The new atheists
Recently there has been an upsurge in neo-atheism with several best selling books, colored by a new, ferocious tone:
The God Delusion (2006)
- Richard Dawkins
Is Religion Dangerous? (2006)
- Keith Ward
God is Not Great - How Religion Poisons Everything (2007)
- Christopher Hitchens
Breaking the Spell (2006)
- Daniel Dennet
Letter to a Christian Nation (2006)
- Sam Harris
The End of Faith (2004)
- Sam Harris
And theists have fought back:
The Faith Instinct (2009)
- Nicholas Wade
God is Back (2009)
- John Micklethwait and Adrian Woodridge
The Case for God (2009)
- Karen Armstrong
If I were prohibited from being critical then I cannot imagine myself being a religious person.
I greatly respect the biologist Richard Dawkins, the current grand champion of neo atheists, and have enjoyed some of his writing. But his book The God Delusion (2006) marked a watershed in the organized campaign of scientists against organized religion - especially targeting Christianity. Christianity’s Achilles heal is that there is a lot of nasty and embarrassing baggage in its history that makes it an easy target for detractors like Dawkins. But that does not disqualify it to me. Personally, I prefer the more eloquently intellectual atheism of Bertrand Russell’s Why I am Not a Christian (1927), to the neo-atheists name-calling and portrayal of Christianity and other religions as dangerous, deranged, stupidly superstitious and a poison in society. And the field is somewhat prepared for the reception of this kind of literature by the spread of Dan Brown’s best-selling novels and those of the legion of others riding his wave - badly written yet very popular books that put out crudely dumbed-down ideas about religion - Christian theology and history in particular.
New atheists have recently taken to writing out of resentment of being marginalized, mocked, ignored, and demonized. Maybe they have a point there. So for that reason they are now pushing back against religion more ferociously than ever before, describing religious belief not merely as a pathological delusion, but as downright evil in itself. Religion hardens hearts, closes and then enslaves minds to superstition, etc. To the new atheists it is religious believers, priests, theologians and the like who destroy the young and the beautiful, the innocent and the helpless. Contrary to the compassionate teachings of the Christ they purport to advocate, what Christians do instead is torment those they should care for, and make us ashamed of everything that is good. Well, sadly there are ample instances where that is exactly the case, but still, we have heard it before.
But Dawkins et alare wasting their breath on the topic of organized religion. First, they are writing for an audience of the converted and are not convincing anyone new of the reasonability of their atheism. Second, religion will never disappear because it fills a naturally-occurring spiritual hole in our psyche. Third, a religious outlook and explanation of reality satisfies a universal human experience of the universe.
Religion in Academia
Atheists and atheist scientists are often suspicious of religious belief because they think that it is based on unquestioning submission to an unchallengeable authority - an infallible book, or an authoritarian church, or an uncritical set of instructions. (Personally, if I were prohibited from being critical then I cannot imagine myself being a religious person.) I believe this to be a disastrous mistake. First, because it is an incorrect perspective of religious faith. Religious faith is an ongoing dialog of people in a community using Reason to understand their experiences and the nature of the world. And, second, because the tendency among atheist writers to identify Reason exclusively with scientific modes of thought is a disastrous diminishment of our human powers of truth-seeking enquiry and relational explanation of the world.
But scientific discovery has shown that the universe demands more explanation that Science itself can provide. Quantum Physics demonstrates that the character of the physical world is very relational, hence the hinge, or the wedge for tolerating a theistic explanation of reality, which is relational by nature.
Atheist scientists also question the place of theology in academia on the grounds that it represents faith, or superstition in a place
that ought to nurture Reason, supposing that Reason and faith are incompatible. Or, they allege that religion is not a truly intellectually open-minded pursuit, and so is unqualified for a place at university for that reason. Or, they claim that religion is a method of sequestering or removing people from physical immersion in real life, and therefore denying them human authenticity. Well, the two are neither incompatible nor contradictory. Theology is a rational pursuit of understanding divinity based on our experiences in life - experiences that include personal, transforming encounters with sacredness - experiences that are real. To deny that they are not ‘real’ experiences gets us nowhere. So I think that any university that does not have a faculty of theology, or a seminary of some sort is incomplete since it fails to engage with the widely attested human experience of encounters with the sacred dimension of reality.
Simply denying the historicity of Christ, or else claiming he was only a myth akin to so many other Virgin Birth / Dying God myths of the ancient world also gets us nowhere. We cannot have dialog if atheists start with that old card. But, of course, they don’t want dialog.
Throwing up the Problem of Evil, or Theodicy every time bad things occur gets us nowhere once more. It is a popular but false diversion and sooner or later all atheist arguments resort to it. If God is benevolent and almighty how can he allow suffering in the world? Disease, war, the suffering of innocent children, genocide, etc? The solution is in the nature of God’s almighty power. God may be said to be constrained externally - by the laws of physics that He created - but not internally - by the character of His own divinity. So, a rational god cannot decree that 2+2=5. And, thank God we live in a world that functions according to physical laws - where, for example, if a baby gets hit by a car the baby dies. If the baby didn’t die in such a circumstance, that would be really scary. Thank God we live on a tectonically active planet where, if we chose to livein an earthquake zone or on the slopes of an active volcano we may suffer as a result. And we do. Those decisions are ours, not God’s. So the conventional use of the Problem of Evil - relentlessly fielded by the media after an earthquake, for example - is just more evidence of human abdication of personal responsibility. I cannot take seriously media or public manipulation of human suffering to express befuddlement with religion. Come on.
