Atheists have questions, and that’s totally acceptable. Did you know that God expects Christians to be asked about their faith? He also expects His people to be able to answer those questions. We’ve combed through article after article online, and these 15 questions keep rising to the top. Today, we’re answering the questions atheists are dying to ask. As the Scriptures say:
But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.
1 Peter 3:151
Before getting to the questions themselves, it should be noted that the answers I am about to give are not as “in depth” as some might desire. Trying to answer 15 questions in rapid-fire succession doesn’t lend itself to a more comprehensive response. But I do hope the answers provided will keep the conversation going and at least demonstrate that answers to these questions are possible.
1. Why does an all-loving God allow suffering and evil in the world?
The assumption that lies behind this question is that all suffering is bad. Yet, if we think about it for even a moment, we realize that assumption isn’t valid because suffering can have positive results.
Consider those who work in the medical field (whether doctors, nurses, therapists, whatever). Every one of them has done something that has caused suffering to a patient (a surgery, a shot, a stretch). Yet they did so for the ultimate improvement of the patient. Similarly, there are benefits to the reality of suffering. Think about what we might consider some of the most positive attributes: courage, compassion, mercy, and sacrifice. These attributes could not exist without a danger to be faced or a tragedy to respond to. In the end, suffering can be for our benefit.
But why is there “so much” suffering? Once we understand that some suffering can be beneficial, the issue becomes one of striking the proper balance between the two. Does the benefit justify the amount of suffering? Would less suffering make up for the loss of benefit? Those are questions no finite human (with their limited understanding of the variables) can answer. Instead, those questions can only be answered by an infinite God.
2. Why did God have to sacrifice Jesus instead of just forgiving humanity directly?
Nearly everyone who knows anything about the God of the Bible knows that He is a God of mercy and forgiveness. But what often goes overlooked is that those are not His only attributes. He is also a God of justice. Psalm 89:14 says, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne…” God’s authority is built on justice. Take away justice and you no longer have the God of the Bible. Now, the God of the Bible is an infinite being, meaning He is infinite in all of His attributes. He is infinite in His justice. If He simply forgave sin, He would no longer be just and thus He would no longer be God.
Man’s sin seemed to place God on the horns of a dilemma. To strictly punish all sin was repugnant to God’s mercy. To excuse all sin was repugnant to His justice. This is where the sacrifice of Jesus comes in to play. He voluntarily suffered the punishment for our sins.
But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 53:5–6
God had to sacrifice Jesus so that His sense of justice could be satisfied while His sense of mercy towards sinners could be fulfilled.
It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Romans 3:26
3. How can you believe in miracles when science explains how the world works?
Science, in a nutshell, is the attempt to discover truth via the process of observation, speculation, and experimentation. We observe a phenomenon, speculate on a cause, and devise an experiment to see if that speculation holds. Through this process, science has been able to identify and describe many of the laws that govern this universe—laws of gravity, motion, thermodynamics, and others. But what science cannot explain is why those laws exist in the first place.
These laws may govern and explain the physical things we observe, but the laws themselves are not physical things. There is no matter or energy in such laws. They are supernatural (i.e., beyond nature). And if the laws are supernatural, their cause must be supernatural. And once we have a supernatural cause (i.e., God) then supernatural events (i.e., miracles) are possible. And if reports of such events are backed up by solid testimony (such as we have in the Bible) then it is reasonable to believe in the reported miracles.
4. Doesn’t evolution disprove creationism and the Bible’s origin story?
If macroevolution (meaning, in this case, gradual changes that lead us from molecules to man) were true, then yes that would disprove the Bible’s origin story. The special creation of man (as described in the Bible) and the gradual descent of man from lower lifeforms are mutually exclusive ideas. Both cannot be true.
Macroevolution, however, hasn’t been proven true. Consider two things that have to have happened for a molecules-to-man progression to have occurred.
- Life must have arisen from non-life. Yet this has never been observed; neither in the wild nor in the laboratory. Numerous experiments have been designed to produce life, but the best that has been achieved is to produce a few amino acids—and those unsuitable for forming proteins. Further, while amino acids are necessary for life, they are a long, long way from life. Mankind’s best and brightest scientists have not only failed to produce life, they have failed to produce the building blocks of the building blocks of life.
