Several weeks ago there was a flare-up in an online discussion I was having with an atheist. Things were going along well until he compared faith in God with faith in fairies. At this point I let him know that putting faith in God in the same category with belief in fairies, Santa, and the Easter Bunny was offensive. A simple apology would have sufficed. Instead he and a number of other of my atheist friends jumped in to defend his statement. So I decided to break off what had been a very interesting conversation.
This is why I took offense: I am tired of atheists taking the posture that their’s is the rational and scientific position, when in fact, atheism, materialism, naturalism, or whatever you want to call it, is no more rational than theism. In fact, I think our faith has a better foundation than their unbelief.
Let me explain what I am referring to. We know that the universe we are living in is finite, it had a beginning. I think the evidence for Big Bang in now incontrovertible. We also know that Big Bang has no naturalistic, materialistic or physical explanation, that only leaves one logical possibility, it must have had a supernatural cause.
The reason we know the universe did not have a physical cause is that the laws of physics did not exist before Big Bang. The reason for this is that the laws of physics tell how the universe we’re living in operates, so until the universe came into existence there were no physical laws to govern it, no physics.
We also know the universe did not have a naturalistic explanation because nature did not exist until Big Bang. We know that there is no materialistic explanation for it either, because mater did not exist until Big Bang. In fact, time, space, and mater did not exist until after Big Bang. So, since there is no natural, physical or materialistic explanation for Big Bang, a supernatural explanation is the only one left on the table.
Now I know that scientists like Richard Dawkins are proposing solutions to this problem, and also to the anthropic principle, since it too would tend to favor a supernatural explanation for the order of the universe. But I also note that there is no scientific evidence for the solution they are proposing (infinite universes with an infinite number of outcomes).
The effort of these atheist scientists reminds me of the efforts of their brethren before them who proposed the “Steady State” theory to try to explain away Big Bang. They too had no evidence, but their motive was the same as Dawkins and company, to come up with something to close the door that had been opened to God by the actual facts of science.
I note also that something is not scientific just because a scientist says it. The hypotheses being proposed by these atheists are impossible to test or observe, they are beyond the reach of the scientific method and there is absolutely no evidence for it. So how can it be called scientific when it is no more supportable than the idea of…Santa Claus or fairies?
No, what Dawkins and his followers are really doing is refusing to go to the place the evidence leads. And so I refuse to allow those who hold to a theory of origins which has less to commend it than the explanation I hold to, to pretend that their faith in eternal something is more reasonable than my belief in an eternal God.
