The Intellectual Absurdity of Atheism
As a boy, I remember my father saying he didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see, hear, touch or taste. In other words, nothing was real unless he could physically experience it. It made sense to young me - invisible things weren’t real. What I didn’t know at that tender age, is just how many people had that same view. Without exposure to alternative viewpoints or critical thinking skills, I simply adopted my father’s position until I was well into adulthood.
Darwinism, materialism, naturalism, scientism & atheism are all terms used to describe a worldview that nothing exists beyond the material world. While each one varies slightly, they are so closely related that for the purpose of this article I will use the terms interchangeably because what they all share in common is that not only does nothing exist apart from the material, but that there is specifically no Agent of Causality that is not of a material origin. They all hold the position that the Universe and Life arose spontaneously, accidentally, unguided and undirected, purely a result of “random chance” and happenstance. They vehemently oppose the idea there is an Intelligence, a Designer, a Creator or God behind the scenes. By contrast, theism (the opposite of atheism) is the belief in the existence of a God or an Intelligent Creator.
The outspoken atheist author, Richard Dawkins, pithily sums up the materialistic position:
“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won’t find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice… There is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference… DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music… We are survival machines, robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”
There is so many things wrong with that statement its hard to know where to start (like where does the information in the DNA come from in the first place? Information comes from Minds, not laws of nature… but I get ahead of myself.) I wonder if anyone besides me has noticed that with that statement, Dawkins offers the perfect definition of a zombie!
"Atheism is no longer simply a belief in the absence of God. It's now an active rebuke against His existence fueled by rage and endless invective. The arguments so many employ against God are as rote and dogmatic as any kind of extremism. Religious faith is maligned to exhaustion online and elsewhere unless it involves crystals and witchcraft. Atheists don't just refuse the light, they now seek to extinguish it." - Ben Shapiro
Atheists like to present themselves as the voice of reason, the ones who are rational, scientific and intelligent, as opposed to the ignorant, superstitious plebs who believe in a Divine Creator. Their rallying cry is that science has proven the idiocy of a weak-minded belief in God. “Science” is their religion. This is quite ironic as science and logic actually not only refute their position resoundingly, but overwhelmingly stack up in favor of the existence of a personal Creator. This article will reveal just how illogical the materialistic worldview gets. And no, we won’t be breaking out the Bible to do so. There is no need. The cold, hard facts of logic and reason will do all the work for us. Let’s see how…
Irrational Foundation
Atheism/materialism is the viewpoint that maintains that all of existence is only the product of the laws of physics and nature. This excludes any supernatural (beyond the physical) cause, influence or reality.
Right off the bat, this is a position that is unscientific, irrational and unprovable. First, the laws of physics are not creative. They describe the rules by which the physical world operates, but they create nothing. For something to be creative it must have a mind and a will. The real question is who created the rules by which the laws of nature operate? According to Kurt Godel, logician, mathematician and philosopher, nature could not create the very rules by which it operates: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle - something you have to assume but cannot prove.”
Second, naturalism is a worldview that cannot account for consciousness, morality, thoughts, feelings, beauty, souls, the mind, the laws of nature, mathematics, logic, information, free will - in short, anything and everything not physical.
Third, it’s not a scientific theory, as it can’t be observed, tested or measured. Last, if atheism were true and we are just random accidents of chemical reactions, then any “thought” we have is just a result of accidental collisions of molecules, so how can we trust our thoughts?
The ideology of atheism is clearly unscientific on multiple levels. If we are just undesigned, “programmed” moist robots of chance, then logic, reason and free will is impossible. If materialistic atheism were literally true then the atheist has no grounds to believe anything he thinks, including his beliefs about atheism. Based on that alone, this worldview is self-refuting and irrational.
The Moral Conundrum
Another reason science is impossible under atheism is because if there is no objective morality - if morals and ethics are simply the unguided firing of random synapses in our brains- then science isn’t possible. Under atheism, any concept of morality is relative to each person as there is no external standard to measure it by. Meaningful science requires scientists to be ethical in their testing and reporting in order to be effective. Imagine every scientist fudging their data and experiments simply to get the results that got them more grant money, not caring one whit if those results actually reflected reality. It wouldn’t be science. Objective morality is necessary to do science. But according to atheism, morality is subjective at best and illusionary at worst.
To claim that you are simply an accidental configuration of random chemical reactions and that nothing exists beyond the material, while at the same time believing that immaterial morals are real is an oxymoron. Can you be an ethical and moral atheist? Of course. You just can’t be a logically coherent one.
