There are significant turning points in the history of mankind. We are
now living in one of them. Some call it globalization and some say that
this is the genesis of the “information age.” These are true, but there
is yet a more important concept than these. Although some are unaware
of it, great advances have been made in science and philosophy in the
last 20-25 years. Atheism, which has held sway over the world of science
and philosophy since the 19th century is now
collapsing in an inevitable way.
Of course, atheism, the idea of rejecting God’s existence, has always
existed from ancient times. But the rise of this idea actually began in
the 18th century in Europe with the spread and
political effect of the philosophy of some anti-religious thinkers. Materialists
such as Diderot and Baron d'Holbach proposed that the universe was a conglomeration
of matter that had existed forever and that nothing else existed besides
matter. In the 19th century, atheism spread even
farther. Thinkers such as Marx, Engels, Nietsche, Durkheim or Freud applied
atheist thinking to different fields of science and philosophy.
The greatest support for atheism came from Charles Darwin who rejected
the idea of creation and proposed the theory of evolution to counter it.
Darwinism gave a supposedly scientific answer to the question that had
baffled atheists for centuries: "How did human beings and living things
come to be?" This theory convinced a great many people of its claim that
there was a mechanism in nature that animated lifeless matter and produced
millions of different living species from it.
Towards the end of the 19th century, atheists
formulated a world view that they thought explained everything; they denied
that the universe was created saying that it had no beginning but had
existed forever. They claimed that the universe had no purpose but that
its order and balance were the result of chance; they believed that the
question of how human beings and other living things came into being was
answered by Darwinism. They believed that Marx or Durkheim had explained
history and sociology, and that Freud had explained psychology on the
basis of atheist assumptions.
However, these views were later invalidated in the 20th
century by scientific, political and social developments. Many and various
discoveries in the fields of astronomy, biology, psychology and social
sciences have nullified the bases of all atheist suppositions.
In his book, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason
in a Postsecular World, the American scholar Patrick Glynn from the
George Washington University writes:
The past two decades of research have overturned
nearly all the important assumptions and predictions of an earlier generation
of modern secular and atheist thinkers relating to the issue of God.
Modern thinkers assumed that science would reveal the universe to be
ever more random and mechanical; instead it has discovered unexpected
new layers of intricate order that bespeak an almost unimaginably vast
master design. Modern psychologists predicted that religion would be
exposed as a neurosis and outgrown; instead, religious commitment has
been shown empirically to be a vital component of basic mental health…
Few people seem to realize this, but by now it should be clear: Over
the course of a century in the great debate between science and faith,
the tables have completely turned. In the wake of Darwin, atheists and
agnostics like Huxley and Russell could point to what appeared to be
a solid body of testable theory purportedly showing life to be accidental
and the universe radically contingent. Many scientists and intellectuals
continue to cleave to this worldview. But they are increasingly pressed
to almost absurd lengths to defend it. Today the concrete data point
strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis.1
Science, which has been presented as the pillar of atheist/materialist
philosophy, turns out to be the opposite. As another writer puts it, "The
strict materialism that excludes all purpose, choice and spirituality
from the world simply cannot account for the data pour in from labs and
observatories."2
In this article, we will briefly analyze the conclusions arrived at
by different branches of science on this issue and examine what the forthcoming
“post-atheist” period will bring to humanity.
Cosmology: The Collapse of the Concept of
An Eternal Universe
And the Discovery of Creation
The first blow to atheism from science in the 20th
century was in the field of cosmology. The idea that the universe had
existed forever was discounted and it was discovered that it had a beginning;
in other words, it was scientifically proved that it was created from
nothing.
This idea of an eternal universe came to the Western world along with
materialist philosophy. This philosophy, developed in ancient Greece,
stated that nothing else exists besides matter and that the universe comes
from eternity and goes to eternity. In the Middle Ages when the Church
dominated Western thought, materialism was forgotten. However in the modern
period, Western scientists and philosophers became consumed by a curiosity
about these ancient Greek origins and revived an interest in materialism.

Immanuel Kant: Proposed the idea of a universe without a beginning
or an end. He was terribly wrong. |
The first person in the modern age to propose a materialist understanding
of the universe was the renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant—even
though he has not a materialist in the philosophical sense of the word.
Kant proposed that the universe was eternal and that every possibility
could be realized only within this eternity. With the coming of the 19th
century, it became widely accepted that the universe had no beginning,
and that there was no moment of creation. Then, this idea, adopted passionately
by dialectical materialists such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, came
into the 20th century.
