Our series has attempted to engage the popular attempt in our culture to make atheism intellectually respectable and compelling. We've seen that arguments for God's existence based on creation, design, or morality can be interpreted as evidence for natural evolution or God's creative power. (Of course, theistic evolutionists believe that both are true.)

Atheists feel the same way about belief in God--all show, no substance. However, while they can claim that evolution explains design without God, they cannot prove their assertion. They can ask why God's existence is not more obvious, but they cannot explain what more he could do to prove that he is real.

Hard disks and iPods have won two scientists the Nobel Prize in Physics. Today's New York Times reports that Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg will share the $1.5 million prize. We assume that such technology did not just "happen." Did the universe?

As we have seen, we can argue for God's existence from the trustworthiness of the Bible or the inherent logic which reasons from creation to Creator and design to Designer. A third way to argue for God's existence is to ask: what else do we want God to do to prove himself? How could he have done things differently than he has?

"Where did God come from?" is a question all children ask. Skeptics say that he didn't. They can claim that evolution explains the design of the world; or that God's existence should be obvious; or that "God exists" has no logical meaning; or that innocent suffering casts doubt upon the idea of a benevolent God. How are we to respond?

Claiming something is true doesn't make it so, in a court of law or the court of faith. As we have seen this week, none of the classical arguments for God's existence can compel a skeptic to believe in him. What's worse, critics have several reasons to reject faith in God.

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.

We're looking this week for ways to respond to militant atheism by constructing reasonable arguments for God's existence. We've seen that reasoning from creation to a Creator will not be compelling for someone who thinks that the universe came to be through natural means, or that history moves in a never-ending circle.

This week we're asking the most fundamental question of faith: how do we know God exists?  If you say that you believe in God and that's good enough for you, atheists will counter that they don't believe in God and that's good enough for them.  And they're right--if all we have is our subjective opinion that God is real, we don't have much of a foundation to build on.

Many of you have asked me to comment on the "aggressive atheism" phenomenon. There was a day when books blaming humanity's problems on organized religion would have been scorned. Now they sell millions of copies. The number of Americans who say they do not believe God exists has doubled in recent years.