How atheism impersonates science.
It is never my desire to frighten readers, but I would be negligent if I failed to warn of an alarming trend which poses a grave threat to the very fabric of our society. Before reading the following, you may want to take a seat (if you are not already doing so). The Naked Scientists (website) warned on December 3rd, 2000 that:
“The number of Elvis Presley impersonators has reached an all-time record high – there are now at least 85,000 Elvis’s around the world, compared to only 170 in 1977 when Elvis died. At this rate of growth, experts predict that by 2019 Elvis impersonators will make up a third of the world population.”
Please take a moment to somberly digest the shocking social and cultural implications of the above trend (virtually no family will remain unaffected). And as you do so, I will reveal the REAL reason that provided the above citation:
As absurd as it is, and although the writers never intended it to be taken seriously, it actually contains some key lessons regarding how atheists deceive people into thinking that atheism is “scientific” or “empirically based.” What atheists present as “science” supporting their views is actually extremely shoddy philosophy posturing or posing as science…a posing and posturing that would make Elvis impersonators proud.
The pathway leading from Darwinian evolution to atheism is not a scientific pathway. Rather, it is a philosophical pathway….a pathway paved from an interpretation of, and then extrapolation from scientific observations.
The pathway leading from Darwinian evolution to atheism is not a scientific pathway. Rather, it is a philosophical pathway….a pathway paved from an interpretation of, and then extrapolation from scientific observations.
Much like the above citation, atheist reasoning often utilizes ridiculous over-extrapolation. Just as it is ridiculous to think that ⅓ of Earth’s population will be Elvis impersonators by 2019 based upon an extrapolation from short-term rates of growth; it is ridiculous to extrapolate atheism from scientific theories such as Darwinism (as Charles Darwin himself clearly understood, as I demonstrate in Why Evolution Cannot Be Used to Rationalize Atheism). The pathway leading from Darwinian evolution to atheism is not a scientific pathway. Rather, it is a philosophical pathway….a pathway paved from an interpretation of, and then extrapolation from scientific observations. An excerpt from I Believe in Science, Why Do I Need Religion is pertinent to this topic:
Let us bring to the surface the atheist philosophical/religious reasoning …so as to expose it to logical scrutiny:
1) An apparently mindless (Darwinian) mechanism known as random mutation and natural selection is responsible for the diversification of life from a common ancestor.
2) Because this mechanism for the diversification of life can be interpreted as mindless, we can extrapolate mindlessness into the origin of life from non-living matter, even though non-living matter has neither genes to mutate nor reproductive offspring to naturally select. (See my post titled Why Life Could Not Have Emerged Without God for a more in-depth exploration of this topic).
3) And because this proposed mechanism for the diversification of life is apparently mindless, we can further extrapolate to a mindless source for this mechanism.
4) And because this proposed mechanism is apparently mindless, we can still further extrapolate to a mindless source for the physical laws that make this mechanism work.
5) Because physical laws can create things and cause things to happen [or so says the religion of scientism], we do not need to cite an intelligent source for the universe.
6) Therefore, there is no need for such a being as God.
In case the reader is wondering if atheists are really capable of such extrapolation gone wild, consider the atheist biologist Richard Dawkins’ statement in his book The Blind Watchmaker that he “could not imagine being an atheist at any time before 1859, when Darwin’s Origin of Species was published.” Apparently Dawkins believes that a scientific theory which discusses the diversification of life through random mutation and natural selection can be applied to everything…whether or not the mutation of genes and the natural selection of reproductive offspring are involved. Now that, folks, is a bizarre religion (or “philosophy,” if you prefer).
The atheist physicist Lawrence Krauss provides another excellent case study regarding how atheists attempt to present what is really atheist philosophy as “science.” In Krauss’ book, A Universe From Nothing, he argues that our universe came from nothing rather than from God. This concept will come as a shock to most readers, since they have no doubt spent their entire lives with the assumption that nothing cannot cause anything to happen or to exist. After all, this is what the Law of Causation (without which, science would be impossible) dictates.
The following excerpt from Come Let Us Reason by William Lane Craig hilariously highlights the absurdity of the idea that nothing can cause something to happen or to exist:
“Imagine the following dialogue between two people discussing the Second World War:”
Person 1: “Nothing stopped the German advance from sweeping across Belgium.”
