Atheism

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February 13, 2009

Atheist Demotivator

Posted by Jason Dulle under Atheism, Fun
[78] Comments 

Have you ever seen those motivational posters that have a nice, serene or inspiring picture, and a word-message beneath it?  For example, it might show a rock climber pulling himself over the summit of a mountain.  And the word will be “achievement,” followed by some inspirational line about achievement.  I hate those posters!  I much prefer the ones created by Despair, Inc. One of my favorites is “Incompetence: When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there’s no end to what you can’t do.”

I would like to make a polemical “demotivational” poster of my own on the topic of “Atheism,” and I would like your help in determining the caption and picture.  Here are the captions I have come up with:

  • Atheism: The best way to become your own boss is to pretend your boss doesn’t exist
  • Atheism: Because God didn’t qualify for the job
  • Atheism: There is no God, and I hate him.
  • Atheism: An elite club for those with enough faith to believe everything came from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing, Amen.
  • Atheism: Because nobody tells me what to do.

Which is your favorite?  Can you think of some alternatives?  Paint for me a picture to go along with the caption you selected.  For example, for the first caption I envision a big corporate conference room with a man sitting in the CEO’s chair on his lap, acting as if the CEO is not there.

 

February 13, 2009

Philosophy: The Last Academic Stronghold of Theism

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Naturalism, Philosophy, Theism
[9] Comments 

Philosopher and theologian, William Lane Craig, has frequently made reference to the turn of events in philosophy over the past 40 years.  What was once a very secularized field has been “invaded” by theists.  As evidence of this phenomenon, consider what atheist philosopher, Quentin Smith, had to say in the journal Philo:

By the second half of the twentieth century, universities and colleges had been become in the main secularized. … Analytic philosophers (in the mainstream of analytic philosophy) treated theism as an antirealist or non-cognitivist world-view, requiring the reality, not of a deity, but merely of emotive expressions…. The secularization of mainstream academia began to quickly unravel upon the publication of [Alvin] Plantinga’s influential book on realist theism, God and Other Minds, in 1967. It became apparent to the philosophical profession that this book displayed that realist theists were not outmatched by naturalists in terms of the most valued standards of analytic philosophy: conceptual precision, rigor of argumentation, technical erudition, and an in-depth defense of an original world-view. … [T]oday perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors are theists, with most being orthodox Christians. … God is not “dead” in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments.[1]

In other words, the intellectual respectability of theism was resurrected.  Theism was rational after all (even if [as Quentin thinks] it is ultimately false), and formed a beachhead against secularism in university philosophy departments.  What I find interesting, however, is the response of naturalists.  According to Smith

the great majority of naturalist philosophers react by publicly ignoring the increasing desecularizing of philosophy (while privately disparaging theism, without really knowing anything about contemporary analytic philosophy of religion) and proceeding to work in their own area of specialization as if theism, the view of approximately one-quarter or one-third of their field, did not exist. … [N]aturalist scientists…are so innocent of any understanding of the philosophy of religion that they do not even know that they are innocent of this understanding, as it witnessed by their popular writings on science and religion.[2]

And again,

If each naturalist who does not specialize in the philosophy of religion (i.e., over ninety-nine percent of naturalists) were locked in a room with theists who do specialize in the philosophy of religion, and if the ensuing debates were refereed by a naturalist who had a specialization in the philosophy of religion, the naturalist referee could at most hope the outcome would be that “no definite conclusion can be drawn regarding the rationality of faith,” although I expect the most probable outcome is that the naturalist, wanting to be a fair and objective referee, would have to conclude that the theists definitely had the upper hand in every single argument or debate.[3]

Be sure, this is not because Smith thinks theists have the better arguments.  On the contrary, he is persuaded that naturalism is the true ontology.  But he recognizes that 99% of naturalists are so ignorant of the philosophy of religion that they would not be able to refute the arguments.  I have found this to be true of many naturalists.  They continue to speak as if theism requires an irrational, blind leap of faith into the dark, and continue to present tired-old arguments against theism as if those arguments have not been answered by theists both past and present.  They are unaware of those responses, because they do not engage the philosophy of religion with the same rigor that theists engage philosophical naturalism.

Furthermore, because most naturalists ignore philosophers of religion, they are also unaware of the fact that theistic philosophers have defeated their arguments for naturalism, and thus ignorant of the fact that their belief in naturalism is not justified (at least until they are able to undercut or rebut those defeaters).  As Smith notes, “They may have a true belief in naturalism, but they have no knowledge that naturalism is true since they do not have an undefeated justification for their belief.”[4]

While Smith is concerned about the recent turn of events in philosophy, I find it reason to rejoice.  It is a testimony to the intellectual credibility of the Christian faith.  Religious faith does not require a commitment of the will in the absence (or in spite of the) evidence, but rather is a persuasion based on reasonable knowledge.  Christians need not fear philosophy; we need only avoid the false philosophies of men (Colossians 2:8).  As C.S. Lewis once said, “Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

[1]Quentin Smith, “The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism,” Philo, 4:2 (2001); available from http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm; Internet; accessed 07 January 2009.

[2]Ibid.

[3]Ibid.

[4]Ibid.

 

November 18, 2008

Big Bang Cosmology and Atheism Go Together Like Peas in a Blender

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Cosmological Argument, Naturalism, Science, Theism, Theistic Arguments
[27] Comments 

big-bangFor millennia philosophers maintained that the universe is eternal.  The philosophical payoff of this view was that it avoided the God question.  If the universe has always been, it did not need a creator.  The emergence of the Big Bang theory in the early part of the 20th century, however, changed all of that.  The Big Bang model successfully predicted that the universe–including all spatio-temporal-material reality–had an absolute origin at a point in the finite past, from which it expanded, and continues to expand today.

