Although atheism can be a stage in the course of an honest search for the truth, in many cases it springs not just from a lack of knowledge, but from moral fractiousness, human pride, and the action of the Evil One who, being a “liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44), does his best to distort our perception of the truth about God and human beings.
Paying heed to the works, they do not recognize the Creator
Atheists believe there is only the material world, that no other reality exists apart from the one we perceive through the senses. Atheism is a belief in the non-existence of God. Often it piggybacks on the metaphysical premises of Darwinism, which holds that life arose as an accident of nature and continues to unfold according to a blind evolutionary process.
Darwinists claim that complex organs and appendages such as the human brain, the eye, wings, etc., are the consequence of a process of natural selection and a series of random mutations, and that all this is “governed” by the blind forces of nature.
Meanwhile, true science claims that the molecular structure of life’s machinery is infinitely more complex than any system capable of being conceived or constructed by the human mind. There is no way of getting around the problem of information, which is a product of intelligence. Even the most primitive living cell contains enough information to fill 5000 books comprising several hundred pages each.
This raises the question: were these extraordinarily complex informational-biological systems created by an Absolute Intelligence possessing Omniscience or are they merely the effect of blind, aimless, accidental forces of nature?
No one would seriously attribute the emergence of the electronic computer to the blind forces of nature. Little wonder then that Holy Scripture should give atheism short shrift: “For all men who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature; and they were unable from the good things that are seen to know him who exists, nor did they recognize the craftsman while paying heed to his works. (…) For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator” “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:19-20). Who then is without excuse? Answer: those “who by their wickedness suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18).
In December of 2004, the guru of world atheism since the 1950s, Dr. Antony Flew, publicly acknowledged his belief in God. His discovery of the truth of the Creator’s existence was, as he stressed himself, the culmination of a long intellectual journey during which he relied strictly on scientific facts and human reason. He singled out the discovery of the DNA code, which contains vast quantities of information and amounts to a super-ingenious form of software. I cite from what I stated in an earlier piece: “One of the most compelling scientific facts pointing to the existence of God as Creator was the discovery of human DNA. We know DNA contains vast amounts of information encoded within it. Logically, then, there must exist an Intelligence that encrypted this code (a kind of software of extreme complexity determining the most diverse characteristics of the human body (sex, color of eyes and hair, etc.). This Intelligence enables the data to direct the natural processes in such a way as to give rise to an extraordinarily complex biological organism. The information contained in the DNA molecule remains distinct from it, the DNA being only the bearer of this information. One might characterize this information as a complex piece of software or “cipher of thoughts,” and this points to the existence of a personal Intelligence. The structural units of DNA known as nucleotides form a logical whole and are linked together like the letters and words in a text of writing. Thus there is intelligence in DNA, and the information contained within it—as Dr. Michael J. Behe has shown—is neither matter nor energy.
“In learning the truth about human DNA, Dr. Flew concluded that atheism had no logical basis and amounted to nothing more than a blind, irrational belief in the random appearance of life and the universe—a universe that represents a harmonious whole functioning in accordance with logical principles. Flew dismissed as “comic” the attempts of polemicists like Richard Dawkins to explain the origins of life in terms of an accidental “felicitous happenstance” (“Faith and Reason,” LOA No. 23). It seems one needs an extraordinarily strong faith to be an atheist.
Atheism’s effect on ethical issues
Our response to the question of the origins of life has a direct impact on how we view the world and the ethical choices we make in life. Since human consciousness, according to the Darwinist view, is a product of the brain, it ceases to exist at the moment of death. Thus the tendency to acknowledge as fully human only those who enjoy a suitable level of consciousness and mental awareness. Unborn children fail to meet that criterion of self-awareness, as also do newborns, people suffering from senile dementia or are in a coma. In fact, atheism admits of no objectively existing moral benchmark. Such are the ideological underpinnings of laws that permit abortion, euthanasia, in vitro fertilization, eugenics, and genetic manipulation. Let us not forget that Darwinism informed criminal ideologies of both fascist and Leninist stripe.
It should come as no surprise that students persuaded of the supposed scientific truth of Darwinian evolution conclude that their lives are bereft of meaning. Small wonder they should fall into depression and seek a way out in suicide. Such instances have been documented. The case involving 22-year-old American student, Jesse Kilgore, received wide coverage. Having read The God Illusion written by militant atheist and Darwinist Richard Dawkins, he stopped believing in God, gave up on the meaning of life, and ended up taking his own life. His father, after watching the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (available on the Internet), which unmasks the manipulation and mendacity of the Darwinist lobby in the scientific community, remains convinced that if his son had known atheism was based on an irrational faith and not on scientific facts, he would never have taken his life.
