Agnostics are more honest than atheists.  Agnostics acknowledge that they do not know if there is a God, but atheists declare confidently that there is no God.

Rationalism

Does this mean that atheists have searched the Universe and concluded that there is no God to be found?  No – they have not searched the Universe.  Their position is a rationalistic one rather than an evidential one. Atheists arrive at their conclusion by reasoning.   It goes like this.

The fundamental argument used by Antony Flew, Britain’s foremost atheist in the 20th century, and used in many debates ever since, is that if God is all powerful and all good, then why do evil and suffering exist?  Either it means that God is not all powerful or that He is not all good.  As evil and suffering exist, this proves that God does not exist.

No – it does not.  What it does prove is that atheists intuitively know that God must be both all powerful and all good.  They acknowledge in their reasoning that God cannot be one without the other.

For the more theologically literate, this is the modern, practical application of Anselm’s ontological argument.

The problem with this atheist reasoning is that the atheist does not believe in the devil as the source of evil.  They blame God for the devil’s work.  A simple mistake in their reasoning.

The limits and proper use of reason

It also shows the limitations of rationalism.  Reason is not sufficient to prove something but only to test a proof.  The reason for this is because one’s reasoning is not infallible, and one can make a mistake at any stage in one’s reasoning, just as the atheist has done above.  So reason cannot prove that there is no God; it can only be used to check if a proof holds water.  Some things are too high for reason to explain or understand.  Reason is a useful tool, but it is not sufficient.  Some things are above reason and some things are against reason.  Do not confuse one for the other.

This is why in the scientific world we use experiments to check if a hypothesis is right, and this is why we need divine revelation to keep us right in our thinking about God, origins, the purpose of life, death, life after death and eternity.  We neglect it at our peril.

The debate and the argument need to be based on evidence, not on reason. This is the scientific method as well as the biblical method.

Postscript:

Britain’s leading atheist, Antony Flew, changed his mind in his old age and wrote a book There is No A God: How the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind, for which he was condemned as a heretic by his former supporters. He moved only as far as theism and not to the Trinitarianism of Christian belief. I wrote to him just as he was dying to direct him to The Force of Truth by Thomas Scott who changed his mind from Socinianism to Arianism to Trinitarianism after making the acquaintance John Newton of ‘Amazing Grace’ fame. The book’s title points to the force of the Bible’s truth.

In 2006 John Humphrys of the BBC Today programme and host of the Mastermind quiz, a self-confessed agnostic, challenged three leaders of three main religions to prove to him that God exists. The Radio Four interviews – Humphrys In Search of God – provoked the biggest response to anything he has done in half a century of journalism. I listened to these debates but the contribution from these ‘three leaders’ was ineffective. I could not contact Humphrys through the BBC.

1 May 2017: John Macleod’s article on atheist beliefs is headlined: ‘There is no God, and we hate Him’ – Scottish Daily Mail, Thursday 27th April 2017. He states: “atheism is not rationality. It is a religion – a faith-based belief system, like any other religion, and in whose names some of the most appalling crimes of the twentieth century were committed. And the fanaticism and hatefulness of so many atheists suggest their position is not, in truth, there is no God; it is that there is no God, and they hate Him.” For a summary of secular religion imitating Christianity see here.

6 Oct 2017: Peter Hitchins on a similar point.

4 Dec 2017: the false religion of secularism, which imitates Christianity.

31 Jul 2019: David Berlinski—Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions.

30 Nov 2019: God Doesn’t Believe in Atheists.

6 Apr 2021: Max Keiser contemplates the debate on whether God exists and concludes: “I will tell you one thing that I can guarantee does not exist – financial regulators!“

6 Sep 2021: a similar argument can be made about superficial attitudes towards the Bible. The rationalistic mistake goes like this – because they think that they have found mistakes in the Bible, it cannot be the Word of God. However, what is undergirding such reasoning? It is an acknowledgement that if there is a God, He does not speak lies, and if He has given us His Word it will not have any errors in it. Their own rationalistic reasoning demonstrates their innate knowledge of some of God’s attributes or characteristics.

18 Dec 2021: why should there be this difference, believing in God but not in the devil? It is similar to the belief in the natural goodness of men rather than man’s wickedness. It is an emotional response flowing from man’s natural bias in favour of himself. It is similar to irreligious people occasionally referring to departed loved ones as ‘at peace’ or in heaven. People are ready to speak about heaven, but not of hell – except as a swear word – and to believe that people are in heaven rather than in hell.

20 Dec 2021: on the other hand, people are unwittingly more ready to believe the devil rather than God. If they believed what God said of sin they would seek to escape its power and if they believed what God said of Christ they would begin to follow Him.

24 Dec 2022: observant readers will notice that I have not used the simple but well-known argument that it is almost impossible to prove a negative, yet atheists believe that there is no God, and I have explained how they do so. They have a problem on their hands, but this problem is so intuitively well-known that atheists are in a distinct minority.

25 Apr 2023: this Spectator interview refers to the folly of intelligent people reasoning to bad conclusions and interfering with proper science.