I’m going to show my cards here at the beginning: I believe the only consistent worldview is the Christian worldview. I’m going to give you two reasons other worldviews are prevaricated: death and adjectives.
I listen to a lot of atheist podcasts. The thing that takes me by surprise is how many things they take for granted. Morality is completely taken for granted; when in reality, the basis for morality outside a Christian worldview is nothing but preference, societal convention, or the desire for certain varieties of star dust to flourish, but all of those options are easily knocked down by logic. After rejecting the existence of the only source of truth and morality (God Himself), they proceed to judge and criticize God for immoral things He apparently didn’t even do in the Bible. He’s fake, but I hate Him, the atheist may proffer. They fail to realize the atrocity they’re pinning on God isn’t even a valid atrocity in their worldview.
God killed people. So what? What is death? To the atheist, it’s not a soul leaving the body, or (as some Christians believe) a temporary sleep until the resurrection, it’s merely atoms in the form of a living body changing to the form of a gradually decomposing body, eventually dissolving completely and leaving the atoms to go on to do whatever is next for them. If we are nothing but atoms, then death is just atoms moving on to the next stop in their journey.
Sure, the brain stops working, but what does that mean? A chemical reaction happening in your brain stopped and now you don’t talk anymore. That requires the same amount of grief and mourning as the blowing out of a candle. Atheism demotes brain activity to the level of a shaken soda can. So who cares if the fizzing ceases?
Why do atheists act like God is evil for stopping a chemical reaction in the brain, and allowing the atoms our bodies are made of to take a different form? Evil is an adjective — why do you believe in adjectives at all? Adjectives require some standard of truth, evil has to relate to a standard of evil, and so does good, and so does blue and green; so if you’re going to reject the Man who called Himself Truth, why would you go on to make a truth claim about His morality? Truth is more than your preference; because I may have a contradictory preference, and then who’s right? Truth is more than societal convention; because that means the Nazis weren’t wrong to act according to their societal norm. Truth is more than the desire to see an arbitrary species flourish; because who said we were meant to flourish as a species? I think tabloids and energy drinks can attest to the fact that we might not have what it takes to make it in the Darwinian marathon.
Then the atheist will turn the tables on the Christian and say, “I hope belief in God isn’t the only reason you don’t murder people.” As if, should the evidence ever somehow prove God doesn’t exist — and therefore morals don’t matter — we would just start killing people because of that glaringly absent purpose in life. Of course not, because I believe murder is wrong, period. Here’s the problem: that proves God. The fact that we both believe murder is wrong regardless of our belief, or lack of belief, in God proves that there is a moral law that transcends both of us. A law that transcends our preferences, societal conventions, and the good of our species; the only three options the atheist has in explaining morality and truth.
This all culminates to one crucial point: death and adjectives are real. The very existence of death proves that we’re not merely chemical reactions. We’re not just candles being blown out. We are beings made in the image of God. That’s why we mourn when somebody dies. Someone made in the image of God, created to glorify and enjoy Him forever, was subject to death. There’s something wrong with that, and we all recognize it; even if we don’t have the right understanding of it. The beautiful thing about this is that the same (Christian) worldview that accurately explains death, is the only worldview that has an answer to it.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 6:23 ESV)
Follow me with this. Don’t tune out. Read this next paragraph twice if you have to. Death is the result of sin; it’s called the law of sin and death. All humanity is under that law, but when Jesus died with no sin on His account, He broke that law of sin and death, and He rose again because death had no power to hold Him without sin. He can credit that very same death and resurrection to you, and you’ll be free from the law of sin and death. You’ll be granted eternal life. Repent and put your trust in Jesus’ atonement. Don’t pretend death and adjectives don’t matter, because we all know they do.