This article was originally published in the March 2011 issue of YS Magazine (Young Salvationist) and is the second half of a two part series on God & Science. The first article can be found here.
As I write this, it is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. I am sitting in a Starbucks surrounded by people of every skin color – mostly high school students – who share the same appreciation for over-priced drinks, sugared pastries, and free Internet. My beverage of choice? Not a latte or a cappucino. No. I’m drinking plain old black coffee, as American as baseball, Mark Twain, and a McDonald’s hamburger. Except the coffee I’m drinking didn’t originate in the United States [Maybe it is American?].
As I reflect upon this further, I am reminded of the interconnectivity and complexity of our world. With coffee there are multiple steps involved in getting it from the field where it is grown to the cup in my hand. Several people along the way contributed to the process of preparing this beverage. But there is something that is occurring today, faster than ever before, which is even more basic than the coffee trade: the transmission of ideas. Like coffee, there are several people along the way that shape an idea.
Throughout history, the greatest influence on ideas within culture has been religion. More than four out of every five people in the world claim to be religious in some sense. But also found in the world’s complicated mix of religious traditions is the idea of atheism. Atheism is a concept as old as civilization itself. It is the belief that God does not exist. The world literally means, “without God.”
Atheism has always existed within every culture. In the Western world, atheism has been an unpopular system of thought. But as the centuries passed and Christianity expanded, the corruption of power within the Church became apparent. Because people felt they could no longer trust the Church, it began to lose its cultural influence in Europe. So, atheism became less taboo within Western civilization.
Before the rise of atheism, people – scientists included – would label something as a miracle of God, when it wasn’t a miracle at all, it was something natural. We understand that God is intimately involved in both the natural and supernatural. He created all that is natural. But when scientists would label things as a “miracle” as some sort of default mode, scientific investigation was dropped on that particular issue. Atheism, however, pressed scientists to keep exploring because it rejected the idea of miracles. Though we still give God the credit for all things natural and supernatural, we can appreciate the conviction of early atheists to take science a step further.
But what we are seeing today is a militant form of atheism that is more aggressive in its attack on religion – particularly Christianity. The so-called “New Atheists” are represented and spearheaded by five authors – most notably Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, two British born, Oxford-educated writers of different disciplines, but also Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett, and Victor J. Stenger. The New Atheism movement presents a radically hostile answer to the question of how to live in a world of differing ideas and values. Somewhat like the extremists of every ilk, the New Atheists have an aggressive intolerance of ideas different from their own.
As part of “educating the masses,” Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have independently undergone a series of debates with Christian counterparts Dinesh D’Souza and John Lennox. The debates are sponsored by Fixed Point Foundation. You can watch these debates on their website, www.fixed-point.org. The debates between D’Souza & Hitchens are at times quite amusing.
As mentioned earlier, the arguments for or against atheism are as old as civilization itself [one might even say as old as the Fall]. Many of Christopher Hitchens’ arguments in particular stem from issues of “theodicy,” or the problem of evil. Hitchens’ question is, how can a good God allow evil to exist in the world? This is a question that every person must seek to answer. Christians answer this by drawing from the wealth of sacred Scripture supported by tradition, which is informed by reason and confirmed by our experience. We understand free will and sin, and most importantly, we understand that Christ has provided salvation from it all – a salvation that will one day be complete. Christopher Hitchens doesn’t have the foundation. His answer to the question of pain isn’t necessarily a defense of atheism but a sign of “misotheism”: the hatred of God.
Richard Dawkins, a zoologist from Oxford, perhaps takes a more elegant atheistic position within the debate. His arguments stem from two theories: Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and the Theory of the Multiverse. The Theory of Evolution teaches that systems emerge over time, gradually becoming more complex in nature. That would mean that the possibility of a god-like being – a deity that is all-powerful, all-knowing, etc. – would come about as an organically evolved creature towards the end of the history of the universe and not its beginning. Obviously that’s exactly the opposite [from any definition of God and] of the biblical truth that God has always existed.
The second premise Dawkins uses, the Multiverse explanation, suggests that the universe, as it appears, is fine-tuned for life. But if an infinite number of universes exist, then the probability of life is more likely. This theory, like any theory, is a “proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural,” it cannot be proven either true or false.
Dawkins counterpart for many of his debates is John Lennox, a matter-of-fact mathematician, who takes history seriously. In the debates, Lennox considers the criteria for criticism placed upon non-Christian historical evidence. He applies the same standards to the historical record within Christianity. If one is so impartial, then the testimonies in the New Testament regarding the historical Jesus must be taken seriously. But atheism does not begin with an impartial position. As Lennox would say, atheism is a prejudiced paradigm, and it does not weigh historical facts with fairness.
So this leads us back to where we started – with belief, not proof. John Lennox in one of his debates with Richard Dawkins that there aren’t any “proofs” outside of Mathematics. In other words, atheism is also based on faith, perhaps – as is suggested above – more so than Christianity. Atheists are purportedly all about fact, not faith. But at the end of the day, it takes just as much faith, if not more, not to believe in God as it takes to believe in Him. In this way, perhaps, the New Atheism movement is self-defeating.
So where do we go from here? In light of this “New Atheism” that has emerged over the past few years with a particularly hostile stance towards Christianity, what can we learn from people like Dr. Martine Luther King, Jr. who not only displayed uncommon decency towards those who saw things differently than he did, but who showed extreme courage through Christian love for his neighbors, black or white? As I meet my atheist brother or sister on the road (or in Starbucks), I am reminded that we have more in common with one another than just sugared pastries, over-priced coffee drinks, and free Internet. I am reminded they too are created in the image of God, the Imago Dei, and they are worthy of Christ’s love. It’s my job to demonstrate that love to them.
Aa.Da.Ra. 