The Religion of Atheism

 They are a RELIGION unto themselves.

According to atheist writer Anthony Flew, they can be broken down into "positive atheists" who affirm God does not exist and "negative atheists" who just lack a belief in God.

In the 21st century a new division began with what was termed the "old atheists" who were chill when coming into contact with theists and the "new atheists" who were openly hostile towards theists and also encouraged others to publicly berate theists when encountered.
The "new atheists" were led in the first decade of the 21st century by the self-proclaimed "4 horsemen of the apocalypse" which consisted of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.
Psalm 14:1
*Atheism is a religion in that one sets oneself up as "god" since you determine right and wrong based on your current worldview at the given moment. Morality ends up on the shifting sand of opinion.

......but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
Judges 17:6
They have a double origins MYTH:
1) The Big Bang (where the universe supposedly came from a microscopic point of singularity of energy that exploded and filled the universe in a billionth of a second under the flawed "inflation theory" (Alan Guth made that up to fudge the math in 1979 because the mathematics of the big bang didn't add up).

Of course many today have gone on to other theories due to the "inflation theory" not working mathematically either. These others include the Carmelian Theory (White Hole Theory), Multiverse Theory, Stasis Universe Theory. MOND (Modified Theory of Newtonian Dynamics), String Theory and Electromagnetic Universe Theory.
As for countering Einstein's theory that states that Space, Matter & Time are co-dependent (can't have one without the other two) and that the universe had a starting point---how does one square that with the "big bang"?...For a pre-existing point of singularity occupies space---even if microscopic in size---therefore time and matter of some kind would exist. But if, as Einstein's theories show, there was a starting point--then from where and when did this point of singularity come from?
Of course this century Lawrence Krauss has tried to answer that by claiming it was from the fluctuation of electro-magnetic waves that sparked causing the universe to "pop" into existence.
But if one has a functioning brain cell then the OBVIOUS QUESTION would be where did the energy come from?
For energy is just matter in an energized form and it too is occupying some space and hence time would be in existence. So you are back to square one as it relates to Einstein's theories that show the universe had a staring point.

Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: He calleth them all by names by the greatness of His might...
Isaiah 40:26
2) Darwinian Macro-Evolution and Long Age Chronology.
The dirty little secret is that many are divided into different evolutionary views that contradict each other. Logic would dictate

then that only one could be right---and as a result therefore that they all could therefore be wrong.
There is Neo-Darwinism (Dawkins), Punctuated Equilibrium (Gould), Panspermia (Sagan), Evo-Devo (DeBeers), A Third Way (Wagner) and sort of a back-to-the-drawing board (Mazur).
From the Microscope to the Telescope one sees DESIGN--which in every aspect of life equals a DESIGNER. But on this one point of origins they willfully suspend reality--or as Dawkins put's it in writing in response to this point--that "TRICKY NATURE".

For ever since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through His workmanship [all His creation, the wonderful things that He has made], so that they [who fail to believe and trust in Him] are without excuse and without defense.

Romans 1:20 AMP

*Many--but to be fair not all--subscribe to an end-of-the-world eschatology: A GREEN APOCALYPSE. The arrogance of man that he can destroy the planet. And as a result only he can save the planet. Such hubris from MORTAL MAN, a speck of a creature in this vast cosmos that only lives a few decades and returns to dust himself.

All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust. Job 34:17

*Then there is the problem for atheists of INFORMATION:
Naturalists believe in*matter*energy*laws of nature*chance.
But .... they deny anything "supernatural"...
So then where does *will *choice *information come from?

Examples include- *A-Z of the English alphabet (26 symbols). *The DNA code of A,C,G,&T (4 symbols). *The Binary code of 0 & 1 (2 symbols).

Dr. Kuppers defined life as MATTER + INFORMATION ... but where does this information come from?

According Dr. Gitt, there is no known law through which matter can give rise to information.

Claude Shannon was the pioneer of Information Theory.

He also was a proponent of the idea that entropy (loss of information) has to be taken into account for calculations.

