Author: John P. Koster, Jr.
Publisher: Wolgemuth & Hyatt Publishers, Inc
Originally Published: 1989
ISBN: 0-943497-33-7

The past two centuries have seen advancements in science that surpass everything achieved in all of man’s previous existence.  Unfortunately, some forms of “science” that are so celebrated today are really nothing of the sort.  In the media, on the campus, and in many other places, Christians who believe in God (and especially Christian’s who believe in Creation) are mocked and viewed as backwards, ignorant, and out of touch with modern science.  Many atheists claim to have objective science on their side, but do they really?  What is very interesting, and disturbing, is to look back at the origins of atheism, or more particularly what might be called Scientific Atheism.  This is the focus of John P. Koster, Jr.’s 1989 book The Atheist Syndrome.  Koster argues in his book that some of the founding fathers of scientific atheism, including Darwin, were not very scientific at all.  When viewed objectively, some of the most influential men that paved the way for modern atheism played fast and loose with science and philosophy, and their “findings” were more a result of their will than their objective studies.  Further, Koster notices some disturbing similarities between these men that led them to their positions – Koster terms the similarities “the Atheist Syndrome.”

As Koster begins his book, he spends a couple of chapters discussing the rise of scientific atheism and what it is.  He does a good job of showing it is definitely more of a religion than a science, and like other religions, it has its own prophets or founders.  The “big four” that Koster focuses on are Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud.  Koster sees in all these men similarities that he believes drove them towards a rejection of Christianity and God, and this is the process he terms the Atheist Syndrome.  The three-step process of the syndrome starts with a childhood where relationship with the father was particularly bad or non-existent. In the second step, there is a flight from home in various forms at an older age in which each man became his own man. Finally, phase three involves a gradually debilitating life plagued with various illnesses which Koster argues were psychosomatic.

Through the second main section of his book, Koster spends a chapter on each of the four main “prophets” of scientific Atheism.  Koster highlights the three-phase process in the life of each man.  He discusses their childhood and the circumstances, tragedies, or oddities that lead each man to have a poor or non-existent relationship with their father.  This is the basis for the Atheist Syndrome.  Koster argues that these men grew up to resent and hate their fathers, and ultimately projected that hatred towards their father’s religion and/or God.  This resentment became the driving force of their life.  While they might have claimed to be objective scientists and philosophers, Koster highlights how untrue that really was.  Koster explains the flight stage and growth of each man as they found their own identity and began their descent into atheism, and finally he describes the miserable conditions with which they all lived.  All of these men shared similar illnesses of frequent indigestion, migraines, digestion issues, and other problems that plagued them fairly severely, without any diagnosable reason.  Koster argues the illnesses were psychosomatic—more of a mental illness affecting the body than actual disease.  One by one, Koster briefly but powerfully tells the story of each man, their obsession with destroying God, and the twisted views and theories they concocted to achieve their goal.

Sadly, while their science and philosophy were poor, their ideas were gladly accepted by many because it taught what many wanted to hear—there was no God to whom mankind must answer..  Facts could be (and were) ignored in order to stick to the “science” invented by these men and several others.  Unfortunately,  these ideas were not merely philosophical tragedies or poor science that misled some people – the work of these men lead to horrific consequences, and the bloodiest century in human history.

In the third section of the book, Koster deals briefly with a few other notable atheists and agnostics that built upon the “big four” such as Robert Ingersoll and Clarence Darrow (the defense attorney in the Scopes Trial of 1925).  From there, Koster’s work focuses on the evil effect of scientific atheism, which was shown most fully in Adolf Hitler’s neo-Darwinism and Lenin and Stalin’s Soviet-style Marxist-Darwinism.  Koster shows the chilly truth that Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin were influenced by atheism and particularly the work of the “big four” and others that followed in their wake.  These leaders had also abandoned belief in God, and in scientific atheism they found support for their horrific policies and tyranny that left more than 100 million dead throughout the early twentieth century.  It should be noted that the big four (with Nietzsche as a possible exception) would not have approved of Nazi Germany or Lenin and Stalin’s Soviet Union, but none-the-less, their work had a profound impact on the development of both states.  Many people try to point to religious wars that have been fought through history as evidence against religion.  While many of those wars were tragic indeed, atheism led to the bloodiest century in man’s existence.

Koster’s final chapter is a call for people to recognize scientific atheism for what it is, and abandon it.  In a pointed yet powerful paragraph toward the end of his work, Koster says;

“We can see the events of Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia as a meaningless collection of atrocities which took place because Germans and Russians are terrible people, not like us at all.  Or we can realize that imposing the life-is-pathology theories of Huxley and Darwin, of clinical depression masquerading as science, played a critical role in the age of atrocities.  And we can take warning.  People have to learn to stop thinking of other people as machines and learn to think of them as men and women possessed of souls.  The truth seems to be, in fact, that the human soul really is more powerful than electrochemical functions of the brain.  If we think of ourselves as a littler lower than the angels (Psalm 8), we may become better than we ever dreamed possible.  And if we think of ourselves as brutes, we have the capacity to become worse than any animal.  That was the real lesson of Hitler and Stalin”

I found Koster’s book fascinating.  There may be points in which he speculates about certain aspects of the lives of the men he discusses, but by and large he seems to reach very logical conclusions based on historical evidence.  His portrayal of Darwin, Huxley, and others, is not one of hatred or spite, but an honest assessment of their lives and symptoms, including some of the tragedies they suffered that lead to their depression and anger.  I would recommend this book to anyone that is interested in learning about the “founding fathers” of evolution and atheism.  It is an eye-opening work, and should be a clear warning to any who might admire or follow the work of men like Darwin, Nietzsche, or Freud.  These men are not to be admired or followed – they are to be pitied, and their doctrines should be avoided and abandoned.

Nate Bibens / natebibens@gmail.com