ATHEISM IS HARDER TO PROVE THAN RELIGION

GARY James lives in a glass house and should not throw stones.

Although many things afflict the three Abrahamic religions like misogyny, pagan customs and literalism, atheism is in a bigger mess. It cannot provide succour to lost souls, neither is it a viable competitor to Islam and Christianity. And there are epistemic and epistemological problems.

A scientific theory like spontaneous evolution will have traction only if it is reproducible in a lab. After many experiments to kick-start life, there is nothing. How can one create a factory (the cell) that has a power station, a conveyor belt producing 2 000-odd proteins, a three-dimensional computer code (gene) and a communication system by mixing chemicals and an electrical spark?

He will say this is the god of the gaps. There is no gap, just an irrational theory. Concerning knowledge, the epistemic prognosis is that what we see are not gaps, but hills. As soon as we have climbed one, we see another and another…

We cannot use sense perception to see into the metaphysical world. Neither is there certainty in the knowledge we have. To make claims of the existence or non-existence of a god and heaven are exercises in futility. That is how God wanted it to be – a test shrouded in mystery.

There are epistemic holes in the science of spontaneous evolution; the elephant in the room is larger – theistic evolution can’t be ruled out because of its metaphysical nature. Athlone