Arguments of Opponents of Religion

FROM DENIAL TO BELIEF IN GOD only when we can come to know what or who it is that made the horn appear on the chick’s beak—in other words, that Ultimate Cause that had prior knowledge of the chick’s need for a tool to help it to come out of its shell and which compelled a bit of matter to appear, right on time, after 21 days, on the chick’s beak, in the form of a horn, which, after finishing its work, drops off the chick’s beak on its own. In other words, earlier, the question was, “How does the shell break?” Now, the question is, “How does the horn come into being?” There is no qualitative difference in either of these cases. One can, at the most, term the appearance of the horn on the chick’s beak as a broader observation of reality. One cannot term it as an ultimate explanation of a phenomenon. The question of what it was that ultimately caused the horn to appear on the beak cannot be answered by materialist science. For theists, the answer is that the horn did not appear on its own. God arranged for this to enable the chick to emerge from its shell. Invoking the ‘laws of Nature’ may explain the secondary cause of occurrences, but the primary or Ultimate cause is other than this, for a secondary cause is itself caused by another cause—a primary cause—and so it cannot be the ultimate cause of a phenomenon. Take another example: atheists might admit that the food digestion process and the food becoming part of the body is truly remarkable. But they would probably contend that people who believe that all this happens because God has so arranged for it are in error, claiming that modern