{"id":347830,"date":"2023-05-11T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-11T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reasons.org\/?p=347830"},"modified":"2023-05-11T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-05-11T12:00:00","slug":"current-science-a-counter-to-atheism-and-a-basis-for-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reasons.org\/religions\/belief-systems\/current-science-a-counter-to-atheism-and-a-basis-for-faith","title":{"rendered":"Current Science: A Counter to Atheism and a Basis for Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the 2009 BCS National Championship Game, Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow inscribed John 3:16 on his eyeblack, inspiring some 90 million people to search the verse\u2014evidently for the first time.1<\/sup> This is a remarkable contrast to the early days of our nation, when cultural literacy would have included at least a rudimentary knowledge of the Bible and verses like John 3:16 would have been familiar, if not memorized. In that era, belief in a God who created the universe, the earth, and every living thing on it was the norm. Clearly there has been a huge cultural shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both then and now, John\u2019s words are an ageless call for personal reflection. Yet it would seem that the message of eternal life and deliverance from a perishing world is not vital today. Priority for a seemingly distant God has fallen well below the \u201curgencies\u201d of daily living. And who would honestly place themselves in spiritual peril? For some, their unpracticed faith has gone cold. Others stress that they have no need for religion, or for God. Spiritually tone-deaf, they may find a refuge in Nietzsche\u2019s lament: \u201cGod is dead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Science and Secularism<\/strong>
Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was one of several powerful voices in the nineteenth century responsible for the cultural shift. His oft-quoted mantra was hardly a boast. It was a statement of despair, rooted in his observation that a world reduced and compartmentalized through empirical science, enlightened thinking, and modern philosophy had eliminated the need for a sovereign transcendent creator. He also predicted the consequential emergence of a nihilistic worldview absent of meaning or purpose\u2014trending to social and civic tyranny.2<\/sup> Does this seem prophetic?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did we get here? Is there a counter to a godless worldview: a path to refresh lost faith? It appears Nietzsche had it right. The march of science and increasingly secular ideas from the mid-nineteenth century forward has framed a mainstream worldview absent of God, where religious belief has been marginalized to myth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adding to Nietzsche\u2019s views, it\u2019s been said that Charles Darwin gifted atheism with a scientific foundation. If natural, random processes can account for the diversity of life and all speciation, then what intellectual space remains for a creator?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon after Darwin\u2019s ideas went public, astronomers3<\/sup> discovered a breathtaking, expansive universe, with countless galaxies far beyond our Milky Way. Did these findings reinvigorate belief in supernatural creation? No. Intellectuals characterized Earth as an insignificant, accidental dust speck in the immensity of space. With these presumptions it is understandable that twentieth-century writers and philosophers would consider humanity as just another species thrown into an uncaring, godless universe with no hope beyond the grave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a complimentary vein, renowned scientists such as Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Richard Dawkins leveraged their platforms to argue that the universe is all there is, all there ever was, and all we need to know. It appears that secular science\u2014\u201call there is to know\u201d\u2014has displaced theology. God has been deemed unnecessary; John 3:16 is irrelevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These subjective, lingering narratives are pervasive in our culture, and one could argue that they have fostered religious doubt and apathy, cast a shadow over individual meaning and purpose, spawned nihilism, seeded agnosticism, and promoted atheism. The normalization of secular science within our education systems may well account for the lack of self worth expressed by many young people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the \u201cdeath\u201d or irrelevance of God (to man) has been an off-ramp to our polarized culture. Instead of a God human beings will answer to, it seems that a godless universe and behavior without ultimate consequences are reflected in spiking crime rates, disrespect for tradition, silencing of opposing beliefs, shaming, bullying, runaway drug-related deaths, human trafficking, gender confusion, corrupt and weak leadership, increased depression, escalating suicide rates, and school massacres. It\u2019s all evidence of a deeply fallen and menacing world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Science in Transformation<\/strong>
I believe we have reached a major turning point. In recent decades, discoveries in both the life and physical sciences have radically transformed our understanding of the universe\u2019s origin and its purpose: a world designed for advanced civilization. The implications of these discoveries counter the atheistic premises of scientists, philosophers, and intellectuals bounded within a naturalist worldview. In a kind of scientific coup, Darwinism has been neutered and Sagan dethroned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biological Complexity<\/em>
Darwin\u2019s core theories, built on random natural mechanisms and extensive time, struggle to account for:<\/p>\n\n\n\n