In the modern day, with our luxurious technology and relatively good education, most people would recoil at the thought of wiping their bottom with a used sponge. This, however, was common practice in ancient Rome. Rather than toilet paper, public toilets would contain a utensil called the "xylospongium", which was literally a sponge on a stick. After use, this was cleaned by washing it in a bucket of water mixed with salt or vinegar, ready to be used by the next person. As can be expected, this practice contributed to the spread of diseases like cholera or typhoid.
But did the Romans know this? In truth, it's unlikely. This was just a normal part of life for them. In fact, even modern societies have similar problems. Lifewater International, for example, is a charity that seeks to provide water infrastructure to impoverished communities. One of their biggest challenges is education. Whereas we, in the West, tend to receive free education, which includes germ theory as standard, less developed countries do not provide this service. Therefore, their citizens do not always understand that their water sources aren't safe. They're quite happy to drink from the same filthy rivers they have drunk from for generations, and they do not see the link between this and the various diseases they face.
In our hubris, we often believe we are somehow better than everyone else, be it everyone who came before us, or even those who live contemporaneously in the so-called "third world". We all live by the same lie: "We got it right this time".
But we're not the only ones who think, or thought, this way. In truth, everyone, no matter who we are, or where or when we live, holds this one thing in common. We think so much of ourselves that we become blind to our errors. Errors which our descendants will one day come to abhor, and our peers around the world already may. We all have our sponges on sticks. Cultural norms that we are comfortable using, yet ultimately, they are harmful.
Now of course, up until now, I have not mentioned religion. Everything I have spoken of thus far has been a matter of science. We can prove that our hygiene practices are objectively better than those of cultures who do not benefit from our modern research. This comes from decades, even centuries, of trial and error. Our ancestors learned, and they passed on what they learned to us. As Isaac Newton once quipped, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." (1).
In much the same way, we stand on the shoulders of giants like Isaac Newton, and our descendants will likewise stand on our shoulders. But this process is a double edged sword. Just as we pass down good things, we also pass down, and even invent bad things. Our metaphorical xylospongiums will always be with us.
Atheists like to suggest religion, at least as they define it, is one of those things. It's common in our societies, passed down throughout the ages, yet they would contend it is actually harmful to us. They even like to brag that atheism tends to be more popular in regions where education is more accessible, and higher quality, which they will claim is evidence that religion is a stupid thing for stupid people.
But anyone who has ever taken a critical thinking class will know that, say it with me now, "correlation does not equal causation". You've probably heard this at least once in your life. In fact, while I cannot speak to the quality of every school in the Western world, I'd be willing to bet that at least half of schools will teach this simple fact, and I would even lobby for it to be compulsory.
To illustrate this, consider the shocking gender gap in nobel prize winners between 1901 and 2020. Of these winners, 876 were male, whereas only 58 were female (2). That's a ratio of 15:1!
Now, as detrimental as I believe our culture is to women right now, we are still civilised enough to recognise explicitly chauvinistic statements are morally unacceptable, and intellectually bankrupt. It is asinine to deny the difference between men and women, but equally absurd to suggest men are superior. Yet look at those numbers! Men have won 15 times as many Nobel Prizes as women! Does this make men superior to women, or is there more likely some other explanation? Or perhaps there are many.
In much the same way, there are a great many reasons atheism tends to thrive more in developed countries, starting with the simple fact it is literally allowed to. In a civilised nation, atheism is more than likely legal. But many countries have blasphemy laws. There are countries in which atheism is punishable by death. By contrast, there is no legal penalty for atheism in the UK, or Germany, or the U.S.. Thus, atheism is allowed to grow.
But here's the ironic part. This is a right that was bought for them by the blood, sweat, and tears, of the Theists they mock and scold! Now, I'm not going to make the case for every single country. This would be impractical and time consuming. But I can save this time by citing the most explicit example: The United States of America.
As much as atheists protest this fact, they have no reasonable grounds by which to deny the Theistic foundations of this particular world superpower. Famously, the U.S. Declaration contains these words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." (Emphasis added). (3)
And so on and so forth. This declaration appeals to God three times. The first time, it speaks of "...the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them...". The second time, as shown above, it speaks of the self-evident fact that our Creator has made us all equal, and given us certain inalienable rights. The third time, the founders appeal to "...the Supreme Judge of the world..." to support them in their bid for independence (which, evidently, He did).
