"5 Reasons: Why I Still Believe in God" - DAY 3

Day 3 – advantage #1 of God’s existence: life after death

The Dogma of Atheism

There is no God. There is no objective truth. There is no ground for reason. There are no absolute morals. There is no ultimate value. There is no ultimate meaning. There is no eternal hope.  –STEVE KUMAR

It matters much whether a person believes in the existence of God. If there were no God, reality would be confined entirely to the natural world. There would be nothing supernatural—or, described more accurately, supra-natural—to acknowledge or with which to interact. Our lives in such a godless universe would arise from nature and be reabsorbed into nature, much like drops of rain are recollected into the ocean. There would be no afterlife, in the sense most of us tend to think of it, only a recycling of our chemical elements at death. We would live on only through the legacy we leave behind. In contrast, God’s existence opens wide the possibility of life beyond the grave.

This is no small matter. If you doubt its importance, ask one hundred people on death's doorstep whether they wish to continue as an individual or be absorbed into nature. It would be the rare person who would choose the latter. Then ask one hundred mothers and fathers whose children have died before them if it matters whether or not they will someday interact with their son or daughter in a personal way. I cannot fathom one parent who would not immediately and joyously embrace the prospect of such a reunion. 

In short, life after death is not conceivable to the atheist. God’s existence alone permits this blessed hope.¹

Daily Quotation

Steve Kumar, Christianity for Skeptics (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2000), 61.

¹For a review of the scientific evidence in favor of an afterlife, read “Intimations of Immortality” in Patrick Glynn’s God: The Evidence (Roseville, Calif: Prima Publishing, 1999).