WHY ATHEISM IS FALSE
C DeSalvo
Atheism
and Christianity are two competing worldviews:
Atheism
argues that undirected accidents caused everything in the universe; human life
has no purpose other than the satisfaction of accidental, natural desires; and
nothing survives death.
Christianity
argues that God created everything in the universe; human life is a test by
God; after death our souls will survive and will be required by God to account
for our earthly behavior.
Most of
modern society’s problems are caused by atheism’s disbelief in God and worship
of oneself. Atheists dominate education
and virtually all media. Most of our
youth are educated, in and out of school, to be atheists. The decay and decadence of modern society
will never be corrected unless believers get off their knees and actively work
to defeat atheism. Defense alone never
wins a contest.
No one
can argue an atheist into Christianity.
One can only present the evidence, hope he will consider it, and perhaps
convince himself. The following was
written with that hope in mind. The
below headings cite the most common atheistic arguments against God.
Believer: That is a baseless opinion, not a fact. There is no proof
that God doesn’t exist. Therefore the possibility that God exists cannot be
denied. The notion of God is more credible than the current scientific belief
that every free, miniscule particle of substance in the whole universe is
really only a probability wave of unknown composition moving through space.
What proof have believers that God
exists? Very
briefly:
(1) The amazing Big
Bang beginning of the universe started with a spec of space smaller than
the point of a needle that was filled with a fantastic amount of energy – far
more than enough energy to form all the matter in the universe. What natural
source created this bit of space and its energy? How did this tiny universe
know to expand at precisely the perfect, sustainable rate? How did it know how
to create matter, galaxies, stars, planets, life and humans?
(2) The immense,
mysterious complexity and perfect order of the universe and its
laws. The odds of all this order accidentally falling precisely into place are
impossibly miniscule.
(3) The stunning
creation of single-cellular plant and animal life from mineral matter.
This happened during a geologically brief period of time and apparently has
never happened again. Why can’t modern laboratories recreate the environment
that supposedly, spontaneously created life?
(4) The obvious design
of single-cellular life with its immunity to aging, ability to feed, metabolize,
heal, grow and reproduce via division. One such cell is more complex than
anything modern man has created. How did such amazing intricacy suddenly spring
into being “accidentally?”
(5) The staggering leap
from single-cellular life to multi-cellular life with its astounding
patterns of cellular specialization, the creation of the five senses and
intelligence, organism birth, growth, sexual reproduction, aging and natural
death. How did evolution evolve aging and natural death? Isn’t aging and death
the exact opposite of what evolution is supposed to do? (Evolution propagates
throughout a species any individual’s characteristics that improve the
individual’s chances of survival and reproduction.) Clearly aging and natural
death do not improve an individual’s chances for survival and reproduction.
(6) The scientific
procedure called intelligent design that uncovers the specified
complexity (intelligent information) within living molecular and cellular subsystems
(e.g. eyes, blood clotting, snake’s poison injection system, the DNA language,
etc.). Evolution could not have created
such complex, information-rich subsystems where every part had to be specially
created in concert for the overall subsystem to function properly. Only an
intelligence we call God could have created such purposeful, living components.
(7) Eleven apostles
and other direct witnesses to Jesus’ miracles accepted horrible deaths rather
than deny the Resurrection. Never have humans fabricated such a lie and then
each accepted torture and death to perpetuate it.
(8) The Shroud and
Sudarium are existing proof of Jesus’ Resurrection. Why can’t modern
science duplicate these supposed “fakes?”
(9) The Bible
and other valid historical writings describe, in honest detail, the life, teachings,
miracles, death and resurrection of Jesus. The Bible made fantastic prophecies
that became true. All supposed mistakes
in the Bible are refutable.
