Atheism and beliefs

From Conservapedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Cipe (Talk | contribs) at 18:20, 24 April 2012. It may differ significantly from current revision.

Jump to: navigation, search

There are number of beliefs that are common among proponents of Western World atheism which will shortly be covered. Also, an examination of the subject of atheism and beliefs quickly leads to the reasonable conclusion that the beliefs held in "faith" by atheists are without any supporting evidence.

Atheism and beliefs about the origins of the universe

See also: Atheism and the suppression of science and Irreligion and superstition

As a theory which addresses the origins of the universe, the Big Bang has always carried theological implications, most notably, the concept of creatio ex nihilo, which stems from the Genesis creation narrative.[1][2][3][4][5] In light of the theistic implications of the Big Bang, Fred Hoyle, an atheist scientist did not accept the Big Bang,[6] preferring a model that did not have a single epoch of creation which would eliminate the need for a creator.[7] As a result, Fred Holyle, Thomas Gold, and Hermann Bondi developed the steady state theory, which appealed to atheist cosmologists because it avoided a creation event and the religious implications associated with one.[8] s such, English physicist and statistical thermodynamicist, Peter Theodore Landsberg, has written that this tension is often seen as that between a Christian-Judaic Big Bang and a communist-atheist steady-state model of the universe.[9][10][11] According to the ideology of the Soviet communism, as it was forumulated in the late 1930s, cosmologial models with heat death, and hence a finite upper time scale, were rejected as well because of their theistic implications.[12]

Atheism and beliefs about the origins of life

See also: Irreligion and superstition

  • Abiogenesis: atheists assert that cellular life was materialistically generated from inorganic material, the "primordial soup." Abiogenesis has not been established in any scientific study, and is profoundly unlikely, given the miniscule odds of the right mix of chemical and environment existing, which are necessary for organic life.
  • Materialistic Evolution: atheists believe that all life on earth developed from the first organic cells, according to Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Importantly, they categorically reject the potential of God's hand in this process, though without cause (see: Theistic evolution for a different take). See The Theory of Evolution for the inherent problems of this belief.


  • Socialism: While there are certainly atheist capitalists, many atheists in history have tended towards socialism and communism and modern communism was explicitly atheistic in origin. Many atheists believe laissez-faire capitalism is unproductive, even though capitalism has provided the greatest growth of productivity and standards of living in human history.[13]
  • Limited freedoms: atheists believe that individuals should have free speech, so long as it does not contradict atheistic or evolutionary doctrine.

Atheism and beliefs about history

  • Science and Christianity: atheists believe that religion is antithetical to scientific research and deny that Christianity was important to the development of science, when in fact the Scientific Revolution was brought about by scientists seeking a greater knowledge of the world that they believe was created by God.
  • Democracy and Christianity: atheists believe that democracy does not rely on Christianity, even though they are clearly linked in Western history and no atheist democracy has ever succeeded.
  • Atheists deny that many of the Founding Fathers were Christian, pretending instead that they were Deists.[14]

General philosophy

See also: Irreligion and superstition

  • Naturalism: atheists believe that the universe only operates through natural processes, and is limited to what can be observed. Most scientists, (from Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein to present) on the other hand, assert that while the observable universe follows natural processes, first causes are unknowable, and our knowledge is limited to what we can detect, leaving open the potential for the spiritual, the soul, and divine acts of God.
  • Scientism: atheists believe that all knowledge and aspects of life can be refined to a science (see Comte and positivism), including religious belief, ethics, morality, and the soul.
  • Human improvement: atheists believe that humans have grown increasingly moral and intelligent as time has gone on, and that people can be improved or perfected through education and liberal institution-crafting, without relying upon God to cleanse sin.[15]
  • Unbounded reason: atheists believe that human reason is capable of comprehending absolutely anything, a theory long since rejected by moral philosophers such as Kant.[16]

Religion and God

  • Disbelief from silence: atheists believe that God does not exist, merely because there is no absolute proof that he does exist, a logical fallacy. Atheists believe that science disproves God[18] but have no actual evidence that this is the case.
  • Superior intellect: atheists often believe that atheists are inherently more intelligent than theists