The theistic implications of this model were recognized instantly.  If the universe began to exist, it seemed to require a supernatural cause (one outside the confines of the natural world).  That’s why it was met with fierce opposition, and why it took several decades and many lines of empirical confirmation to become the reigning paradigm it is today.  Even now, cosmogenists continue to put forth alternative models in hopes of averting the beginning of the universe, many of which are little more than exercises in metaphysical speculation, incapable of both verification and falsification.

While not friendly to an atheistic worldview, many atheists eventually made their peace with the empirical evidence, and accepted the theory.  But the theistic implications of a temporally finite universe have not gone away.  Anything that begins to exist requires a cause.  If the universe began to exist, what caused it to exist?  It could not be a natural law, because natural laws originated with the universe.  It could not be self-caused, because this is incoherent.  Something cannot bring itself into existence, for that would entail its existence prior to its existence.

The atheist has two options.  He can either admit to the existence of an external cause of the universe, or affirm that the universe is uncaused.  For most atheists the first option is out of the question.  An external cause of the universe looks too much like God: immaterial, eternal, non-spatial, intelligent, and personal.  That leaves them the second option.  But this won’t do either.  The causal principle is one of the most basic intuitions we have.  Things don’t just pop into existence uncaused from nothing, so why think the universe did?  If everything that begins to exist has a sufficient cause, on what grounds is the origin of the universe excepted?  If one excepts it on the basis that it is impossible to have a cause prior to the first event, they are guilty of begging the question in favor of atheism, for they are assuming that physical reality is the only reality, and thus the only possible cause of the Big Bang must be a physical cause.  But it is entirely plausible that the external cause of the Big Bang was an eternal, non-physical reality.  The only way to demonstrate that the universe cannot have a cause, then, is to demonstrate that the existence of an eternal, non-physical reality like God is impossible.  But the very beginning of the universe is an argument for such a being’s existence!

Some atheists, recognizing the problem the principle of causal sufficiency makes for the atheistic worldview, cling to an eternal universe despite the scientific and philosophic evidence to the contrary.  They recognize that it is nonsense to think something can come from nothing, uncaused.  Something can only come from something.  From nothing, nothing comes.  If there was ever a time when nothing existed (as the Big Bang model predicts), then of necessity there would be nothing still, because nothing has no potential to become something.  And yet there is something, so there could not have been a time when nothing existed.  As a matter of historical fact, there can’t ever be a time when there was nothing.  Something must exist eternally.  If something must exist eternally, and the universe is not that something, then something resembling the God of theism must exist.  Rather than admit the obvious-that this is evidence for the existence of God-these atheists reject the scientific and philosophical evidence for a finite universe, and assert that the universe must exist eternally.

What’s important to see, here, is that this sort of atheist is not being intellectually honest with the evidence.  He has an a priori philosophical and volitional commitment to atheism, and that commitment biases him to such an extent that he will not accept the destination to which the rational evidence leads.  Only theism is consistent with the evidence, and consistent with reason.  While I commend atheists who reject the notion that the universe could come into being from nothing totally uncaused as an irrational leap of faith, I admonish them to go one step further, and recognize that the principle that something only comes from something, combined with the scientific an philosophical evidence for the finitude of the universe, supports theism, not atheism.  To be consistent and honest with the data, they should accept the finitude of the universe, and admit that its existence requires a personal and supernatural cause.

 

October 6, 2008

Atheists Have Some ‘Splainin’ to Do

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Theistic Arguments
[18] Comments 

Atheists like to think theists alone bear the burden of proof when it comes to the question of God’s existence. They assume atheism is the default position unless, and until sufficient evidence for God’s existence can be mustered. This is simply not true. Atheism is a worldview (or, more accurately, is a component of many worldviews), just like Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. All worldviews make truth-claims, and he who makes a truth-claim assumes the burden of proof to demonstrate the veracity of those claims, including atheists. Each worldview must stand on its own merits. The lack of evidence for other worldviews is not in itself evidence in favor of another. That’s why it is illegitimate to think a (supposed) lack of evidence for theism is itself evidence for atheism.

All worldviews are charged with explaining reality, both as it is, and as we experience it. Atheism is no exception. If anyone is to take their worldview seriously, atheists must explain the existence of the universe, free will, rationality, consciousness, and the like without reference to God. Indeed, they must show that an atheist explanation is superior, and more likely than other theistic alternatives. This project is doomed to failure. The explanatory scope and explanatory plausibility of atheism is inferior to theistic worldviews. How so?

Atheism requires that we believe the universe just popped into existence out of nowhere, caused by nothing. Theism, on the other hand, posits an eternal, intelligent agent who caused the universe to come into being. Unlike atheism, this is in line with our modal intuition that being only comes from being, not non-being.

Atheism requires that we believe free will is an illusion, because as mere physical stuff, humans are not exempt from the determinism inherent to purely physical systems. Theism, on the other hand, posits the existence of an immaterial entity within man, allowing him to transcend physical determinism, to freely choose among options undetermined by external physical constraints. Unlike atheism, this is in line with our experience of genuinely choosing A rather than B.

Atheism requires that we believe rationality developed by evolutionary means, and it is by pure accident that rationality helps us to discover truth about the world. Theism, on the other hand, posits that God is a rational being. Humans are rational because we are made in God’s image, and God desired to endow us with the means to discover true propositions about our world.

Atheism requires that we believe consciousness arise from non-conscious matter. Theism, on the other hand, posits that human consciousness arises from spiritual, rather than material substances. Consciousness is a function of the soul, and is derivative of the consciousness exemplified by a personal God.

Which worldview better explains the world and our experience of it? I think the answer is simple. Theism has greater explanatory scope and explanatory power than atheism, making theism the preferred worldview. Theism does not need to deny something so intuitive as the principle that being only comes from being, that every effect requires a prior cause, or that humans have causal powers undetermined by other material processes.

For further reading see my article titled Not so Fast: There is no Presumption of Atheism.

