The Accidental Poet Spirituality

Scientism: Is it a “Religion” or is it Science?

Our children are growing up in a post-Christian culture in which the public often views people of faith as irrelevant or even, in some cases, extremist. In his book Scientism and Secularism, J.P. Moreland articulates a way of friendly engagement with the prevailing worldview of Scientism.

By Steven Barto, B.S. Psych.

IN HIS BLOG POST Be Careful, Your Love of Science Looks a Lot Like Religion, Jamie Holmes writes, “Science is usually equated by proponents of this view with empiricism or, in many fields, with a method of inquiry that employs controls, blinding, and randomization. Now, a small group of contemporary psychologists have published a series of provocative experiments showing that faith in science can serve the same mentally-stabilizing function as religious beliefs.” What is this thing called “Scientism?” It is said to be an excessive or exclusive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques. It names science as the best or only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values.

Okay. But what does that mean? The claim that scientific judgement is akin to value judgement is often accompanied by the normative claim that scientific judgment should be guided by so-called epistemic or cognitive values. Epistemology refers to the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. We can immediately recognize the “religious” language in the above definition: e.g., justified belief. The problem with such a viewpoint is this: Justified by whom and against what ultimate truth?

Much of this worldview, which is actually a secularization of nature and existence, is rooted in the Enlightenment, during which time philosophers decided that reason and individualism should prevail rather than tradition. It was heavily influenced by seventeenth-century philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, and Newton, and its prominent promoters include Kant, Goethe, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith. We must remember that worldview means a set of presuppositions (assumptions that may be true, partially true, or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic make-up of the world. Scientism is, accordingly, a worldview. Admittedly, Christianity is also a worldview.

A presupposition is something assumed or supposed in advance of the evidence. Generally, a presupposition is a core belief—a belief that one holds as “self-evident” and not requiring proof for its validity. A presupposition is something that is assumed to be true and is taken for granted. Of course, there is a pejorative quality to this term. Synonyms include prejudice, forejudgment, preconceived opinion, fixed conclusion, based upon a priori knowledge. To be fair to this concept, a priori knowledge simply means knowledge possessed independent of experience—that knowledge which we cannot help but bring to our experience in order to make sense of the world. Some philosophers, such as Locke, believe all our knowledge is a posteriori—that the mind begins as a “blank slate.” In order to level the playing field, we must all come to realize that every worldview, whether secular or Christian, contains a degree of presupposition. Christianity, however, has been coming up true and accurate more and more as science and archaeology uncovers empirical proof of the accuracy of the Bible.

Charles Colson, in his book How Now Shall We Live, writes, “We must show the world that Christianity is more than a private belief, more than personal salvation. We must show that it is a comprehensive life system that answers all of humanity’s age-old questions: Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? Does life have any meaning and purpose?” (Colson and Pearcy, 1999, xi) [italics mine]. The Christian worldview breaks these huge questions down to three distinct categories:

  • Creation. Where did we come from, and who are we?
  • Fall. What has gone wrong with the world?
  • Redemption. What can we do to fix it?

Christianity is a Worldview

Colson believes the way we see the world can change the world. As believers, in every action we take, we are doing one of two things: we are either helping to create a hell on earth or helping to bring down a foretaste of heaven. We are either contributing to the broken condition of the world (part of the problem) or participating with God, through his Son and us, to transform the world to reflect His righteousness and grace (part of the solution). This requires us to see reality through the lens of divine revelation. Arguably, the term worldview may sound abstract or “philosophical” (indeed, it may even sound like a “head in the clouds” perspective); a topic that must be relegated to college professors and students in the halls of academia. Keep in mind, however, that understanding and acknowledging one’s worldview is tremendously productive.

Christianity cannot sit back and consider itself a mere belief system, reduced to little more than a private feeling or “experience,” completely devoid of objective facts or physical evidence. In their book Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell consider evidence for matters such as the reliability of the Bible, the deity of Jesus Christ, and the historical (actual) resurrection of Jesus from the dead, revealing strong historical evidence that confirms the Christian worldview. If we have the authentic words of Jesus claiming to be God, evidence that He genuinely performed miracles, and confirmation that Jesus rose from the grave, then Christianity is undeniably true.

Naturalism, the other side of the coin, permeates Western culture, claiming that only physical things exist and that all phenomena can ultimately be explained by the combination of chance and natural laws. This worldview underlies much rejection of metaphysical causes or origins. The New Atheists take particular aim at intelligent design and the deity of Christ. Interestingly, naturalism has absolutely no explanation for the origin of matter or life, the existence of consciousness, the nature of free will, or objective morality. This quest is  true regardless of geopolitical position. All of mankind asks these basic questions. In any event, Anthony Flew (in Licona, 2010, p. 115), a former atheist, said “The occurrence of the resurrection [has] become enormously more likely.”

Scientism as Religion

In 2013, a study published in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology​ found that when subjects were stressed, they were more likely to agree to statements typifying science such as, “the scientific method is the only reliable path to knowledge.” When people felt anxious, they esteemed science more highly than calmer subjects did, just as previous experiments have shown to be the case with religious ideals. Therefore, beliefs about science are often defended emotionally, even when they’re wrong, as long as they provide a reassuring sense of order. That is to say, beliefs about science may be defended thoughtlessly—even unscientifically. Scientism, accordingly, seems to both religious and scientific outlooks as a soothing balm to our existential anxieties. What we believe, the parallel implies, can sometimes be less important than h​ow ​we believe it. This would indicate that a deep faith in science as the only means for explanation of the origin of matter and life, and the meaning existence, is a form of irrational extremism.

Does this view merely negate scientism, or does it also indict Christianity? This is not meant to be a cop-out, but the answer depends on individual worldviews. In other words, if a believer in Christ refuses to consider science at all, stating it has no explanation for the natural world, he or she is viewing the world with eyes closed, misunderstanding all they see. Moreover, such an individual is ignoring the numerous scientific discoveries proposed by Christians and theists over the centuries; please note the wide range of scientific fields represented below (philosophy of science; botany; astronomy; physics; mathematics; chemistry; electricity and electromagnetism; biology, microbiology, and neurobiology; subatomic theory; psychiatry; neuropsychiatry; genetics; information theory):

  • Robert Grosseteste, patron saint of scientists, Oxford, founder of scientific thought, wrote texts on optics, astronomy, and geometry.
  • William Turner, father of English botany.
  • Francis Bacon, established inductive “scientific method.”
  • Galileo Galilei, revolutionary astronomer, physicist, philosopher, mathematician.
  • Blaise Pascal, known for Pascal’s Law (physics), Pascal’s Theorem (math), and Pascal’s Wager (theology).
  • Robert Boyle, scientist, theologian, Christian apologist, who said science can improve glorification of God.
  • Isaac Newton, discovered the properties of gravity.
  • Johannes Kepler, astronomer, discovered planetary motion.
  • Joseph Priestly, clergyman and scientist, discovered oxygen.
  • Michael Faraday, established electromagnetic theory and electrolysis.
  • Charles Babbage, information theorist, mathematician, pioneer in computer programming.
  • Louis Pasteur, biologist, microbiologist and chemist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization.
  • Lord Kelvin, mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics. 
  • J.J. Thompson, credited with the discovery and identification of the electron and discovery of the first subatomic particle.
  • Johannes Reinke, phycologist and naturalist who strongly opposed Darwin.
  • George Washington Carver, American scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor who believed he could have faith both in God and science and integrated them into his life.  
  • Max Born, German physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. 
  • Michael Polanyi, appointed to a Chemistry chair in Berlin, but in 1933 when Hitler came to power he accepted a Chemistry chair (and then in 1948 a Social Sciences chair) at the University of Manchester. Wrote Science, Faith, and Society.
  • Rod Davies, professor of radio astronomy at the University of Manchester, known for his research on the cosmic microwave background in the universe.
  • Peter Dodson, American paleontologist who has published many papers and written and collaborated on books about dinosaurs.
  • Charles Foster, science writer on natural history, evolutionary biology, and theology.
  • John Gurdon, British developmental biologist, discovered that mature cells can be converted to stem cells. 
  • Paul R. McHugh, American psychiatrist whose research has focused on the neuroscientific foundations of motivated behaviors, psychiatric genetics, epidemiology, and neuropsychiatry. 
  • Kenneth R. Miller, molecular biologist, wrote Finding Darwin’s God.
  • John D. Barrow, English cosmologist based at the University of Cambridge who did notable writing on the implications of the Anthropic principle.

