A few years ago, I wrote that in America, atheism was going the way of the freak show. I was wrong. Today Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and other “New Atheists” are regulars on best-seller lists and college lecture circuits, and unbelief is enjoying a new vogue. In his inaugural address, President Obama referred to the United States as a “nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers” ”” a formula he repeated in his Nov. 7 radio address about the Fort Hood massacre. Recently, various humanist and free-thought groups have announced their presence on billboards across the country. “Don’t believe in God?” read bus signs in Des Moines. “You are not alone.”
Today, most Americans associate unbelief with the old-boys network of New Atheists, but there is a new generation of unbelievers emerging, some of them women and most of them far friendlier than Hitchens and his ilk. Although the arguments of angry men gave this movement birth, it could be the stories of women that allow it to grow up.
The atheists’ “voice” matters little unless they can address the one HUGE problem with their ideology — reason. Is it [i]reasonable[/i] to look closely at this complex universe and conclude that it came into being by accident? Or to look closely at history and humankind and deduce that WE are the pinnacle of intelligence and the universe? I find that belief frightening and shocking. That humankind even still exists is despite our best efforts and not because of them.
Furthermore, those who claim that morality and decency exist naturally have absolutely no scientific basis to make that claim. Because we live in a world largely shaped by theism, both past and present, our societies are infused with moral principles. The atheistic parents who teach their children that stealing is wrong and sharing is good may not be doing so out of a belief in God, but they ARE imparting values that became accepted from Christian belief. “Natural” man was all about survival, not a natural morality.
So, if the atheists want their claims to be taken seriously, let’s see them conduct experiments to prove their point. Remove babies from society and raise them in a sterile environment that offers no moral guidance. Let the children interact with each other and their caregivers without any sort of ethical boundaries and watch what develops. Will a “natural morality” emerge? Frankly, I doubt it. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of interacting with an over-indulged child knows precisely how ego-centric, willful, and insufferable they can be.
teatime, I am loathe to defend atheism, but I suspect a no less venerable a Christian apologist than C. S. Lewis might take issue with your argument. In Mere Christianity, he explicates the notion, at some length, that there [b]is[/b] an innate sense of morality among humans (the “honor among thieves” principle, so to speak), and that this is a [i]prima facie[/i] sign of the Divine fingerprint on human nature.
The USA TODAY columnist writes:
“But the key turn in her talk, and in the event itself, came when Gulledge mentioned, in passing, how some neighborhood children refuse to play with her sons because they have not accepted Jesus as their personal savior.”
It’s hard to know for sure what happened here, since it is in the realm of one person remembering an anecdote told by another about two other people who may themselves be unreliable witnesses.
For one thing it’s hard to know whether the atheist mom means that the other kids parents forbad their kids to play with those of the atheist mom — or whether it means that the kids themselves were deeply concerned about their spiritual danger and cut off contact.
Let’s assume it’s the latter, since that’s how the story goes. Then almost certainly it’s not Christianity causing the atheist kids to be friendless, but rather human sin. Basically the Christian kids are like all kids — capable of being cruel and cliqueish and enjoying the pleasures of defriending people. When kids do this, it is almost never for the ostensible reason (you’re fat, you’re black, you’re Jewish, you’ve got a stupid last name) — it’s for the pleasure of watching somebody cry. It’s sin.
This is a mistake that the atheist movement constantly makes. They find some evil action on the part of a church or Christian (e.g. the Spanish Inquisition). Because of their absurdly high anthropology (all people are Good inside) it doesn’t occur to them that bad thoughts and intentions might be the RULE, and that the same people inclined to torture or murder in the name of God will do it under some other secular banner just as easily. In other words, the real motivation was the evil heart, not the alleged external justification given for it.
#1 teatime,
[blockquote]The atheists’ “voice†matters little unless they can address the one HUGE problem with their ideology—reason. Is it reasonable to look closely at this complex universe and conclude that it came into being by accident?[/blockquote]An atheist would respond by saying that you have overlooked alternative possibilities. It’s not simply a case of either God or chance, as the explanation for why things are the way they are. The other possibility is that there is an underlying order to the cosmos, uncreated, un-God-ed, and not chaotic; and that the human goal is to awaken to, and live in harmony with, this underlying order.
4, which is your supposition. What are these alternative possibilities and what is the evidence for them? Just what is this underlying order? A lot of atheists replace theism with an unknowable scientific transcendence which is of course the same thing, but without the god label. How many people resort to the explanation of space aliens? Please explain how order arises out of nothing?
Fr. Dan, while I’m certainly not remotely qualified to take on C.S. Lewis, I have a difficult time believing in an innate morality. I can believe there is an innate need for such, as I believe there is an innate need for the divine but, because of our fallen nature, morality is taught and learned, not natural. Just my two cents…
NewTroll, “order” doesn’t just happen on its own. Some intelligence had to align it, no? Science can only take its theories so far; the rest is mystery. Ironically, that’s what makes believers more reasonable, IMO — we accept mystery and call that mystery “God.” (open-minded) Atheists have a difficult time with mystery and insist there is no God. (close-minded)
The problem is that we don’t know the rules that govern how universes come into being, or how much variation is possible in the physical laws and constants within a universe, or what forces might drive any of this. We have extremely limited knowledge about a sample size of one (i.e., the universe we live in) from the inside; and from that we’re attempting to reason about conditions outside it. For all we know, highly ordered universes spontaneously pop into existence all the time.