 

September 30, 2008

Evicting God from the Garden of Eden

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism
[2] Comments 

The recent spate of anti-religion books written by militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens make the charge that theism is not only wrong, but evil. It’s an interesting twist on the Biblical story of creation. According to Judaism and Christianity, in order to get evil out of the Garden man needed to be removed. According to the new atheists, in order to get evil out of the Garden we need to remove God Himself. Ironic?!

 

September 24, 2008

Quote of the Day

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Quote of the Day
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“Agnosticism seems to be a more tenable commitment than atheism. Problem is, in action one must act as if God does not exist (etsi deus non daretur), or as if He does. In action one must make a commitment that one cannot quite make on purely intellectual grounds. It is by our deeds that we show what we most deeply believe.”[1] 

[1]Michael Novak, “Empathizing with Atheists“

 

August 25, 2008

Possibility and Existence

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Cosmological Argument, Theistic Arguments
[2] Comments 

According to David Berlinski, Thomas Aquinas argued the universe must have begun at a finite time in the past by appealing to Diodorus’s (1st cent. B.C. Greek philosopher) view of possibility: if it is possible that something not exist, then it is certain that at some time or another it did not exist.  Only that which has a necessary existence can be, and must be eternal. [1]

 

Aquinas argued that while our universe does exist, it does not have to exist.  It is contingent, not necessary.  This much seems reasonable.  After all, it is possible to conceive of our universe not existing.  There is nothing about the physical constituents of the universe that demands they exist.  Using Diodorus’s principle, Aquinas concluded that since it is possible that our universe not exist, then it is certain that at some time in the past it did not exist. 

 

Berlinksi thinks Aquinas’ argument commits the fallacy of composition (e.g. just because every part of an elephant is light, does not mean the elephant as a whole is light).  He argues that while Diodorus’s principle might be true of things in the universe, it is not necessarily true of the universe as a whole.  But I think Berlinski misses the point.  The point is that only necessary things must exist eternally.  Nothing else needs to, or can for that matter.  Contingent things have causes, and hence beginnings.

 

What do you think of Aquinas’s argument, Berlinski’s criticism, or my response?  I tend to think this is a decent argument for the finitude of the universe.  What do you think?

 

 [1]David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (New York: Crown Forum, 2008), 85. 

 

July 7, 2008

A Bad Argument Against Atheism

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism
[13] Comments 

It is common to hear Christians argue against atheism on the grounds that it is impossible to prove a negative such as “God does not exist.” Only an omniscient being could do so, but an omniscient being would be God by definition! This sounds convincing, and has great rhetorical value, but it is a bad argument nonetheless.

There are a couple of glaring shortcomings. First, it is a straw-man. Most atheists do not claim to know with certainty that God does not exist. They only claim that His existence is very unlikely, or vastly improbable.

Secondly, the atheist could offer a similar argument against theism. One cannot know God exists with absolute certainty. While there may be very good grounds for thinking God exists, such knowledge is not certain. We could be mistaken (meaning it is not logically impossible for us to be wrong in this belief). In fact, virtually everything we claim to know, we know on probabilistic grounds, and yet we are justified in claiming to know it. If it would be unfair for the atheist to claim theists cannot claim to know God exists unless they have proven it impossible for God not to exist, then it is also unfair for the theist to discount atheism on the grounds that no one can be certain God does not exist. If there are good reasons for thinking His existence is unlikely, then one is justified in claiming to know God does not exist, even if they cannot be certain of this knowledge.

When you think about it, all of us claim to know certain things do not exist (unicorns, leprechauns, Santa Clause, the Greek gods, etc.) without being omniscient, and without proving their existence logically impossible. But are we certain of this? After all, we are making a claim about a negative, and it is impossible to prove a negative. The fact of the matter is that we cannot be certain that unicorns do not exist. They may exist on another planet or in another dimension that we are not aware of, and yet, given the lack of evidence for their existence we are justified in claiming to know they do not exist, even if we could be mistaken. Likewise, atheists are justified in claiming to know God does not exist, even if they cannot be certain of His non-existence. That’s not to say I think they are right, but it is to say their knowledge claim is not an illegitimate one simply because it lacks certitude. If certitude is the criterion for knowledge claims, it would make skeptics of us all.

 

June 4, 2008

Atheism is Driven by the Will, not the Intellect

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism
[20] Comments 

In his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins said “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” I have quoted Dawkins many times, but until it was brought to my attention recently, I never recognized the glaring—albeit implicit—admission he makes about atheism. To say Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist would mean the rejection of God’s existence came before there was sufficient reason to think it possible that God did not exist. Prior to Darwin, one’s commitment to atheism was a commitment of the will, not a commitment of the mind based on evidence. Only after Darwin could account for the apparent design of the universe in purely material terms could atheism be taken seriously.

Unbeknownst to Dawkins, he testifies to the truth of Romans 1 in two ways. First, creation reveals the Creator, and the appearance of design cries out for a Designer. The revelation of creation is so clear that those who rejected it prior to Darwin did so only to the detriment of their own intellectual honesty, for while they could not explain the existence and form of the universe without God, they rejected Him anyway.

Second, as Paul said, people already know God, but suppress that knowledge because their deeds are evil. Atheists are not being intellectually honest with themselves when it comes to the question of God’s existence. Atheism is a commitment of the will in search of justification, no matter how weak that justification may be. Darwinian evolution is a case in point.

 

April 23, 2007

If You Can Think of God, He Doesn’t Exist?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Thinking
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Back in March I published a post about how extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. While atheists often use this to argue against Christianity, the fact of the matter is that it argues against atheism. The claims of atheism are much more extraordinary than the claims of theism.


