What is the problem with Atheism?
Atheism is more than just a problem for faith. It fails to qualify as
science. A good science pursues naturalistic explanations of natural phenomena.
The tradition of biology begun with Charles Darwin in 1859 and running down to
the present time is good science. Darwinism provides the most adequate natural
explanations for the evolution of one species out of a previous species. As
good science, it avoids saying anything about God’s action in the world.
Because science tells us how creatures act with regard to one another, we do
not expect science to say anything directly about the creator. For a scientist
to conclude that there is no God - which is the conclusion of the atheist - is
simply unwarranted by the science. Atheism fails to be scientific, because
science deals with the world of creatures, not the realm of the creator.
Charles Darwin, who gave us the concept of evolution as “descent with
modification,” was no atheist. He belonged to the Church of England; and he
entertained agnostic ideas. Darwin has drawn followers who are atheists,
however. Thomas Huxley in the late 19th century used evolutionary
theory to argue for naturalism without belief in God. In our own era, Richard
Dawkins of Oxford writes in his book, The
Blind Watchmaker (Norton 1987), “Darwin made it possible to be an
intellectually fulfilled atheist” (p.6). We believe this is a colossal error in
logic. Darwin ’s model of evolution is good science; but good science does not
require atheism. There is no step in the scientific method that says “at this
point, abandon belief in God.”
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| Contributed by: Martinez Hewlett and Ted Peters
|