J.P. Moreland

In his book Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology, Moreland (2018, p. 16) writes, “As the ideas that constitute scientism have become more pervasive in our culture, the Western world has turned increasingly secular and the centers of culture (the universities, the media and entertainment industry, the Supreme Court) have come increasingly to regard religion as a private superstition. It is no surprise, then, that when our children go to college, more and more of them are just giving up on Christianity.” Scientism claims that only the “hard” sciences can discover and explain reality. It also believes everything else is based on private emotions, blind faith, or cultural upbringing. Moreover, scientism believes reliance on religious explanation for the origin of matter and life has yielded no reality at all. Simply put, theology and philosophy offer no truth whatsoever and, accordingly, are of no repute.

I find it fascinating that Christian theology does not make the same stinging conclusion about science. As we saw above, many great scientists, inventors, and discoverers throughout history (including many contemporary pioneers in science) were or are Christians or theists. Each of them believe God’s general revelation (that is, the natural order of things and the origin of matter and life) speak loudly of God as our intelligent designer. I, too, hold this view. Nanoscientist James Tour said, “Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith. If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God.” This is the basis for the Teleological Argument that (i) every design has a designer, (ii) the universe has a highly complex design, therefore (iii) the universe had a designer.

Atheism Requires More Faith Than Not Believing!

Postmodern culture has made every attempt to destroy truth. It teaches that the idea of truth and morality are “relative” to the circumstance, person, or era; that there is no such thing as absolute truth. This zeitgeist is prevalent in academia today in our public schools and most (if not all) secular universities. The postmodernist thinks not believing in ultimate truth or metaphysical explanations regarding the universe means one is “enlightened” and, therefore, not reliant on “dogmatic thought.” Interestingly, despite the postmodern belief that there is no absolute truth or morality, society seems to behave as though it exists. Yet these supposedly bright and enlightened ones insist that “truth” is merely a social contract defined and maintained by the powerful to remain “in power.” Admittedly, truth has fallen victim to modern culture. The modern ideas of tolerance and pluralism are a direct result of taking God out of the equation.

The term “university” is actually a composite of the words “unity” and “diversity.” Our universities should allow for the pursuit of knowledge and truth through such unity.

I find it curious that liberal secularists insist on tolerance, yet they have absolutely no tolerance for non-secular worldviews. This is non-tolerance! Perhaps they see “tolerance” differently than the rest of us; they seem to think it does not simply mean treating those with different ideas respectfully and civilly. If you think they are not using disrespect and intolerance to defend their “religion” of naturalism and scientism, then log on to YouTube and find a couple of debates to watch between believers (such as Dinesh D’Souza, Ravi Zacharias, Ken Ham) and the so-called New (or “militant”) Atheists (which includes Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins). In nearly every instance, and despite some atheists with a background in science, they attack Christ, Christianity, and, more typically, the believer rather than providing a convincing argument against intelligent design.

It is rather easy for the postmodern secularist to avoid confronting or defending the notion of intelligent design and creation science because he or she rejects the idea of absolute truth and the Law of Non-contradiction at the start. Rather than engaging in an intelligent point/counterpoint debate, the postmodernist goes about town moralizing to everyone about the importance of tolerance without having to explain the inherent contradiction presented by his or her closed mind regarding all things spiritual or metaphysical. This smacks of intellectual fraud. They simply do not practice what they preach—especially toward Christians. Why is this? One thought is because Christianity is truth, and Jesus knew the world would reject his followers in the same manner they rejected Him. Truth, on one hand, sets us free. But it also confounds and convicts those who reject it and peddle a counterfeit reality.

There is a degree of “political correctness” in this attitude. Even many churches have been corrupted and misguided by the unsustainable notion that pluralism allows for tolerance. Many have allowed their theology to be watered down and have permitted the authority of Scripture to be undermined in favor of society’s “evolved” or “advanced” ideas on morality. Unfortunately, many Christians and their church leaders have become an accomplice to the denigration of truth. This is a conscious and deliberate disobedience of the Great Commission presented to the body of believers by Christ before his ascension (see Matt. 28:16-20).

A Dangerous Division

Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould, though a prominent critic of intelligent design, has claimed he is not atheistic. Science and religion cannot conflict, he believes, because they deal with different subject matter: science is about empirical facts, whereas religion is about meaning and morality. Unfortunately, many of today’s Christians are falling for this rather dangerous division of science and theology. As a result, they are ill-prepared to give an answer for the faith they have in the gospel. A negative side-effect of this lack of preparedness is the tendency to either shy away from defending the gospel or doing so from a militant or insulting position. Neither of these reactions are within the scope of 1 Peter 3:15:

But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect (NIV).

We cannot allow the surgical division of science and Christianity to persist. As noted above, many Christians have made groundbreaking scientific discoveries over the centuries. In fact, the list I provided is incomplete. Space does not allow the listing of all scientists who were Christians or theists. It is also important to note that because all truth is God’s truth, the Bible and science are not diametrically opposed. The means by which the New Atheists make this claim is unfair. It is literally a comparison of apples to oranges. To say that science can explain every aspect of creation is to misuse applied or experimental science when the proper tool is “historical” science. We cannot test the past to see if certain empirical theories are possible. We do not have a time machine.

Further, no one has been able to “create” the building blocks of life (the necessary enzymes, proteins, and genetic code) in a laboratory. No one has an explanation for the origin of biological information needed to establish Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. Modern science knows full-well that, ultimately, life is a molecular phenomenon. All organisms are made of molecules that act as the very building blocks required for origin and operation. Living cells require a constant supply of energy to generate and maintain the biological order that keeps them alive. This energy is derived from the chemical bond energy in food molecules. The proteins, lipids, and polysaccharides that make up most of the food we eat must be broken down into smaller molecules before our cells can use them—either as a source of energy or as building blocks for other molecules. The breakdown processes must act on food taken in from outside, but not on the macromolecules inside our own cells. It’s as if we have tiny nuts and bolts, gears and pulleys, of biological “equipment” inside us. How brilliant is that? We are like the pocket watch found on the ground in the woods by a hiker; we’re fearfully and wonderfully made, with highly intricate biochemical and physical operations, that can come only from a “watchmaker.”

Although it contains one, Christianity is not merely a worldview. Nor is it simply “a religion.” If it were, then it might deserve the reputation of being a narrowly pious view of the world. Thankfully, Christianity is an objective perspective on all reality, a complete worldview, that consistently stands up to the test of practical living. Additionally, it is about our relationship with the Creator. We become one with Christ when we choose to make Him Lord and Savior. This is a great litmus test for deciding whether a particular “branch” or “sect” of Christianity is genuine. Accordingly, we can admit that “false prophets” have arisen. I’m reminded of Jim Jones and David Koresh. Today’s atheists love to talk about all the people murdered over the centuries in the name of Christ. They don’t respond well to the rebuttal that millions were murdered by people who were not followers of Christ, typically in the interest of genocide: Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Josef Stalin, Ho Chi Mihn, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Mullah Omar, Leonid Brezhnev, Kim Il-Sung, Augusto Pinochet, and (drum roll please) the worst, Mao Ze Dung.

References

Colson, Charles, and Pearcy, N. How Now Shall We Live? (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House), 1999.

Licona, Michael, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press), 2010.

McDowell, J. and McDowell, S., Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson), 2017.

Moreland, J.P., Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway), 2018.

The Accidental Poet Spirituality

Did God Use the Big Bang to Create the Universe?

Most science textbooks on cosmology credit Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson with the discovery that the universe began with a hot big bang creation event. While Penzias and Wilson were the first (1965) to detect the radiation left over from the creation event, they were not the first scientists to recognize that the universe is expanding from an extremely hot and compact beginning. Over time, energy and matter has become less and less dense. In fact, the universe is significantly cooler than it was at the moment of creation.

Theoretically, the idea of a “big bang” does not negate God’s creation of the universe. Of course, physicists and theologians constantly bicker about the origin of life and the universe. This is part of the problem. The “bickering.” Most physicists do their research from the mentality of a zero-sum proposition. In other words, they believe science and religion cannot both be right. One is true only through the complete annihilation of the other. Science has its realm—observing and explaining the physical elements and all that we can see—whereas religion is concerned with the spiritual, the metaphysical. They say never should the two meet. This ignores the idea that all truth is God’s truth.

