As you will
be aware from yesterday’s blog post I unwisely tried to engage with some New
Atheist on Twitter and found I could not do so effectively because of the 140
character limit; which allowed for the atheists to make pith and shallow
remarks but left no space for a detailed and considered reflection.
I see in
this blog today a chance to address some of the main criticisms the New Atheists have of
God and the Christian faith, both in the hope that it will give them something
to think about and to demonstrate that there is intellectual rigour in the
Christian faith. I also hope that it may
help my sisters and brothers in Christ in their discussions with atheists.
So, who are
these New Atheists. The key figures in
the new atheism are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett, Victor J.
Stenger and the late Christopher Hitchens.
They and those who have been convinced by their writings are the New Atheists. Unlike the traditional atheists who were content
with people of faith continuing to believe in God; the New Atheists are
actively trying to promote their belief that there is no God with an
evangelical zeal that puts some Christian believers to shame. Ian S. Markham calls them ‘fundamentalist atheists’,
arguing that they share with Christian fundamentalists ‘the equally clear
assertion of uncompromising truth’ and that they also share ‘an unambiguous
assertion of a worldview in which the authors are entirely confident that they
are right.’
The central
tenet of atheism is the conviction that there is no God. The existence of God cannot be proven. Theologians like Thomas Aquinas advanced
various ‘proofs’ for the existence of God.
In The God Delusion Dawkins
provides good arguments against Aquinas’ proofs
and, in fact, those arguments failed in the seventeenth century.
A summing up
of the New Atheist position would be that there is no scientific proof for the
existence of God and that ‘God almost certainly does not exist.’
Alister
McGrath explains the atheist understanding of science as ‘the only reliable
tool that we possess to understand the world.
It has no limits. We may not know
something now – but we will in the future.
It is just a matter of time.’ (The Dawkins Delusion) In another work McGrath points out that there
are limitations to science, writing:
‘A theory
can be plausible enough to gain our trust, even though some of its predictions
and promises lie in the future. In
short: it is about faith – a point long appreciated by Polanyi and other
philosophers of science. So when Dawkins
speaks of “proof”, he actually means something rather weaker, such as “good
reasons for believing that something is right,” whilst realising that it cannot
actually be proved at present.’ (The Twilight of Atheism)
Christians
are not rejecting science. We are, in
fact, being more faithful to the concept of science and its inbuilt limitations
than some New Atheists. In line with
this we can legitimately point out that it is the province of science to
explain how things work, whereas it is the province of theology to explain why
things work; in others words science can tell us what the laws of physics are
and theology can offer an explanation as to why there are laws of physics to
discover.
New Atheists
tend to have a very one-sided and uninformed understanding of God as presented
in the Bible. Dawkins has described what
he calls ‘the God of the Old Testament’ as ‘arguably the most unpleasant
character in all fiction; jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving
control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic,
homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential,
megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.’ Dawkins goes on to describe Jesus as God’s
‘insipidly opposite Christian face, “gentle Jesus meek and mild”’ (The God
Delusion) Christians will immediately
recognise both of these as gross distortions of the God we worship.
Dawkins
himself admits that his portrayal of Jesus ‘owes more to his Victorian
followers than the man himself.’ Christians
will readily acknowledge that there are problematical passages in the Old
Testament that appear to portray the God Dawkins describes; these passages are
sometime difficult for us too; and, of course, some passages are open to
misinterpretation.
An example
of one passage Dawkins misunderstands would be Genesis 22:1-19 where Abraham is
commanded by God to sacrifice his only son Isaac. At the last minute God prevents the death of
Isaac and a goat is provided for sacrifice.
Dawkins calls this a ‘disgraceful story’ and ‘an example simultaneously
of child abuse, bullying in two asymmetrical power relationships.’ What he fails to understand is that this
story is included in the scriptures to demonstrate that God does not require
the child sacrifices common in the ancient Middle East; the exact opposite of
Dawkins’ interpretation.
One of the
central planks of New Atheism’s opposition to faith is the evil that has
apparently been perpetrated throughout history in the name of faith. In his preface to The God Delusion Dawkins writes:
‘Imagine,
with John Lennon, a world with no religion.
Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no
witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian
wars, no Serb/Croat Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as
“Christ-killers”, no Northern Ireland “troubles”, no “honour killings”, no
shiny suited bouffant-haired evangelists fleecing gullible people of their
money.’
Of course,
not all these are references to Christianity, but some are. As a Christians I humbly apologise for the
corporate sin committed in the name of the church.
