Religious Implications of Atheism

Therefore, the ancient myth of the Earth on turtles was never considered as a scientific theory, but served as a metaphor that illustrates the state of mind of a rationally thinking man in the street. If the Earth were floating directly in the ocean, a natural question would immediately follow: is there anything further, at the bottom of the ocean and below it? But when there is a long chain of mysterious creatures between the Earth and the ocean, human curiosity is largely satisfied, and the person is no longer interested in whether there is anything at the bottom of the ocean.

Using this metaphor, the ancient authors wanted to show that no matter how deeply scientists advance in the knowledge of nature and space, they would discover more and more “animals” (essences, laws of matter) and further advance along the chain of knowledge. However, no matter how far they go, there will always be an unknowable ocean ahead. This is what the ancient people understood and what modern atheist scientist does not understand.

Physicists are constantly finding more and more “turtles”—more and more new laws, effects, and essences. Of course, the reliability of physical facts is beyond doubt, but the endless sequence of correct explanations itself now plays the role of a zoo from ancient myth. Physicists have learned to split protons, but how long can subatomic particles be split? Is there anything smaller than the Higgs boson? Physicists are constantly discovering new elementary particles, but how elementary are they? Atheists stubbornly refuse to notice the obvious fact that no matter how far science has advanced, there will always be an ocean of the unknown in the distance.

About the same thing was said by one of the giants of science, Sir Isaac Newton. His quote is widely known, in which he uses a metaphor that is close in meaning:

“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” [22]

Since the time of Isaac Newton, our knowledge of the Universe has expanded significantly, but we also stand only on the shores of the “great ocean of truth”. Physicists have always been and will be doing the same thing as Newton: looking for “a smoother pebble or a prettier shell”, while before them there will always be an unexplored great ocean of truth.

The situation in atheistic cosmology resembles not only a metaphor with turtles, but also a trick with getting rabbits out of an “empty” hat. The only difference is that quantum cosmologists imperceptibly take out of their pocket or from under the table not rabbits, but the formulas of quantum mechanics, wave function, scalar field, etc. and put all this into the original “nothing”.

For example, in the theory of the quantum creation of the universe, it is postulated (i. e., it is proposed to believe!) That the universe arose from an unreal quantum field that did not exist in the physical sense, that is, it is a purely mathematical abstraction, called by A. Vilenkin “literal nothing”. [23] Then watch his hands! This mathematical “literal nothing” due to spontaneous fluctuations was able to give rise to a pseudo-real particle, representing the embryo of the future universe. Moreover, it, in turn, with the help of quantum tunneling overcame the barrier separating the abstract mathematical world from physical reality!

Good trick! However, physics cannot arise from mathematics just because some physicists want it, and they skillfully juggle formulas. Materialists go beyond the applicability of scientific theories that describe our world when they try to talk about something “before” the world came into being. The trick does not cease to be a trick from the fact that “serious people” with high ranks and regalia and with an intelligent look perform it. “A smart face is not yet a sign of intelligence, all stupidity on Earth is done with just such an expression.” [24] In any case, all this rhetoric does not remove the main question: how did the laws of physics arise and why are they exactly like that?

Maybe there will be a boy who will say, “But the king is naked!” It is only in fairy tales that you can lift yourself into the air by your hair or by your laces. Ontologically, physics (that is, the totality of the laws of matter) cannot create itself. Albert Einstein once remarked that it is impossible to solve a problem by thinking the same way as those who formulated it. To solve the problem of the emergence of the material universe, it is necessary to go beyond the “level of physics”; after all, not without reason, the outstanding thinkers of humankind spoke about metaphysics and philosophy.

Could physics give the initial impulse for the emergence of the universe, if it did not exist at first? The question is rhetorical. What comes first, physics or metaphysics, matter or spirit? There must be a final limit, beyond which there is no longer physics. This limit is non-being (Lat. nihilo, Gr. οὐκ ὄν). This is absolute non-being (non-existence, nothingness), a denial of any existence (any of its forms), and a denial of any being. It lacks any essence, potency, inner laws and anything else. In non-being, there are not only the laws of physics, but also even the laws of abstract mathematics.

A great many scientific books and articles on the emergence of the universe from “nothing” have been written. Although the approaches and methods in these scientific works may differ, they are all based on one glaring logical error and can only fascinate science fanatics. The error lies in the fact that the authors speak the language of physics and mathematics about the moment of the origin of the universe, about the initial singularity, ie in the language of the material world, which did not yet exist at that moment. The universe arose not from a physical or mathematical vacuum, but from non-being (nothingness), in which there was no physics, no mathematics. Obviously, when there was no “physics” (ie the material world), there were no laws of physics either. Therefore, no scientific formulas and equations make sense in the original singularity.

