Posted on 09/23/2026 11:28:04 AM PDT by Heartlander
Twenty years ago, Richard Dawkins published his international best-seller The God Delusion, thus establishing “New Atheism” as a major cultural force. Over the ensuing decade, other authors — such as Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss and Daniel Dennett — seized the popular imagination with their respective arguments about why belief in the divine is untenable.
The physicists among them argued that the universe could be explained “from nothing”. The biologists argued that Darwinian explanations of “apparent design” in living organisms make appeals to an actual designing intelligence unnecessary. Thus, Dawkins concluded: “God almost certainly does not exist.”
But now, two decades on, the influence of the New Atheists has waned. Former adherents, most notably Ayaan Hirsi Ali, have repudiated atheism entirely and embraced the Christian faith. Others, such as Alex O’Connor, the hugely popular atheist YouTuber, and Steven Bartlett, the businessman turned podcaster, have moderated their outlooks too. Ironically, even Dawkins admitted in 2024 he feels “at home” in the Christian “ethos” — though he still firmly rejects the existence of God.
As many atheist philosophers (such as the eminent John Gray) have noted, the New Atheists’ philosophical arguments were never very good. Moreover, their arguments seemed strangely anachronistic following many of the great scientific discoveries of the 20th century.
Consider first modern cosmology. Cosmologists have discovered that the universe, contrary to the expectations of those who long portrayed it as eternal, probably had a beginning. Multiple lines of evidence from observational astronomy support this conclusion. Developments in theoretical physics (such as the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem, which states that any universe that is expanding – as ours is – cannot be infinite in the...
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I get so tired of this debate when the only honest answer is, “We don’t really know.”
—
Don’t really know what?
How do you suppose it happened?
Any number of Biblical v. "scientific" propositions, whether how the universe began or abiogenesis. One can believe anything one wishes, but that doesn't make it reproducibly self-evident.
Gould actually said, correctly, science, including evolutionary science, cannot disprove God’s existence.
Dawkins, a true believer, not a scientist, hated Gould being intellectually honest about it.
New Atheists made it in to its own alternate religion, with proselytizing and attempts to convert rather than just not believing in God.
In those old Crevo “debates” the pro-evolution guys were the epitome of Dunning-Kruger.
Two relevant Bible verses.
Psalm 19:1: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”
Romans 1:20: God’s invisible qualities and eternal power have been clearly seen in what has been made since the creation of the world.
God is supernatural and science only studies nature, science cannot answer questions about God existing or not.
Still don’t follow you.
“ Any number of Biblical v. “scientific” propositions, whether how the universe began or abiogenesis.”
This is very broad and vague.
Is abiogenesis even a scientific idea, for example.
Does the concept of abiogenesis prove, or is it consistent with, God or supernatural things, or is it considered evidence against God or the supernatural?
You asked a non-specific question, because you were fishing.
You got a non-specific answer, because I didn’t bite.
“I get so tired of this debate when the only honest answer is, “We don’t really know.” “
I agree, the rational position to take in this matter is to be agnostic, with a strong leaning toward there being a creator, whose nature and motives are quite unknown to us... as yet.
The idea that trillions of inert atoms would organize themselves on their own by chance into something like ourselves, who lives, reproduces, thinks, builds complex things, ponders its own existence... is about as ridiculous a thing as anyone can imagine.
Bookmark.
Bite at what?
You sound defensive or even paranoid for no reason.
Bkmk
That's fair. The workings of a single cell are so complicated that any "life" would randomly expend the energy to succeed at reproduction without a trace of the trillions of failed experiments is simply irrational, especially when we can't "create" a single one under the most idealized circumstances. Even if we could, how would anyone prove that those conditions correspond to how it actually once happened? It's just as foolish to claim one "knows" how it all happened because of an arguably irrational translation of the original Hebrew. I've done that translation work, and can't wrap my head around how so many got where we are to the point of committing enormous resources to either confirm or refute that shaky translation. It's unbelievable. So is "evolution" or "intelligent design" as commonly proffered.
To me it's better to admit that we don't really know, especially when an honest effort to translate said Hebrew can yield enormously useful ideas that DO correspond to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of which "evolution" as an idea stands in stark denial.
Believing is seeing.
Hebrews 11:3 NKJV
By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
Romans 1:20 NKJV
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
“I suppose it is ironic in a way that the scientific method almost can’t be used to prove itself wrong, because proving something false is usually the criteria of proof itself.”
And because the scientific method itself can’t be falsified, it falls into the realm of philosophy of science rather than science itself. But I think Popper’s point is more that a theory must be able to be falsified. Surviving attempts to falsify it corroborates the theory but never proves it. But perhaps that’s what you meant but didn’t say quite precisely.
The scientific method cannot fully justify itself empirically. Using past success to trust induction is circular, which is Hume’s problem of induction. Popper tried to navigate around Hume by arguing that science does not need induction at all. But I think that leaves the scientific normalcy bias in our intellectual shopping cart unpaid for.
Evolution cannot be falsified, thus it doesn't meet the scientific method's requirements to be a theory. As a result, evolution becomes merely another religious belief--unable to be proven or even have an experiment performed to try to disprove it.
Thus, when atheists and theists argue over it, it usually devolves into an ad hominem fight, with no real outcome.
As Psalms tells us, "thinking themselves wise, they become fools." That is why I no longer take part in these debates--because the evolutionists cannot see themselves as just another cultic religion.
You speak wisdom.
Other than “Bara” being, I believe, past tense masculine singular conjoined with “Elohim” for Gods in Genesis as the subject one could say the grammar is irrational, but where else in the first three chapters of Braysheet are you suggesting is a “shaky translation” leading to a different interpretative construction??
Study your lexicon a little deeper, especially the “where used” attribute. The only places “bara” implies ex-nihilo creation are in Genesis 1. In every other Semitic language of that time it is a word of carving or shaping a pre-existing workpiece by removal of undesired material. And that’s just one problem with it. The word preceding it, b’reshith lacks a definite article. The third word, elohim, is indeed a plural.
What I’ve done is reconstruct ALL of antediluvian Genesis according to the tightest grammatical constructs I could apply and then look at it from a pastoralist’s perspective inferred from 30 years of immensely detailed hands on land management. I’m not going into details here, but I can say that this new way of looking at things makes a lot of sense where the existing exegesis is a huge stretch, particularly in Genesis 4 with so many plural verbs and collective nouns. You’ll have to wait for that book.
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