This idea has always been compatible with atheism. This is because to
accept that the universe had a beginning would mean that God created it
and the only way to counter this idea was to claim that the universe was
eternal, even though this claim had no basis on science. A dogged proponent
of this claim was Georges Politzer who became widely known as a supporter
of materialism and Marxism in the first half of the 20th
century through his book Principes Fondamentaux de Philosophie
(The Fundamental Principles of Philosophy). Assuming the validity of the
model of an eternal universe, Politzer opposed the idea of a creation:
The universe was not a created object, if it were,
then it would have to be created instantaneously by God and brought
into existence from nothing. To admit creation, one has to admit, in
the first place, the existence of a moment when the universe did not
exist, and that something came out of nothingness. This is something
to which science can not accede.3
By supporting the idea of an eternal universe against that of creation,
Politzer thought that science was on his side. However, very soon, the
fact that Politzer alluded to by his words, “if it is so, we must accept
the existence of a creator”, that is, that the universe had a beginning,
was proven.
This proof came as a result of the “Big Bang” theory, perhaps
the most important concept of 20th century astronomy.
The Big Bang theory was formulated after a series of discoveries. In
1929, the American astronomer, Edwin Hubble, noticed that the galaxies
of the universe were continually moving away from one another and that
the universe was expanding. If the flow of time in an expanding universe
were reversed, then it emerged that the whole universe must have come
from a single point. Astronomers assessing the validity of Hubble’s discovery
were faced with the fact that this single point was a “metaphysical” state
of reality in which there was an infinite gravitational attraction with
no mass. Matter and time came into being by the explosion of this mass-less
point. In other words, the universe was created from nothing.

John Maddox: His prophecy about the Big Bang utterly failed. |
On the one hand, those astronomers who are determined
to cling to materialist philosophy with its basic idea of an eternal universe,
have attempted to hold out against the Big Bang theory and maintain the
idea of an eternal universe. The reason for this effort can be seen in
the words of Arthur Eddington, a renowned materialist physicist, who said,
"Philosophically, the notion of an abrupt beginning to the present
order of Nature is repugnant to me".4 But despite
the fact that the Big Bang theory is repugnant to materialists, this theory
has continued to be corroborated by concrete scientific discoveries. In
their observations made in the 1960’s, two scientists, Arno Penzias and
Robert Wilson, detected the radioactive remains of the explosion (cosmic
background radiation). These observations were verified in the 1990’s
by the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite.
In the face of all these facts, atheists have been squeezed into a corner.
Anthony Flew, an atheist professor of philosophy at the University of
Reading and the author of Atheistic Humanism, makes this interesting
confession:
Notoriously, confession is good for the soul. I will
therefore begin by confessing that the Stratonician atheist has to
be embarrassed by the contemporary cosmological consensus. For it
seems that the cosmologists are providing a scientific proof of what
St. Thomas contended could not be proved philosophically; namely, that
the universe had a beginning. So long as the universe can be comfortably
thought of as being not only without end but also without beginning,
it remains easy to urge that its brute existence, and whatever are found
to be its most fundamental features, should be accepted as the explanatory
ultimates. Although I believe that it remains still correct, it certainly
is neither easy nor comfortable to maintain this position in the face
of the Big Bang story 5
An example of the atheist reaction to the Big Bang theory can be seen
in an article written in 1989 by John Maddox, editor of Nature,
one of the best-known materialist-scientific journals.
In that article, called “Down With the Big Bang,” Maddox
wrote that the Big Bang is “philosophically unacceptable,” because “creationists
and those of similar persuasions… have ample justification in the doctrine
of the Big Bang.” He also predicted that the Big Bang “is unlikely to
survive the decade ahead.” 6 However, despite Maddox’
hopes, Big Bang has gained credence and many discoveries have been made
that prove the creation of the universe.
Some materialists have a relatively logical view of this matter. For
example, the English materialist physicist, H.P. Lipson, unwillingly accepts
the scientific fact of creation. He writes:
I think …that we must…admit that the only acceptable
explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists,
as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject that we do not like if
the experimental evidence supports it. 7
Thus, the fact arrived at finally by modern astronomy is this: time and
matter were brought into being by an eternally powerful Creator independent
of both of them. The eternal power that created the universe in which
we live is God who is the possessor of infinite might, knowledge and wisdom.
Physics and Astronomy: The Collapse of the
Idea of a Random Universe and
The Discovery of the Anthropic Principle
A second atheist dogma rendered invalid in the 20th century by discoveries
in astronomy is the idea of a random universe. The view that the matter
in the universe, the heavenly bodies and the laws that determine the relationships
among them has no purpose but is the result of chance, has been dramatically
discounted.
For the first time since the 1970’s, scientists have begun to recognize
the fact that the whole physical balance of the universe is adjusted delicately
in favor of human life. With the advance of research, it has been discovered
that the physical, chemical and biological laws of the universe, basic
forces such as gravity and electro-magnetism, the structure of atoms and
elements are all ordered exactly as they have to be for human life. Western
scientists have called this extraordinary design the “anthropic principle”.
That is, every aspect of the universe is designed with a view to human
life.
