The picture on the right is my favorite memory of the week. That young man was in the right spot at the right time. As the second day at Sac City College continued I decided to approach Mr. Atheist, a gray-haired older man and the man behind the atheist website SACFAN.com. He was handing out papers trying to counter our Project Truth display. I asked him what his role at Sac City College was and he said he is a faculty advisor. I told him that I heard him yesterday shout out that "Frank Turek is an insane maniac" and I wanted to know what he meant by that? Mr. Atheist smiled and said, "I don't know, I just wanted to say it." I then said that I noticed he had Frank's book, "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist" in his hand and that yesterday one of our team members had challenged him with finding fault in the book. "Did you have any time to look at Frank's book and find errors so you could get your free dinner and support your claim that Frank is a maniac?" At this point Mr. Atheist said " No I haven't looked at the book but intend to." I then asked, "Mr. Atheist, if you looked at the evidence for the claims of Christianity and found them to be compelling and true, would you become a Christian?" Mr. Atheist smiled, paused and said, "I guess, maybe I would have to believe it." I was a little surprised by his response, but said, "Thank you for your honesty and I repeat the challenge to you that what is in the book 'I Don't have Enough Faith to be an Atheist' is a more complete answer to any questions you and I cannot resolve in the few minutes we dialogue...so would you give the book a look and email me your disagreements?" Mr. Atheist said, "I will read the book and email you." Then Mr. Atheist said, "I have a question for you along the same thinking." "What would have to happen for you, the Christian, to be convinced that God is a myth?" I paused...then said, "There would be several things that must happen, but the most important would be that Jesus would have remained in the grave." Mr. Atheist looked at me and said, "Fair enough, now I have to go to an appointment." I shook hands with him and went back to our table and display. A few minutes later Mr. Atheist came over to the table and said, "Wait a minute. Why is the supposed resurrection of Jesus such an important aspect of your beliefs? Couldn't it be possible that throughout history thousands of people could have come out of their graves?" Why then would Jesus coming out of a grave be such a big deal if others could do the same thing?" At this moment I was sooo glad I did not fall asleep during one of Frank's lectures last week. I looked into Mr. Atheist's eyes and said "That's the whole point of the resurrection of Jesus. There aren't thousands of people popping out of their graves. There's only one who said He would do it to prove He is God the Son. If it was a common occurrence, then you're right, it would not have been a big deal. But it was and is." I could tell Mr. Atheist was not used to this line of reasoning and he said, "OK, that's a good point. But you are putting your faith in and relying on the authors of the Bible to have been honest men who told the truth and did not lie about what happened." I couldn't believe he just said that. I then said, "Mr. Atheist, Frank deals with that aspect of the reliability of the scriptures and the authors of the Old and New Testament in the book we gave you and what you propose is a good challenge, so read a more complete answer to why we believe that the authors were telling the truth." Mr. Atheist said, "That's interesting. I now want to read the book even more and find out what he says about that." I said to him, "May I propose another idea to the equation?" He said, "Go ahead." "You also place your trust in the writings of those in history who were atheists and evolutionists and must also put your faith and trust in those writers being honest and truthful. How do you know that they were truthful? Mr. Atheist said, "I suppose you are right. We do have to consider their trustworthiness as well to be fair. But we atheists have the evidence of billions of years that support our claims." I said, "Wow, it takes more faith to be an atheist than a Christian because we only needed two thousand years to support our claims!" Mr. Atheist laughed and said, "I guess in some ways it does take more faith to hold to our beliefs than yours." I then proposed to Mr. Atheist, "I don't believe that the evidence, whether two billion years or two thousand years, leads us to believe that there is no God, but rather it points to a Master Designer. How do you leap to the idea that evolution would somehow prove there is no God?" Mr. Atheist said, "I have to go to my appointment but we will talk about this further." We shook hands and Mr. Atheist hopefully walked away with several pebbles in his shoes. |