Powerful Proof God Doesn't Exist

A professing atheist approached me recently and said, “Ray, I have three tests for you.” Of course, I knew what the “tests” were before he asked them. The first two were, would I take poison and would I jump off a high cliff? After I spoke at the 27th National Convention of American Atheists in Orlando in 2001, during the question time I was asked to drink poison. The questioner had it in his hand, ready for me to drink, in response to the promise Jesus gave in Mark 16:18.

I told my atheist friend what I said at the convention. If I were to deliberately take poison or jump off a high cliff, I would be tempting God, something the Bible says not to do (see Matthew 4:7). I’m not into snake handling either. Of course, that answer never satisfies atheists, and so their tests remain powerful proofs (in their minds) that God doesn’t exist.

The third test was, can I move mountains? Jesus said that the Christian can move them, so if we can’t, God doesn’t exist.

When Jesus talked about swallowing camels, or of Him being the “door,” or the necessity of eating His flesh and drinking His blood to be saved, or moving mountains, these weren’t literal statements. They were symbolic. How do we know the difference between literal and symbolic? Context and common sense.

Other supposed powerful arguments that the Bible isn't true (and therefore God doesn’t exist) are: bats aren’t birds, there seem to be two accounts of creation, God can’t make a rock that He can’t lift, the Catholic church and their crusades--their terrible Inquisition and their imprisonment of Galileo. Also, Cain married a sister, the way Judas died, and of course the powerful proof of the theory of evolution. If evolution is true, then in the mind of the atheist God doesn’t exist.

The essence of the evolution argument is, did God make man in His image with moral responsibility, or did man evolve without a Maker and he therefore has no moral accountability? If it’s the first, the atheist is in big trouble. It means that he is a wicked sinner in the eyes of a perfect and holy God, and that Hell is a reality. If it’s the latter, then all is well with him, because there’s no such thing as sin, no moral accountability, and therefore no Hell.

So the question that would settle the evolution argument and ease the mind of the doubting atheist is, is there any scientific proof for species-to-species transitional forms in the fossil record? If there is absolute proof of one species actually evolving into another, that would settle the question once and for all. The answer is that there isn’t. There's much speculation, but the link is still missing. So the atheist has to fortify his faith with all his straw-man arguments and his circular reasoning.

So what is the ultimate solution to this continual standoff? It would be for the atheist to simply seek God for himself. He has creation and his conscience as evidence for starters, but if he came to actually know God, that would forever settle the issue for him. So, here’s a promise from God that is not symbolic but is literal: “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13, emphasis added). I did that on April 25, 1972, and I "found" Him at 1:30 in the morning. Countless millions of others have likewise found God, when they sought Him with genuine sincerity. Why should the atheist seek Him like that? Because God is the essence of life itself, and the atheist's time is running out . . . with his every heartbeat.