We may summarize the basics of the anthropic principle as follows:
The
speed of the first expansion of the universe (the force of the Big Bang
explosion) was exactly the velocity that it had to be. According to
scientists’ calculations, if the expansion rate had differed from its
actual value by more than one part in a billion billion, then the universe
would either have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size
or else have splattered in every direction in a way never to unite again.
To put it another way, even at the first moment of the universe’s existence
there was a fine calculation of the accuracy of a billion billionth.
The
four physical forces in the universe (gravitational force, weak nuclear
force, strong nuclear force, and electromagnetic force) are all at the
necessary levels for an ordered universe to emerge and for life to exist.
Even the tiniest variations in these forces (for example, one in 1039,
or one in 1028; that is—crudely calculated—one
in a billion billion billion billion), the universe would either be
composed only of radiation or of no other element besides hydrogen.
There
are many other delicate adjustments that make the earth ideal for human
life: the size of the sun, its distance from the earth, the unique physical
and chemical properties of water, the wavelength of the sun’s rays,
the way that the earth’s atmosphere contains the gases necessary to
allow respiration, or the Earth’s magnetic field being ideally suited
to human life. (For more information on this topic, see Harun Yahya,
The Creation
of the Universe, Al-Attique Publishers, 2001)
This delicate balance is one of the most striking discoveries
of modern astrophysics. The wellknown astronomer, Paul Davies, writes
in the last paragraph of his book The Cosmic Blueprint, "The
impression of Design is overwhelming."8
In an article in the journal Nature, the astrophysicist
W. Press writes, "there is a grand design in the Universe that
favors the development of intelligent life."9
The interesting thing about this is that the majority of the scientists
that have made these discoveries were of the materialist point of view
and came to this conclusion unwillingly. They did not undertake their
scientific investigations hoping to find a proof for God’s existence.
But most of them, if not all of them, despite their unwillingness, arrived
at this conclusion as the only explanation for the extraordinary design
of the universe.
In his book, The Symbiotic Universe the American astronomer, George
Greenstein, acknowledges this fact:
How could this possibly have come to pass [that the
laws of physics conform themselves to life]? …As we survey all the evidence,
the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency—or, rather
Agency—must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending
to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme
Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos
for our benefit?10
By beginning his question with “Is it possible”, Greenstein,
an atheist, tries to ignore that plain fact that has confronted him. But
many scientists who have approached the question without prejudice acknowledge
that the universe has been created especially for human life. Materialism
is now being viewed as an erroneous belief outside the realm of science.
The American geneticist, Robert Griffiths, acknowledges this fact when
he says, “If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department.
The physics department isn't much use.”11
In his book Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose
in the Universe, which examines how physical, chemical and biological
laws are amazingly calculated in an “ideal” way with a view to the requirements
of human life, the well-known molecular biologist, Michael Denton writes:
The new picture that has emerged in twentieth-century
astronomy presents a dramatic challenge to the presumption which has
been prevalent within scientific circles during most of the past four
centuries: that life is a peripheral and purely contingent phenomenon
in the cosmic scheme.12
In short, the idea of a random universe, perhaps atheism’s
most basic pillar, has been proved invalid. Scientists now openly speak
of the collapse of materialism.13 The supposition whose
falsity God reveals in the Qur’an, “We did not create heaven and earth
and everything between them to no purpose. That is the opinion of those
who disbelieve…” (Qur’an, 38: 27) was shown to be invalid by science
in the 1970’s.
Quantum Physics and the Discovery of the
Divine Wisdom

When scientists have gone deeper into the atom, they found it shockingly
"empty". |
One of the areas of science that shatters the materialist myth and gives
positive evidence for theism is quantum physics.
Quantum physics deals with the tiniest particles of matter, what is called
the sub-atomic realm. In school everyone learns that matter is composed
of atoms. Atoms are made up of a nucleus and several electrons spinning
around it. One strange fact is that all these particles take up only some
0.0001 percent of the atoms. In other words, an atom is something that
is 99.9999 percent "empty."
An even more interesting fact is that when the nuclei and electrons are
further examined, it has been realized that these are made up of much
smaller particles called "quarks," and that these quarks are
not particles in the physical sense, but simply energy. This discovery
has broken the classical distinction between matter and energy. It now
appears that in the material universe, only energy exists. What we call
matter is just "frozen energy."
There is a still more intriguing fact: The quarks, those energy packets,
act in such a way that they maybe described as "conscious."
Physicist Freeman Dyson, on his acceptance of the Templeton Prize, stated
that:
Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents
rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between
alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics.
