A Fool's Heart: Answering the Village Atheist

Atheism and the Religious Need

2008-01-23T21:49:00.016-05:00

Once the atheist throws out the Pearl of Great Price of the kingdom of God, what fills the void? Does lack of faith make one vulnerable to dangerous ideologies that mimic the spiritual needs we are created with?

Fred Schwarz is an influential Christian speaker and writer and a noted anti-Communist of a previous generation who dealt continually with the issues of atheism and Communism. We have seen that these two sets of beliefs form an nearly inseparable pair as they resurface throughout history, most recently in the rantings of author Michael Chapman which I covered in a previous post. Why does atheism seem to pair with communistic ideas in history?

Dr. Schwarz gave a helpful answer almost fifty years ago, and since the issues have reappeared again, I thought it fitting to resurrect this answer from the dust bin of history. Here is an excerpt from Schwartz with a few editorial notes for context:

“[Another] factor in the making of a Communist is unfulfilled religious need. “Man shall not live by bread alone.” He needs a purpose. Man is born with a heart to worship God, to reach out for something bigger and beyond himself, to seek some noble vision for which to sacrifice, some purpose for which to live and die. When denial of the existence of God deprives him of the natural fulfillment, Communism provides a substitute. It gives him a sense of purpose and destiny, gives meaning to life, and provides a motive for sacrifice.”

People [especially parents] are mystified when a man [or adolescent] born to great wealth and social position becomes a Communist, spends his fortune for Communist purposes, and even goes to jail in the interest of the Communist cause. To many people, this does not make sense.”

Let us try to put ourselves in his position. As a child he has the finest tutors. [For today’s youth, this education is immediate via the internet, and can take the form of, say, a constant stream of Richard Dawkins propaganda on YouTube]. He is intelligent. Very early in life he learns that there is no God, that the idea of God is for dull and second rate minds, and that he, in the purity and perfection of his intellect, has no need for God. He accepts the Darwinian hypothesis concerning the origin of man, and the Marxian hypothesis concerning the origin of civilization, culture, morality, ethics, and religion.

As a young man he sits on the mount of learning and watches the progress of the animal species from the jungles via savagery and barbarism to civilization. He watches the productive forces as they operate on the human species dividing it into nations and classes, creating cultures, civilizations, moral codes, educational and political institutions and religious faith. He sits above it all, and beyond it all. He is lost in lonely isolation. Life is devoid of meaning, purpose, and objective. Yet he is a young man with all the idealism and emotional urgency of youth. Where can he find fulfillment? Some seek it in sporting life; some in the life of a playboy. These outlets have little appeal for him.

Suddenly he hears a whisper on the breeze that history in the goodness of its heart is calling unto itself a few of its finest and its best—superior intellects, courageous characters with an insight into its mind and its purpose, and a knowledge of historic law and historic will; that it is uniting them into its finest organization and giving them the destiny of conquering the world and regenerating mankind. It comes as a vision of glory. It sets a snog singing in his heart. It puts stars before his eyes. It leads him forward to live and, if necessary, to die in the Communist cause. In it he finds a religious refuge for his godless and unbelieving heart.

Communists are not born; they are made. They are being formed constantly on the campuses of the world. As long as youth is disillusioned, materialistically oriented and spiritually unfulfilled, there will be no dearth of Communist recruits. Herein lies our greatest challenge.”

(Dr. Fred Scharz, You Can Trust the Communists (. . . to do exactly as they say!) Engewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1960, 33-5).

Schwarz’s description certainly fits the message that the atheist propagandists on the internet use, and seems to fit many of the young overly-enthusiastic youth who have joined the fad of “converting” to atheism. Perhaps seeing how closely their new found atheism leads to mock religious faith — complete with inspiration, calling, purpose, destiny, “regeneration” or enlightenment, glory, worship, and “refuge” or security – they will reconsider the merits and uniqueness of godlessness. We are created with a full spectrum of religious needs. Why deny their origin only to fill them with a parody?

I should add that Dr. Schwarz influenced Dr. David Noebel, whose Summit Ministries continues to produce many fine Christian apologetics. I highly recommend their products and conferences.

Atheism’s Aggressive Political Agenda

2007-11-14T20:03:00.000-05:00

We don’t care what they say in order to get elected in this religious country. We care about what kind of judges they give us on the Supreme Court . . . I don’t care what kind of verbal obeisance they pay to religion if that’s what it takes to get a person in the White House who will give us church-state separationists on the Supreme Court. -- (Atheist, Edward Tabash, on Democratic Candidates)

From my very first encounter with the writings of the modern atheists I have argued that the movement is not philosophically sophisticated, nor intellectually rigorous, and it was never intended to be. Despite their pretense to a monopoly on "reason" and "honesty," these guys’ motivation has been a political agenda from day one.

Nowhere have I seen this agenda as brazenly presented as in the recent Convention "Crystal Clear Atheism" 2007, organized by the Atheist Alliance International. The Alliance, which claims as its purpose to "help establish and strengthen the religion-free community," invited all the big names of atheism to address a crowd of — judging by the videos and audience applause — 200 people max. The convention was a mirror image of similar conferences put on by religious groups, with plenary speakers, nightly movies, a "secular parenting" workshop, advice on how to start local atheist cell-groups, and, believe it or not, even an atheist apologetics workshop entitled, "Snappy Answers to Religious Questions: How to Combat Common Questions Posed to Atheists in Formal and Informal Settings."

Admittedly, I’m guessing about the small number of attendees, but there was no need to guess about the message these speakers where there to promote. Far from merely a rehearsal of their typical jokes and name-calling, the speakers spilled an overt agenda to insulate American public life from any and all religious influence (as if that is what the First Amendment meant), called for a concentrated effort to establish and solidify the U.S. Supreme Court as a secular and anti-religious tyranny, and appealed for a radical leftist vision of America.

Well, OK, you may think that as one who has an interest in painting these atheists as bad guys that I have exaggerated my description of their party. Not in the least. Hearing this has again confirmed my presentation in Return of the Village Atheist that the current popular atheism is a reincarnated Marxism. Let the reader decide.

Atheism, Socialism, Marxism: the Hope of America?

The link between atheism and tyrannical socialism became very obvious when former Hollywood screen writer and author Matthew Chapman made an overt plea for American to be made into an openly atheistic and socialistic country. I say socialist, but the whole talk sounded openly Marxist to me. Chapman argued that religion won’t die away in America because it still provides so many great things for its people: community, support, help for the needy, etc. If the delusion of superstition were to be taken away, and government institutions were to take over the support roles, then the need for religion would die away too. He put it like this,

"The church takes care of people . . . and how does atheism compete with that? I don’t think it can. I don’t believe atheism actually can ever succeed in isolation; only as a result of a much larger political change.
. . . It’s quite clear that the better a country takes care of its citizens, the less religion there is. . . . I don’t think atheism can succeed in a country as primitive as this one [the U.S.] now is; a country where politicians deride their own profession, sneering at the political process as if it was the problem not the solution, who deride the idea that government should help, protect, and raise up its weaker citizens; where the current government has turned over the delivery of basic needs to religion and made them a matter of charity."

Get that. We need less religion, less charity, and more government care-taking. Indeed, he argued that, "without gigantic social change, the church will have to remain the only place where ordinary people can go to find community, and equality (albeit under the eye of a very stern god) . . ."

Now if this sounds openly Marxist, it is for good reason: it is a direct repetition of one of Marx’s most famous ideas, that religion is the "opium of the people." Marx wrote, "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people, is the demand for their real happiness." This is the core of the atheist political agenda: religion is a false hope which must be destroyed in order to society to progress. Religion must go, and all the functions of religion must be replaced by non-religious institutions in order to convince people that religion was wrong to begin with. Thus, Marx assessed, "The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion." (Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right)

Now, it seems to me that this is exactly the type of "social change" that Chapman calls for. Build society upon decidedly atheistic institutions, hijack the role of religion in society, and push religious groups to the fringes, then claim victory for atheism. Equally, with anti-capitalist odor, Chapman followed up, "If atheism, if reason is to flourish, it will only do so when people feel protected by a rational system in which they have involvement, and which is run on principles of compassion, not profit." It is this profit, he argued — the greed and fear allegedly nurtured by the free market — that enables religious hunger to grow also.

Let me translate: for atheism to flourish in the marketplace, we must destroy the marketplace, and bring its role under the direct supervision of atheists.

All of this leads me to the obvious conclusion: big-government socialism is the opiate of atheism.

Chapman was hardly coy about this idea. He literally cursed the idea that "big-government" should be frowned upon, and retorted, "I am for big-government," and to even my surprise — and having studied them for a while now, I usually am not surprised by the continued antics of the atheist crowd — the audience heartily applauded.

