An Atheist Becomes a Believer

Jen was raised in a happy home without religious upbringing.

Her father, an engineer, had given her a love of science and had taught her to follow the facts wherever they lead, without letting emotions cloud her judgment. From a young age, it seemed to Jen that there were no logical reasons to believe in God. It was fine if others wanted to have religious beliefs, but she considered them to be fairy tales created to bring people comfort.

She was convinced that the material world is all there is.

Like the atheist authors she admired, Jen believed that there is no such thing as a soul. Our thoughts and feelings are simply the result of chemical reactions in the brain. When we die, we cease to exist, and nothing of ourselves continues on. This realization brought about a sense of despair and hopelessness within Jen. What meaning did her life and actions have, if she was destined to turn to dust? But she found that she could distract herself from such thoughts with moments of worldly happiness. So she resolved to chase such moments and get as much enjoyment out of life as she could.

As a new wife and mother, Jen started to have doubts.

Now 27, she was married to the man of her dreams and had just given birth to a beautiful boy. Reflecting on the love that she and her husband shared, and the unconditional love that she now had for her son, Jen began to be open to the possibility that perhaps there was something beyond the physical. To her surprise, she realized that she could no longer believe that we were simply collections of neurons, or that the love she felt for her husband and her child were merely products of brain chemistry.

With a new openness, Jen began to explore reasons for faith.

She decided to begin by examining Christianity, since it is the only major religion whose founder claimed to be God. She figured such a specific claim should be relatively easy to disprove. She started a blog online and and invited Christians to respond to her toughest objections. To her surprise, she found there were actually logical, compelling answers to her questions. Slowly, as she followed the facts, she increasingly became convinced that the evidence pointed to faith in God and, more specifically, to faith in Jesus. Emotionally, she didn’t want to be a Christian and change her way of life, but she was determined to follow the truth, wherever it led her.

Gradually, Jen opened herself up to a relationship with God.

She and her husband joined a nearby church. With the support of their new church family, they slowly grew in their relationship with God. They are now faith-filled Christians, following Christ as loving parents to six children. Jen still considers herself a work in progress, on a lifelong journey of spiritual growth, but she has changed. She no longer needs to distract herself from despair and hopelessness; her life is now filled with purpose and hope.

Jennifer Fulwiler recounts her conversion story in her engaging and humorous autobiography, Something Other Than God. You can also visit jenniferfulwiler.com to learn more about Jen and her radio show.

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Choosing to Believe in God

Would you jump from a plane without a parachute?

If you are in a plane high in the sky, it would be crazy to jump out without a parachute. Even if you were convinced that this was a good idea, such an action would fly in the face of all available logic. There would be no reason to expect to survive.

This is how many people imagine faith.

Religious faith is commonly misunderstood today to be merely a feeling or a preference, something that has nothing to do with reason or evidence. In such a case, belief in God would require a blind leap of faith, as apparently irrational as jumping out of a plane without a parachute.

What if you had a good parachute?

Suppose you are standing in the plane with a working parachute. It is engineered for a person of your size and weight, and you have been trained in its use. Knowing all of these things, jumping can be seen as a reasonable course of action. You have every reason to expect that, should you jump, you will land safely. But even with all of this evidence, at some point you still have to make the choice: will you jump?

There are good reasons for faith in God.

In this series of faith messages, we have been exploring some of the reasons for faith in God. Persuasive arguments can be made from observations of the universe, such as its existence from nothing and its apparent fine-tuning. Important evidence can also be found in human nature, such as the laws of morality and the yearning we experience for something beyond this world. These clues each have their limits, but taken as a group they have a cumulative effect and carry weight.

Faith and reason are meant to go together.

In the traditional Christian understanding, faith and reason are meant to support one another. We use our intellect to look at the evidence, and this can open our hearts to help us receive the gift of faith. We can see that faith in God is actually quite reasonable, not contrary to common sense or science at all. But at some point, we still have to choose to make the leap of faith. We have to choose to believe in God and begin a new life with him.

Why not ask God for the gift of faith?

We cannot make the leap of faith on our own power; faith is a gift we receive from God. If you are unsure whether God exists, why not ask him to reveal himself to you? You can pray a simple prayer, such as, “God, I don’t know if you are real, but if you are, please help me to know you.” Even though you will probably not experience a miraculous sign or a voice from heaven, God will gradually reveal himself to those who seek him. If he does not exist, you lose nothing, but if he does exist, you gain a treasure beyond price.