Person 2: “Oh, that’s good. I’m glad they were stopped.”
Person 1: “But they weren’t stopped!”
Person 2: “But you said that nothing stopped them.”
Person 1: “That’s right.”
Person 2: “So they were stopped.”
Person 1: “No, nothing stopped them.”
Person 2: “That’s what I said. They were stopped, and it was nothing which stopped them.”
Person 1: “No, no, I meant they weren’t stopped by anything.”
Person 2: “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
And this scathing New York Times review of Krauss’ book by Columbia University Professor of Philosophy David Albert expands upon the absurdity of Krauss’ assertion that science provides a way to cite nothing as the cause of the universe, rather than God:
“Lawrence M. Krauss, a well-known cosmologist and prolific popular-science writer, apparently means to announce to the world, in this new book, that the laws of quantum mechanics have in them the makings of a thoroughly scientific and adamantly secular explanation of why there is something rather than nothing. Period. Case closed. End of story. I kid you not. Look at the subtitle. Look at how [the atheist biologist] Richard Dawkins sums it up in his afterword: ‘Even the last remaining trump card of the theologian, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?,’ shrivels up before your eyes as you read these pages. If ‘On the Origin of Species’ was biology’s deadliest blow to supernaturalism, we may come to see ‘A Universe From Nothing’ as the equivalent from cosmology. The title means exactly what it says. And what it says is devastating.’”
“Well, let’s see. There are lots of different sorts of conversations one might want to have about a claim like that: conversations, say, about what it is to explain something, and about what it is to be a law of nature, and about what it is to be a physical thing. But since the space I have is limited, let me put those niceties aside and try to be quick, and crude, and concrete.”
“Where, for starters, are the laws of quantum mechanics themselves supposed to have come from? Krauss is more or less upfront, as it turns out, about not having a clue about that. He acknowledges (albeit in a parenthesis, and just a few pages before the end of the book) that everything he has been talking about simply takes the basic principles of quantum mechanics for granted. ‘I have no idea if this notion can be usefully dispensed with,’ he writes, ‘or at least I don’t know of any productive work in this regard.’”
Regarding Albert’s above comments, it does not take a physicist to see that what Krauss presents as scientific reasons for doing away with God are actually ideological/philosophical reasons. In order to clear a path from his scientific observations to a conclusion of atheism, Krauss must take the philosophical steps of:
1) bizarrely equating the laws of quantum mechanics with nothing and then,
2) ascribing creative properties to this nothing…which can never be done scientifically because, contrary to what Krauss seems to think, scientific instruments and the methods of science cannot effectively analyze nothing. (Please note that I address the absurdity of ascribing creative properties to physical laws, as Krauss does, in Who Is Playing Make-Believe? (Atheists or theists))
3) deeming the question of where the laws of quantum mechanics come from as unimportant (because such a question is unanswerable from within the framework of the atheist/materialist worldview)…
It must be emphasized that neither Albert nor I present any objections to any of Krauss’ science…just the philosophical add-ons to his science. Further, if Krauss contends that the universe was created by the laws of quantum mechanics, why didn’t he title his book A Universe From the Laws of Quantum Mechanics instead of A Universe From Nothing? Because he knows that this would leave open the question of where the laws of quantum mechanics came from…a question that science is fundamentally unequipped to address. And admitting that the laws of quantum mechanics must have a source would provide a direct pathway to a Lawgiver. Therefore, Krauss must make the bizarre, contorted philosophical move of equating the laws of quantum mechanics with nothing.
And in an attempt to climb out of the hole of incoherence into which he has dug himself, Krauss experiments with different definitions of “nothing”, as he does in this Huffington Post interview.
Below are some of his words:
“Why is there something rather than nothing? Well, ultimately there are a variety of answers, which is why I wrote a whole book about it. But the remarkable thing is that our picture has changed completely because we changed what we mean by something and nothing. Nothing is far more subtle than you might imagine, for the Bible for example, nothing would have been a vast, eternal empty universe. That would have been, you know, a void. Well that kind of nothing we now understand–namely empty space if you get rid of all the particles and all the radiation–that kind of nothing is actually quite complicated. In the modern universe it’s a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles popping in and out of existence on a timescale so short you can’t see them. So there’s nothing there but actually lots of stuff is happening. You just can’t see it, and that kind of nothing, one of the remarkable things we’ve learned is that kind of nothing is unstable. Empty space is unstable.”