It remains to recognize that the act of creating out of nothing requires a person, a creator, who is transcendental in relation to his creation. Moreover, this is not just a philosophical conclusion, but also a fundamental ontological Law, similar to the First and Second Laws of thermodynamics. Just like the Laws of thermodynamics, this Law is not proved, but enunciated inductively.

The centuries-old experience of humankind, no exception from which has ever been found, says that only a creator, a person, can create something out of non-being. A genius poem or musical symphony is not created by physical or chemical processes in the human brain, but is the fruit of his creative act. No tomography and electron microscopes will help you find out how a piece of music is born in the head of a brilliant composer. It cannot be described in the language of physics and mathematics. Nevertheless, it is given to us to feel it through experience.

No physicists will ever answer where the laws of physics come from, which cause the universe from nothing. An honest scientist can only say that the mystery that caused and created everything will always be an insoluble mystery for materialistic science.

Thus, it would be reasonable and logical to admit that only a metaphysical Cause could give the initial impulse to the universe. Only the Reasonable Creator, possessing free will, not bound by any laws of necessity, causality or anything else, and therefore “calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom. 4:17), could call the universe from non-being into being. He did not need a beginning, since he is Being itself (Gr. ὀ ὄν) and generally transcendental to the material world. However, that is another big topic.

Three Options to Explain the Origin of the Universe

All versions of explanations of the origin of the universe in the entire history of human thought are reduced to three main ones: 1) the universe, or some “part” of it, existed forever, that is, it had no beginning; 2) the universe is “an emanation from the divine nature”, that is, it receives its origin from the essence of the beginningless non-material primary cause; 3) The universe was created by the will of the transcendental First Cause out of non-being (nothingness).

The first concept is characteristic of many pagan religions, Platonism and Atheism. It does not matter in principle whether the universe has existed forever in its modern form, or whether it was formed from some preceding “pra-matter”. In ancient Greek cosmogonies, the formless primary matter was ordered by the Demiurge according to the model of eternal ideas. Atheists, at first for a hundred and fifty years, self-confidently asserted that the universe (matter) is eternal. However, modern cosmologists have already proved several decades ago that the universe had a beginning. Now atheists reluctantly admit this fact, but at the same time claim that the universe arose “with the help of physics.” However, physics is an attribute of matter. Thus, one way or another, atheists talk about the eternal beginningless existence of some “physics”, or, what is the same, some “pra-matter”.

The second concept was adopted by the Gnostics, Neo-Platonists and their followers. They taught that the various cosmic “eons” originate in the divine being itself. However, if God created something out of his essence, this would not mean that he actually creates.

The third concept is affirmed by the Abrahamic religions. They teach about the creation of the universe by God from nothing, that is, from non-being. The Second Book of Maccabees directly states this: “Look upon the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, and consider that God made them of things that were not [Lat. ex nihilo, Gr. οὐκ ἐξ ὄντων]” (2 Macc. 7:28, LXX, cf. KJV). Here, the “things that were not” (Lat. nihilo, Gr. οὐκ ὄν) has a completely clear and definite meaning: it is non-being (non-existence, nothingness), the denial of any existence (any of its forms), the denial of being, that is, non-being. In non-existence, there is no essence, potency, law, or concept; moreover, there is no “physics” in it. Therefore, non-being cannot be an object of physics study, like a vacuum or “nothing” specially invented by atheists.

Moses, when describing God’s creation of the world, uses the verb “bará” (Heb. בָּרָא Strong’s lexicon number 1254, Gen. 1:1) to designate the creation of something fundamentally new, which cannot be deduced from the previous, from the pre-existing. He lived around the fifteenth–thirteenth century BC. Thus, the idea of the creation of the universe from non-being preceded Greek philosophy, and could not be borrowed from any other religion.

In Christianity, the creation of the world from non-being (nothingness), except for the text of the Bible, is expressed with all clarity in liturgical texts [25] and in theological treatises. [26] Time began with the universe (Gen. 1:1; Ps. 146:6; John 1:3; Col. 1:16–17; 1 Cor. 8:6; Rom. 11:36). This is important to emphasize. Time was created in the act of creating the universe, and did not exist forever. In the fourth century, St. Basil the Great wrote, “Not in time, it is said: in the beginning he created.” [27] Since God does not create the universe from himself, but calls it out of non-being (cf. Rom. 4:17), Christianity denies all types of deification of the world (the nature).

The first concept contains ontological conditioning, determinism: the universe was supposed to appear. In the third, biblical concept, the universe is ontologically unnecessary. Its cause lies only in the free will of the transcendent Creator. Fr. George Florovsky about this remarkably wrote:

“God is completely self-sufficient. Rather, it is a miracle that God began to create. There is no necessary or compelling connection between the divine nature (or essence) and the law of creation. The absence of creation in no way diminishes the absolute completeness of the Divine Essence, the vastness of this Ocean of Essence, as St. Grigory Nazianzin [28] “God had no beginning, and he will have no end. He dwells in the “motionless radiance of eternity”. [29] And his infinite present is not time but eternity. [30] God is completely unchanging and immovable, —“with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” [31] (James 1:17). He cannot gain or lose anything. Moreover, we can say that the created world is an absolute excess, something additional, which could not exist at all.

