Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Foreword
Preface
1. Doubt: what it is – and what it isn’t
2. Doubt and the futile search for certainty
3. Doubt in other worldviews: the case of atheism
4. The personal aspects of doubt
5. Doubt in the Bible: analogies and images
6. Doubts about the gospel
7. Doubts about yourself
8. Doubts about Jesus Christ
9. Doubts about God
10. Doubt: how to handle it
11. Doubt: putting it in perspective

Preface

‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ (Mark 9:24). We don’t know the name of the man who spoke these memorable words to Jesus. Whoever he was, his words capture perfectly the anxieties of many Christians. They have discovered in Jesus Christ something far more wonderful than they had ever dared to hope. God often seems very close in the first days of faith. Yet nagging doubts sometimes remain. Can I really trust in the gospel? Surely it’s just too good to be true? Does God really love me? Can I be of any use to God? Deep down, many Christians worry about questions like these, often feeling ashamed for doing so. And so they suppress them. They hope they will go away. Sometimes they do – but often they don’t.

In this book, I try to explain, as simply and clearly as possible, what doubt is, and how it arises. We live in a culture that doubts everything as a matter of principle, often seeing commitment to any beliefs as the ultimate secular sin. Yet it is not enough to discuss doubt in such general terms. For this reason, I move on to deal with a series of specific doubts and anxieties many Christians experience, often in the first few years of their lives as believers. I offer some suggestions for handling doubt, and making your faith less vulnerable to it. Its main theme is simple: Doubt is an invitation to grow in faith and understanding, rather than something we need to panic about or get preoccupied with. We must all learn to grasp and value the ‘sunnier side of doubt’ (Tennyson).

This work had its origins in talks given to students from Oxford University at a house party in December 1988. I rewrote it in December 2005 to take account of major cultural changes since that time, as well as my own deepened experience of engaging with the questions that trouble so many people. I hope it will be a useful resource to those who experience doubt themselves, or would like to help their family and friends cope with its challenges.

Alister McGrath
Oxford University

Extracts from ... Chapter 3 Doubt in other worldviews: the case of atheism

In the previous chapter, I made an important point that needs to be explored much more thoroughly. Christians tend to think that doubt is a problem for them alone. But it’s not. It’s a problem for any worldview – whether Jewish or Islamic, atheist or religious. Appreciating this point is essential to seeing doubt in its proper perspective. As I used to be an atheist myself, I’m going to explore the place of doubt within atheism.

Most people (including, it has to be said, many atheists themselves!) have the rather simple idea that atheism is about fact, whereas Christianity is about faith. Their ideas are factual; those of Christians are unproven. But it’s not like that. Let me explain by asking a question: can I prove with certainty there is a God? The short answer is ‘no’. If you have time to study the history of the philosophical arguments for the existence of God, you’ll know they are suggestive, but not conclusive. It’s pretty much the universal consensus within philosophy that rational argument doesn’t settle the question of God’s existence, one way or the other. The atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen makes this point clearly when he writes, ‘To show that an argument is invalid or unsound is not to show that the conclusion of the argument is false . . . All the proofs of God’s existence may fail, but it still may be the case that God exists.’ Argument is not going to settle this question, one way or the other. And that means that the outcome is uncertain for the atheist.

Now let’s pause here, because you need to appreciate something important. Christians often tend to see only one side of that statement – that nobody can rationally prove God exists. But can you see there is another side to it? That nobody can disprove God exists? The Christian who believes in God thus does so as a matter of faith. But can you see the atheist has to do the same? That her belief there is no God is exactly that – a belief? Because she cannot prove there is no God, her atheism is also a faith.

Atheists don’t like this argument, but it is correct. The simple fact is that when anyone starts making statements about the meaning of life, the existence of God, or whether there is life after death, they are making statements of faith. ...

Atheist arguments against the existence of God

Atheists often tell Christians their faith is infantile. It’s just fine for the minds of impressionable young children, but laughable in the case of adults. We’ve grown up now, and need to move on. Why should we believe things that can’t be scientifically proved? Faith in God, many atheists argue, is just like believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. When you grow up, you grow out of it. And if you don’t, you are either mentally retarded or intellectually dishonest.

But this is just rhetoric – the attempt to discredit a belief by heaping ridicule upon it. In fact, it is this argument itself that is childish. If this simplistic argument has any plausibility, it requires a real analogy between God and Santa Claus to exist – which it clearly doesn’t. There is no serious evidence that people regard God, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy as belonging to the same category. ... As I noticed while researching my book The Twilight of Atheism, a large number of people come to believe in God in later life – when they are ‘grown up’. I have yet to meet anyone who came to believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy late in life! So let’s leave this sort of nonsense behind, and look at a more serious argument atheists often advance. ...