As well-known Christians announce a newfound loss of faith, other believers face increasing pressure or doubt. We feel let down, ashamed to question God's goodness, and in need of assurance of our faith and answers to our pain. From a leading voice on issues facing Christians today comes a frank and insightful discussion about whether it's okay to doubt God and what to do about it. Michael L. Brown answers the very toughest questions, such as · Why are people leaving the church? · Why haven't my prayers been answered? · Why do people have to experience pain? · What if there is no God? · And more These pages will lead anyone who has been hurt, anyone with questions that will not go away, into a wonderful, fresh, life-transforming encounter with the living God.

Throughout history, arguments for and against the existence of God have been largely confined to philosophy and theology, while science has sat on the sidelines. Despite the fact that science has revolutionized every aspect of human life and greatly clarified our understanding of the world, somehow the notion has arisen that it has nothing to say about the possibility of a supreme being, which much of humanity worships as the source of all reality. This book contends that, if God exists, some evidence for this existence should be detectable by scientific means, especially considering the central role that God is alleged to play in the operation of the universe and the lives of humans. Treating the traditional God concept, as conventionally presented in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, like any other scientific hypothesis, physicist Stenger examines all of the claims made for God's existence. He considers the latest Intelligent Design arguments as evidence of God's influence in biology. He looks at human behavior for evidence of immaterial souls and the possible effects of prayer. He discusses the findings of physics and astronomy in weighing the suggestions that the universe is the work of a creator and that humans are God's special creation. After evaluating all the scientific evidence, Stenger concludes that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God. This paperback edition of the New York Times bestselling hardcover edition contains a new foreword by Christopher Hitchens and a postscript by the author in which he responds to reviewers' criticisms of the original edition.

Suppose the universe expands and becomes a void, as most scientists think. Would that mean God failed? If that is the fate of the universe, then some of our beliefs concerning God and our place in nature, as well as our beliefs concerning how we should live in the world, will not be borne out. From the biblical perspective, it looks as though the formless void and deep darkness opposing God from the beginning prevailed in the end. Today, when we consider the fate of the universe, as well as the possible destruction of life on Earth, it looks as though a deep darkness surrounds us. That is the idea this book considers. When we explore it, we find that we refocus our understanding of faith, hope, and love, and revitalize our view of how we should live. In brief, faith in a God who challenged the formless void and deep darkness in order to create life and sustain it charges us to do the same: oppose lifelessness and be good stewards of life. Faith in an insurgent God restores authentic hope for our future and realizes its true end: not in heaven, but on Earth, and perhaps beyond it.

"If you are looking for one book to make sense of the problem of evil, this book is for you." Sean McDowell Grasping This Truth Will Change Your View of God Forever If God is good and all-powerful, why doesn't He put a stop to the evil in this world? Christians and non-Christians alike struggle with the concept of a loving God who allows widespread suffering in this life and never-ending punishment in hell. We wrestle with questions such as... Why do bad things happen to good people? Why should we have to pay for Adam's sin? How can eternal judgment be fair? But what if the real problem doesn't start with God...but with us? Clay Jones, an associate professor of Christian apologetics at Biola University, examines what Scripture truly says about the nature of evil and why God allows it. Along the way, he'll help you discover the contrasting abundance of God's grace, the overwhelming joy of heaven, and the extraordinary destiny of believers.

What does God think of us when we fail? Steve Roy has had to face his own failures. But his failures also drove him deep into what God thinks about us and success. He found that a biblically grounded view of success and failure challenges our preconceived notions but leads to hopeful renewal that goes beyond what we often ask or think.

In the three major religions of the West, God is understood to be a being whose goodness, knowledge, and power is such that it is impossible for any being, including God himself, to have a greater degree of goodness, knowledge, and power. This book focuses on God's freedom and praiseworthiness in relation to his perfect goodness. Given his necessary perfections, if there is a best world for God to create he would have no choice other than to create it. For, as Leibniz tells us, 'to do less good than one could is to be lacking in wisdom or in goodness.' But if God could not do otherwise than create the best world, he created the world of necessity, not freely. And, if that is so, it may be argued that we have no reason to be thankful to God for creating us, since, as parts of the best possible world, God was simply unable to do anything other than create us - he created us of necessity, not freely. Moreover, we are confronted with the difficulty of having to believe that this world, with its Holocaust, and innumerable other evils, is the best that an infinitely powerful, infinitely good being could do in creating a world. Neither of these conclusions, taken by itself, seems at all plausible. Yet each conclusion appears to follow from the conception of God now dominant in the great religions of the West. William Rowe presents a detailed study of this important problem, both historically in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, Samuel Clarke, Thomas Aquinas, and Jonathan Edwards, as well as in the contemporary philosophical literature devoted to the issue. Rowe argues that this problem is more serious than is commonly thought and may require some significant revision in contemporary thinking about the nature of God.