Maximum Entropy would result in being unable to know how the symbols/messages would show up to the receiver each time.

And that Zero Entropy would indicate showing up to the receiver identical each time.

Dembski argues that information is conserved but can only be created by intelligence.
It is not derived from matter; instead, matter is the medium by which intelligence communicates information.

A gene sequence is information; know-how refers to the ability to make something from it, and this cannot reside in the information itself.
"DNA has no knowhow and cannot unpack itself; it is a slave to the machinery needed to unpack it," says Hidalgo.

For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible...
Colossians 1:16

Creation Moment 3/19/2026 - Grasping at Clarke's 3rd Law to Reject clear cut visible DESIGN

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of His coming? 2 Peter 3:3,4

"Dawkins believes that complicated things, such as DNA, only appear to be designed. 

Q: Why does it only appear designed? 

A: Well, because if it is designed then the obvious question is, who designed it? 

--The reality of the matter is that the double-helix structure of DNA could not form by chance as we know that it carries complex coded information that can only be generated by intelligence sources (not mindless natural processes). Since Dawkins sees design as an allusion, the possibility of a designer is also seen as delusional (i.e. the title of his 2006 book The God Delusion).

Peter Boghossian: Given that the hosts of arguments [for the existence of God] don’t work, what would it take for you to believe in God?
Richard Dawkins: "I use to say, it would be very simple, it would be the second coming of Jesus or a great big, deep, booming, base voice saying: “I am God and I created.” But I was persuaded mostly by

Steve Zaro . . . he more or less persuaded me, even if there was this booming voice or the second coming in clouds of glory, the more probable explanation is that it is a hallucination or a conjuring trick by David Copperfield or something. He made the point that a supernatural explanation for anything is incoherent, that it just doesn’t add up to an explanation for anything . . . Clarke’s third law “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” magic being supernatural. If you were to fly a Boeing 747 back to the middle ages, you would be greeted as god, and similarly an alien visitation would be so far beyond us in their technology that they probably could manipulate the stars to spell out words or geometric forms or something of that sort." AIG

Creation Moment 3/18/2026 - Morality: Defined by a CREATOR

"The Bible tells us that God is the Creator of all things, and therefore, all things belong to Him (The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, Psalm 24:1). Thus, God as the Creator has the right to define absolute standards of behavior.

Dr. Greg Bahnsen (1948–95) states, “What does the unbeliever

[person who rejects the Biblical God] mean by ‘good,’ or by what standard does the unbeliever determine what counts as ‘good’ (so that ‘evil’ is accordingly defined or identified)? What are the presuppositions in terms of which the unbeliever makes any moral judgments whatsoever?”

Although unbelievers may classify actions as good or evil, they do not have an ultimate foundation for defining what is good and evil." AIG

Creation Moment 12/3/2025 - James D. Watson was truly "WITHOUT EXSCUSE"

For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, ... so that they are without excuse: Romans 1:20
James D. Watson was the man among modern humans who should have been more "without excuse" than any other as being the first to see the Codes of the DNA molecule....yet he hardened his heart.

"No scientist, no human being, could leave a more tortured and contradictory legacy than geneticist James D. Watson, co-discoverer in 1953 of the elegant structure of the DNA molecule. He died this month at age 97.

A noxious atheist, Watson unwittingly pointed the way toward

scientific evidence of a creator.
A noxious racist, citing supposed genetic evidence of African racial inferiority, Watson’s work with DNA suggests that human beings can’t in fact be reduced to “genes.”
No one could deny the beauty of the DNA molecule’s double helix, for the revelation of which Watson with his partner Francis Crick shared the Nobel Prize.
Atheism literally means just the negation of theism, or belief in a deity. Watson’s atheism, on the other hand, was no mere negation. It was an acid bath.

“Every time you understand something,” he announced in 2003 on the 50th anniversary of his discovery with Crick, “religion becomes

less likely.”
The notion of our assuming the place of God, as “human gods,” charmed him. In 2000, he said, answering doubts about genetic engineering, “But then, in all honesty, if scientists don’t play god, who will?”
There was a nihilism to his views. As he told fellow atheist scientist Richard Dawkins, in Dawkins’s 2006 book The God Delusion, human existence is purposeless: “Well I don’t think we’re for anything. We’re just products of evolution.” 

