Mike Tyson once said that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Our time is one where atheists bully us around, claiming we're delusional if we believe in a God. Since there is no physical evidence of him, they say, then teaching our kids about God is worse than child abuse. However, though they try to intimidate and pretend that they stand on the back of science, their claims are very weak indeed.
Mitch Stokes has written an extremely helpful book to equip and strengthen our faith while demolishing our doubts and the claims against our faith. And all this in a time where science is erroneously pitted against religion--not even to mention that most of the older scientists actually explored science because they wanted to know more about God--Newton, Galileo, etc.
We live in an age where evidentialism has taken over--that is to say that all beliefs must be supported by evidence. For far too long Christians have bought into the idea of evidentialism. But if God is spirit and not something we can see, then how can we prove he exists? The truth is that each of our beliefs are based off experience and evidence, not physical evidence alone. Stokes writes, "God himself cannot be observed, so in the case of scientific evidence, his existence will have to be inferred. In other words, his existence will be a hypothesis based on observations" (150). Which, ironically, is much of what science does, infers what cannot be seen.
And though the cranky atheists continue to bully us, saying that we are irrational for believing in God, Mitch Stokes takes the first seven chapters of the book to combat that understanding. We cannot argue in a circle, so all of our beliefs must end somewhere. We can't keep going back to the why of something for infinity, hoping to figure out how each belief rests on the previous. Some beliefs are built upon others; however, each of us has a basic set of beliefs that form the foundations of what we believe. These are not irrational, but rational beliefs. Rational beliefs are formed by evidence and experience, not evidence alone.
In the 1500s, Copernicus began to challenge the Aristotelian view of geocentricity, meaning that the sun revolved around the earth. Copernicus contended that the world was heliocentric, the earth actually rotated and revolved around the sun. The fact is that for many years, observations and facts were the same for both sides. The real debate was on how those facts were to be explained. From our vantage point, the earth revolving around the sun and the sun revolving around the earth would look exactly the same. So even though the facts were split for a long time, it was about how those fact were explained.
In the same way, we view all the evidence of science and explain it through our belief that God exists or he doesn't. Since God doesn't exist, atheists believe, therefore everything must have a naturalistic explanation. But we are not irrational for having a foundational belief that God exists. You look at the tree and see a grand scheme and how it mutated through millions of years to be that way; I look at that tree and see a loving Creator who is holding it together by his powerful word. My explanation is not irrational, and yours is not necessarily rational.
Mitch Stokes spends the whole of Part 2 dealing with science supposedly showing that there is no God. Let me just say this: You'd be surprised to find that there is more evidence for God's existence than there is for his not existing. It's all how you explain the facts.
The entirety of Part 3 has to do with evil and suffering supposedly showing there is no God. Though it's an old problem that has been asked for many years, it is not too hard to explain at all. Stokes argues the point of morality, and good and evil, to show that there must be an objective standard by which they must be measured by. Though some claim that standard is within us, then who are you to tell me that rape and murder are bad when I think they're good? How can you impose your morality on me if it is truly up to all of us about how we want to behave? You can't. There has to be something beyond us, a divine lawgiver to whom we must give account, for there to be evil in the world, or for there to be immorality for that matter. Who's to say it's bad? Who's to say it's good? There is no goodness if there is not anything to measure that goodness by.
Mitch Stokes writes a superb book to help our beliefs stand up to scrutiny in an age of skepticism. Though the chapters are short and easy to digest, you definitely won't read this book on the run if you really want to engage with it's contents. Though I love a lot of books, and there have been a ton that have helped me over the years, this is probably one of the ones that goes on my all-time top 10 list for nonfiction. Every believer and skeptic should read it.
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