 

An individual responded to this post in the comments section, saying, “Yet, believers in GOD(s) forget that all human thoughts are man-made; thus, so is God.” This is so typical of the lazy and convoluted thinking characteristic of postmodern thought. Here is how I responded:


 

Your statement sounds like a bumper sticker: nice ring to it, but lacking in critical thought. What does it mean to say human thoughts are “man-made”? If you mean humans have the ability to generate thoughts, then what you have communicated is a tautology. The human ability to generate thought (“man-made”) is the definition of “human thoughts.” So saying human thoughts are man-made adds nothing to your original description. Ultimately, then you’re left arguing that since humans have the ability to generate thoughts about God, God must be a figment of our imagination.


But how does that follow? The implicit premise of your argument (that which is needed for your conclusion to follow your stated premise) is that if humans generate a thought about something, the object of our thought must be a figment of our own creation/imagination. Does this premise hold true for objects other than God? Do you apply this logic to food? I would imagine that you have had thoughts of eating pizza. Does this make the object of your thought (pizza) a figment of your imagination? Of course not. How absurd would it sound to argue that “all human thoughts are man-made; thus, so is pizza”? Pizza is an objective part of reality, and your ability to generate thoughts about it doesn’t make it any less so.


As a human thinker, you have the ability to generate thoughts about reality. If God exists in reality, then you would have the ability to generate thoughts about His existence just as you do pizza. I’m not saying the ability to think about God proves that God exists in reality, but rather that the ability to think about God cannot possibly be used to argue for His non-existence anymore than your ability to think about pizza argues for its non-existence. Your observation about the human ability to generate thoughts simply has no bearing on the question of whether God exists or not.


Using your logic, for God to be real we would have to lack the ability to think about Him. For the moment we were able to think about His existence He would cease to be real. That makes absolutely no sense at all.

 

April 18, 2007

Atheist Tries to Refute Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Cosmological Argument, Naturalism, Science, Theistic Arguments
[8] Comments 

I am on Skeptic Magazine‘s email distribution. In the April 4th edition, David Ludden reviews Victor Stenger’s new book, God: The Failed Hypothesis. Stenger, a physicist, tries to refute some of the common scientific arguments for God’s existence. 

To tackle the problem of how the universe came into being fully charged with energy (the only known violation of the first law of thermodynamics), Stenger argues that there is a “close balance between positive and negative energy” so that “the total energy of the universe is zero.” I heard Peter Atkins make the same claim in a debate with William Lane Craig. This is absolutely nonsensical. If the total energy is zero, then there is no energy. And yet energy exists. How do explain the origin of energy by saying the value of energy is zero? Besides, even if there is positive and negative energy, and these two opposing forces cancel each other out, one still has to explain the origin of positive and negative energy at the point of singularity (Big Bang). Where did it come from?

 

What about the second law of thermodynamics (disorder increases over time)? If our universe is moving from an ordered to a disordered system, it must have been ordered in the beginning, and this would require a designing intelligence. Not so says Stenger. He says the universe began in a maximum state of disorder, but since it is expanding, that disorder is spread out throughout the universe, giving the appearance of order. Really? If I take a bag full of garbage, and empty the bag of garbage into a large field, I don’t get order when the wind starts dispersing the garbage throughout the field. I simply have lots of space between the garbage. That space is not ordered. It’s simply the lack of garbage. Disorder spread out over a large area cannot create order, or the appearance of order.

 

Stenger gets bold when he tries to tackle the most important philosophical question of them all: Why is there something rather than nothing? According to Ludden, Stenger argues that “the laws of physics tell us that nothingness is an unstable state and will soon ‘undergo a spontaneous phase shift’ to a state of somethingness. …A state of continuous nothingness is so improbable that it could only be maintained through divine intervention.” I’m not sure what physics Stenger is appealing to. Since so much of physics has become a metaphysical discipline of philosophical speculation, I’m inclined to think the physics he is appealing to are little more than mental gymnastics, having no basis in empirical verification. Be that as it may, notice how he is treating nothing as something. He calls nothingness a state that “undergo[es] a spontaneous shift.” Nothing cannot undergo anything! There is nothing to act, or be acted on. It makes sense to say a caterpillar undergoes a phase shift into a butterfly, but it makes absolutely no sense to say that nothing undergoes change into something. Indeed, if there is nothing, what could cause the phase shift? It can’t be the laws of physics because there is no such thing as physics in a state of nothingness. There are no causes either. There is nothing! Only something can cause something else to come into existence.

 

It never ceases to amaze me how people who claim to be so intelligent and rational can believe such inane things. There’s no end to the amount of self-deception one can generate when they subjugate the truth to their will. Paul was right. People would rather believe a lie than the truth. They willingly suppress the truth. They would rather believe that energy is zero, and nothing can become something than admit there is a God.

 

March 29, 2007

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Cosmological Argument, Naturalism
[3] Comments 

The assumption of atheism argues that apart from evidence for the existence of God, people are justified in assuming atheism to be true. The motto of this brand of atheism is that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” From their perspective, the evidence in favor of theism is not extraordinary, so they are intellectually justified in dismissing theism. Bob and Gretchen Passantino respond to this argument as follows: 

It is an extraordinary claim to say this vast and complex universe came from nothing and was caused by nothing. It’s an extraordinary claim to tell us the incredible order we see throughout the universe was caused by blind chance. It’s an extraordinary claim to argue that the innate sense of right and wrong that all of us share – even when it condemns our own actions – came about by non-moral mindlessness or mere human consensus. … In conclusion, no, the evidence is far too weak to believe the extraordinary claim of atheism that there is no God behind these things.[1]

How atheists miss this is an extraordinary phenomenon!

[1]Bob and Gretchen Passantino, “The 2002 Great Debate: Atheism vs. Christianity. Testing the Case: Which View Prevailed”; available from http://www.answers.org/atheism/debate.html; Internet; accessed 26 September 2006.