To those seeking the truth in the matter of evolution I recommend Michael Denton’s book Evolution. A Theory in Crisis and also The Mystery of Life’s Origins by Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olson.
Lack of intellectual honesty
By their opposition to scientific studies that question the dogmas of their atheistic ideology, Darwinists show their lack of intellectual honesty. Despite the facts presented, they stigmatize such studies as unscientific and seek to have them excluded from the domain of science. All data pointing to the existence of a spiritual, supernatural world are ignored. Only the materialist view of the world is considered “scientific.” Any piece of scientific data that supports the notion of a purpose and intelligent plan in the universe is seen as a threat to science. In effect, Darwininsts hold that science must support atheist ideology or else it is not science at all; such is their circular reasoning. Mathematician and philosopher William Dembski observes: “Materialistic ideology has subverted the study of biological and cosmological origins so that the actual content of these sciences has become corrupted. The problem, therefore, is not merely that science is being used illegitimately to promote a materialistic world view, but that this world view is actively undermining scientific inquiry, leading to incorrect and unsupported conclusions about biological and cosmological origins. At the same time, intelligent design (ID) offers a promising scientific alternative to materialistic theories of biological and cosmological evolution—an alternative that is finding increasing theoretical and empirical support” (conservapedia.com/William_Dembski).
Human consciousness and the mind
Since the nineteenth century Darwinists have been making the same scientifically unsubstantiated claim that man is a product of undirected natural forces and that the human mind, the soul, and free will are mere illusions caused by electric discharges in the neurons of the brain. Meanwhile, Harvard professor Dr. Owen Gingerich tells us that the human brain is the most complex organ in the universe. The brain consists of a billion neurons each of which is connected to 10,000 other neurons. The number of connections between the nerve cells in a single brain is far greater that the number of stars making up the Milky Way. Could the atoms comprising the human brain have spontaneously created so complex a structure? Are the Darwinists right in claiming that when the physiological function of the brain stops, human consciousness ceases to exist?
Materialists find themselves up a blind alley, since they have no reliable hypothesis that would explain man’s spiritual experience and the functioning of the human mind. For atheists, the mind as traditionally understood does not exist. They insist it is the material brain that produces psychic phenomena and thoughts. John Eccles (1903-1997), one of the world’s greatest authorities in human brain research, flatly rejected this materialist view. Matter, he states, is incapable of creating mental phenomena. There is no transference of physical into mental energy. Only spiritual reality is capable of creating mental phenomena. The mind and the brain are two different things. The decision to act takes place in the mind. The action is only then realized through the brain’s electrical system. Thus, for example, given the choice of responding to a slight or injury with an act of revenge or forgiveness, a person decides to take the path of forgiveness and overcoming evil with good. This decision takes place in the mind and is only then transmitted to the electrical system of the brain for realization. Thus, in order to act, man’s spiritual mind makes use of the material brain, which is ancillary to the mind.
John Eccles emphatically dismissed the materialistic theory of the brain which sees the latter as a super-complex computer and in which the cerebral cortex generates all thoughts and feelings. He characterized this theory as “barren and empty,” since it resorted to vague generalities. Above all, such a view was incapable of accounting for the miracle and mystery of the uniqueness of the personal “I” along with its spiritual capacities, its creativeness and imaginativeness (How The Self Controls Its Brain, pp. 33, 176). Many years of studying the human brain led Eccles to the conclusion that all human beings possess a “self,” i.e. an immaterial mind, which acts through the material brain. Thus, in addition to our physical world, there exists a mental (i.e. spiritual) world, and both these realities impinge upon each other (cf. How The Self Controls Its Brain, p. 38). “Since the materialist concept—he writes—is unable to explain or account for the experience of our uniqueness, I am forced to accept the supernatural creation of the unrepeatable, spiritual personal ‘I’—i.e. the soul. To put it in spiritual terms: every Soul is a new divine creation implanted in the human embryo” (Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self, p. 237). For Dr. J. Eccles, it became obvious that the human mind—the personal “I”—exists as humanity’s spiritual dimension, which is the immortal soul. Science itself obliges us to reject a purely materialist notion of the mind and human spirituality.
