Thus you shall say to them: “The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.” (Jeremiah 10:11)

Ideas can be false gods. A false god is anything that we worship in place of the True God of the Bible. If we worship something, we are declaring it to be worthy of praise.

Some atheists have referred to quasi-religious feelings as they consider the universe. Here, Richard Dawkins “waxes poetic”:

Awe and wonder are things which religious people undoubtedly feel, but I get a bit irritated when they imply they have a monopoly of them. I think I can feel wonder at least as well as the next man, and I am stimulated to do so by contemplating the huge size and age of the universe, the immense range of sizes of things, from fundamental particles to galaxies, and the awe-inspiring consequences of evolution, starting from simple beginnings and working up to prodigies of complexity like ourselves.

That, I think, ought to inspire in people a kind of poetic sense of wonder — it does in me, and I try to convey it to other people. I find the alternative, religious vision smaller, less imaginative and less exciting by comparison.1

However, Dawkins misses the point about awe and wonder. The object of this awe and wonder is the creation itself. So this type of awe falls foul of what the apostle Paul was talking about in Romans 1, when he said:

[They] exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator. (Romans 1:25)

Throughout history we have seen the temporary nature of such objects of worship. He refers to the “awe-inspiring consequences of evolution,” but these are consequences of a process that never happened and is scientifically impossible. Therefore, he, and other atheists like him, have ascribed a sense of awe and wonder to an unworkable and non-existent idea. Evolution, to them, has become a god that they think made the world.

God said to Jeremiah that “The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.” Our God is greater than the pretend god of evolution, and He is truly worthy of our praise.

  1. Dawkins, R., interviewed in Third Way Magazine, April 1995 Vol. 18 #3, < http://www.damaris.org/content/content.php?type=5&id=102 >