 

November 22, 2006

The New Atheism

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism
[13] Comments 

Albert Mohler reported on Wired magazine’s latest cover article: “The New Atheism.” The author, Gary Wolf, aptly described this new brand of atheism represented by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris:

 

The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it’s evil. . . . Dawkins does not merely disagree with religious myths. He disagrees with tolerating them, with cooperating in their colonization of the brains of innocent tykes.

 

The new brand of atheism is not like the old. Old atheism was relatively passive. At worst the old brand of atheists would argue in the public square that religious belief is wrong, or intellectually inferior to atheism. But now atheists are being evangelistic and militant for atheism and against theism. They are arguing that religion is the cause of the world’s evils, and should be fought against as a social evil. Dawkins goes so far as to propose that the state should prevent parents from being able to teach their religion to their kids!

 

There is a war on religion in the West. This really hit home to me when I was walking through San Francisco with N.T. Wright’s book, The Resurrection of the Son of God, in my hand. I thought to myself, I am more likely to be privately derided by passerbys for carrying this book than I would be if I were carrying Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Sam Harris wrote that “at some point, there’s going to be enough pressure that it is just going to be too embarrassing to believe in God.” I think he’s right. That mood is already here. One of the main reasons for this shift is because people have become convinced religion is blind faith, unsupportable by reason. That’s why there’s a great need for Christians to become informed about their faith, learning the reasons that support their religious convictions, and then actively engaging non-believers and believers alike in the public sphere to share those reasons with them, persuading them of the intellectual viability of the Christian faith. Doing so will go a long way toward making Christianity a viable option in an increasingly educated culture that demands reasons to believe.

 

One quote appearing in Mohler’s article is from Daniel Dennett. Dennett argues that “if you have to hoodwink—or blindfold—your children to ensure that they confirm their faith when they are adults, your faith ought to go extinct.” I can agree with that!


P.S. Chad says there is a lot of anti-Christian sentiment at the new “On Faith” website.

 

November 2, 2006

The Eulogy of Meaning

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Philosophy
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Many months ago I dialogued with an atheist-leaning agnostic about the existence of the soul. After I gave him persuasive reasons to believe that our sameness of identity through the process of physical change is grounded in a substantive soul rather than memory (a view held by some materialists) he responded, “I too am in search of a ‘meaning’ of ‘identity’ and the ‘afterlife.’” That was a strange twist to the conversation, but I used it as an opportunity to discuss Christianity with him. I had just finished reading William Lane Craig’s chapter, “The Absurdity of Life Without God” from his book Reasonable Faith, in which he lays out what is necessary for genuine meaning and purpose to exist in the world, and explains why atheism cannot provide it. I built on Craig’s thoughts to produce the following response that I hope you will find both stimulating and evangeliPublishstically useful:

 

John [not his real name],

 

You mentioned that you “too” were in search of meaning in life. I find your comment interesting considering the fact that I did not mention anything about my own search for meaning. It is true that we all search for meaning—including myself—but I hope you are not confusing my argument for a substantive soul with my psycho-spiritual desire to find meaning in life. While I may find the idea of a soul that grounds our personal identity and survives physical death to be personally meaningful, I hold to the notion—not because I find it meaningful—but because I find it to be the most rational among options.

 

Yes, we all search for meaning in life. We all want to know why we are here, what we are to do, and what will bring us ultimate fulfillment. Have you ever stopped to consider why that is? Why does man seek a purpose to life? What makes us ask Why? in the face of calamity? Why do we want to believe there is a grand purpose to everything? Why do we feel empty, as though something were missing in our lives? Why is it that the accumulation of material things cannot satisfy that emptiness? Why is it that what we think will bring us happiness and fulfillment in life—once obtained—fails to deliver as we had hoped, sending us looking for some other thing that will finally bring us fulfillment? I propose that it might be reasonable to conclude that there actually is purpose and meaning in the world. I propose that we seek purpose because we were created with purpose (to serve our Creator), but turned our back to it, and our souls will never rest until we return to fellowship with our Creator.

 

Some are uncomfortable with such talk, however. They wish to excise the world of a personal Creator, but still hold on to the notion of objective meaning in the world. What most people fail to realize, however, is that for there to be genuine purpose and meaning in life two things must be true: (1) God exists; (2) there is life beyond the grave (immortality). God is necessary because without Him there is no transcendent source from which to receive purpose and draw meaning, and immortality is necessary because without a continued existence beyond the grave our moral choices are ultimately irrelevant. Let me elaborate first on the latter.

 

Immortality

 

If there is no life beyond the grave it makes no ultimate difference whether one chooses to live like Hitler or Mother Theresa. “If there is no God, then your life ultimately means nothing. Since there is no enduring purpose to life, there’s no right or wrong way to live it.”<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–> As Dostoyevsky put it: “If there is no immortality then all things are permitted.” We are just left with the bare facts of cold existence. Molecules and atoms know neither right nor wrong, they just are. Richard Dawkins echoed this in his eloquent obituary for meaning, saying, “In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky; and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[2]<!–[endif]–>

 

If there is no life beyond the grave there are no ultimate consequences for our actions. Man’s evil deeds will go unpunished, and his good deeds will go unrewarded. The wrongs will never be righted, and justice will never be served. If we experience immortality, however, our moral choices on this side of the grave become extremely significant.

 

Without immortality our lives will be stomped out into non-existence, reduced to a fleeting moment in the sea of infinity. Like a candle in the wind our flame will be blown out in darkness, never to flicker again.

 

The Existence of God

Mere duration of existence beyond the grave, however, cannot make our lives meaningful. Ultimate significance requires the existence of God, for without God we would still be asking What is my purpose? and Why am I here?, but for time immemorial rather than for a mere lifetime. Without God we are just a cosmic accident who lives to contemplate just how meaningless our existence really is.

