EVERY PERSON LIVES BY FAITH

EVERY PERSON LIVES BY FAITH

Thursday, July 3, 2014

 

Do atheists and/or agnostics live by faith?

 

  Absolutely, I believe that the majority of atheist and agnostics live by a misplaced faith in man's knowledge. This leads to a hubris that causes them to become blind to the fact that many of them have turned science into a religion. 

  In your [EBB4] last paragraph you state, "...faith involves not necessarily knowing or understanding everything. It also shows us that though lacking complete comprehensive knowledge and understanding, we, as with our past elders, are to make use of that which works," in science we call that a postulate. Here is the definition from www.biology-online.org.

1. Something demanded or asserted; especially, a position or supposition assumed without proof, or one which is considered as self-evident; a truth to which assent  may be demanded or challenged, without argument or evidence.

2. (Science: geometry) The enunciation of a self-evident problem, in distinction from an axiom, which is the enunciation of a self-evident theorem. The distinction   between a postulate and an axiom lies in this, that the latter is admitted to be self-evident, while the former may be agreed upon between two reasoners, and admitted by both, but not as proposition which it would be impossible to deny. (eng. Cyc) 

  So to put simply a postulate is something that is assumed to be true without proof being given. It is a starting point, a place were scientist agree to begin their discussion and by saying it is true even though we can't prove it. They are happy to do this because it is such a basic starting point that the postulate comes across as simply common sense and something that is the very basis of the universe. Please compare that idea with Romans 1:20 "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

  Atheists often ask Christians to prove the existence of God, but we have trouble doing that because the existence of God is, to use the science terminology, a basic postulate for Christians. It is one of the tenants of our faith. We look at the universe and say there has to be a God because of the vary qualities found in the universe.

  The atheist scoffs at this and say you are deluded, an idiot, uneducated, because everyone knows that the universe came about by the Big Bang and Evolution. (Their gods of creation.)

  Here is the atheists trinity, even though many are unaware of them, the three basic postulates of science as given to use by the University of Berkeley. http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/basic_assumptions

 

1. There are natural causes for things that happen in the world around us. For example, if a ball falls to the ground, science assumes that there must be a natural explanation for why the ball moves downward once released. Right now, scientists can describe gravity in great detail, but exactly what gravity is remains elusive. Still, science assumes that there is an explanation for gravity that relies on natural causes, just as there is for everything in nature.

 

2. Evidence from the natural world can be used to learn about those causes. Science assumes that we can learn about gravity and why a ball falls by studying evidence from the natural world. Scientists can perform experiments with other falling objects, observe how gravity affects the orbits of the planets, etc. Evidence from a wide range of experiments and observations helps scientists understand more about the natural causes of gravity. 

 

3. There is consistency in the causes that operate in the natural world. In other words, the same causes come into play in related situations and these causes are predictable. For example, science assumes that the gravitational forces at work on a falling ball are related to those at work on other falling objects. It is further assumed that the workings of gravity don't change from moment to moment and object to object in unpredictable ways. Hence, what we learn about gravity today by studying falling balls can also be used to understand, for example, modern satellite orbits, the formation of the moon in the distant past, and the movements of the planets and stars in the future, because the same natural cause is at work regardless of when and where things happen.

 

  I absolutely love the fact that they use gravity in their examples because it demonstrates my next point. Man has accepted certain things as fact but over time as our understanding grows, we find out that the fact isn't actually a fact, instead it is an explanation, a contrivance, made up by us to explain the world around us. Gravity is one such contrivance. Gravity actually doesn't exist. Now some of you may be jumping up and down and saying, "It most certainly does, otherwise I wouldn't fall back to the floor."  Gravity is actually an effect witnessed due to the interaction between mass, space, and time. It is something we made up to explain the observed "attraction" between two objects. 

  Let's say we have two ants on the surface of a basketball and they start at the basketball's equator and move directly towards the "north pole" of the basketball. Now they may have started 1/4 of the circumference away from each other but by the time they reach the "north pole" they have zero distance between them. To us standing outside, we understand and can see the cause being the curvature of the surface they are on. To the ant, assuming that they could think and only think in 2D, they might say, "Ah, there is some force that acted on us and pulled us together." That is essentially what we have done with gravity. Gravity is our made up force that pulls us together when in fact it is simply the objects following a path along the "surface" created by space, time, and mass.

  That brings me to my next point. Man has expanded his use of postulates in science from the basic three listed above to the point that virtually every science has something they assume to be true without proof. Just to give a couple of examples: Einstein's postulates in Physics, Koch's postulates in Biology, the assumption that the daughter isotope starts at zero in geologic dating, evolutionary theory... These additional postulates have become tenants of their religion. A person that hangs their hat on science for the reason they came about becomes very defensive when these basic "truths" come under attack because they are assumed to be true without any way of proving them.(That is why it is evolutionary theory and not the law of evolution.) All they have left to defend their religion and themselves is to call someone uneducated or stupid or narrow minded. (Might I add, just as a believer sometimes get frustrated when our basic faith is attacked.) 

  I firmly believe that science is the search for truth and I believe, just as confidently, that God is truth, therefore ultimately when science finds the truth it will find God. Einstein once said, "I want to know God's thoughts, the rest are details." The problem as I see it is that an atheist can't get past the details.

 

"Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.” Romans 1:22-23

 

Sincerely,

Jon Mayo

Science Department Chair

Brownell-Talbot School

 

To contact Jon: 402.556.3772 or jomayo@brownell.edu