The Big Bang and the Expanding Universe

In 1946, George Gamow calculated that only a universe expanding from a near infinitely hot beginning could account for the existing abundance of elements. In 1912, Vesto Slipher observed the shift of spectral lines of galaxies, indicating their velocities relative to ours. In 1929, observations made by Edwin Hubble (after whom the Hubble Telescope is named) established that the velocities of nearly all galaxies result from a general expansion of the universe. Beginning in 1925, astrophysicist and Jesuit priest Abbe Georges Lemaitre was the first scientist to promote the idea of a big bang creation event. The first theoretical scientific evidence for a big bang universe dates back to 1916 when Albert Einstein noted that his field equations of general relativity predicted an expanding universe.

Not surprisingly, many big bang theories exist. They share three fundamental characteristics: (1) a transcendent cosmic beginning that occurred a finite amount of time ago; (2) a continuous, universal cosmic expansion; and (3) a cosmic cooling from an extremely hot beginning. All three of the fundamental characteristics of the big bang were explicitly taught in the Bible two to three thousand years before scientists discovered them through their astronomical measurements. Moreover, the Bible alone among all the scriptures of the world’s religions expounds these three big bang fundamentals. Scientific proofs for a big bang universe, thus, can do much to establish the existence of the God of the Bible and the accuracy of the words of the Bible.

The term big bang is problematic. It’s not a “bang” per se. This expression typically conjures up images of a bomb blast or exploding dynamite. Such event would unleash disorder and destruction. Instead, this “bang” represents a very powerful yet carefully planned and controlled release of matter, energy, space, and time, the behavior of which must occur according to specific fine-tuned physical constraints and laws of physics. This type of power and precision exceeds the ability of the human mind.

This begs the question, Why, then would astronomers retain the term? The simple answer is that nicknames, for better or worse, tend to stick. In this case, the term came not from proponents of the theory, but rather from the mind of Sir Fred Hoyle. He coined the expression in the 1950s as an attempt to ridicule the big bang, which was at odds with his “steady state” theory. Steady-state theory is a scientific hypothesis that the universe is always expanding but maintaining a constant average density. Its proponents believe matter is continuously created to form new stars and galaxies at the same rate that old ones become unobservable as they increase in velocity and distance from the center of the galaxy. Such a universe would have no beginning or end. Hoyle objected to any theory that would place the origin or cause of the universe outside the universe proper—outside the realm of scientific inquiry. It seems he wanted to side-step any hint of a metaphysical explanation for the physical universe.

What the Bible Says About a Transcendent Universe

To transcend means “to exist above and independent from; to rise above, surpass, succeed.” By definition, God is the only truly transcendent Being. The LORD God Almighty (Hebrew, El Shaddai) created all things on the earth, beneath the earth and in the heavens above, yet He exists above and independent from them. We see this in Hebrews 1:3a, which states, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word” (NIV).

Being transcendent, God is the incomprehensible Creator existing outside of space and time and thus is unknowable and unsearchable. Neither by an act of our will nor by our own reasoning can we possibly come to understand God. God wants us to seek to know Him, yet how can the finite possibly know and understand the infinite when our minds and thoughts are so far beneath His. In Isaisah 55:8-9, God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, [a]s the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (NIV).

As you might guess, scientists see this Christian tenet as ill-advised at best. It is said that Christians believe in a “fairy tale” story of Creation, and that they hide behind metaphysics, completely unaffected by the so-called “lack of physical evidence” to prove that a Supreme Being spoke all of Creation into existence.

Creation and the Militant Atheist

A militant atheist is one who displays extreme hostility toward religion—with a particular disdain for Christianity. The difference between them and the average skeptic who simply does not believe in God is that they intend to propagate their atheism throughout society. In fact, it is their sincere desire to stop all reference to religion, God, Christ, Christianity, Allah, Islam, or Buddha. Their main aim is to quash any public mention or display of religion or its icons and reference to the subject matter in any public school or college. In addition, they hold all religion to be harmful. Interestingly, militant atheism first popped up during the French Revolution and the Cultural Revolution, and in the Soviet Union.

The militant atheist, Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) likened parents forcing their theistic beliefs to their children as a form of child abuse. He believed parents have no right to “indoctrinate” their sons and daughters with the notion of a Supreme Being. He expressed four irreducible objections to faith: (1) that it wholly misrepresents the origin of man and the universe; (2) that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility—an excessive willingness to serve or please others—with the maximum of solipsism, which means anything outside one’s mind is outside the realm of human comprehension, (3) that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression; and (4) that it is ultimately grounded in wishful thinking.

Hitchens said we are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe, but believes these should be limited to the arts, music, and literature. They have no place in the scientific inquiry into the origin of life and the cosmos. In fact, he believed that serious moral and ethical dilemmas should be relegated to the likes of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Schiller, and Dostoyevsky, not in the “mythical morality” of holy books and scriptures. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and soul.

“I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with ‘you’ in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.”—Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

Hitchens believed that man can live a moral and proper life without religion. In fact, he said when man accepts that this life on Earth is all there is, that we live only once (with the exception of living on through our progeny), we will behave better rather than worse. First, this is far from true in reality. One only has to watch the nightly network newscasts to see that man cannot simply “get alone” to avoid wasting time, life, love,or relationships. Violence is but one symptom of this problem. Christianity, of course, teaches that man is born in sin, with an innate tendency to seek what the individual wants at any cost, and that this aspect of sin nature will prevent man from acting ethically and fairly on his or her own power. Simply put, Hitchens believed religion is man-made. I concur. Christianity, however, is not necessarily just a religion; instead, it is about relationships: with God the Father, with Jesus Christ, and with one another.

Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, Virus of the Mind, and The Blind Watchmaker, among others, said, “I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.” He believes faith is “the great copout;” merely an excuse to evade the need to think and to evaluate evidence. Hebrews 11: 1 tells us, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (NKJV)[emphasis mine]. Dawkins is not shy in his condemnation of Christianity, stating, “It is a horrible idea that God, this paragon of wisdom and knowledge, couldn’t think of a better way to forgive us our sins than to come down to Earth in his alter ego as his son and have himself hideously tortured and executed” [emphasis mine].

Dawkins seems tremendously militant about his atheist views, stating, “Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.” He went over the top when he invoked the memory of 9/11, stating that many atheists saw religion as “senseless nonsense,” with belief systems that lack physical evidence to back their claims. He said if people need “a crutch” to get through life, where is the harm? He concludes, “September 11th changed all that.”

Not All Scientists Deny the Existence of a Supreme Being

The universe is, of course, tangible. We can observe it (at least as far as current technology permits). But there is an infinite and transcendent aspect to the universe as well. The tangible is typically explored by obstinate observers and exasperated experimenters. These “scientific” individuals come to the search with preconceptions, biases, and presuppositions. But no matter their extensive education (at and beyond the master’s degree level), these individuals are sentient beings with limited understanding, bound by time and space, and can only peripherally comprehend what they observe. Moreover, they are saddled with trying to prove a negative: God does not exist! We all know how difficult it is to prove a negative.

Albert Einstein once said, “Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature, and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.” Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking ultimately concluded that there is no God. For me, it’s a matter of science’s failure to completely and thoroughly demystify nature and the cosmos. I agree that we know many things as a result of scientific inquiry. For example, we know why the sky is blue: Among the wavelengths of light in our sun’s spectrum, blue oscillates at the highest frequency and is, therefore, scattered quite nicely by the molecules of air in our atmosphere. Because the blue wavelength bounces off air in all directions, the sky appears blue.

We also have come to understand how gravity works. Newton understood gravity to be a force exerted by objects in space, but Einstein proved that it is a property of space: the curvature, or what he called “warping” of spacetime. Perhaps this is why Gene Roddenberry coined the term “warp speed” relative to escaping the pull of gravity on space ships in order to travel faster than the speed of light. Einstein said this warping is similar to bouncing on a trampoline. He believed that massive objects warp and curve the universe, resulting in other objects moving on or orbiting along those curves. The predictions of Einstein’s theories have been validated time and time again. Now, 100 years after the formulation of his theory of gravity, another one of its predictions—the existence of gravitational waves—has been directly measured, despite Einstein’s belief that we’d never be able to do this.

