God's Not Dead: Evidence for God in an Age of Uncertainty (28 page)

Since finishing his PhD in physics, Dr. Miller has spoken to hostile crowds on university campuses across the world on the evidence for the Christian faith. Through these experiences, he has increasingly understood that the beliefs of skeptics are typically based more on
blind faith
in naturalistic philosophy than on hard evidence.
²⁷

D
R
. J
O
G
OODSON
: A C
HILDHOOD AS AN
A
THEIST

Graduate of Imperial College, London

It has been my privilege to reach out to campuses in London, England, since 1981. It has been challenging, to say the least, but the testimonies of the transforming power of the gospel have been amazing. None of those stories is more encouraging than Joanna Goodson; here it is in her own words:

I was brought up in an atheist household. It wasn’t overly spoken about; we simply didn’t bother going to church. We didn’t talk about God—why would we? We understood that other people believed in God and felt that was fine if it helped them get through life. Luckily we were well educated and financially stable and perhaps believed we were a little smarter than others, so we didn’t need to invent some “fantasy God” to help us get through life. We were happy, good people, and we believed that was enough.

Looking back, I can see times in my childhood when my siblings and I were actually curious about God. I remember finding a Gideon Bible in a hotel room and making a decision to read it from beginning to end in one night.
I was about twelve at the time. I fell asleep halfway through Deuteronomy and never thought anything more of it. Was this intellectual curiosity, or God trying to communicate with me? Even now, I’m not sure. I remember my brother coming home from school at the age of seven and saying he believed that every word of the Bible was true. My parents didn’t have to take him to the side and explain how foolish this was; my sister and I did a fine job over dinner of beating it out of him with ridicule and insult, calling him “naïve.” He now considers himself a Buddhist, so I guess you could say we weren’t able to make him a skeptic when it came to
spiritual
things.

The change for me happened when I went to university at eighteen, an arrogant undergrad who had it all figured out, both life and religion. I met a dynamic Christian with dreadlocks and a winning personality. Everyone loved him and wanted to hang out with him. He was open about his faith and didn’t drink, although he did go clubbing and danced for fun. What’s more, he didn’t sleep around. That didn’t make sense to me. He was well educated, well liked, and not in need of a crutch. He was an anomaly in my understanding of life.

We discussed religion a lot. I thought I could convince him that he was being silly and obviously clinging to something he had been taught in childhood but never really critically assessed. He was an adult who still believed in Santa Claus, and I would show him the truth; because at his age it was cruel not to know. As our discussions progressed, I was shocked to find that I was the one who had never really thought things through. I was the one who had never
challenged what I had been told in terms of the atheistic view of life. This didn’t automatically make me a Christian; it just opened my eyes to the possibility that God was real.

It was when Natty, my dynamic Christian friend, took me to church that things fell into place. I wasn’t convinced by any fancy arguments; I was challenged to consider the possibility that Christ had indeed died for me. Eventually God met me where I was, hiding at the back of a church service in London, asking,
Is there anybody really up there?
I knew when I finally came to a place of faith that God had indeed done so much for me that I had simply ignored. A deep sense of gratitude has been in my heart since that day.

My life changed instantaneously, and it would take many volumes to explain how. It wasn’t about stopping the drugs and the sex and simply becoming a good person. It was about living for God, sincerely wanting to change as well as to see the world changed for Him and His honor. Ten years later I am married with a son and a daughter on the way. I am a doctor and a
mathematician
. My thesis at university was on proving the existence of God through mathematical
logic
. I really only proved that you can’t prove it either way. That’s good enough for me; it forces people to take a step of faith, one way or the other. I hadn’t realized I had taken that step in the wrong direction until someone challenged me on it.

I am content, at peace, and can trust others because God puts His trust in me. I can forgive others because God has forgiven me. I am strong because God gives me His strength. I can deal with the bad times because I have
something to put my hope in. I smile because I know that whatever my world may look like, God is working all things for my good. My family has yet to believe in God, but amazingly they want to. They tell me they want the faith that I have. My mother has often expressed a wish that my brother and sister would find a nice church like I attend. She thinks the happiness, friendliness, and the ability to deal with the challenges of life come from church. I know they really come from Jesus. When she sees this, she will believe too.
²⁸

B
RANT
R
EDING
: A
N
A
THEIST
W
HO
T
OOK
H
IS
D
OUBTS
S
ERIOUSLY

Canadian Student

Brant Reding is one of the brightest minds I have ever met
.
He was a young business leader in Calgary, Canada, and a very sincere follower of Christ when we met in the early 1990s. It was hard to believe that this guy had been an atheist.

I asked him to explain the story of his journey from unbelief to faith. He began by telling me of a conversation he had his freshman year with a person of faith while attending the
University of Calgary
, where he was challenged to take his doubts seriously.

I was presenting my best arguments against belief in God, and yet this man threw it back in my face. He said, “I can’t answer all your objections, but I think you should do one thing: why don’t you take some time and disprove the existence of God. Whatever you determine, live your life in that truth.”

“That should be easy,” I responded. “Every university
and academic in the world would agree with me: religion and God is simply a crutch, an opiate of the masses, an ancient superstitious attempt to explain life.”

This was the conversation that prompted me to take a semester off university. I set out to settle this issue, to disprove the existence of God and live with a clear conscience. The intellectual wrestling proved longer than a semester, however. Disproving God’s existence was not as simple and as “logical” as I had first assumed.

On campus I had evolved from a simple skeptic into a strong cynic, describing myself as an atheist who simply wanted to have fun and be a nice guy. By second year I had successfully talked a number of nice people out of their socalled faith. It was easy; no one had any substantial proof for their beliefs.