MindMatters

Using the Public Schools

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

"In 1905, John Dewey was hired as a professor of philosophy at Columbia University Teachers College, a position he held until 1930. He was without question the most influential shaper of our modern

school system.
Dewey was also an outspoken proponent of humanism and socialism, and he believed that teachers should use their positions of authority in the classroom to advance “progressive” or Leftist ideas: “I believe it is the business of everyone interested in education to insist upon the school as the primary and most effective instrument of social progress” (which he believed meant moving away from Christianity toward humanism and socialism).

Dewey was not subtle about his ideological preferences:
“The old dogmas of religion have largely lost their power…There is no room for fixed and final dogmas in the life of the mind… The hypothesis of God as a person cannot be maintained.”
“The true and primary source of knowledge is not in revelation but in observation and reason.” 

Fulcrum7

Creation Moment 7/4/2025 - The Damnable Heresy Taught in Schools

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, 2 Peter 2:1

"The first two tenets of Humanist Manifesto I (1933), signed by many prominent evolutionists, are:
1- Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not

created.
2- Humanism believes that Man is a part of nature and has emerged as a result of a continuous process.

This is exactly what evolution teaches. Many humanist leaders are quite open about using the public schools to proselytize their faith." CMI

Creation Moment 6/27/2025 - Materialistic ideology & 2 Peter 3:3

Knowing this first, 

that there shall come in the last days scoffers,... 2 Peter 3:3

"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 worldview, 

---but that this worldview is actively undermining scientific inquiry, leading to incorrect and unsupported conclusions about biological and cosmological origins." 

UncommonDescent

Creation Moment 4/23/2025 - Atheist Darwinian Coyne Slams atheistic Freedom From Religion Foundation

"Secularism is a religion (an anti-God religion). I’ve being saying that for years—it’s a worldview, a religious system used to interpret the world, and it’s a faith-based belief system. So I’m not surprised that famous evolutionary biologist Dr. Jerry Coyne (who is a very vocal critic of creation!) has separated from the atheistic Freedom From Religion Foundation due to their religious beliefs no longer matching his beliefs.

Coyne claims he joined FFRF—an extremely vocal anti-Christian group of atheists—because he “supported its work guarding the wall of separation between religion and government, educating the public about how to be moral without faith, and, most important, upholding science and rationality over dogma and superstition.”

Now, before we continue on, notice the inconsistencies in just that paragraph:Coyne isn’t really for a separation of religion and government: he’s for the separation of Christianity and government—he’s perfectly fine with his religion of secularism being the prevailing worldview in our government. That’s what he fought for with the FFRF!
Q: When he says, “to be moral without faith,” what does he mean?

There is no consistent standard for morality apart from God and his Word. Morality becomes completely arbitrary without an ultimate foundation. From his evolutionary worldview, why be “moral”? Animals—and in his view, we are animals—aren’t “moral.” 

Q: And what does “moral” even mean? Who decides?
Q: Does he really uphold “science and rationality” over “dogma and superstition”? 

Well, he dogmatically believes naturalism—that everything came from nothing due to the big bang, life arose from nonlife, and one kind of creature turned into another kind—even though these ideas all fly in the face of observational science. There’s nothing scientific or rational about these beliefs. It’s a story about the past, a fairy tale.

But Coyne is no longer with FFRF. He, along with Richard Dawkins

and Steven Pinker, resigned from the advisory board because “the foundation has abandoned science.” In reference to a recent incident where FFRF removed his article “Biology is not bigotry” and issued an apology for the “distress” it may have caused to the LGBTQ+ community, he notes, “The woke care more about ‘progressive’ ideology than scientific facts.”

He goes on to say,

"In many ways, transgender ideology is no different from the religious dogma the FFRF was founded to oppose. It insists on doctrines that are palpably untrue (“trans women are women”), engages in circular reasoning (“a woman is whoever she says she is”) and affirms mind/body dualism (“your self-concept is more real than your actual sex”). . ."