Clearly this is a religious document. In fact, whereas atheists opposed to this blatant fact of history will point out that some of the Founding Fathers were actually Deists, Deism, by nature, presents God as aloof - present by necessity as Creator, but certainly not "Supreme Judge of the world", nor even remotely bothered with creating us as equals, nor endowing us with inalienable rights. Thus, it seems clear that the Christian beliefs among the Founding Fathers won out.
The result of this is freedom of, not "freedom from", religion. As long as the Constitution of the United States is properly applied, all citizens of the U.S. will be permitted by law to be atheists. Now of course, as those who enforce the Constitution are as human as those who wrote it, it is not always properly applied. This, however, very rarely hinders atheists, and indeed tends to be quite strongly in their favor.
This is because atheists are often expert manipulators. To begin with, they have taken advantage of the appearance, yet impossibility, of true neutrality. True neutrality is unfortunately excluded by the logical law of excluded middle: Either a statement is true, or its negation is true. Properly applied, this means any interaction between two humans with conflicting beliefs will result in one of those humans prevailing.
In a previous article, I wrote about the example of a diner that offered a discount for gratitude. After a receipt from the diner went viral for giving a 15% discount for "praying in public", the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a notorious group of petulant bullies, took the diner to court and won. The charge: "Discrimination".
So, on the one hand, we have an apparently religious business owner (who uses the term "chakra", which is a notably Hindu/Buddhist thing, so we're not even talking about a Christian here) who sees fit to offer discounts for public gratitude. This, by the way, is easily accessible to atheists. Mary Hugard, the aforementioned business owner, notes that this is a gift she likes to offer to those who so much as breathe in a grateful way. So, Mary wants to practice her faith, her way, in her business. On the other hand, we have a group of hate-filled individuals who frequently engage in frivolous lawfare. By playing the neutrality game, atheists appear to be the wounded party, which allows them to wound the innocent.
The same applies with the Sweet Cakes scandal in Oregon. It is wholly unrealistic, not to mention morally reprehensible, to expect a Christian business to cater to a gay "wedding". Yet, this is exactly what happened to a small family bakery, and because they refused, and they were unfortunate enough to face a corrupt activist judge, their First Amendment rights were violated, and they ultimately lost the business they had worked so hard to create.
You see, then, that true neutrality is impossible. But giving the appearance thereof creates a loophole that can be easily exploited. Where a Christian following the will of God can be framed as the imposition of religion upon an atheist, the atheist can cry foul, because they can pretend their views are more objective, and, most importantly, not religious.
But it goes further than simply "give me special treatment, or I'll get my gang together and we'll bankrupt you". By framing their views as not religious, they can even force their religious views where religious views would not normally be allowed. Most notably, the public school system.
While it should be noted that not all atheists believe in Evolution, Evolution is certainly an atheistic religion. And it is, undeniably, a religion. Ironically, one of those who admit this is Michael Ruse, whose arguments were instrumental in the case McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education 1982. The conclusion of this trial was that the teaching of Creation science is a violation of the First Amendment. A later case, Edwards v. Aguillard, was fought in the Supreme Court, establishing this across the entire United States of America.
In spite of his claims in the courtroom, Ruse later admitted "Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint—and Mr Gish is but one of many to make it—the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today." (4).
Evolution is a religion, as is admitted by Michael Ruse, and a few Evolutionists besides him. Yet, it has been prominent in public school classrooms for decades. Indeed, over time, our culture has become saturated in it, so much so that it has even infiltrated the one place where it should be least welcome: The Church of the Living God.
Evolution is science's sponge on a stick. For decades, it has been a tradition handed down, with only a few scientists wise enough to avoid it. Although there are many scientists who accept Creationism, many of them accept it without critical thought. Indeed, fallacious though it is, this is a chief argument for many Evolutionary apologists! But I can assure you, these are beliefs they have inherited, not tested. Evolution, even if it could happen, could never be observed within the short time since human beings invented it. There are no scientific experiments by which Evolution could be verified, nor indeed could it be falsified. Rather, when it is confounded by evidence, Evolution merely evolves. That it happened is never open for questioning, only how.
The greatest irony of all this? Evolutionists aren't just standing on the shoulders of giants. They are standing on the shoulders of God. The very God they deny, preferring to believe we are somehow descended from apes, is the ultimate foundation for the science they swear allegiance to. In other words, while they brag about the coincidence that atheism is most prosperous in educated nations, it is no coincidence at all that those educated nations were historically influenced by Christianity.
