You probably know the phrase “mind over matter.” It’s used in kind of a comic-book sense, oftentimes, but there’s a serious sense, too. It is the idea that Mind precedes matter. That a consciousness (the mind of God) preceded and created matter, and so all of matter is subject to its Maker, the immaterial God who is not distinct from matter, but transcends it.
The theory of macro-evolution as the explanation for development of all life hints at the opposite: matter over mind. From it one might conclude that matter existed first, and mind (the mind of man) is just an emergent property of man’s brain. The reason atheists hail Darwin as the Messiah of atheist materialism is that Darwin’s theory has matter developing from matter. Greater complexity, including the human mind, evolves from lesser complexity, in living things, according to the theory. Although Evolution doesn’t speak to the origin of life, nor the origin of matter, it “raises consciousness” according to atheists like Richard Dawkins, because at least with regard to biological development, it reverses the mind-over-matter paradigm.
There’s an interesting thing happening here. In the process of attempting to extinguish God, atheists resurrect Him.
The nature of God is somewhat elusive to us as mere humans, because He has attributes that we don’t. We understand those to be omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. He is all-knowing. He is everywhere at once. He is all-powerful. Atheists who are atheists because they think science demands it have essentially applied these same attributes to matter. In this way, they borrow the attributes of God, but deny the personhood of God.
Matter has omniscience in this way. Because matter is all there is, all that is known is known by purely material minds; and all that is knowable is knowable only to material minds. Matter is omnipresent, atheists necessarily hold, because matter is all there is. Matter occupies all of reality. Matter is omnipotent, atheists have to believe, because all of the power in the universe resides in material things.
As with so many things, it’s ultimately a battle of words. Logos. God is defined by these attributes. Atheists ascribe these attributes to matter. Therefore matter is God. This is the peculiar way in which awe can be sustained in the face of raw materialistic determinism.