Science: What It Is and What It Isn’t
At its heart, science is a study of causality, a search for causes. It’s a systematized method of observing effects and then searching backwards for the originating cause. What few people realize however, is there are two different types of science: Empirical (also called “operation” science) and Forensic (also called “origin science). Empirical science addresses events that can be observed, tested, repeated and measured in real time. This is the “science” that is so often referred to by atheists, materialists and even many scientists. Forensic science, however is the study of that which can’t be observed or repeated in an experiment. Forensic science is at the core of archaeology, history, cosmology, cryptology, and crime scene forensics. Since forensic science studies past events that cannot be repeated, it involves inferring from effects back to causes using logic, the law of causality and the principle of uniformity.
Cosmological scientists study the universe…which means literally peering backward into the past as the light from stars we see today left them millions or billions of years ago. Those same scientists infer the existence of dark matter and dark energy because they notice the effect of galaxies being more energetic and gravitionally dense than the observable matter can account for. Not one single shred of observable, repeatable evidence has been found for the existence of dark matter or dark energy and yet it is roundly embraced as a reasonable scientific theory, due to reasoning (inferring) from effect back to causes.
Those same scientists however, angrily reject any suggestion of a super-natural cause to the Big Bang. Even though everything we know about logic, causes, effects, science and physics dictates that whatever caused the beginning of space, time and matter must have existed prior to space, time and matter and thus by definition is spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent and personal.
Can science disprove God?
Dr Frank Turek, the author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist,” had this to say on his blog:
“If science is about investigating natural events, how can science disprove the possibility of supernatural events?
How does our greater understanding of how natural laws work prove that no one created those natural laws or the universe itself? If I understand how a car works, have I proved that no one created the car?Understanding how a car works is an empirical science, but discovering who made the car is a forensic science. Getting a better understanding of empirical science (technology and how a car works) can't disprove the existence of a car maker. In fact, the better you understand how a car works, the better you will understand who made the car in the first place. A car is an effect whose attributes can tell us something about the attributes of its creator.”
Dr Turek, goes on to add, “Science doesn't say anything - scientists do. All data needs to be interpreted. We're all looking at the same evidence - we just disagree over how to interpret the scientific evidence. So the debate between atheists and theists is not over the scientific process of how to run experiments or gather evidence - it is a philosophical debate over how to interpret the evidence once we have it.”
Scientism, the almost Science
Science is based on the (immaterial) principle of causality, which is that every effect has a cause. And there are only two known kinds of causes: natural and intelligent agent. However, materialistic scientists refuse to consider an intelligent cause for any effect outside of humans. Even when faced with the in-your-face problem of the Big Bang.
If a scientist’s job is to seek out the truth about reality, why would they rule out ahead of time one of the only two possible causes of an event? Is that intellectually honest? Is that reasonable? Is that even scientific? How can we trust what scientists tell us when they decide ahead of time what causes they will consider and which they won’t?
One atheist scientist, the late Richard Lewontin, an evolutionary biologist, was at least willing to admit his willful, intentional bias:
“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for the unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Imagine if every scientist ahead of time decided what results they wanted to see from their experiments and refused to acknowledge any other possibility regardless of the evidence? Imagine no longer. That is what a great number of scientists do today. This distortion of science is called Scientism.
Scientism is the belief that truth can only be determined empirically and that physical science is the only way to do so. Any possible cause outside of the natural, material world is not acceptable. Celebrity scientist/atheist, Neil deGrasse Tyson clearly believed this when he quipped, “After the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.”
The first problem with this belief is the very statement, “Science is the only way to discover or know truth” is itself not verifiable by science. It’s self-defeating. Tyson’s statement falls into the same trap. They are both philosophical statements that are neither verifiable nor testable by the very scientific method they espouse. So we can confidently say back to Tyson, “sorry, but your statement is mere opinion.”
And we can say it confidently because the very tools scientists require to even do science, such as the laws of logic and math, morality and consciousness, cannot themselves be verified by science. They are known as First Principles - the unprovable from which proofs are built. They are what we have to know prior to doing science.
Learn more about the dangers of scientism:
The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis (YouTube video)
Scientism isn’t Scientific (article by a theoretical physicist)
Scientism Not A Real Science (article)
“I try not to bite on any particular philosophy or theory until one emerges as the most rational, given the evidence… There’s one thing I know for sure (having worked both fresh and cold homicides): you simply cannot enter into an investigation with a philosophy that dictates the outcome… The question is not whether or not we have ideas, opinions or preexisting points of view; the question is whether or not we will allow these perspectives to prevent us from examining the evidence objectively. It’s possible to have a prior opinion yet leave this presupposition at the door in order to examine the evidence fairly.”