The omnipotence of God must be defined not only as the supreme power to create, but also as absolute power not to create at all. God could have allowed nothing to exist outside of him. To create and not to create the same good for God and it is useless to find the underlying cause of the reason for the Divine choice, for the act of creation was not even conditioned by the mercy of God and his infinite perfection. The “Creative Essence” is not the main and not the determining quality of God: God creates in unlimited freedom . . .

For the human consciousness, there is something mysterious, paradoxical and contradictory in this. The created mind is always looking for the necessary reasons, inevitably closing in on itself. To the idea of creation is absolutely alien such an approach. The world undoubtedly has a Cause that is supreme and sufficient. Nevertheless, this is a Cause given in absolute freedom of expression and manifestation. The creation cannot exist without the Creator. However, the Creator may not create.” [32]

Krauss: The question is Islam, as one of a thousand religions, all of which makes the same claims, but mutually inconsistent ones . . .

Comment 11

How can identical statements contradict each other? Krauss argues mutually exclusive things. This is completely incomprehensible, and he should have given at least one example. Although, this is hardly possible.

Krauss: Thousand religions, they all make mutually inconsistent claims. So, they cannot all be correct. In fact, at best, one of them can be correct. They not consist with each other. So that means “a priori” [33], [referring to Tzortzis] I know you like that term . . . A priori, Islam is probably 0.1 percent have been correct. Because this is just one of a thousand religions. But since they all make the same claims, is probable that none of them are correct. So treating Islam specially is inappropriate.

Comment 12

Here are examples of demagoguery and sophistry in almost every sentence. This is how they usually “prove” that white is black and vice versa. People have created as many scientific theories as religions. Should we conclude from this that among the many scientific theories there is not a single true one?

Krauss does not mind, for example, that quantum mechanics and the theory of gravity contradict each other, since gravity is not quantized. But physicists use both. Why is each of the thousands of religions equally likely to be true? Krauss did not confirm or substantiate this thesis. Moreover, if cosmologists come up with a thousand theories of the origin of the universe, will they all have the same probability (0.1 percent) to be true? And why make any judgments about the truth a priori? On the contrary, everything must be tested, checked. Christianity teaches this too, “Test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21).

[00:36:00] Krauss: Then Atheism as somehow have been described speaker as a belief system. It is not a belief system like Islam, or Judaism, or Christianity, or the North’s myths, or Zeus, or Thor or any other myths have been create in human history. It is not a belief system. We do not choose to believe that stuff, because it is not sensible.

Comment 13

From this point of view, there is nothing new and unique about atheism. Even the apostle Paul urged not to believe in myths, because it is not sensible. For example, he advised the apostle Titus strictly denounce the inhabitants of Crete, “so that they may become sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths [Gr. μῦθος] or to commandments of those who reject the truth” (Titus 1:13–14). He also encourages the apostle Timothy to fight myths: “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths [Gr. μῦθος]” (2 Tim. 4:3–4).

Krauss: So, it is not saying, “We belief that.” An atheist can say, “This myth is unconsent with this myth, or this myth is unconsent what we know about the universe. And therefore, it is unlikely it be true.” So, the atheism is just saying, “This is unlikely to be true.” It is not a belief system . . .

Comment 14

It is obvious (and there are many examples of this) that both among atheists and among adherents of any religion, there are both genius scientists and people who are completely ignorant and even stupid. Faith or disbelief does not depend on knowledge or intellect, but on the state of the soul. Atheists are reluctant to admit this obvious fact.

Krauss and other atheists try to make things seem like they alone have a “monopoly” on reason and common sense. They argue that people have been mistaken for thousands of years in absolutely everything, and only atheists (who have appeared quite recently by historical standards) act reasonably. However, this is not true. For example, the theory of the multiverse has no more scientific evidence than the existence of Zeus or Thor. Then why is it better than any other long-standing invention of humankind?

In fact, there are a lot of myths in politics, science, and culture. Myths are everywhere. Of course, it is good when a person “turns on the brain” and thinks reasonably. The trouble happens when at the same time everything else that is characteristic of a person is turned off.

All over the world, religious people were looking for wisdom and engaged in science long before atheists. Indian, Arabic, and ancient Greek mathematicians made great contributions to mathematics thirty five thousand years ago, when there were no atheists. Yes, their religious views were sometimes wrong. However, the scientific views of the same time were also erroneous. Many scientific theories have over time been refuted, and they could be called “fictions” and “myths”.

