According to atheists, the advance of science and the spread of knowledge have now shown man the truth of things that he had not hitherto understood, because of which he had wrongly attributed them to some ‘imaginary’ supernatural force. Events and phenomena in his surroundings that man lacked proper knowledge of were declared to be a miracle of that supernatural force, but now science has shown them to be the result of entirely natural forces. Earlier, there were certain links in certain events which man did not know, because of which he could not understand why these events were occurring, and so he attributed them to some God. But now because we have full knowledge of all the links in these events, we have full knowledge of the events and why and how they happen—entirely because of natural causes and having nothing to do with a God.
For example, earlier, man did not know the truth about the phenomena of the rising and the setting of the sun. That is why, atheists might argue, man came to believe that there is some God who takes the sun out and makes it rise and also causes it to set—and in this way, the notion of a supernatural force was born. But now when we know that the rising and the setting of the sun happens because of an entirely natural cause—the rotation of Earth around its axis—there is no need to believe in God in order to explain this phenomenon. In the same way, atheists would contend, all those other phenomena regarding which it was earlier thought that some supernatural force was at work behind them have, in the wake of modern scientific findings, come to be known to be the result of the actions and reactions of entirely natural forces, forces that are known to us. Thus, atheists might argue, after coming to know the natural causes of events and phenomena, there is no need at all to account for them by assuming the existence of a God or some other such supernatural force.
This argument can be expressed as follows:
If a rainbow is caused by the refraction of the sun’s rays as they fall on raindrops, it is totally wrong to say that they are a sign of God in the sky.
Atheists might remark:
If events are due to natural causes, they are not due to supernatural causes.
Atheists would say that from the study of the universe, it has come to be known that here whatever events are happening in accordance with determined laws of Nature. Hence, in order to explain them, there is no need to posit the existence of any unknown God, because there are known natural laws that explain these events.
The best answer to this argument are these words of a certain scholar: “Nature is a fact, not an explanation.” Nature or ‘The Laws of Nature’ cannot in themselves be the final explanation of such phenomena, because the question arises: “Who or what made Nature and the Laws of Nature?”
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The atheists’ naturalistic argument can be responded to by asking, “What or Who caused the laws of Nature to come into existence?” It is true that man has discovered various laws of Nature. But ‘the laws of Nature’ are not the answer to the question in response to which religion has come into being. Religion informs us about the Ultimate Cause that is working behind the universe and that also brought the laws of Nature into being, whereas the discovery of the laws of Nature is only related to the external structure of the universe. ‘The ‘Laws of Nature’ are only a secondary cause of the various phenomena that they are used to describe, the primary or Ultimate Cause being that Being or Force that caused the laws of Nature to come into being and to be just the way they are. And this primary or Ultimate Cause is, in the language of religion, called ‘God’. Whatever modern science tells us are only further details of various phenomena found in the universe and not the actual or final explanation of these phenomena.
Invoking the ‘laws of Nature’ may explain the secondary cause of occurrences, but the primary or Ultimate cause is other than this, for a secondary cause is itself caused by another cause—a primary cause—and so it cannot be the ultimate cause of a phenomenon.
Take a example to understand this issue better: Atheists might admit that the process of the digestion of food and, after that, the food becoming part of the body is truly remarkable. But they would probably contend that people who believe that all this happens because it has been so arranged for by God are in error, claiming that modern observation indicates that it is simply the result of chemical reactions in the body. But will the existence of God be negated because of this? After all, what is that power that made the chemical components in the human work in such a way as to enable food to be digested and to become part of the body?
After food enters the body, it passes through different stages, in line with an amazing automatic arrangement. Witnessing this, it would be utterly absurd to claim that this arrangement came into existence on its own or by mere chance, as atheists might argue. The fact is that this phenomenon actually makes it even more necessary for us to accept that it is God who is the ultimate cause of it, and that here, He works through laws of Nature which He has established in the world.
In other words, Nature and the laws of Nature do not explain the creation and the functioning of the universe. Rather, they require an explanation for themselves—and that explanation is God. Undoubtedly, science has told us a great many new things. But even if these sorts of discoveries were to increase millions and billions times, the need for religion would still remain. This is because these discoveries only tell us about how these events take place. They do not tell us why these events are happening and what their ultimate cause is. All of these discoveries are only intermediate or secondary explanations, while authentic religion gives us the ultimate and total explanation of things, centred on the existence of the Creator.
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