Darwin’s Black Box

The term “black box” is a whimsical reference to a device that does something, but whose inner workings remain mysterious—sometimes because the workings can’t be seen, and sometimes because they just aren’t comprehensible. When Leeuwenhoek first saw a bacterial cell he essentially revealed a black box (the cell) within a black box (the organism itself). The cell theory was promulgated in the early nineteenth century by Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann. It was Schwann who concluded that cells or the secretion of cells compose the entire bodies of animals and plants, and that in some way the cells are individual units with a life of their own. Schleiden added, “The primary question is, what is the origin of this particular little organism, the cell?”

The question of how life works was not one that Darwin or his colleagues were able to answer. They knew eyes were for seeing, but wondered exactly how sight works. How does blood clot? How does the body fight off disease? What was the smallest “unit” of life? Things began to open up a bit when Justus von Liebig showed that the body heat of animals is due to the combustion of food at the cellular level. From this discovery, he formulated the idea of metabolism, whereby the body builds up and breaks down substances through chemical processes.

A Fine Example

To Darwin, vision was a black box. Today, however, after the work of numerous biochemists, we have a better understanding of sight. Michael J. Behe, in his book Darwin’s Black Box, recounts the biochemistry of how a human is able to experience vision:

When light first strikes the retina, a photon interacts with a molecule called 11-cis-retinal, which rearranges within picoseconds to trans-retinal. (A picosecond is about the time it takes light to travel the breadth of a single human hair.) The change in the shape of the retinal molecule forces a change in the shape of the protein rhodopsin, to which the retinal is tightly bound. The protein’s metamorphosis alters its behavior. Now called metarhodospsin II, the protein sticks to another protein called transducin. Before bumping into metarhodopsin II, transducin had tightly bound a small molecule called GDP. But when transducin interacts with metarhodopsin II, the GDP falls off, and a molecule called GTP binds to transducin. (GTP is closely related to, but critically different from, GDP.

GTP-transducin-metarhodopsin II  now binds to a protein called phosphodiestrerase, located in the inner membrane of the cell. When attached to metarhodopsin II and its entourage, the phosphodiesterase acquires the chemical ability to “cut” a molecule called cGMP (a chemical relative to both GDP and GTP). Initially, there are a lot of cGMP molecules in the cell, but the phosphodiesterase lowers its concentration, just as a pulled plug lowers the water level in a bathtub… Trans-retinal eventually falls off of rhodopsin and must be reconverted to 11-cis-retinal and again bound by rhodopsin to get back to the starting point for another visual cycle.

The Odds of Random Life

Donald Page of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Science has calculated the odds against our universe randomly taking a form suitable for creating life as one out of 10,000,000,000 to the 124th power—a number that exceeds human imagination. Sir Fred Hoyle believed the odds of the random formation of a single enzyme  from amino acids (necessary for life itself) anywhere on Earth are one in 10 to the 20th power. He believed this tremendous chance-happening is rooted in the fact that there are approximately two thousand enzymes, with the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial only one in 10 to the 40,000th power! Say what? This is an outrageously small probability that would not likely occur even if the entire universe were made up of organic soup. Nothing has yet been stated relative to DNA and where it came from, or of the transcription of DNA to RNA, which even atheist-minded scientists admit cannot be mathematically computed. Nor has anything been said of mitosis or meiosis. It would seem any chance of the random ordering of organic molecules in a manner consistent with formation of life is zero.

Replacing Darwin

Nathaniel T. Jeanson, in his amazing book Replacing Darwin: The New Origin of Species, stated the following in his Afterward:

In the beginning… God created “kinds” of creatures—the original min. Representing creatures somewhere between the rank of sub-genus and order, these min contained millions of heterozygous sites in their genomes. As they reproduced, shifts from heterozygosity to homozygosity led to diverse offspring… after the creation of these min, their population sizes were dramatically reduced. At least for the land-dwelling, air-breathing min, their population sizes were reduced to no more than fourteen individuals. In some cases, their populations declined to just two. However, because this population bottleneck was so short, the heterozygosity of the Ark passengers would have been minimally affected. For sexually reproducing min, a male and female could have possessed a combined four copies of nuclear DNA. These copies could have been very different, preserving a massive amount of speciation potential.

If you’re familiar with Noah’s Ark, you’ve probably heard the phrase “two-by-two,” as if Noah brought animals on board the Ark only in groups of two. For some animals, Noah brought at least seven male and seven female individuals of that animal (see Genesis 7:1-3). Some biblical scholars agreesuspect that “seven” might refer to pairs (rather than to individuals), implying that Noah brought fourteen individuals (7×2=14) of these types of animals.

There has been a fundamental misunderstanding among most scientists (and atheists, for that matter) of both science and Christian faith. First, we must remember that some important scientific theories have yet to be tested—for example, Stephen Hawking postulated that black holes rotate. Second, Christianity can be tested. We have already been successful at the factual level regarding Christian doctrine standing up to atheistic scrutiny. The reliability of the biblical documents and evidence for the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus has stood the test of time. In addition, Christianity is observable and testable at the individual level.

The Nature of Science

I’ve heard it said that science doesn’t say anything, scientists do. For a scientist to claim he or she can disprove the existence of God—trying to prove a “negative”—is like saying a mechanic can disprove the existence of Henry Ford. In fact, it would be more accurate to state that theism supports science, not that science supports theism. Scientists are responsible for collecting data and interpreting it properly. This is not the function of science; rather, it is the responsibility of the scientist. They function as judges of the data. Science itself is a tool, not a judge. Even in jurisprudence, the jury is the trier of the facts. Because if this, we are presented with a dilemma. Qualitative data is inherently necessary when doing science, but each scientist comes to the lab with certain preconceptions and biases.

James W. Sire (2015) explains what is meant by a worldview. He states it is “…a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic makeup of our world” (p. 19). David Entwistle (2015) warns us that assumptions and biases affect data interpretation. He said, “…what we see depends, to some degree, on what we expect and are predisposed to see.” (p. 93) Our ability to know is both dependent upon and limited by the assumptions of our worldview. This is problematic in science, especially because a person’s worldview is not just a set of basic concepts, but a fundamental orientation of the heart.

Accordingly, atheists and theists are not really arguing over the data, nor are they bickering over the vast majority of scientific issues. Instead, they are butting heads over contrasting worldviews. In order for science to be fair and balanced, scientists must take a forensic approach similar to that of a detective reviewing evidence at a crime scene. You can certainly imagine what happens if a detective approaches a homicide absolutely convinced about who committed the murder and why. Little-to-no investigation of exculpatory evidence or alternative suspects would be entertained. This would frequently lead to the wrong conclusion and conviction of the wrong individual.

Richard Lewontin, a Darwinist from Harvard University, addressed the philosophical biases that plague science. He wrote the following in The New York Review of Books:

Our willingness to accept accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a-priori adherence to the material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanation, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door [emphasis added].

Here’s my thought on this matter. If nature behaved in an erratic and unpredictable manner then life and science would be impossible. Laws of nature must point to a Law Giver. Most atheists have come to believe that God is no longer necessary. They think God and the laws discovered  through scientific study are diametrically opposed. Militant atheists take this viewpoint further, insisting that belief in God actually derails scientific progress. They believe “God” merely fills in the gaps in data until we “figure it all out.” In other words, who needs faith when we can empirically prove the whys and the means for how the physical world operates.

John C. Lennox, a mathematics professor at Oxford University and accomplished Christian apologist, noted that when Sir Isaac Newton discovered the universal law of gravitation he did not say, “I have discovered a mechanism that accounts for planetary motion, therefore there is no agent God who designed it.” Rather, because he understood how it worked, he was even more in awe of God who designed it that way. Granted, the prestige of science and technology is indeed impressive. But there’s more “code” and intricate functionality in just one of our forty trillion cells than in the latest iPhone.

Revisiting the concept that we all bring our preconceptions and biases to the table when taking on a subject, it is important to note that before doing science scientists frame their own philosophical rules for doing science. How can this not have a deciding impact on what they see or don’t see? Should scientists be open to only natural causes, or are intelligent or metaphysical causes worthy of consideration. While doing science, scientists rely on the orderly laws of nature, the law of causality, and the theory of knowledge known as realism when conducting an experiment or empirical investigation. After doing science, scientists must decide what is good evidence. What counts as evidence is not evidence itself—a philosophical value judgment must be made. Moreover, they must remain honest and open-minded throughout the entire process.

References

Behe, M. (2006). Darwin’s Black Box. New York, NY: Free Press, Div. of Simon and Schuster.
Entwistle, D. (2015). Integrative approaches to psychology and Christianity, third edition. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books.
Jeanson, J. (2017). Replacing Darwin: The New Origin of Species. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Publishing Group.
Sire, J. (2015). Naming the elephant: Worldview as a concept, second edition. Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press.