- J. Warner Wallace, #1 cold-case detective, former atheist. ColdCaseChristianity.com
Science cannot tell us the truth about many things, such as whether we actually exist (we could be in the Matrix for all we know), historical truths (we assume causality was the same in the past as now but we can’t verify it), aesthetic truths (what is ugly or beautiful), metaphysical truths ( the existence of souls, emotions, thoughts, logic, math, consciousness, etc). Science is great for many things, but it is clearly not the only way to determine what is true and real and valid.
“Scientism, in other words, is the reigning view, the idea that science is the only way to truth. And Bertrand Russell summarized this viewpoint by saying ‘What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know.’ Now, Russell was quite a brilliant logician, but his logic failed him badly when he made that statement. ‘What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know...’ Is that a statement of science? No. So then we cannot know it. This is what we call a logically incoherent statement. If it’s true, it’s false.” - Dr John Lennox, Oxford Mathematician, Philosopher of Science
Most people do not realize that the scientific method is based on unprovable assumptions such as; the natural world exists independent of humans; there is a dependable rational order to the world; objective truth exists; human consciousness is capable of discovering that truth; morality is real; and immaterial mathematical and logical truths apply to the material world.
The scientific method relies on each of these a priori assumptions and yet science itself cannot justify them because they are philosophical positions, not scientific facts. In the end, Scientism is self-refuting, like a snake eating it’s own tail. It states that only scientific propositions are true, and yet scientism itself is not a scientific proposition; it’s merely an (erroneous) philosophical statement about science. Oops.
“Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle - something you have to assume but cannot prove.” - Kurt Godel, logician, mathematician and philosopher.
Atheists Believe In Miracles
The Bible is full of miracles and atheists love to mock them. However, in yet another twist of irony, it turns out that atheists also believe in miracles. In the face of all reason and scientific evidence they dogmatically claim it’s possible to get something from nothing, as in the first Big Bang (see the Three Big Bangs). As stated earlier, every effect has a cause. And there are only two known kinds of causes: natural and intelligent agent. The eruption of Mt St Helens was a natural cause, while Mount Rushmore was by an intelligent agent. Mankind has never discovered anything that did not have a initiating cause and to even imply the possibility would make one a laughing stock in the scientific community. And yet, those very same people insist that the entire universe sprang into being from nothing because they can’t “allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Now, to be fair, most materialists know that position is untenable and do search for a cause but so frantic is their attempt to avoid the supernatural, they bend the laws of logic and reason to the point of breaking like this embarrassing example by the usually brilliant physicist, the late Stephen Hawkings: “We do not need to invoke God to explain the creation of the universe. Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can create itself out nothing.”
Say what? An effect cannot be its own cause, as Dr John Lennox points out so adroitly. Gravity is an effect of space, time and matter. The cause of space, time and matter must therefore be transcendent to, prior to, space, time and matter.
But then look at the second sentence, “…the universe can create itself out of nothing.” If you went to any scientist and said that same thing only exchanged the word universe for any other thing in existence (“…the BMW M3 can create itself out of nothing”) you would be mocked mercilessly - and rightfully so.
The very science that atheists worship states that every effect requires an adequate cause and that no effect can be its own cause. Except, of course, when it might point to an immaterial, transcendent, powerful, intelligent cause to the universe. Then apparently those rules of logic don’t apply.
“Big bang theory delivers a near fatal blow to naturalistic philosophy, for the naturalistic credo regards reality as an unbroken sequence of cause and effect that can be traced back endlessly. But the big bang represents a sudden discontinuity in the chain of cause and effect. It means science can trace events back in time only to a certain point; at the moment of the big bang explosion, science reaches an abrupt break, an absolute barrier.” - Charles Colson, from “God and Governing”
If there truly were no God, we wouldn’t know it. If we lived in a universe without light, the word or concept of Light would have no meaning. But because there is light we know there is dark. Because we perceive evil, we know there is good.
In a purely materialistic universe that had no immaterial (super-natural) aspects such as consciousness, accidental creations of random chemical processes from primordial soup would have no concept of right and wrong and no ability to contemplate a Higher Being. Of all the life on the planet, only humans have these abilities. Why?
