review--Richard Simmons III on the Big Question

“Reflections on the Existence of God: a series of essays” by Richard E. Simmons III (Union Hill Publishing)

The most important question of life is simple but critical: “does God exist?” Either He does and he does not. There is no third option. You are betting your eternal destiny on your answer, as well as informing your entire earthly life. The options are mutually exclusive: if one is right, the other is wrong. “Atheism and theism are alternative belief systems that offer radically different views.”

This book is a series of essays exploring that question. Its research is drawn from the great atheist thinkers over the ages, including philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Bertrand Russell; scientists like Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett. The author also looked at the work of theistic thinkers from the Judeo-Christian worldview, which provided the foundation for the rise of Western civilization.

Here are the two worldviews: either we live in a random, pointless existence in a universe that evolved just as life did, for no particular reason, with no god and no direction; OR there is a supernatural intelligence who gives the universe order and life meaning, whose history is rooted in Biblical revelation.

We either have no accountability for anything we do, think or plan; or we are accountable to a being that created us, rescued us from our grubby little lives of greed, lust and hate, and sustains us by His spirit. Further, you need to know not only what you believe but WHY. Don’t hold a worldview because you are too lazy intellectually to look at any evidence. (For example, most people who reject Christianity know almost nothing about it except what they have seen in the media or had a brief encounter with it.)

Simmons’ book investigates the journeys of great thinkers from one worldview to the other and why they changed their minds. “Follow the truth wherever it leads, always remembering that the truth is your friend. It enables you to believe responsibly.” For example, what of the problem of evil?

“You have to explain where the goodness scale comes from that enable us to identify evil. So how does a person with an atheistic worldview deal with the problem of evil and wickedness? He does not have a good basis to be outraged over the evil seen in the world, because atheist evolution teaches the clear lesson that natural selection depends on death, destruction, and violence of the strong against the weak.” However, “the notion of evil implies that there is a standard of goodness that has been violated. Apart from a transcendent lawgiver, there is no basis for moral law other than the law of the jungle. Human rights are not self-evident to everybody. Human rights are not things we can prove. It take religious commitment. It’s a faith assumption.” Without God, human beings are merely another animal.

So what do YOU think?