Remedy against atheism
An honest, unrelenting search for the truth is the best refutation of atheism. The conversion stories we have long been publishing in our magazine bear out the fact that those who sincerely seek after the truth find it personified in God who became true man in Jesus Christ and who in His resurrection is always present in the community of the Catholic Church where He teaches, forgives sins, and heals body and soul of all manner of disease. Testifying to Christ’s divinity are the Gospels and the apostles who witnessed the Resurrection and suffered martyrs’ deaths in defense of this truth. Testifying to Christ’s divinity and resurrection are the teaching and history of the Church, which finds herself constantly under attack and persecuted along with her millions of saints and martyrs who continue to lay down their lives for Christ.
Here we also need to mention two special witnesses to the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ as presented to us by the domain of science: namely, the Shroud of Turin (Christ’s burial cloth) and the Veil of Manoppello, which bears the imprint of Christ’s face at the very moment of the Resurrection. After years of meticulous study we can state with full confidence that these two artifacts represent hard evidence of Christ’s resurrection. The Shroud of Turin represents a unique kind of “snapshot” of a crucified Man who had undergone an untold number of torments including blows, beatings with a rod, Roman scourging, the imposition of a crown of thorns, falls, penetrations by nails into the wrists, and a spear-thrust in the side. The image appears as a photographic negative. The fabric contains no traces of pigment or paint, and the blood clots remain intact. This indicates that the body was not removed from the cloth but passed through it in some mysterious fashion. It is scientifically certain that no human hand produced this image. The most recent study conducted by scientists of the Nuclear Research Center in Frascati near Rome suggests that the image of the Man on Shroud resulted from a sudden burst of electromagnetic energy, as from a powerful flash of light. Published in December of 2011, the results of the study point to a searing of the linen’s surface fibrils resulting in an ideally flat image without deformity. The scientists estimate that a flash of light capable of producing such an image would require up to 34,000 billion watts of vacuum ultraviolet radiation. Currently available apparatus is able to generate barely a few billion watts of VUV radiation. The conclusion is obvious. Modern science is incapable of replicating the image that appears on the Shroud of Turin.
In 2005, Dr. R.N. Rogers and his group of American scientists made a decisive discovery. They conducted a series of special tests on a preserved sample of the Shroud that had been used for C14 dating in 1988. It turned out the sample had been taken from a corner of the Shroud only 40% of which consisted of the original ancient linen fabric. The remaining 60% of the material consisted of cotton thread of medieval date which had been used to repair that portion of the Shroud. This accounted for the earlier false C14 dating which ascribed the Shroud to the Middle Ages. We now have scientific certainty that the Shroud dates back to the time of Christ; only the cotton fibers that were used to repair the linen date from medieval times. Those who claim the Shroud dates from the Middle Ages and rely on the C14 datings of 1988 do so out of ignorance or for patently fraudulent reasons (see the article “Fatal Flaws in the Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud,” LOA No. 19).
The image of the Face of the Resurrecting Christ on the Veil of Manoppello is another great mystery for science. The artifact is woven from byssus, silk threads spun by a species of sea mussel. The material is sheer and yet as fire-resistant as asbestos. Oils or watercolors will not adhere to the weave. Studies have led to the stunning discovery that the dead Face of the Shroud of Turin and the living Face of the Veil of Manoppello represent the very same person. When the one is overlaid the other, the faces conform perfectly. In structure and dimensions they constitute a 100% perfect match. To the scientist it is clear that the Divine Face of Manoppello could not have been the work of a human hand (see the article in LOA No. 16).
And so, among the most telling prodigies whose authenticity stands confirmed by years of scientific study—prodigies that cry out to us to believe in the resurrection of Christ and open up our hearts to His love—are three images that no human hand painted: the Shroud of Turin, the Divine Face of Manoppello, and the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe (see article in LOA No. 18).
Modern science admits to being unequal to the replication of such images. When we accept these signs with humility and open our hearts in faith to the mysterious love and mercy of God, we begin the process of spiritual transformation and healing. We embark on the journey of faith and freedom that will lead us to union in love with the Risen Christ. Those, on the other hand, who “by their wickedness suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18) and reject these and other signs of God that call us to repentance and conversion, embark on a journey of spiritual enslavement and death that ultimately leads to eternal destruction.
A constant and honest search for the truth, keeping the Ten Commandments, studying the Gospel in conjunction with the teachings and history of the Catholic Church, and praying for the gift of faith—these are the most effective remedy against atheism. Believers also need to heed the warning:“ Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). That is why all of us should pray every day for the gift of faith, for the conversion of sinners and unbelievers, and then set an example of lively, mature faith, unselfish love of neighbor, and holiness of life.
Those who sincerely seek the truth will certainly find it and encounter Jesus Christ, who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Let them only seek it honestly and perseveringly and never be discouraged.