The Person Across the Table
Someone you love may not believe in God. He may be your son, your coworker, or the friend you go fishing with. He probably is not a debater, and he may be kinder than some Christians you know. This study is about him.
The Apologetics section makes the case for God from creation and conscience, answers naturalism and relativism, and lays out the evidence for the resurrection. We will not repeat those arguments here. Our question is different. What does this person actually believe, how did he get there, and how do we love him toward Christ?
The belief that no God or gods exist, or, as many atheists prefer to put it, the absence of belief in any god.
The position that we do not or cannot know whether God exists. T. H. Huxley coined the word in 1869.
A way of thinking and living that leaves God out of account. George Holyoake gave the word its modern sense in 1851. In politics it can mean, more narrowly, that the state should not govern religion.
Most people in this group are not atheists at all. Pew's 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study found that 29 percent of American adults claim no religion. Only 5 percent called themselves atheists and 6 percent agnostics. The largest group, 19 percent, said “nothing in particular.” So the friend you have in mind may never have decided against God. He may simply never think about Him.
The Greek word atheoi appears only once in the New Testament, and Paul used it of Christians. He was reminding the believers in Ephesus what they had been.
“That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:”EPHESIANS 2:12 · KJV
The words without God translate atheoi. Every believer once stood there. We do not speak to an atheist from above him. We speak as people who have been brought near.
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For Deeper Study
- I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an AtheistAmazon Norman L. Geisler and Frank TurekA popular, step-by-step case from truth to God to Jesus.
- Cold-Case ChristianityAmazon J. Warner WallaceA former atheist and homicide detective applies a detective's methods to the Gospels.
- The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of SkepticismAmazon Timothy KellerA thoughtful answer to the objections of secular people. Keller was Reformed, and we differ with him on election and other points.
- Surprised by JoyAmazon C. S. LewisLewis's account of his road from atheism to faith. Lewis was an Anglican and held some views Baptists do not.
- Seven Types of AtheismAmazon John GrayAn atheist philosopher's frank survey of atheism's forms and their weaknesses. Not a Christian book, but useful for hearing the position from inside.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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The Existence of God: Creation and Design
The universe had a beginning and bears the marks of design, so creation itself declares the Creator the human heart already knows.
Open Doctrine