9 Famous Thinkers Who Said They’d Rather Go To Hell than Worship God

CS Lewis famously remarked that “the gates of hell are locked from the inside.” In other words, the residents of the damned are there based on personal preference. It’s not because they’d rather be in heaven but only lacked sufficient information.  Echoing Lewis, Christian philosopher Dallas Williard wrote that hell isn’t “an ‘oops’ or a slip. One does not miss heaven by a hair, but by a constant effort to avoid and escape God.”  But are these famous Christian thinkers correct? Doesn’t it seem crazy that anyone would prefer hell? Based on the statements of many influential skeptics and atheists, the answer might surprise you. Many hardheartedly reject the Biblical picture of God. If such … Read more

Are There Any “Good” Atheists?

One of the most popular arguments for God’s existence is the moral argument. It can take different forms, but a popular version runs like this:  If God doesn’t exist, there are no objective moral values or duties.  But moral values and obligations exist – objectively.  Therefore, God exists.  It’s not unusual for someone to say, “Are you saying that all atheists are bad people? Rude!” The Christian apologist will often reply that the issue isn’t about belief in God but whether or not God exists. After all, we all know moral atheists.  It’s true that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the argument. But do we really know of many good atheists?  Relatively so, absolutely. … Read more

3 Ex-Atheists Who Became Christians by Studying Philosophy

There are dozens of arguments for the existence of God. To rattle off just a few: there’s the moral argument, ontological, religious experience, miracles, consciousness, reason, desire, and the families of cosmological arguments and design arguments.  Some Christians say that while these arguments are good for building up the faithful, they’re useless for apologetics and evangelism. After all, we’re not trying to make generic theists. Even the demons believe in God, but that doesn’t give them a saving relationship with Him! (James 2:20) Apologists using these arguments in conversations or debates are barking up the wrong tree at best, and at worst, are being unfaithful to God.  To make the point, these critics will often … Read more

The way skeptics argue against God reveals why God is so hidden to them

Christianity says that God loves everyone. It also teaches that God is all-powerful and he’s worked some crazy-amazing miracles in the past. The Bible also says that God knows everything, so he’d know what kind of convincing people need. So why are there atheists? Therefore, the reasoning goes that there probably is no God, or at least not one who cares enough to communicate clearly with us. This is a pretty common thing you’ll hear when talking to skeptics. There are certainly fancier ways of laying out this argument, but this is what philosophers call the problem of divine hiddenness. One of the things that critics of this argument have pointed out is that God … Read more

Is Jesus Alive?