Timothy Birdnow

I was on the message board of Bishop Robert Barron's post about why atheism is wrong, and naturally it was chock-full of atheists who were in high degrees of agitation over the Bishop daring to challenge their faith. Naturally I couldn't stay out of it. Oddly enough I got few people willing to reply to me.

Why not? Almost all of them used the same line "there is no evidence for God" and I proceeded to provide it to them. They couldn't refute anything so at most I got a laughing emoji, if that.

At any rate one of my interlocutors, one who actually answered me, took umbrage with my claim that children are generally born theists and only later are taught atheism. He insisted it was the other way around.

So I provided him with this.

Yes, peer reviewed science has shown most children are believers by nature.

The larger study by Oxford University (hardly Ave Maria University) found that most people the world over believe in God and the survival of the soul after death.

But children do especially. From the article:

Studies by Emily Reed Burdett and Justin Barrett, from the University of Oxford, suggest that children below the age of five find it easier to believe in some superhuman properties than to understand similar human limitations. Children were asked whether their mother would know the contents of a box in which she could not see. Children aged three believed that their mother and God would always know the contents, but by the age of four, children start to understand that their mothers are not all-seeing and all knowing. However, children may continue to believe in all-seeing, all-knowing supernatural agents, such as a god or gods.

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And the same holds true for adults:

Project Co-Director Professor Roger Trigg, from the University of Oxford's Ian Ramsey Centre, said: 'This project suggests that religion is not just something for a peculiar few to do on Sundays instead of playing golf. We have gathered a body of evidence that suggests that religion is a common fact of human nature across different societies. This suggests that attempts to suppress religion are likely to be short-lived as human thought seems to be rooted to religious concepts, such as the existence of supernatural agents or gods, and the possibility of an afterlife or pre-life.'

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So this guy was flat wrong when he claimed theism is taught.

There are multiple other pieces of evidence for the existence of a supreme being, an intelligence who designed reality.

Take the Anthropic Principle. It is a well-established scientific concept that points out that our universe is uniquely suited to our existence and if you alter just one physical law even slightly the whole thing comes unraveled and life is impossible. That is hard to dismiss. Either we are lucky beyond any sort of reasonable odds or somebody designed things.

In fact this bothered the hell out of (pardon the pun) astronomer Fred Hoyle, an atheist, who calculated the odds of life spontaneously coming into existence. He didn't even calculate the odds of life - he just looked at the amino acids. His numbers were staggering - 10 to the 40,000 power. He likened it to a tornado moving through a junkyard and creating a Boeing 747. Many atheists have tried to disavow this and yet their criticisms largely fail (mostly they say multiple smaller processes could happen at the same time then amalgamate, something equally preposterous but they think they can get the odds down to 10 to the 26,000 power.)

At any rate Hoyle realized this was impossible so he kicked the can WAAAAYYY down the road. He invented the Steady State theory in which he argued the universe always existed but that just our little slice of it is only 4.3 billion years old and that life drifted here from the older parts. Of course, if the universe is eternal it would long ago have reached heat death. And there is that pesky 3 degree background radiation from the Big Bang to contend with. And the fact life is a violation of thermodynamics, a complete reversal of entropy - order from disorder. The universe doesn't workt hat way as we see it now.

Speaking of the Big Bang it followed the Book of Genesis perfectly. Cosmological expansion began BEFORE the Big Bang for reasons that are yet unclear. Genesis said "and the Earth was malformed and void and darkness was upon it's face, and God said "Let there be light" and there was light. Just like Cosmologists now believe.

Oh, there are other arguments. Order, for instance, comes from somewhere despite entropy. We have mathematical concepts that suggest a rationality to the universe, a design. The Nautilus Shell Spiral is called a "Golden Spiral" and it appears all over the place. The Milky Way is such. There is Pi. There are Mandelbrat sets. etc.

There is Natural Law; self-evident truths that we all intuitively understand. What is the first thing out of any child's mouth when something doesn't go his way? "That's not fair!" Why does he think that? Why does he expect fairness in a world clearly governed by it's opposite? Because he knows in his heart that there is Natural Law and so many things violate that. Thomas Jefferson understood it too and it's part of our Declaration of Independence.

Where did that concept originate? It certainly violates what appears to be the law of our universe, survival of the fittest and power granting the strong to thrive.

We have near death experiences all over the world with witnesses actually coming back from death with tales of an afterlife - both good and bad.

We have Marianne apparitions which many people have seen. For instance, in Zeitun Egypt back in 1968-71 where over a MILLION people saw a vision of Mary above a Coptic church in this suburb of Cairo. President Nasser was one of them and after that he began the peace negotiations that Anwar Sadat would later complete with Israel. It was actually televised and we have films of it!

