Atheism Essay, Example Composition
Writing on Atheism, Sample Atheism Essays
Essay Example 1: An Essay about Atheism
One day, an atheist
was walking through the woods admiring all of creation. He liked the
beauty of all the trees, the streams, the mountains, all the
creatures he saw and all the birds of the air. Suddenly, from behind
him, he heard a rustling sound and turned to see a giant grizzly
bear looking right at him. Filled with fear, he began to run. The
faster he ran, the faster the bear ran. Finally, looking backward,
he tripped and fell and just like that, the bear was upon him. The
bear raised his claw, intending to maul the man. In despair, the
atheist cried out, “Oh, my God!” Suddenly, a bright light shone
down from Heaven and just like that, everything stopped. No more
breeze, no more sounds, even the bear was frozen. Suddenly, the
voice of the Lord could be heard. God spoke to the man and He said,
“All of your life, you have denied me and rejected me, and now, only
in your moment of despair, do you call my name, expecting me to save
you.” The man replied, “Lord, I’m not worthy of being saved, but can
you at least make a Christian out of the bear?” Suddenly, the bear
folded his paws and began to pray, “Lord, thank you for this meal
which I am about to receive!”
How many of us are like this man, calling upon God only in our
moments of despair? You’ve heard the expression, “When you get to
the end of your rope tie a knot and hang on.” Now, is it before or
after we tie the knot that we call upon God and acknowledge our sin
before Him and humbly beg forgiveness? I think the sad truth is that
we all feel we’re capable of handling whatever life has to throw at
us on our own, without help from anyone or anything. The fact is
that there’s a certain amount of pride and also a sense of
accomplishment when we’re able to do something on our own to get
ourselves out of a less than ideal situation.
Have you ever considered this thought: It’s a good thing we’re not
capable of saving ourselves from eternal damnation because by doing
so, we’d only serve to glorify ourselves in the process and not our
Maker? If we could save ourselves then we’d have absolutely no need
of God anymore. Nor would we even feel it worthwhile to pursue a
relationship with His Son, Jesus Christ or to tell others about His
amazing free gift of salvation that is found only through belief in
Him? I believe it’s by God’s divine plan that we’re dependent on Him
for our salvation. In fact, we’re really dependent on Him for much
more than that, aren’t we?
How many of us have ever been able to cause it to rain, for example?
Or cause our crops to grow or our heart to beat or our lungs to
breathe? Who among us chose to be born or chose our parents or our
skin color or what nationality we’d be? You see, when you think of
life in these terms, you begin to realize that we really have very
little say in our own existence and in the circumstances surrounding
who we really are. There’s someone much bigger than all of us
combined who’s really in control of it all and personally, I’m very
glad for that because quite frankly, I don’t want that
responsibility.
One of the things that Christianity has taught me over the years is
the principle of relationships and how vitally important they are
for us. Relationships give meaning and purpose to our lives and help
to determine our place within the body of believers. The first 2
commandments drive home the point of relationships. In Matthew 22,
when an expert in the law sought to test Jesus, he asked Him which
commandment was the greatest. Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like
it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” He even went so far as to say
that, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
You see, all that we are can be traced back to the relationships we
have, both with our God and with each other. These are relationships
built on love and are the most enduring of any we’ll ever have.
I’m sure you’ll agree that there is much that divides us, both as a
body of believers and as a nation and the Christian community is not
immune to this division. But no matter what our opinion is on a
given topic, we must be the ones in the world to continue to work
for peace, to seek the common ground and to discern what the truth
is and make sure we all know it, understand it and embrace it. We
must make unity within the body of believers a top priority and seek
ways to always continue to grow together in Christ. We simply can’t
afford to get to the point, like the atheist, when we’re flat
on our backs, about to be devoured and calling out to God for the
first time after a lifetime of ignoring Him and doing things our own
way. The Christian life has so much more to offer us.
Essay Example 2: The Atheist
The atheist does
not believe there is a God or eternal life. I assume then that they
believe life is simply over when you die. You cease to exist. An
intellectual argument can be made here that it makes more sense to
believe than not to. If you believe that God is real and you live
your life accordingly, doing good for others and for yourself, and
it turns out you are right you will enter into eternal life, which
is good beyond description. If it turns out you are wrong than your
existence will end as the atheist, only you will have lived a
good and rewarding life. On the other hand if you do not believe in
God and live accordingly and it turns out you were wrong then you
will spend eternity in a place called the lake of fire. Not so good.
