Evolution
Someone pointed me to this article. It is quite useful to look at what passed for deep thinking these days. He mostly takes as obvious that evolution implies there is no God. So most of what he says is true and good insight into evolution. Then he just kind of jumps to his conclusion like he has proven something.
There are two basic arguments against the existence of God and he hints at both of them. One is the problem of evil or the problem of pain. Why do elephants die such painful deaths? There are a few more examples of natural phenomenon which seem like God messed up. Anyone who has ever contemplated pain and suffering will know these are hard questions. How can a God permit the things that happen in this world? But there are answers. He does not deal with them. He just assumes that theists have not done any thinking on the question of suffering.
The second argument against the existence of God is: Things make sense without God so why should we suppose He exists? That is more the heart of why evolution presumes to have conquered theism. It is not really a sound argument. My world would work quite nicely without supposing Australia exists. Does that mean it does not exist? Not really. But Christians are not just proposing that God exists but that He actually belongs in the very center of your life. So one might expect that what properly belongs in the very center of your life would be something that would be hard to simply suppose does not exist. At some level it isn’t that hard to deny God’s existence. There is not one simple question in life that is unsolvable without involving God. Evolution makes that stronger. People can suppose that life came about as an accident. Evolution gives good answers to a few of the questions people used to find unanswerable with respect to where did this world come from?
Of course evolution does not answer everything. It assumes genetic reproduction is occurring. How did that originate? Evolution does not help there. It also has trouble accounting for many of the features of man. Like why we love beauty, why we love truth, why we want to believe there is a meaning and purpose to life, why we have sense of moral right and wrong, why we worship, etc. All these things that don’t seem to have less developed versions in other species. Even in that animal world there are some features that evolution does not seem to have good answer for.
Despite all that it does allow someone to suppose there might be answers for all these things. Of course you could always suppose that. Still it does answer some questions that people once felt were only answerable by believing in God. It does make one wonder if perhaps ALL the questions are answerable. But would that be enough?
Some people find this ultimate cause argument convincing. Some people don’t. The reality is we have to accept the fact that God has made His presence ultimately deniable. The method of denial used to be a theory of many gods. Now the theory of no gods is more popular. The idea of one God who created you, loves you, cares for you, demands a lot of you, and wants to invite you into His eternal peace. That seems just as easy or just as hard to believe as ever. The claim of Jesus to be God is still there. Ultimately nothing evolution has come out with contradicts that claim. It might make disbelieving it a little easier but that is not the issue. I don’t think it makes believing Him easier or harder. If we go looking for reasons not to believe we will always find them. If we look at Jesus none of those things will matter.
I have read, somewhere, that the two real arguments against God are: evil exists and that the world seems to exist without directly needing God (allowing Atheists to create a materialistic worldview that is not clearly insane).
June 9th, 2008 at 7:33 pmYes, there are many ways to express those two arguments but they all basically boil down to those two. I like to call them the problem of evil and the problem of faith. Ultimately our minds don’t really settle fully on atheism or theism. We have to decide to be a theist or an atheist and then choose to continue despite our doubts.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:51 pm