The Accidental Poet Spirituality

The Angry Atheists

When Jerry Falwell died on May 15, 2007, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper asked the caustic atheist Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) for his reaction. Cooper said, “I’m not sure if you believe in heaven, but, if you do, do you think Jerry Falwell is in it?” Hitchens held nothing back. He took a deep breath, smirked, and said, “No. And I think it’s a pity there isn’t a hell for him to go to.” Cooper was taken aback. “What is it about him that brings up such vitriol?” Hitchens said, “The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called reverend.” Hitchens told Cooper he thought Falwell was “…a bully and a fraud” who was essentially a Bible-thumping huckster.

I was introduced to Christian apologist Dinesh D’Souza in my World Views class at Colorado Christian University. One of the weekly assignments included watching a debate between D’Souza and Christopher Hitchens. I was shocked at the amount of venomous, loaded, sarcastic language Hitchens kept throwing his opponent. Hitchens always came across as a bombastic bully better at delivering witty zingers than compelling arguments. D’Souza writes, “A group of prominent atheists—many of them evolutionary biologists—has launched a public attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular; they have no interest in being nice.” He notes a comment made by Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion, displaying Dawkins’ anger at God:

The God of the Old Testament is 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, infaticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

In a Christianity Today article dated March 13, 2008, Tony Snow writes, “There are two types of Christian apologetics. One makes the positive case for faith; the other responds to critics. Dinesh D’Souza’s delightful book, What’s So Great About Christianity, falls into the second category. It sets out to rebut recent exuberant atheist tracts, such as Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great and Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion.” Snow notes that these so-called militant atheists tend to combine argument with large doses of bitter biography. Hitchens has gone so far as to state, “…religion poisons everything.”

Dr. David Jeremiah, in his book I Never Thought I’d See the Day!, said, “When I write of the anger of the atheists, I am not primarily referring to the classic atheists such as Bertrand Russel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. The atheists I am writing about are the ‘New Atheists.’ The term ‘new atheism’ was first used by Wired magazine in November 2006 to describe the atheism espoused in books like Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, Lewis Wolpert’s Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, Victor Stenger’s The Comprehensible Cosmos, Sam Harris’s The End of Faith, and Christopher Hitchens’s God is Not Great.“

WHY ALL THIS ANGER?

How can people  be so angry with God if they do not even believe He exists? Moreover, why would those most indignant about God feel such compulsion to literally preach their anti-God religion with the type of zeal we typically see from evangelists? Do they consider atheism to be their religion? Today’s front line atheists have truly ramped up the volume of their objections. They once held private their personal opinion that God does not exist. Today, they find it necessary to go on talk shows and lecture circuits announcing their belief in loud, shrill, militant voices.

The Pew Research Center (2019) published an article indicating that in the United States the ages 14–17 are very influential in terms of an individual adopting atheism. Of those who do embrace unbelief in the United States, many do so in their high school years. The average age group when most people decide they do not believe in God is 18-29 (40%). Theodore Beale declared, “”…the age at which most people become atheists indicates that it is almost never an intellectual decision, but and emotional one.” The Christian apologist Ken Ammi concurs in his essay The Argument for Atheism from Immaturity and writes, “It is widely known that some atheists rejected God in their childhood, based on child-like reasons, have not matured beyond these childish notions and thus, maintain childish emotional reactions toward the idea of God.” It is likely some great trauma or loss has caused the young atheist to not only reject God but to be filled with anger and resentment.

Men such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris are known for taking a look-back-in-anger, take-no-prisoners type of atheism. They, and most other active but not-so-famous atheists, reject the term “militant,” and refuse to explain their anger. Antony Flew, atheist-turned-believer and apologist, said, “What was significant about these [men’s] books was not their level of argument—which was modest, to put it mildly—but the level of visibility they received both as best sellers and as a ‘new’ story discovered by the media. The ‘story’ was helped even further by the fact that the authors were as voluble and colorful as their books were fiery.” Their delivery sounds a lot like hellfire-and-brimstone preachers warning us of dire retribution, even of apocalypse.

It’s obvious that atheists in the West today have become more outspoken and militant. The “average” atheist balks at the term militant, claiming it has no place in non-belief; only in radical, violent extremists like the Christians of the Crusades and Islamic terrorists. Fine. Let’s take a look at the meaning of militant: “combative and aggressive in support of a political or social cause, and typically favoring extreme, violent, or confrontational methods.” No, these new atheists do not seem to be violent, but you don’t have to be violent to be militant. They are surely combative and aggressive, often using rude, brutish, insulting confrontation in lieu of substantive comebacks. Dinesh D’Souza says what we are witnessing in America is atheist backlash. The atheists thought they were winning—after all, Western civilization has adopted pluralism and moral relativism—but now they realize that, far from dying quietly, Christianity is on the upswing. This is precisely why the new atheists are striking back, using all the vitriol they can command.

For example, consider the title of some of the books the new atheists have written:

  • The God Delusion—Richard Dawkins
  • The End of Faith—Sam Harris
  • God: The Failed Hypothesis—Victor Stenger
  • God is Not Great—Christopher Hitchens

SOMETHING IS LACKING IN THIS NEW ATHEISM

Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and others refuse to engage the real issues involved in the question of whether God exists. None of them even address the central grounds for positing the reality of God. Flew notes Sam Harris makes absolutely no mention of whether it’s possible that God does exist. Moreover, these new atheists fail to address the pesky question Where did the matter come from that forms our universe? They don’t discuss rationality, consciousness, or conceptual thought. I’d love to know where they believe our intellectual capacity, as well as metacognition—thinking about thinking—and who we are and what life really means came from. Neither do they present a plausible  worldview that explains the existence of law-abiding, life-supporting, altruistic behavior. They have no plausible explanation for the development of ethics and truth.

Flew goes so far as to comment, “It would be fair to say that the ‘new atheism’ is nothing less than a regression to the logical positivist philosophy that was renounced by even its most ardent proponents. In fact, the ‘new atheists.” it might be said, do not even rise to logical positivism. Hold on. Let’s take a minute to look at positivism so we’re on the same page as Flew and his argument. Simply stated, it is a Western philosophy that confines itself to the data of experience and excludes a priori or metaphysical speculation. It has also been known as empiricism and, later in the 20th century, analytic philosophy.

WHAT THEY WANT

For the militant atheists, the solution is to weaken the power of faith and religion worldwide and to drive religion completely from the public sphere so that it can no longer have an impact on academia or public policy. In their view, they believe a secular world would be a safer and more peaceful world without the concept of religious faith. D’Souza writes, “Philosopher Richard Rorty proclaimed religious belief ‘politically dangerous’ and declared atheism the only practical basis for a ‘pluralistic, democratic society.’ These ideas resonate quite broadly in Western culture today.”

Isn’t it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought about?—Richard Dawkins

Dinesh D’Souza writes, “It seems that atheists are not content with committing cultural suicide—they want to take your children with them. The atheist strategy can be described in this way: let the religious people breed them, and we will educate them to despise their parents’ beliefs.” In other words, militant atheists are more concerned with indoctrinating our young students against their parents’ religious influence through promoting an anti-religious agenda. It’s been said that Darwinism has enemies mostly because it is not compatible with a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.

Christopher Hitchens, who was an ardent Darwinist, wrote, “How can we ever know how many children had their psychological and physical lives irreparably maimed by the compulsory inculcation of faith?” Hitchens accused religion of preying upon the uninformed and undefended minds of the young. He did not take kindly to Christian parochial schools. He boldly stated, “If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.”  Sam Harris likened belief in Christianity to a form of slavery! Biologist E.O. Wilson recommended using science to eradicate religion by showing that the mind itself is a product of evolution and that free moral choice is an illusion.

Sam Harris goes further, saying atheism should be taught as a mere extension of science and logic. Harris says, “Atheism is not a philosophy. It is not even a view of the world. It is simply an admission of the obvious. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.” Dawkins believes faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to small pox virus but harder to eradicate. He writes in The God Delusion, “Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.” Sigmund Freud regarded religion as a illusion (rather than a delusion, which is a psychiatric term), but he was by no means militant, combatant or completely closed-minded on the subject. In fact, he often invited religious leaders to his home to discuss the merits of their faith. He at least seemed open-minded, albeit not convinced.