2. AN ALL-GOOD GOD WOULD NOT ALLOW INNOCENT SUFFERING
Atheist: An all-good God would not have created this world with all its
natural and human cruelty, with so much evil, misery and innocent suffering in
it. What is the purpose of natural disasters like painful illnesses, hunger,
diseases, viruses, horrendous birth defects, volcanoes, earthquakes, poisonous
snakes and insects?
Believer: Perhaps God isn’t all-powerful, and to produce a universe and people, God had to accept some bad natural side effects such as tornados, hurricanes, floods, malaria-carrying mosquitoes, piranha fish, sharks, dwarfs, birth defects, etc. The human suffering caused by nature may be a side effect of God’s creation of a universe and life.
God
created humans to test them. God gave humans free will to choose to do good or
evil. Therefore, evil must exist for a choice to be possible. The evil humans
choose to do often results in innocent suffering. Furthermore God may want
suffering to exist to test how humans react. Will they suffer with patience?
Will they forgive those who cause their suffering?
Atheists always judge God by their human standards or opinions. Never do atheists admit or appreciate that God’s intelligence is far greater than human intelligence, and therefore humans can never understand everything about God’s actions. Can an atheist’s pet cat or dog comprehend why humans go to work each weekday, or why humans read a book? Can a one-year-old child understand why her parents force her to be painfully inoculated against polio?
Consider the suffering of Jesus. Do you think Jesus was having a tea party on the cross? Jesus suffered and accepted death on the cross to show how much He loves us, His creations. Humans have no right to object to suffering caused by God simply because they don’t like or don’t understand it.
Atheist: Everlasting punishment in hell is an inhumane, vicious and
vindictive notion unworthy of a God.
Believer: To a kind and loving person, punishment can appear to be cruel.
But to the victim of a criminal, punishment of the murderer, rapist or thief
may be simply justice. Possibly God is all-just and not all-good. (All-good means will absolutely never hurt
any living thing in any way.)
Heredity
and environment are factors that can be considered when determining punishment
for a bad act, and can alleviate the punishment, but free will allows humans to
choose to act badly. Like it or not, we are alive to be tested, and only those
that pass the test are rewarded. Those who reject God and do evil are punished.
3. JESUS WAS NOT GOD
Atheist: Jesus was only a great teacher, not God.
Believer: Jesus was either the world’s greatest and weirdest con artist,
who did good deeds for no personal gain, in fact at enormous personal cost, or
Jesus was God. The carefully written and preserved Gospels, plus religious
tradition, and other historical documents give strong testimony that Jesus was
God, as does the willingness of many witnesses of Jesus life and crucifixion to
accept cruel deaths rather than give up their beliefs.
Atheist: The miracles described by Jesus’ apostles may be lies.
The reputed miracles, cited in the Gospels, occurred two thousand years ago,
and there is no proof they occurred, only the written words of religious
fanatics, perhaps further exaggerated by copyists. Many of the “miracles” could
have been fabricated. Was Lazarus really dead? Was the multiplication of loaves
and fishes merely the result of members of the crowd who had brought lunches
with them? Did Jesus really walk on water?
Believer: The Gospels list some thirty-odd miracles performed by
Jesus and hint of more. The cited miracles include raising Lazarus from the
dead, healing the lame and blind, changing water into wine, etc. Multiple
writers report the same miracles.
Many persons witnessed these miracles,
and when the early Gospels were written, more than a few of those witnesses
were still alive. None, and not even the Jewish leaders of the time, denied
that the miracles had happened. The Jewish leaders said Jesus could perform
miracles because Jesus was a devil.
4. BIBLE IS NOT TRUE
Atheist: The Bible is a collection of false, ancient folklore.
People are foolish to base their lives on ancient, unscientific beliefs.
Religion is a hoax worthy of W.C. Fields or P.T. Barnum. Religion is not based
on facts. Frightened, superstitious humans invented God to explain natural
mysteries before they had scientific knowledge.