A View of the Atheistic Agenda

The second overt rally cry was given by crusading anti-religion lawyer Edward Tabash. Tabash caught my attention by name at first because I am familiar with his active role as a debater of the existence of God. I have heard a few of his debates, particularly one many years ago in which he did not fair too well under the acumen of Dr. Greg Bahnsen. Nevertheless, Tabash continues, primarily as chair of the activist legal group "Americans United for Separation of Church and State."

At first Tabash merely called for the atheists to have two objectives:

1) "To secure an America in which the separation of church and state is absolute (in the words of John F. Kennedy), and to make sure that no branch of government is able to treat the believer and non-believer differently"
2) "To promote the atheistic idea to society at large, and use our powerful scientific and philosophical arguments to explain why the supernatural is non-existent."

Related to these objectives Tabash foresees two possible futures:

1) One where "secular government" secures that "religion will be left as a matter of private conscience to the individual, and not be legislated by government," or, conversely,
2) one where "by a shift of only one vote on the United States Supreme Court, we will essentially become a theocracy, in which all branches of government will be freed to favor religion collectively over non-belief."

Tabash’s inability not to editorialize was already showing through. But his real feelings came out much later. For now, let us rehearse quickly what awful things Tabash fears that imminent "theocracy" threatens to take away. What is Tabash afraid such a "freed" government will cause atheists to lose? He gives a list:

1) "We will lose autonomy in every area of our private lives if the Supreme Court in a new decision nullifies government neutrality in matters of religion. We will not just lose the right of abortion for women, we will lose the right to use birth control even for married women . . . we would lose the morning after pill, ... [and] all post-fertilization forms of birth control."

2) America will be plunged into scientific ignorance: citing a "shocking example of the attack on evolution," Tabash added, "Not only would they bring about oppression here at home in America, the Religious Right is in danger of being able to actually cripple our competitiveness worldwide by destroying rational modern scientific education here at home."

3) This includes stem-cell research: "we are going to forfeit our leading role in science to those nations who do not have a religious right that hampers the development of this most important aspect of modern biotechnology."

4) Worst of all is the "overt effort to oppress gays and lesbians." Referring to a 6-3 Supreme Court decision that decriminalized homosexual behavior to the extent that "no state can punish what two adults do with each other in private," and lamenting that a more recent ruling reduced that decision to 5-4, Tabash gave the awful news : "Justice Scalia very chillingly said that the people of a state should be able to use their sense of tradition to criminalize all sexual behavior they regard as deviant." (Imagine that. States actually determining their own laws without the Supreme Court forcing them! Why, it sounds almost like the Tenth Amendment.) Tabash will have none of that: "We don’t want this man to have a majority on the United States Supreme Court."

5) Further, "We will lose modern sex education."

6) "End of life issues" (read: euthanasia)

7) Further, tax money to "faith-based initiatives." Eddie expounds on this one: "It is not the business of the President of the United States to appropriate billions of dollars of tax money to fund charitable programs through religious institutions, when it should be secular government that provides social welfare services to the people."

So, in short, this is what Tabash fears his atheistic community will lose: abortion, post-fertilization contraceptives, embryonic stem-cell research, homosexuality, sex education, euthanasia, government socialism, and tax money. Condensing these into their fundamental concerns, Tabash fears the loss of atheistic powers to define and arbitrate life, family, and wealth.

In the face of imminent danger, how can atheists preserve these great delights of free society? Tabash advises: "This is what we must do. We must make sure that the next president of the United States supports church-state separation." Further,

"Every single time there is a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court, we must deluge our Unites States senators with as many letters as we possibly can, and phone calls, to make sure that they do not pass through a religious right-winger," and, "we must vigorously oppose all United States Senate nominees who indicate a willingness to support the confirmation of religious right-wing judges."

The agenda was becoming more clear. Rather than peaceful, freedom-loving people who simply have a "lack of belief in God," the atheist conference courted and promoted a radical political agenda: to gain control of political power in strategic places.

Lying to Win

Then Tabash got really scary. It was not until the question and answer session when he revealed his most ominous side; perhaps due to the more informal nature of the format, he spoke as unguardedly as any liberal I’ve heard. One questioner asked that due to the abundance of religious talk coming from not just Republican (which is to be expected) but Democratic candidates as well, whether atheists should be concerned. Tabash responded with this gem:

"We don’t care what they say in order to get elected in this religious country. We care about what kind of judges they give us on the Supreme Court, because only the Supreme Court determines if we’ll have secular government." So, he expanded, "Don’t look to the rhetoric they need to pander to, remember what country they’re running in. I don’t care what kind of verbal obeisance they pay to religion if that’s what it takes to get a person in the White House who will give us church-state separationists on the Supreme Court."

[Editorial plea: Please mark the preceding quote down, copy it to every website you can imagine, email it to everyone you know, mail it to those who have no email. Distribute!]

Tabash’s endorsement of blatant dishonesty was unsettling even for an atheist audience. One questioner pushed the issue, arguing that we should hold the candidates’ "feet to the fire" for what they say as well as do. Tabash would not budge: "When it comes to Democratic presidential candidates, they all will give us the right judges on the Court, courts [emphasizing the plural, and thus the entire federal court system] . . . so let’s not make the fire too hot."

Tabash could not get off the issue. When another questioner asked for his comments on how to stop the "the proliferation of church-based law schools," like Regent and Liberty, and their "influx into government legal roles," Tabash continued his campaign: "The only way to do that is to have a president who disfavors the Religious Right and will not be accepting those people into White House positions."

Here is a good point to note the hypocrisy in our crusader’s agenda. Aside from his open endorsement of lying when pragmatic for his cause, in his opening "objective," he claimed to fight "to make sure that no branch of government is able to treat the believer and non-believer differently." By the end of his talk, however, his agenda was noticeably opposite. Apparently, for him, it’s OK to reverse the prejudice and disfavor the Religious Right and bar them from White House positions.

When it seemed as if his rhetoric could sink no lower, Tabash closed his atheistic spin with this completely debasing comment: "We [atheists], the true First-Amendment patriots, cannot allow these vicious fanatics to take over our country." He made no attempt to hide the atheistic political agenda, "Let us make saving the United States of America from the Religious Right our absolute number one priority."

Conclusion

What have our atheists told us in just this one brief conference? Far from docile citizens hoping to live their lives quietly in private peace, these atheistic leaders have your government, your children, and your money in their sights, and they are serious about things. Society can only progress when religion is eradicated from society (Chapman) or at least driven to the dark corners of something called "private conscience" (Tabash). In addition, they say, we must fight for atheistic control over the definitions of life, death, family, sex, and taxes.

Worst of all, we have learned that these atheists believe it is acceptable for a presidential candidate to consciously deceive religious people in order to gain votes, and then work to promote a secular atheistic society in opposition to those who voted them in. As we have know all along, and now have Tabash’s own words, an atheistic society must be built on the foundations of deception and political strong-arming. Apparently, the only thing stronger than a Christian faith is the atheist’s faith in the dishonesty of Democratic candidates. Blessed be the lie than binds!

And we, Christians, we are the ones they call vicious fanatics.

There's an Atheist After Your Child - MP3 Audio Lecture

2007-10-17T09:18:00.001-04:00

The audio files for the Worldview Superconference 2007 are now available at Americanvision.org .

This includes my lecture "There's an Atheist After Your Child!" for which I previously posted the text. Now, for a mere $1.99, you can download the MP3 audio file for yourself --- or, order the entire twenty-two lecture conference on CD for about $49.

New Article - Sam Harris Sacrifices Human Reason

2007-10-15T08:24:00.000-04:00

Christian Faith and Reason Online has posted another of my articles, this one critiquing Sam Harris' amateurish attempt to smear Christian faith in general and the Lord's Supper specifically as just one more example of savage human sacrifice.

I refute him at length, and remind him what real human sacrifice is, where to see it today, and a little of the theology of sacrifice, too.

You may post comments here or at the CFR website.

http://www.christianfaithandreason.com/index.html

Hitchens Proves Worthy of "Village Atheist" Title, Again

2007-10-09T21:16:00.000-04:00

In a story that has headlined as "Hitchens Unhinged" and "Hitchens Bullies Priest," the best-writing and least tactful of the modern atheists has played the role of the "angry atheist" as well as any.

According to the sources, Hicthens appeared inebriated and especially raunchy while speaking at an expensive dinner club in New York. A local 9-11 hero priest - who also happened to be a member of the dinner club board - used the comment and question session to confront Hitchens on his extreme vulgarity, and then embarrassed the atheist by focusing on his apparent drunkenness. After a short exchange in which Hitchens tried to villify the Priest for having stood up, the event was abruptly ended.

Then the anger mounted. After a respite to the men's room, a red-faced Hitchens emerged and charged the Priest literally in his face, to the extent that witnesses say a body guard had to restrain the atheist. Hitchens yelled and blistered all ears with shouts of "child-molester" and such aimed at the respected Priest.

