CHALLENGE OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE

Challenge of Modern Knowledge ~ 16 ~ Atheists maintain that the progress of science and the expansion of knowledge had enabled man to observe that which was beyond his observation in the past. Being in the dark about chains of events, we had not been in a position to understand isolated events. Now, equipped with knowledge, we no longer stood in awe of natural phenomena. For instance, the rising and setting of the sun are now understood as matters of common knowledge. But, in early times, these events seemed inexplicable, and man supposed that there must be a God who was responsible for them. This led to the acceptance of there being a supernatural power: he described whatever was beyond man’s knowledge as a miracle wrought by that power. But now that we know the rising and setting of the sun is the result of the earth’s revolving upon its axis, where is the need to believe that there is a God who makes the sunrise and set? Similarly, the functioning of all other things, which had been attributed to some invisible power, purported, according to modern studies, to result from the action and interaction of the natural forces now known to us. That is, after the revelation of natural causes, the need to posit, and to believe in the existence of God, or a