Philosopher Richard Rorty argued that secular professors in the universities are out to “arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.” It’s as if these atheist professors intend to discredit parents in the eyes of their children, trying to strip them of their fundamentalist beliefs, making such beliefs seem silly rather than worthy of discussion. D’Souza writes, “The conventions of academic life, almost universally, revolve around the assumption that religious belief is something that people grow out of as they become educated.”

CONCLUDING REMARKS

As children, we certainly spend a great amount of time in school. Basic psychology tells us early child development encompasses physical, socio-emotional, cognitive and motor development between birth and age 8. A continuum of care—from preconception through the formative years—is needed to safeguard and maximize children’s developmental outcomes. Indeed, the first five years of a child’s life effect who a child will turn out to be. The beliefs, emotions, and action-tendencies represent the accumulated experiences people have had while trying to get their needs met, which plays a key role in personality development. Accordingly, personality develops around our motivations (our needs and goals). Children of Christian parents who grow up in an environment that consistently presents and lives the Gospel enter public school with an understanding of Who and What God is. This is more pronounced if they attended a parochial school prior to entering college. Secular professors want to dismantle that belief system in the interest of empirical science and truth.

Militant atheists have come out of the shadows of private belief with the intention of attacking theism in general and Christianity in particular. They are no longer content with deciding for themselves that there is no God. They feel compelled to poison the minds of young college students, steering them away from their faith, by bombarding them with science, logical positivism, Darwinism, pluralism, and moral relativism and… well, whatever works. Just as long as they can convince the world that God is dead one college student at a time.

Praise God that He lives so that we may live.

References

Dawkins, R. (2006). The God Delusion. New York, NY: Bantam Press.

Jeremiah, D. (2011). I Never Thought I’d See the Day! New York, NY: FaithWords.

Pew Research Center. (2019). Age and Distribution Among Atheists. Retrieved from: http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-family/atheist/

Snow, T. (March 13, 2008). “New Atheists are Not So Great.” Christianity Today. Retrieved from: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/march/25.79.html

The Accidental Poet Spirituality

Challenges From Atheism

Atheism remains an important challenge to faith throughout the Western world, especially in the United States. Many of its critics believe that the movement has lost its way and that its intellectual credentials and cultural appeal have dwindled in recent years. I completely disagree. Atheism is, of course, a “godless” worldview under which nearly every claim and nuance of “faith” is ridiculed as nothing less than a centuries-old fairy tale. As a matter of course, atheism has typically meant a lack of belief in gods. Although this might sound like mere semantics at first blush, atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; rather, it is a lack of belief. Some older lexicons define atheism as “a belief that there is no god.” Atheism has not gone away. In fact, it has morphed into a militant attack on Christianity itself.

Diagoras of Melos

Who created atheism? Atheism—or at least the idea that would today pass for atheistic—seems to have begun in the 5th century when Diagoras of Melos (ancient Greek poet and sophist) declared that there were no gods. Atheism contrasts with the word theism, which, in its most general form, is the belief that at least one deity exists. Etymology of the Greek word ἄθεος (atheos) means “without gods.”

American Atheists is a movement founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair in 1963. O’Hair filed suit in 1959 on behalf of her son who was forced to attend Bible readings in his school and was a victim of harassment at the hands of school employees after he declined to participate. The Murray v. Curlett case was consolidated into Abington School District v. Schempp and was decided on June 17, 1963. This landmark case held for the first time that state-mandated prayer and Bible readings in public schools were a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. That year, the Society of Separationists (the precurser to American Atheists) was founded.

Friedrich Nietzsche

It’s been 134 years since Friedrich Nietzsche declared “God is Dead” (or Gott ist tot, in German), giving philosophy students a collective headache that’s lasted from the 19th century until today. It is, perhaps, one of the best known statements in all of philosophy. The death of God didn’t strike Nietzsche as an entirely good thing. Without a God, the basic belief system of Western Europe was in jeopardy. Nietzsche was an atheist during most of his adult life, and didn’t mean that there was a God who had actually died; rather that our idea of one had. After the Enlightenment, the idea of a universe that was governed by physical laws and not by divine providence was considered to be reality.

Philosophy argued that governments no longer needed to be organized around the idea of divine right in order to be legitimate, but rather by the consent or rationality of the governed. Philosophers said large and consistent moral theories could exist without reference to God. Europe no longer needed God as the source for morality, value, or order in the universe; philosophy and science were capable of doing that. This increasing secularization of thought in the West led the philosopher to conclude that not only was God dead but that human beings had killed him with their scientific revolution—their desire to better understand the world. Nietzsche wrote in Twilight of the Idols, “When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. This morality is by no means self-evident… Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole.”

Atheism is on the March

As many atheists know, to not replace God with a new philosophical structure providing meaning can be a cause of existential dread. Are we at risk of becoming a society struggling with our own meaninglessness? Are we at risk for nihilism? Are we more vulnerable to ideologies and con men who promise to do what God used to do for us and society? While Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the future, the non-religious are less so than the spiritually-minded. It seems Nietzsche may have been wrong in the long run about our ability to deal with the idea that God is dead. Interestingly, Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said, “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”

It would seem that atheism has become a religion onto itself.

Richard Dawkins’ international bestseller The God Delusion has been called a “hard-hitting, impassioned” book in which he is said to eviscerate the arguments for religion and demonstrate the “supreme improbability” of the existence of a supreme being. Proponents of his militant atheism believe Dawkins “makes a compelling case that faith is not just irrational but potentially deadly.”

Dawkins, in his Preface to The God Delusion, writes, “If you feel trapped in the religion of your upbringing, it would be worth asking yourself how this came about. The answer is usually some form of childhood indoctrination. If you are religious at all it is overwhelmingly probable that your religion is that of your parents. If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam false, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan, you are the victim of childhood indoctrination. Mutatis mutandis if you were born in Afghanistan.” Dawkins’ militant attitude spills over from mere personal disbelief in God; he attacks Christian parents who, as he puts it, brainwash their children. He writes, “I want everybody to flinch whenever we hear a phrase such as ‘Catholic child’ or ‘Muslim child.’ Speak of a ‘child of Catholic parents’ if you like; but if you hear anybody speak of a ‘Catholic child,’ stop them and politely point out that children are too young to know where they stand on such issues, just as they are too young to know where they stand on economics or politics.”

The Militants

Atheism has not typically been antagonistic to religion. Even Diagoras of Melos simply believed life would be better without a god lording it over everyone. Nietzsche believed God was dead because unbelief killed Him. Psychology Today believes militant atheism is a myth. Not so fast. Julian Baggini, a committed atheist author, summarizes militant atheism rather eloquently. He writes, “Although atheism is not necessarily hostile to religion, there are, of course, some atheists who are hostile to religion, and not just fundamentalist religions… Atheism which is actively hostile to religion I would call militant. To be hostile in this sense requires more than just strong disagreement with religion—it requires something verging on hatred and is characterized by a desire to wipe out all forms of religious beliefs. Militant atheists tend to make one or both of two claims that atheists do not. The first is that religion is demonstrably false or nonsense, and the second is that it is usually or always harmful.”

Richard Dawkins is beyond any doubt the new high priest of the militant atheist movement. Upon release of The God Delusion, he officially declared war on religion in general and Christianity in particular. He has made it clear that he will not rest until he has completely defeated God and religion. Philip Johnson said, “After reading a great deal of this bombast, I have come to the conclusion that Richard has never assumed the duties of a Professor of the Public Understanding of Science—a position he holds due to the patronage of a zillionaire from Microsoft. He seems to lack the intellectual confidence to say anything of substance, so he sticks to the very safe path of appealing to the materialistic prejudices.”

But what of Dawkins’ arguments themselves? The God Delusion is little more than an aggregation of convenient (if not embellished) factoids, suitably overstated to achieve maximum impact, and loosely arranged to suggest that they actually constitute some element of Socratic reasoning. This makes dealing with its so-called arguments a little problematic, in that the work frequently substitutes aggressive, bullying rhetoric for serious evidence-based argument. Dawkins often treats evidence as something to cram into his preconceived theoretical (perhaps theatrical?) framework. Religion is persistently and consistently portrayed in the worst possible way.

Perhaps Michael Caputo gives us some hope in his We Believe in God: The Greatest Artists, Musicians, Philosophers, Scientists, Writers and Poets Believed in God.