See Also


  1. Robert J. Russell. Cosmology: From Alpha to Omega. Fortress Press. Retrieved on 2011-03-05. “Amazingly, some secularists attribute to t=0 a direct implication. The June 1978 issue of the New York Times contained an article by NASA's Robert Jastrow, an avowed agnostic, entitled "Found God?" Here Jastrow depicts the theologians to be "delighted" that astronomical evidence "leads to a biblical view of Genesis." Though claiming to be agnostic, he argued without reservation for the religious significance of t=0: It is beyond science and leads to some sort of creator.” 
  2. Michael Corey. God and the New Cosmology. Rowman & Littlefield. Retrieved on 2011-03-05. “Indeed, creation ex nihilo is a fundamental tenent of orthodox Christian theology. Incredibly enough, modern theoretical physicists have also speculated that the universe may have been produced through a sudden quantum appearance "out of nothing." Physicist Paul Davies has claimed that the particular physicis involved in the Big Bang necessitates creation ex nihilo.” 
  3. Eric J. Lerner. The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe. Vintage Books. Retrieved on 2011-03-05. “From theologians to physicists to novelists, it is widely believed that the Big Bang theory supports Christian concepts of a creator. In February of 1989, for example, the front-page article of the New York Times Book Review argued that scientists argued that scientists and novelists were returning to God, in large part through the influence of the Big Bang.” 
  4. Neil A. Manson. God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science. Routledge. Retrieved on 2011-03-05. “The Big Bang theory strikes many people as having theological implications, as shown by those who do not welcome those implications.” 
  5. John Jefferson Davis. The Frontiers of Science & Faith. InterVarsity Press. Retrieved on 2011-03-05. “Genesis' concept of a singular, ex nihilo beginning of the universe essentially stands alone among the cosmolgies of the ancient world and exhibts, at this point, convergence with recent big bang cosmological models.” 
  6. S.K. Basu. Encyclopædic Dictionary of Astrophysics. Global Vision Publishing House. Retrieved on 2007–10–18. “While having no argument with Edwin Hubble's discovery that the universe was expanding, Hoyle disagreed on its interpretation. An atheist, he found the idea that the universe had a beginning to be philosophically troubling, as many argue that a beginning implies a cause, and thus a creator (see Kalam cosmological argument).” 
  7. David H. Clark, Matthew D. H. Clark. Measuring the Cosmos: How Scientists Discovered the Dimensions of the Universe. Rutgers University Press. Retrieved on 2007–10–18. “Hoyle wanted a universe without a beginning and without an end, a universe that had always existed and would always exist, a universe that did not have a single epoch of creation and therefore would not need a "creator"–a univserse that was truly eternal. Hence Hoyle, Bondi, and Gold produced their "steady state" hypothesis as an alternative to the big bang. The steady state universe was indeed envisaged as being eternal.” 
  8. Don O'Leary. Roman Catholicism and Modern Science: A History. Continuum International Publishing Group. Retrieved on 2007–10–18. “Several eminent scientists, especially those who were resolutely atheistic, repudiated the Big Bang theory. In 1948, Fred Holyle, Hermann Bondi, and Thomas Gold proposed an alternative explanation. Their steady state theory envisaged that the universe was unchanged in time and was uniform in space. matter was spontaneosly and continuously generated to fill the extra space caused by cosmic expansion. In the 1950s and early 1960s steady state theory offered a robust challenge to the idea of the Big Bang. Its appeal to atheistic cosmologists was that it avoided a creation event–with all its concomitant religious implications.” 
  9. Peter Theodore Landsberg. Seeking Ultimates: An Intuitive Guide to Physics, Second Edition. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved on 2007–10–18. “Some people seem to have felt that there was a struggle between a Christian-Judaic Big Bang and a communist-atheist steady-state model of the universe.” 
  10. Isaĭ Shoulovich Davydov, Joseph Davydov. God Exists: New Light on Science and Creation. Schreiber Publishing, Inc.. Retrieved on 2007–10–18. “It is the "theory" of the steady-state (and not the evolutionary) Universe which depicts the latter as eternal and unchanged and thus tries to refute the Biblical model of the creation of the world.” 
  11. Polly Jones. The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era. Routledge. Retrieved on 2007–10–18. “The theory of the 'Big Bang' was to be desisively repudiated.” 
  12. Helge Kragh. Entropic Creation. Ashgate Publishing. Retrieved on 2007–10–18. “In part because of Engels's opposition to finite space and time, and because of the long tradition of associating these concepts with idealism, clericalism and bourgeois thought, infinite space and time became incorporated in twentieth-century dialectical materialism and in this way obtained status as official doctrines in communist thinking. According to the ideology of the Soviet communism, as it was forumulated in the late 1930s, cosmologial models with heat death, and hence a finite upper time scale, had to be rejected because of their theistic implications.” 
  14. James Thrower, A Short History of Western Atheism, 212.
  16. James Thrower, A Short History of Western Atheism, 14.
  17. James Thrower, A Short History of Western Atheism, 33.
  19. Brooks, Arthur C., Religious Faith and Charitable Giving, Policy Review, Oct-Dec 2003, p.2.