Believer: The Bible is a true history of God’s interaction with
humans and of human behavior. It includes God’s teachings and revelations to
ancient peoples and the teachings of Jesus to His contemporaries. It contains
many prophecies that came true. Its parables, writings and spoken styles are
consonant with the cultures of persons at the time.
Atheist: The Bible approves of war, animal sacrifice, murder,
sodomy, incest and other obnoxious practices.
Believer: War in defense of one’s life, family, relatives and
friends is valid and good. Humans must eat other forms of life to survive, and
animal sacrifice was a symbolic way for humans to honor God for His gifts to
mankind. Murder, sodomy, incest, slavery and other practices were initiated by
humans. The Bible’s historical descriptions of such practices does not mean God
approves of them.
Atheist: Religious writings are flawed. Humans wrote them and
anything touched by humans will likely be imperfect. The oldest scriptures are
conglomerations of old, oral stories repeated from generation to generation
possibly with embellishments. Basing one’s life on ancient statements in a
stack of writings of dubious origin is not sensible.
Believer: The Bible and other historical records are valid evidence
that Jesus lived, performed miracles, was crucified and did resurrect. Many
people witnessed Jesus’ life, death and Resurrection. The Gospels were written
while many witnesses were still alive to refute any errors in them. There are
no records of such objections. At the time they were written, even the Jewish
leaders who opposed Christianity did not dispute the Gospels.
5. ThERE ARE NO GOD-GIVEN Morals
Atheist: Humans are simply intelligent animals, pre-programmed by
nature to behave according to inherent and conditioned instincts. There are no
such things as spiritual morals. There is no absolute right and wrong. All
judgments are relative.
Believer: God created the universe, life and humans, and humans are
tested for obedience to God’s commands that are summarized in the Ten
Commandments and expanded upon by Jesus’ teachings.
Atheist: Morals and ethics are developments of intelligent minds that
are striving to determine what behaviors benefit the most humans. Like
government laws, the rules of football games, etc., humans create morals and
ethics for the benefit of humans.
Believer: Morality and ethics are meaningless without God. Only God
gives ethics and morality a firm basis. Without God all life is merely the
product of a series of natural accidents. As such, no human is responsible for
her actions. Everything is the result of characteristics derived from
capricious genes. So anyone may lie, cheat, steal, etc. and feel not the
slightest sense of guilt; if challenged and accused, they can say it’s not
their fault, they can blame bad behavior on accidentally inherited genes, or be
fashionable, and blame it on someone else or their upbringing or an indifferent
society or on a disease like alcoholism or bi-polarism. Blame it on anything
and everything except themselves. Similarly, one can argue that Hitler, Stalin,
Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein were innocent victims of their inherited bad
genes.
6. RELIGION IS FALSE AND EVIL
Atheist: There are many religions, each claiming to be the one
true religion. Which is correct?
Believer: Like other questions in life, one must study the evidence
and alternatives, make judgments, and base one’s decision thereon. The desire
for an explanation of life and our individual preferences give birth to many
opinions and therefore many religions. If a person develops a humble attitude,
and is kind and loving toward all others, perhaps any religion compatible with
the principles of Jesus’ life will do.
Atheist: Religions have many weird beliefs and unnatural
restrictions contrary to human happiness. The variety of questionable religious
notions and requirements include Original Sin, the Trinity, the Resurrection,
the Last Judgment, confessions, celibate, male-only priests, no unmarried sex
or adultery, no artificial birth control, etc. Religions have opposed
reasonable reforms and some religions promote foolish sexual practices that
result in overpopulation and venereal diseases.
Believer: What appears weird to a human may not be so to God whose
intellect is far above that of humans. Non-believers object to religious
practices and beliefs that interfere with their pursuit of personal pleasures,
particularly beliefs that restrict a person’s sexual proclivities, such as
chastity before marriage, sex only within marriage and no homosexuality or
bestiality. Believers accept such restrictions as the preferences of God.