But, as the Oxford University mathematician John Lennox puts it:
“What serves to obscure the illogicality of statements is the fact that they are made by scientists; and the general public, not surprisingly, assumes that they are statements of science and takes them on authority. That is why it is important to point out that they are not statements of science, and any statement, whether made by a scientist or not, should be open to logical analysis. Immense prestige and authority does not compensate for faulty logic.”
So, let us take Krauss’ attempt to redefine nothing and expose it to logical analysis, as per Lennox’s advice: How could two different definitions of nothing differ meaningfully from one another?! Aristotle defined nothing as, “What rocks dream about,” and the Oxford Dictionary defines nothing as, “Not anything. No single thing.” Although these two definitions differ in the words which they utilize, their meaning is the same. Krauss’ attempts to redefine nothing are really attempts to smuggle something back into nothing. This is semantic maneuvering in support of an ideology. It is NOT science. There cannot be different types of nothing. Period. Case closed. End of story.
Secondly, contrary to what Krauss’ thinks, nothing is actually a very simple concept and the definition of nothing has remained very stable over time. Krauss’ worldview dictates that he must equate nothing with nothing material because allowing for something non-material would allow an opening for non-material entities such as God. Nothing and nothing material are two entirely different concepts. What we understand matter to be certainly has changed with advances in science, but what we understand nothing to be has not and cannot change. Nothingness is a philosophical concept, not a scientific concept.
Moreover, a person who is committed to objectivity, rather than ideology, does not try to “usefully dispense with” (in Krauss’ words) a crucial question such as where the laws of quantum mechanics come from. Rather, such a person tries to provide objectively reasoned and rationally sound answers to such questions. Krauss betrays his ideological motives with his own words. A rationally sound answer to this question cannot be furnished from within the framework of his worldview, and so he prefers to “dispense with” it.
Notably, theists and atheist physicists such as Krauss seem to be in agreement on a few key points: Because matter, space, time, and energy are properties of the universe, they cannot be the cause of the universe. Therefore, whatever the cause of the universe is, it must be immaterial, spaceless, timeless, and energy-less. Both God and nothing, if one stops to think, are just that…immaterial, spaceless, timeless, and energy-less.
But since science is not and never will be capable of examining things of a immaterial, spaceless, timeless, and energy-less nature, deciding whether God or nothing is the best candidate for the cause of the universe can, ultimately, only be done philosophically. So we must decide whether an eternally existent consciousness (God), or nothing, is the best candidate for having creative properties. And unless one is an ideologically driven atheist, the choice is clear. Indeed, I point out in God Is Real…Why Modern Physics Has Discredited Atheism how (and why) the majority of the most important contributors to modern physics (FAR more important contributors than Krauss and the like) have concluded that God is the best explanation. Theism is the view which is by far most compatible with modern physics.
Although the threat to society posed by Elvis Presley impersonators presented at the beginning of this essay may have been overstated*, the threat posed by atheist philosophy impersonating science is indeed significant.
*at least outside of the greater Las Vegas area.
As I read this, I remembered a thought I had on Easter Sunday: “Evil is nothing, but it still exists.”
That really sounds strange, but it makes perfect sense! “Evil” is the absence of what is supposed to be there; a child who has no arms suffers from evil. Evil people, regardless of what weapons they invent, they ultimately destroy things which are good.
Besides the well-known truth that existence presupposes being, we also see another truth, which seems to awkwardly stand beside the first: “There is a distinction between non-existence and non-being.”
I see a new light in this: “Being” is presence, and “existence” is instance.
Statement One: A thing can’t be present unless there is an instance of it.
Statement Two: There can be an instance of a thing without it being present.
Empty space* is another example of Statement Two: it is the complete absence of anything, but it exists. What makes this interesting is that for Statement Two to obtain, there must be something present; evil, despite being nothing, exists because there are people who destroy good things. Empty space, despite being nothing, exists because there are things standing in spatial relations to each other, without anything present between them.
We see that even non-entities need causes.
Emmanuel Kant’s attempt to defeat the cosmological argument fails: even if the universe were a noumenon (as he called it), we would know it needs a cause, even if we could never know what the cause is like.
