I am a failed atheist because I began to think/realize I didn’t have sufficient faith.

I was a committed atheist for a while in my life. I was impressed with all the appearance of logic and facts. I bought the image of Christianity being like a great myth and emotional safe place for people to hide. I was even able to beat up some beginning Christians with my logic and reasoning as it was at the time, a fact that now grieves me because of the harm I caused in my arrogant ignorance.

I began to realize that atheism is its own faith. It requires a perspective that overcomes logic and fact gaps with an unwillingness to listen as well as speak. To really be logical is to hear without prejudice in an effort to examine all possibilities in their own contextual integrity. That wasn’t available in the atheist point of view or in the ability of insecure Christians. Truth must be able to stand on its own strength regardless of the people or their perspective or their need to make themselves feel good or secure. I, in my examination, have to recognize my own limitations in being part of the system of life that I’m examining. This point of humility is not common due to the creature need to assert its own value.

I spoke to an avowed atheist and asked him to explain the foundations of his faith. The more he talked, the more he evangelized me toward my own faith. I could not understand, based on his own comments, how he didn’t immediately realize that he was justifying a divine creator. The shortest, and probably inadequate, way to abbreviate his statements was to say he explained a well ordered universe, which is beautifully knit together in sustainable systems, being created as a product of complete randomness. I asked him to define random because he was obviously seeing something I didn’t. His reason for atheism requires more faith than I can muster. I was equally challenged by other reasonings and explanations he provided about science versus Christianity which I do not see as oppositional.

This brings up science. So much of atheism seems to say that science disproves Christianity. My perspective is that science proves Christianity. The only fight is the perspective of the talker. A person who does not believe sees his facts as proof God doesn’t exist. A believer easily sees science as proving God and the creation. Either way, it takes faith. The advantage I feel I have is that, as God is alive, He is able to speak for Himself and verify Himself to each new generation. The debate requires two people in the limits of their understanding to argue their perspectives with the facts they know. A living God who interacts with His creation is a verification that makes being a Christian the easier faith. I don’t have to know everything to know Him. The atheist is sort of his own god because he does not believe in another. He can only speak to himself and respond to his own thoughts. A Christian can speak in prayer to a living God and expect a response that is not of his own making.