Atheists want no restrictions of
any kind regarding sex of any kind with anyone, including oneself, or with any
animal, simply because it feels good. If the result is an unwanted human
pregnancy, atheists solve that problem by murdering the developing, human
fetus.
Christians believe that life
begins at conception, that a fetus is a developing human hosted within its
mother’s body, and therefore God does not want fetuses killed via abortion.
Atheists argue that even though a fetus has a beating heart, brain function,
movement and feels pain, it can be defined to not be a human, and then it can
be killed legally if a pregnant woman so chooses.
Atheist: Religions have been the cause of much hatred, abuse,
misery, torture, and war. In the past many wars were started in the name of
religion, particularly the Crusades. Trials, torture and killings were done in
the name of religion during the Inquisitions. Scientists, such as Galileo, were
persecuted for their teachings.
Believer: Religion often has been used by some people as an excuse
to justify bad actions. Almost always it is not the religion that is bad but
some leaders, administrators or users of the religion that are bad or foolish.
Most religions and their members teach love and mercy, not hatred. Those few
religions or members that promote hatred are false religions and bad persons.
What evils are contained in the Ten Commandments, the foundational beliefs of
Christianity and Judaism?
In the Middle Ages it was the
Christian religion that preserved learning and expanded economic, technological
and scientific discovery in Church-initiated universities. The church taught
that man’s reason was God’s gift and should be used for the betterment of
mankind. Christian belief in free will and the equality of all humans fostered
individualism, capitalism, a strong work ethic and the abandonment of slavery.
The Crusades were two centuries of
defensive wars in the middle of more than twelve centuries of unprovoked Muslim
attacks against Christians. European Christians responded to pleas for help
from the Christian Byzantines and recaptured some territory, but basically the
Crusades failed, and Muslims soon recaptured what the Crusades had liberated
plus even more Christian territory until Muslims controlled, Palestine, Syria,
Turkey, Northern Africa, most of Spain, Greece, the Balkans and even threatened
Austria.
The Inquisitions were not
Christianity’s best initiatives. The Church leaders started them primarily to
uncover heretics masquerading as Christians, but soon lost control to local
governments with ulterior motives. They were regrettable actions that resulted
in the deaths of a few thousand persons, not the millions commonly claimed by
haters of Christianity. Far more cruelty, misery and suffering has been caused
by atheism than by Christianity.
7. CRUCIFIXION AND RESURRECTION
WERE NOT TRUE
Atheist: The need for God to suffer a crucifixion to atone for
human sin is asinine. And the belief that Jesus resurrected is too ridiculous
for serious consideration. The details of the lives of Jesus and the apostles
are clouded with mystery, and the clearly biased writings of fanatical
believers are not to be trusted any more in Jesus case as in that of the
followers of Jim Jones.
Believer: Here again atheists are judging God by their human
standards. The Resurrection of Jesus is the foundational doctrine of all
Christian faiths. The Resurrection suddenly transformed the cowardly apostles
into courageous heroes. They defied the Jewish leaders and preached openly the
divinity and teachings of Jesus. They, and many others, accepted horrible
executions rather than retract their belief that the Resurrection occurred.
That is powerful evidence that the Resurrection truly happened. And remember,
Jesus predicted His death and Resurrection, and it happened just as He had
prophesized!
Both misguided fanatics and brave
heroes have given their lives for a false cause that they believed to be true,
but no sane person has ever sacrificed his life to promote as true a cause he
personally knew to be false. So if the apostles knew Jesus wasn’t God, why did
they willingly accept their own slaughter to perpetuate that lie? What purpose
would their sacrifices then serve?
Non-believers can argue that Jesus
and the apostles never lived; they are myths. But no ancient documents are
better validated than the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. All four of the
Gospels were written within two to four decades of Jesus’ death. At least part
of the Acts was written before any of the Gospels. The surviving portions of
the earliest Gospels match extremely well with today’s versions.
