An atheist was walking through the woods and wondered aloud:

“What majestic trees! What powerful rivers! What beautiful animals!”

As he was walking alongside the river, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him and he turned to look. He saw a 7-foot grizzly bear charging towards him.

He ran as fast as he could up the path. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the bear was closing in on him. He looked over his shoulder again, and the bear was even closer. He tripped and fell to the ground. He rolled over to pick himself up but saw that the bear was right on top of him, reaching for him with his left paw and raising his right paw to strike him.

At that instant the Atheist cried out, “Oh God!”

Time stopped. The bear froze. The forest was silent.

As a bright light shone upon the man, a voice came out of the sky.

“You deny my existence for all these years, teach others I don’t exist, and even credit creation to cosmic accident. Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to count you as a believer?”

The atheist looked directly into the light and said, “It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a Christian now, but perhaps you could make the bear a Christian?”

“Very well,” said the voice.

The light went out. The sounds of the forest resumed. And the bear dropped his right paw, brought both paws together, bowed his head and said:

“Lord bless this food, which I am about to receive from thy bounty. Amen.”

I can’t remember where I found this little story but it helps to illustrate another facet of the incoherence of atheism. We’ve all heard the tired line that, ‘if the Christian God was truly loving then there would be no evil in the world or we wouldn’t face difficulties in life,’ or something similar.

Most atheists see this as a “kill shot” in that their superior intelligence just did away with thousands of years of religious belief. The objection is easily dismissed and rejected.

One, God never promised our lives on earth would be easy and that they wouldn’t be without pain and hardship. In fact, they are to be expected. And two, why would anyone think that if they rejected God’s commands on how to live a peaceful and fulfilled life, that peace and fulfillment would come of their own accord? If you reject God, why would God feel some sort of obligation to you to ensure that your life was free from hardship? It’s an absurd claim to make, especially for an atheist who believes there is no purpose or direction to the natural order.

In his heart, the atheist does not want to believe in anyone above him. He has set himself as the god of his own life and only to himself will he have to answer. This objection to God’s existence is merely the outworking of his unbelief in order to soothe his conscience in that unbelief. It is not logical. It is not rational. Atheism by its very nature is incoherent and should never be taken seriously by anyone.