One died for asserting one God; none, in the former ages upon record, hath died for asserting no God. —Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, 1:30.
While certain famous persons give a public face to atheism, and make it seem to be a common belief, atheism has in fact never been the belief of rational people. In every culture since the beginning of time, the existence of some deity has been assumed. Christians know that this is because the existence of God is made obvious through his creation (Romans 1:19–20). This universal belief is no inconsequential matter of opinion. Throughout history, men and women have laid down their lives rather than deny God. Atheists, in contrast, have no Book of Martyrs.
Charnock writes on this universal knowledge of God and its cause in nature:
The apostle resolves it (Rom. i. 19, 20), “The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.” They know, or might know, by the things that were made, the eternity and power of God; their sense might take a circuit about every object, and their minds collect the being and something of the perfections of the Deity. The first discourse of the mind upon the sight of a delicate piece of workman ship, is the conclusion of the being of an artificer, and the admiration of his skill and industry. The apostle doth not say, the invisible things of God are believed, or they have an opinion of them, but they are seen, and clearly seen. They are like crystal glasses, which give a clear representation of the existence of a Deity, like that mirror, reported to be in a temple in Arcadia, which represented to the spectator, not his own face, but the image of that deity which he worshipped. The whole world is like a looking-glass, which, whole and entire, represents the image of God, and every broken piece of it, every little shred of a creature doth the like; not only the great ones, elephants and the leviathan, but ants, flies, worms, whose bodies rather than names we know: the greater cattle and the creeping things (Gen. i. 24); not naming there any intermediate creature, to direct us to view him in the smaller letters, as well as the greater characters of the world. His name is “glorious,” and his attributes are excellent “in all the earth;” [Psalm viii. 1.] in every creature, as the glory of the sun is in every beam and smaller flash; he is seen in every in sect, in every spire of grass. The voice of the Creator is in the most contemptible creature. The apostle adds, that they are so clearly seen, that men are inexcusable if they have not some knowledge of God by them.; if they might not certainly know them, they might nave some excuse: so that his existence is not only probably, but demonstratively proved from the things of the world [Banes in Aquin. Par. 2. Qu. 2. Artic. 2. p. 78. col. 2.].
Especially the heavens declare him, which God “stretches out like a curtain” [Psalm civ. 2.], or, as some render the word, a “skin,” whereby is signi fied, that heaven is as an open book, which was anciently made of the skins of beasts, that by the knowledge of them we may be taught the knowledge of God. Where Scripture was not revealed, the world served for a witness of a God; whatever arguments the Scripture uses to prove it, are drawn from nature (though, indeed, it doth not so much prove as suppose the existence of a God); but what arguments it uses are from the creatures, and particularly the heavens, which are the public preachers of this doctrine. The breath of God sounds to all the world through those organ-pipes. His being is visi ble in their existence, his wisdom in their frame, his power in their motion, his goodness in their usefulness. They have a voice, and their voice is as intelligible as any common language [“For their voice goeth to the end of the earth,” Psalm xix. 1, 2.]. And those are so plain heralds of a Deity, that the heathen mistook them for deities, and gave them a particular adoration, which was due to that God they declared. The first idolatry seems to be of those heavenly bodies, which began probably in the time of Nimrod. In Job’s time it is certain they admired the glory of the sun, and the brightness of the moon, not without kissing their hands, a sign of adoration [Job xxxi. 26, 27.]. It is evident a man may as well doubt whether there be when he sees his beams gilding the earth, as doubt whether there be a God, when he sees his works spread in the world.
—Ibid., 42–43
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