The Scourge Of The Modern Evangelical Atheism

Our Lady of La Salette said "Fight, children of light, you, the few
who can see. For now is the time of all times, the end of all ends."

Joe writes:    It is beginning to dawn on Christians from all walks of life that the twenty first century has set the stage for the proverbial cleansing of the temple. The armies are marching, the battle lines have been drawn and in the words of Gandalf “things are now in motion that cannot be undone”. The fight is to the death between the faith established by Jesus Christ and hovered over by the Holy Spirit (guide of sacred tradition) and modern man’s doctrines, secular intellect and illuminism. The age-old doctrines of the Catholic faith remain the refuge of the believer, for there can only be one flock, one shepherd and one faith.

We need to separate here modernism from modernisation, with the latter being good for humanity. Through modernisation we have the greatest means of transport, communication, investments, education, medications and such like, all of which are fruits of human innovation. These things are good and they show the nature of the creative rationality endowed in us by our creator who made us in His own image and likeness. However, modernism is the greatest deception of all time, indeed the synthesis of all heresies from the ancient world to our time. 

In the twenty first century, modernism has lifted its head and as a giant hairy monster stands ready to destroy the Catholic faith and the Bible. Lately, I have listened to debates between members of the Catholic faith with the rising evangelical atheist front-runners such as Richard Dawkins (with Card. George Pell, Arch. R. Williams (Canterbury) and Fr George Coyne), the late Christopher Hitchens (with Tony Blair, Dinesh D’Souza, Anne Widdecombe with Arch. of Abuja Nigeria) and Bart Ehrman debating Dinesh D’Souza. The general trend has been that debates with scientists focus on decimating the Bible through evolution and thus disproving original sin and the ones with non-scientists generally are all over the place but focus on lack of tangible evidence for the existence of “The God of the Bible”. The latter also dwell on the multiplicity of religions most of which grew out of the revolt of 1517 and a bit on competing beliefs of Islam. Here, the Church and her hierarchy are reminded of the need to state what is true and right and not mince words for political correctness because Truth cannot be relative but one.

Perhaps the most disappointing observations in the latter class of debates is the style and premise of arguments put forward by Catholics – a kind of attempt to explain God without God. Here is what I mean, in holy scripture God says in Isaiah 55:9 “For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.” Christianity which is devoid of Divine revelation is really misguided religions of men or superstition and worse still when it is devoid of Christ it becomes, in the words of pope St Pius X, religious immanence, a kind of faith borne of man’s inner need for “a God”. Hence the popular atheist understanding that man created God to deal with perceived loneliness, perceived injustice in this life and fear of the afterlife. Worse still is replacing the Divine Son of God with the modernised Jesus of liberation theology, the nice guy who is stripped of the miraculous and whose death, resurrection and ascension are side-lined as nice sayings that were true to his fishermen followers at that time. Entering a debate armed with such ‘chaff’ can never hold sway because Jesus Christ, the King of kings, the Lion of Judah, the son of Almighty God remains a mystery to the human intellect. In Him was the unexplainable mystery of the hypostatic union, true man whilst retaining true Divinity. The shepherd who stood for truth, integrity and an unapologetic love that saw Him whip people in the Temple and call Pharisees “whitewashed sepulchres” while still retaining the gentleness of an affectionate father and the lover who offers His own life for the beloved.

The interesting debate I witnessed was between Bart Ehrman (Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina) who got scandalised by suffering in the world and turned agnostic, and Dinesh D’Souza (President, The King's College, New York). In this debate Dinesh kept to his faith and it was refreshing to witness faith in action. You see, we should never forget that our call as Christians is never to convince, confound and eventually convert atheists, agnostics and pagans because that is the job of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3:6), our job is to give reasons for our hope (1 Peter 3:15). Every human being has the inherent dignity of a child of God and is endowed with an irrevocable freewill, so conversion is never by force but rather by free acceptance of the saving hand of Christ. We also stand the danger of being converted ourselves in such encounters for with heresy and pride our “… wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places” (Eph 6:12). Remember in Dante’s divine comedy heresy is condemned to the sixth circle of hell, this is because it is a serious perversion of Divine revelation and fight against the light of the Holy Spirit. You know, this is not to say that the atheists and agnostic are devils, but rather that there is no de-militarised zone in the spiritual battle and as in “The Matrix” whoever is not yet unplugged has their freewill tainted with the prince of this world.