The irony about this is that it took place on May 1, 2007 -- six months ago, with hardly a peep from the press. Had it been Rick Warren, the now late D. James Kennedy, or some other high-profile Christian, you can bet every tv, radio, mag, paper, and coffee shop window would be announcing the horrors.

But stay tuned, because these brawling atheists like Hitchens, and the press that loves to hide their evils so well, are the same people who want to eradicate God from our country, so they themselves can rewrite our moral code, and your child's curriculum. . . .

Except, that is, for public school curricula. They wrote those a long time ago. Now not even the dinner clubs are safe.

Sam Harris Against Nature

2007-09-24T22:42:00.000-04:00

No sooner has Sam Harris established his reputation for intolerance and harassment of religious faith than he has now begun to lash out at those scientists who do show tolerance and respect toward religious folk. He is passionate that, as he titles it, "Scientists should unite against threat from religion." Imagine! The crime of not excluding people from scientific discourse because they are Christians, or even Muslims!

Sam won’t stand for it, and in his recent editorial to that massive organ of scientific literature Nature he blasts the scientists for — of all things — being too nice. Nature’s great sin of being "unfailingly tactful" Sam warns — saving us from almost certain peril — whitewashes religion and leaves us with nothing but "obsurantism."

The charge of dreaded "obscurantism" reminds me of some real scholarship I recently read, regarding the militant atheists of times past. I quote a bit at length:

"Interrelationship between science and religion is probably the most sensitive and most emotionally laden subject in the whole of Soviet atheism’s spoken and written output. Its aim is to prove that these are incompatible, that only science and the scientific method are true and pursue the truth, and that therefore the essential nature of religious faith is obscurantism and ignorance. . . .
Soviet literature focusing on the attempt to prove the anti-scientific and hence anti-progressive, obscurantist, intellectually reactionary character of religion, is immense in volume and, even on the ‘high-brow’ level, emotionaly [sic] highly charged." (Dimitry V. Pospielovsky, Soviet Studies on the Church and the Believer’s Response to Atheism: A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory and Practice, and the Believer, Volume 3 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988) 36, italics mine).

As I showed with case after case in Return of the Village Atheist, the outspoken modern atheists repeat the same charges that the earlier communist and murderous revolutionary atheists flung at Christians, only today Harris and his clan keep denying the consequences of trying to erase religion from culture. Well despite the denials, the parallels are there, and though Harris keeps sounding the keynote to disestablish all things religious, and keeps denying that atheism itself had anything to do with the Soviet atrocities, the quote above comes from the man who wrote the book (several actually) on the subject of Soviet Atheism. There is no reason why Sam’s supposed atheistic utopia could be any different than what Pospielovsky chronicles.

Such a minor digression in my topic may prompt our atheist to respond that I am playing a game of "guilt by association," where if I can pin the image of a murderous commie on Sam (not to be confused with "Uncle Sam"), then I have gotten by with a smooth but effective dishonesty. Well, personally, I believe the case is closed on the fact that atheism itself lay at the root, in the stem, and in the poisonous fruit of the violent Marxist tradition, but it would take more time to prove than I have right now. But look! It is not me but our atheist who is playing the subtle dishonesty game. To wit:

Sam Harris Against History

In order to cement his case that religion and science must never be mixed, Sam quickly slams down the Galileo card. He reminds us once again how wrong the church was, and how infallibly precious science turned out (precious if only because it was the church that turned out wrong), and all the standard anti-faith rhetoric is spouted all over again.

But, this time there’s a big problem. Sam, and I must stress, for those who have read my book, is once again so wrong about his historical facts that he should feel moved to publically recant and apologize to theists and atheists alike. He states incorrectly that in the year 1633, "Galileo was being forced, under threat of death, to recant his understanding of the Earth’s motion." Under threat of death! What?!? This claim has been known to be wrong for so long that to keep repeating it is evidence of pure ignorance, carelessness, or pure malice. Why in the world Nature published such nonsense without giving the writer a chance to edit his embarrassing error hints of some kind of agenda: either to further the slander of religion, or to allow Sam to publically discredit himself. One can only hope the latter, and hope that it succeeds, too.

Truth is, according to real historians of the matter, Galileo was never threatened with death, nor even in danger of it, especially near the latter part of his story in 1633. At that time, even though he was under house arrest, the scientist was at leisure in a sunny Italian villa unharassed. He was once — seventeen years prior, in 1615-1616 — required to witness with the "on paper" threat of torture, but the respected historian Giorgio de Santillana informs us that even this "threat" was a mere formality which would never have been carried out due, if for nothing else, to Galileo’s age. (Giorgio de Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1981 [1955]) 322-3)

Well, as you can tell from just that little bit, actual facts are a bit boring; so Sam doesn’t bother with them. He apparently prefers to charge his story with emotion and fear of immediate "threat from religion" — just as Pospielovsky reminds us the Soviets did. The reason is simple: the facts don’t line up with Sam’s argument, philosophy and science neither line up with Sam’s agenda, so he has to dramatize the story, and hope that enough fear will help recruit atheists.

Let me be the first to congratulate Sam on his pure bravado: to take on a scientific journal the size of Nature is truly an exhibition of David vs. Goliath faith. But to make such blunders in the process must be a real disappointment. I suspect it doesn’t bother him; meanwhile, let us be wary of his quasi-commie threat for scientists of the world to "unite against religion."

Better, out of our hands, let the "beauty and majesty of God’s creation" continue to overwhelm our resistance (a phrase written by Christian and genetic scientist Francis Collins, and presented by Sam as a subject of ridicule). Real science is not afraid of God, His majesty, or His beauty; it’s all quite natural. But until faith, reason, and tolerance have a balanced sway, atheists like Sam will continue to oppose Nature, and, for that matter, Nature’s God, too.

On Being a "Flea"

2007-09-14T10:27:00.000-04:00

The running joke at the atheist website RichardDawkins.net is now to call all responses to recent atheist books “fleas” as if they were nothing more than parasites on the atheists’ successes. Apparently, I am one of these fleas.

As best I can tell, it seems to have started with a biting (forgive me) reference Dawkins himself made toward the highly accomplished Oxford scholar Alister McGrath. After McGrath published two books refuting Dawkins’ publications, Dawkins ignorantly accused him of “building a career riding upon my back.” Despite the fact that McGrath’s career was long since established before Dawkins’s own current job at Oxford was bought and funded for him by zillionaire Charles Simonyi, the atheist just can’t talk eye-to-eye with an intellectual peer who happens to be both a scientist and – gasp! – a theologian. So, Dawkins insulted his fellow Oxford professor with a quote from the poet W. B. Yeats, “Was there ever a dog who praised his fleas?"

Well, since Dawkins’s followers are capable of doing little except blindly following their leader, the “flea” label has been flung at all of us apologists, myself included.

The latest effort, collecting all of us “fleas” together is here.

So, what can I say to being called a parasite?

Well, I am a big believer in the old adage “Sticks and stones . . . but words will never hurt me,” so I will be happy to exchange rhetorical barks all night, all in good humor. Maybe that’s their way of avoiding the real issues. But at some point the name-callers must realize the implications of such metaphor-mongering. If I’m a flea, then what does that make my host?

I am reminded at this point of one of the great exchanges in the movie Rob Roy (paraphrasing somewhat):

Duke of Argyle: I hear that you’re putting my name about Court as a Jacobite . . .

Marquis of Montrose: Great men such as yourself draw rumors as shite draws flies.

Duke of Argyle: You are the shite, Montrose! And the flies upon it! For all the flowers in your great gardens, I know you in my nose. Keep your stink off my name, for by God, I will clip you as close as one of your gelded trees . . .

Now, I would like to thank the litter at the RichardDawkins.net kennel for publicizing my book. It’s hard to see us fleas with the naked eye – we are very small, indeed. So thanks to Dawkins for holding up the magnifying glass.

And, of course, anyone who cares to actually look through will see us all cozy and smiling. We sit comfortable and confident beneath the fur of atheistdom, and gladly feel the breeze when Dawkins’ whiffing hind-leg scratches-strains-scratches, but just can’t quite reach the itch.

And boy, do they strain often. Reading the several comments made by Dawkins’s underdogs on these posts makes me laugh and cry. Coming from a group that constantly boasts “open-mindedness,” “reason,” “tolerance,” “critical thinking,” and the like, the total bullheaded ignorance often displayed as confidence is a tragedy.

For example, the very first comment, coming from a user under the name of “heathen2,” exhibits their open-mindedness, use of evidence, and razor-sharp reasoning skills thusly: I will not buy a single flea book. Maybe peruse them if available at the library, but that's all. The same old worthless counter arguments are just boring and I don't have that kind of time to waste anymore.”