Like religious fundamentalists, proponents of these views have a fierce conviction that they’re morally correct and know what’s best for you and society. To disagree is to be immoral—sinful, you might say.Yes, the LGBTQ lobby and the FFRF are religious, extremely religious. And their religion is atheism and/or progressivism. But what Coyne refuses to recognize is he is religious too. His religion is atheism, but of a different kind than FFRF’s. That’s where the conflict between him and FFRF arises from: their religions no longer agree. And that’s not surprising as neither has an ultimate foundation for their thinking. All they have are their own opinions, interpretations of the natural world, or the consensus of the group.We would agree with Coyne that all humans belong to one of two sexes: male or female. But we don’t argue this merely from biology. We begin with God’s Word, which tells us God created everything, and he clearly created human life as either male or female (So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Genesis 1:27). Because we are not self-made people, we don’t get to decide for ourselves what our identity is. God has already done that, and it is clearly reflected in our biology." 

AIG

Creation Moment 1/29/2025 - Naturalism is the Root of Evolutionary Thinking

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Psalm 14:1

"The framework behind the evolutionists’ interpretation is naturalism—it is assumed that things made themselves, that no divine intervention has happened, and that God has not revealed to us

knowledge about the past.
Evolution is a deduction from this assumption, and it is essentially the idea that things made themselves.
Professor D.M.S. Watson, one of the leading biologists and science writers of his day, demonstrated the atheistic bias behind much evolutionary thinking when he wrote:
"Evolution [is] a theory universally accepted not because it can be proven by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible." 

CMI

Creation Moment 1/7/2025 - Atheists think they have Mutated Genes....

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Psalm 2:4

"From Katherine Hignett at Newsweek:
"Religious people tend to live healthier, longer lives than atheists. This trend has puzzled academics for some time, but social scientists may have discovered the reason why."

"Research published in Evolutionary Psychological Science has linked a rise in atheism to increasingly prevalent mutant genes."
"Lead author Edward Dutton from the Ulster Institute for Social Research explained the research to Newsweek. He says: “Maybe the positive relationship between religiousness and health is not causal—it’s not that being religious makes you less stressed so less ill. Rather, religious people are a genetically normal remnant population from preindustrial times, and the rest of us are mutants who’d have died as children back then."

Mutant genes? Maybe we should have covered this for our occasional sci fi frite nite…
Evolutionary psychology is still looking for a problem it can solve. In the real world, religious people live longer because most long-surviving religions embody lifestyle rules and social structures that promote longevity. One is less likely to die in a church than in a crack den, irrespective of whether one has children.
Note: A friend writes to observe that atheism is there classified as “not religious.,” That is a dead giveaway for ignorance and incompetence in writing about the subject. Atheism means “not believing that there is a God/gods.” The Dalai Lama is an atheist; is he not religious? Humanists who strive to live by their principles may claim they are not religious but, sociologically, they are.
Q: If naturalism can explain religion, why does it get so many basic facts wrong?
Q: Evolutionary conundrum: is religion a useful, useless, or harmful adaptation?
Imagine a world of religions that naturalism might indeed be able to explain."
UncommonDescent

IN the NEWS - Outspoken Atheist Goes Viral After Publicly Coming to Realization About God

I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. Luke 15:7

"A once-outspoken atheist who previously argued against the existence of God did an about-face on social media on Monday, and explained she is trying to further her relationship with Him.

Freely Ashley of the outlet ThePublica acknowledged on the social media platform X that she had encountered a situation that had changed her mind and her heart.
Ashley explained a bit more about her feelings about God after coming across Him.
“I believe in God. This is very new. And scary,” she wrote. “Why is it scary? I’ve denied the existence of God since I could remember.”
“I’m not labeling myself as anything right now. I’m wearing the cross to remind myself there’s always an audience (God) and to act accordingly. I put it on about a month ago." 

