Gaslighting Atheists

The Darwinian Ploy to Obscure Obvious Truths

We’ve all seen videos of amazing robots that walk, jump, pick up objects, avoid obstacles, keep their balance when hit, right themselves when they fall, and even engage in conversation. These incredible machines seem to think and make rational choices, but in reality, they have no options in their behavior. They merely do as their programs direct and make automatic adjustments to their movements and actions in response to built-in sensors that continually monitor their environments.

Denying Free Will

According to Richard Dawkins, robots are not the only automatons on planet Earth. He asserts that the above description of how robotic machines operate applies equally well to humans: “We, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes.” He claims we have no power of choice. Every action is dictated by the highly sophisticated computer we call a brain. The late physicist Stephen Hawking concurred, saying, “Free will is just an illusion.”

The name of this philosophy which denies free will is determinism. Its followers claim that all our actions are pre-determined, dictated by previous actions, external stimuli, and mental conditioning. Determinists believe we have no capacity for choice. Everything we do is as inevitable as the trajectory of a billiard ball struck by a cue.

Despite the claims of determinism, when we make a decision, whether it involves selecting a tie, a car, a career, or a mate, we feel that we are choosing freely from alternatives that we could just as freely reject. Often, we agonize over our choices and vacillate between them before finally settling on one. This assumption that we have free will is infused into us. Hawking admits that we all share this feeling and explains why: it’s because nature hid from us the awareness that we are automatons and gave us instead the illusion of choice. This illusion is necessary, he says, because to survive we must act as if we have free will, even though we don’t. Hawking admitted that “even people who claim everything is predetermined and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road…. one has to adopt the effective theory that one has free will and that one is responsible for one’s actions.”

Hawking understood that to adopt determinism openly would destroy society. Determinism undermines order and justice by eroding responsibility for antisocial or destructive behavior. We cannot justly punish a murderer if he’s merely a robotic machine that cannot help doing whatever it does. What Hawking and Dawkins do not explain is how evolution, which they see as the blind, undirected force that created us, managed to plant into humans an illusion necessary for survival even though it contradicts their deterministic theory of reality. It seems clear that Dawkins, Hawking, and their Darwinian colleagues are attempting to gaslight us.

The term “gaslighting” comes from the 1944 film Gaslight, a story set in the Edwardian era of England in which an abusive, avaricious husband distorts reality in an attempt to force his wife to question her own judgment and intuition. A recurring phenomenon in the film is the flickering of the house’s gaslights, which he uses to convince her that she is imagining things that are not really happening in an attempt to gain control over her mind.

Determinist Darwinians are gaslighting us by saying, in effect, “You must ignore what seems blatantly obvious—that in every decision you make you seem to be exercising free will. The facts are the opposite of what they appear to be. You do not have free will; your every decision is dictated by internal conditioning and external stimuli over which you have no control.” We are expected to trust them in this matter, suspend our own judgment, and believe that what they are telling us is true, as they have appointed themselves as authorities on this subject.

Denying Design

Determinism is not the only example of Darwinian gaslighting. Dawkins, a staunch and vocal atheist, admits that everything in the universe strongly appears to have been designed. But because he believes that no grand designer exists, he asserts that this appearance of design is another illusion. He tells us that all the diverse elements in our universe came into being and evolved blindly into their present forms via natural processes. This claim requires that we deny several scientific truths long affirmed by evidence and reason.

For example, despite the scientifically and historically demonstrable fact that life does not emerge from nonliving matter, Darwinians assert that it did. They tell us that, without plan or purpose, a highly complex and intricate cell capable of bearing life somehow formed itself through random processes, perhaps in a primeval pool where it was then shocked into life by a stray electrical current.

They also tell us that, despite the fact that chaos cannot produce order, it did. They explain that a sudden expansion of an incredibly dense pinpoint of primeval matter scattered atoms throughout space, where, without plan or direction, they ordered themselves into a highly structured and finely tuned universe.

Though logic says that nonrational matter cannot produce reason, the Darwinians tell us that it did, that man’s reasoning mind emerged spontaneously from insentient matter. Darwinian gaslighting offers a universe built on logical impossibilities that defy both reason and basic tenets of science. Yet they deride Christians who believe the universe was created by a supernatural God—a belief they label as medieval, irrational, anti-scientific, and rooted in blind faith.

Engaging with Reality

Since the universe appears to be designed and science cannot support any rational alternative, it is highly likely that the appearance of design reflects reality. The universe and everything within it, from the precise order of planetary movement down to the code-filled DNA molecule, attest to the existence of information, and the origin of information requires a mind. Since we appear to have free will—and even Darwinian atheists admit that we must act as if we do—isn’t it highly likely that free will is also a reality? As the old syllogism says, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, flies like a duck, and swims like a duck, it’s likely that it really is a duck. We must not let the gaslighting Darwinians deceive us with their quacked-up claims that free will and our intuition of design are illusions.

According to the book of Genesis, our universe was designed by an omnipotent, supernatural designer, and free will is a vital and defining attribute of humanity that gives us the power to choose our destiny. The sense of freedom we experience each time we make a decision exposes determinism as a lie at war with reality. It is imperative that we use our free will for its intended purpose—to choose the right side in this great cosmic war that involves us all, whether we realize it or not.