Excuse me? Don’t buy my book if you like, fine. Don’t read it either, OK. But then to pretend you already know what’s in it, and that it must be the “same old worthless” refuted arguments is to prove nothing but your own dogmatism. Please don’t pretend to be on the side of reason when you talk like that.

Besides, I have shown – in my long article “Darwin’s Bulldog and Russell’s Terriers” – just who exactly are the ones using the old, worn-out arguments. Some of these atheists rehash old stuff to the point of plagiarism – a practice that recalls the “dog returning to its vomit” (Prov. 26:11).

Examples like these from the modern atheist world are abundant. One of my favorites comes from my book’s listing on amazon.com . One reviewer posted a favorable review, and then another – naming himself “secularman” – criticized his review with another display of “new atheist” influence:

You claim this book bebunks the atheist viewpoint, and yet that is immposible if using facts, logic and reason. [. . .] There is no doubt that every argument in this book has already been shown to be a fallacy or a lie. [. . .] Anybody who believes in supernatural myths is insane and unable to compete against the infallable logic of atheists. Period.”

Aside from the atrocious spelling, secularman confirms for us what we apologists have been saying all along – today’s militant atheists are as dogmatic and close-minded a lot as any Holiness Pentecostal or Fundy Baptist ever thought about being. We are told that to refute atheism is “impossible,” and that the logic of atheists is “infallible,” and anyone who dissents is “insane.”

Scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch . . . Woof-woof . . . Hoowwwuuu!!!

BTW - What kind of world is it where people spend their time commenting on other people’s comments on other people’s books about other people’s books, within the small-folds of the publishing world?)

Enough.

So, perhaps, these days, Dawkins’s pack would love to find a flea-collar, but that would make them look too much like Anglican priests – so that’s out of the picture. But there remains one permanent solution for the atheists’ flea problem: get a dip. That is, get baptized, and end the froth-mouthed pit-fight for good.

Until then, Dawkins and company will continue their dogged attacks. There is hope, but as along as the leader of the pack is spreading the mange of atheism, fleas of all sorts will continue to spring up as well. It’s their choice.

D. James Kennedy, R.I.P.

2007-09-05T15:13:00.000-04:00

Another giant Christian leader has passed on. D. James Kennedy, founder and life-long pastor of the 10,000 member Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, founder of Knox Seminary, author of countless books and materials including the popular Evangelism Explosion, educator, scholar, patriot, you name it . . . died today at age 76.

Read an obituary written by Gary North here.

North notes well that despite all the wealth, responsibility and fame, "There was never a hint of scandal regarding his ministry."

In a time when liberals and atheists constantly throw the Ted Haggard's and others in believers' faces, continually reminding the world of Christian leaders' failings, the examples of men like Kennedy are good to remember. Among his many other accomplishments, his integrity is a model for future Christian leaders.

His leadership and erudition will be missed.

Wright on Dawkins

2007-08-30T08:03:00.000-04:00

There was a humorous moment during the question and answer session of N. T. Wright's Faraday Lecture (linked in the previous post). When someone asked Wright what he thought of atheist Richard Dawkins's book The God Delusion, Wright responded that he never quite finished it:

"If found it was the sort of book that once I put it down I found it hard to pick up again."

[Laughter]

Well put. Dawkins's is a book calculated to spread resentment and incite hatred -- hard even for some atheists to finish.

***

On another note, my apologies for not posting more in the past month. I have been traveling and busy for much of the time. I hope to be in a position to write more in the next week or so.

God Bless.

Two Great Talks by Two Great Scholars

2007-08-08T20:21:00.000-04:00

Here are a couple of links to good lectures - one from N. T. Wright, and another from Alister McGrath.

For those of you who are not too familiar with Bishop Wright, or who have only heard about him via the many smears and false accusations made against him by American fundamentalists (and many Reformed theologians, too!) — let me assure you that there is no greater authority on the history, theology, scholarship and meaning of the Resurrection than he. His work came in quite handy when I was writing Manifested in the Flesh, and this particular lecture is entitled "Can a scientist Believe in the Resurrection?"

N. T. Wright: Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection?

I particularly liked the way he confronted the idea of strict, repeatable "scientific knowledge." By that standard, Wright essentially argues, of course we can’t prove that the Resurrection happened. No Christian should feel ashamed to make such a "concession." But there are other ways of "knowing" than such a limited (and narrow-minded) standard, and Wright elaborates well. Then he fields questions for several minutes.

BTW, this audio can be found at "the N.T. Wright page" - where you can find a veritable plethora of New Testament scholarship, sermons, interviews, lectures, etc.www.ntwrightpage.com

The second link is to a lecture and forum given by Alister McGrath directly on the topic of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. Anytime you get to hear McGrath speak it’s a treat, and this particular presentation is not only to the point on Dawkins, but deconstructs the atheist with such simplicity that it’s a pleasure to listen. McGrath takes several question as well.

McGrath: Open Forum -- The God Delusion

If for any reason you have trouble with the McGrath link, the audio can be found on www.theocca.org

New Article - Sam Harris' Pearl of Great Price

2007-08-06T08:56:00.000-04:00

I have a new article entitled "Sam Harris' Pearl of Great Price" published by Christian Faith and Reason Magazine.

The hard-copy version of this is set to release in the Nashville area this week, circulating 25,000 copies. The magazine, edited by Michael Patrick Leahy - who has also written a response to Sam Harris entitled Letter to an Atheist - is planned to go national two months from now.

There are still a few bugs in this online version, and the footnotes have not been posted yet, but the meat is there. Also, they say that I have begun my Ph.D. studies, when actually I hope to start next year, but haven't yet. Not a big deal.

You may post comments on the article here, since they are not set up for it.

Lubac on Atheism - II

2007-07-25T22:58:00.000-04:00

Lubac writes,

"We do not want a mysterious God. Neither do we want a God who is Some One. Nothing is more feared than this mystery of the God who is Some One.

We would rather not be some one ourselves, than meet that Some One!"

(Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987 [1948]) 214.)

Short but deep. Lubac pierces directly to the heart of atheist spirituality (yes, that’s right, I said "atheist spirituality"). From a Christian perspective, men are fallen creatures - not seeking God as much as running from Him. Genuine "seekers" will find what they ask for, as Jesus tells us. But many who claim to be in pursuit of Truth are merely buying time for themselves to live according to their own dictates rather than submit to the will of God.

Just as in Lubac’s era, atheists today constantly hurl insults at Christians for being "irrational" and for believing in a Being they cannot see (a "mystery" which cannot be fathomed by human reckoning), and for believing in miracles and the Resurrection of Christ. If a God does or ever did exist, He would not the be the kind of Being described in the Bible, so we are told. He would rather be the kind of god famously spoken of by the philosopher Spinoza, or Einstein: universal and infinite, perhaps, but not conscious, not personal, and never interfering in the natural order of things. Even the atheist Richard Dawkins has said — and I am paraphrasing — that he could believe in such a god, because that type of god is not God. He is more of a mathematical concept.

Lubac was insightful: he saw such atheistic comments as the result of human fear. Not liberation, as is so often heralded by atheists, but fear of a God Who is both mysterious and personal. Human history and much of human behavior (not to mention our secret mental worlds) reflect too poorly upon us to accept such a God. So, we try everything to eradicate Him — even to the denial of the peculiar nature of His chief creation, humanity itself. We are no longer the offspring of God, sons of Adam, distinct from the animals, charged with dominion over the earth; rather, we are the offspring of animals, sons of apelike ancestors, one with the animals, charged with evolving the next great species. In short, we would rather not be the image of the mysterious-personal God, we would rather be the result of impersonal forces, somehow having arrived at something we call consciousness (don’t worry, science will soon "explain" consciousness as a "natural" — read impersonal — phenomenon).

Again, a paradox of atheism. Just as with that majority of atheists who are materialists, the deniers of a mysterious God must degrade man in order to do so. The denial of God always logically reduces the value of man. Even when those who argue otherwise speak of freedom, dignity, or progress, they destroy, or at least empty, the very category of personality which makes these concepts meaningful.

Anyone who would lower God beneath the bar of terrestrial measurement, would have no problem degrading man accordingly. But, as Lubac has noticed, the atheist would rather have it that way, even if he and his favorite propagandists say just the opposite.

Christ-Myth Fails Under Scrutiny - Flemming, Freke & Gandy

2007-07-17T23:52:00.000-04:00

I first thought to start a blog after writing my first book, Manifested in the Flesh, and before my second, The Return of the Village Atheist. Time got away from me, and I have found myself talking mostly about the so-called "New Atheism" in general and not addressing the Christ-myth atheists that began my descent into the caverns of the infidels to begin with. I here return to the Christ-myth nonsense in order to show just a few of the many breathtaking leaps the Christ-myth writers pawn as scholarship.

