MODERN ATHEISM
An Analysis
INTELLECTUALLY, the history of man can be divided into two major periods: the pre-scientific era, and the post-scientific era. Intellectually, in the pre-scientific era, religion became a trendsetter for man. After the emergence of scientific era, this situation changed. Now, science, in general, has gained the status of being a trendsetter. Science itself is neither in favour of religion, nor against it, but, in some ways, it has a practical result that atheism prevailed in almost all intellectual matters during the scientific era. Why did it happen? Here is an overview of it.
Man has been living on the present planet earth for thousands of years. He sees many things happen every day, such as the rising of the sun, the falling of the rain, blowing of winds, etc. as being done directly by God. The monotheistic and polytheistic man, both in one way or the other accepted it. In other words, the concept of a cause between the Creator and the event did not exist intellectually.
After the emergence of modern science, it became known that behind every event, there is a material cause. For example, Sir Issac Newton, the founder of modern science, was sitting in the garden, when an apple fell from the tree. Newton began to wonder why the apple fell from the tree and did not go up. Finally, he discovered that Gravity is the force that causes things to move from top to down, not from down to top.
The scientific study grew until the scientists discovered that there is always a cause behind all the events that happen in this world. This discovery has been named as the Principle of Causation. This way of understanding events based on causes continued to spread all over the intellectual activities of man, who first would refer to God for the explanation of events, now refers to causes for the explanation of events.
This discovery of science initially had only a physical aspect. Despite not explaining events in terms of God, it did not mean denying God. But atheistic thinkers, not scientists started using the theory to deny the existence of God. This is where the doctrine that is called modern atheism began.
With this discovery of science, modern atheists tried to convince people that we no longer need to believe in God to explain events, because if events are due to natural causes, they are not due to supernatural causes.
There is a huge logical gap in this argument of the modern atheists. That is, the cause of an event that science tells us, is not an end in itself. Even after that, the question that remains pertaining to the cause is, why did it happen? The fact is that the cause does not explain, cause itself needs an explanation. Science can tell us 'How" but not "Why"
