Chapter 70

I have been asked to provide more insight into understanding the religion of atheism. You may ask why I call it a religion, and the simple answer lies within the actual definition of the word which is: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with passion and faith. As discussed in previous chapters, the question of origins requires faith; therefore, you are required to believe that either the universe created itself or God created it… it’s really that simple.

If you venture into sci-fi territory and talk about life being created elsewhere and sent to Earth via transplanted panspermia (which was a quack theory first mockingly and whimsically proposed by Francis Crick that states the “seeds of life” originated elsewhere and were sent to flourish on Earth like a zoo); or if you believe in the multi-verse theory (which states our universe originated as one among many that expands, contracts, and explodes every so often)… you are STILL left with the fundamental question that any 3 year old child recognizes which is: “Well, where did that come from?” As I have stated before, the only way to philosophically escape an endless regress of causes is to have an original, uncreated cause which we call GOD. The skeptical atheist is required to proclaim proof of the non-existence of God, and as such, stops nothing short of deliberately espousing a kind of intellectual pessimism. He is bereft of any dogmatic proof of course, just a wad of convoluted and pointless theories on how matter somehow self-creates and guides itself upward by some apparent mystical life-force (sounds like a kooky religion to me).

Some skeptics argue that they can statistically prove religious people are unintelligent, uneducated, hypocritical, deceitful, insincere, or phony; and of course because of this, they have yet another excuse to refuse belief in God. This red herring argument (which means it is a deliberate attempt to divert attention) is remarkably weak and ill-contrived, but let's take a look at it anyway.

Let us consider for a moment this simple analogy: If a father tells his son, “Do not eat the blue tablets that I placed on the counter, because if you do you will die.” ‘But why?’ asks the little boy, ‘it is not poisonous’. The father replies, “How do you know it is not poisonous?” ‘Because’, says the little boy, ‘when you smash them on the floor you don’t find blue monsters inside of them’. Clearly when this little boy thought of poison he thought of blue monsters that would kill him; and to that extent he was mistaken. But this does not mean that everything the little boy thought or said about poison was therefore nonsensical and false. The little boy knew perfectly well that poison was something that would kill you if you ate it, and he knew to some extent that some of the pills lying on the counter were harmful. If a visitor came into the house and the little boy warned him, “Don’t eat any blue pills you find around the house because my Dad says they will kill you,” the visitor would be quite foolish to ignore the warning based on the fact that ‘this little boy has an unintelligent, primitive idea of what poison is, he thinks it is blue monsters that will kill you, which my adult scientific knowledge has long since repudiated’.

The Bible verse that comes to mind is in Romans 3:4 which says, “…Let God be true, and every man a liar.” (NIV) Never allow another man's misunderstanding or misconception of Christianity keep you from personally examining the claims of Jesus Christ. You must make the choice for yourself and decide how you are going to respond to God, for in the end, you alone are responsible for how your life turns out. The great Apostle Paul said it best in Romans 1:18-20 which says, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities –his eternal power and divine nature –have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (NIV)