What do you think?
Rate this book
There Is a God: How to Respond to Atheism in the Last Days
We know the scriptures were given for us, but did you know that they specifically teach us how to combat the rampant atheism in our day? Addressing skepticism head-on, There is a God helps Latter-day Saints respond to atheist challenges and even reach out to rescue those whose faith has faltered.
- GenresReligion
176 pages, Paperback
Published May 9, 2017
16 people are currently reading
35 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 16, 2018
This book reads more like a philosophy book than a novel. But if you love that kind of stuff it is a great resource for really questioning the assumptions behind not just atheism but much or our modern culture and society. I really appreciated the study and work Dr. Lewis put into this book. All the reading and thinking about every modern philosophy and ideal was clearly evident. Even though I loved this book, I often wondered who the intended audience is. People who have left the church would never go along with many of the doctrinal assumptions and the vast majority of the lay church members would not be able to comprehend the sophistry in much of the book. Then I realized I was the intended audience. Educated members of the church who have friends and loved ones leaving the church. It helps us not only to have answers to their accusations against God but also to fortify us in our beliefs and knowledge of God. If that description fits you definitely pick up this book.
March 19, 2019
“And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea... seek learning, even by study and also by faith.” Doctrine & Covenants 88:118
Professor Lewis quotes this verse held as scripture by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which some people know as “Mormons” or “LDS”). Clearly, not everyone has faith in God or prophets or ancient scriptures, so if we hope to persuade others or even simply defend our beliefs and right to choose, we must be able to do so in a manner that can be understood.
Lewis is NOT, however, suggesting anyone adopt a confrontational approach - even when being confronted. He goes through the common arguments from the so-called “New Atheists” against God and religion, and refutes them with LDS teachings. And - in my opinion - he refutes them very effectively, but this book really is written for an LDS audience. While those of other faiths may agree with many of his points, many of the doctrines that are unique to LDS theology and perspective are not as widely accepted. Some parts of the book get highly philosophical, and I did my best to understand and follow along. But whether or not I ever have an opportunity to share some of his points with someone else (assuming I can remember them, that is!), I found it to be very affirming to my own faith and beliefs. And for those who share my faith, I highly recommend this book.
Professor Lewis quotes this verse held as scripture by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which some people know as “Mormons” or “LDS”). Clearly, not everyone has faith in God or prophets or ancient scriptures, so if we hope to persuade others or even simply defend our beliefs and right to choose, we must be able to do so in a manner that can be understood.
Lewis is NOT, however, suggesting anyone adopt a confrontational approach - even when being confronted. He goes through the common arguments from the so-called “New Atheists” against God and religion, and refutes them with LDS teachings. And - in my opinion - he refutes them very effectively, but this book really is written for an LDS audience. While those of other faiths may agree with many of his points, many of the doctrines that are unique to LDS theology and perspective are not as widely accepted. Some parts of the book get highly philosophical, and I did my best to understand and follow along. But whether or not I ever have an opportunity to share some of his points with someone else (assuming I can remember them, that is!), I found it to be very affirming to my own faith and beliefs. And for those who share my faith, I highly recommend this book.
July 28, 2021
Very well written, and well-reasoned!
February 15, 2018
Here are my favorite quotes from Prof. Lewis' masterpiece, There Is a God: How to Respond to Atheism in the Last Days:
Intro: This book is an extended personal reflection on religion... and a justification of my beliefs that others may profit from them. It addresses the standard claims of atheism and explains why I, through the restored gospel, have come down strongly on the side of belief in God. I am sharing what has helped me on my own journey of faith, and I hope it can help others on theirs.
Ch.1: "The atheist argument from evil isn't really an argument against God but only against a certain kind of God--an all-powerful and all-good one. My guess is that atheists know by intuition that God must be good and powerful, so their refutation of a certain kind of god presupposes a knowledge of that god's characteristics and, therefore, his existence. Perhaps they are not arguing so much against God, but arguing with God (as many of us have done from time to time) for allowing suffering.
