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Answering atheist arguments

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Skeptics commonly raise all sorts of objections as an excuse to deny God and His Word. At a recent CMI event, the speaker was given a written list of questions written by a skeptic who would not attend citing his questions as reasons why. The pastor’s wife asked if we could respond. The letter’s questions and responses from CMI–US’s Lita Sanders, are reproduced below.

1. Primitive man needed a way to explain why the universe is, so he created religion. They didn’t know the sun was a ball of gas. They created stories to explain the world.

Everyone uses stories to try to explain the world, and everyone believes in creation ex nihilo, it’s just that some people have a God to drive the creation of matter and others don’t. See Evolution: an ancient pagan idea and Archaeologist confirms creation and the Bible.

2. The pyramids are “carbon-dated” and match the historical record of Egyptian writings.

The pyramids are made out of limestone and thus cannot be carbon-dated, as only organic material can be dated this way. In any case, it is well-recognized that carbon dating gets less reliable the older the tested objects are. See What about carbon dating? and Egyptian chronology and the Bible—framing the issues.

3. Confuscious [sic] led an orderly society, and other organized societies did not need to know about a Jewish god—they had their own.

There are clear advantages to societies that embraced Christianity. They stopped committing infanticide by exposing their unwanted babies to the elements, women had it much better as they were seen as equally in the image of God. Christians built the first hospitals and universities, and they were the first real scientists. See The biblical roots of modern science and Review of The Irrational Atheist.

4. Other cultures came up with similar religions.

The similarities between Christianity and other religions are incidental; the differences are momentous. For instance, Judaism was the only religion with a true idea of resurrection, and Christianity substantially added to it with its assertion that one man (Jesus) was resurrected ahead of everyone else. Also, Christianity is the only religion with a true virgin birth. No other religion has anything like Christianity’s doctrine of salvation; I could go on and on. Dionysus and the Lord’s Supper both use wine—big deal.

5. They have found skeletons of “Nephilim”.

No, they haven’t found Nephilim skeletons; you’re probably thinking of various Photoshop hoaxes. Search snopes.com. They also haven’t found Nephilim footprints, skulls, or anything else. See also Who were the ‘sons of God’ in Genesis 6?

6. Dogs and bears are the same creature at one point and then evolved.

Evolutionists believe pinnipeds are more closely related to the bear than dogs are. I feel no need to refute something even evolutionists don’t believe.

7. If you invalidate carbon-dating, how can you date anything? How can you date any objects to correlate with historical records?

The historical records provide us with dates. There is no scientific way to conclusively determine the age of something. See Carbon-14 dating—explained in everyday terms. Also, carbon-14 can only provide us with ages in the range of thousands of years, not millions. As such, it is actually a valuable dating method for creationists, because we find carbon-14 in things that are commonly asserted to be millions of years old, and should not have any carbon-14 in them if they really were, like diamonds and dinosaur fossils.

8. You can’t use the Bible as science because it’s not a science book. It’s a history and spiritual book.

I agree that the Bible is a history and spiritual book! But where the Bible’s teaching has scientific implications, it must be true if its history is true. And it is!

9. When we die, we just die.

How do you know that? Have you done a scientific experiment to prove that? The Bible records an eyewitness who died and was resurrected—the Lord Jesus Christ, so we believe He is the authority.

10. Fingernails are completely useless. The only reason we have them is because they are a leftover by product of evolution. The same with eyebrows and eyelashes.

No, they’re not useless, and not even evolutionists think that. Another bad argument.

This gentleman is using some bad arguments. These sorts of arguments can be found on any number of atheist websites and form a sort of antichristian ‘apologetic’. It is becoming more and more important that Christians become informed so they can answer these sorts of baseless attacks. I hope these answers help your friend to start thinking a little more critically.

Published: 6 August 2016

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