The Atomists

There is nothing wrong with scientific research and equipment, and it is in fact a great good.

It looks like the atomists deduced the basics of one of the great discoveries of the nuclear age without access to any modern scientific equipment and research.

With little more than observation and reasoning, can the human mind deduce what people thought only complex scientific equipment could uncover? The Greek atomists of ancient times believed that there were small, indestructible particles from which visible material was made. These particles sound like the atoms we know about today. Although we now know atoms can be broken, they are still remarkably strong. It looks like the atomists deduced the basics of one of the great discoveries of the nuclear age without access to any modern scientific equipment and research.

There is nothing wrong with scientific research and equipment, and it is in fact a great good. The point of that introduction was to invite you to consider what else the human mind can deduce through observation and reason. Socrates, another ancient Greek thinker, believed that there had to be a higher power. Essentially, he reasoned how it does not make sense for anything to happen without a cause. Other past thinkers made similar arguments. If you see a ball rolling, you do not assume it always rolled on its own. Likewise, you would not assume that all you now see never had a source that put it in motion.

This way of thinking makes sense in terms of modern physics, and it can also be related to chemical reactions. The human mind deduced the existence of the atom long before modern science, however. Some of the great minds also reasoned that God exists before modern scientific research, and science can now point to that reality in some ways as well.

This relationship between past thinkers and modern science could interest the public in discussing God in the public square once again.