It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices,
is to some extent inherent in every atom.14
What this means is that there is information behind matter. Information
that precedes the material realm. Gerald Schroeder, an MIT-trained scientist
who has worked in both physics and biology and author of the famous book
The Science of God, makes a number of important comments on this
subject. In his more recent book, The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals
the Ultimate Truth (2001), Schroeder explains that quantum physics—along
with other branches of science—is the tool for discovering a universal
wisdom that lies behind the material world. As he puts it:
It took humanity millennia before an Einstein discovered
that, as bizarre as it may seem, the basis of matter is energy, that
matter is actually condensed energy. It may take a while longer for
us to discover that there is some non-thing even more fundamental
than energy that forms the basis of energy, which in turn forms
the basis of matter.15
John Archibald, professor of physics at Princeton University
and recipient of the Einstein Award, explained the same fact when he said
that the "bit" (the binary digit) of information gives rise
to the "it," the substance of matter.16 According
to Schroeder this has a "profound meaning":
The matter/energy relationships, the quantum wave
functions, have profound meaning. Science may be approaching the
realization that the entire universe is an expression of information,
wisdom, an idea, just as atoms are tangible expressions of something
as ethereal as energy.17
This wisdom is such an omniscient thing that covers the whole universe:
A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades
the universe. The discoveries of science, those that search the
quantum nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a
startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom.
In the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically
articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every
particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level
of information, of wisdom.18
This means that the material universe is not a purposeless
and chaotic heap of atoms, as the atheist/materialist dogma assumes, but
is instead a manifestation of a wisdom which existed before the universe
and which has absolute sovereignty over everything that exists. In Schroeder's
words, it is "as if a metaphysical substrate was impressed upon
the physical". 19
This discovery shatters the whole materialist myth and reveals that the
material universe we see is just a shadow of a transcendent Absolute Being.
Thus, as Schroeder explains, quantum physics has become the point where
science and theology meet:
The age-old theological view of the universe is that
all existence is the manifestation of a transcendent wisdom, with a
universal consciousness being its manifestation. If I substitute
the word information for wisdom, theology begins to sound like quantum
physics. We may be witnessing the scientific confluence of the physical
with the spiritual. 20
Quantum is really the point where science and theology meet. The fact
that the whole universe is pervaded by a wisdom is a secret that was revealed
in the Qur'an 14 centuries ago. One verse reads:
Your god is God alone, there is no god but Him. He encompasses all
things in His knowledge. (Qur'an, 20:98)
The Natural Sciences: The Collapse of Darwinism
and
The Triumph of Intelligent Design

Darwin: His theory is now refuted by a great deal of scientific evidence.
|
As we stated at the beginning, one of the main supports for the rise
of atheism to its zenith in the 19th century
was Darwin’s theory of evolution. With its assertion that the origin of
human beings and all other living things lay in unconscious natural mechanisms,
Darwinism gave atheists the opportunity they had been seeking for centuries.
Therefore, Darwin’s theory had been adopted by the most passionate atheists
of the time, and atheist thinkers such as Marx and Engels elucidated this
theory as the basis of their philosophy. Since that time, the relationship
between Darwinism and atheism has continued.
But, at the same time, this greatest support for atheism is the dogma
that has received the greatest blow from scientific discoveries in the
20th century. The discoveries by various branches
of science such as paleontology, biochemistry, anatomy and genetics have
shattered the theory of evolution from various aspects. (See Harun Yahya,
Evolution
Deceit, 2000). We have dealt with this fact in much more detail
in various other books and publications, but we may summarize it here
as follows:
Paleontology:
Darwin’s theory rests on the assumption that all species come from one
single common ancestor and that they diverged from one another over
a long period of time by small gradual changes. It is supposed that
the proofs for this will be discovered in the fossil record, the petrified
remains of living things. But fossil research conducted in the course
of the 20th century has presented a totally
different picture. The fossil of even a single undoubted intermediate
species that would substantiate the belief in the gradual evolution
of species has not been found. Moreover, every taxon appears suddenly
in the fossil record and no trace has been found of any previous ancestors.
The phenomenon known as the Cambrian Explosion is especially interesting.
In this early geological period, nearly all of the phyla (major groups
with significantly different body plans) of the animal kingdom suddenly
appeared. This sudden emergence of many different categories of living
things with totally different body structures and extremely complex
organs and systems, including mollusks, arthropods, echinoderms and
(as recently discovered) even vertebrates, is a major blow to Darwinism.
For, as evolutionists also agree, the sudden appearance of a taxon implies
supernatural design and this means creation.
Biological
Observations: In elaborating his theory, Darwin relied on examples
of how animal breeders produced a different variety of dogs or horses.
He extrapolated the limited changes he observed in these cases to the
whole of the natural world and proposed that every living thing could
have come to be in this way from a common ancestor. But Darwin made
this claim in the 19th century when the level
of scientific sophistication was low. In the 20th
century things have changed greatly. Decades of observation and experimentation
on various species of animals have shown that variation in living things
has never gone beyond certain genetic boundary. Darwin’s assertions,
like “I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by
natural selection, more and more aquatic in their habits, with larger
and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.”21
actually demonstrates his great ignorance. On the other hand, observations
and experiments have shown that mutations defined by Neo- Darwinism
as an evolutionary mechanism add no new genetic information to living
creatures.
