Ingersoll part five
Life Without God
Many people want a life without God. They think that would be utopia. Perhaps to a person bent on serving himself and wanting no moral guide to tell him that he is wrong, that sounds appealing. But neither atheism (which does not believe in God), nor agnosticism (which is not sure if it believes in God) are all they are cracked up to be.
You don’t have to believe me. Believe the words of these world renowned agnostics themselves.
Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)—"Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud and the only answer is the echo of a wailing cry." (Eulogy at his brother’s grave)
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)—"Man is the product of causes which had no provision of the end they were achieving… his origin, his growth, his hope and fears, his loves and his beliefs are all but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms."
Voltaire (1694-1778)—"I wish I had never been born."
Life without God is hopeless. It drowns in a sea of despair. Those who think they will find more happiness without God, actually find more misery.
It is a great irony because these people think of believers as being the fools. Actually, "The fool has said in his heart ‘There is no God.’" (Psalm 14:1). Those who claim to be intellectually superior cannot see their own ignorance, "Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread. And do not call on the name of the Lord? There they are in great fear, for God is with the generation of the righteous. You shame the counsel of the poor, but the Lord is his refuge." (Psalm 14:4-6).
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), noted English journalist and author, wrote this uninspired gem, "I was a pagan at the age of twelve and a complete agnostic by the age of sixteen. All I had… heard of Christian theology had alienated me from it… It was Huxley [an agnostic] and Herbert Spencer [an agnostic] who sowed in my mind the first wild seeds of doubt. Our grandmothers were quite right when they said that Tom Paine and the free-thinkers unsettled the mind. They do. They unsettled mine horribly… The rationalist made me question whether reason was of any use whatever; and when I had finished Herbert Spencer, I had got as far as doubting (for the first time) whether evolution had occurred at all. As I laid down the last of Colonel Ingersoll’s atheistic lectures, the dreadful thought broke across my mind, ‘Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.’ I was in a desperate way…
"As I read and reread all the non-Christian or anti-Christian accounts of the faith… a slow and awful impression gradually but graphically grew on my mind—the impression that Christianity must be an extraordinary thing. It was attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons… And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that perhaps those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other." --Orthodoxy
Life without God is a hell that I don’t want to imagine.
He has left us with a witness of His existence. It speaks every language, and preaches its sermon every day and night, so that nowhere on the earth is its never silent voice not heard. "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." (Psalm 19:1-4).
It calls daily to people of every age, culture, and place in this world, "so that they might seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each of us." (Acts 17:27).
It’s funny to hear someone talk about our ‘blind faith’—especially those agnostics who have a ‘blind lack of faith’.
You can’t whistle in the graveyard hoping that God will go away. He has left us too much evidence of His existence to disbelieve. "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools…" (Romans 1:20-22).
Life without God—are you kidding? I hope life never becomes that bleak and hopeless! |