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Why Do We Long for More?

A successful lawyer discovers something is still missing.

He was young, handsome, and brilliant. He was at the top of his field, well-regarded by both his peers and by those in power. He partied with the rich and famous. He had everything that the world had to offer. Despite all this, he still was not happy. His heart was restless. He couldn’t shake the sense that he was meant for more.

We experience this same pattern in our lives.

As a child, we pinned our hopes for happiness on a certain toy, and even when we received it, the joy it provided quickly faded. So we looked to another toy, hoping this one would do the trick. We find the same pattern as adults. Whether it is a new car, the latest gadget, or a new romantic relationship, we keep finding that it is not enough. Why is this?

We all experience a longing for the infinite.

We have a desire for goodness, truth, and beauty which can never quite be satisfied by the things of the world. Gazing at the most beautiful sunset, we still yearn for an even deeper beauty. No matter how many books we read or degrees we have, we still thirst for more knowledge. Even the most wonderful friend or spouse can’t fulfill our longing for perfect friendship and love.

This is a sign that we are meant for something more than this world.

C. S. Lewis famously articulated in Mere Christianity, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water… If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

The yearning in our hearts is a desire for God.

God created us in his image and likeness (Genesis 1:27), which means that we are persons with intellect, freedom, and an ability to love. He created us to be united with him and to share in his love, here on earth and one day in heaven. This is why we experience this desire for perfect goodness, truth, and beauty: it is a desire for our creator, who alone is perfectly good, true, and beautiful. This desire in our hearts is like a homing beacon that helps draw us to God.

In God, our hearts can finally find peace.

The lawyer mentioned above was Augustine, serving the Roman Emperor in the fourth century. He eventually became a Christian and finally found the peace and joy for which he was searching. From him we have the famous prayer, “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

Why not test it out for yourself?

This desire of our hearts can’t be measured with scientific instruments, but nonetheless it is a sign that can point us to the possibility of there being more to reality than the material world. Each of us can do an experiment: what happens if we stop trying to satisfy our hearts with finite things, and instead seek God?

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Why Do We Share a Sense of Morality?

In 1901, an amazing discovery was made in Iran.

In the ruins of ancient Susa, archaeologists unearthed a pillar of black stone. About seven feet tall and two feet wide, it bore thousands of lines of Babylonian text. The scholars discovered that it is a list of laws enacted by the sixth king of Babylon, Hammurabi, in about 1754 BC. Now known as the Code of Hammurabi, it represents one of the oldest surviving examples of ancient law.

An even older law can be discovered in the human heart.

The Code of Hammurabi was chiseled into stone, but looking at our experience as humans, we can recognize that there is a moral law chiseled into our hearts. From even a young age, we have a sense that certain actions are good and other actions are evil. We have a conscience which urges us to do good and avoid evil. We often fail to follow our conscience, choosing evil, and yet we are aware that we are in the wrong.

The moral law is consistent across cultures.

As C.S. Lewis notes in the first chapters of Mere Christianity, there is no country where cowardice is celebrated, or one takes pride in double-crossing one’s friends. Even though cultures vary on some of the details, the sense of good and evil is astonishingly uniform across all peoples, places, and centuries. This indicates that our moral code is not simply conditioned by society, but rather is built into us as human beings.

Where does this moral law come from?

When one discovers a law, one naturally expects a lawgiver. The Code of Hammurabi, for example, was not chiseled onto the pillar by accident, but at the king’s order. Similarly, it is no accident that a moral law is chiseled into the human heart. The moral law points to a law-giver greater than ourselves: our creator, God. Just as he created the physical laws of the universe, he created the moral law and installed an awareness of these truths in the human heart.

The moral law points to God’s goodness and care for us.

As we have seen in previous articles, we can gain certain insights into God as we reflect on the physical universe around us, such as how he is timeless and all-powerful. But as we reflect on the moral law within us, we gain additional insights. Since God provides us with this moral guidance, we can see that he is not indifferent towards us; he cares about us and desires our well-being. And in recognizing the call within ourselves to be good and loving, we can conclude that these are attributes of God. He is perfectly good and loving, and he is inviting us to participate in his goodness and love.