There are two varieties of argument, or evidence, which concern me the most. The first are reinterpretations of what have classically been understood as historical witnesses to Christ outside of the Bible: Josephus, Seutonius, Tacitus, etc. Of this class I may find time to deal with later, for the second variety concerns me more. This second class is made up of various references from other religions — often pagan mystery-cults — which sound as if they very explicitly contain Christian doctrines, yet they predate the New Testament writings, sometimes by centuries. These evidences, when they are presented in a certain striking manner (which I shall argue is misleading and poorly researched), lay the foundation for the understanding that Christianity borrowed its most distinct doctrines frm already existing religious cults. Some of these instances, which I have not covered in the book, I want to examine here in this blog.

The problem with such "evidences" is that when you search just below the surface of the presentation — trace just a few footnotes and sources — you find that they are almost made up out of thin air. Following are two clear examples from Timothy Freke’s and Peter Gandy’s book The Jesus Mysteries.

First, Freke and Gandy present the Christian sacrament of Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, as nothing less than an ape and imitation of earlier pagan practices. They write, "The ritual of eating and drinking the ‘body’ and ‘blood’ of Jesus is celebrated by Christians as the Eucharist. Such a ‘holy communion’ was also practiced in the Mysteries, as a means of becoming one with Osiris-Dionysus" (TJM, 48-9). Alongside what should be considered a very general and unconvincing parallel of the Graeco-Roman god Bacchus (the "god of wine"), they proceed to pull out what seems to be the clincher, a genuine smoking-gun. They write,

"An inscription reads, ‘He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation.’" (TJM, 49).

And just when the readers mind is settling in saying, "I’ve heard that before. That’s Jesus in John 6:53, 6," Freke and Gandy reveal to us the shocking truth: this is not Jesus! It is "actually the Mystery godman Mithras speaking!"(TJM, 49, italics mine). And, believe it or not, they’ve got the scholarly footnote to prove it! They cite scholar Jocelyn Godwin’s book, Mystery Religions in the Ancient World (1981), page 28.

So I trace down Godwin’s book looking for the real ancient source of this "inscription." But I am disappointed: Godwin does say what Freke and Gandy claim, but gives no scholarly citation or source at all for the quote. So, I had to do the scholarly leg-work myself in order to find it.
Finally, after combing through several books, I actually found it. It was quoted by M. J. Vermaseren in Mithras, The Secret God (1963), p. 103-4, and Vermaseren himself is quoting the famous Mithras scholar Franz Cumont’s work. It turns out that the quote is not from any ancient artifact, but is derived from one single medieval manuscript that alleges to parallel Persian religion with Christian.

So, now, put this together. What we have is Freke and Gandy quoting Godwin, who is quoting Vermaseren, who is quoting Cumont, who is quoting a lone manuscript that was written about a thousand years after Christ. Thus we have the refutation. This is shoddy scholarship, quoted uncritically by successive generations of skeptics and passed down like a hereditary disease. There is no such parallel between the words of Christ and Mithras after all, only a very late and dubious manuscript. The apparently striking truth turns out to be a very poor joke.

A second example is even more striking, for it deals with a even more central and distinct Christian doctrine, the Trinity. Freke and Gandy imply (they rarely make a direct claim - rather, they make implications and rely on their readers’ gullibility to fill in the gaps) that Christians stole the idea of a Triune God from previous pagan religion. They write, "The notion of a divine trinity is not found in Judaism, but it is prefigured by paganism" (TJM, 82). Then they quote from a hundred year-old scholar of ancient Egypt, E. A. Wallis Budge. In his 1899 work Egyptian Religion, Budge quotes a religious text that has the god Nerbertcher say "Being One I became Three" (TJM, 82). Sounds like a trinity, right? But how much is it really like the Christian idea?

As in the first case, the context proves the lie. Budge gives us the fuller text (which Freke and Gandy must have had in front of them):

The god Nebertcher says, "I emitted from myself the gods Shu and Tefnut, and from being One I became Three; they sprang from me, and came into existence in this earth. . . . Shu and Tefnut brought forth Seb and Nut, and Nut brought forth Osiris, Horus-khent-an-maa, Sut, Isis, and Nephthys at one birth." (Budge, Egyptian Religion, 42, 45)

So this is hardly a latent trinity, it is merely a very selectively chosen fragment of a very typical polytheistic genealogy of pagan gods. How many gods are there altogether? I count ten. Freke and Gandy should have talked about a "decinity" instead of a trinity - but that, of course, would have been nonsense. So to cover their nonsense, they edited out a tiny fraction of the text which to portray to their readers as a precursor to Christian doctrine. But there is nothing unique about this fragment when seen in its context. There are such genealogies all over the pagan world. Greek mythology is famous for the carousing of the gods. Gnosticism, the heresy which the early Church fathers refuted, had numerous examples of mythical tales that were filled with multi-tiered "emanations" of gods, just like the one spoken here by "Nerbertcher." Christianity was always opposed to it (even as early as Paul - see 1 Cor. 8:5-6).

Speaking of Nerbertcher, here is some more of his soliloquy from the same religious text, just for your entertainment:

"I evolved the evolving of evolutions. I evolved myself under the form of the evolutions of the god Khepera, which were evolved at the beginning of all time. I evolved with the evolutions of the God Khepera; I evolved by the evolution of evolutions . . ." (Budge, 41)

This god seems to have only one thing on his mind. Much like modern "scientific" paganism: the universe created itself and matter is eternally evolving. No wonder these myths are so attractive some modern atheists like Brian Flemming! Hey, maybe someone should send this text to the famous atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins. Maybe he might read it and decide he believes in a god after all: the evolved/evolving/evolution god Nerbertcher.

Far from being a source of Christian doctrine, Egyptian religion was looked down upon by the early Church fathers. This should come as no surprise since much of Egyptian paganism was among the most openly base. Here are some facts about Egyptian religion:

1. Egyptian gods were mortal — even the highest among them, Ra, the sun-god, and Osiris. None were necessarily eternal.

2. They had countless gods which were often "grouped" for pragmatic, regional, or relational reasons, sometimes in two’s or three’s.

3. Osiris—Isis—Horus was just one of the later of these concoctions of local gods, and was created mainly to legitimate the undeserved inheritance of the throne by a Pharaoh’s son.

4. The most significant feature of Egyptian religion by far was the outright worship of Animals. For example, the following animals received worship for these purposes:

A. Wisdom (Tahuti-Thoth): Baboon

B. Male Reproduction (Ra and Ptah): Bull

C. Female Reproduction (Hathor-Isis): Cow (the so called "great queen of heaven" was worshipped as a cow! Here’s a direct quote from one Egyptian religious poem: "Hail to thee, Great One, who came forth from the Heavenly Cow." Morning Hymn, Frankfort, p.17)

D. Pregnancy (Ta-urt): Hippopotamus (!)

E. Maternity (Mut): Vulture

(DISCLAIMER: Husbands, do not attempt to use "C," "D," or "E" as terms of endearment at home. Joel McDurmon and American Vision will not be held accountable for any consequences resulting from such actions.)

F. Other Animals worshiped: Falcon, Jackal, Frog, Crocodile, Snakes, Fish, etc. In many cases these animals have been found mummified and placed among buried rulers.

The Early Church fathers picked up on this ridiculous side of Egyptian religion. One of the earliest apologists, Aristides, wrote:

"The Egyptians, moreover, because they are more base and stupid than every people that is on the earth, have themselves erred more than all. For the deities (or religion) of the Barbarians and the Greeks did not suffice for them, but they introduced some also of the nature of the animals, and said thereof that they were gods, and likewise of creeping things which are found on the dry land and in the waters." (The Apology of Aristides, XII)

It is hardly likely that the early Church fathers drew inspiration from the very Egyptian paganism they so openly despised. Besides this, Freke and Gandy are wrong to say that the notion of a divine trinity is not found in Judaism. While it is not explicitly stated in Judaism, the latest New Testament scholarship — notably that of N. T. Wright — is showing that the elements of Trinitarian worship were latent in Judaism from very early on (more on that at another time).

So once again we see that, from every angle, the claim made by Freke and Gandy is so far off as to be on the verge of open dishonesty. Their quote is selective, the actual context of the quote gives a very different story, the historical context of Egyptian religion makes the claim highly unlikely, and the clear views of the early Church itself prove just the opposite point.

A third case concerns the supremely important doctrine of the Incarnation. Freke and Gandy imply that Greek mythology predates this doctrine by nearly 500 years! According to them, the Graeco-Roman god Bacchus came in the Flesh, and they quote him, "Lord god of God born!," "Godhead in a mortal shape . . . manifest to mortal men," "I have changed my immortal form and taken the likeness of man" (they are quoting Euripides, Bacchae, 5C B.C. - compare Phil. 2:7-8; John 1:14).

