Atheism in decline and will be defeated by faith, says Oxford professor

Have to go find the lectures online and listen.

 

Until Christ returns and smears the landscape with the blood of the rebellious, there will always be those who will deny God's existence and insist that the divine is meaningless.

 

I find it hard to believe....Its (atheism) getting bigger & bigger & bigger every day!

 

I would like to believe this, but I'm unconvinced. Perhaps if I locate his lectures he may be able to convince me.

Denial of God will be present all the until the Lord returns and brings justice to the earth - then it will be too late.

I have nothing against Dr. McGrath - I have a high regard for him - but he seems to be missing the real issue. Atheism, for most of its adherents, is completely irrational. It is usually not the result of careful objective study, but of a prejudice born of dislike of authority or a desire that the world not be as it is.

Many theists, even Christians, are quite irrational about their faith. While not ideal, it is not essential to be rational since knowing Jesus is not conditioned upon reason - although it is always good to be rational.

As much as atheists talk about rationality, I find them to be quite uniformly irrational when it comes to issues of faith and God. It is darkly humorous to have atheists approach me to talk about faith, God and rationality, only to have them lose their temper and make rash declarations about how they "refuse to believe something like that." If I point out that their language has just revealed that their will is set against the things of God, they tend to lose all pretense of rationality. In 25 years of sincerely and carefully reasoning with atheists, I have never lost my temper. WIth athiests, the score is not nearly as good. About two thirds of the time, they get angry and shut down communication... for a while. Then they come back with a new argument and it starts again. The fact that they have to consistently formulate new arguments for the same old positions instead of considering what I might have to say is true is further evidence of their flight from God.

In recent years, I have taken to ending conversations and dialogues that are going nowhere because I don't want to voluntarily be a part of the hardening process - where people harden their hearts against God. I will tell atheist friends and acquaintances that I will shut down a dialogue if they are not willing to admit even the possibility that God might exist and that they may not be in right relationship to Him even if they are on His Christmas card list. (Believing that Jesus existed is not enough.) I tell them that I would rather let them "win" the argument than for them to shut themselves apart from God's love. Strangely enough, that is a very effective strategy.