Ch. 2: The Book of Mormon anticipated all of the major ideas of these atheists... the anti-Christ Korihor argued that religion was 'the effect of a frenzied mind' (Alma 30:16; an anticipation of Freud) and a tool for the ruling class to 'glut [themselves] with the labors' of the workers (Alma 30:27; an anticipation of Marx). He also said that you "cannot know of things which ye do not see" (Alma 30:15; an anticipation of logical positivism), that "every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature" (Alma 30:17; an anticipation of Darwin), and that the end of God means that "whatsoever a man did was no crime" (Alma 30:17; an anticipation of Nietzsche)." "...binary code that travels wirelessly through the air and only discernable on electronic screens. Ryle ridiculed the idea of 'ghosts in the machine' while on the very cusp of the new information age in which 'ghost-animanted' machines would transform the world... The information coded in our DNA, which determines the structure of our bodies persists over time. Atheists might not ridicule the idea of a future resurrection if they realized that science itself has shown that this process already happens. The matter comes and goes while the information (the ordering and structuring pattern for the matter) remains...While it's common today to use the term information, LDS scriptures (prophetic as always) have long called it intelligence. [footnote 6- Early computer scientists, lacking the word information, even referred to computer code as intelligence.]... While information lies at the foundation of all reality, materialists, who claim the mantle of science, proceed as if science itself hadn't overthrown their view many decades ago."
Ch. 3: "Eyes are merely a tool through which our sight is filtered, and brains are merely a tool through which our minds are filtered. Damage to the eye can cause reduction in sight as damage to the brain can cause reduction in thought, but it doesn't change the reality that the eye is not sight and brain is not mind... A televisioin set can be damaged and thereby transmit show less perfectly (or not at all), but that hardly means the television set is the show (or produces the show). And yet, using the same logic, atheists continue to assert that the brain is the mind (or produces the mind)." "If, as materialists claim, humans are just puppets of genetics and environment without the ability to choose, what, exactly, would a totalitarian government take away?"
Ch. 4: "The important question is not whether I was born a Mormon but whether I put Mormonism to the test. I have. It passed. I continue to believe in it for the same reasons I continue to believe the earth is round or that democracy is the best form of government. That I was born into a round earth or democratic culture does not affect the correctness of a belief in a round earth or democracy; that I was born into a Mormon culture does not affect the correctness of Mormonism."[Athiests] may respond, "I don't believe you can get extrasensory knowledge because I have never gotten extrasensory knowledge." This is tantamount to a blind person saying, "I don't think anyone can see because I have never seen." Atheists, in other words, are using their own spiritual deficiencies as evidence against spirituality in general. It's an attempt to impose their own limitations and narrow experiences onto everyone else--a form of bigotry." "If you identify the taboo words of a culture, you will also have found what it holds sacred. A century ago, genteel Americans would casually utter racial slurs in public but never utter the curse words associated with God, the body or sexuality. Today, it is the opposite. The n-word is considered a curse word for the same reason the f-word once was: it is a derogatory way to refer to something society holds sacred. We have appropriately increased our reverence for racial equality but have inappropriately decreased our reverence for God, sex and the body."
Ch 5 "All of this shows that atheists are not nearly as wedded to empiricism as they claim. They say that seeing is believing, but if they saw God or an angel today they would almost certainly maintain that it was simply their brain playing a trick on them. After all, that's what they do with the testimonies of thousands who actually have seen God or angels. If seeing is believing for the atheist, then why do they explain away the many sightings of God that real people have had? The atheist claim that seeing is believing is manifestly not true. But the most fundamental flaw in atheist attempt to explain away religious experiences is that they undercut materialist empiricism itself. If we can dismiss spiritual experiences (such is feeling the spirit) by appealing to brain chemistry, we can also dismiss empirical experiences in the same way for the same reasons, thereby rendering science impossible." "I am more sure of my love for my children that I am of the latest claims of genetic science, so why deny this love is real based on the dubious interpretations of certain scientific findings, which, unlike my love for my children, is subject to change, falsification, and reversal." "God does not make himself visible to all people since such a perfect knowledge will bring responsibility and condemnation upon us: "for unto whom and to whom much is given much is required; and he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation" (D&C 82:3)" "Isn't the whole idea of unremembered consciousness just a lame attempt to save a palled concept of pre-mortality? Actually, unremembered consciousness is extremely common. It is characteristic of both infancy and dreams... my three-year-old son will remember nothing of his life right now. He and I will tell jokes, play games, read stories, watch movies, and even have a rational conversation, but as an adult he will have no recollection of any of this. Our current consciousness did not emerge out of nothingness, as materialist say, but out of previous consciousness that we have no recollection of".