The
Origin of Life: Darwin spoke about a common ancestor but he never
mentioned how this first common ancestor came to be. His only conjecture
was that the first cell could have formed as a result of random chemical
reactions “in some small warm little pond”.22 But
evolutionary biochemists who undertook to close this hole in Darwinism
met with frustration. All observations and experiments showed that it
was, in a word, impossible for a living cell to arise within inanimate
matter by random chemical reactions. Even the English atheist Nobel
Prize-winner Fred Hoyle expressed that such a scenario "is comparable
with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might
assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”23
Intelligent
Design: Scientists studying cells, the molecules that compose the
cells, their remarkable organization within the body and the delicate
order and plan in the organs are faced with proof of the fact that evolutionists
strongly wish to reject: The world of living things is permeated by
designs too complex to be found in any technological equipment. Intricate
examples of design, including our eyes that are too superior to be compared
to any camera, the wings of birds that have inspired flight technology,
the complexly integrated system of the cells of living things and the
remarkable information stored in DNA, have vitiated the theory of evolution
which regards living things as the product of blind chance.
All these facts have squeezed Darwinism into a corner by the end of the
20th century. Today, in the United States and
other Western countries, the theory of intelligent design is gaining everincreasing
acceptance among scientists. Those who defend the idea of intelligent
design say that Darwinism has been a great error in the history of science
and that it came to be as the result of materialist philosophy’s being
imposed on the scientific paradigm. Scientific discoveries show that there
is a design in living things which proves creation. In short, science
proves once more that God created all living things.
Psychology: The Collapse of Freudianism and the Acceptance
of Faith
The representative of the 19th century atheist
dogma in the field of psychology was the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund
Freud. Freud proposed a psychological theory which rejected the existence
of the soul and tried to explain the whole spiritual world of human beings
in terms of sexual and similar hedonistic motivations. But Freud’s greatest
assault was against religion.

Later studies showed that Freud's ideas, especially the ones about
religion were totally flawed. |
In his book The Future of an Illusion published in 1927, he proposed
that religious faith was a kind of mental illness (neurosis) and that,
as human beings progressed, religious faith would completely disappear.
Due to the primitive scientific conditions of the time, the theory was
proposed without the requisite research and investigation, and with no
scholarly literature or possibility of comparison, and therefore, its
claims were extremely deficient. Indeed, if Freud had the possibility
of evaluating his propositions today, he would himself be surprised by
the logical deficiency of his claims and he would be the first to criticize
such senseless presuppositions.
After Freud, psychology developed on an atheist foundation.
Not only Freud, but the founders of other schools of psychology in the
20th century were passionate atheists. Two of
these were B.F. Skinner, the founder of the behaviorist school and Albert
Ellis, founder of rational emotive therapy. The world of psychology ended
up by becoming the forum for atheism. A 1972 poll among the members of
the American Psychology Association revealed that only 1.1 percent of
psychologists in the country had any religious beliefs.24
But most psychologists who fell into this great deception were undone
by their own psychological investigations. It became known that the basic
suppositions of Freudianism had almost no scientific support and, moreover,
that religion was not a mental illness as Freud and some other psychological
theorists declared, but a basic element of mental health. Patrick Glynn
summarizes these important developments:
Yet the last quarter of the twentieth century has
not been kind to the psychoanalytic vision. Most significant has been
the exposure of Freud’s views of religion as entirely fallacious.
Ironically enough, scientific research in psychology over the past twenty-five
years has demonstrated that, far from being a neurosis or source of
neuroses as Freud and his disciples claimed, religious belief is one
of the most consistent correlates of overall mental health and happiness.
Study after study has shown a powerful relationship between religious
belief and practice, on the one hand, and healthy behaviors with regard
to such problems as suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, divorce, depression,
even, perhaps surprisingly, levels of sexual satisfaction in marriage,
on the other. In short, the empirical data run exactly contrary to the
supposedly “scientific” consensus of the psychotherapeutic profession.25
Finally, as Glynn says, “modern psychology at the close
of the twentieth century seems to be reacquainting itself with religion”26
and “a purely secular view of human mental life has been
shown to fail not just at the theoretical, but also at the practical,
level.27
In other words, atheism has been routed also on the field of psychology.
Medicine: The Discovery of "How Hearts Find Peace"
Another branch of science that was affected by the collapse of atheist
suppositions was medicine.