- For life to evolve from simple to complex there must be the addition of genetic information. Most of us know that the blueprints for our bodies are encoded in our DNA. For species to become more complex, new information must be added to the genetic code. Yet, there is no known method for genetic information to be added to the genome. Every mutation that has ever been observed involved either the loss of information or duplication of already existing information, not the creation of something genuinely new. Without this new information, there is simply no way to get from molecules to man, even if we were to assume the molecules were living in the first place.
While small changes within species (often called “microevolution”) have been observed, the broader concept of macroevolution, which claims that all life evolved from a single cell, remains unproven. It, therefore, does not disprove the Bible’s account of creation.
5. Why are there so many contradictions and immoralities in the Bible?
Before we can claim there are or are not contradictions in the Bible, we must understand what a contradiction is. For a genuine contradiction to exist, two passages must be speaking of the same subject, at the same time, and in the same sense. Once we realize that the Bible was written by approximately 40 individuals over a period of some 1600 years in a number of different genres and facing countless different situations, we realize that most passages in the Bible aren’t speaking of the same subject, at the same time, and in the same sense. Thus, there is no contradiction in such passages.
Further, for a genuine contradiction to exist, no reasonable reconciliation can be possible. In those situations where the same subject, time, and sense are involved, reasonable explanations are possible. For example, a commonly alleged contradiction revolves around the number of angels at Jesus’s tomb. Luke and John mention two, while Matthew and Mark mention only one (though they do not expressly say there was only one). If there were two angels, then necessarily there was one and no contradiction exists. While not all claimed contradictions can be answered so simply, they can all be answered.
Now, why are there so many immoralities in the Bible? Again, we must define “immorality” and that isn’t an easy task for a skeptic. Yes, “immorality” is whatever is against “morality,” but how does one define morality, and what determines what is and isn’t moral? Without God, it just can’t be done. To claim there really is such a thing as objective moral truth (and not just moral preferences) is to claim an objective moral source. And that requires a God.
All this being said, there are immoralities recorded in the Bible, but those immoralities are committed by people and not God. In other words, in those cases, the immortality is descriptive, not prescriptive. God has been accused of immorality—like ordering the annihilation of the Canaanites—but that was done as punishment against a wicked people. It was not an act of immorality, but an act of retributive justice. There are human immoralities in the Bible, but divine immoralities or genuine contradictions simply aren’t there.
6. How can you take the Bible literally when it’s been translated so many times?
This question misunderstands what is occurring in biblical translation. If you were to take a document and translate it through several different languages, say from English, to Spanish, to Russian, to Swahili, to Japanese, and then back to English, no doubt the end product would differ considerably from the original. But that isn’t what has happened with the Bible. Indeed the Bible has been translated into multiple languages and multiple translations have been made for a given language. Yet those translations, at least the reputable ones, start—not from another translation—but from the original languages. Our modern English Bibles are not an English translation of a “Ye Olde English” translation of a Latin translation of a Greek document. Rather, they are an English translation of the Greek and Hebrew texts. Thus the number of times the Bible has been translated is ultimately irrelevant.
What matters are two things: How well have the Greek and Hebrew texts been preserved and how accurate is the modern translation? In both cases, the answer is quite positive. Literally thousands of Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament exist with some of them dating at least to the second century and perhaps earlier. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 revealed that the Hebrew text of the Old Testament has been faithfully preserved across numerous centuries. We know with practical certainty how the text of the Bible originally read. And we can know if it has been faithfully translated. Most English translations are made—not by an individual—but by a committee, thus minimizing the possibility of theological bias. Unsurprisingly, therefore, most translations read more or less the same. Compare any two English Bibles and you will likely find any differences are for the most part insignificant. The vast majority of them deal with producing a Bible that is more understandable to a modern audience. In fact, the number of translations can be helpful to us who struggle to read ancient Greek or Hebrew. That is because by consulting several translations, we can get a better sense of what the original meant. Thus the multiple translations don’t make the Bible less reliable. They actually make it more understandable.
(If you’d like to look into this further, check out this study.)
7. How can you believe in something with no scientific evidence?
Here is another question where we must be certain to define our terms. What do we mean by “scientific” evidence? Typically, when people speak of “science” they are thinking of things learned through the five senses—hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, smelling. And yet most people believe in somethings for which there is no such empirical evidence. For example, do you believe in love? Have you ever seen love? Not an act of love or an example of love, I mean have you ever seen love itself? Have you ever taken a ruler to measure the dimensions of love or placed it on a scale to see how much it weighs? Of course you haven’t, so how can you believe in love?