The 9-11 hijackers believed what
they were taught. The apostles believed because they were in a locked room when
a resurrected Jesus appeared, talked and ate food with them. They were
first-hand witnesses. No one taught the apostles that there was a Resurrection;
they directly witnessed it. If Jesus had not resurrected, the apostles would
have known it.
The hijackers had only the word of
their “religious” teachers as evidence that God wanted them to kill infidels.
They had no direct evidence that God wanted infidels killed. The hijackers, Jim
Jones’s followers, and other brainwashed people believed lies that they were
told by leaders who had selfish reasons for duping their followers.
Unlike the 9-11 hijackers, the
apostles didn’t attack or hurt anyone. They believed God wanted them to love
everyone, even enemies. The 9-11 hijackers were taught and believed God wanted
them to murder infidels, their families, babies and other innocents. Japanese
Kamikaze pilots of World War II believed that Japanese victory was more
important than their lives. They sacrificed themselves for a real cause they
believed in, not a fictitious one.
Atheist: Science will eventually explain all the mysteries of the
universe, the development of first life and its evolution into complex life.
Believer: That is an incredible dream or a hope, but not a fact. To
insist that science someday will explain the many mysteries of the universe and
life is a belief that requires more faith than belief in God. The accidental
origin and development of life was a viable theory at the time of Darwin when
life and even cells were believed to be simple. But today, science has
discovered so much complication in life to the point that claiming fortunate
accidents did it is beyond ridiculous. Only a Mind could have done it.
Atheist: According to science’s Big Bang doctrine, the universe
was created when a fantastically large burst of energy suddenly appeared in a
miniscule bit of expanding space. The total energy involved was sufficient to
create multiple universes. Yet only a fraction of that energy changed into
matter and became our universe.
The Big Bang really happened and science cannot say specifically what caused it. Inventing a God to explain the Big Bang doesn’t really answer the question. It only changes the question from: “What created the Big Bang?” to “What created God?”
The evidence that ratifies the Big Bang concept includes: (1) Einstein’s general relativity law, (2) Hubble’s discovery that the universe is expanding and (3) Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson’s measurement of today’s cosmic background radiation that developed soon after the Big Bang began.
Believer: For centuries non-believers ridiculed the Biblical description that the universe was created. Now science has discovered that there was a creation (or beginning).
Dozens, if not hundreds of
universal constants and initial conditions must possess extremely precise
values and almost exact ratios between them for the universe, earth and life to
exist. A tiny deviation in any of these characteristics or ratios would make
the universe, earth or life impossible. Such precision and balance implies a
designer.
But neither science nor religion can offer direct evidence of what caused the creation. Believers say it was a miracle, God did it; non-believers say it was an accident from a totally unknown cause, except the cause absolutely could not be God. Atheists ask: “What created God?” But where God lives there is no time, and without time nothing can be created, it simply is.
9. FIRST CELLS AND DNA LANGUAGE
HAPPENED ACCIDENTALLY
Atheist: The first cell or cells of life were created by natural
accidents. Those initial cells were single-cellular organisms, such as bacteria
and algae, which developed from lifeless matter. Science doesn’t yet know
exactly how they came to be, but science has made enormous strides in
deciphering how cells are constructed and in explaining many other former
mysteries of life. Based on that record of achievement, it is reasonable to
expect that in time science will explain the accidental development of first
cells.
Believer: The first cell or cells were too complex to be natural
accidents. Scientist’s claim that they were created by accident within a short
geological period is simply a hope justified only by vague theories and no
experimental proof. Today, we appreciate that the simplest cell of the simplest
life is more complex than anything mankind has ever built. There is no
experimental evidence that anything more than simple life-sustaining compounds
(such as water, hydrides and amino acids) could have arisen accidentally from
inert mineral matter.