Is this sufficient justification for belief in God? Unfortunately
not, as it does not constitute a true belief, but one based on
personal convenience. It lacks any real hope.
Why should you hope for something that you cannot see or prove
exists. Hope that can be seen is not hope. If you could see it and
prove that it exists, you would not need to hope for it (Rom.8: 24).
You would already have it. But if we hope for what we do not see,
then we eagerly wait for it. How should we hope for eternal life?
Should we hope actively, pursuing it every day or should we just
passively hope, sitting back and living our lives the same as if we
had no hope. How can we actively pursue what we hope for if we
cannot yet see it? How do we put “legs” to our hope so to speak. The
word we use to describe this process is faith. Faith it turns out is
the substance or substantiation of the things we hope for (Heb.11:
1) When we do things as if what we are hoping for is definitely
going to come, these actions are called faith. Faith is not an
intangible like hope but it is always tangible and can be seen
(Luke5: 20). When we live our lives doing things as if what we are
hoping for but can not yet see, will come, then it is said that we
are living our life by faith.
Essay Example 3: Atheism and Christianity
There is no mistaking
the presence of unique challenges to the life and mindset of the
modern day Christian. Our secularist, privatized, consumerist
worldview has wielded a religion (indeed many religions) that has
little or nothing to do with life itself. Coupled with secularism's
privatizing of religion from the public realm, consumerism's pull
creates a context whereby the choice of belief is not only a
personal matter, but a matter entirely divorced from the history and
communities that inform these beliefs. As David Wells notes, "God
has been evacuated from the center of our collective life, pushed to
the edges of our public square to become an irrelevance to how our
world does its business. Marxism rested on a theoretical atheism;
our secularized world rests on a practical atheism in the
public domain, though one that coexists with private religiosity."
This chasm between public and private, sacred and secular, forces a
theology whereby God is largely absent, unknown in the public arena,
and silent unless spoken to.
Meanwhile, in conjunction with our evacuation of God and subsequent
practical atheism, we live within an understanding of
unbounded freedom to pursue and consume whatsoever we will. While we
may recognize secularism for what it is, Wells warns: "We do not
recognize the corrupting power of our affluence for what it is....
We consider our abundance as essentially harmless and, what is just
as important, we have come to need it. The extraordinary and
dazzling benefits of our modernized world, benefits that are now
indispensable to our way of life, hide the values which accompany
them, values which have the power to wrench around our lives in very
damaging ways." Our sheer appetites, which we readily appease as if
angry gods bring us to the conclusion that we ourselves are the
center of collective life, echoing the call of secularism that God
is where God belongs--in quiet, private corners. Even in the church,
this outlook is often practically lived if not publicly admitted.
Yet, this dichotomy that is now readily accepted between matters of
private faith and public life belies a betrayal of the very identity
the Christian sets forth. The hope within us is not something we are
able to keep private--for if the very public act of Christ's
resurrection from the dead was not real, then the very faith our
culture would have us keep in private is futile. The events of
Christ's life, death, and resurrection, and the faith that upholds
them, do not allow for the dichotomies of public and private,
spiritual and physical, sacred and secular. The call of Christ is
one that encompasses every possible realm, thus making "private
faith" an unintelligible distinction.
Nonetheless, while the challenges of practical atheism may
indeed be the outworking of a unique cultural moment, it is hardly a
new way of life. Though the causes and contexts are certainly
different, our current cultural mood is in some ways comparable to
the scene Paul discovered in Athens. Standing before these men and
women, Paul gently bid them to see their philosophy amounted to
little more than practical atheism. Where there was belief
that amounted to very little, where gods were acknowledged but
unknown, and worship was offered in ritual, fear, and apathy, Paul
set before them the God who is there, the God who is known. While
the cultural challenges before us are intricate and unyielding, and
we will try and fail and try again to clear away the obstacles that
prevent our neighbor from seeing Christ, one of the clearest
apologetics we can offer is that of a life touched by the God who is
there. If atheism is intellectually implausible, practical
atheism is unlivable when it is placed beside the one who is
known.