The thesis that atheism is not a belief system is also wrong. In the USSR and other communist countries, atheism was a belief system. A lot of literature has been written on this topic. On the other hand, it is absolutely wrong to identify all religions only with a belief system. This is oversimplification. It is like looking at the world through a small hole covered by a thick light filter. Only a small part of the complete picture will be visible, and only in one color.

Sharpie looks at the world through the prism of probability theory. However, not all people are like that, and the theory of probability is not applicable everywhere. Let us say that Krauss meets a young man with a burning gaze, and he will happily tell that he has fallen in love with a girl. “She is beautiful, the one and only,” the young man will say. Suppose, Krauss will reply, “Your statement is ridiculous. There are hundreds of millions of girls in the world with exactly the same shapes, with exactly the same physiology. There is nothing special about it. Moreover, hormones, brain substances, and social patterns trigger your emotions. Therefore, the likelihood that your statement is true is low.” Will Krauss leave unbeaten after that? Great question!

Krauss’s picture of the world is dull and uncheerful. This is the picture of formulas and equations. This is a world without love, without spiritual achievement, without spiritual enlightenment. Everything in it is subject to the theory of probability, the impersonal laws of physics and chemistry. It has no purpose, no meaning.

Krauss’s theses testify to his complete lack of understanding of the essence of the issue. Religions are, first of all, spiritual states that defy description and cannot be expressed in words. Moreover, no science can say anything about them. Even religious scholars who study any religion from its texts, but have not experienced its spiritual experience, cannot adequately describe it. They are like people studying musical notation, but not knowing how they sound.

Christian ascetics and Islamic Sufis said that their goal was the comprehension of the Truth. In addition, this goal can be achieved not through reason, logic, and reasoning, but only with the help of love, conscience, and purity of heart. [34] In a state of spiritual imperfection, in an abnormal state, people are not able to see things as they really are. An imperfect person, due to his imperfection, without even realizing it, perceives the truth as distorted, and not as it really is.

Yet, Krauss never said, in what way is Islam or Christianity or Judaism contrary to what we know about the universe? He did not say because they did not contradict anything. So all Krauss’s accusations are unfounded.

On the other hand, Krauss’s argument can be rephrased in relation to atheism. Atheism is not unique. Everything has been said thousands of years ago. Even the ancient sophists wrote down all possible lines of thought, long before Krauss. Moreover, atheism can also be called one of a thousand religions. After all, religious people have always looked for common sense and engaged in science. Moreover, the penchant for myths is a feature of culture and psychology. There have been and are myths in science too.

[00:36:51] Krauss: The first part of the false promise is that Islam is special. Not special at all . . . It is just like all the rest.

Comment 15

Krauss did not study Islam, and he cannot say how Islam is similar to other religions. Therefore, all of his statements about the similarity of religions are groundless and fundamentally wrong. Although in Islam there are some borrowings from Christianity, Neo-Platonism, and Buddhism, the presence of some borrowings from three religions does not at all mean similarity with all. If we talk about Christianity, then everything in it is connected with the Incarnation from beginning to end (Matt. 16:15–18). This is the meaning of the creation of the world, and the meaning of human life. There is nothing like this in any religion.

[00:37:00] Krauss: And atheism is not a religion. It is just, in fact, it could be described as “common sense”. Ok? What make sense? I will think that those things that make sense are likely, and others things that do not make sense are unlikely prefer to assume that rationally understood events are probable, while are unlikely. In fact, science is all about. Okay . . .

I am an educator (may be it is flaw, but it is that it is). That means I believe in actually trying illuminate ideas and lead to discussion, critical thinking, and eventually learning things and increase in knowledge. Debates are not made for that. Debates are rhetorical devises . . .

[00:38:20] Krauss: So, the first thing I want to say, however, I want to clear some misconceptions. This idea of deductive arguments, which sounds good, is not the way we learn about reality. Okay. Deductive argument is just do not work. It leads to irrational actions. In fact, if we discuss “what common sense is?” The common sense is taking your beliefs to conform of the evidence of reality so you make rational actions.

Comment 16

Socrates and Plato would say the same thing about religion that it’s just common sense, and aligning your beliefs with reality data to perform rational actions. By the way, in the Byzantine era they were portrayed in the vestibules of churches and were called “Christians before Christ”, since long before Christianity they presented some Christian theses. Note that no angel from heaven said anything to Socrates and Plato. They made their conclusions solely based on logical reasoning and common sense.

In the Bible, the word “wisdom” occurs over two hundred times. For example, King Solomon wrote, “Get wisdom; get insight: do not forget, nor turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will keep you; love her, and she will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever else you get, get insight. Prize her highly, and she will exalt you; she will honor you if you embrace her” (Prov. 4:5–8). Moreover, in the book of Ecclesiastes it is written, “Applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with” (Eccl. 1:13).