Why Today’s Atheism Requires a Leap of Faith

Not long ago, belief in God was dismissed as intellectually naïve—a relic of pre-scientific thinking. Disbelief, by contrast, was seen as the natural outcome of reason and evidence. Today, scientific progress is reshaping that landscape. Paradoxically, it is now the materialist worldview that demands a leap of faith.

For much of the 20th century, scientists tended to assume that the universe had always existed, that life could arise spontaneously from inert matter, and that the universe's finely balanced laws were brute facts requiring no further explanation. These assumptions supported a naturalistic view of reality, but more recent scientific breakthroughs challenge this premise.

First is the question of origins. In the past, the idea that the universe had a beginning was seen as a theological view rather than a scientific one. Today, it is standard cosmology. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity demonstrated that space, time, and matter form a unified fabric, which we refer to as "space-time." And evidence from thermodynamics and the Big Bang model strongly suggests that space-time itself had an origin. As physicist Alexander Vilenkin once put it, "All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning."

This insight carries weighty implications. If time, space, and matter all came into being, whatever caused them cannot itself be temporal, spatial, or material. That is not a gap in scientific knowledge; it is a boundary of science itself. The question becomes metaphysical by necessity.

Second is the problem of fine-tuning. Our universe operates according to physical constants—ratios and forces whose values appear delicately set. Change them even slightly, and life as we know it becomes impossible. The ratio between the strong nuclear force and gravity, for instance, must be precisely 10³⁹ to allow stars like the Sun to burn steadily over billions of years (for scale, there are approximately 10⁸⁰ atoms in the known universe). Without that balance, there is a sterile cosmos—no chemistry, no biology, no observers.

The fine-tuning extends across physics, chemistry, and even the initial conditions of the Big Bang. It raises questions that science cannot easily answer: How did this precise configuration of everything emerge, and not another? Could this exact outcome have randomly occurred, or was there a guiding force with a thumb on the scale?

Third is the enigma of life itself. Despite decades of research, the origin of life from non-living matter—abiogenesis—remains a profound mystery. As our understanding of DNA, protein synthesis, and cellular mechanisms deepens, the problem grows more complex. Life is not just chemistry; it is information. It relies on coded instructions, error correction, and the capacity for self-replication—none of which arise naturally from molecular interactions alone.

So how do some materialists respond? Often, by positing a multiverse: a gigantic number of universes with randomly assigned laws, such that one like ours was bound to occur eventually. The multiverse theory is an elegant idea, but it comes at a cost. There is no empirical evidence for other universes. No observations. No experiments. The multiverse is not a scientific theory in the traditional sense; it is a philosophical maneuver meant to preserve naturalism in the face of improbability. It assumes that there are many more sterile universes (10⁵⁰⁰) than there are particles in our universe (10⁸⁰). It also assumes that the natural process of universe creation is well regulated. But by whom? That is why, at the end of his life, Stephen Hawking began to doubt this hypothesis.

To insist that the universe created itself, or that an enormous number of unseen worlds exist simply to account for this one, is not scientific conservatism. It is metaphysical speculation, which requires its own kind of belief: a willingness to accept enormous explanatory leaps to avoid a conclusion that points beyond material causes.

None of this proves the existence of God, nor does it make atheism irrational. But it does challenge the notion that belief in a creator is unscientific, while disbelief is simply a matter of following the facts. As philosopher Thomas Nagel once admitted, “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.”

In the 20th century, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud argued that religion was a psychological crutch or cultural opiate. As science advanced, they believed, faith would wither. Yet the opposite may be happening, especially among Gen Z. A new YouGov and Bible Society survey shows that nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds in England and Wales now believe in “some higher power”—up sharply from 29 percent in 2018. Science is moving away from materialism and opening new metaphysical questions that are not easily answered by science alone.

The intellectual terrain has shifted. What was once seen as skepticism has evolved into a kind of faith in its own right: faith in unseen universes, in self-creating laws, in the spontaneous emergence of order from chaos. Perhaps the real question today is not why so many still believe in God, but why so many now disbelieve in spite of the evidence—not because of it.

Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies are the authors of the forthcoming book God: The Science, the Evidence.