7, and your entire statement is just what we are talking about. It is speculation. Oh, it has a scientific veneer, but at bottom is pure speculation. You might as well say, “In the beginning…..” Indeed your last sentence postulates creation form nothing, you just omit the word god.
I never said it was anything but speculation. My point is: teatime seems to be arguing that the universe we see can only be explained by a creator deity. I am saying that we do not know enough to rule out other possibilities.
Morality does not appear to require theism of any sort. Daoism, Confucianism, and much of Buddhism are distinctly non-theist, but I would say the observable level of morality among Daoists, Confucianists, and Buddhists is certainly no lower (and perhaps higher) than the level I’ve observed among theists of the various sorts — for that matter, the level does not seem low among the atheists or agnostics I’ve met.
I also think that Christian beliefs are compatible with the idea that God might well have created humans with an innate moral sense. The idea that God has created humans as inherently evil does not seem compatible with Christian teaching.
#10… TGD, you write:
“The idea that God has created humans as inherently evil does not seem compatible with Christian teaching.”
It depends on what you mean by “created” and “inherently evil.” Classical Christian teaching distinguishes God’s original creation over and against how the created world exists now (including how individual humans now come into the world).
Certainly in the West Christian teachers (Roman, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican) have understood all men to be born inherently evil. See Article IX and X of the 39 Articles, for example. Our Lord seems to have accepted that diagnosis (“if you, being evil…”).
That said I don’t dispute the idea that to some extent most men may be also born with a sense of right and wrong. KNOWING what is good, however, does not make you capable of wanting the good or choosing it or loving it. (Here Christianity parts company with Plato, who thought that people only were evil because they lacked knowledge. In Romans 7 Paul dismantles that idea in a vivid and personal way, explaining that he watches himself knowing what is good but consistently being unable to choose it.)
#11 Jon, if by “inherently evil”, you mean totally incapable of good, then exclude the “Romans” from that list.
Every worldview (and religion as well as atheism are worldviews) has a morality. And there are different types of theism.
For example the god Molech asked for human sacrifice. On the other hand Hinduism requires the poor to suffer so they can work off bad karma and reach a higher status in their next reincarnation. To label a morality as good or bad depends on the yardstick used to measure it.
So I guess the question is what is atheistic morality even assuming that their is a monothilic atheistic world view? And if not then I would assume some one will have to judge each different morality on a case by case basis using some still as yet undefined yardstick.
#4
“The other possibility is that there is an underlying order to the cosmos, uncreated, un-God-ed, and not chaotic; and that the human goal is to awaken to, and live in harmony with, this underlying order. ”
Yes, it’s reasonable to think there’s an uncreated order cosmic order, as Ross pointed out in #7. The problem is that the atheist has to effectively rule out the possibility that this order is created. Even if the atheist can dispose of the “order doesn’t just happen on its own” objection as question begging, he — and I say he advisedly — must still struggle, in reverse, with the same difficulties that plague theists: accounting for evidence of cosmic order; the evidence of moral order in the human mind; the evidence of an admittedly unreliable but often real providential order; the reasonable tendency to continue to think that cosmic order presumes an intelligent agent (not to mention the deep seated intuition that leads so many to think this way.
Furthermore if atheists believe that “the human goal is to awaken to, and live in harmony with, this underlying order” they have to contend with the fact/value distinction. This is where theists can turn Hume against the atheists: “It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.”
Atheism is at least as philosophically problematic as theism. That’s why most reasonable non-theists are agnostics. The new atheism is ideology, pure and simple.
I lack the intellect for deep discussion of abstract philosophy and theology. I only want to mention that among my entire circle of acquaintances, the atheists and agnostics are the least judgmental, most humble, and most helpful; the hard-core Christians, on the other hand, tend to be the most judgmental, most prideful, and least helpful.
This is only among my (very large) circle of friends and acquaintances, but it makes me wonder what kind of witness each group thinks it’s projecting into the world.
No. 3 – Jon – Maybe the kids of the atheist mom were as smug and annoying as she quite possibly is.
#16…. you are right. A distinct possibility. Yet one more reason to be skeptical of her general point — that Big Bad Doctrinaire Christianity caused her kids to lose some friends.
Basically there’s ALL KINDS of reasons kids decide not to be friends with other kids. Maybe her kids rub people the wrong way. Maybe they lecture other kids on how stupid they are for believing in Christ. Maybe the kids got in a fight and this is the excuse they all made up. Who knows!
But I am willing to grant that it must happen SOME of the time that Christian kids or their parents veto further contact with otherwise pleasant nonChristian kids on the purported grounds of spriritual contamination. My point was, that’s an example of people behaving badly — which actually Christianity says you should expect. Christianity stands alone in world religions in making as an essential part of its story the claim that (a) everybody is bad and (b) some of the worst of us are high ranking religious authorities in God’s chosen religious hiearchy and will do their worst things on allegedly religious grounds. It explains (b) by (a) — that people start with bad hearts and then justify their bad thoughts and deeds by whatever ideology is available to them (feminism, Marxism, free market economics, postmodernism, Islam, the Bible, etc.).
(“What the heart desires, the will chooses and the mind justifies” — a key insight of the Reformers.)
The atheist mom (and her colleagues) have a much more limited toolkit to explain the human experience since they believe that people are innately good (e.g. the “natural goodness” of the atheist sons).
No. 17 – Jon – I agree with you too. I’ve sen examples of “Christian parents” running their kids lives like that. Merry XMAS to all!