The Accidental Poet Spirituality

Is Faith Irrational?

faith-photo.jpg

The truth about God is too important not to be seriously investigated and honestly and fairly discussed. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for friendly conversations about religion to escalate into shouting matches—and this helps no one. Belief and unbelief are two sides to the same coin. The debate over faith and spirituality is here to stay. However, it does no good to vilify the other side. If any real ground is to be reached, we need to change the tone of this conversation.

WHY ALL THIS HOSTILITY AGAINST RELIGION?

It wasn’t too long ago that the idea of books on atheism and apologetics becoming New York Times best-sellers would have been hard to imagine. So what happened? Why are people reading books bashing God and ridiculing the faithful, or proffering a defense of the Gospel? Of course, that’s a rather complex question.

Lower Manhattan Just After Towers Fell

First, we live in a much different world following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The events of that horrific day, when 2,996 people were murdered and more than 6,000 were injured, are burned into our collective memory. We all had front-row seats to religious fanaticism run amok. Until that day, such zealotry had always been going on “somewhere else” in the world. It is impossible to overstate how drastically the events of 9/11 changed our world.

isis-soldiers.jpg

In the days that followed, the cultural conversation turned to the role and value of religion in the public square and throughout the globe. Such conversations are certainly legitimate and appropriate and, if conducted properly, can be quite healthy. But events like 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, 2013, or the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando on June 12, 2016, helped create the cultural context in which the hyper-aggressive claims of today’s militant atheists could actually be entertained by a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles.

Second, there is a growing undercurrent of unbelief in America. A Newsweek cover story written by John Meacham, published on April 16, 2009, titles “The End of Christian America,” reported that “the number of Americans who claim no religious belief or affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent.” Why is this? While sociologists have more than enough polling data to analyze, I think Timothy Keller offers a plausible explanation in his book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism:

Three generations ago, most people inherited rather than chose their religious faith. The great majority of people belonged to one of the historic mainline Protestant churches or the Roman Catholic Church. Today, however, the now-dubbed “old-line” Protestant churches of cultural, inherited faith are aging and losing members rapidly. People are opting instead for a non-religious life, for non-institutional personally constructed spirituality, or for orthodox, high-commitment religious groups that expect members to have a conversion experience. Therefore the population is paradoxically growing both more religious and less religious at once.

This post 9/11 rejection of God and religion has its roots in pluralism and secularization. It seems a growing number of people—on both sides of the God question—are no longer content to “play church.” It is likely many see “religion” as a training ground for extremism, dogma, elitism, and narrow-mindedness. Either what people believe is true and they are going to attempt to live out their faith in all areas of their life, or it’s false and people shouldn’t waste their time going through the motions of their childhood faith if belief makes no difference whatever.

So these two factors have generated a cultural conversation about faith and God in the 21st century. This is both an opportunity and a challenge for those who attempt to share the Gospel. In addition, the events of 9/11 and after also created room in culture for militant atheists whose advocates tell anyone who’ll listen that if we get rid of religion, we can free ourselves from what they call childish nonsense. Atheism, of course, is not new. It’s been with us for quite a long time. The media fueled atheism, starting perhaps with the April 8, 1966 cover story of Time magazine, “Is God Dead?” Friedrich Nietzsche infamously said Gott ist tot God is dead) in his 1882 collection titled “The Joyful Pursuit of Knowledge and Understanding.”

What is new, however, is the biting and powerful rhetoric, as well as the cultural visibility, of these so-called militant atheist, the likes of which include Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Bill Nye. Naturally, their visibility has increased secondary to the explosion of the Internet, blogs, and 24/7 media coverage of every imaginable topic. The more controversial and polarizing, the better. Hoping that something hits the mark, these militant atheists tend to throw everything at people. They appeal primarily to the emotions, lacking any evidence regarding the non-existence of God. Granted, it’s impossible to prove a negative. But these individuals skillfully dodge the concept of proof and instead use sarcasm and innuendo to rattle their theist counterparts and paint religion—especially Christianity—as delusional.

SO, IS FAITH IRRATIONAL?

Richard Dawkins Pic

A distinct feature of the rhetoric being espoused by the militant atheists today is their belief that religion is blind, irrational, and, well, just plain stupid. This is evident in the title of Richard Dawkins’ seminal work: The God Delusion. His intent is clear—those who believe in God are fools who have been brainwashed by their parents and ancestors into believing something absurd. Dawkins thinks religious people are deluded. I find myself asking, What could possibly cause Dawkins and others like him to be so adamantly against religion? Why resort to attacking fellow citizens simply because they believe in God? A major reason is because Dawkins has decided religious belief is not based in evidence. He said, “In all areas except religion, we believe what we believe as a result of evidence.”  In other words, he believes religious faith is blind but in other disciplines—especially science—we demand physical proof for what we believe. Dawkins concludes that religion is a “nonsensical enterprise” that “poisons everything.”

Dawkins’ definition of a “delusion” is “a persistent false belief in the face of strong contradictory evidence.” Now wait just a minute! Isn’t it nearly impossible to prove a negative? What is this strong contradictory evidence? Daniel Dennett—an American philosopher, writer, cognitive scientist, atheist, and secularist—claims that Christians are addicted to their blind faith. According to militant atheist Sam Harris, “Faith is generally nothing more than the permission religious people give one another to believe things strongly without evidence.” Harris said, “Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.”

Doubting Thomas

Dawkins often cites the story of doubting Thomas as proof that Christianity requires blind faith. When the other disciples reported that they had seen the risen Christ, Thomas refused to believe until he could see the nail marks and put his hands where the nails had been and into Jesus’ side where He had been speared. A week later, Jesus showed up and gave Thomas the evidence he demanded. Then Jesus said to Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29, NIV). True to form, Dawkins says this Scripture passage proves that Christianity opposes reason. He adds, “Thomas demanded [physical] evidence… the other apostles, whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence, are help up to us as worthy of imitation.”

BIBLICAL FAITH

The fact that some Christians may have so-called “blind faith” is not the same as Christianity itself valuing blind faith and irrationality. Frankly, the Bible does not tell us to irrationally believe something in the face of reliable physical evidence to the contrary. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (NIV). Eugene Peterson, in his translation of Hebrews 11:1, writes, “The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see” (MSG) [Emphasis added]. To me, this wonderfully written paraphrase shows that Christianity does not require blind faith in face of scientific evidence to the contrary. Hebrews 11 (the “faith” chapter) explains trust in God.

Faith Hebrews 11

Many individuals—believers, non-believers, and agnostics alike—have a gross misunderstanding of what constitutes faith. Faith is not merely a manner by which we “fill in the gaps” in the absence of, or in the face of, real, tangible, evidence. Carl Sagan, for example, once said, “Faith is believing in something in the absence of evidence.” This is a rather narrow definition. Let’s take a closer look at the word substance. It comes from the Greek word hupostasis, meaning “a placing or setting under, a substructure or foundation.” This word can also be translated as “confidence.” The Greek word for evidence, elengchos, means “that by which a thing is proved or tested; conviction.”

Biblical faith comes from careful observation and the weighing of all available evidence. Faith, therefore, is dynamic rather than static. The militant atheists like to lump all religions together and dismiss them with sweeping generalizations. But Christianity is unique in valuing the role of the mind which includes the proper use of reasoning and argumentation. In fact 1 Peter 3:15 says, “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have…” (NIV). The King James Bible uses this same terminology: the substance of things hoped for. Jesus tells us to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind. God said to Israel, “Come now, let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18, NKJV).

EVERYONE HAS FAITH!

When people hear the word faith, they typically think of religion. No doubt religious people have faith in God. Christians have faith in the Word and many unseen things such as heaven, angels, and the spirit. The point that’s often passed over is that Christians are not the only ones who have faith—everyone does. Everyone has faith in something, including Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. If you don’t have faith, you wouldn’t eat, leave your house, get in an airplane, or go to the fiftieth floor of a skyscraper in an elevator car.

The philosophical revolution over the past few decades has lead to the strengthening of the traditional arguments for God’s existence with new insights and evidence. In their writings, militant atheists hardly interact with these arguments, and, until recently, they have refused to engage leading Christian thinkers in public. As part of my class on World Views at Colorado Christian University, I watched a debate between Dinesh D’Souza and the late Christopher Hitchens. I was shocked by Hitchens’ vilification of Christianity and the vitriolic and mean-spirited comments he threw at D’Souza in an attempt to throw his opponent off his game.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Faulty views of Christianity and its followers are not countered solely by good arguments, but also through relationships. The apostle Paul spoke of imparting not only the truth of the Gospel, but also his very own life. We typically refer to this as our “witness.” Perhaps Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens simply haven’t gotten to know thoughtful and intelligent Christians who value the role of evidence and reason. In other words, believers who grasp the importance of 1 Peter 3:15.

