One day, an agnostic (a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God – Oxford American Dictionaries) take a rest in a park near his house. Suddenly he spotted something weird, there is a footprints of a duck! He didn’t believe that there exists a duck in that region and he never saw one before. He suspected that some little kids wanted to make fun of him, because this guy is well known to believe that all duck in that region has come to extinct. He analyzed the footprints carefully, taking a photo of it, measuring the surface area of the footprints, measuring the depth of the footprints and the distance between each footprint. With all these data, he knew that the shape of the footprints fits with most typical duck species and from the footprints depth he calculated the approximate weight of that “something” causing the footprints, and the weight is a typical weight of a duck. Furthermore the distance between each footprint fell well in a typical step distance of a duck.
Well, he still didn’t believe that those footprints is caused by a duck, maybe someone put a duck-like footprints there to make fun of him. He traced the footprints all the way down and it disappeared in the river bank. After carefully documenting the evidences, he came back home and took a rest. In the following day, he came back to the same place and he spot a duck! He’s surprised in unbelief and without patience grab that duck and analyze the feet characteristic of the duck and weigh the duck. His data showed that this duck was most probably the duck making the footprints the day before.
Yeah, you guess rightly, he still didn’t believe that those footprints he spotted was caused by that duck. He still didn’t believe it, he believed that someone making fun of him spotted him yesterday and put that duck to deceive him. He insisted that for him to be convinced that those footprints was caused by that duck, he needed to see it by his own eye. And he waited for the technology to build a time-machine for him, so that he could come back to the past to see how those footprints emerged. He waited and waited but time-machine was not invented during his lifetime and therefore he never knew…
The great atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell was once asked what he would say if he found himself standing before God on the judgement day and God asked him, ‘Why didn’t you believe in Me?’ Russell replied, ‘I would say, ‘Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence!’ Well, I think the argument of God is more than enough. It is indeed enough to be rational but surely not enough to be coercive. It is different from the argument that 1+1 must equal to 2. I firmly believe the argument needs a little leap of faith, as to believe the footprints is made by a duck albeit we did not see it by our own eye. Although evidences of God is not coercive (as it will violate our free will), it is rational just like it is rational to believe the footprints is made by a duck.
God has given clear evidence for those who earnestly sought after him, but also vague enough so that it will not be coercive especially to people who rejected God (as it will be divine rape). Although the evidence is clear, people rebellious to God could always avoid it irrationally, e.g. Stephen Hawking who made the absurd theory using imaginary time to avoid a beginning point in Big Bang, avoiding first creation point and hence avoiding God. Scientists rejected creationism and replace it with evolutionism despite the accumulating evidence pointing the other way. This is just like hypothesizing that someone wants to make fun of you by putting the footprints of the ducks in the illustration above.
I believe that in their knowledge, they know that the belief in God is rational, but the problem lies on their heart, i.e. they reject God.
“There are only two possible explanations as to how life arose: Spontaneous generation arising to evolution or a supernatural creative act of God…. There is no other possibility. Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others, but that just leaves us with only one other possibility… that life came as an act of supernatural creation by God, but I can’t accept that philosophy because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.” Dr. George Wald (Professor Emeritus of Biology, Harvard), Nobel Prize winner in Biology, 1971
The quote above is more commendable as compared to atheists which formulate irrational theory to justify their belief, as it is really an honest statement. There is a stark difference between believing that there is a God and believe in God. You could believe that there is a God, but your heart have to make the choice whether to believe in that God. I believe the evidence is clear enough for truth seekers. For me, when I see the duck footprints in the illustration above, I don’t have enough faith to believe that someone wants to make fun of me by putting the footprints of the ducks, but I just have a little faith to believe that a duck make that footprints although I don’t see it with my own eye.