For more on the topics in this series, a good introduction can be found in Steven Hemler’s 2014 book, The Reality of God. He explores additional avenues of interest in physics and biology which we are unable to cover in this series, such as how our  planet appears finely tuned for life, and the problems inherent in presuming that even a one-celled organism formed naturally by chance alone.

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The Fine-Tuning of the Universe

What if the strength of gravity were slightly different?

Scientists have discovered that if the force of gravity were ever so slightly weaker than it is, the universe would have expanded so rapidly that stars like the sun would never have formed. And if gravity were ever so slightly stronger than it is, the universe would never have expanded outwards and formed stars and planets like ours. In either case, we would not exist. If the strength of gravity were analogous to the amount of sand needed to fill an Olympic pool, life would be impossible with the addition or subtraction of a single grain of sand!

Many similar examples of precision have been discovered.

The strength of gravity is one of about twenty fundamental constants of nature identified by scientists. If any of these constants were slightly different, our universe would have been inhospitable for life. For example, the strong nuclear force binds together protons and neutrons. If it were slightly stronger, no hydrogen would have remained to form stars; if it were slightly weaker, no elements other than hydrogen would ever have formed, and therefore no building blocks of life such as carbon.

The universe displays a remarkable fine-tuning.

We can imagine each of these fundamental constants like enormous dials on a wall. Each of these dials could have been turned to any setting, and yet they are each turned to the precise combination that allows for the formation of stars, planets, and life. This has caused scientists to remark that the universe seems to be finely tuned to enable the development of life as we know it.

Is this fine-tuning simply the result of random chance?

Are the fundamental constants so precisely tuned merely due to random chance? The odds of all of these constants coinciding to allow for life are so remote that they seem to demand an explanation. It would be like a man buying one lottery ticket at a time, and winning the jackpot dozens of times in a row: the odds are so unthinkable that chance would be ruled out and other explanations would be sought, such as manipulation of the games.

Can this fine-tuning be explained by infinite universes?

Recognizing that there must be an explanation besides chance to account for the fine-tuning we observe, some scientists now speculate that an infinite number of universes were created from the Big Bang. Each of these universes has its own random setting of the “dials,” and we happen to be in one of the universes where the combinations align perfectly to allow for life. In the lottery example above, this would be like saying that there are countless universes where the man bought tickets and lost, and we happen to live in a universe where all his tickets were winners.

Is there a better explanation for this fine-tuning?

Since science is limited to the study of our own universe, we can never scientifically prove the existence of infinite universes. In other words, such a belief would require a leap of faith. It is reasonable to look at the evidence and take a different leap of faith: that the universe is finely tuned for life because it has been purposefully designed this way by its creator.

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Why Is There Order in the Universe?

On the beach, seashells are normally scattered here and there.

But imagine walking on the beach and finding that an area of sand is clear of shells, except for some lined up in particular shapes. Getting closer, we see that the shells form the pattern, 3 x 3 = 9. We would naturally conclude that this order did not happen by chance; someone had picked up the shells and arranged them not only to form symbols we can recognize, but also in a way that makes mathematical sense.

Why is the universe ordered, instead of chaotic?

On the beach, we would expect to find the shells randomly distributed, without any order we could identify. It would have been reasonable to expect the universe to exhibit a similar lack of order. After all, if the universe began in an initial, violent explosion from a single point, might we not expect it to act in a random, unpredictable manner? Thankfully, this is not the case.

The universe operates under recognizable, predictable laws.

All scientific work is based on the assumption that the universe operates under laws that remain constant across time and space. For example, the laws of gravity and motion apply throughout the universe and in all time periods. Thus, we can plan to fly in an airplane, trusting that gravity and motion will function the same tomorrow and in each place we travel.

These laws can even be expressed as mathematical realities.

Amazingly, not only can we recognize the laws of nature, but they can also be expressed with mathematical precision. For example, Einstein’s famous equation describes how energy (“E”) equals mass (“m”) times the speed of light (“c”) squared. It is quite remarkable that important laws of nature can be effectively represented in simple and elegant mathematical formulas, allowing us to put them to practical use.

There is a mystery here, unexplainable by science on its own.

Since science is the study of the material world, it can help us discover and better understand the laws of nature. But science cannot explain why there are these laws to begin with. Why is the universe ordered? Why are nature’s laws such that we can not only recognize them, but also express them mathematically?

The order of the universe calls for an explanation.