The very first chapter of the Bible tells us plainly: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” - Genesis 1:27
The Shell Life of Atheists
Like an empty shell found on a beach, materialists have a hollow, broken worldview. They spout nonsensical slogans while simultaneously living in direct contradiction to their supposed beliefs.
The late atheist, Christopher Hitchens came up with this slogan for Christians that his followers christened “Hitchens Razor” after the famous Occam's Razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
These and similar slogans are used to dismiss those silly Christian believers, and one can only wonder at the irony and lack of self-awareness that this bites the author far more than its target.
Fellow atheist, Richard Dawkins, offers up similar linguistic boomerangs: “Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument.” Hmmm… replace the word Faith with Atheism and does the shoe fit? And this one, “Religion is the root of quite a lot of evil.” But wait, I thought he said there was no such thing as evil?! (“There is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference…”) He sounds confused.
The answer to the first slogan is to ask the atheist for the evidence for their belief in atheism.
Atheist: “But I don’t need to provide evidence for atheism as you can’t prove a negative.”
Theist: Um, so if what you are asserting is without evidence, it can be dismissed without evidence, right? Or would it be that you believe something for which there is no evidence? Sounds like “blind faith” to me.
The next position the atheist takes is to insist they simply “lack a belief” in God, so they don’t need to offer evidence. First, that’s quite a cowardly way out of defending your position - and for people who “lack a belief” in God, they sure have a lot of opinions about Him, writing endless books about it! Secondly, if atheism is merely a lack of belief in God, then cars, dirt and jellyfish must be “atheists” as well because they too lack a belief in God.
Philosopher Paul Copan points out, “What the atheist fails to see is that atheism is just as much a claim to know something ("God does not exist") as theism ("God exists"). Therefore, the atheist’s denial of God’s existence needs just as much substantiation as does the theist’s claim; the atheist must give plausible reasons for rejecting God’s existence. In the absence of evidence for God’s existence, agnosticism, not atheism, is the logical presumption.”
The original meaning of the word atheist was someone who firmly believes that there is no God. And an honest atheist would be one who is willing to present his arguments for his position. But that’s their conundrum…because the moment they attempt to provide the evidence, their house of cards collapses and is exposed for the illusion that it is. Here is an excellent example of an atheist unwilling to present his evidence, and attempting to dodge rationalizing his viewpoint.
“I honestly think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It’s a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in nonbelief. “I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe.” Period. It’s a declaration. But in science we don’t really do declarations. We say, “Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or for that.”
- Marcelo Gleiser, theoretical prize winning physicist (from article in Scientific American)
More Self Deception
Skeptic Michael Shermer has said, “Play hard, work hard, love hard.... The bottom line for me is to live life to the fullest in the here-and-now instead of a hoped-for hereafter, and make every day count in some meaningful way and do something — no matter how small it is — to make the world a better place.”
That’s a wonderful life philosophy anyone can get behind. An atheist, however, cannot reconcile it with atheism. See the word “meaningful.” There is no meaning in an materialistic universe. Meaning implies purpose, better and worse, and none of that exists if materialism is all there is.
Then there is the “better place.” Again, Shermer has to import an objective morality into his “no good-or-evil” materialism. As Dr Frank Turek points out in his book, “I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist,” atheists have to steal from God to claim these values. You can’t have it both ways: materialism and meaningful, objective morality.
If Atheism is True, Then Why All The Fuss & Snark?
Since according to atheists, materialism is the true nature of reality, then why all the snark and online attacks? From the atheist worldview, the question of God’s existence should be of no more consequence then other people believing the Tooth Fairy is real. One wonders then why the atheists are so angry. If they truly believed their claim that there is no God, then nothing matters because there is nothing but matter… and people believing in God are just robots “dancing to their DNA,” no more responsible for their chemically derived thoughts than the atheist. How then can an atheist simultaneously deny the existence of free will and then hop on their angry soapbox about religion? The actor/comedian, Ricky Gervais, is a perfect example as he really loves mocking believers.
These vocal diatribes by atheists deeply puzzle me as I was an atheist for 55 years and never was bothered by religious believers, I simply ignored them. I’ve since come to the conclusion that their anger merely reveals that in their heart they really do believe in God - and they hate him.
But what is it about the idea of a Creator that frightens people so much?
