“In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands” (Psalm 102:25).
Anselm was born in Italy in 1033. At the age of 23, he had a quarrel with his father, left home and began wandering through France. He ended up at the Benedictine Abbey of Bec, which he entered and stayed until be became abbot in 1078. Anselm is remembered for deducing that there are valid reasons for believing in God, all of which have evolved around the premise that God is the only explanation for man’s moral nature, the fact that design demands a designer in our world, and the cause and effect relationship of nature necessitates a master architect and a builder who, in the words of Scripture, is God.
Since then, materialists and atheists have railed against Anselm’s arguments, but none have effectively refuted them, and that is one of the reasons why I am not an atheist.
When he was president, Ronald Reagan spoke for a National Prayer Breakfast and said, “I have long been unable to understand the atheist in this world of so much beauty. And I’ve had an unholy desire to invite some atheists to a dinner and then serve the most fabulous gourmet dinner that has ever been concocted and, after dinner, ask them if they believe there was a cook” (Washington Post, February 8, 1988).
The beauty, symmetry, order, and perfection of our earth is something which I cannot accept as chance any more than I can believe an explosion in a print shop could produce an unabridged dictionary. It is not only nature which keeps me in awe, but the more I know of the human body—the intricacies of the human body, including your brain, your nervous system, the network of veins and arteries that bring oxygen to your body, the dexterity of your hand, and the marvelous way your eye gives you vision—they all convince me that humankind came from the drawing board of heaven, and the architect and creator was the one of whom Moses wrote, “In the beginning, God created….” (Genesis 1:1).
Another reason that I am not an atheist is that only a belief in God and our responsibility to Him can really account for a belief in the dignity and value of a human being—whether it be an abandoned child in India or the son of the wealthiest man in your city. Apart from God and the recognition that we are accountable to Him, there is no real motive for morality or reason to treat each other with dignity and respect. As Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in The Brother’s Kamarazov, “If there is no God, then anything is permissible.” Our concept of right and wrong, as opposed to the existentialist “I’m OK; you’re OK; do whatever seems good to you,” is all derived from the belief that God exists and that He has revealed Himself to humankind.
Atheism offers no real standard of right or wrong, of truth or falsehood, and provides no answers to the deep questions of the heart.
There is another issue which demands that I believe in God, and that is the issue of existence. Now, Moses wrote that I was created in the image of God and I bear His image, His stamp is on me, which means I have a will, and choices to make. Furthermore, I am responsible for what I do. A belief in God alone answers the centuries-old questions of existence: “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where do I go after I die?”
A final thought. If there is a God, then whether or not I believe this is unimportant apart from the fact that I am denied an existence of what makes life worth living, what gives purpose to existence, and brings order to chaos. Think about it.
Resource reading: Psalm 90.