Ch 6 "That most Americans are not LDS hardly makes a Mormon living in Provo Utah a dissenter, and that most Americans are religious hardly makes a materialist scientist in an academic department a dissenter. The free thinking atheist, then, resemble the proverbial thundering herd of independent minds running along with their peer group and priding themselves on their independence while manifesting very little... I've learned to distrust the progressivism of my own field as a sociologically created academic fad, and scientist should learn to distrust the materialism of their field for the same reason." "A godless universe is also a morally relativist one, and this is highly attractive in an age of substance abuse, and endless material acquisition, and general hedonism... of the four steps of repentance – recognize, confess, ask forgiveness, and forsake – we usually think of recognition as the easiest. But in our world of moral relativism, most never even make it that far."
Ch. 7 "But utilitarianism is especially problematic for atheists because it still runs into the moral – empirical problem. How can an empiricist appeal to the good as a basis from reality when nobody has ever seen this mysterious thing called good? ... When the pleasure centers of the brain light up that is objectively good and we should therefore promote the brain activity associated with pleasurable feelings. But from a materialist framework, why is it morally preferable to have another certain part of a material object (the brain) light up and not another? What does lighting up have to do with right and wrong? Is it morally correct for a firefly to light up?"... some atheists try to cling to the utilitarian argument by rephrasing it in pragmatic terms, saying, "morality is that which is most useful." But this only begs the question, "useful for what?" Hitler's Nazi regime was certainly useful for killing Jews, Bull Connor's police brutality was useful for repressing African-Americans, and slavery was useful for harvesting the plantation owner’s cotton." Deeming something useful doesn't solve anything morally.... either atheists are consistent empiricists or they are not. If they are, then they should stop talking about an invisible entity such as the good. If they are not, then they should stop hectoring religious people for believing in a non-empirical God." "what evolutionary morality gives us, then, is a mere moral tautology. It's maximum must be, "keep doing whatever you were doing because if you were doing it, evolution has programmed you to do it; therefore, it's morally correct." This is hardly a useful guide to correct action, but it is all the atheists have. Those of us not wrapped up in the irrationalities of Darwinian fundamentalism understand the "evolved" doesn't equate to "good," yet new atheist scientist, for all their PhD's and endowed academic chairs, refuse to face up to this obvious flaw in their moral reasoning." "How many ex- Mormon atheists, when reminded of times when they felt God or the spirit, now say, "yes, but those are just feelings"? Yet when it comes to morality, they accept "just feeling" as a guide to right action and a legitimate path to knowledge. Do they see the contradiction?"
Ch.8 Is faith really the problem, or are people the problem? Isn't it more likely that humans are naturally violent and the religious teachings of love, mercy, and forgiveness actually helped tame those natural impulses?… To test whether religion was the cause of violence, we would have to control for the religious variable by comparing the per capita violence committed by religious believers to the per capita violence committed by atheists... we can look at those few situations in history where atheists have gotten exactly what they wanted – overtly atheistic regimes purged of religion – and then contrast them to the religious regimes of the time. When we do this we find the atheist have it exactly backward: atheism is for more likely to produce more violence than religion. And it's not even close. When humanity has created atheist societies, they have been unmitigated disasters.… Anecdotal evidence is not scientific evidence, yet anecdotes (a handful of stories) are all the atheist have in their condemnation of religion." "asking is not controlling, so God is no more a tyrant than is a beggar asking for charity." "If criminals are robots who couldn't have helped their actions, then the judges and juries and voting public who send him to prison or the electric chair are also robot who can't help their actions. Why, then, is the atheist upset about the death penalty or other harsh sentences for criminals? The atheist needs to make up her mind: either nobody is morally responsible, in which case she needs to quit lecturing us about punishing criminals, or people are morally responsible, in which case criminals can justly be punished for their chosen actions." "Sigmund Freud famously declared the religion was a neurosis of the mentally weak. The reality is the opposite: the religious have better mental health and are generally more well-adjusted than unbelievers."