According to results compiled by David B. Larson and
his team at the National Institute for Healthcare Research, a comparison
among Americans in relation to church attendance yielded very interesting
results. Risk of arteriosclerotic heart disease for men who attended church
frequently was just 60 percent of that for men who were infrequent church
attenders. Among women, suicide was twice as high among infrequent as
among frequent church attenders; smokers who ranked religion as very important
in their lives were over seven times less likely to have normal diastolic
pressure readings than were those who did not.28
Secular psychologists generally explain such phenomena
as having a psychological cause. In this sense, faith raises a person’s
morale and contributes to his well-being. There may be some truth in this
explanation, but if we look more closely we see something much more dramatic.
Belief in God is much stronger than any other influence on the morale.
In comprehensive research on the relationship between religious belief
and physical health, Dr. Herbert Benson of the Harvard Medical School
came up with some interesting results. Although he did not have any religious
faith, Benson arrived at the result that faith in God and worship had
a much more positive effect on human health than could be observed in
anything else. Benson concludes that he has “found that faith quiets
the mind like no other form of belief.”29
Why is there such a special relation between faith and
human spirit and body? The result arrived at by Benson, who is a secular
researcher, was, as he put it, that the human mind and body are “wired
for God.”30
This fact, that the medical world is slowly beginning to notice, is a
secret revealed in the Qur’an with the verse, “Only in the remembrance
of God can the heart find peace.” (Qur’an, 13:28) The reason why those
who believe in God, pray to Him and trust in Him are physically and mentally
more healthy than others is that they behave in harmony with their nature.
Philosophical systems opposed to human nature always bring pain, sorrow,
anxiety and depression upon people.
The basic source of the peace experienced by a religious person is that
he acts in order to gain God’s approval. In other words, this peace is
the natural result of a person’s listening to the voice of his conscience.
A person does not live the morality of religion simply “to be more at
peace” or “to be healthier”; a person who acts with this intention cannot
find peace in its true sense. God well knows that what a person stores
in his heart or what he reveals. A person experiences peace of mind only
by being sincere and attempting to gain God’s approval. God commands:
So set your face firmly towards the [true] religion, as a pure natural
believer, God’s natural pattern on which He made mankind. There is no
changing God’s creation. That is the true religion—but most people do
not know it. (Qur’an, 30:30)
In the light of the discoveries that we have briefly
indicated above, modern medicine is starting to become cognizant of this
truth. As Patrick Glynn says, “contemporary medicine is clearly moving
in the direction of acknowledging dimensions of healing beyond the purely
material”.31
Society: The Fall of Communism, Fascism and the Hippie
Dream
The collapse of atheism in the 20th century
did not occur only in the fields of astrophysics, biology, psychology
and medicine; it happened also in politics and social morality.
Communism may be considered the most important political result of 19th
century atheism. The founders of this ideology, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky
or Mao, all adopted atheism as a basic principle. A primary goal of all
communist regimes was to get society to adopt atheism and to destroy religious
belief. Stalin’s Russia, Red China, Cambodia, Albania and some Eastern
block countries applied immense pressure on religious people to the point
of committing mass murder.
Yet, amazingly, at the end of the 1980s this bloody atheist system collapsed.
When we examine the reasons for this dramatic fall, we see that what collapsed
was actually atheism. Patrick Glynn writes:
To be sure, secular historians would say that the
greatest mistake of Communism was to attempt to defy the laws of economics.
But other laws, too, came into play… Moreover, as historians penetrate
the circumstances of the Communist collapse, it is becoming clearer
that the Soviet elite was itself in the throes of an atheistic “crisis
of faith”. Having lived under an atheistic ideology—one that consisted
of lies and that was based on a “Big Lie”— the Soviet system suffered
a radical demoralization, in every sense of that term. People, including
the ruling elite, lost all sense of morality and all sense of hope.32
An interesting indication of the Soviet system’s great “crisis of faith”
was President Mihail Gorbachev’s attempts of reform. Since the time that
he assumed the presidency, Gorbachev was interested in moral problems
as well as economic reforms. For example, one of the first things he did
was to initiate a campaign against alcoholism. In order to raise the morale
of society, for a long time he used Marxist-Leninist terminology but he
saw that this was of no use.

Gorbachev: His futile attempts could not heal the "crisis of
faith" in the Soviet society. |
Then, in the later years of the regime, he even began to mention God
in some of his speeches, even though he himself was an atheist. Naturally,
these insincere words of faith were of no use and the crisis of faith
in Soviet society continued to worsen. The result was the collapse of
the gigantic Soviet empire. The 20th century
documented not only the fall of communism, but also that of another fruit
of 19th century antireligious philosophy—fascism.
Fascism is the outcome of a philosophy which may be called a mixture of
atheism and paganism and which is intensely hostile to theistic religions.
Friedrich Nietzsche, who may be called the father of fascism, extolled
the morality of barbarous idolatrous societies, attacked Christianity
and other monotheistic religions and even called himself the “Antichrist.”