In our seashell analogy, it is reasonable to expect that someone with an intellect purposefully arranged the shells in this organized and mathematical manner. Similarly, it is reasonable to observe the order built into our universe and conclude that the laws of nature were arranged by an intellect vastly superior to our own. Christians believe that God created the universe with its order, intending for us to understand the laws of nature and rely upon them. The order and beauty of the universe reflects the majesty of its creator.

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What Caused the Universe?

A firework explodes, brilliant in the night sky.

Without thinking about it, we assume that there is a reason for the loud sounds and colorful lights we perceive. An empty sky wouldn’t explode into these bright, purposeful patterns on its own. There must be a cause of this explosion.

The universe didn’t always exist; it had a beginning.

In the 1920s, scientists discovered that galaxies are moving away from each another at incredible speeds. Further discoveries led scientists to conclude that the universe began expanding outwards from a single point about 13.7 billion years ago. At this moment, all matter and energy came into existence, as well as time and space. But since science is limited to observations within time and space, it cannot explain how or why the universe came into existence out of nothing.

There must be a cause for the universe’s existence.

Different thinkers throughout history have used logical reasoning to explore how the universe could have come into existence. One famous argument goes like this: 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence. 2) The universe began to exist. 3) The universe must therefore have a cause for its existence. Like the firework exploding in the sky, the universe cannot have begun to exist unless it had a cause beyond itself.

What kind of cause could have created the universe?

As we use logical reasoning to examine what could have created the universe, certain truths about this “First Cause” become clear. This First Cause must transcend time and space, for neither existed until it created the universe. Since it is timeless, it is eternal, without beginning or end. Since it transcends space, it is non-physical, or immaterial. Since it can create a universe out of nothing, there must be no limits to its power; it is all-powerful.

This First Cause must have chosen to create the universe.

If the First Cause is immaterial, timeless, and all-powerful, it cannot have created the universe out of necessity; it must have chosen to do so. Therefore, it is not a mindless force, but a personal being that freely chose to create the universe. In other words, the First Cause is not a something but a someone.

The First Cause is what Christians refer to as God.

God is traditionally understood as an eternal, immaterial, and all-powerful being who freely chose to create the universe. While these reflections do not tell us everything about him, and they cannot be verified in a laboratory, they nonetheless carry weight. They help us see that belief in God is reasonable and compatible with our scientific understanding of the universe.

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Can Science Disprove God?

Metal detectors are amazing, but they have limits.

One often sees people on the beach after a storm, using a metal detector to find lost rings, coins, or other unexpected treasures that may have washed onto the shore. But if a large diamond were to fall out of a woman’s wedding ring, it would make no sense for her to try to find it with a metal detector. As useful as they are, metal detectors can’t be used to discover everything.

As wonderful as science is, it also has limits.

Modern science has brought us amazing breakthroughs in medicine, travel, communication, and comfort. Thanks to science, we can do things our ancestors couldn’t even imagine. But since science is the study of the natural world, this means that it is limited in its scope: scientific inquiry can only answer questions about matters that are observable in time and space.

Science cannot make moral judgments.

Science helps us describe the world, but it cannot help us decide what is good or bad, right or wrong. For example, scientific inquiry cannot answer whether it is right or wrong for people to steal, or whether a human life is more valuable than the life of an endangered animal. Scientific research can open up new possibilities, such as the ability to clone a human being, but it cannot tell us what we should do with this knowledge.

Science cannot explain realities like love or beauty.

Scientists can observe the interactions between a mother and her child, but they cannot prove whether love exists between two people, or explain why it exists. Science can explain how the Grand Canyon was formed, but it cannot tell us whether or not it is beautiful. We know from experience that love and beauty are real, but such realities fall outside the purview of science.

Science cannot answer questions concerning God or religion.

Since science only examines the physical, natural world, it cannot give answers to supernatural questions such as, “Does God exist?” By definition, God is outside of space and time and thus beyond the limits of science. Science cannot be used to prove or disprove God, any more than a metal detector can establish the presence of a diamond in the sand.

There are reasons for faith in God.

If the woman in our example were looking for her diamond, she would search with other tools, such as a screen to sift through the sand. In a similar way, if we are to investigate God’s existence, we will need to employ avenues other than scientific research. In particular, we will need logical reasoning. In this message series, we will explore some of the reasons why it makes sense to believe in God.

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