Common Objections
There isn’t enough evidence that God exists
There actually is – people just suppress it. The Bible is very clear on this. The primary reason people refuse to see the truth is that if God exists and is who the Bible says He is, they will have to follow His rules and won’t be able to just do what they want anymore. It is the sin of rebellion carried to its logical conclusion. They shout down their conscience that tells them that what they are doing is wrong, then questions whether it might be wrong, then is silent. For your conscience can be killed with repeated suppression. It’s the child singing loudly so he can’t hear his mother calling.
Romans 1:18-20
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 He has hand-crafted, so that people are without excuse.
People still wonder at the marvels of the universe. They marvel at the complexity of life. Then they twist themselves in knots to attribute these wonders to anything but God. It’s not that they can’t see Him, but that they won’t see Him. They will be without excuse at the judgement.
Science has disproved religion
There are several problems with this, the first being that it is impossible. Science operates in a way that makes it impossible to either prove or disprove the existence of God.
Science operates by studying nature. It looks for patterns and regularities in an effort to describe things and explain how they work. God is, by definition, outside of nature. Science seeks to explain what things exist and how they work, so cannot explain why they exist or why they works the way they do. Those questions involve motive. Since science cannot even establish the existence of God, it is silly to think that it can say anything at all about why He set things up the way He did. There is, in fact, no way that science could provide any information about Him at all, except by looking at His direct intervention in the world – miracles. Please see Miracles.
Scientists usually refuse to accept anything that breaks the pattern of what is – that is, they refuse to acknowledge the supernatural. Since they refuse to acknowledge the possibility of the supernatural, they refuse to even examine evidence for it. To simply refuse to accept that the supernatural can happen is a metaphysical assertion, not a scientific assertion. A true scientist would examine all evidence with an open mind, then decide where it leads. But they stubbornly refuse to believe that the supernatural is possible, so continue to look for natural explanations for things. This makes them incapable of acknowledging evidence of God. They are suppressing it.
We have evidence for evolution, so creation couldn’t have happened the way it said in the Bible, so therefore God doesn’t exist
The Biblical account of creation is how God explained what He did to tribal shepherds. It is not, and was never intended to be a scientific exposition. The fact is, nothing in the Biblical account, if read correctly contradicts scientific accounts of our biological history. Closer examination of the evolutionary theory will reveal that there are many insoluble problems with it that the secular community carefully hushes up or shouts down. The Intelligent Design movement is a result of those problems. Even that is an evasion, though, a rejection of God and suppression of His truth. Humans will go to great lengths to avoid submitting to God. The truth is that God created everything that is and didn’t tell us much about how or why He did it. We need to stay focused on that and try not to get bogged down in irrelevant controversies.
Faith means belief in the face of evidence to the contrary
This is a distortion by people that refuse to accept any evidence that points to God. There is considerable evidence that God exists. Jesus’ death and resurrection are among the best-attested events in history. Open-minded and honest evaluation of the evidence will lead inevitably to that conclusion. People who claim this are refusing to look at the evidence and see God. Faith as discussed in the Bible is almost the opposite of what it means in the above objection and should really be called faithfulness – continuing to follow the God that your reason has shown you is real and true in the face of emotional doubts. There are many books by skeptics and investigators seeking to disprove Jesus by looking at the evidence who discovered that they couldn’t and turned to Him. ‘The Case for Christ’ by Lee Strobel and ‘Cold Case Christianity’ by J. Warner Wallace are two of the better ones.
Miracles can’t happen
This is a metaphysical assertion rather than a scientific one. That means that it is a statement about what must be true about the supernatural rather than about nature. There can be no scientific basis for it. A person who says this has decided that he doesn’t believe in miracles and won’t look at any evidence to the contrary. Please see Miracles.
You don’t have to be a Christian to live a good life
This statement hinges on the definition of “good”. If you define “good” in the human sense of living a generally ethical life, the statement is true. The problem is that definition of “good” is inadequate. Please see Good and evil.
People who make this statement are trying to live what they consider to be a good life while actually refusing to see the truth about the real meaning of the term “good”. They don’t want to explore the subject because they are afraid that God will put requirements on them they don’t want to have to meet. They usually want to take the easily digestible moral lessons of the Bible but leave God out of it. This will not work out well for them in the long run.
Christianity cannot be true because there is no absolute truth
This is a problem of logic. These people are not thinking correctly.