10 Myths about Christianity
1) Jesus Christ was only a great moral teacher.
Certainly Jesus, like Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed was a product of the Axial Age - an observation which can be used as a tool for explaining a certain kind of religious and transcendental moral thinking represented in the teachings of the great religions. But if one accepts the proposition that humanity is in need of salvation, then this is an obvious myth. Contrary to the teachings of other religions, the savior of the Bible must be both fully human in order to have the credibility to offer salvation, but at the same time fully divine in order to have the ability to offer salvation. Therefore, Jesus must be more than a great teacher. But if one does not accept the proposition that humanity needs salvation, well then ...
2) Christianity teaches a legalistic, stifling moral code.
No. Christianity is a living faith, flexible and open to debate and change, innovation and evolution. The best education for
a Christian is synonymous with the best education, period, and I cannot imagine being a Christian if I did not have the leeway to err, to be deviant, to defy and challenge. Like Judaism, Christianity invites debate, and even then, outcasts are welcome.
3) Conversion and religious experience are the result of conditioning and socialization.
Religious or spiritual experiences transcend culture, language, education, wealth and social class. The universality of spiritual experience is a symptom of the objectivity of spirituality. The same kinds of experiences are broadly enough reported that we can effectively deny strict social determination.
4) Christianity is an other-worldly religion and is irrelevant to life in the 21st century.
Certainly not. Religious experiences, or spiritual experiences that are transformative and that catalyze the development of religious scriptures, rituals and practices are universal and enduring. Science does not adequately explain the human experience of reality, leaving room for faith even in contemporary times. It will always be so. The Kingdom of Godwill come in this world. We have a moral responsibility to live righteously in this world, now. The Church is the Kingdom of God in the world. Furthermore, Jesus Christ is risen, so he is not removed from the world. He is in the world now. Our theology must be in the present tense to be accurate.
5) Science is in conflict with the Christian faith.
Science and Christianity are not in conflict, although many contemporary atheist scientists and conservative evangelical Christians have made careers by dealing in the pretense that the two are incompatible. But it is a pretense, so let’s stop pretending. All knowledge contributes to the understanding of God. Critics - and high school science teachers - consistently point to the case of the persecution of Italian scientist Galileo Galilei as a template for the antipathy of Faith and Science. But the reality is that Galileo was persecuted more because he was an asshole than because he was wrong. He was not wrong, and the Church at the time knew it. I cannot imagine an intelligent Christian denying the geologic age of the Earth, or the Big Bang, the biological evolution of species, and even the real possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. True Christians are not stupid. If they are stupid - believe stupid things, say stupid things, act stupidly - then they are not true Christians. Or, at the most they are just really, really bad Christians.
6) Modern science proves that miracles are impossible.
Is our idea of God that He is bound by the laws of nature? Or, is God imagined as above the laws of nature, only choosing to abide by them so far as they fit His purposes? The universe is more than science has the ability to describe. I don’t need the wonders of science or the distractions of science fiction when I realize that Nature itself is really weird. To disallow the existence of miracles just by pointing to their very low level of probability simply will not do as an argument, although it sounds good. I ask myself, “Is there sufficient historical evidence indicating that miracles have occurred in the past and still do on occasion?” and I am satisfied in the positive.
7) The Bible is an unreliable set of documents and cannot be trusted.
Reading and interpreting the Scriptures properly/appropriately is a big task. It is a fascinating document. There is a time for reading Scripture literally, and a time for reading it figuratively. Certainly, the Bible reliably records the experience and reflections of the Hebrews who wrote it. Much of it is a straight history book - the history of the Hebrew incursion into the Transjordan. It is not a science textbook. It is not a book of magic spells, or divination, or answers of any kind. It is a window. As a history book, it proves remarkably dependable for archaeologists.
8) There is no evidence that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
The Pauline Epistles and the Gospels themselves constitute evidence and are historic documentation. Although detractors rebut that they are disqualified because they date from after Jesus’ lifetime the same can be true of the classical Greek philosophers. Yet no one questions the lives of Socrates, Aristotle or Plato, because they were secular figures, not religious ones. The establishment of the Church is also evidence, since it is beyond reasonable to suggest that early Christians would endure what they had to endure to create the Church without the risen Lord to inspire, motivate and support them. Ideas by themselves are inspirational, but not that inspirational.
9) The presence of evil and suffering in the world proves that there is no God.
The problem of evil, called Theodicy, is proof of God’s existence more than the opposite. The measure of evil in the world is related to the measure of moral freedom the God of the Bible extends to us. So while evil presents humanity with a degree of moral responsibility that few want to recognize or admit, the existence of evil is still necessary for us to fulfill, or maximize and authenticate our humanity. Do we want to be less free than we are? Without saying so, it appears that that is what many people certainly do want.
10) It doesn’t matter what you believe, because all religions are basically the same.
Negative. There are many anthropological and social archetypes that create similarities in mythology and ritual forms and which religious detractors easily use to press their case. In doctrinal religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam, what you believe is important. These traditions teach it as a requirement to believe certain things and not others. And while it is possible for the teachings of different religions to be equally wrong it is not possible for them to be equally right because the claims of one would exclude the others.