 

Atheism is inept to provide meaning and purpose to life. The message of atheism is that man came into existence for no purpose, and he will pass out of existence without purpose. The same purposeless cosmic process that brought us into existence will also be responsible for eradicating our existence. Peter Singer, an atheistic philosopher at Princeton University understood the implications of the atheistic worldview clearly when he said, “When we reject belief in a god we must give up the idea that life on this planet has some preordained meaning. Life as a whole has no meaning. Life began [in] a chance combination of molecules; it then evolved through chance mutations and natural selection. All this just happened; it did not happen for any overall purpose.”<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[3]<!–[endif]–> In a similar vein G.G. Simpson wrote, “Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material.”<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[4]<!–[endif]–>

 

In a purely materialist view of reality life is nothing more than a struggle to survive—a struggle that we ultimately lose in the end. Why is it that we continue with the struggle? Why do we want to survive? What is it that we live for? Atheism is incapable of answering these questions to our existential satisfaction. William Lane Craig wrote to this end:

“Who am I?” man asks. “Why am I here? Where am I going?” Since the Enlightenment, when he threw off the shackles of religion, man has tried to answer these questions without reference to God. But the answers that came back were not exhilarating, but dark and terrible. “You are the accidental by-product of nature, a result of matter plus time plus chance. There is no reason for your existence. All you face is death.” Modern man thought that when he had gotten rid of God, he had freed himself from all that repressed and stifled him. Instead, he discovered that in killing God, he had also killed himself. … For if there is no God, then man’s life becomes absurd. It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[5]<!–[endif]–>

On a naturalistic view of the world the end of man is the same as mosquitoes, and thus he is ultimately no more significant than mosquitoes. John Darnton, New York Times journalist and author of The Darwin Conspiracy, wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle: “For ultimately, if animals and plants are the result of impersonal, immutable forces…we are all of us, dogs and barnacles, pigeons and crabgrass, the same in the eyes of nature, equally remarkable and equally dispensable.”<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[6]<!–[endif]–>

Cornell’s William Provine, wrote:

How can we have meaning in life? When we die we are really dead; nothing of us survives. Natural selection is a process leading every species almost certainly to extinction and “cares” as much for the HIV virus as for humans. Nothing could be more uncaring than the entire process of organic evolution. Life has been on earth for about 3.6 billion years. In less that one billion more years our sun will turn into a red giant. All life on earth will be burnt to a crisp. Other cosmic processes absolutely guarantee the extinction of all life anywhere in the universe. When all life is extinguished, no memory whatsoever will be left that life ever existed.

 

Yet our lives are filled with meaning. Proximate meaning is more important than ultimate. Even if we die, we can have deeply meaningful lives. <!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[7]<!–[endif]–>

The horror of modern man is that “because he ends in nothing, he is nothing.” It’s true that we may have a relative significance because of some impact we had on history, but still no ultimate significance because all will come to naught in the end. The activities of our lives, and even our very existence is utterly without enduring meaning. People may choose to pretend their life has meaning, but it is just that: pretending. The universe does not acquire value simply because we ascribe value to it. Bertrand Russell wrote of the abolition of meaning in this way:

That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving. That his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves, his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms. That no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave. That all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspirations, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievements must be inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins. All these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation, henceforth, be safely built.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[8]<!–[endif]–>

Borrowing from Theism

Unfortunately many atheists have not yet to come to terms with the nihilism inherent to their worldview like Russell did. Friedrich Nietzsche, the father of modern nihilism, was aware of this cognitive gap. He illustrates it beautifully in the story of the madman:

 

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!”—As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed.

 

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried. “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

 

“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us—for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”

 

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: “What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[9]<!–[endif]–>

 

What was Nietzsche’s point? His point was that those who deny the existence of God often fail to recognize the logical implications of that belief. The madman understood the significance of atheism, but those in the marketplace did not. The madman had come too early. While he recognized that the death of God meant the death of man as well, this had not yet reached the ears of his contemporaries. They were atheists by confession, but the full implications of that atheism had not yet sunken in. They were still drawing from the benefits of theism, all the while denying its intellectual foundation. They had not yet grasped that the metaphysician’s blade responsible for removing God from the universe also removed all meaning and purpose in life. The madman had come too soon. But Nietzsche predicted a day in which the cognitive gap between the death of God and the death of meaning would be bridged. Eventually man would realize what he had done, and the age of nihilism would be ushered in.

Man cannot live happily in such a state. The only way for him to achieve happiness in such a world is to act in a manner that is inconsistent with his worldview, supposing that the world has meaning, but without the proper foundation on which to build it. The atheist must borrow from the theistic worldview to avoid despair, deceiving himself into believing the Noble Lie: that we have value and purpose when in fact we have none. This blind leap into the recesses of personal fiction to find meaning for life will disappoint over time once it is realized that there is no solid ground on which to land.

One strength of the Christian message is found in its ability to provide what is necessary for genuine meaning and purpose in life. As William Lane Craig observed, “According to the Christian world view God does exist, and man’s life does not end at the grave. In the resurrection body man may enjoy eternal life and fellowship with God. Biblical Christianity therefore provides the two conditions necessary for a meaningful, valuable, and purposeful life for man: God and immortality. Because of this, we can live consistently and happily. Thus, biblical Christianity succeeds precisely where atheism breaks down.”<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[10]

This is not an appeal to believe in God on the basis that believing in God is emotionally satisfying. As emotionally satisfying as belief in God may be, the only reason to believe in God is because He exists in reality. My appeal is for you to reflect on why it is that you seek meaning and significance in life. Why do you feel the need to have a purpose, and be part of a purpose larger than yourself? Maybe it’s because you were created with purpose and meaning. Maybe it’s because there truly is meaning and value in life, but you have been searching for it in the wrong places.

The ability of Christianity to provide genuine meaning and purpose in life is not the only, nor the best reason to become a Christian, but it is a good one. Given the choice between atheistic materialism and theistic Christianity, the existential attractiveness of Christianity far outshines its competitor. Thankfully its intellectual viability far outshines its rivals as well, making Christianity not only existentially fulfilling, but rationally satisfying as well.