Intro: This book is an extended personal reflection on religion... and a justification of my beliefs that others may profit from them. It addresses the standard claims of atheism and explains why I, through the restored gospel, have come down strongly on the side of belief in God. I am sharing what has helped me on my own journey of faith, and I hope it can help others on theirs.
Ch.1: "The atheist argument from evil isn't really an argument against God but only against a certain kind of God--an all-powerful and all-good one. My guess is that atheists know by intuition that God must be good and powerful, so their refutation of a certain kind of god presupposes a knowledge of that god's characteristics and, therefore, his existence. Perhaps they are not arguing so much against God, but arguing with God (as many of us have done from time to time) for allowing suffering.
Ch. 2: The Book of Mormon anticipated all of the major ideas of these atheists... the anti-Christ Korihor argued that religion was 'the effect of a frenzied mind' (Alma 30:16; an anticipation of Freud) and a tool for the ruling class to 'glut [themselves] with the labors' of the workers (Alma 30:27; an anticipation of Marx). He also said that you "cannot know of things which ye do not see" (Alma 30:15; an anticipation of logical positivism), that "every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature" (Alma 30:17; an anticipation of Darwin), and that the end of God means that "whatsoever a man did was no crime" (Alma 30:17; an anticipation of Nietzsche)." "...binary code that travels wirelessly through the air and only discernable on electronic screens. Ryle ridiculed the idea of 'ghosts in the machine' while on the very cusp of the new information age in which 'ghost-animanted' machines would transform the world... The information coded in our DNA, which determines the structure of our bodies persists over time. Atheists might not ridicule the idea of a future resurrection if they realized that science itself has shown that this process already happens. The matter comes and goes while the information (the ordering and structuring pattern for the matter) remains...While it's common today to use the term information, LDS scriptures (prophetic as always) have long called it intelligence. [footnote 6- Early computer scientists, lacking the word information, even referred to computer code as intelligence.]... While information lies at the foundation of all reality, materialists, who claim the mantle of science, proceed as if science itself hadn't overthrown their view many decades ago."
Ch. 3: "Eyes are merely a tool through which our sight is filtered, and brains are merely a tool through which our minds are filtered. Damage to the eye can cause reduction in sight as damage to the brain can cause reduction in thought, but it doesn't change the reality that the eye is not sight and brain is not mind... A televisioin set can be damaged and thereby transmit show less perfectly (or not at all), but that hardly means the television set is the show (or produces the show). And yet, using the same logic, atheists continue to assert that the brain is the mind (or produces the mind)." "If, as materialists claim, humans are just puppets of genetics and environment without the ability to choose, what, exactly, would a totalitarian government take away?"
Ch. 4: "The important question is not whether I was born a Mormon but whether I put Mormonism to the test. I have. It passed. I continue to believe in it for the same reasons I continue to believe the earth is round or that democracy is the best form of government. That I was born into a round earth or democratic culture does not affect the correctness of a belief in a round earth or democracy; that I was born into a Mormon culture does not affect the correctness of Mormonism."[Athiests] may respond, "I don't believe you can get extrasensory knowledge because I have never gotten extrasensory knowledge." This is tantamount to a blind person saying, "I don't think anyone can see because I have never seen." Atheists, in other words, are using their own spiritual deficiencies as evidence against spirituality in general. It's an attempt to impose their own limitations and narrow experiences onto everyone else--a form of bigotry." "If you identify the taboo words of a culture, you will also have found what it holds sacred. A century ago, genteel Americans would casually utter racial slurs in public but never utter the curse words associated with God, the body or sexuality. Today, it is the opposite. The n-word is considered a curse word for the same reason the f-word once was: it is a derogatory way to refer to something society holds sacred. We have appropriately increased our reverence for racial equality but have inappropriately decreased our reverence for God, sex and the body."
