Atheism Vs Theism

It's not easy holding beliefs concerning sometimes outdated ideals, especially religion. There are so many different religions that it's hard to prove that one is more credible than another. Some are contradicting, while some are minor variations of others. There are theists, those who believe in a god or gods, as well as atheists, those who deny any gods. But while theism shows a strong benefit to the individual, atheism really doesn't have any significant benefits for the individual. Its real benefit is the lack of concern it has towards other beliefs. Unlike theism, it creates a more peaceful and less conflicting society. In theory, atheism is more beneficial to mankind as a whole.

These two groups, theists and atheists, are very different from each other. Theism relies on the need to prove itself right, and therefore in certain cases trying to prove other theories wrong. Some theists also feel it is their duty to spread their theology to other people in the world. Theism is such a wide and diverse group, however, which includes all religions and any other people that still believe in a higher power without committing to a religion. With so many different groups and ideas being spread around the world, theism in general is very opinionated, often times publicly expressed.

Atheism, on the other hand, is a very quiet and self-focused theory. It requires no spreading of ideas or really disproving others. Some individual atheists choose to get into the argument of proving their belief right while disproving other beliefs wrong, but that's only occasionally the case. Atheism is not just a belief in no god, but it can also be no belief in a god. In the latter case, there is no need for atheists to prove their theory right because there is no theory to prove.

It is easiest for a theist to prove their beliefs are the correct ones when the description of their god or gods and religion's background is unspecified, lacking strongly detailed information. The less there is to actually focus on, the easier it is to prove the theory. Theists must degrade the beliefs of others to make theirs true. This can be in the form of denying such things as evolution, homosexuality, and other forms of existence or lack there of after death. Some also believe that certain acts and beliefs that don't follow their own code of morals are universally immoral and therefore inappropriate for humankind.

On the other hand, atheists hardly have anything to prove. Atheism covers only two theories. The first is the belief that no god exists, and the second is no belief in a god or lack there of. They do not need to disprove the wide range of theories and beliefs that theism covers, though some choose to. An atheist can believe in many different ideologies in the world, including things like evolution, acceptance of homosexuality, and no afterlife, and still these things have no importance to atheism. They are individual concepts that can not conflict with the basic beliefs of atheism.

Second, theists tend to have this idea that they must make the world share their views on religion and life. For centuries, certain religious groups have felt obliged to spread their views over many foreign lands. Missionaries are common examples of this act, notable mostly in the Imperial Age. They have gone to great lengths to conquer the minds and rituals of others. In many cases these missionaries have suppressed groups of people, defining them as inferior thinking to the greater religious systems. Certain religious groups have even gone so far as to take over other groups' religious ceremonies, such as Christians turning pagan holidays into Christmas and Easer, in hopes of taking away their credibility. Even in this age some theists feel they must publicly humiliate atheists to get their point across. Former president George H.W. Bush was quoted as saying "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

At times, conflict has arisen from the contact of two or more theist groups. In the mild situations, simple sharing of ideas and arguments of beliefs have taken place between the groups. However, in the most extreme, this conflict between the groups has caused major wars that devastate all mankind. The most powerful examples of this would be the Crusades, World War II, and the war between Israel and Palestine.

Contrary to this, atheists never create conflict within their group by sharing their beliefs. Since they all share the same essential belief to atheism, or have a lack of belief, then atheists have nothing to prove to each other. In this sense, they are all equal and have no need to create conflict. Any problems that come between them because of other views about life and society have nothing to do with atheism since they are not factors of being an atheist.

Finally, there are the different levels of gain for the individual in each belief. Most profitable is the spiritual enlightenment that theists receive. Through the discipline of their theology, theists are able to gain a form of holy wisdom that creates different views on how the world works, including theories and beliefs in the afterlife, the creation of life, and the purpose of mankind in the world. Many theist groups adopt the idea that it is their duty to help others, and that they must bring good into the world. This is beneficial to both the individual and the world.

