Exposing atheism for what it really is
God doesn’t exist- Prove it. An interesting challenge to the too often arrogant claims of atheits.
The Fall of Atheism in the West?
In the West, over the last 30 years the Christian consensus has been shrinking as thousands of nominal Christians have abandoned the Church. This is often taken to mean that people have abandoned faith for non-faith. But this is not the case as can be seen from the rise in interest in faith-based views in Western countries today. There is clear rise in more generalised spiritual beliefs such as new age spirituality or that of other World Religions especially Buddhism and Islam.
The Berlin Wall and the end of atheism
The theologian and biologist Alistair McGrath published “a devastating critique’ of the atheism preached by the scientist and staunch evolutionist, Richard Dawkins entitled, Dawkins’ God (Blackwell). McGrath also wrote a book entitled The Twilight of Atheism (Rider). In it he showed that atheism as a popular belief system began to gain currency around 200 years ago fuelling among other things the French and Russian Revolutions and giving rise to various forms of Communism in the 20th Century. However, McGrath suggests that atheism peaked in the 1960’s and that the demolition of the Berlin wall in 1989 signalled also the end of atheism. Disbelief in God is no longer the consensus view. Faith is on the increase. As Christians, we want to impact our society with the gospel and see the culture of our nation transformed by the teaching and values of Christ.
Design and a designer
Intelligent design. This is the theory that the world is not the product of the blind forces of nature and chance, but that an intelligent designer is behind the universe. The prevailing “scientific’ opinion, upheld by so many of the institutions of our day, is supportive of the Darwinian theories of evolution. But is this down to the weight of scientific evidence? Or is it because these evolutionists (like Richard Dawkins) have a prior and rigid commitment to a philosophy which predetermines their view in these matters, no matter what the scientific evidence? Johnson and Snelling did an admirable job of showing how current evolutionary theories are wholly inadequate interpretations of the scientific facts at our disposal. Their arguments were so persuasive that one reporter suggested that the Snelling-Johnson tour should have been entitled Darwin Refuted and not Darwin Reconsidered. On the other hand, some dismissed the tour as mere Christian propaganda.
Atheism as a religion
And so we see that atheism is still far from dead. But we also can now see atheism for what it truly is – a religion in its own right. It is a religion founded neither on clear-thinking nor on science and is absolutely committed to perpetuating a view which is being increasingly discredited by science – the belief that the natural world, the world we can see or touch, is all that exists, and that everything we can see and touch comes only from what we can see and touch. Matter/energy is the ultimate reality of the universe. Congratulations! Atheists these days have more faith than most Christians I know!