If the human condition limits our ability to know what is true, how do we determine what to believe? It’s been said that we have no criterion for truth—only the means to recognize error. In other words, our knowledge is finite but our ignorance is infinite. Philosophy has long recognized this fact and uses dialectics to assist in our quest to understand what is true. This process involves repeated and thorough criticism of our assumptions. After all, our Christian worldview is more inherited than undertaken by us. Of course, most atheists are fond of stating that faith is defined as believing without evidence. This is actually a faith that mirrors Hebrews 11:1. Even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith the existence of law-like order in nature and throughout the universe that is at least comprehensible to Christians.

 

The Accidental Poet General

Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today (Part Three)

“But sanctify the LORD God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15, NASB).

APOLOGETICS_3

One True Religion?

Many Americans believe, “All religions are good, so let us all just get along!” The problem is that neither Christianity, Judaism, nor Islam teach such inclusive ideas. Each claim to be the one true religion. The COEXIST symbol is merely portraying yet another religious view: All religions are equally valid. But is it logically possible for all religions to be true? Or is there only one true religion?

Do all religions lead to God? Think about the logic of this. Can I pick up my cell phone and dial any phone number and get home? No, there’s only one number that’ll get me home. This reminds me of a comedian (I cannot remember his name) who said, “Don’t you hate it when you can’t remember the phone number of a friend or relative? You get close, but no cigar! I think if you get every number right but one you should at least get someone who knows the person you’re trying to reach!” Regarding religion, the truth is all roads don’t lead to Rome, and all religions don’t lead to God.

WAY_TRUTH_LIFE.001-608x342.jpg

The road to heaven is clear. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). I’m betting my life and my salvation on the fact that He was right. I believe Jesus Christ was God incarnate, and I don’t think He would lie about the road to paradise. Jesus told Nicodemus, a Pharisee, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (NIV). The most unique attribute of God is His holiness and justice. His holiness is demonstrated by His being “set apart” from all of creation. “With whom then will you compare God? To what image will you liken Him?” (Isaiah 40:18, NIV). God is pure and undefiled, separate from sinners. He is unable to fellowship or dwell with the wicked. Psalm 5:4-5 says, “For You are not a God who is pleased with wickedness; with you, wicked people are not welcome” (NIV).

When we try to figure out, explain, or define God by our own reasoning, we come dangerously close to creating an image or idol—an image of God that satisfies us from our innately limited point of view.  If God exists—and I believe He does—we certainly did not create Him. Today’s vocal atheists—some prefer to be called anti-theists—proclaim that those who believe in God have simply created Him in their mind. Any attempt on our part to define or explain God will be just that. An attempt.

I’ve heard it said, “No religion is the TRUE RELIGION because humans are behind each doctrine or belief. Religions only serve to divide people who might otherwise get along just fine. Instead, in the name of a god or supreme being, people judge, exclude, or persecute others based upon their religious beliefs.”

Militant Atheists

Most so-called “open-minded” people today tout the belief that no one religion can have a monopoly on truth. Atheists, of course, insist no religion is true because God does not exist. I have been studying apologetics for about a year, and have watched debates between the likes of Dinesh D’Souza and Christopher Hitchens, or Bill Nye and Ken Ham. It is not unusual to see visceral, nasty attacks on Christians. Many of these anti-theists say believers are narrow-minded, exclusionary, bigoted, elitist, deluded, or just plain stupid.

militant-atheism dawkins

Many of the more visible atheists today are rather militant, showing hostility toward religion, who are bent on propagating atheism among the masses rather than just quietly, privately, refusing to believe in God. Militant atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens propose that religion is harmful. Both have gone so far as stating that parents who force their faith on their unsuspecting children are pounding religion into their young minds, consequently giving them little-to-no chance of making their own decision about religion. Hitchens actually believes this is a form of child abuse. These militant atheists tend to form their comments from a base of emotions, subjectivity, and a cavalier treatment of subject matter better discussed with depth of thinking and an open mind.

These non-believers are fond of letting the sins of individuals who claim to be Christians discount or discolor the very image of God. Richard Dawkins is known for this tactic, blaming Christians for violent persecution and prosthelytizing during the Crusades. They typically exaggerate the number of people killed while ignoring the terrible murder, persecution, torture, and genocide of countless despotic leaders like Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin, Hirohito, Vladimir Lenin, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Muammar Gaddafi, Edi Anim, and the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

What About The Presence of Evil?

Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, and others typically argue that the presence of evil and tragedy in the world is proof that God does not exist. They malign the Christian God by saying either God is omnipotent and able to stop evil but chooses not to— making him cold and callous—or He is unable to stop evil, indicating He lacks the power to stop evil. Of course, this is the most troubling accusation for a believer to answer. The best way to examine this issue is to look at God’s nature and His desire for mankind. God loves us and wants us to love Him back.

If-God-Exists-Then-Why-is-There-So-Much-Evil-in-The-World-Today.jpg

But He gave us free will. We can choose to love Him in return, or we can turn our backs on His grace and goodness. Love is a choice. Martin Luther examined free will in his treatise The Bondage of the Will. Luther is actually responding to Erasmus who took issue with the necessity of free will. The following are passages from Luther’s response.

Section. 5. BUT this is still more intolerable, your enumerating this subject of “free-will” among those things that are “useless, and not necessary;” and drawing up for us, instead of it, a “form” of those things which you consider “necessary unto Christian piety.”
Section. 6. THE “form” of Christianity set forth by you, among other things, has this, “That we should strive with all our powers, have recourse to the remedy of repentance, and in all ways try to gain the mercy of God; without which, neither human will, nor endeavour, is effectual.” —Martin Luther

If love is a choice, evil actions are also a choice made by mankind and not Almighty God. If you have a choice, you have to be able to choose not to love, which is in itself the nature of evil. Evil is choosing not to love. So when God gave us the freedom to choose, he gave us not only our greatest blessing, but he also gave us our greatest curse, because we can choose to do right or choose to do wrong.

THEREFORE, it is not irreligious, curious, or superfluous, but essentially wholesome and necessary, for a Christian to know, whether or not the will does any thing in those things which pertain unto Salvation. Nay, let me tell you, this is the very hinge upon which our discussion turns. It is the very heart of our subject. For our object is this: to inquire what “free-will” can do, in what it is passive, and how it stands with reference to the grace of God. If we know nothing of these things, we shall know nothing whatever of Christian matters, and shall be far behind all People upon the earth. —Martin Luther

The reason there’s evil in the world is not because of God, but because God gave us the freedom to choose. The potential for love outweighs the existence of evil, because you see, evil is only going to exist for a short time, but love is going to go on forever. And all of the suffering and all of the death that we see in the world today are the result of man making wrong choices. God could have taken our freedom, but He didn’t.

Concluding Remarks

The Apostle Paul, a skillful debater who was happy to wrangle with rabbis and philosophers alike, recognized the perils of linking faith improperly with clever argument. Of course, this is exactly the approach taken by today’s militant atheists. Their rhetoric is steeped in emotions and conjecture. When engaging in apologetics, we must remain humble and respectful. We engage in apologetics because we are commanded to. We all have minds that need convincing and satisfying. Christianity meets all our needs. We need to communicate this fact to non-believers. If God has commissioned us to work with Him in testifying to the virtues of the Gospel, then we must do so with vigor and enthusiasm.

As a Christian, I do believe that God has given us the privilege of hearing and embracing the Good News, of receiving adoption into His family, and of joining the Body of Christ as a vital cog in the wheel of salvation. We do believe that we know some things that others do not know, but we do not know all there is to know. What human mind can fully grasp the reality of God Almighty? Above all, I know I have met Jesus Christ on my own road to Damascus. On the basis of what we know—indeed, what we have been shown—we offer to our neighbors through apologetics the truth, the goodness, and the beauty of Jesus Christ, our precious Lord and Savior.

What’s Next?

Next week, in Part Four, I will present the truth and the nature of conversion, including the definition of being “born again,” and how one comes to a decision regarding religion. I look forward to presenting the Christian doctrine to you.