Nietzsche’s disciple, Martin Heidegger, was an avid Nazi supporter and
the ideas of these two atheist thinkers gave impetus to the terrifying
savagery of Nazi Germany. (The Holocaust, one of the greatest act of evil
in human history, was the result of Nazi anti-Semitism, an ideology that
hated Jews and the monotheistic faith that has been the cornerstone of
Judaism—and also Islam.) The Second World War, that caused the death of
55 million people, is another example of the calamity that atheist ideologies
like fascism and communism have brought upon humanity.
At this point, we must recall another atheist ideology—Social
Darwinism—which was among the causes for the outbreak of both the
First and the Second World Wars. In his book entitled Europe Since
1870, Harvard history professor James Joll states that behind each
of the two world wars lay the philosophical views of Social Darwinist
European leaders who believed in the myth that war was a biological necessity
and that nations developed through conflict.33

In contrast with the theist and peaceful American Revolution, the
French Revolution was atheist, neo-pagan and extremely violent. |
Another social consequence of atheism in the 20th century
appeared in Western democracies. In the present day there is a tendency
to regard the West as the “Christian world.” However, since the 19th,
century, a quickly growing atheist culture has held sway with Christian
culture, and today there is a conflict between these two cultures in what
we call Western civilization. And this atheist element has been the true
cause of western imperialism, moral degeneration, despotism and other
negative manifestations.
In his book God: The Evidence, the American writer Patrick Glynn
draws attention to this matter and, in order to compare the God-fearing
and atheist elements in the West, he takes the examples of the American
and French Revolutions. The American Revolution was carried out by believers;
American Declaration of Independence states that all men “are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. Since the French Revolution
was the work of atheists, the French Declaration of Human Rights was very
different, with no reference to God and full of atheist and neo-pagan
notions.
The actual results of the two revolutions were quite
different: in the American model, a peaceful, tolerant environment was
created that respected religion and religious belief; in France the fierce
hostility to religion drowned the country in blood and unleashed a savagery
such as had never been seen before. As Glynn says, “there is an interesting
historical correlation between atheism, on the one hand, and moral and
political catastrophe, on the other hand.”34
Glynn notes that attempts to turn America into an atheist
country have also caused harm to society. The fact that the sexual revolution
(for example) that spread in the 60’s and 70’s caused immense social damage
is accepted even by secular historians.35

John Lennon: The world he imagined —one without religion— did not
bring a happy end, neither to him nor to his followers. |
The hippie movement was a demonstration of this social damage. The hippies
believed that they could find spiritual emancipation through secular humanist
philosophy and by such things as unlimited drugs and sex. These young
people who poured onto the streets with romantic songs—like John Lennon’s
Imagine in which he spoke of a world “with no countries, and no religion
too”—were actually undergoing a mass deception.
In fact, a world without religion actually brought them to an unhappy
end. The hippy leaders of the 1960s either killed themselves or died from
drug-induced comas in the early 1970s. Many other young hippies shared
a similar fate.
Those young people of the same generation who turned to violence found
themselves on the receiving end of violence. The 1968 generation, who
turned their backs on God and religion and imagined they could find salvation
in such concepts as revolution or selfish Epicureanism, ruined both themselves
and their own societies.
The Dawn of the Post-Atheist World
The facts that we have briefly summarized to this point shows clearly
that atheism is undergoing an inevitable collapse. In other words, humanity
is — and will be — turning towards God. The truth of this assertion is
not limited only to the scientific and political areas that we have written
about here. From prominent statesmen to movie stars and pop artists, those
who influence opinion in the West are much more religious than they used
to be. There are many people who have seen the truth and come to believe
in God after having lived for years as atheists. (Patrick Glynn from whose
book we have quoted is one of these ex-atheists).
The fact that the developments which have contributed
to this result began in the same period, that is from the second half
of the 1970s, is quite interesting. The anthropic principle first appeared
in the 1970s. Scientific criticism of Darwinism started to be loudly voiced
at that same time. The turning point against the atheist dogma of Freud
was a book entitled The Road Less Traveled published in 1978 by
Scott Peck. For this reason, Glynn, in the 1997 edition of his book writes
that “over the past twenty years, a significant body of evidence has emerged,
shattering the foundations of the long-dominant modern secular worldview.”36
Surely, the fact that the atheist world-view has been shaken means that
another world-view prevails, which is belief in God. Since the end of
the 1970’s, (or, from the beginning of the 14th
century according to the Muslim calendar) the world has seen a rise in
religious values. Like other social processes, this does not happen in
a day and the majority of people may not notice it because it has been
developing over a long period of time. However, those who evaluate the
development a little more carefully see that the world is at a major turning
point in the realm of ideas.
