I’m not sure that surveying 5,000 Americans actually reveals what all Americans believe or don’t believe but, a new survey by Pew Research has once again made the attempt.  Based on the survey, the Washington Post reported that about 80% of Americans believe in God.  However, only 56% of those believe in the God of the Bible.  The rest believe in a transcendent force or spiritual power (obviously an impersonal one).  Of the 20% who don’t believe in God, half still believed in some force outside themselves.  Only 10% were confident that there was no one and no thing outside of humanity.  Obviously Mr. Nietzsche (who said, “God is dead”) is the dead one and a good share of the population has a hard time believing we are “on our own.”   While Enlightenment proponents would like to suggest we have arrived at a place in human evolution where we no longer need a “great father in the sky,” the general population cannot get over the thought that He just might be there!  Why would that be?  I suggest that God has given us both internal and external witness to Himself.  He has put eternity in our hearts (Ecc. 3:11) and He has provided the witness of nature as a visible reminder of His eternal power and Divine nature (Rom. 1:20).  Pastor Tim Keller (The Reason for God), reminds that while individual explanations by Christians of why things are the way they are can be “rationally avoidable at some point,” the overwhelming evidence suggested by the clues God has left us form a rational conclusion—God is!  We are living in a Biblically illiterate culture but that does not leave us without a starting point to know God and make Him known.  Paul called on the witness of nature in Lystra—we may have to do the same.  (See Acts 14:8-18)