I refute this claim at length in my book Manifested in the Flesh: How the Historical Evidence of Jesus Refutes Modern Mystics and Skeptics (pp. 91-4). He who wishes to see the full refutation, as well as a fuller defense of the Incarnation may look there. In an Appendix to the same book I cover much more about their book in all its comical details.

It was after viewing the atheist Brian Flemming’s anti-Christian DVD that I realized there needed to be a response this brand of nonsense. The answers are out there, but propagandists like Flemming, and Freke and Gandy, have strewn a labyrinth of misleading thoughts and distractions for their readers and followers. Thankfully, they don’t tend to persuade actual scholars (the only scholarly review that I could find of Freke and Gandy’s book was a scathing and sarcastic criticism - something highly uncommon in scholarly journals. I quote the review in my book). They do, however, persuade lots of uncritical people, and shock a lot of unsuspecting and otherwise unprepared Christians. Let there from now on be no more shock.

If you have any specific questions regarding other claims of the Christ-mythicists, please feel free to email me at the address found on my profile page, or post them in the comments section of this post. I will do my best to research and address the concerns.

Atheists After Your Kid

2007-07-13T21:22:00.000-04:00

A few words from a recent Dennis Prager column struck a chord. Why have atheists such as Sam Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, etc., received such a broad hearing? Why are they being listened to so widely, and why are people falling for such weak secular arguments? Prager answers, we cannot overlook the effects of generations of secular education:

"The secular indoctrination of a generation that has grown into adulthood is bearing fruit. Unless one receives a strong religious grounding in a religious school and/or religious home, the average young person in the Western world is immersed in a secular cocoon. From elementary school through graduate school, only one way of looking at the world -- the secular -- is presented. The typical individual in the Western world receives as secular an indoctrination as the typical European received a religious one in the middle ages. I have taught college students and have found that their ignorance not only of the Bible but of the most elementary religious arguments and concepts -- such as the truism that if there is no God, morality is subjective -- is total." (Full Artilce)

Hearing Prager’s comment reminded me of the 45-minute lecture I gave at American Vision’s recent Worldview Super Conference. The argument is right on. While it will be a few weeks before DVD’s of the conference are available, DeMar has given me permission to share my full-text manuscript with my blog audience (see link below).

The speech, entitled "There’s an Atheist After Your Kid," covers the current push among atheist promoters to do everything necessary to usurp total control of the education of your children, even to the extent of coercing the content of home-school curricula, if they could. With Dawkins constantly saying that religious education is a form of child abuse, and that atheists need to unite and form a political lobby, it behooves us as Christians to question the wisdom of secular education, as well as the failure of many Christians to get involved in politics. There are many reasons for this negligence, and I talk about the biggest one in the speech. I also give a Biblical view of educational authority, over against the atheists, and call for Christians everywhere to return to our covenantal commitments to Christian culture, of which the education of children is the beginning.

Some theologians of the late nineteenth century saw the path secular education would lead us down. Reformed giants such as A. A. Hodge, as I quote in the speech, clearly saw that atheism would be the result, and thus he argued against public schooling. Now that we can see Hodge was right, isn’t it time to take his advice before it is too late?

DOWNLOAD THE FULL LECTURE in PDF:
Atheists After Your Kid.pdf

Paradoxes of Atheism: de Lubac on Atheism - 1

2007-06-23T15:22:00.000-04:00

The influential Roman Catholic theolgian Henri de Lubac lived through an era of intense revolutionary atheism, not unlike that of our own times. He has left us with many unique perspectives. Here is a sample:

"It seems that each of the great protagonists of contemporary atheism makes it a point of honor to prove that with him, from him onwards, now for the first time, as it were, mankind has progressed beyond the narrow perspective of anti-theism; that in him it has at last become free; that henceforth, thanks to him, the idea of God can be envisaged without resentment, for resentment might give rise to suspicion as to the value of this denial of him; that the question of God will not even be posed in the future; that belief in God, then, will no longer have to be fought; that the illusion will be dispelled forever; that to our children's children he will be known only as a curio of the past. Such was the line taken by Comte and Marx; and, more recently, by Sartre and a few others. Each one outdoes his predecessor and, if he recognize any predecessors, it is he, so he thinks, who definitely opens the new era, by saying the last word on the subject.

But at the same time, the thought of God obsesses them, and the care even that they take to say they are going to deliver the human race from him once for all is a sign of this obsession, which is ever reborn. Nothing is more fiercely polemical, more anti-theist, more calculated to awaken the suspicion of resentmen, than certain of their manifestos. Each of them wishes to prove, better than his forerunners, that unlike them he is at peace in his atheism and feels no need to think of God in order to "refute" him. But all that takes up a number of pages. And the concern that he shows in this way, producing a profusion of ever greater and greater subtleties and precautions, betrays him." (Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1948) 218)

There is much to think about here, not the least of which is the almost exact description of the most recent popular atheists (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Christopher Hicthens). "End ofFaith," "Breaking the Spell," "God Delusion" --- all are "fiercely polemical" and aimed at nothing less than creating resentment, while at the same time each announcing a definitive end to God. How many times have we heard that faith is through, that reason is the only way, or that even God is dead? Thus, atheism is "reborn" once again.

I have long been decided on the fact that atheists are about the most religious people out there. Atheists must labor to convice themselves and others that they have explained the universe in such a way that God is not necessary. And Lubac is right, this effort requires a lot of paper and ink, and a lot of rationalization. The atheist's claim to intellectual victory --- to be able to rest contented with his scientific (atheistic, that is) explanation for life --- is betrayed, in almost every case, by his passion against God.

This leads me to conclude that there are no defacto atheists, but only anti-theists; for the belief that God does not exist is a choice, not a scientific fact.

McGrath Calls Dawkins. Results.

2007-06-06T21:45:00.000-04:00

There has been a "quiet" response from Richard Dawkins’s people to the embarrassment that the atheistic propagandist received from a recent article written by Professor Alister McGrath.

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=433628&in_page_id=1770

McGrath rightfully complains that he was completely, and conveniently, edited out of Dawkins’s TV documentary. Even though, or we might presume because, McGrath gave scholarly, rational, and sound answers to the atheist’s jabs for over an hour, he was not allowed to make Dawkins’s final cut, which, after all, was designed to make Christians look evil and stupid to begin with. Can’t have an Oxford Doctor of Philosophy messing up the atheist's tidy propaganda, can we?

As soon as I read McGrath’s article I remembered a game that one of my dear critics tried to play. After littering my blog site with atheistic posts, he ran back to the Dawkins online forum, and claimed victory in the "debate." He then began to "take bets" how long it would be before I deleted these alleged damaging and defeating posts from the atheists.

Well, you can see how defeated I am; and you can judge for yourself just how soundly I have been "trounced." (Note to the atheist: number of words, and number of times you repeat yourself, do not count towards intellectual weight of argument. I will, however, give you points for not getting dizzy while running in circles.)

And now we know who really likes to delete the embarrassing material, don’t we? So, I responded in the Dawkins forum thusly:

***
As for actual cowardly hack-jobs done by propagandistic editors, it was your champion Dawkins who chopped out the tough refutations from his TV series. McGrath writes:

"Dawkins and I . . . were also filmed having a debate for Dawkins's recent Channel 4 programme, The Root Of All Evil? Dawkins outlined his main criticisms of God, and I offered answers to what were clearly exaggerations and misunderstandings. It was hardly rocket science.

[...]

But when I debated these points with him, Dawkins seemed uncomfortable. I was not surprised to be told that my contribution was to be cut. The Root Of All Evil? was subsequently panned for its blatant unfairness. Where, the critics asked, was a responsible, informed Christian response to Dawkins? The answer: on the cutting-room floor."
***

Well, the "quiet" response has been to avoid responding to my post for over two weeks now, and to avoid any direct mention of McGrath’s article whatsoever. Rather, quietly, the entire hour-plus exchange, unedited, has appeared on google video.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6474278760369344626&q=mcgrath+dawkins

There is also a small link on Dawkins’s website, with a string of typical atheists’ comments.

Sqeaky wheel gets the greasin.’

About the matchup, McGrath seems to me to be a particularly interesting opponent for Dawkins. The Oxford theologian’s testimony and qualifications meet Dawkins at every turn. He grew up in Belfast, experiencing the so-called religious conflicts (they are really purely political) first hand, so Dawkins’s manufactured rhetoric about Northern Ireland sounds a bit hollow compared to McGrath’s understanding of the situation. McGrath grew up as a committed atheist, so Dawkins has nothing on him there. McGrath completed his first Ph.D. in molecular biology, so Dawkins can’t play the "science" card against him either, not without being countered equally. McGrath found Christianity after an intellectual comparison of many religions, so Dawkins can’t pull the "you just grew up with Christianity" line. And McGrath is quite in touch with a vast array of intellectual Christian literature, and has contributed quite a bit to it himself, so he maintains a high level of competence and intelligence for the full time he speaks about the faith. He is likewise equally prepared and quick on his feet as Dawkins usually is.

