The last post was basically my statement of faith, and I’m eager to get into more detail about that.

However, today’s post is dedicated to those of you who thought, “I’m reading all your beliefs about salvation and such, but I’m not even sold on the existence of God.”

I hope to get into a lot of detail on this subject as well. Today will be just a broad overview. Up front, I want to say don’t worry, I realize I do not have all the answers.

I will be referencing various quotes today, and I will provide the links at the bottom of the post.

Here is the point I want to make in today’s post, and perhaps in all of our apologetics discussions here:

Monotheism vs atheism is a confrontation between two faiths.

(I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew, so I will not discuss polytheism today).

In other words, It is not a confrontation between faith and science. True, much historical and scientific work has been done on both sides of the confrontation, and I will probably discuss some of it in future posts. But ultimately, both sides have to exercise some faith. But faith in what?

Monotheism puts faith in God. Here is a monotheistic statement of faith:

Hebrews 11:3 “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”

Atheism puts faith in matter, energy and/or physical laws. Here is an atheistic statement of faith from Richard Lewontin, Harvard biology professor:

“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”

I realize that he does not use the word faith there, but his paradigm clearly requires faith. When you make a “prior commitment to materialism”, you are putting faith in the universe to both exist and organize itself without any outside help. Using Lewontin’s own words as my guide, I can look at a proposed naturalistic explanations of origins and say “they have not necessarily found evidence strong enough to convince an impartial observer…they have merely assumed that the universe exists by itself and organizes itself, and then done their very best to explain how that might have happened.” According to Lewontin, someone who approaches the universe with the question “Hmmm, who or what caused all this?” is disqualified from the inner circle of scientific truth. That is not an OK question to ask.

It’s almost like a criminal trial without a defense attorney.

“Atheism” itself is a tricky word. The word tells you what the atheist disbelieves. It leaves out what the atheist must, by consequence, believe. So what, specifically, must the atheist have faith in?

• The self-existence of the law of gravity, energy, and/or a super-dense chunk of matter, or some other set of physical things and laws that were always just there
• The spontaneous appearance of life, whether on earth or somewhere else, without any intelligent intervention (this has never been proven)
• Evolution of the first organism into an intelligent life form (the vast majority of mutations that would be necessary for this to happen have never been observed)

Further, if you are an atheist who does not work in the natural sciences, we need to acknowledge another layer of faith required for your worldview. You don’t really have the wherewithal to fully verify for yourself, scientifically, that the naturalistic explanations of origins are valid, and you must rely to some extent on information provided by scientists. You must trust that their work is accurate. You must place your faith in them. You must assume that they are able to resist the allure of moral autonomy as they look for evidence that we really don’t need God to explain origins. Lewontin wisely comments that even as a biologist, he still has to place his faith in scientists like Hawking when it comes to the Big Bang. He even mentions his worry that the masses will place their faith in Dawkins, whose approach to macro-evolution Lewontin disagrees with. Let’s face it: You have a full-time job. You may have children. You have dry-cleaning to pick up. That is just the nature of our lives. Pure human reasoning is just not enough, no matter which side of this debate you are on.

William Provine was a historian of science at Cornell. In a debate with Philip Johnson, he agreed that his materialist worldview required a leap of faith. Yes, he claimed that his leap of faith was smaller than Johnson’s, but he still agreed with the terminology.

Here is another statement of faith (bolding mine) that conforms well to the atheist’s worldview, even though it was made by Charles Darwin, who as of the writing of the Origin of Species was a theist:

“But I am bound to confess, that, with all my faith in this principle, I should never have anticipated that natural selection could have been efficient in so high a degree, had not the case of these neuter insects convinced me of the fact.”

Here Darwin professes faith in natural selection. And please read his entire discussion of neuter insects in chapter 7. You will find that, even though in the quote above he says this investigation “convinced me of the fact”, his investigation did not uncover proof that natural selection produced the tendency of the fertile insects to produce a particular type of neuter insects.

This is what actually happened: He hypothesized that if natural selection had produced such a tendency, then he should occasionally find neuter specimens that were anatomically intermediate between the more established neuter varieties. And then he found such specimens. Thus, he verified one (arguably) necessary condition for natural selection to have occurred. The problem is that there are other reasonable explanations for what he found. If John Doe committed a violent crime, then any foreign hairs found on the victim’s body should be red, since John Doe’s hair is red. Now, suppose red hairs are indeed found. Suggestive? Yes. Definitive? Yes, if you ask the prosecutor.

Let’s ask Darwin. I will give you one more quote, which consists of Darwin’s next two sentences (I will bold the part that I think is a highly questionable extrapolation):

“I have, therefore, discussed this case, at some little but wholly insufficient length, in order to show the power of natural selection, and likewise because this is by far the most serious special difficulty, which my theory has encountered. The case, also, is very interesting, as it proves that with animals, as with plants, any amount of modification in structure can be effected by the accumulation of numerous, slight, and as we must call them accidental, variations, which are in any manner profitable, without exercise or habit having come into play.

Some may say “well of course Darwin needed faith….that was before we dug up all those additional fossils!” My response: then why does Lewontin, whom I quoted above, make the statement in 1997 that the evidence still does not stand on its own? Why is a reasonable observer still disqualified unless he or she takes on faith that the universe independently produced the unfathomable complexity around us?

Now another common objection is, what about forensics? Good question. I have thought about it and would like to share some thoughts on that in a future post.

I hope I have shown that atheism requires faith.

Now, for those of you who choose to put faith in the universe rather than God, may I ask why? Lewontin explains that it’s because to put faith in God is to allow for the occurrence of miracles. This baffles me…I have faith in God and I believe in miracles, but I have also spent my career in engineering, ensuring that various systems interact with the physical world in a desired way, without appealing to divine intervention. And many scientists and engineers take the same view as I do.

So I will close with some questions which might make you a little uncomfortable, but they are asked in good will, and hopefully taken that way 🙂

Is it possible you have put your faith in the universe because the gospel was not properly explained to you?

Could it be because there is something in your life you think you would have to give up if you trusted in God?

Is there someone in your life who would get angry if you proclaimed faith in God, especially Jesus Christ?

Are you distracted from God by worries, money, or something else?

Did a Christian, or someone claiming to be a Christian, hurt you?

Is there just too much suffering in the world for you to believe in God?

Are you a very technical person who has simply never been exposed to other technical people/researchers who actually believe that God created the world?

I would love to discuss further with you. Maybe, in time, you will let a Divine Foot in the door after all 🙂

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Links:

Provine/Johnson debate (sorry, don’t remember when he makes the faith comment)

Lewontin’s review of The Demon-Haunted Universe

The Darwin quote is from Chapter 7. I don’t know how to give a page number. I’m using Kindle. The Origin of Species is free and I encourage you to read it in its entirety, as I have.

Al Mohler article about closed intellectual systems