(AI) “A worldview is the overall perspective, set of beliefs, and values through which a person or group understands and interprets the world and their place in it. It is the lens that shapes an individual’s thoughts, actions, decisions, and expectations, influencing their perception of reality, morality, and meaning in life.” 

There are two worldviews. One is an atheistic worldview in which there is no God, man is simply an evolved mammal, there are no absolute right or wrongs, the Bible is a book of myths, Jesus (even if he really did live) was just a good rabbi but not the Son of God and certainly not the risen from the dead Savior of our sins, LGBQT is accepted, and abortion is accepted.

The other is the Christian worldview where there is a God, Yahweh, the only true God; the Bible is the inspired word of God (the originals were inspired and we have reliable copies and translations); God created Adam and Eve full grown, as he did everything else, and the story of the creation in Genesis 1 is actual history, not myth; the theory of macro evolution is false science (macro evolution is that everything came from a non living matter chemicals, which is spontaneous generation and has been proven to be impossible, and that everything evolved over millions of years whereas micro evolution is the change within each species that we all agree happens); that sin is defined by what God tells us through inspired writers in the Bible and thus homosexuality is a sin; that marriage is only for a man and a woman; that God made us to be either male or female, period; that Jesus is the Son of God, crucified for our sins and raised from the dead; that life begins at conception when the egg is fertilized and has all the DNA that the zygote will ever have and that abortion at any point after conception is taking a human life (that is not about the rights or choices of a mother but about taking away the rights of an unborn human).

We have been given freedom of choice to choose which worldview we will adopt. An atheist can refute and deny all the beliefs mentioned above in the Christian worldview. That is his choice. If he/she is correct, then this life is all there is. The atheist will decide his or her own morals to live by. He/she might choose to get all the gusto you can, eat, drink and be merry, or even choose to be evil and engage in criminal activities. It that freedom of choice that God gave man (which is a proof that there is a God b/c evolved chemicals can’t choose; they are simply brain neurons responding to stimuli). The atheist has no hope for life after death, and he/she might be perfectly fine with that. The atheist mght even pity, or even hate, those poor misguided Christian worldview people think they are going to live forever in eternity with Jesus. That is the choice you have the freedom to make.

But the Christian worldview has the hope of eternal life. The proof of this hope is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Paul made a statement in 1 Corinthians 15:¹² Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? ¹³ But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised; ¹⁴ and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is in vain. ¹⁵ Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. ¹⁶ For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised; ¹⁷ and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. ¹⁹ If we have hoped in Christ only in this life, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Christianity and the hope of eternal life rise or fall based on whether Jesus was really raised from the dead. As Paul said, if we are wrong on that, then we truly are to be pitied by the atheists for spending our whole lives believing in some myth of a resurrected Jesus.

Of course, I would contend that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is overwhelming. Some say that Jesus faked death with some drug and then simply revived and walked out of the tomb, but the Romans, who were experts in crucifixion, confirmed that he was dead by not bothering to break his legs to hasten his death and then by sticking a spear in his heart area with blood and water pouring out just to make sure he was dead. How could he survive the scourging and crucifixion and then just walk out in good shape without any medical help? Even the enemies admitted that the tomb was empty. If the disciples stole the body, which is what the enemies claimed, then why were they not arrested and the body found? The disciples were afraid and in hiding after Jesus’ death, so what could have given them the courage to risk their lives to go steal the body. How could they sneak past Roman soldiers, even if the soldiers were sleeping (which is highly unlikely since they would be killed if someone took the body while they were guarding it). What could have made the apostles go out preaching the resurrection and dying martyrs’ deaths without any of them ever recanting their testimony that they had seen Jesus raised? There were many reliable witnesses of the raised Jesus (listed in 1 Corinthians 15), witnesses of good character and sufficient number (over 500 saw him at one time and that many people don’t have the same hallucination). The resurrection was preached just 50 days after, in the same city in which it occurred (not some far away country where testimony could not be confirmed or denied), thus giving ample opportunity for people to investigate and refute the testimony of the apostles, and yet thousands in that city accepted the resurrection as facts and became followers of Jesus. Then there is the testimony of Paul, who was killing Jewish Christians until the saw the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus and was converted. He spent the rest of his life preaching the resurrection, using his own conversion as proof that Jesus was raised. What could have possibly changed Paul other than seeing the raised Jesus? He lost everything and gainted nothing materially by becoming a Christian. Even James, Jesus’ brother who did not believe in Jesus while Jesus was alive, came to believe in Jesus after Jesus was raised. To me, all that is ample evidence that Jesus was raised from the dead. So I believe that we did land on the moon and that Jesus really was raised from the dead. I might be wrong, but that is what I choose to believe. Each person must accept or reject this evidence, but that is his freedom to choose.

I would encourage everyone to go past the debate about where and how the universe and life came to be, the debate about evolution, the debate about intelligent design, etc. I encourage you take one last look the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. If he was raised, then that proves that Yahweh is the only true God, that Jesus is the promised Messiah and Son of God, that Jesus’ death on the cross satisfies God’s wrath against our sins, that the Bible is the word of God (many Old Testment predictions about Jesus’ life and death made hundreds of years before he was born were all fulfilled in the New Testament), and that we will be raised to eternal life with Jesus and fellow believers when we die. The only proof that anything in history actually occurred is “reliable eyewitness testimony”. Some still don’t believe that we landed on the moon, but that goes against the reliable testimony of hundreds of people. The resurrection of Jesus, even if you don’t believe the 4 gospel writers were inspired, is based on reliable eyewitness testimony. You might refute the evidence. That is your choice.

There is not much else to say. An atheist doesn’t believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. That is his choice. If he is right, all of us, atheist or Christian, will simply die and cease to exist. If he is wrong, and if Jesus was raised from the dead, then the atheist will miss out on eternal life. This is not a personal debate to see who is right. There is no need for he atheist or the Christian to be condescending toward one another or attack each other with words. We can debate the evidence and then each make his/her choice and live with our choices. This is about examining the evidence for the resurrection.

Where does prayer come in to all this? Of course, the atheist is not praying to any God. The athiest might point out that Hindus, for example, are praying to gods that neither atheists nor Christians even believe exist. Many scoff at Christians b/c they arrogantly believe that their God, Yahweh, is the only true god out of all the thousands of other gods. But belief in false gods of many cultures doesn’t mean there is not one true God. So what proof do we have that the God of the Bible, Yahweh, is the only true God? Several proofs. The fulfilled Bible predictions of events in history (like the destruction of many nations predicted ahead of time by the prophets in the Old Testament); the fulfilled predictions about Jesus the Messiah and his birth, life, miracles, death, and resurrection; the fulfilled predictions of Jesus and the apostles about the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD. All these things prove that Yahweh is the one true God and that the Bible is His inspired word through inspired writers. There is no such proof for the existence of the Hindu gods, for example, or the gods of the Egyptans, Babylonians, or other cultures. But the Christians pray to Yahweh through Jesus, believing that God can work providentially in the life of unbelievers to perhaps bring them to believe in God and Jesus. That’s all we can do. If there is a God, then He is the God of love that you read about in the Bible. He loves all His creation, even if they deny that He even exists. We pray that He will somehow give every unbeliever the opportunity to change.

I close with what Jesus said in John 17:³ And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”