Ch 5 "All of this shows that atheists are not nearly as wedded to empiricism as they claim. They say that seeing is believing, but if they saw God or an angel today they would almost certainly maintain that it was simply their brain playing a trick on them. After all, that's what they do with the testimonies of thousands who actually have seen God or angels. If seeing is believing for the atheist, then why do they explain away the many sightings of God that real people have had? The atheist claim that seeing is believing is manifestly not true. But the most fundamental flaw in atheist attempt to explain away religious experiences is that they undercut materialist empiricism itself. If we can dismiss spiritual experiences (such is feeling the spirit) by appealing to brain chemistry, we can also dismiss empirical experiences in the same way for the same reasons, thereby rendering science impossible." "I am more sure of my love for my children that I am of the latest claims of genetic science, so why deny this love is real based on the dubious interpretations of certain scientific findings, which, unlike my love for my children, is subject to change, falsification, and reversal." "God does not make himself visible to all people since such a perfect knowledge will bring responsibility and condemnation upon us: "for unto whom and to whom much is given much is required; and he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation" (D&C 82:3)" "Isn't the whole idea of unremembered consciousness just a lame attempt to save a palled concept of pre-mortality? Actually, unremembered consciousness is extremely common. It is characteristic of both infancy and dreams... my three-year-old son will remember nothing of his life right now. He and I will tell jokes, play games, read stories, watch movies, and even have a rational conversation, but as an adult he will have no recollection of any of this. Our current consciousness did not emerge out of nothingness, as materialist say, but out of previous consciousness that we have no recollection of".
Ch 6 "That most Americans are not LDS hardly makes a Mormon living in Provo Utah a dissenter, and that most Americans are religious hardly makes a materialist scientist in an academic department a dissenter. The free thinking atheist, then, resemble the proverbial thundering herd of independent minds running along with their peer group and priding themselves on their independence while manifesting very little... I've learned to distrust the progressivism of my own field as a sociologically created academic fad, and scientist should learn to distrust the materialism of their field for the same reason." "A godless universe is also a morally relativist one, and this is highly attractive in an age of substance abuse, and endless material acquisition, and general hedonism... of the four steps of repentance – recognize, confess, ask forgiveness, and forsake – we usually think of recognition as the easiest. But in our world of moral relativism, most never even make it that far."
Ch. 7 "But utilitarianism is especially problematic for atheists because it still runs into the moral – empirical problem. How can an empiricist appeal to the good as a basis from reality when nobody has ever seen this mysterious thing called good? ... When the pleasure centers of the brain light up that is objectively good and we should therefore promote the brain activity associated with pleasurable feelings. But from a materialist framework, why is it morally preferable to have another certain part of a material object (the brain) light up and not another? What does lighting up have to do with right and wrong? Is it morally correct for a firefly to light up?"... some atheists try to cling to the utilitarian argument by rephrasing it in pragmatic terms, saying, "morality is that which is most useful." But this only begs the question, "useful for what?" Hitler's Nazi regime was certainly useful for killing Jews, Bull Connor's police brutality was useful for repressing African-Americans, and slavery was useful for harvesting the plantation owner’s cotton." Deeming something useful doesn't solve anything morally.... either atheists are consistent empiricists or they are not. If they are, then they should stop talking about an invisible entity such as the good. If they are not, then they should stop hectoring religious people for believing in a non-empirical God." "what evolutionary morality gives us, then, is a mere moral tautology. It's maximum must be, "keep doing whatever you were doing because if you were doing it, evolution has programmed you to do it; therefore, it's morally correct." This is hardly a useful guide to correct action, but it is all the atheists have. Those of us not wrapped up in the irrationalities of Darwinian fundamentalism understand the "evolved" doesn't equate to "good," yet new atheist scientist, for all their PhD's and endowed academic chairs, refuse to face up to this obvious flaw in their moral reasoning." "How many ex- Mormon atheists, when reminded of times when they felt God or the spirit, now say, "yes, but those are just feelings"? Yet when it comes to morality, they accept "just feeling" as a guide to right action and a legitimate path to knowledge. Do they see the contradiction?"
