Atheism sits on hot
air, nothing else
By
ABRAHAM V. LLERA
February 29, 2016
God is something man cannot
see, touch, hear, feel, nor taste, yet isn’t it simply amazing that
not a single nation on earth is without religion? Isn’t it simply
amazing that every nation on earth has people believing in some sort
of divinity, someone superior to themselves, someone who one day would
call us to account for things we have done on earth?
The Church teaches that God,
our Creator and Lord, can be known with certainty, by the natural
light of reason, from created things.
We can know the one true God
through our natural reason, and we are able to do this even in our
fallen nature. We can know God through his works, though created
nature, and we can know him with certainty.
We can also know God from
Scripture, from history, from Sacred Tradition, but even someone who
has not been in contact with the world such that he has never heard of
Scripture, nor of history, nor even of Sacred Tradition can still know
God through knowledge of God, a knowledge that is innate in us. Note,
however, that what is innate in us is not the idea of God as such, but
the ability to know his existence easily and with certainty from his
works.
There are actually two sides
to this: we can know God by the spontaneous use of reason and by the
scientific use of reason. An example of how we can know God by the
spontaneous use of reason is, for instance, that observation about how
not a single nation on earth is without religion.
An example of how we can
know God through the scientific use of reason is by showing how
everything in the universe is an “effect” of a “cause,” a “cause” whom
we call God. In other words, the spontaneous use of reason allows us
to know; the scientific use of reason allows us to know why.
The Church affirms that
reason – alone, meaning by itself – can prove that God exists by
showing that a “cause” is necessary for the universe of beings. This
type of proof we call “a posteriori” because we go from effect to
cause.
But some may already be
asking: were it so evident, why do a lot of people reject the
existence of God?
Well, because in the first
place, God’s existence is not evident. We do not see God, he is
something who is NOT evident, in other words, something who is not
perceptible through our senses. While his existence is true and
certain, his existence is not evident, his existence has to be
demonstrated, and this can be done through reason.
In other words, our
knowledge of God is not direct, but indirect, through a reasoning
process.
It does not help that a
number of factors intervene. One person, for instance, might have a
father who, when the person was young, would beat him black and blue
everyday. At least one study has shown that children having this
horrendous childhood experience often grow up rejecting God, a strong
father figure. Another may have absentee parents, and he grew up
without a mom and dad, without the very persons God designed to give
instruction to the child by word and by example. Still another may be
the victim of sexual abuse from one parent while still a child.
(To be continued...)