It stands to reason. Doesn't it?

I wrote here about Jack Kinsella's suggestion that if you are in conversation with an atheist, he is likely to challenge you to prove that God exists, lest he is asked to prove that God doesn't exist (because he can't).

Jack Kinsella is at it again. Seeking to disprove atheists' arguments, that is. One of the most formidable obstacles atheism must contend with, he says, is the existence of its principal tool - the ability to reason.

Knowledge is attained by reasoned thought and by reasoned thought, the atheist has concluded that he knows there is no God. . .

What is the evolutionist's explanation for the ability to reason? They argue it is the result of chemical reactions in the brain. But chemicals react - they don't think, or reason, or plan.

It is a bedrock principle of science that an effect cannot be greater than its cause. A chemical reaction cannot generate morality, immorality, reason or rationality.

A reaction is the result of an action. Reason, on the other hand, is the analysis of that action. . .

The ability to reason can only come from one of two sources. It was either the product of intelligent design or it was the result of mindless chance.

Since the mindless cannot create the mind, there is only one reasonable explanation - that the mind was created by intelligent design and implanted with a divine moral code.

Just as a chemical reaction cannot explain reason, reason cannot explain a moral code. . .

If a deer population in a particular area grows too dense, conservationists will hold a 'deer cull' - a special hunting season on deer to reduce the population and ensure the survival of the species.

The morality of taking a deer's life is not at issue when the alternative is the needless suffering, starvation or death of the whole population. Why is it immoral to do the same with human beings?. . .

Even if a chemical reaction could explain how we know right from wrong, it doesn't explain why culling deer is right and culling humans is wrong.

What is the objective standard? Upon what basis do we form such profound judgments?. . .

If they are nothing more than the mindless product of random chance chemical reactions in the brain, how can we KNOW anything?

We can't. The effect cannot be greater than the cause. Knowledge is greater than random chemical reaction.

You can't be an atheist without having faith in your own reason and judgment, but the basis for your faith cannot be explained apart from the Creator God that you are sure (based on your God-given ability to reason) does not exist.

Of course, recognizing intelligent design is not the same thing as recognizing a loving God Who sent His only begotten Son to atone for the sins of mankind at the Cross.

But it's a start.

Sounds reasonable to me.

Why are atheists so aggressive?

Why are atheists so aggressive these days, what with books by Richard Dawkins, posters on the sides of buses and the formation of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies to support atheist students?

I have some ideas on the matter, but not being totally convinced of the reason, I'd like to leave the question open. Somebody supposed it was because atheists, while content to pooh-pooh the idea of a God, were irked because they were finding it increasingly difficult to counter the claims of intelligent design. Proponents of intelligent design don't speak of a God, but do suggest that the physical and biological systems we see around us are best explained as having an intelligent cause.

Francis Crick and James Watson, the scientists who discovered the structure of DNA, were, I understand, both atheists. They had a desire to show that the mysterious phenomena of life could be explained in terms of physics and chemistry. In discovering the structure of DNA, which I understand is found in every cell in the body, they discovered something incredibly complex. So complex, in fact, that it must have had an intelligence behind it.

DNA contains information. Someone has said that in just a pinpoint of DNA you can find as much information as in four complete 30-volume sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Information, from where I'm sitting, can't come from evolution, but only from an intelligence.

So when they discovered something so amazingly complex, did Crick and Watson cease to be atheists? Evidently not.

I have a theory about atheists. I suggest that an atheist is not an atheist because he can't believe, but because he won't believe. I suppose that atheists are not atheists because of evidence or the lack of it, but because of hardness of heart.

Christianity and science are not necessarily opposed. Some Christians are scientists, and some scientists are Christians.

But beware. Some Christians believe in evolution. How can you be a Christian and believe in evolution? Only by disbelieving the account of creation in Genesis. Here's the problem: if you believe the account of creation in Genesis is untrue, how do you know the rest of the Bible is true?

Here's something to bear in mind as you think about these things. Mark 10 tells how the Pharisees were disputing with Jesus about the question of divorce. In verses 6 - 8, Jesus says: "From the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, so then they are no longer two, but one flesh." He was quoting from the first two chapters of Genesis.

Jesus believed in the Genesis account.