Worldviews are constructed like houses. A foundation must first be laid before any building can take place. Four of the most basic foundation stones of all worldviews are principles dealing with material reality (physics), questions touching on the different types of things that exist (metaphysics), how we attain knowledge (epistemology), and ways in which right and wrong are determined (ethics). Atheists claim that only physical things exist. There is no certainty, in fact, no existence at all, beyond what can be studied under the microscope or through the telescope. Seeing is believing for the materialist.

The materialist-only worldview is a problem for the atheist. If he is consistent with it, he has no way to account for non-physical entities like numbers, knowledge, logic, and morality. Richard P. Feynman, who was a professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology, “considers it more likely that the cosmos developed through random physical processes.” He assumes that “nature is governed by mathematical rules which must be found by the physicist.”[1] Of course, Feynman is not making a scientific claim. There is no way to prove his assertion. His conclusion about the origin of the universe is based on a series of first-principles—presuppositions—which he has adopted without regard to scientific investigation. He is using a metaphysical argument.

Feynman and others who maintain that the material world is all there is—that physics is everything—have a serious worldview problem. They cannot account for entities like the principles of mathematics because mathematics has no physical properties. For example, numbers do not exist in physical form. They can’t be seen or felt. Drawn numbers on a sheet of paper are merely symbols for numerical concepts. Mathematicians can write numeric symbols (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) and formulas (E=MC2), but these aren’t the numbers and formulas themselves. How can the physicist find “mathematical rules” that govern mathematical axioms in a physics-only world? He can explain the nature of the rules, but the rules themselves do not exist in physical form. Even an explanation of the rules has no material content. All materialists know this, yet they have no problem trusting the trustworthiness of mathematics in a physics-only world.

With this background in mind, it’s rather humorous to read that the latest data coming out of NASA that assures us that at its origin point nearly 14 billion years ago “the universe expanded rapidly—growing from the size of a marble to billions of light years across—within the first trillionth of a second after its cataclysmic birth.”[2] The most obvious question is, How do the people at NASA know this? In terms of science, they don’t. It’s a cosmic guess, a form of scientific metaphysics.Talk about a Big Bang makes some atheistic scientists uncomfortable. John Maddox, editor of Nature magazine for 20 years, wrote an editorial with the title “Down with the Big Bang” in which he described the theory as “philosophically unacceptable.”[3] Maddox feared that the Big Bang theory, to use Michael Behe’s take on his views, had “extra scientific implications.”[4] For Maddox, the Big Bang conjures up images of metaphysics that gives credence to creationist theories. Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time wrote, “Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention.”[5]

I receive emails from atheists who want to know how I can believe in an “invisible god.” For consistent atheists, invisible “things” do not exist, and yet they believe the universe was at one time almost invisible—“the size of a marble”—and seems to have no physical limits. What about the stuff of the universe itself? “Normal matter, the stuff of people and planets, is only about 4% of the combined matter and energy in the universe.” What makes up the other 96% of the universe? “Dark matter, invisible and exotic physical particles, and dark energy, a gravity-defying force behind the continuing expansion of the universe, makes up the rest.”[6] Ninety-six percent of the universe is invisible and defies gravity. Given materialist assumptions, how can this be? In the whacky world of atheistic cosmology, it can be no other way.

In addition to not being able to deal with the metaphysical elements of origins, atheists have a problem accounting for the non-material aspects of ethics. Atheism has become a trending worldview option for the Bobos (Bourgeois Bohemians[7]):

In a nutshell, atheists believe in reason alone, in those things that can be arrived at through intellect and the scientific method. Concrete evidence for God, they argue, simply doesn’t exist. They don’t cotton to leaps of faith or anything that involves a supernatural being reaching into human lives. They believe you can live a happy, respectable life based on human ethics that were derived not from God handing down a tablet but from a code of rules that emerged naturally through an evolutionary process in which humans learned how to live together successfully.[8]

What a loaded definition! There is no “happy” in an evolving universe of evolving values. Why should life be respected in a materialist-only cosmos? The new “atheists believe in reason alone.” Where is the “concrete evidence for” the existence of reason? Please, is there a single atheist out there who can show me the physical reality of reason, the laws of logic, love, compassion, and respect? They do not exist in physical form. They are invisible concepts that derive their meaning from the Christian worldview. Why should humans learn how to live together successfully when other animals[9] don’t “live together successfully”? Other animals kill and eat one another!

Endnotes:

[1] Jefferson Hane Weaver, The World of Physics: A Small Library of the Literature of Physics from Antiquity to the Present, 3 vols. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 1:34. [2] Dan Vergano, “Big Bang unfolded in the blink of an eye,” USA Today (March 17, 2006), 2A.
[3] John Maddox, “Down with the Big Bang,” Nature (1989), 425. [4] Michael Behe, testimony in the Dover, Pennsylvania, Intelligent Design case (October 17, 2005): http://www.thomasmore.org/pdfs/Behe_10-17_Morning.pdf
[5] Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, chap. 3: http://www.physics.metu.edu.tr/~fizikt/html/hawking/b.html
[6] Vergano, “Big Bang unfolded in the blink of an eye,” 2A.
[7] David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).
[8] Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje, “Atheists put their faith in ethical behavior,” San Antonio Express-News (March 18, 2006): http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/living/religion/14121950.htm
[9] Evolutionists describe homo sapiens as “bipedal primates” that are a part of the “Kingdom Animalia.”