God Arises
Challenge of Modern Knowledge
~ 10 ~
Modern atheistic 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.
They feel that, in the light of advanced learning,
man is now in a position to make a re-appraisal of
traditional ways of thinking 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.
According to Auguste Comte, a well-known French
philosopher of the first half of the nineteenth
century, the history of man’s intellectual
development can be divided into three stages—
the
