Whether belief in God is rational is a very important question.

Atheist authors portray themselves as having chosen the rational option of unbelief rather than the

unreasonable stance of faith. In his book, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, presents himself

as having taken the hard but necessary road of truth. Such atheists

portray themselves as courageously accepting the only rational option regarding the God question.

Yet is it true that one must choose between unreasonable faith and God or a reasonable rejection of Him?

This evening, I will endeavor to show that this opposition is false.

We will begin by defining terms such as belief and reason.

We will also distinguish between two very different ways of studying God.

We will see that there are two different kinds of theology,

namely based on revelation or based on reason.

Finally, we will look back over 2,000 years to the dawn

of both science and philosophy in 6th century BC, Creece.

We will see that two key figures named Xenophonies and Anaxagoras

argued for God's existence based on human reason rather than divine revelation.

So part one is preliminary definitions and distinctions.

To answer the question of whether belief in God is rational,

one must begin by defining one's terms. And so this is definition one. A belief is a judgment

that one holds in the absence of proof that is certain. So that's based on Thomas Aquinas.

For example, one could believe that right now it is raining in London.

While a belief has subjective certainty, it lacks objective certainty.

As Thomas Aquinas says, and this is on the handout,

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