Why do men and women fail to see the evidence of a creator?
This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘The Creator and the Creation Stories’ (2001).
Well, that’s a big question, isn’t it? There are all sorts of reasons. One is because they have been taught the opposite by teachers whom they regard as authoritative. And therefore, children in school, who are told by the chemistry or physics teacher or someone else that science proves there’s no God, don’t even start looking for the evidence. So, in those cases, it’s the fault of other folks.
But the Bible says:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Rom 1:18)
There is, alas, deliberate action on the part of some people who do not wish to see the evidence of deity in the universe around us. I have here, and I can show it to anybody who wishes to see it, a quotation from Richard Lewontin, a Harvard biologist. He is a Jew, a Marxist and an atheist. In a review of the book written by his friend Carl Sagan, now deceased, he wrote to explain why, as a scientist, he organizes his experiments in certain ways and what his basic belief is. His starting point, he explains, is materialism—not consumerism, but materialism in the philosophical sense that there is nothing but matter in the universe. In other words, there is no God, no spirit and no soul; there’s nothing but matter, and human beings are nothing but matter. He explains how he devises his experiments and finds that sometimes they come up with very funny results. He says they do it that way because ‘we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door’.1 In other words, he’s telling the public straight that he is not prepared to envisage the possibility that there should be a God.
And of course, there is another reason why some people don’t like to face the fact that there is a God, and that is because it raises the possibility of a final judgment. I’m not saying this is true of everybody, of course. The early Greeks invented the atomic theory in 300 or 400 bc and this theory was embraced in the first century by a Roman poet named Lucretius, who wrote six books of poetry on the subject.2 People read his poetry; I had to read it as a student and later lecture on it from time to time. They were different men than we are nowadays, of course. Lucretius was delighted by this atomic theory, as he explained in the preface to his work, because it shows that when we die the atoms of our body and soul come adrift, and there’s nothing left of us. That shows that there is no God out there waiting to punish us, and we can be delivered from all fear because nothing happens after death. There is no God, there is no final judgment, and we are therefore delivered from fear of the wrath of the gods.
Sometimes, in people’s hearts, there is that sneaking feeling, isn’t there? If there is a God, then conscience tells us that he is concerned with the way we behave and one day we shall have to meet him to give account of what we have done. Upon that and our attitude to him and to the Saviour will depend our eternal destiny, so it’s understandable that some people prefer to think that there is no God.
Then there are others. Life has hurt them, and they say, ‘Look at that mosquito—beautifully engineered with the drilling equipment to pierce my skin and infect me with malaria and maybe kill me. Was it designed by your God, to do that?’ Faced with life’s pains and sorrows, they find it difficult to believe that there’s a God in heaven who loves them.
I thank God that I was brought up as a Christian and came to know the good Shepherd of the sheep before I faced many of life’s sufferings. Knowing the shepherd makes it easier for a sheep to trust him when things get difficult. My heart goes out to those who come across suffering in life and don’t yet know the Shepherd. In the end, suffering for them is therefore destructive and absolutely meaningless. They too will have their reasons for feeling that there is no God.
