Letter to an Atheist

in an effort to blog more regularly than once a month, i will now sheepishly post something i've already typed. i came across this atheist's website, and left this comment:

hi michael =)

my name is siehjin, and i'm a Christian from Malaysia (a small country in southeast asia).

as a Christian, i believe that Truth and Reality are rooted in God. i understand that, as an atheist, you reject this idea and believe that as humans we have to discover Truth and Reality for ourselves (which would be true even if God were the ultimate Truth and Reality, as we'd still have to discover Him ourselves... but nevermind that).

the problem, to me, is that there can be no solid basis for Truth and Reality in the absence of God... truth then becomes relative, some truths being true only for certain people and other truths being true for others. (am i making sense here?) in this understanding of the world, the only Truth is that there is no absolute Truth. perhaps this is implied in your second last paragraph, "it is impossible for anybody to be certain about anything".

now the problem with this relativistic truth statement is that, it commits suicide. if there is no absolute Truth, then it is not absolutely True that there is no absolute Truth. there may be no absolute Truth for you, but there may be absolute Truth for me. in the end, we have a confusing hodge-podge where there is nothing is essentially true! to use your own words, if it is "impossible for anybody to be certain about anything", then it is impossible for you to be certain that it is "impossible for anybody to be certain about anything". therefore, it is possible for somebody to be certain about something; but that isn't certain either.

i hope i'm not boring you with all this. it's like that statement, "i never tell the truth". if it's true, i'm lying; but if i'm lying, it's true.

not only is this relativistic position on truth impossible to hold on to philosophically; i don't think it works in real life either. no one can live in a continuous limbo of truthlessness. all of us live as if there were such a thing as truth, absolute Truth. atheists, for example (correct me if i'm wrong) believe that it is True that there is no God. the very logical and rational way you write, presupposes that logic and rationality lead us to Truth.

therefore, i reject the notion that there is no such thing as absolute Truth. i believe rather that there is such a thing as absolute Truth, and i call this absolute Truth "God". interestingly enough, Jesus claimed to be "the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life".

looking forward to your responses to my thoughts. may God, if He exists, bless you! =)

i'll post a real blog post soon. hopefully. heheh =P