Arguments of Opponents of Religion

FROM DENIAL TO BELIEF IN GOD that he had not hitherto understood, because of which he had wrongly attributed them to some ‘imaginary’ supernatural force. Events and phenomena in his surroundings that man lacked proper knowledge of were declared miracles of that supernatural force, but now science has shown them to be the result of entirely natural forces. Earlier, there were certain links in certain events that man did not know; because of this, he could not understand why these events were occurring, so he attributed them to some God. But now, because we fully know all the links in these events, we fully understand why and how they happen—entirely because of natural causes and having nothing to do with a God. For example, earlier, man did not know the truth about the sun’s rising and setting. That is why, atheists might argue, man came to believe that there is some God who takes the sun out, makes it rise, and causes it to set—and in this way, the notion of a supernatural force was born. But now, when we know that the sun’s rising and setting happens because of an entirely natural cause—the rotation of the earth around its axis—there is no need to believe in God to explain this phenomenon. In the same way, atheists would contend, all those other phenomena regarding which it was earlier thought that some supernatural force was at work behind them have, in the wake of modern scientific findings, come to be known to be the result of the actions and reactions of entirely natural forces, forces that are known to us. Thus, atheists