Truth does not get old. 800 years ago Thomas Aquinas proved that God exists. To reject God’s existence, one has to reject reason itself.
The two main objections against the existence of God, are
If God exists, why does evil exist?
God is unnecessary, because everything has a natural explanation. We do not need supernatural explanations.
If either argument sounds like a reason you have rejected God, know that I just cited Thomas Aquinas. He wrote 800 years ago that those are the two main objections to believing in God. Truth does not get old. Let us look at the proof (read an English translation of the original online).
Proof 1: Things move
Things are moving. Things do not move themselves, but are moved by other things. Something had to get the ball rolling. “This everyone understands to be God.” God is the Unmoved Mover.
Atheists will cite the Big Bang and gravity as all that is needed to explain the motion of the universe. To believe that the universe got itself moving is irrational, because a thing cannot move itself.
Proof 2: Things Exist
Things exist. Things that exist have causes. Things cannot cause themselves (e.g., you are not your own grandpa). Something had to start causing things to exist. To this “everyone gives the name of God.” God is the First Cause.
Atheists have to pretend that the universe was its own grandpa to get around this one.
These first two arguments are against infinite regress, the idea that no beginning is necessary. Infinite regress is a logical contradiction, and so to believe it is to reject reason. Belief in infinite regress is the first reason why atheists are irrational.
For example, imagine your neighbor gives you some chicken eggs. You ask him if he has chickens, and he says, “no, I got these eggs from my neighbor.” So you knock on his neighbors door, and the man two houses down says the same thing. And the third house, and the fourth house and so on all say the same thing. Well, the existence of the eggs cannot be explained by “I got them from my neighbor.” That explanation cannot go on forever, as an infinite regress. Eventually there has to be a chicken, or a beginning.
Proof 3: There used to be nothing in existence
Once there was nothing, and now we are here. But things that exist can only begin to exist by something else that already exists. So if nothing existed, “it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence—which is absurd.” That which exists has to come from something that exists. This necessary existence “all men speak of as God.” God is the Necessary Being.
Atheists have to pretend that nothing “has properties,” like the ability to create the universe, in order to get around this one.
Proof 4: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty
How do we know something is good? Or beautiful? Or true? If we have two good things, we can compare them, and say that one is better than the other. We know what is better by comparison. Similarly, something can only be good, or true, or beautiful, in comparison to a standard of what is true, or good, or beautiful. Something can only be good, or true, or beautiful if a standard for those things exist. That standard “we call God.”
If goodness, truth, and beauty exist, there is a God. In order to avoid the necessary, logical, implications of goodness, truth, and beauty, atheists deny that truth, goodness, and beauty exist. They say all these things are mere opinions, which is irrational.
Proof 5: Order Exists
Nature is ordered. Things that do not have minds move with purpose. But purposeful action comes from a mind. Therefore the order and purpose of nature and the universe were made by a mind.
To get around this one, atheists have to pretend that there is no purpose. That eyeballs are not made to see, but merely happen to see. That man’s reason was not made for truth, but is just a useful secretion of an evolved brain.
Atheism is irrational. But that will not stop people from rejecting God. Reason is not enough. People are turned away from faith because God is unpopular, Christians are sinners, Church is boring, sin is fun, etc. Or they may be too busy with “more important” things to take a moment to think about God.
There are good reasons to not believe in God. Evil, for example. The most evil thing that has ever happened, is that when God became man and came to reign, He was rejected by men, tortured by them, and murdered by them. But God took that greatest of evils and made it good.
Evil may have happened in your life. Forgive those by whom evil came, and pray to God. He can make it good, because He is infinitely good. In God, our weaknesses become strengths.
Of course there are natural explanations for all things we see. That is called science, or “secondary causality” by Thomas Aquinas. But God is the first cause, the primary cause, who got things started, who keeps things going, and He is our purpose and destiny. Praise Him.