Dr. Krauss’ attempt fails for the same reason.
Yes, exactly…and here is how I like to put it:
People often ask, “If God is good, why is there such a thing as evil? And if God created everything, then isn’t it true that he must have also created evil?”
And the best answer is that evil is an absence of God’s love and God’s goodness, just as darkness is an absence of light. Evil is something that exists only in contrast to God’s goodness and love.
First I’d like to say you have a decently set up website
Second I’d like to say if your sight advertised proof of god it should have that. It does not. Every other sentence speaks of how bad atheists are. That is presumptuous at best. We are not hateful, we do not bomb people, we do not believe in killing. We believe in truth. That’s all.
It upsets me that so many people are seriously angry with me not believing in your fairy tails.
I don’t kill BECAUSE IT’S WRONG. The bible gives you reasons to kill. And justifications to do so.God is not real. Grow the fuck up. Your faith should stand alone. Without hate. Only love.
We are all part of the same compose heap.
If I may step in, it’s been a while….
I’m glad you think Mr. Youngren’s website is decently established. Thank you for trying to be pleasant when explaining yourself.
I’m sorry, but I think one of us misunderstands the site. Mr. Youngren is trying to offer evidence; this does not mean proof, as proof only is needed to persuade the unreasonable, correct? Take what has been offered as you will, but it at least gives moderate warrant for belief.
Every other sentence is about how “bad” atheists are? I’m sorry, but I must be naive: when I read this page, I saw an expose of a common fallacy. As I understand, condemning a philosophy does not mean condemning its adherents. Did this page speak of atheist atrocities, or being justified in these crimes? No, another page, perhaps? https://godevidence.com/2011/02/doesnt-religion-cause-killing/ that one? You seem not to understand that page, if you mean to use that one. The whole affair leaves me curious: why should an atheist do what is “right” if there can be no such thing?
I’m upset when freedoms are opposed, also. But I am even more upset when people knowingly give up their eternity. Maybe you should practice your patience; when people push, they merely want you to be among the everlasting.
You do not kill because it is wrong? That’s good, right? How did you decide that it is wrong? I really am concerned.
Kevin:
Thanks for your comments.
This website never advertises “proof” of God’s existence. There are very few things in human experience that can be proven. With very few exceptions (such as mathematical proofs), virtually all logical arguments can be subjected to some degree of skepticism.
For example, can you really “prove” that we have bodies, and that we are not really just brains in a vat being stimulated by a mad scientist? Answer: No, you can’t. And, yet, the vast majority of people accept that they have bodies…based upon logical reasoning.
Can you prove that the moon is not made of cheese? No, you can’t….no matter what evidence you could provide to argue that the moon is not made of cheese, a skeptic could still raise objections.
This is why the question of God’s existence (like nearly everything else in human experience) is a matter of preponderance of evidence, and not “proof.” An atheist who denies God’s existence based upon “lack of proof” therefore has every bit as flimsy of a logical justification for his stance as a person who tries to argue that the moon is made of cheese because it can’t be proven otherwise.
I am not angry with you for your beliefs. However, I intend to do everything in my power to try to prevent atheists such as yourself from making what I perceive to be the biggest mistake a person could ever make.
Your use of strident rhetorical terms such as “fairy tales” is strongly suggestive that you hold your atheist views for emotional reasons rather than logical reasons. Further, rhetorical terms such as “fairy tale” are what a person must fall back on when that person does not have a logical argument. Logical arguments consist of logic, not rhetoric…no matter how you slice it.
I am glad that you brought up the topic of killing. As I demonstrate in my post titled Doesn’t Religion Cause Killing?, the most blood drenched regimes in all of human history (by far) have been either officially atheist (such as the Communists) or have justified their killing using atheist philosophy (as is the case with the Nazis). Nobody in all of human history has come anywhere close to killing as many people as the atheist Communists or the Nazis.
When it comes to the connection between atheism and unrestrained killing, mathematician David Berlinski hits the nail on the head in his book The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and It’s Scientific Pretensions:
Somewhere in Eastern Europe, a [Nazi] SS officer watched languidly, his machine gun cradled, as an elderly and bearded Hasidic Jew laboriously dug what he knew to be his grave. Standing up straight, he addressed his executioner. “God is watching what you are doing,” he said. And then he was shot dead. What Hitler did not believe, and what Stalin did not believe, and what Mao did not believe, and what the SS did not believe, and what the Gestapo did not believe, and what the NKVD did not believe, and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Blackshirts, Gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe, was that God was watching what they were doing. And as far as we can tell, very few of those carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that God was watching what they were doing either. That is, after all, the meaning of a secular society.
