Answering the New Atheists: Prayer, Happiness, and the Good Life - Audio
In this message, Pastor Tom teaches on the basic arguments of the New Atheists. He urges us not to debate their premises, which are based on happiness as the goal of life, but instead to offer the image of the self-giving Christ as the goal of life, on earth and for eternity.
- Duration
- 33m
- Broadcast on
- 02 Aug 2015
- Audio Format
- other
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Father, we confess that this is your day. We confess that you are a good God, that you are a mighty God. We confess that you have the power to answer prayer, that you are preparing us to be the image of your Son, to be united with Him in heaven, living your life. Open that up to us today. We pray in His name. Amen. You may be seated. Total Request Live. We started this last week in the early 2000s, Carson Daly, who I believe was the Ryan Seacrest of his day, was the host of Total Request Live on MTV, which I never saw because I didn't like the music or the idea of MTV, but it was really, really popular. And the idea was that all the people of the United States of America would get together and decide what they thought were the most important videos of the day, music videos, and that those would be displayed for all to see. Well, this summer, for the remainder of the summer, we're doing Total Request Live here at Coase Bible Church. So if there is something that you would like to hear, my opinion on, or Neil's opinion on, you may send an email or talk to us and we will do our best to address it. And when I say our opinion, ideally what we'll be doing is really God's opinion. So there's that. Today we're talking a little bit, we're shifting a little bit to the apologetic side of things. Last week we talked about the Greek word "pistuo," and the way it was used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament and the New Testament, "pistuo" is the word that typically gets translated as having faith in or believing or trusting. This week we're doing a little more of an apologetic message. We had a request to talk a little bit about, you know, a defense of the faith or reasons for the faith. Now I think Neil's going to be addressing some more of these issues later, but what's closest to my heart is the answer to what we call the New Atheists. The New Atheists are better and more entertaining than the Old Atheists because they are evangelical in their atheism. They don't want to just keep the good news of atheism to themselves. They want to share it with the whole world so that we can all be freed from the oppressive rule of God and live the lives that nothing meant us to live. So that's the New Atheists. And today I want to talk about kind of an argument that they develop out of three different strands. And those strands as we talk today will be a prayer at happiness and the good life. The New Atheists bring together ideas about prayer, happiness, and the good life to demonstrate that there's clearly no God. I like atheists. I think they're refreshingly honest and fun, but also very sad in some ways. And we'll get to see a little bit about that today. So prayer, happiness, and the good life. The atheist wants us to ask, at the very beginning, a new atheist wants us to ask, does prayer work? And the atheist is going to say no, and we'll talk about that in a second. Then the atheist is going to say, get us to ask this question. Does Christianity prevent us from being happy people? And the atheist is going to say, oh yes, and let me tell you how.
Transcription truncated.
In this message, Pastor Tom teaches on the basic arguments of the New Atheists. He urges us not to debate their premises, which are based on happiness as the goal of life, but instead to offer the image of the self-giving Christ as the goal of life, on earth and for eternity.