Zeitun was far from the only one - we had Fatima, Lourdes, Guadalupe, all over the world. Medjugorje, although that has yet to be approved. I know a guy who went to Medjugorje and saw the miracle of the sun, in which the sun started spinning violently. First seen at Fatima it terrified people at the site then.

And the miracles. The Catholic Church investigates miracles from Marianne sights and is very careful to NOT declare one without solid evidence, yet people are cured of diseases and problems all the time at these locations.

And what of demonic possessions? Those too are ubiquitous, universal occurrences common to all humanity. If the Devil exists than so too does God.

I could go on and on but you get the point. None of these are smoking gun proofs, but they are evidence. If we were in a court of law we certainly could get an indictment, but a conviction would be tougher. God wants us to have free will so we can choose, choose who and what we want to be and decide our place in eternity. He makes us partners with Him in our own creation. Atheists often just take their ball and go home because they are angry at God or don't like life. But life isn't supposed to be easy, and if we are to become what we want we have to face the consequences of our decisions. You can't do that without there actually being consequences.

And as Paul said, this is "our momentary, light affliction" in eternity, a breath and done. As he also points out, it is like labor pains for a women, who will forget all about them as soon as the baby is born.

Yes, life is hard and that may actually add to our joy much like a little garlic improves pasta or salt improves our food in general. The memory of our suffering may be a great source of our joy in the hereafter.

I once read a near death experience and the person involved said he was told by a guide that we have to learn certain things and are thus sent here which is the only place we can learn them. You can't truly love your enemy if you have none, so we have to come here to learn to love our enemies. Otherwise we remain simple children. I am sure there is a lot of that in our being sent here. And always we have to learn to trust God and seek His grace because it's far too easy to put ourselves on the godhead, and that way leads to damnation. (Damnation is chosen, by the way; Hell is a place where people go to get away from God. As one near death experiencer said, the worst part of Hell is the people there - they have nothing to do for eternity and so they entertain themselves by tormenting others.)

In the final analysis atheism is as much a leap of faith - more actually - than belief. It's not agnosticism, where you say "I don't know" but rather you say "I know and there is no God" which is entirely unprovable. It's a dangerous and foolish risk to so confidently dismiss God's existence because you think you could do a better job.

I know I can't. I've long pondered God's ways, which are mysterious, and come to the conclusion that I wouldn't have done it any differently. I hate that but I understand it. God has to be hidden or we wouldn't have free will, wouldn't have a choice. He has to allow bad things to happen because otherwise we would have nothing to respond to. It's easy being good when times are good, not so much when the cold winds blow. We all have to learn fortitude to trust God so when we get back to Him we know it's not just sucking up to Him to get stuff. We have to make a choice. And we have to remake ourselves.

God made all sorts of intelligences and He wanted each to be unique. But how is that fair? Lucifer was the best and brightest and most beautiful while some schlub of an angel (let's forget humans who were worse than all the angels in beauty and intellect) got nothing, the null set. He was slow, plain, not real bright,not very engaging. But God loved him too! So how do you right this? You hold a tournament and give prizes away. You give gifts to those who win and the victory is largely based on desire. If you want to be kind God gives you kindness. If you want patience He gives you patience. If you want to be close to Him, sitting at His right hand, you will get that, provided you try to be righteous. Lucifer and the other fallen angels simply took their ball and went home. They refused to serve "better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven" and so now they have what they wanted - and it is overwhelmingly bad. Michael, the prince of the angelic host, had just been an archangel, the second lowest order of angels. Now he bosses around Cherubim and Seraphim because he was the one who loved God the most.

Mary is at the very top of creation (as opposed to Jesus, who is the top of everything) because she loved God and her son more than anyone. What was she? An uneducated peasant woman, the kind most people would see as a "hillbilly" as she was from Nazareth. Now she is greater than Queens and Empresses.

This is not to say salvation is not the gift of Jesus, that we can work our way into Heaven. We still must have faith and ask Jesus for it. But the things we do in life matter to our place in eternity. Adolf Hitler could possibly be in Heaven (very doubtful) and certainly Mussolini could. But they would be at the very bottom because they were bad people who may have repented at the end. Some very seemingly holy people may not be there.

At any rate in my view there is plenty of evidence for the existence of God although none of it is a smoking gun proof. God isn't going to give us that until Jesus returns. But He gives us enough if we are willing to seek it with an open mind. Sadly too many atheists lack that.

Posted by: PSLC at July 23, 2026 12:50 AM (h3/op)

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