The individual benefits of being an atheist are little, if any. There is no true measurable gain for not believing in a god. The choice of not believing in a god does not extend past that simple thought. Being an atheist does not prevent anyone from helping others or bettering society. Adaptation of different beliefs, including humanitarian morals, allows the atheist to participate in the same fields of beneficial work that theists do because of their religious principles. But in all fairness, theists too can adapt other beliefs that their religion does not cover, and therefore share this individual power with atheists.

Atheism and theism both have benefits and disadvantages for the individual and mankind as a whole. It truly comes down to the person's own choice. As is, there is no real tangible proof that either is right, nor will there probably ever be. Theism lies solely in faith while atheism simply denies such things.

The key factor here is both involve mankind. In theory, the best solution to the progress of mankind is to have one belief system. Many would suggest that one religion would suit this, but in reality it wouldn't. The fact that a religion is a following of people to a god defeats the purpose right there. The fundamental duty that an individual theist has to his/her god puts that god before any other human. This creates a society that honors a divine and abstract being before its own kind. When a god is placed higher in importance than humankind, it lowers the value of the society's ability to be united. That is why atheism is the more beneficial of the two. Theism puts the emphasis on the fact that a greater being controls the fate of man, while atheism shows that humankind itself is the only source to rely on for survival in life.

Who Created God?

It is easy to make an argument for God’s existence from a cosmological standpoint.  As the years have gone by, a growing amount of scientific data has accumulated which negates atheistic assumptions about how matter and the cosmos came into existence and how it has arrived at its present condition.  As a science teacher and public lecturer on the compatibility of belief in God and science, I have been impressed with an increasing awareness on the part of many scientists and theologians that science and religion are symbiotic disciplines.

One question which inevitably comes up in a discussion of this nature is what the origin of God is?  If God created matter/energy and designed the systems that have propelled matter into its present arrangement, who or what accomplished that for God?  Why is it any more reasonable to believe that God has always been than it is to say that matter has always been?   As Carl Sagan has said, “If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been?” (Carl Sagan, Cosmos, [New York:  Random House, Inc., 1980], p. 257).

From a purely scientific standpoint, it is easy to demonstrate that matter cannot be eternal in nature.  The universe is expanding from what appears to be a beginning point in space/time, which appears to be a one time event.  Hydrogen is the basic fuel of the cosmos, powering all stars and other energy sources in space.  If the fuel of the universe has been used eternally, that fuel will eventually be depleted; but the evidence is that the cosmological gas gauge, while moving toward “empty,” is yet a long way from being there—a condition incompatible with an eternal universe.  The second law of thermodynamics insists that the cosmos is moving toward a condition of disorder, sometimes referred to as “heat death.”  Even in an oscillating universe, things ultimately run out of energy and “die.”  All of these evidences, and several others we have not made reference to, show that matter cannot be eternal, as Dr. Sagan and his associates would like to believe.  However, this does not mean that we automatically accept the hypothesis that God is the Creator.  Why is it not equally invalid to suggest that God has always been?

The problem here is that many people have a mistaken concept of God.  If we conceive of God as physical, anthropomorphic (like man) being, the question of God’s origin is valid.  However, such a concept of God is alien to the Bible and to common sense.  Consider the following descriptions of God from the Bible:

John 4: 24 
God is a Spirit: ...
Matthew 16:17 
... for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my father which is in heaven.
Numbers 23:19 
God is not a man, that he should ... ;

Obviously, the descriptions and concepts of God given in these passages are that God is a spiritual entity.  He exists outside of the three-dimensional physical world in which we live.  The Bible further supports this concept of God in the following passages:

Jeremiah 23:23-24

Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off?  ... Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD.

2 Chronicles 2:6 
But who is able to build a house, seeing the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain him? ...
Acts 17:28 
For in Him we live, and move, and have our being; ...

Not only is God described as being outside space, but He is also described as being outside of time.  Consider the following:

2 Peter 3:8

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Psalm 90:4 
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
Psalm 102:27 
But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.
Acts 1:7 
...It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his power.

If God is a being that is unlimited in time, and if He has access to every piece of time as if it were now, the question of who created God is an invalid question.  The problem is like asking a student to draw a four-sided triangle.  The terminology is self-contradictory.