The first problem is that the statement refutes itself: There is no absolute truth except the absolute truth that there is no absolute truth. If there is no absolute truth, the statement itself cannot be true.
If something is true, then it corresponds correctly with reality. It is true that the sun emits energy. It is true that my barn is red. It is true that poison will kill me. These things are objectively true regardless of who is looking at them.
Two contradictory statements cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense. My barn cannot be both red and blue in the same sense and at the same time.
Jesus made specific claims about Himself in the Bible.
Consider John 14:6
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Here Jesus is asserting that there is no other way to heaven except through Him. This statement contradicts every other religion in the world. Some, like Islam, specifically reject Jesus as the savior and means of salvation. Both religious statements cannot be true. Either one or the other must be true, or both must be false. Jesus proved His assertion through His resurrection, so all religious assertions that conflict with His must be false. To say otherwise is to refuse to see the evidence that is plainly visible, suppressing the truth. There will be no excuse.
Christianity can’t be true because Christians have done some awful things
All religions and philosophies have had people do terrible things in their name and for their sake. Christianity is no different. The problem here is the people, not the religion.
One key difference is that the Christians should have known better, since the terrible things they did were specifically against the tenets of their faith. They took things out of context and twisted or misused them to justify their actions in their own eyes.
With most religions or philosophies, however, terrible actions can be legitimately justified by their tenets. Islam, for example, specifically directs violence against non-Muslims. A logical outworking of atheism can lead to genocide of weaker or undesirable races to strengthen the race as a whole.
By contrast, Christianity specifically calls us to love our enemies and do good to those who hurt us (Luke 6:27). Anyone who does evil to people has departed from Christianity. Anyone who does evil in the name of Christianity dishonors it and God and will answer for it.
Christianity is just one of a number of paths to God
Please see the above objection, “Christianity cannot be true because there is no absolute truth”
The existence of evil in the world means that God is not omnipotent or He is not good. In either case, I reject Him.
This a complicated issue. Please see Good and evil.
The existence of pain in the world means that God is not omnipotent or He is not good. In either case, I reject Him.
Pain is not in itself a bad thing. Pain tells us when we do something that will cause is injury (or further injury). Pain in its proper place and at its proper level is a normal and necessary function of our bodies, which are not substantially different than they were intended to be. We were intended to be as we are, but not degraded and broken.
The problem is that the world is out of balance. When Adam disobeyed, God cursed the world. It doesn’t matter whether the account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is literal or allegorical – the point still stands. Since that time, chaos and disorder have been the normal function of creation, rather than order and unity. As a direct result, natural things hurt us that otherwise might not. Animals get hurt in ways they otherwise might not. There is a great deal more unnecessary pain in the world.
This does not mean that God is evil, nor that He is the author of the excess of pain that we see around us. It grieves Him. But He is honorable and inflexible in His justice – He stands by the curse He inflicted. But consider this: no tear is wasted with God. He uses all of the pain and suffering that we inflict on each other and the world around us to push us closer to Him. He cursed the world in a way that would help offset the consequences of the rebellion that caused the fall.
As Christians, we are to help alleviate the pain and suffering we see around us. We are to learn from it and help others learn as well.
Why should God kill an innocent child?
There are several problems with this.
This implies that there is no such thing as original sin. There is no such thing as an innocent child. Please see What is sin. We are all born with original sin, and work our way down from there. We all deserve death and eternal separation from Him. It is only by His grace that we are allowed to bypass that fate through Jesus’ sacrifice in our place.
God is not responsible for everything that happens. God allows us to take action, even evil action. He will work to minimize the impact in accordance with His good plan and will incorporate the evil that men do into His plan and make allowances for it. He will sometimes, in times and places He deems necessary, interfere directly. But He neither creates nor approves the evil. He weeps over it.
We live in a fallen world that is out of balance. As a result, sometimes things happen that kill people, like earthquakes or tsunamis. This is a direct result of Adam’s disobedience. God acts within those situations for His purposes, but does not cause them.
Even if He takes or allows specific action resulting in a person’s death, He has a morally sufficient reason for doing so – we just don’t know what it is. We always trust that He will work to the good. Please see Good and evil.
Nevertheless, there is some evidence that God saves the children of believers who die before they are old enough to choose God for themselves.
Genesis 3:17-19
To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
Romans 5:12-13
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men, because all sinned. For sin was in the world before the law was given; but sin is not taken into account when there is no law.