I also acknowledge
the hurt caused to New Atheists by our sometimes antagonistic and hate filled
engagement with them. Richard Dawkins
has cited examples of hate filled comments he has received in correspondence
from ‘Christians’ that are too disgusting for me to print here. Sam Harris has had his share of hate letters
from Christians. In his introduction to Letter to a Christian Nation he wrote,
‘The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ’s love are
deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism. While we may want to ascribe this to human
nature, it is clear that such hatred draws considerable support from the Bible. How do I know this? The most disturbed of my correspondents
always cite chapter and verse.’ Not only
are these Christians discrediting themselves; they are, by association,
discrediting the church and the scriptures they would claim to hold dear.
Brothers and
sisters, Jesus told us to love our opponents.
We provide a poor witness when we show hate instead and we are failing
to honour our Lord!
The New
Atheists like to claim the support of science for the belief (and it is a
belief, not a fact) that God exists. Richard
Dawkins has written that ‘Great scientists of our time who sound religious
usually turn out not to be so when you examine their beliefs more deeply’,
using Einstein as his primary example. Dawkins is being very selective in his
approach and there are great scientists who articulate their Christian faith
very clearly. Dr Francis Collins,
director of the Human Genome Project, has written:
‘I had
started this journey of intellectual exploration to confirm my atheism. That now lay in ruins as the argument from
the Moral Law (and many other issues) forced me to admit the plausibility of
the God hypothesis. Agnosticism, which
had seemed like a safe second-place haven, now loomed like the great cop-out
that it often is. Faith in God now
seemed more rational than disbelief.’
Geologist
Kenneth Hsu has written ‘We have had enough of the Darwinian fallacy. It is about time we cry “The Emperor has no
clothes.” John Polkinghorne is a well-known
scientist who defends his strong Christian faith and he has written several
books on the interface between faith and science. Finally, if there is a great scientist of our
age it must surely be Stephen Hawking who, although not a professing Christian,
has written, ‘It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should
have begun in just this way, except as an act of God who intended to create
beings like us.’ Dawkins is simply being
disingenuous when he implies that great scientists do not have faith and the
witness of those scientists who do give New Atheists reason to look again at
the question of God’s existence.
New Atheists
have trouble dealing with the person of Jesus.
Christopher Hitchens resorted to commenting on ‘the highly questionable
existence of Jesus’ when in fact no serious scholar of history questions Jesus’
existence. He also tried to slight the
character of Jesus by accusing him of being one of a number of ‘deranged
prophets roaming Palestine’. Christian
apologist C.S. Lewis indeed proposed this as one of the options when
considering Jesus, stating that Jesus must either be mad, bad or the Son of
God. Lewis concluded ‘it seems to me
obvious that he was neither a lunatic nor a fiend and consequently… I have to
accept the view that He was and is God.’ Dawkins tackles this point and suggests
another possibility ‘that Jesus was honestly mistaken’ whilst failing to
provide any justification for this view.
As a Christians I would argue that Jesus was and is exactly who he
claimed to be because of his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead.
In Jesus God
lived amongst us as a human being and revealed himself to the world. Jesus gave his life on the cross to save us
from the consequences of our rebellion against God and the resurrection proves
that all Jesus claimed for himself was and is true. Many have offered convincing proofs for the
resurrection, from Frank Morrison in Who
Moved The Stone to N.T. Wright in The
Resurrection of the Son of God. Respected
scientist John Polkinghorne has also offered proof for the resurrection,
writing:
‘One of the
strong lines of argument for the truth of the resurrection is the astonishing transformation
of the disciples from the demoralised, defeated men of Good Friday to the
confident proclaimers of the Lordship of Christ at Pentecost and beyond, even
to the point of martyrdom. Something
happened to bring that about. I believe
it was the resurrection and that if Jesus had not been raised it is probable
that we would never have heard of him.’
Resurrection
is outside the realms of natural possibility and could only come about by the
intervention of a supernatural God, the very God Atheists claim does not exist. John Polkinghorne has written, ‘if a person
believes in the resurrection then a simply secular reading of the gospels will
no longer be sufficient.’ Paul made the
same point about the centrality of the resurrection to Christian faith when he
wrote ‘if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your
faith is in vain.’ (1 Cor 15:14).
If you are
an Atheist reading this, then please think about what I’ve written. You may well still disagree with me, but
hopefully you will have gained a better understanding of the Christian faith
and may not be so rigorous in attacking that faith.
If you are a
Christian reading this then I hope that I have demonstrated that there are
positive ways in which the Christian church can engage with the New
Atheists. We can discuss together the
things we have in common like the appreciation for and understanding of
science, both its achievements and limitations; and we can remind New Atheists
that the seed bed of the scientific disciplines was Christian faith . As Kepler said, ‘Science is thinking God’s
thoughts after him.’ We can engage with
science in our apologetics. We can
sincerely repent of the corporate sin of Christianity, of our oppression of and
violence those who do not think as we do.
We can offer to New Atheism the witness of respected scientists like
John Polkinghorne. Finally, and most
importantly, we can witness to Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected, the
Jesus who lived and died and rose again and who is still encountered and
experienced today.
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