The New Atheists and Remembering A Notorious Atheists’ Prayer/Part 1
| By: Dr. John G. Weldon; ©2011 |
| I have long believed that theology and apologetics are critical to the spiritual health of the Church and yet they are, unfortunately, often neglected. Because of it, evangelism also suffers. Ironically, an eternal Heaven or Hell hang in the balance. |
- “For we are not able to do anything against the truth, but [only] for the truth…” (2 Corinthians 13:8, Young’s Literal)
- “We are created in God’s s image, and God loves life and lives forever. We were made to live forever. And we will. The opposite of eternal life is not annihilation. It is hell….This is an unspeakable reality that shows the infinite evil of treating God with indifference or contempt.”[1]
Introduction: Atheists and Unicorns
Just as unicorns are the personification of untamed freedom, so in many ways is atheism – freedom so commanding it demands freedom from God Himself and that forever. (Thankfully, God often has other ideas, as we will see.) But atheism and unicorns happen to share another commonality: that of a mythical nature.
The Bible never argues for God’s existence because it never needs to. Everyone knows God exists, no matter what they say, even atheists and other skeptics.
According to Romans 1:19-21: the following is true of all men since “the first man Adam” (1 Corinthians 1545-47), which includes everyone who has ever lived:
- “… 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. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools…”
Note several things about this passage.
First, the knowledge of God is “plain” to all men for a very specific reason: “because God has made it plain to them.” Who has been our teacher? God Himself. There is no possibility of a better educator, nor is there any possibility of failure. As a result, everyone knows God exists by definition of big human. Indeed, nine chapters later in Romans 10:18, the apostle Paul – specifically in the context of the proclamation of the Gospel itself – declares, “But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for: ‘Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.'” (Cf. Romans 2:14-15)
Second, the passage goes on to affirm that God’s eternal power and divine nature are “clearly seen” being understood through what has been made, i.e., the creation – hence the raw power of something like the Intelligent Design movement in its various forms (e.g. Discovery.org), a movement I believe one day will dethrone the scientific and theological nonsense of evolution.[2]
Third, as a result of their intuitive knowledge of God, Romans 1 declares that all men who reject the one true God are “without excuse” (verse 20) because even though “they knew God” they nevertheless refuse to glorify Him as God and be thankful.
Fourth, as the passage continues, they substituted dead things (wood and stone idols) in the place of the living God, the most spectacular indeed foolish exchange if ever there was one. Today, the idols may or may not be something different (self comes to mind), but the conclusion is the same: atheists are, in fact an extinct species. Actually, it’s rather worse – they are a mythological species, like unicorns. No atheist has ever existed since Adam, nor will an atheist ever exist – the only thing that exists is simply the unproven claim to be something one can never be. This is a form of self-deception, one of the worst, one that by definition strips away reality and forces one to live life in an illusion. Reality is dethroned and delusion becomes one’s God. The irony is twofold: by suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, the truth one already knows, one is forced to live in a world that rejects the most real thing of all, God Himself, and to live in a world of make-believe, a manufactured world of one’s own imaginings. Worse still, modern atheism is actually a myth supported by another myth, the equally impoverished materialistic postulate of Darwinian evolution.[3]
Notes
- ↑ John Piper, 50 Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die, 2006, 56-57
- ↑ See John Ankerberg, John Weldon, Darwin’s Leap of Faith: Exposing the False Religion of Evolution; Dr. James F. Coppedge, Evolution: Possible or Impossible? [Google “the Impossibility of Evolution”]; Wendell R. Bird, The Origin of Species Revisited (two volumes); Dr. Jason Lisle, Ultimate Proof of Creation; Tom McIver, Anti-Evolution: an Annotated Bibliography (which lists 1850 titles).
- ↑ Three of the best creationist websites are the Creation Research Society (CRS.org; technical); AnswersInGenesis.org; Institute for Creation Research (ICR.org); also, see the “Resources” at Rae.org; for Intelligent Design, Discovery.org, especially their booklist, http://www.discovery.org/csc/books/. For the proper classification of evolutionary theory as a materialistic postulate, see Dr. Willem J. Ouweneel, Research Associate in Developmental Genetics, Ultrech, Netherlands, with the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, in his article “The Scientific Character of the Evolution Doctrine,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, September 1971, p. 109-15. He argues that evolution should not be considered a scientific fact, theory, hypothesis, or postulate. For example, evolutionary theory is not, strictly, a scientific postulate because to be so: (a) it must be in accordance with the principal laws of mathematics and natural science (which it isn’t); (b) it must not be more complicated than necessary for the explanation of observed phenomena (which it is); (c) it must give rise to conclusions which can be controlled by further experimental observations and testing (which it doesn’t); (d) it must conform to the general data of science (which it doesn’t); (e) alternate hypotheses must be shown to be wrong or less acceptable (which aren’t); and (f) the reliability of a scientific conception is inversely proportional to the number of unproven postulates on which it is founded (evolution has far too many). Evolution fails all six criteria for categorization as a scientific postulate. This is why Dr. Ouweneel properly concludes that evolution is actually a materialistic postulate (a statement about origins based on an unfounded (and deeply flawed philosophically) scientific naturalism that is accepted as true without proof), rather than a credible scientific theory.