When asked “Who or what created God?” we are making the assumption that God was created.  If God exists outside of time and space, and if He is the Creator of time and space, He obviously was not created!  God began the beginning!  This is why He says, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Revelation 22:13).

God created time.  The statement of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” is making reference to the creation of time.  The reason that things like heat death, the expansion of the universe, and the depletion of hydrogen do not apply to God is because He is outside of time.  God has always been.  He did things before time began (see 1 Corinthians 2:7).  He not only began time; He will also end it.  When time ends, all matter and all mankind will enter eternity—a timeless condition free of the negative things that time brings upon us now.

2 Peter 3:10-11 
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.  Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness.
Revelation 21:4 
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

The agnostic position that there is nothing that can be said to support God’s existence that cannot be said against that existence cannot, in the opinion of the author, stand in the face of this evidence.

Understanding the God

To help the reader comprehend the nature of God, I would like to borrow an analogy from the book Flatland by Edwin Abbott.^* Abbott was a mathematician and the model is geometric in nature. It was originally written in the 19th century for the purposes we are using it for here. Flatland is the story of a man who lives in a two dimensional world--like a sheet of paper. In the surface of the paper there is only length and width-there is no such thing as thickness. You and I are three-dimensional beings-we have length and width and frequently considerable thickness. You cannot get me, a three-dimensional being, into a two-dimensional sheet of paper. You can draw a front view of me (a portrait), but that is not the whole me. You can draw a top view of me which because I am bald, ends up being three concentric circles, but that is not the whole me. If you and I were to look at the man in Flatland, we would see him as a profile (see figure 1). He would be outlined but have no thickness.

Figure 1: The man in Flatland.

One day the man in Flatland is visited by a sphere. The sphere is a three-dimensional object just as we are, and it just so happens that it crosses Flatland right in the man's living room. Now if you will think about that for a moment, you will realize that for the man in Flatland a rather incredible thing has happened. A dot appears on the man's floor with no cause that the man in Flatland can understand. A dot in Flatland is matter! In figure 1, the man, himself, is made up of a series of dots. Just as a tennis ball dipped in paint and touched to a sheet of paper would produce a dot on the paper, so too has our dot which the man in Flatland calls matter appeared out of nothing (see figure 2). As the man in Flatland watches, the dot becomes a circle which continuously grows in size (see figure 3). You will see if a plane truncates (or slices) a sphere, it will produce a circle; and the deeper the sphere sinks into the plane, the larger the circle will become.

Figure 2: A sphere tangent to a plane produces a dot on the plane. The man in Flatland sees only the dot.

Figure 3: A plane truncating a sphere. The man in Flatland sees a circle.

The circle becomes so large it is about to fill the living room of the man in Flatland. He is terrified because he does not understand what is happening. All of the laws of science which state that matter cannot be created nor destroyed are being violated. What he sees is for him a true miracle. Just as he is about to run in panic from the room, the sphere reaches its equator, passes its equator, and gradually sinks out of the plane. So what happens to the circle in Flatland? It begins to shrink, and it becomes smaller and smaller until finally it is just a dot on his floor and then it is gone! Another violation of the laws of science! Matter cannot be destroyed and yet the man in Flatland has seen it happen. The man in Flatland is being confronted with miraculous and ghost-like events which violates his science and his common sense.

Let us suppose now that the man in Flatland begins talking to the sphere, and he says to the sphere: "What is it like to be a sphere? The sphere says, "I'll tell you what it's like; draw a circle on your floor." This is not easy for the man in Flatland to do. His perception of a circle is a constantly curving line that returns to its origin, but he cannot see all of the circle at once. He can only see the side of the circle facing him. The only way he could see a whole circle would be to be inside the circle, and if he got inside he could never get out. People in Flatland commit suicide by drawing circles around themselves that they can never get out of. Because of this it takes along time for him to draw the circle. The sphere is most impatient with all this because he could have done it instantly. Finally the circle is completed and the sphere says, "Now what I want you to do is to rotate the circle! What he has in mind is that the man in Flatland will rotate the circle about its diameter producing a sphere, but what the man in Flatland does is to rotate the circle about its circumference, spinning it like a record on a record player. "No, no--rotate it the third way,' says the sphere. "There is no third way you fool," cries out the man in Flatland, and for him this is true. There is no third way, no up and down in a thickness direction, and absolutely no way for him to comprehend what the sphere is talking about or what the sphere is. The only thing that he can understand is the world or dimension in which he lives.

