Atheists doubt themselves

By Herbert Vego

YESTERDAY, I read an online news report addressed to us Filipinos: “Tonight, you can spot Saturn visible in the night sky, as it will be in the opposite direction of the Sun and up for most of the night. You may also be able to see the bright planet Venus and the star Regulus low in the sky after sunrise on Friday morning, September 5, 2025.”

Wondering how, I read further, “Look towards the east after sunset to find the waning crescent moon.”

By the time this column comes out, I must have already located it.

If you have not done so, this one will be easier to find: “Around 85% of the world’s population has a chance to see a “blood red” total lunar eclipse on September 7–8, 2025.”

In such a lunar eclipse, the Moon will pass through the Earth’s shadow for about one hour and 22 minutes on the nighttime side of the globe with clear skies, including Asia, Africa, Europe, and Australia.

Celestial events like that remind us of the Bible verse, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).”

I wonder why atheists and agnostics look the other way.

The so-called “learned atheists” view order in the universe as a product of the “big bang” theory — resulting from chance, akin to winning the lottery despite the odds. Simply explained, they believe that the universe as we know it started with a small singularity, then inflated over the next 13.8 billion years to the cosmos that we know today.

However, some of them admit that for human life to be possible from a big bang defies the laws of probability in innumerable trillions.

You must have seen the late English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, a quadriplegic agnostic, speak on TV: “The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”

But he could not illustrate how the “big bang” produced the first life.

We God believers can only reason out that all of the above scenarios are impossible — unless it was fixed by the omnipotent Someone behind the scenes.

Scientists who believe in God may have expected such fine-tuning, but atheists and agnostics are unable to explain the remarkable “coincidences.”

In his book The Symbiotic Universe, agnostic astronomer George Greenstein asked, “Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon the scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being?”

In another book, God and the Astronomers, agnostic astronomer Robert Jastrow postulated why some scientists are reluctant to accept a transcendent Creator: “Science is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the universe. When it is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, the scientist has lost control. He would be traumatized.”

Greenstein and Hawking cannot accept a God-made universe because, being speculative, it could not be verified in the realm of science – in other words, beyond the reach of either the microscope or the biggest telescope.

Although Hawking continued to explore purely scientific explanations for our origins till his death in 2018 at age 76, other scientists have acknowledged what appears to be overwhelming evidence for a Creator.

British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle wrote, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”

Though Hoyle was not a Biblical creationist or even a Christian, he eventually recognized the impossibility of Darwinian evolution before his death in 2001. He took to task the Darwinian establishment for ignoring the complex sources of information and information processing programs (like DNA) needed for the creation and continuation of life.

Albert Einstein wasn’t religious, but he called the genius behind the universe “an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”

Before he died of esophageal cancer at 62 years old in December 2011, British-American atheist Christopher Hitchens, admitted that “life couldn’t exist if things were different by just one degree or one hair.”

As he lay dying, according to his friend Steve Wasserman, “He asked for a pen and paper and tried to write on it.“

He gave up, uttering, “What’s the use?”