Atheists and a Flat Earth

On my morning cycling commute to work, I was pondering God's existence. I asked Him, "Why can't you make yourself known in clear and obvious ways? What is the value of faith, that we must rely on it rather than on empirical evidence?" As I mused about the various ways I wished God would manifest himself to us in the modern age (including a giant robot-like creature that perpetually roamed the earth), I was suddenly reminded of the unbelief of the ancients when presented with the manifest power of God (the Plagues, Jesus's miracles, etc.) Why didn't they believe, after seeing these amazing manifestations of God's presence and power? Of course, if I were a modern atheist, I could simply say, "Because those miracles didn't actually happen. They're just fables." Now, of course, we're stuck with arguing the veracity of the Bible (which, I believe, there are some great modern apologetic resources on, including the work of Douglas Groothuis and Ravi Zacharias).

But, returning to the simple question of why God would not reveal himself in obvious ways so as to put an end to all debate, I realized that, even if we dismiss the Bible miracles as fable (which, to be clear, I do not), the argument as to man's refusal to believe in spite of overwhelming evidence can be seen in modern times by examining modern proponents of the Flat Earth theory (yes, there are still those who espouse this belief). Although, from my understanding, they concede that other planets and satellites are indeed spherical, they refuse to accept that Earth follows this pattern. Their arguments are typically based on their own limited experiences and observations, and any evidence presented to them clearly showing a spherical earth is dismissed as conspiracy (to what end would governments perpetuate such a ruse, I haven't been able to surmise).

However, I expanded my idea of how God could manifest himself in such a way that everyone could see that he does, indeed, exist, and what I realized was that, due to his surpassing glory, we could never view him exactly. This means he would always have to show evidence of himself in lesser ways that we could actually observe and comprehend. And there is the essence of the problem: There is necessarily a separation between the manifestations of God's existence and God himself. That separation, or distinction, is where man goes astray.

If we take my childish solution of the giant robot wandering the earth, proclaiming the existence of God, what would quickly happen as a result of seeing this robot? Would we believe in the God it professes, or would we instead worship the robot itself? Hopefully you can see where we're heading with this, because it presents a problem for us that is pointed out clearly by Paul in Romans 1:18-24 and is still quite evident today in the way in which we approach nature. Because we cannot directly observe God in His glory, he has shown himself to us in other ways through his creation. But we have dismissed the Creator, and have instead worshiped the creation. In this case, we have set the creation as the creator. We have made nature the supreme, non-sentient designer of things by way of extraordinary chance. It takes the same amount of faith to believe things exploded into being out of nothing than to believe that a sentient, eternal god put them here.

And so, as I continued riding my bike along the city streets, I was reminded of the value of faith for, without faith, even something as seemingly evident (in modern times) as the spherical nature of our planet can be called into question, until such time as each one of us is able to take a rocket ride into the void and see for ourselves. Looks like we must put our faith in quite a few things, people and entities in order to discover the truth about ourselves and our existence. Thank you, God, for revealing yourself the way that you have. It is by your grace we even receive those manifestations we have of you.