So far, we have considered the existence and nature of God and the possibility of a divine communication to humanity. The transition into a consideration of the historical evidence for the truth of Christianity is facilitated if the seeker accepts the validity of these two propositions. However, objections are often raised based on the following perspectives:
Asked what he would say if he faced God after death, the atheist philosopher, Bertrand Russell said he would claim there was insufficient evidence to warrant belief. However, most people insisting on absolute proof are vague about what type of proof they would accept. As I explain in Basic Assumptions About Certainty and the Pursuit of Truth, we all live by faith, because most propositions can be doubted. Nothing that really matters can be proven absolutely.
Proponents of this worldview believe that nature is an absolutely closed system of cause and effect. The chain of causes and effects cannot be broken. Even if a Supreme Being exists, he does not interfere in the workings of the natural world. Therefore, divine revelation and miracles are impossible. The Deists of the Enlightenment adopted this view because they insisted that nature must be comprehensible to the human mind. As the French physicist, Pierre Laplace reputedly stated concerning God, "I have no need of that hypothesis." However, dogmatic naturalism cannot be demonstrated by means of the scientific method. It is an assumption held by faith. (See Evasive Naturalism.)
This claim is based on the conviction that God is radically transcendent and, therefore, cannot be known to finite, time-bound human beings. This position denies that the Supreme Intelligence that brought the universe and our earth into being is capable of communicating with us. On what grounds is this objection based? If God created time and space, why couldn't God act into history? (See Has God Really Communicated with Humanity?)
Relativists often base their position on the presence of multiple world religions or on an antipathy to any exclusive truth claim or religious "meta-narratives". There are individuals who have not taken the time to examine the various world religions and naively assume that all religions are basically the same. Therefore, they conclude that as long as a person is sincere, his or her personal beliefs don't matter. Then there are the postmodernists, who advocate radical skepticism of all truth claims and total relativism. However, this position is self-refuting, for it is itself a truth claim and is fundamentally illogical. (See The Role of Logic in Examining Religious Truth Claims.)
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