ARGUMENTS AGAINST GOD AND RELIGION — Part III Argument from History

ARGUMENTS AGAINST GOD AND RELIGION — Part III Argument from History A THEISTIC thinkers dismiss religion as being unfounded in fact. They maintain that it springs from man’s desire to find meaning in the universe. While the urge to find an explanation is not in itself wrong, they hold that the inadequacy of our predecessors’ knowledge led them to wrong conclusions, namely, the existence of a God or gods, the notions that creation and destruction were a function of the godhead, that man’s fate was of concern to God, that there was a life after death in heaven or hell, as warranted by the morality of man’s life on earth, and that all thinking on these matters must necessarily be regulated by religion. Here we examine the arguments from History against God or religion. The Argument from History Modern atheistic thinkers believe that, in the light of advanced learning, man is now in a position to make a re-appraisal of traditional ways of thought and to rectify errors of interpretation, just as in secular matters he has already exploded myths and overturned false hypotheses whenever facts and experience have forced the truth upon him. All those things, which were formerly attributed to supernatural forces, are now wholly explainable in terms of natural causes, modern thinking having it that the “Discovery” of God was a mere assumption arising from ignorance. With the spread of knowledge, this belief has automatically disappeared. That which is a revelation of reality is an ideal in itself, and its history with all its manifestations has to be studied in this light. Physics, psychology and history have proved conclusively that all those events which man explained in terms of the existence of a God or gods, or some abstract ‘Power’ had entirely different causes, but that man, steeped in ignorance, continued to speak of them in terms of religious mystery. Some anti-religionists use an argument from history against the reality of religion. They maintain that it was the particular historical