I had not been raised in religion; I had never opened a Bible or a Qur’an. I had never attended a religious gathering up to that point in my life. I was not angry or bitter with religious people, just perplexed by their blind-faith ignorance that seemed archaic and devoid of reason. Any childlike wonderings of God I may have had as a child were firmly filed away under the weight of reason, science, and individualism.

I began my quest reading and researching, and I began to discover there where two viewpoints: the skeptics I expected but also many respected academics, scientists, and philosophers who had no problem integrating faith in God within pure intellectual pursuit. Frankly it confused me. How could intellectuals suggest that God exists when our five rational senses confirmed otherwise? You cannot
see
God or
hear
God; you can’t
touch
or
taste
or
smell
God. It seemed obvious to me: He, therefore, could not exist.

At one point in my research, a wise academic kindly dropped a pencil into my hand from a foot high. “What caused the pencil to fall?” he asked.

“Gravity,” I replied.

“What does gravity look like? Can you see it?” he pressed. “What’s its texture? Can you feel it? What odor does gravity have, what sound does gravity make, what does it taste like? This force that holds the entire universe together is invisible, undetectable to your five senses, and yet you live your life subject to its reality, even if you can’t prove it with your five human senses.”

I honestly had to admit the possibility of a creative force in the universe was feasible and reasonable. Logically that meant there might even be a reason for the universe, a purpose for life and consciousness; and if that was possible, then there might even be a reason and purpose for me. That thought was honestly very unnerving. I had lived twenty-three years in my “matrix”; life was simply the product of evolving genetic processes—lucky mud—and we make life what it is. There is no grand purpose or reason; just live and let live.

It became clear there was no conclusive evidence to disprove God scientifically; rather, the circumstantial evidence was stacking up in the other direction. I shifted to look at the world’s religions. They claimed God was real, so why not look into them? It seemed obvious to me: all the God-centered belief systems would, in fact, prove my understanding: they were all concocted, man-made belief systems rooted in superstition.

I chose to focus on the key individuals, not the potpourri of confusing religions. The obvious characters included
Muhammad
, Joseph Smith, Siddhartha Gautama, and Jesus, among others. It was soon evident that the person, life, and teachings of Jesus floated to the top of all the others. Most of the other groups pointed either directly or indirectly to Him.

I dug further. A turning point for me came after reading C. S. Lewis’s
Mere Christianity
and Josh McDowell’s
Evidence That Demands a Verdict
. The weight of evidence and the sincere people I was now accustomed to watching live their faiths were impossible to ignore. On a cold, minus-thirty-degree winter day, sitting in my car, I took a step and out loud asked God, “If You are real, if all this is true, make Yourself real to me.” The invisible became tangible immediately. Everything changed inwardly. The words of Blaise Pascal, the famous
mathematician
, came true for me: inside of every man there is a God-shaped vacuum that nothing can fill except the Creator. I was a skeptic turned believer. What I had set out to disprove had in fact been proved. It took a few years, but now I would not change those years of searching for anything.
²⁹

J
IM
M
UNROE
: T
HE
I
LLUSION OF
U
NBELIEF

Professional Illusionist

Jim Munroe is a psychological illusionist and a self-proclaimed “skeptic from birth.” From a very young age, Jim had a unique knack for making people believe something was happening when it really wasn’t. His ability to create false belief in his audiences as an illusionist left Jim skeptical about all forms of religion and
spirituality
.

While studying psychology and philosophy at the
University of Texas
, he decided that he’d answer the God question for himself, once and for all. He studied the claims of all major world religions and philosophies. His one question for God, through all of his study, remained the same: “God, if You are real, You need to make Yourself so real that You can’t be ignored.” Little did he know, his prayer was going to be answered, probably in the way he least desired or expected.

In 2009, he was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer. At one point the doctors told Jim that the leukemia would kill him in only two months. He started treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and had to undergo a bone-marrow transplant. The catch to this transplant was finding someone who matched Jim’s blood perfectly and who would be willing to donate his marrow on Jim’s behalf. After searching for a match in a nine-million-person international database, there was only one who could save him from this biological disease. Jim explained that he could see a direct comparison to the gospel message of Jesus Christ. Jesus was the One with the perfect blood who could substitute His healthy blood (in a
spiritual
sense) for our hopelessly diseased condition.

Upon completion of his successful cancer-curing bone-marrow transplant, Jim saw that God had indeed answered his
prayer
and revealed Himself in an undeniable way. “The doctors told me that I had been given a second birthday. The nurses told me that I was like a baby inside the womb all over again.” Through his amazing journey, Jim claims his skeptical nature “was overwhelmed by the realities of Christ.” Now Jim leads thousands to the Lord and to the bone-marrow donor registry through his remarkable story.
³⁰

D
R
. A
UGUSTO
C
URY
: I
NTENSE
A
THEISM
I
MPLODES

Psychiatrist and Author

I met Dr. Augusto Cury, a Brazilian, while he was in the United States writing a book. A world-renowned psychiatrist and a prolific author, he has written thirty books with more than forty million copies sold worldwide. His teachings and insight have impacted people in more than sixty nations. It is my honor to call him a friend.

I was one of the most committed atheists who ever walked this earth—maybe more than Nietzsche, who wrote about the death of God; or Karl Marx, who wrote that religion is the opium that numbs humanity; or Freud, who wrote that seeking for God is to seek for a father protector. The great majority of atheists, in reality, are antireligious. In contrast to them, I was a scientific atheist.