The problem is much different with the rise of scientific atheism. The weapon of choice for the scientific atheist for the destruction of the Bible is the “Darwinian Theory of Evolution”, and it is safe to say that here we have entered the era of Enuma Elish "reloaded". Darwinian evolution presupposes the coming into being of life from a random and pointless state, followed by an ordered progression of purifying selections to attain the complex life forms present in the world today and the key words here are 'chaos' and ‘chance’. Chance, specifically because genetic mutations are not ‘willed’ into being but rather are random responses to the prevailing environmental pressures – thus the experiencing organism adapts to its surroundings through a series of genetic mutations. In Enuma Elish, which is the Babylonian creation story, the powerful god Marduk son of Ea creates the universe from the remains of Tiamat (the salt primeval waters). 

Left: The mythical god Marduk killing the dragon (worm) Kingu from whose blood
came the creation of man in Enuma Elish; Right: Man is but a worm from Charles
Darwin the father of the "theory" of evolution.

Marduk then proceeds to kill Kingu, Tiamat’s consort and then took his blood, mixed it with the dust of the earth and formed the first humans. In the Theogony (Greek; birth of the gods) 'chaos' is said to have arose spontaneously, then came Gia (Earth) etc. Prometheus, son of Zeus is said to have given man access to fire; which was against his father's will and thus Zeus bound him in punishment. Zeus is then said to have devised 'woman' as punishment in trade. It is said then that Hephaistos and Athena build woman with exquisite detail, and all men and gods consider her beautiful.

It is clear thus from all these pagan accounts of creation that the earth grew out of chaos and that man is devised from the waste of the created earth, either to serve these gods or in mockery. There is no point to his own life in general and love has nothing to do with his emergence on the earth. Out of Darwin’s Theory of evolution too, matter and indeed the earth came from chaotic events and man arose from stardust and the primeval soup with no point to life. This theory, although in some cases is assumed to reside side by side with Biblical accounts of the creation week, it does away with the Garden of Eden as a real place and disposes of original sin as a reality. Needless to say, destruction of love from creation, freewill and original sin subsequently destroys the whole point of the chosen people and the coming of the Messiah. All these become mythical events that are relegated to make-believe stories, the acceptance of which puts the reality of Jesus Christ into serious doubt.

Some in the hierarchy of the Church have been lulled to this day-dreaming state and have exalted themselves above Divine revelation and do not see the danger to the faith that is posed by Darwinian theories. The disciples of Darwin have worked hard to achieve this state and children of the Church in their desire to encounter the scientific atheist at his own game with some clever philosophical abstractions have confused themselves in the process.  These debates are destroying the faith and re-examining Biblical truths that have always been held through sacred tradition (Jeremiah 6:16). Jesus says in John 15:5 “I am the vine: you [are] the branches. He that abides in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit: for without me you can do nothing.” This is not a mere symbolic statement but rather divine revelation from the very mouth of God. No one can outsmart man inflamed with pride lest the same be converted to the errors of the undisciplined.

We live in the end times; errors from yesteryear have coagulated into unimaginable and relentless monster ideas that come not but to steal, deceive and destroy the faith. We have a lot of teachings from Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of La Salette, Our Lady of Akita routed in sacred scripture that warn us against those who assume to know what they can't know. As we engage in these debates, it would be good and safer to put on the full armour of God and remember the promise of Exodus 4:12 and Matthew 10:20 that you shall be given what you are to say. One should never mistake their role with that of the Holy Spirit, only He can move the hearts of stone towards faith.