Atheists are rapidly being routed in the face of advances in modern science. As the world famous Vienna University sociologist of religion Paul M. Zulehner stated in a report in The Washington Times titled “Atheism in Decline Worldwide”: True atheists in Europe have become an infinitesimally small group. There are not enough of them to be used for sociological research.
Atheists are rapidly being routed in the face of advances in modern science. As the world famous Vienna University sociologist of religion Paul M. Zulehner stated in a report in The Washington Times titled “Atheism in Decline Worldwide”:
True atheists in Europe have become an infinitesimally small group. There are not enough of them to be used for sociological research.
These very small atheist groups in Europe are in their death throes on account of the contraction their philosophies are undergoing in the eyes of science and society. Most recently, unscientific distortions concerning intelligence and faith by the British psychologist Richard Lynn have become a subject for debate. In a study published in the scientific journal Intelligence, the University of Ulster academic Lynn suggests that non-believers outnumber believers in God among intellectuals and academics in society, and that as average intelligence levels rise the proportion of believers declines accordingly.
The Turkish daily Akşam took up the cudgels on behalf of this claim under the caption “intelligence turns people away from faith,” thus showing itself to be a supporter of this deception that represents an insult to the faithful people.
The fact is that there is no scientific basis for Lynn’s suggested inverse proportional relationship between intelligence level and faith. The preparation of this study and its reflection in the media shows that the aim behind it is mere intimidation. This article responds to Lynn’s claims as reported by Akşam.
It is those who regard faith as foolishness who are truly fools
Those who imagine that denying the existence of God somehow makes them intellectuals, an elite, are making a terrible mistake. Anyone possessed of good conscience and awareness who looks at the world around them can see that there is a blueprint requiring sublime might and intelligence, and based on the most delicate balances, both in their own bodies and also in nature. They can easily see that nature, consisting of rock, air and water and devoid of any intelligence, has now power to turn a blueprint into reality, and that these things can only be the work of a Supreme Creator.
So why is it that some highly intelligent academics with a considerable knowledge of the workings of nature espouse atheism?
Human nature is inclined to be proud of its own attributes and to regard itself as superior to everything else. As their accumulated knowledge grows, atheist academics begin regarding themselves as superior to other people, and totally lose sight of the fact they are servants created by God. In their pride, they deny the existence of a Creator to whom they are accountable for their behaviour, and refuse to worship Him. This attitude on the part of deniers is revealed as follows in the Qur’an: “…and they repudiated them wrongly and haughtily, in spite of their own certainty about them. See the final fate of the corrupters.” (Sura an-Naml, 14)
The impression given in daily Akşam, atheism is a noble conception stemming from high intelligence is a total fraud. Atheism is a superstitious belief predicated on abandonment of reason rather than its adoption. It is such an irrational idea that it requires one to blindly believe that functional proteins representing the basic building blocks of life can emerge by chance, whereas there is in fact a zero probability of even a single one doing so. For instance, a well-known Turkish Darwinist and biologist, Professor Ali Demirsoy, says that he prefers to believe in the chance appearance of the protein Cytochrome-c, despite its total impossibility:
"The probability of a cytochrome-c sequence forming is so low as to be effectively zero... Or else supernatural forces that we cannot describe played a role in its formation. Accepting this latter alternative is incompatible with the scientific objective. We therefore have to accept the former hypothesis."
Another statement on the same subject by the same biologist reads:
The probability of coming up with a specific amino acid sequence of cytochrome-c is as low as a monkey typing out a history of mankind without making a single mistake (assuming the monkey taps the keys at random.) i
Therefore, equating faith in God with low intelligence shows only how irrationally and illogically those who make such claims behave. Almighty God describes the position of such people in the Qur’an: “When they are told, ‘Have iman in the way that the people have iman,’ they say, ‘What! Are we to have iman in the way that fools have iman?’ No indeed! They are the fools, but they do not know it.” (Sura al-Baqara, 13)
Responses to the distortions in the Akşam report
1. The figures cited regarding the proportions of atheists among academics are intended to mislead
Akşam carried various totally misleading claims and figures based on Lynn’s study. For example, the number of atheists among academics is exaggerated, with the report suggesting that only 3.3% of British academics believe in God. The fact is that a study of 1,646 eminent academics conducted by the Rice University sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund in 2005 revealed that two-thirds of them believed in God. Another study, also conducted in 2005 by researchers from the University of Chicago, shows that 76% of doctors believe in God. Taking an average of these two studies and assuming that some 70% of academics believe in God, this figure is at least 20 times greater than the 3.3% figure given for British academics in daily Akşam. In short, Akşam has inexplicably chosen to give its readers narrow and misleading figures with the aim of covering up the decline confronting atheism.