Atheist: Science suggests that DNA occurred in the first cells of
life when several simple DNA structures consisting of a few nucleotides
developed accidentally in the initial single-cellular organisms. The combining
of such organisms (as when virus “cells” inject their DNA into a human cell) could
have expanded and complicated the DNA structures. Mutations then could have
gradually increased the complexity of DNA. Nature accidentally discovered that
the accidentally created “recipes” in DNA were useful for constructing proteins
and other things.
Believer: All life is based on DNA (or its derivative, RNA). DNA
utilizes a language. In all human experience, the existence of a language
implies that intelligence created it. However, atheistic evolutionists argue
that a natural process invented the DNA language by accident, and then
accidentally used that language to create recipes that it stored in genes.
Other cell components use these recipes to manufacture proteins (and for other
uses). Evolutionists believe that before a cell divides into two cells, natural
processes “accidentally learned” how to copy the thousands of gene recipes, how
to proofread them to check that the copying was done correctly, and also
“accidentally learned” how to repair minor mistakes. Finally, if the mistakes
are major, then this blind, mindless, accidental, natural process learned how
to order the cell to commit suicide, a complex process that also was
“accidentally developed.”
And atheists further claim that
each small step of improvement in the process of development and use of DNA, in
itself caused an overall improvement in the ability to survive and reproduce of
the individual members of a species. But specifically how such steps occurred
is never proven; only vague, overall generalities are offered as possibilities.
10. EVOLUTION IS TRUE; GOD IS
FALSE
Atheist: Evolution
explains how new species and complex life developed from simpler species.
A. Evolution teaches that once
life somehow did appear, new life forms (species) were developed because of
“natural selection” operating on “biological variation.” What that means is
that members of a species have one or more different characteristics from each
other (biological variation). Some of those characteristics (e.g. strength,
size, intelligence, aggressiveness, health, eyesight, attractiveness to mates,
etc.) favor the survival and reproduction (natural selection) of the members
that have these favorable characteristics. This causes the favorable
characteristics to gradually dominate in the species or in a separated portion
of the species, and additional, favorable changes, if continued long enough,
will eventually result in a new species more suited to its environment than the
old species. Generally the more-fit, new species will be more complex than
earlier species, and in this way, evolution produced more and more complex
species. The final result has been the human species.
B. The fossil record proves
increasing complexity in life forms through time.
C. Geological and cosmological
evidence indicates that large amounts of time existed during which evolution
could operate.
D. The evidence in nature of great
waste and inefficiency suggests that a natural process was responsible for the
development of life rather than an outside intelligence.
E. Human characteristics (e.g.
five digits on hands) that are extremely similar to those of other animals
suggest evolution, not design. And the existence of vestigial organs and
structures in humans such as wisdom teeth, the coccyx (tail bone), ear-moving
muscles, body hair, the appendix, etc. apparently have lost most if not all of
their original purposes, presumably as humans or pre-humans evolved.
F. Embryology indicates that
animal embryos develop through stages that resemble older forms of life.
G. Geographic separation shows
that isolated groups develop differences from other members of the species.
Galapagos and Australian animals illustrate this. Such differences imply the
operation of evolution.
Believer: Evolution is a false theory.
A. In evolution theory, a missing
link is one organism that is developing a new characteristic that is different
from those of other members of its species (e.g. a worm that is developing legs
or an ordinarily wingless insect that is developing wings). Evolution claims
that missing links are the means by which new species are created and that many
missing links existed in the past.
Not one definite missing link has
been found in the fossil record. Claimed missing links are really members of
distinct species where the species has characteristics that appear to be
intermediate between two other true species. Science has discovered more fake
missing link fossils than real ones. And why are there no missing links in the
modern world? Has evolution suddenly disappeared?
B. No satisfactory evolutionary
explanation exists for the sudden Cambrian “explosion” that created many
species 540,000,000 years ago, when species as complex as any alive today
appeared in a brief geological period, with little or no evidence in the fossil
record of any ancestor species.