A Philosophical Issue cont.

Firstly, and a bit ironically, Christianity is the only religion (with the exception of Judaism) which does not describe God in a way that you would think humans would if we were to invent God. If man invented God, He would think and act like we do, and His moral standard would reflect our desires. However, this is very contrary to the God described in the Bible. In fact, the God described in the Bible requires that one must “die” to himself spiritually, giving up and surrendering his current ways and life, and giving into God’s will and purpose, before recieving eternal life. This can sometimes be very uncomfortable at first. Yet nearly every other world religion describes a god or gods that reflect our way of thinking and our personal desires. Therefore it is much more likely that Christianity could be true, and other beliefs may just be a crutch.

The second major problem to this is that atheists seem to think that just because the Christian holds the positive position, that is, that something (God) does exist, it is therefore up to the Christian to always defend that claim and refute disagreements. However, the ax falls both ways. For example, if an atheist makes the claim that “there is no God”, it is not up to the Christian to prove him wrong, it is up to the atheist to defend his claim. That is a simple rule of the burden of proof. If you make a claim, regardless of what that claim itself states, the burden is on you to defend your claim. So logically speaking it can just as easily be said that atheism may be a crutch itself. Just think about it. Some people may find it difficult to believe in a God or supernatural force, so they look to the natural for their answers to everything, again not because we know that everything must have a natural cause, but because in their personal philosophical view they may find it difficult to believe in a God. It is very possible that some atheists may have in fact invented “non-God” because of painful experiences or relationships in the past which cause them to have difficulty believing in a God, and therefore they could just be looking for a reason to escape (perhaps even subconsciously) the implications of God’s existence.