Newsletter

Daily Prayer

Daily Prayer provided by the official Church of England web site, © The Archbishops' Council of the Church of England, 2002-2004.

First, religious belief is about experiencing God. It’s not just the mere belief that God exists in the same way that extra-terrestrials may exist. We do not expect everyone to believe in God; if we did, then the onus would indeed be on us to prove it beyond doubt, and of course this would be impossible. We respect people who choose not to believe, for whatever reason. Dogmatic atheists, on the other hand, claim that belief in God is impossible, that it goes against the evidence, that nobody in their right mind can possibly be a believer. They are the ones who expect others to think like them. So the onus is on them to prove, to believers and agnostics alike, that faith is a logical impossibility or that it is inconsistent with what we know about the world. We don’t think they can do that.