“The fool says in their heart, ‘There is no God.’” - Psalm 14
Atheism: It’s Volitional, Not Lack of Evidence
In the final analysis, an atheist wants to find God about as much as a thief wants to find a cop. This atheist professor of astronomy, George Greenstein, admits it: “The more I read (about the fine-tuning of the universe) the more I became convinced that such ‘coincidences’ could hardly have happened by chance”; “As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency—or, rather, Agency—must be involved.” However, he goes on to add: “As this conviction grew, something else grew as well . . . It was intense revulsion, and at times it was almost physical in nature”; “I will have nothing to do with it. My conviction is that the world obeys laws, the laws of nature and that nothing can ever occur that stands outside those laws.”
This video may be the best example of the intentional rejection of rationality by atheists. (in their own words)
“I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.” - Thomas Nagel, philosopher
The Mountain of Evidence For God
Here are just a few of the hundreds of logical and rational arguments for the existence of a Creator. This will be kept short as each topic requires an entire book to adequately cover. These are extremely strong philosophical arguments, backed by scientific evidence that grow exponentially with each passing year.
The Fine Tuning Argument: As cosmological science has progressed, scientists are increasingly discovering just how much the universe is ridiculously fine tuned to a razor’s edge to simply exist let alone support life. The Fine Tuning Argument explained. Three Illustrations That Demonstrate the Degree to Which the Universe is Fine Tuned. God’s Crime Scene.
The Moral Argument: Every law has a law giver. There is a moral law. Therefore, there must be a moral law giver. The Moral Argument explained.
The Ontological Argument: If God possibly exists, then God must therefore actually exist. The Ontological Argument explained.
The Cosmological Argument: Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore the universe has a cause. The Kalam Cosmological Argument explained.
The Information Argument: DNA & Information - Specified, complex information only comes from a mind. The Information Argument explained.
The Contingency Argument: Why is there something rather than nothing? The Contingency Argument explained.
The Teological Argument: All designs imply a designer. There is great design evident in the universe. Therefore there must be a Great Designer of the universe. The Teological Argument explained.
The Cumulative Case Argument: When the evidence from many different sources all point to the same conclusion. The Cumulative Case Argument explained.
"The charge that belief in God is irrational is common, but completely without basis. I'm not going to let anyone who makes this assertion off easily. I want to know specifically, how theism is at odds with good thinking. Believing in leprechauns is irrational. Believing in God, by contrast, is like believing in atoms. The process is exactly the same. You follow the evidence of what you can see to conclude the existence of something you cannot see. The effect needs a cause adequate to explain it. There is nothing irrational or unreasonable about the idea of a personal God creating the material universe.
The Big Bang needs a Big Banger it seems to me. A complex set of instructions (DNA) needs an author. A blueprint requires an engineer. A moral law needs a moral law giver. This is not a leap; it is a step of intelligent reflection. Therefore, the question, 'Specifically, what is irrational about believing in God?' is completely in order." - Greg Koukl, author, Christian Apologist.
Resources:
“The New Atheists,” by Greg Koukl of STR.org
“I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist,” by Dr Frank Turek, of CrossExamined.org
“What We Can’t Not Know,” by J. Budziszewzki."
“On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision,” by William Lane Craig, ReasonableFaith.org
“Is Atheism Dead?” by Eric Metaxas
Final Note…
Here is an excellent example of an exchange during a debate between the atheist, Dr Peter Atkins and the Christian scholar, Dr William Lane Craig
Atkins: There is no need for God. Everything in the world can be understood without needing to invoke God. You have to accept that’s one possible view of the world.
Craig: Sure, that’s possible, but…
Atkins: (interrupting): Do you deny that science can account for everything?
Craig: Yes, I do deny that science can account for everything.
Atkins: So, what can’t it account for?
Craig: I think there a good number of things that cannot be scientifically proven, but that we’re all rational to accept. Let me list five. First, logical and mathematical truths cannot be proven by science. Science presupposes logic and math so that to try to prove them by science would be arguing in a circle. Second, metaphysical truths like there are other minds other than my own, or that the external world is real, or that the past was not created five minutes ago with the appearance of age are rational beliefs that cannot be scientifically proven. Third, ethical beliefs about statements of value are not accessible by the scientific method. You can’t show by science that the Nazi scientists in the camps did anything evil as opposed to the scientists in Western democracies. Fourth, aesthetic judgments cannot be accessed by the scientific method because the beautiful, like the good, cannot be scientifically proven. And finally, most remarkably, would be science itself. Science cannot be justified by the scientific method, since it is permeated with unprovable assumptions. For example, the special theory of relativity - the whole theory hinges on the assumption that the speed of light is constant in a one way direction between any two points, A and B, but that cannot be strictly proven.
Atkins: (Crickets)