I attended GAC as a theist among the atheists.
I went as a Christian believer and left as a Christian believer.
Oddly, my faith was strengthened and deepened by attending.
How did this happen?
For one, I was irritated at unfair parodies and caricatures of
Christianity. These included describing faith as dehumanising submission to a
cruel slave master who subjected his own son to a torture chamber. Again and
again I felt like saying that I didn’t believe in that god either. I didn't expect the case for faith to be presented at such a gathering but had hoped for integrity in discussing faith. Instead, I was
unimpressed at the lack of integrity by many speakers in the way they treated
Christianity.
How weak is the atheist case if the ‘Christianity’ they argue
against is a parody of their own making and not the Christianity of the Bible?
For another thing, I was exposed to the emptiness of the atheist position.
Hence Krauss on the insignificance of humanity in a vast accidental universe
and Harris with his urging to suspend thought for ‘mindfulness’ as an atheistic
response to death. What kind of a world is that?
As I walked to my hotel one night I thought about this.
If I really believed
what such speakers said, it would be entirely sensible to flee rationality for
sensual indulgence and then kill myself. Who wants to live and who can live in
such a universe? Instead I enjoyed dinner on my walk, prayed, read my Bible and
slept secure in the knowledge that I would awaken to a world that made sense
because of the creator, sustainer and redeemer whose world it is.
That being said, GAC was challenging. It challenges me to examine the
basis of my faith, to live and talk in a way that commends the gospel
(especially in its intellectual aspect) and to be genuinely open regarding big
questions of life and faith.
However, I remain a theist even more firmly after being among the atheists having seen them first hand and found their cause wanting.
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