Wallace, the product of Mr. Wallace’s own investigation as a specialist in Cold Case investigations and the conclusions he reached?
Furthermore if Mr. Skyvington is going to bring up the Bible, then he must deal with one of the central characters of that book – the man Jesus Christ, who most (reasonable) scholars will acknowledge certainly existed. The challenge here is that this particular man made some absolutely remarkable claims about himself: to be blunt, he called himself God.
Now most people today love to hedge their bets by playing the “great moral teacher” card with Jesus. Unfortunately, to quote C.S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity”, we really should have none of that “patronizing nonsense”: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.” This is the Law of Non-Contradiction: Jesus cannot be a Great Moral Teacher and be lying about who he is at the same time, and in the same way.
Finally, Mr. Skyvington suggests that people are “too bloody stupid to think for ourselves”, all while suggesting that we are also to be the ones to fix the problem. Now that is a contradiction. But for the Christian, no such contradiction exists: we know we are the problem, and we know that there is only one solution, Jesus Christ, who can fix it. And while we agree that there are those who do evil things in the name of religion, at least where Christianity is concerned, the only way to willingly do evil is to ignore the plain teachings of our founder, Jesus Christ.
I think one of the marks of a good thinker is being willing to begin with an open mind – maybe there is a God, and maybe there isn’t. But if what you begin with is a “materialistic” worldview (i.e. the universe is all there is – that’s another objective claim by the way), then there will be only one possible conclusion – there is no God.
Respectfully, I think this is what Mr. Skyvington has done and would suggest that he take a step back and begin his investigations anew. Like I was many years ago, he may be shocked at what he finds.
Carmen Gauvin-O’Donnell”
SEEGOD'S SPOT 