And we see this going the other way, too. As atheism grows, scientific literacy shrinks. Or I suppose I should really say it fluctuates. That's not to say that atheists, digging in the mines Christians have dug, cannot bring up vast amounts of gold ore. See, God's word clearly tells us that God "...makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." (Matthew 5:45). It's a part of His love for, and grace upon, all mankind. Thus, the science that works for His people will work for His enemies.
But just as good science leads to good conclusions, bad science leads to bad ones. Thus, if you erroneously assume there is no God, and man is the end result of billions of years of Evolution following a magical explosion, you're going to draw some very dodgy conclusions. Conclusions like the caucasian is "...the highest type of all...", and is "...represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America" (5). This might lead one to conclude that "At some future period the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla." (6).
Grotesque beliefs, such as these, have lead to grotesque atrocities, many of which were committed within the last 100 years. Time would fail me to name them all! Not that I haven't tried, of course. I have noted, for example, the tragic case of Ota Benga, a Congolese man who survived the slaughter of his tribe, only to be displayed in the Bronx Zoological Gardens as a primitive human ancestor. I have written about the Bodysnatch, during which Australian aboriginals were slaughtered in an attempt to "gather specimens", before the practice was eventually outlawed. Perhaps most tragic is the practice of abortion, a crime against humanity which, by design, disproportionately targets black people.
But with the exception of abortion, most of this has been left to perish, surviving only in the history books. We have since proven, beyond all reasonable dispute, that one's ethnic origins in no way dictates one's ranking on a social hierarchy. Evolutionists have mostly done away with this dark element of their religion.
But as atheist comedian Bill Maher notes, this generation is certainly not the smartest. In his words, "You know why advertisers in this country love the 18 to 34 demographic? Because it’s the most gullible. Yeah. A third of people under 35 say they’re in favor of abolishing the police. Not defunding. But doing away with a police force altogether. Which is less of a policy position and more of a leg tattoo. Thirty-six percent of Millennials think it might be a good idea to try Communism. But much of the world did try Communism. I know Millennials think that doesn’t count because they weren’t alive when it happened. But it did happen. And there are people around who remember it. Pining for Communism is like pining for Betamax or MySpace. So when you say, ‘You’re old, you don’t get it,’ get what? Abolish the police and the border patrol and capitalism and cancel Lincoln? No, I get it. Problem isn’t that I don’t get what you’re saying, or that I’m old. The problem is that your ideas are stupid. If you say, ‘Let’s eat in the bathroom and s**t in the kitchen,’ yeah, that’s a new idea. But I wouldn’t call it interior design. You think someone 80 is hopeless because they can’t use an iPhone? Maybe the one who’s hopeless is the one who can’t stop using it. You think I’m out of it because I’m not on Twitch? Well, maybe I get Twitch, but I just think people watching other people play video games is a waste of f***ing time. Twenty percent of Gen Z agree with the statement, ‘Society would be better off if all property was owned by the public and managed by the government. And another 29 percent don’t know if that’s a good idea. Here’s who does know: Anyone who wasn’t born yesterday." (7).
The irony? Maher is, himself, one of the atheists who brags that as society becomes more educated, it becomes more atheistic! "The unaffiliated share of the population consisting of people who describe their religious identity is atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular, has risen from 5% in 1972 to 15% in 2005 to 32% today. You're welcome." (Emphasis mine). (8). Yet, he goes on to say "Millennials are the first generation that are less than a majority Christian. Their idea of Hell is a coffee shop with no WiFi".
Did you notice that? On the one hand, Maher notes and laments that as a society, we're getting dumber over time. On the other hand, he celebrates (and even appears to take credit for the fact) that we're becoming more atheistic. Even the ideas he points to, saying "The problem is that your ideas are stupid", and "Anyone who wasn’t born yesterday" knows it, are inherently contrary to Christian theology, whereas they fit quite nicely within atheism.
Furthermore, they are sustained by the same mindset. See, atheists may well give lip service to evidence, but the truth is, more often than not, nothing will convince them. But of course, I'm a biased Christian. I'm not even saying that sarcastically, as if an atheist would say that about me, but I won't admit it myself. I am a biased Christian. So of course I'm going to accuse atheists of merely giving lip service to evidence, but nothing would change their mind. But perhaps it will sound significantly more believable coming from one of the world's most famous atheists: Richard Dawkins. In an interview with Peter Boghossian, Boghossian asked Dawkins what it would take for Dawkins to believe in God? Dawkins replied "I use to say, it would be very simple, it would be the second coming of Jesus or a great big, deep, booming, base, Paul Robson voice saying: “I am God and I created.” But I was persuaded mostly by actually Steve Zaro (...) he more or less persuaded me that, even if there was this booming voice and the second coming in clouds of glory, the more probable explanation is that it is a hallucination or a conjuring trick by David Copperfield or something. I mean he made the point that a supernatural explanation for anything is incoherent, that it just doesn’t add up to an explanation for anything."