WesternJournal

IN the NEWS - Going Full Rom. 1:22 in Secular Cosmology

“Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22). Creationists are routinely mocked by evolutionists for believing that mankind once lived with dinosaurs. 

So, I just had to shake my head and chuckle when I read the first line of this article, “A new study argues that a real-life ‘Jurassic World’ could currently exist, just on another planet.”
---So, it’s foolish to believe that God created dinosaurs on day six of creation week, on the same day as mankind, just a few thousand years ago . . . but it’s not foolish to believe dinosaurs evolved on a distant planet and we just need to look for the right signatures to find them? Yes, Romans is right, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” 

Studies like this one simply highlight yet again that humans are willing to grasp at anything rather than believe the truth of God’s Word." 

AIG

IN the NEWS - Islamic Atheist Leader turns Christian

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Isaiah 1:18

"Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a longtime critic of Islam and vocal atheist, has announced that she is now a Christian for both spiritual and civilizational reasons.

"I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity," she wrote in an

essay published this week. "I discover a little more at church..... But I have recognized, in my own long journey through a wilderness of fear and self-doubt, that there is a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief had to offer."

The famous Muslim apostate Hirsi Ali recalled that the Muslim Brotherhood had a unique ability to transform her and her fellow teenagers into activists almost overnight.

Amid strict prayer and fasting sessions, the Somali-born Hirsi Ali and her friends were taught to hate Jews and avoid indulging in early pleasures or else face the wrath of Allah.

She said that the "zero-cost escape" from a life of "self-denial" and "harassment" offered by atheism made the absence of belief appealing to her for a time. The atheists in her circle, like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, offered her a new circle of friends that were both fun and clever.

However, as Hirsi Ali witnessed the threats posed to Western civilization via authoritarian regimes like Russia and China, the rise of global Islamism and the "viral spread" of woke ideology, the benefits of atheism seemed inadequate to combat the issues of modern civilization.

"We endeavor to fend off these threats with modern, secular tools:

military, economic, diplomatic, and technological efforts to defeat, bribe, persuade, appease, or surveil. And yet, with every round of conflict, we find ourselves losing ground," she wrote.

The atheist doctrine of "God is dead," in her opinion, seemed now insufficient to find refuge in the "rules-based liberal international order." The solution, Hirsi Ali found, was an embrace of one's desire to uphold Judeo-Christian tradition.

She also praised the freedom of conscience and freedom found in Western civilization.

Hirsi Ali admitted that she found life without any spiritual aspect "unendurable," and atheism failed to answer the eternal question: What is the meaning and purpose of life?

The "God hole," as she described it, inevitably left a void that has been filled by a "jumble of irrational, quasi-religious dogma."

She believes without Christianity, the West cannot withstand China, Russia and Iran, cannot counter Islam with secularism and will be unable to fight "woke ideology," which she claimed is determined to "destroy civilization." FOX

Scary Harari

They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth. Psalm 73:9

"Yuval Noah Harari, is an atheist gay Israeli author with an Oxford PhD in Philosophy who practices buddhist vipassana meditation two hours a day.....Harari published Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow....How does he define religion?

"Religion is any all-encompassing story that confers superhuman

legitimacy on human laws, norms, and values. It legitimizes human social structures by arguing that they reflect superhuman laws. More than a century after Nietzsche pronounced him dead, God seems to be making a comeback. But this is a Mirage. God is dead. It’s just taking a while to get rid of the body."

Harari says humans replaced one religion with another, replaced God-centered belief with a new belief in humanity. That is, that humans shifted from the worship of God to the worship of self. 

Who then is the greatest threat to this worship of self? Harari’s words:

"Throughout history, prophets and philosophers have argued that if

humans stopped believing in a great cosmic plan, all law and order would vanish. Yet today, those who pose the greatest threat to global law and order are precisely those people who continue to believe in God and his all-encompassing plans."

Harari subdivides humanism into three branches: liberal humanism (LH), socialist humanism (SH), and evolutionary humanism (EH), corresponding loosely to what we might call liberalistic, socialistic, and evolutionistic ways of thinking.