I suspect you would say you believe in love because you have seen its effects. That is, you have seen someone give of themselves to make things better for another person. You’ve seen parents wear old clothing so their children could have something new. You’ve seen someone run into a burning building to save a stranger. And as you have seen these acts of compassion, you’ve come to realize the only sensible explanation for them is love.
It is the same with God. No, I’ve never cut off a slice of God and looked at it under an electron microscope. I’ve never run a sample through a mass spectrometer to see what kind of “stuff” He is made of. But I have seen a universe that has a beginning. The second law of thermodynamics illustrates that. And whatever has a beginning has a cause. I have seen a universe that is complex yet ordered. And that is evidence for an intelligence. I have experienced the outrage that comes with witnessing atrocities and that sense of right and wrong is evidence of an objective moral standard. I haven’t seen, touched, heard, smelled, or tasted God. But I have seen plenty of evidence that only the existence of God can explain.
8. Why are there so many religions that contradict each other?
Often this question and similar questions are asked in an attempt to disprove the concept of religion at all. Yet, we wouldn’t accept that type of reasoning in any other discipline. A teacher might ask the class a question relating to science, mathematics, or history and perhaps get a wide range of different answers. Those many, contradictory answers wouldn’t necessarily mean all of science, mathematics, or history was false. Similarly, we cannot use the plurality of religions to say all religion is false.
Still, if there is a true religion that is from God, why are there so many other religions? The simple answer to that rather complex question is that people have always been tempted to do what was easier, what was more pleasurable, or what made more sense to them. It has been that way since the very beginning. Take the example of the golden calf in Exodus 32. While Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the Law from God, the people of Israel grew impatient. They pressured Aaron into making a visible, tangible god that they could worship, something they could see and control. Despite just being rescued by the one true God, they crafted a new religion around a man-made object. God had already revealed how He was to be worshiped, but they chose their own way. It felt more immediate, more familiar, and more comfortable. And in doing so, they replaced God’s instruction with their own invention. By their choice, they had made an additional religion where there should have been only one. And mankind has always fallen into that trap.
9. Christians committed atrocities like the Crusades—how is that moral?
Quite frankly, it isn’t. Those claiming to follow Christ have done many heinous things (supposedly) in His name. However—and this is an important distinction—not every action claimed to be done in the name of Christ is done with the authority or consent of Christ.
Jesus said:
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”
Matthew 7:21–23
In this context, Jesus was speaking of good deeds, but notice the general principle: claiming to do something in the Lord’s name is not the same as doing His will.
The leaders and soldiers of the crusades claimed they were acting in the name of the Lord, but they weren’t. In fact, they were acting in direct contrast to Jesus’s teachings. Jesus condemned murder (see Matthew 19:18) and instead instructed love and service. His followers are to love their enemies and do good towards those who hate them (see Luke 6:27). And standing before Pilate, Jesus expressly denied the idea that His was an earthly kingdom men should go to war over.
My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.
John 18:36
Consequently, anyone who goes to war to advance the kingdom of Christ has done so against the will and teaching of Christ!
The atheist may say that the Crusades were immoral, and here, at least, the genuine follower of Christ is in full agreement.
10. Why would a loving God send people to hell forever?
This question presupposes that love excludes punishment. Yet, in truth, love often requires punishment. For example, why would a government send a rapist or murderer to prison for the rest of their lives? In part it is because they love themselves and their society and want to protect the law-abiding citizens from the criminals. Similarly, it is by no means inconsistent with the love of God that He separate the obedient from the disobedient for eternity.
Another point that is often overlooked is the fact that there will be no innocent people in hell. Jesus teaches:
An hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.
John 5:28–29
Only those who have done evil will be subject to God’s condemnation. Now at this point, the objection is usually raised that forever is too long and hell is too terrible to be consistent with the love and justice of God. But are we really qualified to make that judgment? After all, we ourselves are guilty of sin (see Romans 3:23), and deserving of death (see Romans 6:23). No court in the world would look to the criminals and ask, “What do you think is a fair punishment for you?” Consequently, we can’t be surprised when God hasn’t consulted the guilty when it comes to punishment.
