[HOME] [INDEX OF ARTICLES ] [ COPYRIGHT INFORMATION ] [ ABOUT US ] [CONTACT ]

The Self-Contradiction Of Atheism:

Quenching The Unquenchable Creatorial Knowledge Of God

Rom. 1:21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

 


There is knowledge about God. And then there is a knowing of God that transcends knowledge.

 

There is an innate "creatorial" knowing of God already born into every man, one quite apart from any kind of knowledge about God. This innate knowledge is not a saving personal knowing because it does not come through the atonement. Nevertheless it is a spiritual knowing by virtue of creational implant—one that establishes accountability between man and his Creator. It is the divine trademark stamped upon every human soul that says “Made by God.”  

 

This creatorial knowing is the knowing to which Paul refers in Romans 1:21 “For although they knew God….”—and on which he further elaborates in 2:15 “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts.” It is the same knowing of which John 1:9 speaks: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” The Quakers referred to this light as “the divine spark.”

 


The Military Journey from Creatorial to Saving Knowledge

 

Between the place of creatiorial knowledge and the personal saving knowing of God by spirit rebirth is a journey through the maze of natural knowledge. Within that maze is a battle to prevent creatorial knowing from converting into the saving knowing of God.

 

This battle is framed as a war against the inborn creatorial knowledge of God.  This occurs before the battle against the saving knowledge of God is ever engaged. As the father of lies and deception, satan attacks the creatorial knowing of God in every man. He does this in the same two ways he attacks truth of any kind. He either works to corrupt truth, or to deny the truth. (The war against charismatic truth is a good example of this typical two prong assault. Satan either corrupts it in those who receive it, or else secures the denial of it in those who won’t.)

 

In most cultures, satan corrupts the divine creatorial knowledge. This is the origination of worship of false gods, idols, etc. Corruption of this knowledge marks the overwhelming state of humanity. And it is this majority corruption to which Paul speaks in Romans 1.

 

But in the slim minority, satan works to the denial of the creatorial knowledge. This is the source of atheism.  Atheism is the willful rejection of the inborn knowledge of the Creator. Nothing more. The knowledge is inescapably there. But it is rejected through denial.

 

As said already, the journey between the creatorial and saving knowing of God is taken and otherwise fought out amid the maze of natural knowledge. In this, natural knowledge can be used as an aid to that journey, or as a weapon against it. Apologists of the faith use natural knowledge ("evidences") to help that journey. Atheists and other philosophers however use it to destroy the same.

 

- Limitation of Apologetics 

What is most important to grasp however is that the natural knowledge is not the heart or essence nor therefore the determinant of the truth pertaining to God.

 

If natural knowledge were the essence of the knowing of God or the ground of God’s essential appeal to the human heart, He would not have written the scriptures the way He did.

 

The scriptures are full of half told stories that in appearance make much room for the rejection of God on a naturally judgmental basis. Through many evidences in scripture's annals, God is easily left to appear as unjust or nonsensical in His ways. No god wanting to be known on a natural basis would have left such an appearance behind in his sacred writings. Atheists and others appeal to that appearance as their basis for rejection, contending that such natural appearance “proves” that God does not exist.

 

 

The Atheist Dilemma: Admission by Denial

 

But the battle over natural knowledge is but a smokescreen for what atheists otherwise cannot hide, which is that they themselves possess the innate creatorial knowing of God. Their effort to deny that inner knowledge only bears witness to their possession of it.  The battle itself testifies to the reality.

 

If atheists did not possess the same innate knowing of God as those who affirm God by it, they would have no incentive to argue against it. The fact of their argument witnesses against their argument. It is as a living man arguing that he is dead. His ability to argue his proposition defeats it.

 

What atheists call “proof” against God’s existence based in natural observation is mere opinion, while their ability to make the opinion speaks against it. And the more passionately they make the opinion in their denial, the greater the betrayal of inescapability from their own inner knowing.

 

Atheists perpetually hang themselves through their own language and argumentation. For instance, an atheist may say he “wishes” he could believe in God. Yet the proof of the innate knowing is in the wish itself. Apart from such knowing, he would have neither wish to believe nor to deny God’s existence.  Both the wish to know and the denial against the knowing testify to the knowing.

 

Atheists beg off the betraying evidences in their language and experience (such as guilt) onto the “influence of society.” But what of it? It is circular. For who is “society” but themselves? They are as much “society” as the “society” they would condemn for its influence.  There is nothing to objectively distinguish them from the society whose “influence” they would otherwise condemn. (This is true for all philosophies that seek to pawn off personal self-contradictions on “society.”)

 

Atheists are like people who shut their eyes and then say, “You can’t prove to me the sky is blue.”  Yet in their unguarded moments, they "blink." They have to open their eyes to do something and in that unavoidable moment make a slipped reference to something that they can see.  

 

In all this, the atheist's argument against God’s existence is ultimately nothing more than masked hatred of Someone they inescapably know exists. It is not as they say that they objectively “cannot” believe in God. It is that atheists subjectively “will not” and “do not want” to believe in God because they have a grudge against God. Otherwise, why would they be so dedicated to shutting down the public expressions of those who do believe who are unashamed to say so? 

 

Once we get past the smokescreen of argument over natural knowledge to see that the argument itself is merely atheism’s denial of the internally inescapable—a fig leaf attempt to hide from their own philosophical nakedness—then all we need to do is keep using the atheist’s own protestations as witnesses against his protestation and proof of the very thing “whish” he denies.

 

But more than this, seeing the battle for what it is from the genuinely spiritual perspective, we have the further ability to pray for the Lord to simply bring forth that inescapability more and more through the atheist’s own words and actions, and that He expose the atheist’s hidden motives and agenda of hatred and bitterness against God, until his self-contradictory testimony is so strong that he either surrenders to the truth or goes insane.

 

The preference is that he surrenders to the truth.

 

Chris Anderson

First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org

2/14


BACK TO TOP

Webmaster littleflock@netzero.net
Page created August 16, 2014

Background courtesy of