In socialist humanism the party makes the decisions that matter; think USSR. Wisdom resides with the leaders of the collective.

Then there is evolutionary humanism. Harari says:

"Hitler and the Nazis represent only one extreme version of evolution or humanism. Just as Stalin’s gulags do not automatically nullify every socialist idea and argument, so too the horrors of Nazism should not blind us to whatever insights evolutionary humanism might offer…. Auschwitz should serve as a blood-red warning sign rather than as a black curtain that hides entire sections of the human horizon. Evolutionary humanism played an important part in the shaping of modern culture, and is likely to play an even greater role in the shaping of the twenty-first century."

Harari sees the future as evolutionary humanism, or more accurately, transhumanism.

In the final section of his book Harari sets out to deconstruct the value, even the concept, of the individual. According to Harari, man is not an individual, he is a bundle of algorithms.

And so he states the superiority of the new religion.

"When you read the Bible you are getting advice from a few priests

and rabbis who lived in ancient Jerusalem . In contrast, when you listen to your feelings, you follow an algorithm that evolution has developed for millions of years, and that withstood the harshest quality-control tests of natural selection. Your feelings are the voice of millions of ancestors, each of whom managed to survive and reproduce in an unforgiving environment. Your feelings are not infallible, of course, but they are better than most other sources of guidance.”

We didn’t ask for the changes Harari predicts to happen, and we won’t be asked. 

We are being directed onward as rats in a maze. Powerful persons who literally do not understand reality are bent on changing the world right underneath our feet."

Larry Kirkpatrick/Fulcrum7

Perplexing to Atheism: Mind and Morality

For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son....

Romans 1:9

 

"The origin of mind and morality from energy and atoms has long been a problem for the materialist. 

It is a major theme of philosopher Thomas Nagel’s book, Mind and Cosmos,.....

 

A fig tree produces figs, not apples. That seems obvious. Likewise,

physics and chemistry produce physical and chemical outcomes. However, mind and morality are not just matters of physics and chemistry. Sure, creatures that are physical and chemical have mind and morality, but how did such non-material things arise from the material? 

 

This is a serious problem for materialism, and the Atheist Nagel candidly admits it, to the extreme annoyance of his atheistic colleagues." CMI

The Atheist SIMPLIFIED

Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, 

He abandoned them to their foolish thinking...

Romans 1:28 NLT

 

"Professor of Molecular Biology (Biola University) Douglas Axe made the following perceptive comments in 2021:

‘For just a minute or two, put yourself in the place of someone who it

determined to deny God. 

To make that easier, take yourself back to a moment when you yourself were resolved to assert your sovereignty over your life.

In those moments, God’s presence seems highly inconvenient, so we push Him out of our minds. 

I’m suggesting that atheists are merely people for whom this momentary lapse becomes a consciously adopted way of life. … Atheism is a commitment, not a deduction”." 

CMI

Creation Moment 6/8/2023 - Isaac Newton Nailed It

When I consider thy heavens, 

the work of thy fingers, 

the moon and the stars, 

which thou hast ordained;

Psalm 8:3

 

"Newton is credited with saying, “Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.” 

He also stated, “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”

ICR

Creation Moment 4/24/2023 - The 4 "Wise" Fools of France

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,... 

Romans 1:22

"Belief in ‘deep time’ actually developed in France in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries, before spreading to Britain in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries.

 

Amongst the most notable French voices against scriptural authority and belief in the Flood in the 18^th century were: Bernard de Fontenelle (1657–1757), Benoît de Maillet (1656–1738), Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778), and Denis Diderot (1713–1784).

 

Bernard de Fontenelle

Fontenelle was trained at the Jesuit Collège de Bourbon, and for decades (1697–1740) he held the prestigious position of Secretary to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. This allowed him to influence the development and direction of geological science in France in a way that undermined belief in the Biblical Flood.

He had earlier written a book (1686) entitled Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. Effectively a science fiction dialogue, it discussed space travel and the possibility of life on the moon and other planets. Fontenelle envisioned gradual alterations in nature occurring over hundreds of thousands of years, and his book was influential in preparing the French imagination for a different worldview over the subsequent century.

