Dr. John Blanchard is an internationally known Christian preacher, teacher, apologist and author. He has written 25 books, including two of Britain’s most widely used evangelistic presentations, Right With God and the booklet Ultimate Questions. The latter has over fourteen million copies in print in over 40 languages. His major book Does God believe in Atheists?, published in 2000, was voted 'Best Christian Book' in the 2001 UK Christian Book Awards, and immediately became a best-seller, described as 'a brilliant defence of belief in God'. Other books he has written include: Truth for Life, Whatever Happened to Hell, Meet the Real Jesus, and The Beatitudes for Today.

Dr Blanchard visited Whittlesey in April 2006 to give a talk on the subject of 'Has science got rid of God?'.  The article below was published in the local 'Discover Whittlesey' magazine shortly before his visit.

Does God believe in Atheists?
by
Dr. John Blanchard 

To some people atheism seems like a breath of fresh air. After all, if God does not exist, there is no need to worry about moral standards and behaviour; we are totally free to 'do our own thing', and when we die we will not have to answer awkward questions or face the possibility of being punished for what we have thought, said or done. It sounds a very attractive proposition - but it raises impossible problems.

The world around us

If the earth were the size of the full stop at the end of this sentence, the moon would be five-eighths of an inch away, the sun just over nineteen feet and the nearest star 1005 miles. We would still be 23,380,000 miles from the centre of the Milky Way and 467,600,000 miles from the Andromeda Galaxy. This raises massive questions for the atheist. How did it all get there? Why is it the way it is? Why is there something rather than nothing? Where did the laws of nature come from? Why is there such amazing coherence in the universe? Why do we have cosmos and not chaos? Talk of a 'Big Bang' raises even more questions: Where did the original speck of dust come from? What caused the 'bang'? And how did an unplanned, purposeless explosion produce the astonishing beauty, order and design that can be seen all over the natural world?

The mystery of life

The existence of life is an even greater problem for the atheist. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says, 'There is no generally accepted definition of life', yet we all know the difference between life and non-life. What can account for it? When Francis Crick and James Watson unveiled the now famous double-helical structure of DNA in 1953, the question became even more relevant. We now know that the genetic information in a single chromosome is equivalent to 500 million words - but a single fertilized human egg has 46 chromosomes, which means that it houses the genetic equivalent of 23 thousand million words. Are we seriously to believe (as atheists do) that this amazing amount of information came about by chance, or from a source with no intelligence? Professor Edward Conklin, of Princeton University, told Reader's Digest that life originating by chance is about as likely as a complete dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing factory! 

The miracle of man

Human beings are truly amazing. Laid out in 'single file', the DNA in any one of us would stretch to the sun and back more than 100 times! In an average lifetime, the human brain processes enough data to fill 7,142,857,142,860,000 computer discs! We can think, speak, count, appreciate beauty and build personal relationships. We have a sense of right and wrong. We ask questions such as 'Where did I come from?', 'Why am I here?' and 'Where am I going?' Above all, human beings have a deep-seated religious instinct, a sense that there is something (or someone) greater than ourselves. These things can be said of no other living creature - try asking a cat to read this article! 

Why should we be unique? It surely makes no sense to say that these features arose by accident? If our brains are accidents, why should we trust anything they tell us? How can we know the truth about anything? If all of life is accidental, why should we bother about our behaviour? Why should we make any effort to be decent, honest or kind? If we are nothing more than biological accidents there is no reason why we should claim to have more dignity than pigs, parsnips or pilchards. Then how can we be sure we are in a different league?

The Bible's answer to these questions is that the wonderful universe in which we live was created by God, who made man 'in his own image', distinct from all the rest of creation and capable of living in a personal relationship with his maker. That relationship has been ruined by sin, but in his great mercy God has come into the world in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and provided a way by which it can be restored. This is the heart of the Christian gospel.