The two most common objections to the reality of God, that seem to the skeptic so logical and historically irrefutable, are –

Voltaire (Arouet) expressed this objection in his rejection of the God of the Bible; believing that history and the human condition show that either –

This deserves an answer, and every Christian ought to understand what the Bible has to say on this issue. For the Bible itself echoes the humanitarian concerns of the skeptic in the words of Job in his suffering:

The suffering of innocents is a characteristically sad feature of history and of our human condition. The primary agent of this suffering is humanity itself, both directly and indirectly.

CS Lewis wrote – "Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself." But, that does not really help us, does it?

The Bible's answer to this desperate tragedy, and why God doesn't just stop it all, begins at the Bible's own beginning – in the very first chapter of its first book – Genesis One.

Essentially, and to put it very crudely, humanity was designed to 'play God' within its natural environment. The Bible gives this unique perspective on humanity's critical and key influence upon the totality of this planet and its environs: God's intrinsic design of humanity was to represent Him, to rule on-His-behalf!

It is only within this perspective that the act of making humanity in God's 'image' is to be understood. This has nothing to do with 'spirituality' or 'morality', and even less to do with the shape of the human anatomy.

This authority-over-all, which the human race was instructed/designed by God to exercise, was not the crass brutality that the armies of history have tragically demonstrated, or the commercial plundering of natural resources that blights our planet. This authority was to be representative of the Creator Himself, a creator whose character is expressed in the design of that creation – in all its rich beauty and wisdom.

This authority and the responsibility that results from it is not based on any religious notion and even less on any social structure. It is intrinsic to the design of creation itself from the hand of its Creator.

For this reason the abuse of the authority naturally brings sad consequences in human experience and the world around us. The level of human corruption and abuse sometimes cries out from its victims for redress (whether the victims be human, animal or even the plants and stones around us, Hab.2:1; Jon.4:11), for God to intervene in His justice and mercy.

God does not go back on His word. To intervene uninvited is to contradict the delegation of human responsibility described above! There can be no divine intervention therefore, except by human invitation (prayer) alone, or else it is to close this chapter of human history and end human rule.

This finality is what the Bible anticipates as the end of human history in the return of Jesus Christ to rule (the only man to have fully carried out this Genesis mandate). Thus, every judgment of God recorded in Bible history is a preview or sample of the judgment to come; whether that be of cities such as Sodom an Gomorrah, or of empires such as the Babylonian.

The delegated nature of human authority with its responsibility means that there is a built-in entitlement to appeal to the Source of that authority by those who carry its responsibility.

Thus, communion with the Creator, or prayer as it became, is intrinsic to the very design of human authority. God's intervention in answer to this is the record of the subsequent history reflected in our Bible.

Of the fossil record's apparent lack of evidence for purposeful design:

The human need to see 'meaning' in the events and situations of life is well known. People do need hope that everything is not meaningless. But that does not mean that meaning must therefore be defined within the parameters of our human understanding. That would be an unwarranted leap of logic.

Job's 'comforters' assumed this, and pointed fingers at Job accordingly. If God is just, Job then had somehow to deserve the tragic situation which he found himself in. This presumption the Bible rejects!

For this reason also Hinduism falls back on the idea of previous existences to explain undeserved benefits or burdens, if justice is real. 'Karma' caused it: undefined injustice or merit out of sight of our present life.

Jesus confronted this human need to rationalize purpose and meaning to fit within the human framework of understanding when his disciples passed a comment on a man who was born blind.

That is – why was he born blind? If God is good and in charge – what justice is served by this tragic situation? Who is to be blamed?

Jesus answered, 'It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
We must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.
As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world'."

Jesus was demonstrating it – that which expresses God's character translated into human relationships: primarily, compassion and all that flows from it!

The building of this attitude, and the character it forms, changes people – changes society – and begins a process that leads to a reversal of all that distresses the history of humanity.

The blame factor, which was so prominent in the disciple's minds, the finger-pointing perspective, was the ultimate issue for Jesus in His seeing Himself as blameless-ransom for humanity's blame. This was His final act of self-sacrifice.

Christ came to take our blame before God (so 'blame' is no longer relevant for those who believe) and open the way as a light – for us to follow.

Jesus Himself is the standard for all future existence, the 'image' of God, that is – authority to represent the Creator in all His creation. As the Bible puts it:

"...because whom He did foreknow, He also did fore-appoint, to be conformed to the image of His Son,
that He [Jesus] might be first-born among many brethren..."

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Strangely, many apparently intelligent atheists such as Richard Dawkins betray a surprising ignorance in their passionate refutation of faith in God. For instance Dawkins' rebuttal of Pascal's faith assumes that one cannot choose to believe. Whereas the ability to choose faith/trust toward God by a decision of the will, rather than as an emotion (produced by religious background or environment), is the very basis of the moral accountability of humanity toward God. At least, so says the Bible, which is the basis of Christianity.

"Kant, who exerted his great logical ability to prove that the speculative reason in searching after God inevitably loses itself in sophisms and self-contradictions, believed himself to have found in the practical reason or moral faculty an assurance for the divine existence and government capable of defying the utmost efforts of skepticism."