In the exchange, I especially appreciate McGrath pressing the point that the murderous communistic governments of the twentieth century were indeed "institutionalized atheism." When Dawkins predictably tried to "correct" him on the issue, McGrath rightly insisted that atheism was not peripheral to Lenin, Stalin, et al, as the atheist claimed, but it was a core issue. This is one of the many points I show in The Return of the Village Atheist, and thank you to Dr. McGrath for sticking with the hard truth.

For those unfamiliar with McGrath’s works --- which now, I am guessing, number 40-50 volumes --- I suggest starting with his Christian Theology: An Introduction and Christian Theology Reader. On the atheism issue, see his The Twilight of Atheism, the wonderfully relevant "Intellectuals Don’t Need God," and Other Myths, and the recent The Dawkins Delusion.

Darwin's Bulldog and Russell's Terriers

2007-06-06T07:57:00.000-04:00

"I'm like a pit bull terrier being released into the ring, as a spectator sport, to attack religious people" -Richard Dawkins, The Guardian (Feb, 6, 1999)

In his own time Darwin’s most outspoken and eloquent proponent was a man named Thomas Huxley. Coming out in a forceful and rabid public defense of Darwin’s atheistic theory, Huxley dubbed himself Darwin’s “Bulldog.”[i] He was enraged that clergy enjoyed a higher social status than scientists, and in his capacity as the “fiercest polemical writer of his generation,”[ii] awaited the time “when he could get his heel ‘into their mouths and scr-r-unch it around.’”[iii] Had it not been for Huxley’s bark, the propaganda of Darwinism may have never left the doghouse of academic obscurity.

Today we are hearing a new outburst of such barking, but this time it is high-pitched, mixed with whining. Atheist Richard Dawkins has mimicked Huxley’s nickname, and dubbed himself “Darwin’s pit-bull.” But these New Atheists are actually much less than bull dogs or pit-bulls. If it could ever be said of anyone that their bark is worse than their bite, it could be said of these guys. Pit bulls, ha! More like lap dogs that annoy with their constant and unbearably loud yipping. The whole new pack of atheists has dug beneath their fences and is out growling at every passer-by in the Christian neighborhood. It’s time to call animal control.

Stolen Bones

After spending some time studying the works of this burst of popular atheism, I have realized that they have very little to offer in the way of anything new or profound — just old bones to pick. You can’t teach old dogs new tricks. The similarity in language and argument to the popular atheists who wrote a century or so ago, is quite comical. In fact, in some places they seem to verge on plagiarism. In my book, The Return of the Village Atheist, I document some of the arguments of the former Communist murderers as an eerie echo in Sam Harris, for example, but those parallels exist due to the logical conclusions of atheism (a culture of death). Here are some more instances, these smacking of intellectual borrowing and unoriginality.

For example, Harris uses the language of bygone atheist Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). Russell was a famous philosopher, mathematician, and loud opponent of religion. Among his anti-faith arsenal was the argument that the Church, “by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering.”[iv] Russell first gave this comment in 1927. Harris digs up the same 80-year old slander:

"Religion allows people to imagine their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral — that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings."[v]

Russell continued that the Church is,

"an opponent still of progress and of improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness."[vi]

Harris echoes, “Religion allows people to imagine their concerns are moral when they are not — that is, when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation.”[vii]

Russell’s basis for morality was that which “would make for human happiness.”[viii] Harris repeats: for morality, “there need only be better and worse ways to seek happiness.”[ix] Same thought, no reference (and neither, by the way, could tell you exactly what happiness is, or when it is legitimate or illegitimate).

Harris could not even resist using the same example as Russell. The Cambridge scholar ridiculed what he saw as the Roman Catholic strictness on marriage:

Supposing that in this world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a syphilitic man, in that case the Catholic Church says: ‘This is an indissoluble sacrament. You must stay together for life’ . . . I say that that is a fiendish cruelty.[x]

Harris uses the same bark, only updating syphilis to HIV:

"If you can believe it, the Vatican is currently opposed to condom use even to prevent the spread of HIV from one married partner to another."[xi]

The similarities between the two writers on this issue are more extensive yet. Russell wrote,

"Take, for example, the question of the prevention of syphilis. It is known that, by precautions taken in advance, the danger of contracting this disease can be made negligible. Christians, however, object to the dissemination of knowledge of this fact, since they hold it good that sinners should be punished. They hold this so good that they are even willing that punishment should extend to the wives and children of sinners."[xii]

For Harris, his alleged Christian ambivalence to human suffering “explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year.”[xiii] Similarly, he complains,

"We now have a vaccine for HPV that appears to be both safe and effective. . . . And yet, Christian conservatives in our government have resisted a vaccination program on the grounds that HPV is a valuable impediment to premarital sex. These pious men and women want to preserve cervical cancer as an incentive toward abstinence, even if it sacrifices the lives of thousands of women each year."[xiv]

I refute these lies in Village Atheist. Here I just intend to show how Harris can’t even make up his own lies. Rather, he repeats Russell’s ideas, almost his very words, hoping to bring smear the Church. This level of intellectual pirating would get you expelled from any major university, and would end the career of any major journalist. But atheistdom, as we theists have been saying for some time now, is a worldview that destroys the foundations of morals. So much for the atheist’s vaunted quest for intellectual honesty.

Today’s generation of atheists even plagiarize each other. Harris seems to do so to Dawkins without citing him. In one place, Dawkins tries to argue that morality improves in history regardless of input from Christianity. Harris picks up his language without reference. Compare the two side-by-side:

Dawkins: “Although martin Luther King was a Christian, he derived his philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience directly from Gandhi, who was not.”[xv]

Harris: “While King undoubtedly considered himself a devout Christian, he acquired his commitment to non-violence primarily from the writings of Mohandas K. Gandhi.”[xvi]

Dawkins himself has no real ammo against the faith, except that which he has garnered from Russell. His only defense against Christian scholar Alister McGrath’s insightful critique of him is to dig up an old bone from Russell’s back yard. Russell referred to the impossibility of disproving God as ridiculous, because, he said, it would be like disproving the existence of an undetectable teapot orbiting Mars. I have exposed the fallacy of Russell’s “celestial teapot” in a previous post; here we should just see the bankruptcy and utter tiredness of the modern atheists in their reliance on a dead and gone generation. Even though Dawkins cites his source, he nevertheless uncritically uses the same old argument. The old arguments failed once. They are just as flea-ridden today.

One Generation to the Next

But the self-designated pit-bull is still as mean spirited as any junk-yard dog. We can see Darwinist mercilessness on the part of Dawkins himself toward the weak and defenseless of his own species. During his speaking engagement at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, VA, a questioner asked Dawkins about former atheist Anthony Flew’s assent to theism shortly before his death. Flew, one will recall, was every bit as hardened an atheist as Dawkins every dreamed of being, and was so for decades. But, late in his life, he read the work of Michael Behe on Intelligent Design, and was persuaded to leave the atheist camp. His former atheist colleagues, even though Flew is deceased, are now after his reputation, and like a hyena circling an aged beast that has exposed itself from the herd, Darwin’s pit-bull sank his canines into the question. He ridiculed Flew’s decision and insulted, “He was once a great philosopher . . .” Once. Not anymore, apparently.

This is survival of the fittest among the pack of atheists. As long as you retain your atheistic belief, then your are considered smart. But relinquish that belief, even ever so slightly as Flew did, and then you’re washed up, senile, diminished, dead meat. So, the same man, same IQ, same scientific method, same mathematics and statistics, same evidence, who once was considered by Dawkins profound because of his atheism, now relinquishes his atheism, and, despite all of his other attributes and talents unchanged, is now portrayed by Dawkins as doddering and unintelligent. What gives? You can clearly see that in atheism’s dog-eat-dog world, all that matters is atheism. Godlessness. Aptitude or logic are not important. Only the presupposition and conclusion of atheism. Nothing else.

Therefore, our response to Dawkins should not be to try to sit down and reason with the man. He’ll never hear it. The response should be to feed our flocks and protect them from these terriers in wolves’ clothing. They are no real intellectual threat. They are only a media and political threat. They are merely howling to their own kind — people who already believe in atheism to begin with, and want to find strength in numbers. The constant yip-yap we hear in the media can be ended by rolling up a newspaper, and giving a few swats. Fence the yard, and call the dog-catcher. At least call your Representatives and tell them that you value your religion and will not support any anti-Christian or anti-religious legislator or legislation whatsoever. Their job should depend on your Christian moral values. This will have the atheists howling at the moon.