<!–[endif]–>

[1]Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 20.

[2]Richard Dawkins, Out of Eden (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 133.

[3]Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2d ed . (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 331.

[4]G.G. Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of its Significance for Man [1949] (Yale University Press: New Haven CT, 1960 reprint) 344.

[5]William Lane Craig, “The Absurdity of Life Without God”; available from http://www.bethinking.org/resource.php?ID=129; Internet; accessed 02 September 2005. This is an online excerpt from Craig’s 1994 book, Reasonable Faith, pages 51-75.

[6]John Darnton, “Darwin paid for the fury he unleashed: How a believer became an iconoclast”, San Francisco Chronicle, September 25, 2005; available from http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/25/INGAUERQK01.DTL&hw=darwin&sn=001&sc=1000; Internet, accessed 26 September 2005.

[7]William Provine, abstract of “Evolution: Free Will and Punishment and Meaning in Life”; available from http://fp.bio.utk.edu/darwin/1998/provine_abstract.html; Internet; accessed 12 October 2005.

[8]Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963), 41.

[9]Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.

[10]William Lane Craig, “The Absurdity of Life Without God”; available from http://www.bethinking.org/resource.php?ID=129; Internet; accessed 02 September 2005. This is an online excerpt from Craig’s 1994 book, Reasonable Faith, pages 51-75.

 

November 2, 2006

Free Will is a Necessary Illusion

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Epistemology, Mind, Naturalism, Philosophy
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In the same vein as my post on Richard Dawkins’ comment…in Dennis Overbye’s New York Times review of What the Bleep, Down the Rabbit Hole (a documentary about quantum mechanics and [new age] religion) he explicated his take on free will given his materialist worldview: “Take free will. Everything I know about physics and neuroscience tells me it’s a myth. But I need that illusion to get out of bed in the morning. Of all the durable and necessary creations of atoms, the evolution of the illusion of the self and of free will are perhaps the most miraculous. That belief is necessary to my survival.”


 

That’s right. I know it’s not true, but I have to live as if it were. I feel the same way about trains. I know the train on the track is not real, but I feel forced to wait for it to pass the crossing as if it were really there! Has Overbye ever stopped to wonder why he needs the illusion of free will to get out of the bed in the morning; why it is necessary for survival? Overbye’s view is incoherent. When one’s worldview is inconsistent with their experience of reality, it is a sure sign that something is wrong with their worldview. Worldviews are snapshots of reality. If they do not help us navigate reality, maybe our snapshot is out of focus, and needs to be changed.


I thought atheists were atheists because atheism is so rational? Hardly! Atheists are atheists despite the irrationality of its implications.

 

November 2, 2006

A Philosophy in Pursuit of the Evidence

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Evolution, Naturalism, Science
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This is old news, but this quote was brought to my attention again recently and I wanted to share it with you.


In 2005 Harvard University funded a $1 million project to find an explanation for the origin of life. Harvard professor of chemical biology, David Liu, said, “[M]y expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention.”


 

This is important for two reasons. First, it shows that scientists still don’t know how life arose from purely naturalistic processes. It’s too bad the media was not more forthcoming about this fact. The way scientists and reporters alike talk about evolution to the public one would think this problem has been resolved. You have to go to the scientific journals to find admissions of just how bleak the state of origin-of-life research really is.


 

Secondly, Liu’s statement shows just how ideologically driven science has become. Why spend all this money? To find a purely naturalistic origin of life. Clearly Harvard’s “scientific” pursuit is a pursuit to justify materialistic philosophy. By all accounts the best explanation of the origin of life is rooted in Intelligent Design. But since that contradicts materialistic philosophy, and science is currently ruled by materialists in either profession or practice, it is excluded from the start. No matter how unproductive the search for life’s origin is, materialists like Liu will continue to look, never considering the possibility of design. They will maintain their faith in materialism until the bitter end, if not beyond. Origin-of-life researchers, Robert Shapiro, wrote of this tendency:


We shall see that the adherents of the best known theory [soup theory, RNA world] have not responded to increasing adverse evidence by questioning the validity of their beliefs, in the best scientific tradition; rather, they have chosen to hold it as a truth beyond question, thereby enshrining it as mythology. In response, many alternative explanations have introduced even greater elements of mythology, until finally, science has been abandoned entirely in substance, though retained in name.[1]


 

Ouch!

 

[1]Robert Shapiro, Origins: A Skeptics Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth (Random House, 1986), 32.

 

 

November 2, 2006

No I Don’t, Yes I Do Believe in Free Will

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Dawkins, Epistemology, Mind, Philosophy
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William Dembski reported on his friend’s exchange with Richard Dawkins at a D.C. bookstore, where Dawkins was promoting his new book The God Delusion. Dembski’s friend “asked Dawkins if he thought he was being inconsistent by being a determinist while taking credit for writing his book.” The exchange was recorded. The transcript reveals the bankruptcy of atheism as a worldview:


 

Questioner: Dr. Dawkins thank you for your comments. The thing I have appreciated most about your comments is your consistency in the things I’ve seen you written. One of the areas that I wanted to ask you about and the places where I think there is an inconsistency and I hoped you would clarify it is that in what I’ve read you seem to take a position of a strong determinist who says that what we see around us is the product of physical laws playing themselves out but on the other hand it would seem that you would do things like taking credit for writing this book and things like that. But it would seem, and this isn’t to be funny, that the consistent position would be that necessarily the authoring of this book from the initial condition of the big bang it was set that this would be the product of what we see today. I would take it that that would be the consistent position but I wanted to know what you thought about that.

