Some of the ideas about atheism are explained to make it so simple and easy, it is one of the easiest conversions available! Granted the big name proponents of New Atheism believe that religion is an unscientific folly and the source of world’s evil, and that once we rid the earth of such monstrous beliefs, we shall all be able to get down to the real job of creating a beautiful world of peace, prosperity and progress. But apart from this aggressive atheism, there is a calmer easygoing sort.
· ABSENT
This milder atheism is presented as about the easiest thing anyone could slip into, hardly without noticing. All that is needed is the absence of a belief in a supernatural god or gods. Atheism is reduced to the absence of a belief in gods. What could be simpler! What do I make of this, and how will I analyse the underlying assumptions of people who are invited to have their atheism confirmed by the apparently simple elegance of this sort of reasoning?
One thing is clear, that once this absence of a particular belief is present in a person’s mind, he or she automatically qualifies as an atheist. Nothing is said about the reasoning process that led to such a conclusion, or whether there might be a rational basis for the belief, or whether they might hold ethical or religious beliefs. Once the condition is fulfilled of the absence of either theistic or polytheistic beliefs, everything else is immaterial.
Another thing I notice about atheism generally is the prior belief in a naturalistic philosophy of reality. This is assumed to be as close as it’s possible to get to a picture of the ultimate nature of everything.
· LACKS EVIDENCE
But when we ask, if there is any evidence-based research to confirm this assumption, we find we are merely going around in circles, because the enterprise of contemporary science also assumes that the whole of reality is the same type of material stuff, which necessarily excludes the possibility that any ultimate non-material entities exist.
I also see the philosophy of language in this discussion, where a commonly held view is that religious language that uses words like ‘god’ is meaningless, and as such it’s time to drop them from any rational discussion.
But I also notice that these atheistic beliefs and the philosophical beliefs underpinning them have gone beyond science as the meaningful investigation of the physical reality, especially when we consider that early modern science arose within the clear biblical Christian theism of the 16th and 17th centuries, which gave a rational basis for an understandable cosmos saturated with information; a basis that led to so many wonderful discoveries.
· ATHEISM ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE REASON
Left to its own philosophical underpinning, atheism has no answer for why there is rationality in the first place. Are molecules able to arrange themselves so as to create meaning and significance out of a meaningless explosion, and able to determine that everything is of the same physical stuff? As to this easygoing atheism, do you think that holding an absence of belief in a god or gods is the same as having beliefs that are a true correlation with ultimate reality? In the absence of a rational basis for these atheistic beliefs, it is beginning to look as if they are a convenient way of avoiding what they don’t wish to make explicit. It is beginning to look as if beneath the calm exterior there is a denial of the all-wise and powerful creator God, and a veiled admission that our cerebral chemistry has transcended its own nature; after all, does mere chemistry know whether there is, or is not a supernatural Creator?
However, the historic Genesis fall into moral rebellion against God explains how we naturally and inescapably use our transcendent personal minds, preferring to believe we are only using molecules, so as to suppress what we don’t want to acknowledge!
· GOD IS THE ANSWER!
Perhaps, on reflection, you would consider that this apparently benign atheism is a cover for a partially concealed hostility to that which, without any credible basis, it wishes to deny; the Personal fount and origin of all reality – the living God himself? ‘So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened’ (Romans 1:20-21). Did you know that atheism is the result of futile and darkened thinking?
What a wonder, that Christ has fully dealt with this rebellious and foolish hostility by carrying its just penalty in his own death on behalf of the rebels, ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom. 6:23).
Confidence in the person of Christ, his finished work on the cross and his bodily resurrection is not an unthinking leap, lacking convincing evidence, but rather the response of a careful evaluation of his life and claims, and their relevance to you as a person, which are amply recorded in the New Testament Scriptures. Historic biblical Christianity is the only final, intellectually credible answer that is entirely consistent with reality and humanity as it is.
Over to you, but be careful as you realise you are already using more than molecules as you reach your conclusions!