But here is a beautiful fact many people disregard when they ask this question: God has done everything He can to ensure that no human sees hell. Jesus came to be “the propitiation [or atoning sacrifice] for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). The good news of the gospel is that no one has to go to hell. Everyone can be forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ. Consequently, those who—by their own sins, mind you—find themselves in hell will literally have done so over God’s dead body. They will have walked over the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to get there. The truly mind-boggling thing about hell is not how many will be there, but how many won’t because of the loving actions of God and Christ.
11. If God is all-knowing, how can we have free will?
This is a question that, not only atheists ask, but even many Bible-believers. According to the Bible, God is all-knowing. He even knows what I will do at any given point in the future. For example, He might know that I am going to have bacon and eggs for breakfast tomorrow. Thus, it would seem, I am not free to have pancakes instead because what God knows will happen must happen. Because of this apparent conundrum, some have sought to limit God’s omniscience by claiming that there are some things even God doesn’t know. On the other hand, some have suggested limits on man’s free will by claiming that our actions are predetermined by God. In truth, neither option is required.
The fundamental problem with this knowledge/free will paradox is the assumption that knowledge equals causation. That is, because God knows something will happen He causes it to happen. Yet even we can know something will happen without causing it. On one occasion I was watching a ball game while talking to my father-in-law who was watching the same ball game but from a different location. Our television providers were on slightly different delays so that he was a few seconds ahead of me. He was able to tell me what happened before I had seen it. Now, my father-in-law is not omnipotent. He wasn’t causing the play to turn out the way it did, but he was able to describe what was about to show on my television screen because he had knowledge from the future—or at least the future from my perspective.
The same is true with God. The Bible describes God as being beyond time. He “inhabits eternity” according to Isaiah 57:15. Consequently, He has already “seen” what we will do in the future. He knows what I will do, not because He is causing me to do it, but because He has already seen my free choice. We don’t have to make a theological choice between Divine foreknowledge and human free will. We need only to understand that the infinite God transcends our concepts of time.
12. Why did Jesus have to be crucified in such a cruel way?
To the best of my knowledge, the Bible doesn’t give us a specific answer to this question. Certainly, there are passages in the Old Testament that prophesied the crucifixion of Jesus as opposed to some other form of death. Psalm 22, for example, vividly describes many aspects of crucifixion including the great stress placed upon the muscles and joints (vv. 14–15) and the piercing of the hands and feet (v. 16). But these prophecies did not cause Jesus to be crucified. He could have died in some other way and then the prophetic passages would have described that form of death instead.
My suspicion (and I freely admit that is all this is) is that Jesus died by crucifixion to demonstrate the depth of His love for us. Numerous passages in the Bible (like John 3:16; John 15:13; and Romans 5:8) point to the death of Jesus as an act of love. Other passages point to Jesus’s death by crucifixion as evidence of the intensity of His commitment. For example, in discussing the need for humble obedience, Paul cites the example of Jesus who “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). Jesus didn’t just obey when it was easy. Jesus obeyed when it was excruciatingly difficult and painful.
The same could be said of Jesus’s love for us. He didn’t just love us when it was easy. And He didn’t just die for us in a painless, peaceful moment. Rather, He chose to endure the horrors of the cross as a demonstration of His great love for us. How much does Jesus love me? As wide as His arms can spread—and He spread them upon the cross. Such great love ought to be extremely compelling to us. Speaking of His crucifixion, Jesus said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). The love displayed on the cross ought to draw us to Jesus Christ.
So why did Jesus have to suffer such a cruel death? I believe He choose such a cruel death that I might know just how much He loves me and that I might be inspired to love Him in return.
13. Why are many intelligent people turning away from religion?
The author of the article that inspired this lesson also added, “Surveys show atheism and skepticism towards religion are becoming much more common among highly educated people and in developed nations.”2 The assumption behind the question and explanatory statement is that intelligence and education lead the thinker away from religion; thus, religion must be false.
Let’s begin by noting this is a false assumption. The truth of a position is not revealed by the numbers or credentials of the people who hold to it but by the strength of the evidence that supports it. If you want to find truth, don’t count noses, rather consider the evidence. As a dear friend of mine was fond of saying, “100 people doing a stupid thing doesn’t change the fact that it’s a stupid thing.”
