Atheism and materialism have been around for a long time, at least since ancient Greece. There was always tension between science and the authority of the Catholic church, and religion in general. Atheism was sometimes a kind of defiance, a rebellion against dogmatic authoritarianism.
In the 19th century, Darwin's idea about the cause of evolution seemed to support atheism. Evolution was not a new idea, but Darwin's theory was new. He speculated that random variations occur, and the most successful of these variations are the most likely to survive and reproduce. Well how could that not be true? And does it actually explain evolution?
But somehow it seemed to be a breakthrough in scientific understanding.
In the 20th century DNA was discovered, and it seemed to validate Darwin's theory of how evolution may have happened.
Remember that evolution theory was around long before Darwin. What was new and different about Darwin's theory was that it said evolution could have happened entirely by chance, without any direction from any kind of supernatural forces or beings or gods.
The 20th century science of genetics supposedly verified Darwin's theory, and it made atheism seem plausible and scientific.
Then we had Richard Dawkins and the New Atheism.
And here we are now, with an increasing number of New Atheists, materialists, rationalists, naturalists, etc. In other words, denial of the supernatural, of spirit.
Ok, is there anything wrong with all that? Well yes, there is. Darwin's theory has not been verified scientifically. Actually, there is no evidence for it. And it is wildly improbable.
So why do so many educated people believe it? Misunderstandings, trickery, politics.
The scientific evidence is for evolution. Evolution is not debatable, because we have enough evidence for it. But how and why evolution happened is as much as mystery as ever.
Natural selection (Darwin's theory) is a fact. How could it not be? It says that individuals who are capable of surviving are more likely to survive. In other words, it says nothing. But it is a nothing that had not been said before.
Natural selection does explain certain things. But does it explain evolution? Lots of people say it does. But how do they know? They don't know, they just think they know.
The trickery is in pretending that evidence for evolution is evidence for Darwin's theory of evolution.
Intelligent Design theory says that evolution could not happen by chance. But ID has been called creationism and banned from science education.
One of the most important questions of our time -- Could life have evolved by chance? -- can't be asked or answered because it's all tangled up in misunderstandings and confusion.
