The last year has seen a significant sea change in American public discourse regarding God and the Christian message. If you are not already aware of this new wind blowing across our bow, everyone serious about the Great Commission would do well to batten down for the gale-force storm that is brewing. It is no small comfort that the Captain is onboard with us.
Due to the almost complete retreat of evangelists from the public square, the gospel has become a strange sounding message to many. The term “evangelical” in most quarters now means “We believe the gospel,” not “We preach the gospel.” The certain sound of the trumpet with its convicting and converting power is seldom heard in the marketplace. This—among other reasons, like worldliness in the churches—has emboldened the enemies of God.
Four books—diatribes, really—have risen to the top of the Best Seller list recently. They are The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett, and two books by Sam Harris: The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. They have become something akin to the four “Gospels” of atheism. Dennett, by the way, objects to being called an atheist, and suggests the term “brights” instead. Hardly appropriate for “the natural man” who “receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness to him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).
Dawkins, England’s most pugnacious atheist, is “Charles Simonyi professor of the public understanding of science” at Oxford University, a sort-of Director of Missions for Darwinian evolution. Daniel Dennett is Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. Sam Harris is a philosophy grad (Stanford) and is earning a doctorate in neuroscience, no doubt hoping he can prove that belief, love, and morality are merely neurological functions.
This page obviously doesn’t allow for any serious critique of the arguments in these books. Most of them have been posed and answered long ago. But there are a few new twists. One repeated theme is a call for the end of religious tolerance. The authors, if possible, despise liberals who compromise the Christian message even more than they do those who take the Bible literally. They object to the way Western society has allowed religious positions to go unchallenged in the name of tolerance. It is not enough to tolerate Christianity because, they say, Christianity is not merely a benign fairy tale. Indeed, all forms of religion are, according to these authors, bringing civilization to the brink of extinction. “We need a world government,” says Sam Harris, and “[t]he diversity of our religious beliefs constitutes a primary obstacle here” (The End of Faith, p. 151).
Here are snippets from some reviewers who would agree generally with the basic theses of these books. They are not Christian by any means. Their objections have to do with the treatment of the subjects addressed. For example, Terry Eagleton, English Literature professor at Manchester University, reviewing Dawkin’s book, writes:
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be.
In a New York Times review (Feb 19?06), Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the New Republic, assesses Dennett’s attempt to demolish the Christian worldview:
Scientism, the view that science can explain all human conditions and expressions, mental as well as physical, is…one of the dominant superstitions of our day…. For a sorry instance of present-day scientism, it would be hard to improve on Daniel C. Dennett’s book. Breaking the Spell is a work of considerable historical interest because it is a merry anthology of contemporary superstitions.
In an October 2006 book review titled “Dawkins the dogmatist” in the British Prospect magazine (prospect-magazine.co.uk) Andrew Brown, author of “The Darwin Wars,” begins by quoting Dawkins as saying:
“The majority of us don’t cause needless suffering; we believe in free speech and protect it even if we disagree with what is being said.” …Does he believe in it himself? He quotes later in the book approvingly and at length a speech by his friend Nicholas Humphrey which argued that, “We should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible or that planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out.” But of course, it’s not interfering with free speech when atheists do it.
Dawkins not only believes that Christian parents should not be allowed to teach their children about God and the Bible, he also thinks scientists (and philosophers who agree with them) are the only ones who have any right to speak. In addition, scientists who are Christians have also disqualified themselves. Because they believe in the “God delusion,” they are sufficiently biased that anything they suggest from their scientific endeavor cannot be taken seriously. In this way, only those who agree with his presuppositions ought to speak. We might call this the Dawkins delusion.
But if there is no Purposer, how can life have any purpose? Dawkins addresses the issue in this fashion:
It is a tedious cliché…that science concerns itself with how questions, but only theology is equipped to answer why questions. What on Earth is a why question? (p. 56).
He then proves that some why questions are silly (Why are unicorns hollow?) and then leaves it to us to conclude that he has somehow proven that all why questions are equally silly. But eventually he addresses the atheist’s lack of purpose in life by telling a story about himself and fellow scientist James Watson:
I conscientiously put it to him that…some people see no conflict between science and religion, because they claim science is about how things work and religion is about what it is all for. Watson retorted: ‘Well I don’t think we’re for anything. We’re just products of evolution. You can say, “Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don’t think there’s a purpose.” But I’m anticipating having a good lunch.’ We did have a good lunch, too (p. 100).
Such is the result of evolutionary thought, placing brilliant scientists on the level of lost sheep looking for a few tufts of grass to hold death at bay a little longer.
Sam Harris, in the absence of any deity, lays claim to the right to define morality on his own terms. In this he lays a flawed premise as the foundation for his argument. He states: “Questions of morality are questions about happiness and suffering.” From this, in caustic terms, he sets about to prove that God, Christians, and their Bible do not maximize happiness and minimize suffering. Therefore, by his definition, the God who—in his mind—does not exist anyway has disqualified Himself from being the arbiter of right and wrong.
At the heart of Christianity is the Cross, the ultimate Right Thing which was also the most excruciating thing that ever happened. Indeed suffering, although a by-product of sin, is one of God’s most effective tools in accomplishing the redemption of lost souls.
These arguments only confirm that “men by their wisdom knew not God.” Though God calls us to reason with Him (Isa. 1:18), it is to our ultimate peril, in matters where we are uncertain, if we assume that we are right and God is wrong.
The books, however, can be somewhat helpful to evangelists because they show the present state of atheistic philosophy. We must be prepared to deal with such arguments “with meekness and fear” as we present “a reason of the hope” we have (1 Pet. 3:15). And it should humble us to see how hard such atheists work at maintaining and propagating their hopeless faith. One wonders whether we are as willing to give ourselves to the rigorous task of presenting the case for the true Christian gospel to a generation made skeptical of Evangelicalism by its blatant worldliness and half-hearted devotion.