 

Benoît de Maillet

Another significant influence of the middle of the 18^th century was de Maillet’s edited book Telliamed (a reversal of his name). It was first published posthumously (1748) by the Jesuit priest Abbé Jean Baptiste le Mascrier, although draft copies had been circulating in Paris for a couple of decades. De Maillet had become a French diplomat, allowing him to travel to the Middle East where he became acquainted with other cultures and beliefs.

Telliamed argued the case for millions of years of change from the perspective of a Hindu sage against a French missionary. Earlier clandestine drafts had argued that the earth was at least two billion years old, correlating roughly with half a day of the Hindu creator god Brahma; the 12-hour day of Brahma is said to last for 4.32 billion years (during which period Brahma is awake), followed by a night of similar length.

 

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)

The famous Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire also claimed that deep time was required for geological change. He commented in an anonymous letter to the Academy of Bologna in 1746 that:

Revolutions of thousands of millions of years are infinitely less in the light of the Great Architect of Nature, than to us that of a wheel which compleats [sic] its round in the twinkling of an eye.

Voltaire also argued that fossil fish found on Alpine mountains were in fact food dropped by Christian pilgrims! However, Charles Lyell, though a strong opponent of the Mosaic account, thought Voltaire was arguing deceitfully, because Voltaire recognized that such fossil evidence strongly supported the Biblical Flood account. He commented quite bluntly that:

The numerous essays written by him on geological subjects were all calculated to strengthen prejudices, partly because he was ignorant of the real state of the science, and partly from his bad faith.

Voltaire even began to argue that the Hindu writings were more ancient and authentic than the Bible. However, again he misrepresented the truth. He praised the Ezour Veda (or Ezourvedam) as a valuable gift to Western nations, saying they were indebted to this eastern religion. But in reality, this was a latter-day forgery; the work of Jesuits, not an ancient text. It was in the form of a dialogue between two supposed Vedic sages, one a monotheist and the other a polytheist who conclude that Hindu polytheism is more or less monotheism in disguise.

 

Denis Diderot

Diderot was an agitator against the political and religious authorities and, at one time, was imprisoned for sedition. In his Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature (1754), he wrote:

… may not a philosopher, left to his own conjectures, suspect that, from time immemorial, animal life had its own constituent elements, scattered and intermingled with the general body of matter, and that it happened that these constituent elements came together … [and] that millions of years passed between each of these developments … ?

The Jesuit-trained Diderot was well acquainted with Voltaire and gradually lost his faith, becoming a deist, then an atheist. He was tasked with editing a French Encyclopédie, a comprehensive work published from 1751 to 1772 to explain the world from the perspective of naturalism, and aimed at changing the thinking of French society.

 

Belief in millions of years of geological change then spread to Britain in the late 18^th century and early 19^th century through men such as James Hutton, Erasmus Darwin, Charles Lyell, and Charles Darwin." CMI

Creation Moment 4/4/2023 - Hubristic Expectations Stemming From The Enlightenment

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh.... Psalm 2:4

 

"As its somewhat virtue-signaling name implies, the thinkers of the

Enlightenment wished to distance themselves from anything that smacked of religious “superstition.” This led to the determination to declare a unilateral declaration of independence from the metaphysical sphere in favor of purely “scientific” modes of explanation. 

Yet in the face of the last century of scientific discoveries we have come to realize that hubristic expectations stemming from the Enlightenment dream of encompassing the whole of reality in some grand material theory of everything have been forced into a reluctant retreat." Neil Thomas, 6 Oct 2022

Creation Moment 4/2/2023 - The Fear for the Nobel Prize Winner

That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:

Ephesians 2:12

 

"The origin of the universe is a mystery for science, surely for the present one. It is a disturbing mystery ... The same applies to the origin of life and of Homo sapiens .... The concept of God .... helps us to make decisions in the right direction. We should be very different, I fear, if we did not have that concept."

 E.P. Wigner, Nobel Prize for Physics (Princeton University