Now the reason that I have told you this little story is to give you a foundation by which you can understand God. When you read, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1), you are reading a description analogous to Flatland. The concept is that, a God, who is in a higher dimension than are we, a God who has the same kind of relationship to us which the sphere had to Flatland, that, this kind of being touched our little "Flatland," so to speak, and in violation of all of our laws of science created matter out of nothing. God is so superior to us, he exists in such a higher dimension than do we that what is natural and ordinary to him is miraculous to us. The Bible recognizes this concept and uses it in every single description of God.

The Practical Proof of God

The existence of God is a subject that has occupied schools of philosophy and theology for thousands of years.  Most of the time, these debates have revolved around all kinds of assumptions and definitions.  Philosophers will spend a lifetime arguing about the meaning of a word and never really get there.  One is reminded of the college student who was asked how his philosophy class was going.  He replied that they had not done much because when the teacher tried to call roll, the kids kept arguing about whether they existed or not.

    Most of us who live and work in the real world do not concern ourselves with such activities.  We realize that such discussions may have value and interest in the academic world, but the stress and pressure of day-to-day life forces us to deal with a very pragmatic way of making decisions.  If I ask you to prove to me that you have $2.00, you would show it to me.  Even in more abstract things we use common sense and practical reasoning.  If I ask you whether a certain person is honest or not, you do not flood the air with dissertations on the relative nature of honesty; you would give me evidence one way or the other.  The techniques of much of the philosophical arguments that go on would eliminate most of engineering and technology if they were applied in those fields.

    The purpose of this brief study is to offer a logical, practical, pragmatic proof of the existence of God from a purely scientific perspective.  To do this, we are assuming that we exist, that there is reality, and that the matter of which we are made is real.  If you do not believe that you exist, you have bigger problems than this study will entail and you will have to look elsewhere.

THE BEGINNING

If we do exist, there are only two possible explanations as to how our existence came to be.  Either we had a beginning or we did not have a beginning.  The Bible says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1 :1).  Most atheists maintain that there was no beginning.  The idea is that matter has always existed in the form of either matter or energy; and all that has happened is that matter has been changed from form to form, but it has always been.  The Humanist Manifesto says, "Matter is self-existing and not created," and that is a concise statement of the atheist's belief.

    The way we decide whether the atheist is correct or not is to see what science has discovered about this question.  The picture below on the left represents our part of the cosmos.  Each of the disk shaped objects is a galaxy like our Milky Way.  All of these galaxies are moving relative to each other.  Their movement has a very distinct pattern which causes the distance between the galaxies to get greater with every passing day.  If we had three galaxies located at positions A, B. and C in the second diagram below, and if they are located as shown, tomorrow they will be further apart.  The triangle they form will be bigger.  The day after tomorrow the triangle will be bigger yet.  We live in an expanding universe that gets bigger and bigger and bigger with every passing day.

Now let us suppose that we made time run backwards!   If we are located at a certain distance today, then yesterday we were closer together.  The day before that, we were still closer.  Ultimately, where must all the galaxies have been?  At a point!  At the beginning!  At what scientists call a singularity!  In 1999, it was discovered that the galaxies are accelerating in their expansion.  Any notion that we live in an oscillating or pulsating universe has been dispelled by this discovery.  The universe is not slowing down, but speeding up in its motion.

A second proof is seen in the energy sources that fuel the cosmos.  The picture to the right is a picture of the sun.  Like all stars, the sun generates its energy by a nuclear process known as thermonuclear fusion.  

