“The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, They have done abominable works, There is none who does good” (Psalm 14:1).
Stephen Charnock: “I. It is a great folly to deny or doubt of the existence or being of God: or, an atheist is a great fool.
II. Practical atheism is natural to man in his corrupt state. It is against his nature as constituted by God, but natural, as nature is depraved by man: the absolute disowning of the being of a God is not natural to men, but the contrary is natural; but an inconsideration of God, or misrepresentation of his nature, is natural to man as corrupt.
III. A secret atheism, or partial atheism, is the spring of all the wicked practices in the world: the disorders of the life spring from the ill dispositions of the heart.
For the first, every atheist is a grand fool. If he were not a fool, he would not imagine a thing so contrary to the stream of the universal reason of the world, contrary to the rational dictates of his own soul, and contrary to the testimony of every creature, and link in the chain of creation: if he were not a fool, he would not strip himself of humanity, and degrade himself lower than the most despicable brute. It is a folly; for though God be so inaccessible that we cannot know Him perfectly, yet He is so much in the light, that we cannot be totally ignorant of Him; as He cannot be comprehended in His essence, He cannot be unknown in His existence; it is as easy by reason to understand that He is, as it is difficult to know what He is. The demonstrations reason furnisheth us with for the existence of God, will be evidences of the atheists folly. One would think there were little need of spending time in evidencing this truth, since in the principle of it, it seems to be so universally owned, and at the first proposal and demand, gains the assent of most men.”
Clay Miller: He will deal with II. And III. later. God is a universal idea through all times and all places. It is also something everyone considers in their own soul no matter where they are. God is evidenced all around us…in all of creation. This includes what we see on the surface and the intricacy we see when we probe deeper.
“if he were not a fool, he would not strip himself of humanity and degrade himself lower than the most despicable brute”…Atheists often speak of self-worth while relying of a system for existence that denies any purpose at all. They would rather contradict than admit the rationality of an intelligent Being…all to preserve imagined autonomy. In one breath we are all valuable and in the next breath (usually in the context of a religious discussion) he is nothing more than mutated protoplasm.
It is true we cannot know all there is to know of God. If we could, we would be God. He is infinite. But He has condescended in creation to not only to create us intimately, but also to put evidence of His greatness all around us. So while He is transcendent (exists beyond the created universe)…He is also immanent (existing in our universe). And the evidence of His immanence is overwhelming, thus it is just pure folly to deny the existence of God. Charnock has much to say on this and I will try to keep posting to get it in…Again though, the point is this, God has put so much before us to show that He is. Then He puts it in words through Scripture. And in His providence He brings people to share with us both of these revelations to consider. The alternative? Go to naturalistic evolutionists who do not allow from the very beginning, the possibility of supernatural explanations (God). They do this for two reasons: One, they know if God is allowed in the equation it will make sense of all science. And two: They can make most people buy into thinking that such a presupposition (God) is unsophisticated and thus avoid looking foolish themselves. More later…