Thus we might be encouraged, for regardless of the risks and
opportunities that fill the world around us, so it is filled of the
unfailing love of a present God. And it is this reality that despite
ourselves or our obstacles compels the blind to see. On such matters
of the Spirit, 18th-century preacher Jonathan Edwards once noted,
"Though great use may be made of external arguments...for they may
be greatly serviceable to awaken unbelievers, and bring them to
serious consideration and to confirm the faith of true saints...
There is no spiritual conviction...but what arises from an
apprehension of the spiritual beauty and glory of divine things. And
such a direct apprehension is a gift mediated only by the Holy
Spirit of God." In our pluralistic, privatized, and practically
atheistic culture this Spirit indeed continues to move
Essay Example 4: The Problem with Atheism
It may surprise many
people that God has a lot to say about atheism. Throughout
its pages, the Bible affirms again and again one fundamental truth:
atheism as a condition results from a deliberate choice of
the heart, rather than from purported loyalty to open-minded
intellectual inquiry.
The atheist confines his debate to a limited arena, creating
a whole world, as it were, in a sandbox. In that sandbox he claims
to be a lover of truth, refusing to believe anything that has not
been satisfactorily proven. There is no evidence that God exists, he
says, and so there is no reason to believe in Him—any more than
there is a reason to believe in fairies or leprechauns. On the other
hand, there are plenty of reasons not to believe in a God who is
all-powerful and totally benevolent. Evil exists, for one thing, and
how could such a God permit it to continue and still remain true to
His nature? God is silent, for another thing, and a simple test will
prove it. The atheist invites God to strike him dead
instantly, or to turn a tabletop into a cloud of purple smoke,
within say, the next 60 seconds. Seeing no response, he
congratulates himself on finding “proof” of his assertion.
As a precondition for believing in God, the atheist demands a
comprehensive explanation for a God-created world. He insists that
Christians provide a system that answers all his objections. Again
and again he says, “If God is real, He owes me an explanation.” God
must answer for allowing evil and suffering in the world. God must
answer for allowing death, war, hunger, and disease. He has made a
world with misery in it, and He cannot be both good and omnipotent,
or He would long since have done something to change it.
Confident within this world of his own making, the atheist
scoffs at God and those who trust in Him. He dismisses belief in God
as superstition, the folly of the cowardly and weak-minded—people
who are too afraid or too simple to cast off their fear of the
Almighty. But in his heart he has deliberately chosen to deny the
possibility of a very real world outside the safe sandbox of his own
mind. And, like it or not, that world does intersect with his
artificial world. He can deny its existence, but if he persists, it
will forcibly intrude upon him at an unforeseen time.
Sooner or later, a gust of wind from that outside world will sweep
in and crumble his arguments, like so many sand castles. In its wake
will be the soft voice of God, whispering these words:
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the
godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their
wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them,
because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the
world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine
nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been
made, so that men are without excuse. (Romans 1)
In these verses God explains a fundamental truth: that He has made
the grains of sand, the people of the earth, and the stars that
outnumber them all. Though He is invisible, His existence is obvious
to all people, because they can see His creation. He indicts mankind
for abandoning the knowledge of Him, and for suppressing the truth
about Him by their evil behavior.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor
gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their
foolish hearts were darkened. (Romans 1)
The world outside the sandbox is the real world, which God has made
and which He rules. In that world, man must answer to God, not the
other way around. God will call each person to answer for every evil
thought, every evil word, and every evil deed. He will judge the
attitudes of each person’s innermost being. That judgment will be so
intense, like fire, that no man will be able to stand on his own.
God will show that He has no tolerance for evil, but that He allowed
it for a time out of kindness, in the hope that each person would
turn away from it and decide to follow Him—without being forced to
do so.1
Would we dare suggest then that it is God’s fault that evil is in
the world? God will show us what we did to promote evil in the short
life we had on earth, and He will destroy that evil work—and us too,
if we have failed to turn away from it.
Atheism is a spiritual condition, a “darkening of the heart,”
which results from a moral choice to reject the truth, its Author,
and the accountability He demands. The moral choice and the result
(denial of God) always go hand in hand, as the Bible says in Psalm
14: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”2 (The Hebrew
word for “fool” denotes one who is morally deficient.)
The atheist’s arguments may make perfect sense to him, but
they are nonetheless spurious and deceptive. God calls him to make a
second choice of the heart, a choice to step outside the sandbox and
into a life with Him.