Dawkins: The philosophical question of determinism is a very difficult question. It’s not one I discuss in this book, indeed in any other book that I’ve ever talked about. Now an extreme determinist, as the questioner says, might say that everything we do, everything we think, everything that we write, has been determined from the beginning of time in which case the very idea of taking credit for anything doesn’t seem to make any sense. Now I don’t actually know what I actually think about that, I haven’t taken up a position about that, it’s not part of my remit to talk about the philosophical issue of determinism. What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don’t feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do. None of us ever actually as a matter of fact says, “Oh well he couldn’t help doing it, he was determined by his molecules.” Maybe we should… I sometimes… Um… You probably remember many of you would have seen Fawlty Towers. The episode where Basil where his car won’t start and he gives it fair warning, counts up to three, and then gets out of the car and picks up a tree branch and thrashes it within an edge of his life. Maybe that’s what we all ought to… Maybe the way we laugh at Basil Fawlty, we ought to laugh in the same way at people who blame humans. I mean when we punish people for doing the most horrible murders, maybe the attitude we should take is “Oh they were just determined by their molecules.” It’s stupid to punish them. What we should do is say “This unit has a faulty motherboard which needs to be replaced.” I can’t bring myself to do that. I actually do respond in an emotional way and I blame people, I give people credit, or I might be more charitable and say this individual who has committed murders or child abuse of whatever it is was really abused in his own childhood. And so again I might take a …

Questioner: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views?

Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with otherwise life would be intolerable. But it has nothing to do with my views on religion it is an entirely separate issue.

 

Dawkins actually recognizes that his behavior and emotions are inconsistent with his worldview, and yet he cannot help but to behave and feel the way he does. In his words he can’t bring himself to blame molecules for bad behavior. But who else is there to blame if all we are is a combination of molecules? Dawkins wants to blame a free-will agent, while denying the existence of that which is necessary for free-will agency: an immaterial soul. Atheists are incapable of living out their worldview because their worldview is not true to reality.


 

Tom Magnuson remarked,


 

Richard Dawkins is a staunch materialist who simply cannot follow his worldview to its logical conclusions. He follows his innate moral intuition, which cannot be explained by material processes, and concedes that he cannot truly live out his worldview.

Dawkins’ naturalistic determinism requires that anything like consciousness, self-awareness, and freedom must be emergent properties of matter. Humans must deal with this “reality” as best they can. The concession is huge because it means Dawkins’ scientism has no place for “humanness”.

 

Well said.

 

 

October 25, 2006

Hilarious: Colbert interviews Richard Dawkins

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Dawkins, Fun
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This is a must-see short interview. For those of you familiar with Steven Colbert, you know how funny he is. Now just imagine him interviewing Richard Dawkins on his new book, The God Delusion. You will be rolling with laughter!

 

October 23, 2006

The NYT Gives a Thumbs-down to Dawkins’ book THE GOD DELUSION

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Dawkins
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Richard Dawkins’ latest book, The God Delusion, is a vitriolic polemic against religion. According to Dawkins religion is the root of all evil, and a pernicious delusion. One would think a book like this, written by the world’s foremost evolutionary biologist and ardent atheist, would be praised by the secularist community. You would be wrong.

 

Apparently the book is so poorly reasoned that even the New York Times won’t praise it. In Sunday’s book review section Jim Holt (no friend of conservative religion) didn’t have much good to say about it. He said such things as:

 

  • “The book fairly crackles with brio. Yet reading it can feel a little like watching a Michael Moore movie. There is lots of good, hard-hitting stuff about the imbecilities of religious fanatics and frauds of all stripes, but the tone is smug and the logic occasionally sloppy.”
  • “But Dawkins’s avowed hostility can make for scattershot reasoning as well as for rhetorical excess.”
  • “The least satisfying part of this book is Dawkins’s treatment of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. The ‘ontological argument’ says that God must exist by his very nature, since he possesses all perfections, and it is more perfect to exist than not to exist. The ‘cosmological argument’ says that the world must have an ultimate cause, and this cause could only be an eternal, God-like entity. The ‘design argument’ appeals to special features of the universe (such as its suitability for the emergence of intelligent life), submitting that such features make it more probable than not that the universe had a purposive cosmic designer.”These, in a nutshell, are the Big Three arguments. To Dawkins, they are simply ridiculous. He dismisses the ontological argument as ‘infantile’ and ‘dialectical prestidigitation’ without quite identifying the defect in its logic, and he is baffled that a philosopher like Russell —‘no fool’— could take it seriously. He seems unaware that this argument, though medieval in origin, comes in sophisticated modern versions that are not at all easy to refute. Shirking the intellectual hard work, Dawkins prefers to move on to parodic ‘proofs’ that he has found on the Internet….”

  • “Despite the many flashes of brilliance in this book, Dawkins’s failure to appreciate just how hard philosophical questions about religion can be makes reading it an intellectually frustrating experience.”

 

There’s more juicy tidbits in the review, but these alone are enough to make one feel for Mr. Dawkins. The man who believes rationality is opposed to religious belief is accused of not being very rational when writing a book about the irrationality of religious faith. Ouch!

 

October 23, 2006

When Not Seeing is Believing

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Religions
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In the October 9th 2006 edition of TIME magazine Andrew Sullivan wrote a cover piece titled “When Seeing is Not Believing.” It was the latest in fashionable attacks on conservative, “fundamentalistic” Christianity. Sullivan’s attacks were not limited to Christianity, but all religious believers who possess certainty about the ultimate questions of life. If you take your religious faith seriously, and think what you believe is a real description of reality, Sullivan is talking to you. Certainty is the enemy of our times according to Sullivan. To be doubtful is to be humble is to be tolerant is to have peace.

 

There were so many outlandish claims, and such an abuse of rationality that I will not even begin to dissect it for you here. I would suggest you read the piece for yourself.

 

What do you find to be his most outlandish claim? What logical fallacies and/or mistakes of reasoning were you able to spot? I’m interested to see if you walked away with some of the same observations I did.

 

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