Ch.8 Is faith really the problem, or are people the problem? Isn't it more likely that humans are naturally violent and the religious teachings of love, mercy, and forgiveness actually helped tame those natural impulses?… To test whether religion was the cause of violence, we would have to control for the religious variable by comparing the per capita violence committed by religious believers to the per capita violence committed by atheists... we can look at those few situations in history where atheists have gotten exactly what they wanted – overtly atheistic regimes purged of religion – and then contrast them to the religious regimes of the time. When we do this we find the atheist have it exactly backward: atheism is for more likely to produce more violence than religion. And it's not even close. When humanity has created atheist societies, they have been unmitigated disasters.… Anecdotal evidence is not scientific evidence, yet anecdotes (a handful of stories) are all the atheist have in their condemnation of religion." "asking is not controlling, so God is no more a tyrant than is a beggar asking for charity." "If criminals are robots who couldn't have helped their actions, then the judges and juries and voting public who send him to prison or the electric chair are also robot who can't help their actions. Why, then, is the atheist upset about the death penalty or other harsh sentences for criminals? The atheist needs to make up her mind: either nobody is morally responsible, in which case she needs to quit lecturing us about punishing criminals, or people are morally responsible, in which case criminals can justly be punished for their chosen actions." "Sigmund Freud famously declared the religion was a neurosis of the mentally weak. The reality is the opposite: the religious have better mental health and are generally more well-adjusted than unbelievers."
February 16, 2018
I checked this book out from the library; at page 19 I paused to purchase the Kindle edition from Amazon. I have no background in science but over the years I have tried to read and understand, Hawking, Schrodinger, and others and have watched a fair number of Ted talks and YouTube videos on matter, motion, and quantum theory. One cannot do this without encountering atheism, atheists, and their philosophies.
When I saw the full title of the book it immediately appealed to me. I've been troubled from time to time by my inability to respond to atheists even if it was not in open engagement but only in the dark corners of my own mind.
I cannot begin to describe the enthusiasm with which I read this work!
When I saw the full title of the book it immediately appealed to me. I've been troubled from time to time by my inability to respond to atheists even if it was not in open engagement but only in the dark corners of my own mind.
I cannot begin to describe the enthusiasm with which I read this work!
November 27, 2019
Logic rather than faith
Religious people do not debate well on God. They usually quote scripture and the atheist declares victory. What makes this book excellent and different is how Mr. Lewis uses logic and science in response to the atheist. The typical atheist is not accustomed this type of debate and therefore this book is excellent addition to the subject of God.
Religious people do not debate well on God. They usually quote scripture and the atheist declares victory. What makes this book excellent and different is how Mr. Lewis uses logic and science in response to the atheist. The typical atheist is not accustomed this type of debate and therefore this book is excellent addition to the subject of God.
December 17, 2021
This book reminds me of why I would never be a philosophy major in college. Lewis makes some good points, but you have to wade through too many vocabulary words to get there. Also, he seems angry with scholars. It's always hard for me to read when the tone is so confrontational.
October 23, 2022
Although the spiritusl and societal landscape is a bit different now then when this book came out, I feel that this is a very well written response to the various challenges that are out there to one's faith.
August 12, 2018
Gives good understanding on how to reply to people who are atheists in regards to faith.
November 15, 2018
Very well researched book! It took me some time to get through it because it is very scholarly and contains philosophy terms that I was not familiar with.
June 5, 2019
A well-written and well-documented book by an accomplished BYU-Idaho history professor. The arguments are consistent and fair. A great book for the times we live in.
March 27, 2022
Really tried to enjoy this book. Almost put it aside a few times without finishing. It was just not something that spoke to me.
February 13, 2020
It is a good book with many great answers but for me, much of it was very hard to understand
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews