Published on 10/4/2007

Americans do indeed live in a country where you are free to believe in any God or none. Those of us who believe in the existence of God have no right to force our faith on others. And so we are obligated to find ways to explain our belief in our Lord.

Commentary

Rudi Giuliani would be refused Holy Communion if Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Burke has his way. Today's New York Times reports that Burke, the archbishop of St. Louis, said he would deny Communion to any presidential candidate who supports abortion rights. When asked for his response, Mr. Giuliani said, "Archbishops have a right to their opinion, you know. There's freedom of religion in this country. There's no established religion, and archbishops have a right to their opinion. Everybody has a right to their opinion."

One way to argue for God's existence is to point from creation to Creator; but skeptics will reply that the universe may have come to exist through natural means. We can use design to suggest a Designer, but evolutionists believe that natural selection could account for life as it is. Scholars continue to debate the merits of their claim. But whether you believe that Darwin was brilliant or deluded, you can see why atheistic evolutionists aren't impressed with the design argument. If this is the best we can do, our skeptical friends will probably remain skeptical.

A third way people argue for God's existence starts with human morality. Where did our sense of right and wrong come from? If you got yours from your parents, where did they get theirs? And where did their parents get theirs? Ultimately we can make our way back to a God who is holy and created us with a sense of morality reflecting his own.

Unfortunately, this approach is not very compelling for skeptics, either. They can claim that our moral sense illustrates Darwin's principle of self-preservation, as it often does. (My wife told me when we got married that if I ever had an affair it wouldn't be a divorce but a funeral. I believe her.) Or they can credit natural selection with encouraging morality in order to ensure the survival of the species.

What about moral choices which seem to violate self-preservation? Unfortunately, skeptics will say that a Christian who dies for his or her faith is on a selfish quest for recognition in this life and glory in the next. A Muslim suicide bomber seeking paradise tragically illustrates their point. And so our skeptical friends are still not impressed, as we'll see tomorrow.