“I know a man who has such a passion for proving that he will have no personal existence after death that he falls back on the position that he has no personal existence now.” GK Chesterton
Christian apologists regularly face what we call the distraction challenge: the temptation to take seriously insubstantial objections against God’s existence. An insubstantial objection involves reasoning that is beyond or in spite of intellectual reasons or evidences; it may include nonintellectual or even anti-intellectual factors. We’re not saying that these insubstantial objections are unanswerable or that it is somehow wrong to answer them; we’re just saying that it might be more wise and prudent if our arguments and replies are attentive to the “reasons of the heart” and not only to those of the head. By lending credence to insubstantial arguments, we risk dignifying folly, encouraging self-satisfying flattery, and ultimately diminishing the power of gospel proclamation.
It is not uncommon for atheists to argue the universe is all there is and it luckily popped into existence, out of nothing, uncaused. The universe’s fine- tuning, or ability to support life, is the result of luck and luck explains the origin of first life. Lucky positive mutations worked on by natural selection explain the complexity of life forms.
Physics professor Edward P. Tyron considers that “in answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time. Should we entertain these arguments with a straight face?
Some atheists directly admit they don’t want God. New York University’s Thomas Nagel acknowledged, “I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.” Nagel says that he fears the very possibility of God’s existence. He recognizes that his fear is due to what he calls a “cosmic authority” problem. One might also consider the frank admission by nihilist Aldous Huxley, when he wrote that he “had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently, assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.
I have been around the world several times and met thousand of artists, and to this point, can say I never met a serious artist that considered himself to be an atheist. It is fascinating to think of the creative process that results in a musical composition. As Bob Dylan said in many interviews “ideas for a new song or composition come from God, not man.”
How the idea is fleshed out to result in a final product. Is it a flash of genius, a skill that can be learned or a divine intervention? The process of arranging and orchestrating a melody is one that can be learned and is taught in music schools, even on-line now on the internet. But just where does that melody come from, where do the words for a song come from and what starts the whole process?
Of course, we are all aware of famous composers who have written symphonies and other grand music. Mozart is most often looked to as a creative genius within whose mind entire symphonies were created, virtually heard then committed to paper for posterity.
Yea, the arguments that the universe just happened is as non-intellectual as great songs that just come out of our feeble little minds.