“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 Nevertheless, the idea that religion is outdated has gained traction; and aside from enclaves of Bible-believing Americans or pockets of God-friendly developing countries, the western world is fast being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!