Every second that passes, the sun compresses 564 million tons of hydrogen into 560 million tons of helium with 4 million tons of matter released as energy.  In spite of that tremendous consumption of fuel, the sun has only used up 2% of the hydrogen it had the day it came into existence.  This incredible furnace is not a process confined to the sun.  Every star in the sky generates its energy in the same way.  Throughout the cosmos there are 25 quintillion stars, each converting hydrogen into helium, thereby reducing the total amount of hydrogen in the cosmos.  Just think about it!  If everywhere in the cosmos hydrogen is being consumed and if the process has been going on forever, how much hydrogen should be left?

Suppose I attempt to drive my automobile without putting any more gas (fuel) into it.  As I drive and drive, what is eventually going to happen?  I am going to run out of gas!  If the cosmos has been here forever, we would have run out of hydrogen long ago!  The fact is, however, that the sun still has 98% of its original hydrogen.  The fact is that hydrogen is the most abundant material in the universe!  Everywhere we look in space we can see the hydrogen 21-cm line in the spectrum--a piece of light only given off by hydrogen.  This could not be unless we had a beginning!

A third scientific proof that the atheist is wrong is seen in the second law of thermodynamics.  In any closed system, things tend to become disordered.  If an automobile is driven for years and years without repair, for example, it will become so disordered that it would not run any more.  Getting old is simple conformity to the second law of thermodynamics.  In space, things also get old.  Astronomers refer to the aging process as heat death.  If the cosmos is "everything that ever was or is or ever will be," as Dr. Carl Sagan was so fond of saying, nothing could be added to it to improve its order or repair it.  Even a universe that expands and collapses and expands again forever would die because it would lose light and heat each time it expanded and rebounded.

The atheist's assertion that matter/energy is eternal is scientifically wrong.  The biblical assertion that there was a beginning is scientifically correct.

THE CAUSE

If we know the creation has a beginning, we are faced with another logical question--was the creation caused or was it not caused?  The Bible states, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."  Not only does the Bible maintain that there was a cause (a creation) but it also tells us what the cause was.  It was God. The atheist tells us that "matter is self-existing and not created."  If matter had a beginning and yet was uncaused, one must logically maintain that something would have had to come into existence out of nothing.  From empty space with no force, no matter, no energy, and no intelligence, matter would have to become existent.  Even if this could happen by some strange new process unknown to science today, there is a logical problem.

In order for matter to come out of nothing, all of our scientific laws dealing with the conservation of matter/energy would have to be wrong, invalidating all of chemistry.  All of our laws of conservation of angular momentum would have to be wrong, invalidating all of physics.  All of our laws of conservation of electric charge would have to be wrong, invalidating all of electronics and demanding that your TV set not work!  Your television set may not work, but that is not the reason!  In order to believe matter is uncaused, one has to discard known laws and principles of science.  No reasonable person is going to do this simply to maintain a personal atheistic position.

The atheist's assertion that matter is eternal is wrong.  The atheist's assertion that the universe is uncaused and selfexisting is also incorrect.  The Bible's assertion that there was a beginning which was caused is supported strongly by the available scientific evidence.

THE DESIGN

If we know that the creation had a beginning and we know that the beginning was caused, there is one last question for us to answer--what was the cause?  The Bible tells us that God was the cause.  We are further told that the God who did the causing did so with planning and reason and logic.  Romans 1:20 tells us that we can know God is "through the things he has made."  The atheist, on the other hand, will try to convince us that we are the product of chance.  Julian Huxley once said:

We are as much a product of blind forces as is the falling of a stone to earth or the ebb and flow of the tides.  We have just happened, and man was made flesh by a long series of singularly beneficial accidents.

The subject of design has been one that has been explored in many different ways.  For most of us, simply looking at our newborn child is enough to rule out chance.  Modern-day scientists like Paul Davies and Frederick Hoyle and others are raising elaborate objections to the use of chance in explaining natural phenomena.  A principle of modern science has emerged in the 1980s called "the anthropic principle."  The basic thrust of the anthropic principle is that chance is simply not a valid mechanism to explain the atom or life.  If chance is not valid, we are constrained to reject Huxley's claim and to realize that we are the product of an intelligent God.