He continued for a bit, and was eventually asked the question a second time: "So, that couldn’t be enough, so what would persuade you?" Dawkins' response? Exactly what I just said! "Well, I am starting to think nothing would, which in a way goes against the grain because I’ve always paid lip service to the view that a scientist should change his mind when evidence is forthcoming. The trouble is I can’t think what that evidence would look like." (Emphasis mine).
Richard Dawkins, famous atheist apologist, author of the popular book "The God Delusion", admits that he merely pays lip service to the view that a scientist should change his mind when evidence is forthcoming. In his own mind, nothing, not the Second Coming, not a big booming voice, not even the stars being rearranged so they spell out a message in the sky saying "Richard Dawkins, I am God, worship me", would bring this intellectual giant any closer to the conclusion that there is a God!
And he's not alone. Peter Atkins, similarly, admits "I have asked myself that question previously, y'know, is there any evidence that would flip me into the belief camp, and I simply can't think of any. I think if I tell myself that if I agreed with some evidence then it shows that I've simply gone mad. It's a serious question, but I don't think there can be any evidence." (9). Even if Peter Atkins could go back in time and see the resurrection, he admits in this same debate that he would explain it away as a hallucination!
Now, I'm going to lay my own cards on the table here: I also don't believe anything could convince me there is no God. This, however, is because I am an intellectually convinced Molinist. A part of Molinism is the Perseverence of the Saints, a doctrine in which the Holy Spirit preserves the faith of a true believer, and thus a true believer can never truly and permanently apostatise. But if there is no God, that means He isn't actually holding me fast in the faith, and therefore my faith is 100% intellectual. Therefore, I could be as easily convinced to become an atheist as I am currently convinced by Molinism and Christianity.
If you're an atheist, and you're truly committed to evidence, that should be your claim, too, though obviously reversed. But I believe Dawkins, Atkins, and many like them, have merely admitted under pressure what most atheists feel in their heart: No evidence can convince them. Because it was never about the evidence.
And if they can do this with God, why would we assume they won't do it with other things? All the evidence shows we need a police force, but they don't care about evidence, so why wouldn't they want to abolish the police? All the evidence shows that Communism is bad for society, but if they don't care about the evidence, why wouldn't they want to give it another try? The evidence indisputably points to a natural binary gender system, without which the human race could not continue for even one more generation, but lump biology, we want to let men break the jaws of their female UFC counterparts, all because we want to appear "tolerant", and you're a bigot if you think that's wrong. It's madness, but at least God's not involved...
The spongey stick has met society's butthole, and rather than removing the poo with which we are covered and leaving us fresh as a daisy, it has brought us a disease that we really need medical help with.
But thank God for His great physician! Because in spite of the stubborn rejection of the evidence that absolutely should convince a reasonable mind, it turns out there is a God! Furthermore, we have earned His wrath, yet He did send His Son, and His Son did die and rise again, and He will grant eternal life to everyone who believes in Him! And because of my spongey stick analogy, I finally have a decent comeback to the snivelling little atheist trolls who joke about the Bible being good toilet paper, because in that sense, it absolutely is! The Bible is better toilet paper than atheism! Why? Because atheism is the sponge on the stick. It is the communal norm that seems clean to our society, but just as we look back on the Romans and see the problem with their literal sponge on a stick, those who are truly committed to the evidence will inevitably find that atheism, especially with its creation myth of Evolution, is filthy.
References
1. Newton, Isaac, quoted by Turnbull, H. W. - The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, Volume 1: 1661–1675, 1959
2. Ritcher, Felix - The Nobel Prize Gender Gap, Statista, October 13, 2020 (link)
3. The Declaration of Independence, Congress, July 4th 1776, as found on archives.gov (link)
4. Ruse, Michael - How evolution became a religion: creationists correct? National Post, May 13th 2000
5. Hunter, George - A Civic Biology, 1914
6. Darwin, Charles - The Descent of Man, 1871
7. Maher, Bill - Real Time, HBO, April 23rd 2021 (link)
8. Maher, Bill - Real Time, HBO, April 1st 2023 (link)
9. Atkins, Peter - Lennox vs. Atkins, "Can Science Explain Everything?", Southampton University, January 31st 2019 (link)