What is it with atheists these days? It seems like over the last few years something has really gotten into their godless craw. They keep writing books, one right after the other, rehashing the same old tired arguments that you heard in your freshman philosophy class. Atheists taking issue with those who believe in God is — of course — nothing new. The only difference is that now — with each new offering — they appear to be getting angrier. ... and more desperate.
The first of these books was “The End of Faith,” by Sam Harris, which was published in 2004 Then came “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon,” by Daniel Dennett, a philosopher at Tufts University who attempts to make belief in God an evolutionary survival mechanism. Next was “The God Delusion,” by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionist and relentless critic of belief in God. Harris joined battle again last year with “Letter to a Christian Nation,” which renewed his attack on Christianity in particular. And now there is “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”, by Christopher Hitchens, which is both the most visceral and the angriest of all.
As I said, there is nothing new about the atheist challenge to religious belief. For centuries theists and atheists have intellectually sparred with each other and yet maintained the utmost respect for one another. In 1948 BBC Radio aired the famous debate on the existence of God between Father Frederick C. Copleston (Jesuit Catholic priest) and Bertrand Russell (agnostic philosopher). The exchange was sharp, and yet very cordial. Both men respected the intellect of the other and did not make the exchange personal.
But the tone has turned sour with each of these atheist authors resorting to ridicule rather than reason. Its as if — given their continued decline in influence — they are making a desperate last stand: they can’t win with arguments and so they make belief itself not only an object of intellectual derision, but also a cause for personal embarrassment. And they pull no punches in their printed tirades.
Why is this the case? Atheism as a worldview has fallen on hard times and is losing adherents. Stephen Prothero, Chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University, writes, “The hard-core atheist, once a stock figure in American life, has gone the way of the freak show.” Why? Because atheism is arrogant in its stance and simplistically dismisses life’s ultimate questions such as, “Why am I here?”, “Am I significant and valuable?”, “Does life have meaning?” In all of these cases this neo-atheism rejects such questions as irrelevant and says looking to the supernatural for an answer is childish. And worse than that: if they do address these questions they argue as if they can be answered by their own blunt materialism. For them the reason we ask these questions is found in man’s evolutionary survival instincts. At least older forms of atheism honestly wrestled with these questions and recognized the problems such issues raised if God did not exist. Sam Schulman, writing for the Wall Street Journal, summed it up nicely when he said, “The new atheists are separated form the old by their shallowness.
Expect more of this approach to come in the next few years. Christians — in particular — can expect more name-calling from these intellectually inept neo-atheists because Christians won’t call for jihad against those who ridicule them. But rest assured that belief in God is not in any danger from the attacks of atheists. They are gasping for air, desperate to be taken seriously, and are doing whatever they can to try to sway people away from faith. Given their pathetic track record what’s next: saying something bad about my mother?
Rev. Marty Fields is the pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church. Reach him at pastor@westminsterepc.com.
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