The problem Atheists have with Theists and the premise of God, a Being who is all good, omniscient, omnipotent and eternal, is that they believe that since science and the world cannot prove that such a being exists and since life seems to sustain itself without any external help, then this Being probably does not exists nor can this Being ever be proven to exist.This method of thinking stems directly from a belief, not that science is god, but more that mankind is a self-sufficient, self-reliant being along with the philosophy of materialism and evolution which denies the possibility of soul or the immaterial.This resulted in the hijacking of science to prove what materialists already believed, that everything is relative and truth exists only if it can be proven by science. This is, as a materialist already knows, an issue that can only relate to the corporeal. The conflict that occurs is many theists belief that there is a truth and it can be known by reason which includes science but also can be discovered using every aspect of the human person. This includes the spiritual, corporeal, and even the emotive aspect of the man.
The another debate in this issue pits the clinging to classical thought by the theists against claim that classical thought is unsubstantiated, old fashioned and that only modern thought is relevant because it is the most progressive. So there seems to be an intrinsic impossibility for a materialist atheist to believe in God because it is diametrically opposed to the dogmatic belief in science, materialism, and man as a creature of nature not of the immaterial.The Atheists’ beliefsThe atheists’ core beliefs have already been brought to attention but in order for a complete argument to take place, a simple overview is not sufficient, so a more in depth analysis is needed to better understand this ideological battle. To be fair to atheists, there is a diversity of ideas and beliefs why God cannot exist. Some of these reasons behind this belief can be simple and unfounded arguments or elaborate systems which argue God out of the picture.While it would be easy to discredit and disprove the simple arguments, such as “I don’t see God’s involvement in the world and it seems like the world functions on its own, therefore, God doesn’t exist,” there are plenty of arguments that have shown this type of thinking as shallow and wrong.
The more significant arguments are the views of atheism include a mechanistic view of the world along with a materialist understanding of the operations of the world.This is the view, according to Edward Feser, that most serious atheists hold and is responsible for the understanding that God does not exist in the world, that the world is self sufficient and that man is simple a creature of evolution. Of course what follows from this belief is the understanding that man is not bound to anything spiritual or moral since there is no such thing as morals since that entails something immaterial.They believe instead that morality is either a construct of the mind, which is influenced by Kant, or that morality is the conditioning of the culture to make man feel guilty, which is influenced by Nietzsche. Feser points to the origin of this mode of thinking, explaining that it stems from the removal of the formal and final cause of things of Aristotle’s natural science in which all things have a material, efficient, formal and final cause. When the formal and final cause is removed then people don’t have a final end other than survival nor does anything have a nature or is there a correct form.
What this does is it removes the importance of religion.When there is no afterlife or purpose of a person to be moral then there is no need for God or religion. Feser also claims that once formal and final causes were removed, and then it paved the way to materialism, which, if there is a formal or final cause of things, is the only reasonable understanding of the world. Materialism is the belief that everything can be reduced to their material function and there is nothing outside of empirical evidence.
There means there is no soul or spiritual aspect of a human person. People are given the impression that science can explain everything, but Feser explains that “For the reason science has “explained” almost everything other than the mind is precisely because everything that doesn’t fit the mechanistic model has been swept under the rug of the mind, treated as a mere projection.”The very essence of today’s atheism is that the world can be explained and if there is something that cannot be explained then they say that science will explain it after we have a better understanding of the object in question. This belief that science can and will explain everything is held so strongly that atheists become as Feser describes them, “the very thing they argue against” namely, dogmatic and irrationalThis is a result of the belief that there is no truth.
Science, although it has improved the quality of life and has led to many discoveries, is to blame for a particular mentality that is felt all over the world, that of progress. Along with thinkers like Hegel, who believe that all of history is progress and that everything has been leading up to our point in time today, the mentality within science is that progress is always good.This is another assumption held by atheists in that they believe that science is progress and if there is progress then the time this progress was a lesser time and held views that were lesser and imperfect. So from this understanding, Christianity and religion in general is old fashioned and wrong, while science is right and the only truth that is, if there can even be truth. It is science that focuses on the efficient and material causes of things. In other words, it is science that ignores formal or final causes.
Because of this belief it makes the place of religion irrelevant.Materialist atheists use science, the study of material objects with their molecular makeup and the like and use what we have discovered by means of science to explain questions of metaphysical nature. Feser explains that “empirical science of its very nature cannot give us the full story about these matters; but metaphysics just is the rational investigation if them.” Also on the same topic of the separation between religion and science, Stephen Jay Gould explains that “the net of science covers the empirical realm: what he universe is made of and why does it work this way.The net of religion extends over question of moral meaning and value.
” (Gould p.522) A conflict has occurred however because as was mentioned previously, when the final and formal cause is removed, then the nature’s of things don’t exist but so does purpose and without purpose then going beyond the what is impossible. Atheists hold central to their beliefs that there is nothing beyond this world and that all operations of the world are contained within it.Richard Dawkins believes rather that our “morality” has been changing and that the Old Testament God is “will not be adopted as a literal role model by anybody you or I would wish to know.” He means that social norms have been changing and that our morality can be explained through science of culture and society, not dependent on God or scripture. Dawkins continues saying that other aspects of the Christian religion are in conflict with science.
He claims that the assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven is false and assumes that heaven is a “physical reality – how else could the physical body of a woman go there?” Dawkins brings this up to make the point that everything is under the realm of science; he even goes as far as to say that the “sudden injection if an immortal soul in the time-line is an anti-evolutionary intrusion into the domain of science. Dawkins’ point is that there is not a separation of religion and science; metaphysical claims are even under the claims of science.In the case of the mind, Dawkins and others believe it can be explained. And even though there is religion, it is a simple social construct to control the ignorant. Their truth is that science can explain everything even prove that a metaphysical world cannot exist.