2. Even world-famous atheists have stated, in the face of the facts of faith, that they believe in God
Perhaps the finest indication of the invalidity of the way that the proponents of atheism seek support for their philosophies on the basis of atheism among academics was a statement by the famous atheist philosopher Antony Flew that he now believed in God. Flew, a British university professor, became an atheist at the age of 15, and first made his name in the academic world with a paper he published in 1950. Over the following 54 years, he defended atheism in books, lessons and articles, at the universities of Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele and Reading where he taught and at many American and Canadian universities where he appeared as a visitor. In 2004, however, Flew abandoned his error and announced that he agreed that the universe had been created. He listed the scientific reasons underlying this change of belief in the following passages:
(Yet biologists" investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce [life], that intelligence must have been involved," ii It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism.)iii (I have been persuaded that it is simply out of the question that the first living matter evolved out of dead matter and then developed into an extraordinarily complicated creature,) iv
3. The ideas that academics have to be atheists is ludicrous. The founders of scientific disciplines were researchers who believed in God
The Akşam report gives the utterly false impression that when people begin taking an interest in science and become academics they reniunce belief in God and instead become atheists. The history of science clearly shows that the founders of scientific disciplines and methodology based on investigating nature believed in God. Some of these fields and individuals may be listed as follows:
Physics: Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin
Chemistry: Boyle, Dalton, Ramsay
Biology: Ray, Linneaus, Mendel, Pasteur, Virchow, Agassiz
Geology: Steno, Woodward, Brewster, Buckland, Cuvier
Astronomy: Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Herschel, Maunder
Mathematics: Pascal, Leibnitz, Euler
(For details see, The Qur’an Shows the Way to Science, by Harun Yahya, Araştırma Publishing)
4. The idea of an “intelligence gene” is an unscientific myth
The Akşam report also contains information to the effect that a gene known as SSADH is the “intelligence gene” and that those carrying it live longer lives. Considered in the light of the relationship constructed between faith and intelligence, these claims by Akşam result in the completely false conclusion that there is a gene that encourages people towards atheism and that this gene has been discovered by science. However, neither this nor any other gene is regarded as an “intelligence gene” in the scientific literature.
In their comments published in the New York Times, Rob Desalle, director of the American Museum of Natural History Molecular Biology Laboratory, and Michael Yudell, a researcher in the same lab, state:
Despite the guise of I.Q., a precise meaning of human intelligence remains inadequately understood and therefore impossible to correlate with a gene. v
Conclusion:
Atheism is collapsing, and attempts to mislead with lies and invented figures change nothing at all
Atheism is a blindly-held superstitious belief that denies the evident truth of the existence of a Creator. The report in daily Akşam was a final, desperate attempt from proponents of this philosophy, prepared in a climate of total panic. As shown above, Richard Lynn’s inverse proportional relationship between intelligence and faith conflicts with the facts of the history of science and the results of other sociological researchers. Due to the activities of Harun Yahya in particular, atheism and the theory of evolution have come to the end of the road in the world.
[i] Prof. Dr. Ali Demirsoy, Kalıtım ve Evrim, Meteksan Yayıncılık, Ankara, 1995, Yedinci Baskı, s. 61
[ii] Richard N. Ostling, "Lifelong atheist changes mind about divine creator", The Washington Times, http://washingtontimes.com/national/20041209-113212-2782r.htm
[iii] Antony Flew’ün Philosophy Now dergisinin Ağustos-Eylül sayısına mektubu; http://www.philosophynow.org/issue47/47flew.htm
[iv] Stuart Wavell and Will Iredale, "Sorry, says atheist-in-chief, I do believe in God after all," The Sunday Times, 12 Aralık 2004, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1400368,00.html
[v] http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE2D91739F93AA25756C0A96E958260