Secular historians try to explain this process according to their own
principles but just as they are in deep error with regard to the existence
of God, so they are greatly mistaken about the course of history. In fact,
as the following verse reveals, history moves as God as determined: “...You
will not find any changing in the pattern of God. You will not find any
alteration in the pattern of God.” (Qur’an, 35: 43) It follows, then,
that history has a purpose and unfolds as God has commanded. And God’s
command is the perfection of His light:
They desire to extinguish God’s Light with their mouths. But God
refuses to do other than perfect His Light, even though the disbelievers
detest it. (Qur’an, 9: 32)
This verse means that God has sent down His light upon humanity through
the religion that He has revealed. Those who do not believe want to extinguish
this light by their "mouths"— intimations, propaganda and philosophies,
but God will finally perfect His light and give dominion to religious
values on earth.
This may be the “turning point in history” mentioned at the beginning
of this article as also indicated by the evidence we have provided here,
as well as the implications of various hadiths and statements by scholars.
Surely, God knows best.
Conclusion
We are living at an important time. Atheism, which people have tried
for hundreds of years to portray as “the way of reason and science,” is
proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance. Materialist philosophy
that sought to use science for its own ends has been in turn defeated
by science. A world rescuing itself from atheism will turn to God and
religion. And this process has begun long ago.
It is clear that believers have important duties in this period. They
must be aware of this major change in the world’s way of thinking, interpret
it, make good use of the opportunities that globalization offers and effectively
represent the truth along this road. They must know that the basic conflict
of ideas in the world is between atheism and faith. It is not a struggle
between East and West; in both East and West there are those who believe
in God and those who do not. For this reason, faithful Christians, as
well as faithful Jews are allies of Muslims. The main divergence is not
between Muslims and the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians),
but between Muslims and the People of the Book on the one hand, and atheists
and pagans on the other. Of course, we must not show hostility to such
people but view them as people who need to be rescued from their error.
The time is fast approaching when many people who are living in ignorance
with no knowledge of their Creator will be graced by faith in the impending
post-atheist world.
Harun Yahya
September 2002
___________________________________________
(1) Patrick Glynn,
God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular
World , Prima Publishing, California, 1997, pp.19-20, 53
(2) Bryce Christensen, in a review of Gerald Shroeder's
book The Hidden Face of God, Booklist March 15, 2001
(3) George Politzer, Principes Fondamentaux de Philosophie,
Editions Sociales, Paris, 1954, p. 84
(4) S. Jaki, Cosmos and Creator, Regnery Gateway, Chicago,
1980, p.54
(5) Henry Margenau, Roy Abraham Vargesse, Cosmos, Bios,
Theos, La Salle IL: Open Court Publishing, 1992, p.241
(6) John Maddox, "Down with the Big Bang",
Nature, vol. 340, 1989, p. 378
(7) H. P. Lipson, "A Physicist Looks at Evolution",
Physics Bulletin, vol. 138, 1980, p. 138
(8) Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint, London: Penguin
Books, 1987, p. 203
(9) W. Press, "A Place for Teleology?", Nature,
vol. 320, 1986, s. 315
(10) George Greenstein, The Symbiotic Universe, p. 27
(11) Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, p. 123
(12) Denton, Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny: How the
Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, The New York: The Free
Press,1998, p. 14
(13) Paul Davies and John Gribbin, The Matter Myth,
Simon & Schuster, New York, 1992, p. 10
(14) As quoted in Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face
of God, Touchstone, New York, 2001, p. 7
(15) Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, Touchstone,
New York, 2001, p. 8
(16) Ibid. p. 8
(17) Ibid. p. 28
(18) Ibid. p. xi
(19) Ibid. p. 48
(20) Ibid. xii
(21) Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: A Facsimile
of the First Edition, Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 184
(22) Charles Darwin, Life and Letter of Charles Darwin,
vol. II, From Charles Darwin to J. Do Hooker, March 29, 1863
(23) "Hoyle on Evolution", Nature, vol. 294,
November 12, 1981, p. 105
(24) Edwin R. Wallace IV, “Psychiatry and Religion:
A Dialogue”, in Joseph H. Smith and Susan A. Handelman, eds., Psychoanalysis
andReligion, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1990, p. 1005
(25) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation
of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California,
1997, pp.60-61
(26) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation
of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California,
1997, p.69
(27) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation
of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California,
1997, p.78
(28) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation
of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California,
1997, pp.80-81
(29) Herbert Benson, Mark Stark, Timeless Healing, Simon
& Schuste, New York, 1996, p. 203
(30) Herbert Benson, Mark Stark, Timeless Healing, Simon
& Schuste, New York, 1996, p. 193
(31) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation
of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California,
1997, p.94
(32) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation
of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California,
1997,pp.161-162
(33) James Joll, Europe Since 1870: An International
History, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1990, pp. 102-103
(34) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation
of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California,
1997, p.161
(35) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation
of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World , Prima Publishing, California,
1997, p.163
(36) Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation
of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World, Prima Publishing, California,
1997, p. 2
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