In short, Kevin, the governing worldview behind the most prolific killers in history has been that THERE IS NO POWER GREATER THEIR OWN.
What reasons does the Bible give a person to kill? This is a very strange assertion considering that the Bible says “thou shalt not kill.”
Further, your comments about killing bring to light another important point: Atheism provides no grounding for a moral belief such as “killing is wrong.” If there is no God, then what is the source for right and wrong? Atheist philosophers have struggled to find a source for morality and many even admit that atheism provides no such source.
My essay titled Why Do I Have to Believe In God to Be Good? discusses atheism’s inability to explain the source of morality. An excerpt:
John C. Lennox notes in Gunning for God:
Albert Einstein, in a discussion on science and religion in Berlin in 1930, said that our sense of beauty and our religious instinct are: “tributary forms in helping the reasoning faculty towards its highest achievements. You are right in speaking of the moral foundations of science, but you cannot turn round and speak of the scientific foundations of morality.” According to Einstein, therefore, science cannot form a base for morality: “Every attempt to reduce ethics to scientific formula must fail.” Richard Feynman, also a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, shared Einstein’s view: “Even the greatest forces and abilities don’t seem to carry any clear instructions on how to use them. As an example, the great accumulation of understanding as to how the physical world behaves only convinces one that this behavior has a kind of meaninglessness about it. The sciences do not directly teach good or bad.” Elsewhere he states: “Ethical values lie outside the scientific realm.”
Lennox continues by citing Jacques Monod in Chance and Necessity:
One of the great problems of philosophy is the relationship between the realm of knowledge and realm of values. Knowledge is what “is” and values are what “ought” to be. I would say that all traditional philosophies up to and including communism have tried to derive the “ought” from the “is”. This is impossible. If it is true that there is no purpose in the universe, that man is a pure accident, you cannot derive any ought from is.
And this is exactly what atheism claims…humankind is a purely purposeless accident that resulted from mindless natural processes. One must ask, How can moral values (good and bad) result from mindless natural processes?
Many of the atheists who will make statements like these do so based on a very skewed view of scripture. He says the bible “gives reasons to kill” He’s probably referring to the old testament passages like the famously overused example of the malachites when God told Isreal to kill women and children. Nevermind that these people sacrificed their own children to the God “Molech” And were dangerous in every way imaginable, many atheists tend to assume that they were lovely people who didn’t deserve it lol. Cause you know, they own time machines and can go back and meet the malachites themselves.
But this is also a misrepresentation because there is no “reason to kill” in these passages. Not one that can be applied in any other situations. These were specific commands given to a specific people to wipe out another specific group on one specific occassion. They can’t be used to justify killing in any other scenarios, if you are not an isrealite living in 2000 BC and your priests have not just told you to go to war with someone after leaving the sacred temple, then there is no situation that would allow you to kill biblically speaking.
I think that people like Kevin (and kevin I’m talking to you as well so please don’t think I’m talking about you while ignoring you) have just experienced alot of hellfire and brimstone talk and people telling them they’re bad for not believing. I disagree with this tactic whole heartedly and think people should do more honest research on hell in general. It’s not an open and shut case, the only real thing we know is that Jesus is love, Love is God, Jesus is therefore both God and Love, and when we believe in him we have an abundance of love and life given to us eternally. But the actual specifics of what EXACTLY this means deserve more examination imo. I think we oversimplify things and cause the truth to get lost.
One thing I want christians to always remember is that Jesus said to NOT judge other people. What more harsh of a judgement could you make than deciding you know someone is going to burn in hell? BE light. BE filled with the holy spirit. Act LIKE Jesus and HELP people. And stop telling them where they are or aren’t going, just be ready with answers when they ask you questions.
That’s my outlook at this time anyway.
Symph,
These are very good points about atheist misinterpretation of God as depicted in the Old Testament. Paul Copan elaborates in detail on the points you touch on in his book Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God. You can click on the preceding link to check it out at Amazon. I have read it and recommend it.
Scott