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“Organized religions in
general, in my opinion, are dying forms. They were all
very important when we didn't know why the sun moved,
why weather changed, why hurricanes occurred, or
volcanoes happened. Modern religion is the end trail of
modern mythology...”[1]
The statement above was made by one of Hollywood’s
leading actors, and is indicative of the type of
thinking indulged in by many of today’s prominent
intellectuals, entertainers, and leaders. Either through
the snickers of television comedians turned
commentators, or more directly via a number of blatantly
anti-God books by popular authors, one cannot escape
being exposed to the rising onslaught of skepticism
aimed at religious belief. The idea many of the
so-called educated or talented elite of our society
espouse is that religion is for the poor, uneducated,
and superstitious.
The truth is, such banal rhetoric relies on vague
notions about pre-history for its source of “wisdom”,
and leans on unsupported scientific speculation about
where we came from and how we got here. Armed with such
incredibly dull ‘intellectual’ weaponry, such thinkers
seek to wage war against those who hold a belief in God.
Nevertheless, the idea that religion is outdated has
gained traction; and aside from enclaves of
Bible-believing Americans or pockets of God-friendly
developing countries, the western world is fast being
overtaken by the “post-religion” phase of human history.
The mere mention of belief in a deity is increasingly
greeted with annoyed skepticism, if not dismissive
laughter; but beyond ridicule, the new assault on
religion, and more specifically Christianity, has taken
on an ominous undertone.
The modern champions of the anti-God movement have
promulgated a line of reasoning that places blame for
modern society’s problems squarely upon a belief in God,
and they have gone so far as to label such a belief
immoral. According to the new champions of secular
righteousness, God causes us to hate, go to war, and
commit a myriad of other evils. This is bold stuff in an
age when boldness sells books; but such notions, when
stripped of their novelty, often turn out to be nothing
more than shocking insults based on the author’s (or
speaker’s) own unsubstantiated speculation. What follows
below is an examination of three of the themes the
modern attack on Christianity is predicated upon. These
arguments include the assertion that people who believe
in God have accepted fantasy over fact, that
Christianity is a cause of war, and that Christianity
leads to an intolerant and oppressive society.
Atheists Are Fact Oriented And A Belief In God Is The
Stuff Of Fantasy
One alternative to a belief in God is the theory of
evolution. This popular notion asserts evolution is fact
and God is fantasy. If you are “educated”, this is what
modernists claim you are to believe. Putting aside the
inconsistency of calling a “theory” fact, however, it is
important to ask if science has given us the answer to
where we came from, and thus disproved God. To date, the
answer is no.
The reason evolution is still called a theory is that
its primary hypothesis has not been proven. If you stack
up all of the “facts” upon which evolutionary theory is
built, there still exists a very broad chasm between
what evolution postulates and a fact-based answer to the
question of how life began. In spite of all their
scientific endeavors to prove their theory true,
evolutionists still can't point to facts that support a
cohesive explanation of the origin of life; that is,
without first taking a gigantic leap of faith. Questions
that find no place in the evolutionist’s reasoning such
as, “Where did the spark that created life come from?”
go unanswered in the evolutionists’ dogma.
The fact is, evolution does not explain where the
initial condition came from that allowed for a
condensed, extremely hot state to develop that
then….(skipping ahead)…resulted in the Big Bang. If you
believe that a naturally occurring “Big Bang” is indeed
the source of life, then you are placing your faith in a
theory that remains unproven -- a point which the
eminent scientist, Stephen Hawking, conceded when he
commented, “the odds against a universe like ours
emerging out of something like the Big Bang are
enormous. I think there are clear religious
implications”.[i]
Let’s move on. Another problem for those who have
substituted evolution as their faith is that this theory
conflicts with some very important and well-established
natural laws. As an illustration of one such problem,
you could take two rocks and knock them together as hard
as you can. Your challenge would be to keep doing that
until you produce a living organism. Sound ridiculous?
It is. But that is what evolution asks us to accept in
faith -- that life came from an explosion of nonliving
substances that came from…where? The theory has failed
to provide a plausible alternative to the natural law
known as “biogenesis”, which in essence stands for the
rule that life can only come from life.
Interestingly, ancient philosophers such as Aristotle
theorized that life could spontaneously generate from
nothing; however, it was the nineteenth century
scientist Louis Pasteur who swept such notions away by
proving the biogenesis rule. Pasteur demonstrated that
life today does not arise in areas that have not been
contaminated by existing life. Pasteur's empirical
results were summarized in the phrase, Omne vivum ex
ovo, Latin for all life [is] from eggs (Wikipedia,
Biogenesis). Thus it was scientific advancement itself,
which discredited the idea that life came from nothing,
proving instead that there must be a first cause – a
creator. Well, it proved it for some. Since that time
there have been over 23 other theories of abiogenesis,
which theorize that life may at some point come from non
life (including the “primordial soup” idea), all of
which disagree with each other, and more importantly,
none of which have been proven.
One example of the fallibility of abiogenesis comes from
Jerry Bergman Ph.D., of the Creation Research Society.
Dr. Bergman’s argument goes as follows: “It is widely
recognized that major scientific problems exist with all
naturalistic origin of life scenarios. This is made
clear in the conclusions of many leading origin-of-life
researchers. A major aspect of the abiogenesis question
is “What is the minimum number of parts necessary for an
autotrophic free living organism to live, and could
these parts assemble by naturalistic means?” Research
shows that at the lowest level this number is in the
multimillions, producing an irreducible level of
complexity that cannot be bridged by any known natural
means. “
The above has addressed just two fundamental problems
with evolutionary theory – lack of fact, lack of
plausibility -- but there are indeed other problems.
Providing an evolution-based answer as to why we
experience love, vanity, and a whole range of human
emotions, which do not fit neatly into the hypothesis of
“natural selection”, has been a constant thorn in the
side of evolutionists. But perhaps the greatest problem
with the theory of evolution is that it has been unable
to explain how a perfectly balanced universe could
emerge out of a chaotic, unintended collision of random
forces. Albert Einstein himself understood this
deficiency in the theory when he commented, “In view of
such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited
human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people
who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry
is that they quote me for the support of such views.”[ii]
Albert Einstein was no supporter of organized religion,
but he could not deny that there is a void between what
science has been able to prove and the place where the
answer to “why we are here” is found.
Indeed, the amazing conditions that sustain life on our
planet amid the organization of our universe into
galaxies of perfect balance are difficult to explain
using the logic of those who believe such things came
about by happenstance. As scientist Francis Collins
stated, “When you look from the perspective of a
scientist at the universe, it looks as if it knew we
were coming.”[iii] There are valid reasons for coming to
this conclusion, which include, among other things, the
perfect balance of the myriad of constants of the
universe, like gravity, that are too numerous to name.
The existence of these constants can be better explained
when seen from the perspective of the guiding hand of a
creator rather than as a series of random, chaotic
events of nature. Logic based upon observation,
experimentation and pragmatism leads us to the obvious
conclusion that order results when natural laws are
followed; but for the evolutionary atheist, who is
willing to cast aside such logic in order to couple
unexplainable chaos with resulting order, the
implausible is a central tenet of faith…however
illogical it may seem.
The conclusion to all of this is that despite popular
disdain for those who still believe in God, the
“rational” thinkers of evolution have in fact ‘bet it
all’ on their illogical faith -- a faith anchored in
multiple, conflicting theories of men who seek to
understand the amazing universe in which we live, but
deny the master craftsman who made it.
Watch for the next installment of this Series! |