I talked with a friend, yesterday, about God. She said that she was reading a book by C.S. Lewis. She explained that he had been an atheist at one time but after his wife died, through some experiences and research, he regained his faith (I had not known that he had been an atheist, though I did know that he had a belief in God). Anyway, she said that in the book she was reading (I can't remember the title) he put forth one of the arguments that atheists have against there being a god. It goes something like this, "If God is all powerful, then He would be able to create a boulder that was too heavy for Him to lift. But if God was all powerful and couldn't lift the boulder then He really wouldn't be all powerful, so therefore, He doesn't exist."
Huh? That was my first reaction. She repeated it and the first thing I thought of was, "Is that all they've got as an explanation?" The second thing was, "There's more than the concrete-physical version of power." And my final thought was, "That sounds a lot like the sick thinking of an addict."
Another friend I have, had talked with me several years ago and told me that for every idea, law, or promise that God offers, evil has a counterfeit. So, if God advises you to take time and be still to know He's God. Evil suggests that you need to multi-task so that your brain is so overwhelmed and over worked that you can't even know yourself let along God. If God says to love your neighbor, evil provides a mental magnifying glass so that you can pick apart every annoying detail about your neighbor which makes understanding them pretty much an undesirable and impossible task. If you read what God requires, you can always find the counterfeit of evil that we have all been tempted by or given into. It starts with the twisted ideas that get planted and grow into these huge convoluted vines that intertwine their way through your rational thinking. That's how evil works. The mind really is the battle field.
That's what I thought about with that atheists' argument. Convoluted thinking. An idea that sets the listener up for failure even before you try to rationalize the statement. Addictive thinking has the same effect. A twisted idea: Drinking/drugs will make relax me and I'll be more sociable. I won't need a lot, just enough." Convoluted thinking then demands more of the product and the vine takes over, and the person with an addiction is held captive in that vine, with thoughts that aren't rational or true. Sick thinking instead of healthy thinking.
God is logical. That argument sounds logical, but it isn't. It's illogical (the counterfeit of God). For example, a part of the nature of God is to be infinite. A part of God's nature is to love good. God can't love evil, because that would go against His nature. If God created a boulder so large that He couldn't lift it, it too, would become infinite, and that would go against the nature of God, too. So, God not making a boulder too large for Him to lift doesn't prove His non-exhistance, it confirms that the nature of God can't be changed. My friend's explaination was that the statement about the boulder is like the questions: When did you stop beating your wife? It's a question that can't be answered with anything but an assumption that at some point you beat your wife, even if that never happened. It's twisted ideas, that appear to be logical, but are not. Much like the thinking of a person with addiction.
The power of God is that He is true to His nature. That His laws, comands and teachings are universally applicable. This is important because, unlike evil, God provides a firm foundation. The counterfeit to that is a foundation that is shaky and uncertain--always changing to manipulate the moment. I think that the idea of God's consistancy is comforting because being reliable anchors people. It comforts, sooths, and gives inner strength. The counterfeit, is that anxiety, worry, and unreliable sense that something bad is going to happen. Faith vs. fear. I choose Faith. But, if the argument still isn't convincing, I'll defer to the story, The Song of Bernadette, where the author writes (and I'm paraphrasing) "To those who believe, no explaination is necessary. To those who don't, no explaination is possible."
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