Atheism Sits On Hot Air, Nothing Else

By ABRAHAM V. LLERA GOD is something man cannot see, touch, hear, feel, nor taste,
yet isnt it simply amazing that not a single nation on earth is without religion? Isnt it simply
amazing that every nation on earth has people who believe in some sort of divinity,
someone superior than them, someone who one day would call us to account for things we
have done on earth?

The Church teaches that God, our Creator and Lord, can be known with certainty, by the
natural light of reason, from created things. We can know the one true God through our
natural reason, and we are able to do this even in our fallen nature.

We can know God through his works, though created nature, and we can know him with
certainty. We can also know God from Scripture, from history, from Sacred Tradition, but
even someone who has not been in contact with the world such that he has never heard of
Scripture, nor history, nor even of Sacred Tradition can still know God through knowledge of
God, a knowledge that is innate in us.

Note, however, that what is innate in us is not the idea of God as such, but the ability to
know his existence easily and with certainty from his works. There are actually two sides to
this: we can know God by the spontaneous use of reason and by the scientific use of
reason.

An example of how we can know God by the spontaneous use of reason is the observation
about how not a single nation on earth is without religion. An example of how we can know
God through the scientific use of reason is by showing how everything in the universe is an
effect of a cause, a cause whom we call God.

In other words, the spontaneous use of reason allows us to know; the scientific use of
reason allows us to know why. The Church affirms that reason alone, meaning by itself
can prove that God exists by showing that a cause is necessary for the universe of beings.

This type of proof we call a posteriori because we go from effect to cause. But some may
already be asking: were it so evident, why do a lot of people reject the existence of God?
Well, because in the first place, Gods existence is not evident.

We do not see God, he is something who is NOT evident, in other words, something who is
not perceptible through our senses. While his existence is true and certain, his existence is
not evident, his existence has to be demonstrated, and this can be done through reason.

In other words, our knowledge of God is not direct, but indirect, through a reasoning
process. It does not help that a number of factors intervene. One person, for instance, might
have a father who, when the person was young, would beat him black and blue every day.
At least one study has shown that children having this horrendous childhood experience
often grow up rejecting God, a strong father figure.

Another may have absentee parents, and he grew up without a mom and dad, without the
very persons God designed to give instruction to the child by word and by example.

Still another may be the victim of sexual abuse from one parent while still a child.