In truth, there are many reasons why people might turn away from religion. They may have had a negative experience with religion or religious people. They may have rejected the demands of religion. They may have experienced a crisis of faith which they didn’t know how to answer. There are perhaps as many reasons to turn away from religion as there are apostates. But let’s consider one reason that the questioner has alluded to: education.
Consider the institutions of education that exist in the developed nations. How many of them can be thought of as favorable to religion in general and to New Testament Christianity in particular? How many “highly educated people” have been fairly exposed to anything but atheism and skepticism? Consequently, it isn’t surprising how many of them have chosen these positions over religion. Nearly two millennia ago, Paul asked, “How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?” (Romans 10:14). Is is possible that many of our “highly educated” people are hearing less and less of Jesus Christ directly from the pages of the New Testament and more and more from skeptics like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens?
If you want to find truth, you need to seriously consider all sides. And if we at Topical Bible Studies can help you more accurately consider the religion of Jesus Christ, we’d love to help you do so.
14. How can you pick and choose what parts of the Bible to follow literally?
Respectfully, I must disagree with the language of this question. It is not for Christians to “pick and choose” what they will follow and what they will ignore. That being said, no Christian follows all the details of the Old Law—like abstaining from mixed-fabric clothing or allowing the land to rest every seventh year. But that isn’t because they have simply chosen not to do so, but because those commands don’t apply to them. The real question becomes, “How do you know which parts apply and which parts are to be taken literally?”
The answer to both facets of this question is context. No doubt you have heard a request—a request you felt no compulsion to fulfill because of the context. For example, imagine you’re copied into a group email at work. Your boss writes, “Can we get those reports finished by Friday?” You don’t immediately panic, because you know from the context that the task was meant for the finance team, not for you in marketing. The words were seen by everyone, but they weren’t intended for everyone. The same is true with the Bible.
Christians forgo the commands of the Old Testament because those were never directed to Christians. As we have already covered on this site, they were part of a covenant made with Israel alone, a covenant which has since been made obsolete by the new covenant of Jesus Christ. I’m not simply choosing not to follow its commands. Those commands were never directed to me in the first place. Similarly, there are some commands and some passages that are clearly figurative in nature. The book of Psalms, for example, is poetry and abounds with figurative language. Similarly, many of the visions of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation rely upon dramatic images to convey ideas and are not intended to be understood literally. Admittedly, this is a quick simplification of a rather complex field (the discipline of hermeneutics), but we don’t choose what to follow or what to interpret literally. Rather, the text itself reveals those guidelines for us.
15. How can God be just, merciful, AND a jealous God who demands worship?
It is precisely because God is just and merciful that He can demand worship. The very word “worship” is connected to the idea of recognizing something or someone as worthy. Revelation 4 describes the heavenly figures falling down before God to worship Him and they do so saying:
Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.
Revelation 4:11
They recognized God as worthy of worship because of His creative acts. He is equally worthy of worship because of His justice, mercy, and every other attribute.
Still, some are turned off by the idea of God being jealous. We tend to think of jealousy as a negative attribute, but is it always? Imagine this: You’re out with your spouse, and a stranger walks up and begins to speak to them in a way that’s clearly inappropriate, like using flirty language or intimate tones that only belong in your marriage. You wouldn’t just sit there smiling politely, right? No, you’d feel something stir inside—a protective love, a rightful jealousy—and no one would fault you for it.
Now, if that kind of exclusive devotion is expected in marriage, how much more is it right for God to be jealous when our hearts drift toward things that don’t belong in our lives, like idols and misplaced worship? Is it “petty jealousy” for God to seek recognition from the people He created to have such a relationship with? Not at all. And that is the very context in which God is described as “jealous.”
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.”
Exodus 20:4–5
God has every right to be jealous of our worship because He and He alone is worthy of it.
Well, we made it. Fifteen questions asked. Fifteen questions answered. Maybe your question wasn’t answered, or maybe it wasn’t answered as deeply as you would have liked. Feel free to let us know. And please sign up so that if we do address it, you won’t miss the response.
- Scripture quotations in this article are from the ESV®Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright© 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ↩︎
- https://mastermindquotes.com/15-questions-atheists-want-christians-to-answer/ ↩︎