Normally, it’s a colossal waste of time to argue to death about what happens after we die. It’s pointless. Furthermore, I absolutely, 100% guarantee you that whoever you’re arguing with doesn’t know the answer either.
Nobody does.
But sometimes, even when an answer is unknowable and/or unprovable, the thought patterns we use to decipher the riddle can be evaluated. There are good SOPs and bad SOPs. Clearly, not all thought patterns are equal.
Take atheism, for example.
It’s possible there is no God, so perhaps the atheists are right. Nobody can definitively disprove atheism, just as no one can definitively disprove Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or even Scientology. By definition, faith-based theologies aren’t scientifically testable. They fall outside of the scientific method.
So why do the atheists insist they’re right?
Most religious people are delighted to talk about their faith and explain their belief systems — especially those from an evangelical religion — but the leading atheists aren’t interested in debating ideas anymore. Instead, they’re smug and arrogant, coupled with a healthy dose of elitism. In their minds, all the smart, educated men and women — the doctors, scientists, college professors, and Nobel laureates — are card-carrying atheists, whereas those inbred rubes in Flyover Country are just too stupid to realize that Jesus and God are a bunch of silly nonsense.
Statistically, they have a point: Global numbers on atheism are difficult to ascertain, but it seems that only 7% of the world’s population is atheist or agnostic (with communist China responsible for about 40% of the total tally).
But only 65% of Nobel prize winners were either Christian or raised Christian. The award’s namesake, Alfred Nobel, became an atheist later in his life. And in a study of the “professional philosophers” from the top university’s departments of philosophy, it was revealed that a whopping 72.8% considered themselves atheists.
Atheism is overrepresented on college campuses as well. At the “elite” universities with doctoral programs, 36.5% were either agnostics or atheists.
Indeed, researchers Helmuth Nyborg and Richard Lynn even published a study claiming that atheists were, on average, six IQ points ahead of non-atheists. So not only are they better educated, but they’re smarter, too. (So they say.)
An overwhelming majority of atheists look down on religion: 94% cite religion as divisive and intolerant; 91% believe religion encourages superstitions and illogical thinking; 73% are convinced that religion does more social harm than good. If elitism were a theology, the atheists would be… theists.
Yet, the atheists contend they’re simply relying on hardcore, empirical science. Fine. So let’s examine the science:
According to the scientific consensus, roughly 96% of the universe is comprised of either dark matter or dark energy. Somewhere between 4 and 5% is made up of “normal” mass and energy — the stuff we encounter in our day-to-day life.
Even though dark matter and dark energy share the word “dark,” it’s not at all clear that the two phenomena are linked. Scientists use the word “dark” as a general euphemism, meaning, “we don’t know what it is well enough to make an educated guess.” So basically, today’s science doesn’t have much of a clue what the hell 96% of our universe actually is! They just assume dark matter and dark energy must exist, because the current cosmology models function better when you factor them in.
Additionally, the “observable universe” — the parts we can still see — is only a tiny sliver of the total universe. The dominant scientific model measures our observable universe at approximately 93 billion light years in diameter. Anything beyond the 93 billion light year mark is expanding away from us at ever-increasing speeds, which means no information will ever reach us. We don’t know (and may never know) for sure how big it actually is, but some models predict that the total universe must be an astounding 250 times larger than the observable universe! Instead of it being “just” 93 billion light years, it’s likely about 7 trillion light years across!
Yet these scientists are so sure atheism is right… when there’s only 4% of existence they can directly observe?! And when just 1/250 of this is still visible?!
Modern science emerged in the 17th century. It’s a very new discipline — one that’s still in its infancy. There’s exponentially more we don’t know than what we do. The bottom line is, if you can’t even access 96% of reality, you simply lack the means to exclude a Creator. You’re too ignorant.
Lately, it’s become trendy to consider the Simulation Theory. Elon Musk, for example, insists it’s much more probable that we’re living in an artificial simulation, and not in a “real” world. His thought process is extremely straightforward: In the 2020s, we’re rapidly approaching the ability to create Artificial Intelligence that’s indistinguishable from human intelligence. Once we can create one human-level AI, we can create billions; once we can run one simulation, we can also run billions. Or even trillions.
If it turns out that Musk is correct and sentience is an emergent quality in a sufficiently intelligent system, then one day, AIs will achieve sentience. Therefore, one of two things must be true: Either this is the only time in the entire history of our universe that an intelligent species has developed this kind of AI technology and we’re in the “real” universe testing it for the first time, or we’re in one of the billions (or trillions) of simulations that have already begun. In Musk’s opinion, the statistics are so lopsided in favor of a simulation, it would be illogical to assume otherwise.
But even if our entire existence is an AI creation, it still necessitates the existence of a Creator. All it does is (possibly) redefine His nature and objectives.
Imagine the arrogance of the atheists! To argue that God can’t exist and mustn’t exist — because the infant science of 4% of reality says otherwise! And of the 4% we can see, only 1/250 is even visible?!
That’s a poorly reasoned conclusion.
To me, one of the more inspiring indicators of God’s possible existence is the sun and moon. Our sun is millions of times larger than the earth; our moon is ¼ the size of our planet. Yet, from our (temporary) seat in the cosmos, the sun and moon are so perfectly identical in height and width, they can literally take turns completely eclipsing the other.
It's strange. It’s bizarre. As far as we know, this doesn’t happen on any other planet.
But here we are, with the sun and moon — the two most blatantly obvious objects in the sky! — being so perfectly proportional, they’re practically twins. It’s completely contrary to what you’d expect via the laws of probability.
Ask yourself: Can you imagine a subtler, more elegant way for a Creator to demonstrate to His creations that our universe isn’t random — instead, it’s deliberate — than by making the two most obvious symbols in the sky exactly identical? And to do so in a way that makes a mockery of randomness?
Unlike atheism, it’s probably worth considering.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member