Above all, we must be faithful to our children’s education. These atheists’ number one agenda, currently, is to gain tighter control over education in this country (and in the UK), in order to secularize the children, especially those from religious families, from their earliest years forward (this was Russell’s agenda, too[xvii]). If we want our children to be pit-bulls for atheists, then let us do nothing. If we take our covenantal responsibilities seriously, then we will not send our children to the dog-trainers to be educated.

Concluding Remarks

You would think Russell’s terriers would learn something about evolution from their master’s own words. In a 1914 essay Russell wrote, “The beliefs of today may count as true today, if they carry us along the stream; but tomorrow they will be false, and must be replaced by new beliefs to meet the new situation.”[xviii] Russell was expounding the alleged philosophical out-workings of Darwinism. He himself saw something devious in the belief that truth itself evolves. He continued, “Somehow, without explicit statement, the assurance is slipped in that the future, though we cannot foresee it, will be better than the past or present.”[xix] Dawkins actually buys into the idea that future generations will be far better than ours, simply because they will be further evolved, morally speaking.[xx] This is the utopian, leg-kicking, rabbit-chasing, dream of many atheists and Darwinists. Russell rightly saw it as a childish fantasy: to those who follow such a view he said, “the reader is like the child which expects a sweet because it has been told to open its mouth and shut its eyes.”[xxi] Such is the type of blind faith required by Dawkins’s blind-watchmaker.

There is a final lesson (for now) found in Dawkins’s, Harris’s, and others’ regurgitation of the arguments of earlier village atheists such as Russell. There is nothing new, and nothing savory, about the New Atheism. “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly” (Prov. 26:11). Their atheism is the same old rancid stew, with the same old dogs returning to it. Thankfully for us, the self-dubbed “pit-bull” has told us up front what sort of animal he desires to be. We can be certain that his intellectual kibbles-n-bits are aptly repugnant.

The more I study these guys the more convinced I become: they are not careful reasoners, they are conscious propagandists. They are not respectable or loyal to humanity, as they claim, and they are certainly not mankind’s best friend. They are fueled strongly by their hatred of the Church and of religion. Just as the original “bulldog” once also called himself “Huxley-Episcopophagous”[xxii] — meaning “Bishop-eating Huxley” — so Darwin’s dogs want to devour the Church again today. They are the rabid strays of academia, fed on the garbage left by their century-old cousins. Throw out the garbage and the dogs will waste away, too.

P.S. - If you are a dog breeder, please do not be offended at my metaphors between dogs and atheists. I intended no insult to man's best friend. Additionally, I am quite aware that pit-bulls are a breed of terrier, and thus my inference that terriers are yippy lap-dogs as opposed to powerful fighters does not hold. The point, however, that the new atheists are lap-dogs in comparison to some former thinkers, does.

End Notes:
[i]. Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1962) 263.
[ii]. Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx Wagner: Critique of a Heritage, 2nd ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958) 32.
[iii]. Himmelfarb, 263.
[iv]. Bertrand Russell, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” in Russell On Religion: Selections from the Writings of Bertrand Russell, eds. Louis Greenspan and Stefan Anderson (London and New York: Routledge, 1999) 89-90.
[v]. Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006) 25.
[vi]. Russell, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” 90.
[vii]. Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, 25.
[viii]. Russell, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” 90.
[ix]. Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, 23.
[x]. Russell, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” 89.
[xi]. Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, 34*.
[xii]. Bertrand Russell, “Has Religion Contributed to Civilization?,” in Russell On Religion: Selections from the Writings of Bertrand Russell, eds. Louis Greenspan and Stefan Anderson (London and New York: Routledge, 1999) 171.
[xiii]. Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, 25.
[xiv]. Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, 26-7.
[xv]. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006) 271.
[xvi]. Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006) 12.
[xvii]. Bertrand Russell, “Has Religion Contributed to Civilization?,” 172.
[xviii]. Bertrand Russell, “Mysticism and Logic,” in Russell On Religion: Selections from the Writings of Bertrand Russell, eds. Louis Greenspan and Stefan Anderson (London and New York: Routledge, 1999) 125.
[xix]. Russell, “Mysticism and Logic,” 125.
[xx]. Dawkins, The God Delusion, 262-72
[xxi]. Russell, “Mysticism and Logic,” 125.
[xxii]. William Irvine, Apes, Angels, and Victorians: The Story of Darwin, Huxley, and Evolution (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, Inc., 1963 [1955]) 416.

Joe Sobran Wacks Hitchens's Knuckles

2007-05-24T08:36:00.000-04:00

http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070508.shtml

An excerpt:

"After reading him, I’m always surer I know whom he hates (or, less often, loves) than what he thinks.

[...]

It may seem ironic that Hitchens, a fierce defender of the Iraq war, blames religion for war, when the last two popes have opposed both Iraq wars; but then, he also seems to blame the popes for opposing them. As Huck Finn might put it, and as Hitchens would surely agree, popes is mostly a bad lot.
When you come right down to it, Hitchens’s case against religion is a more impersonal form of the old Phil Donahue argument, which may be summarized thus: Mean old nuns whacked my knuckles with a ruler, ergo God does not exist. This is less inductive reasoning than simple free association with a grudge."

One might wonder the same about Dawkins, who, though he hastens to say that it did not affect him when as a boy he was encountered by a priest, he does make sure to mention it in his book.

Surely The Root of All Evil is a product of a root of bitterness.

Hedges in the Debate

2007-05-22T10:30:00.000-04:00

There is another Sam Harris “debate” scheduled for tonight, May 22, 2007, at 8pm, this time with journalist Chris Hedges. The topic appears to be “Religion and Politics: The End of the World?,” which is more of a discussion starter than a formal proposition for serious debate. And this is the problem with Harris’s debates heretofore: he only takes on opponents from the liberal end of the spectrum who already agree with him on the important theological and philosophical issues. For example, did anyone really expect Andrew Sullivan to best the atheist, especially since he already implicitly conceded Sam’s naturalism in ethics (homosexuality), origins (evolution), and authority (Scripture not infallible)? Harris chooses his opponents for his public performances wisely.

So who is this Chris Hedges? Not the kind of guy you want defending your Christianity. He recently referred to “the radical Christian right,” as, “the most dangerous mass movement in American history.”[i] He may be brilliant, but he's hardly the kind of religious expert I want representing my side. He follows, fanatically urging that conservative Christians have “built a binary worldview of command and submission wherein male leaders, who cannot be questioned and claim to speak for God, are in control and all others must follow.”

By caricaturing the Christian right this way, Hedges distances himself from any conservative leaders, and at the same time basically agrees with Harris’s slanderous portrayal of the majority of American Christianity. So whom does Hedges really represent in this debate (representation is always a key issue!)? I'll let the reader figure that out.

Why anyone would take these guys seriously is hard to say. Certainly no conservative Christian should. So why does Sam Harris single him out for debate?

It may very well be a smokescreen. The liberal left is in the process of mounting forces for the next elections. They realize they got beat over the past two elections to the religious vote. Instead of trying to deceive and appear religious themselves, some are mounting a tremendous anti-religion propaganda campaign. They are trying to divide and diffuse the power base of the religious vote. This stands in contrast to another part of the left (Obama, Clinton), that tries to flaunt its religion when publicly advantageous.

This debate is nothing but a showcase of a radical leftist who happens to be an atheist, and a radical leftist who claims religion has some value. Whoever wins, the radical left wins. Religion will appear weak whatever the case, human reason will be exalted beyond measure whatever the case, and the Christian right will be vilified whatever the case. This is no real debate — it is merely a bunch of liberal leftists hedging their bets.

You don’t have to look very far to find evidence that my suspicion is warranted. Just listen to the appeals in Sam Harris’s writings for example. He admits that he has little hope of converting conservative Christians to his views. So he makes his appeal to the so-called “moderate” Christians, who are almost always leftists.

No, this debate is not a debate. It is an intellectual pillow fight. Harris and Hedges might as well show up in their pajamas, dim the lights and play “truth or dare.”

When the atheists, liberals, and other radical leftists get done with their intramural games, then maybe they’ll be practiced up for a real debate. It would be nice to get the outspoken Harris in the ring with a real Christian debater, and do it in a formal debate setting. But we know it’ll probably never happen. Harris likes to choose his opponents — and his stages, and his audiences — too cleverly.

End Notes:
[i] http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070128_christianists_on_the_march/

Some Hot Tea for Russell's Pot

2007-05-16T10:04:00.000-04:00

Among the many amateur philosophical stunts pulled by Richard Dawkins in his rage against God is the use of a quip made by 1920's atheist Bertrand Russell, known as his “parable of the celestial tea pot.”[i] This story, as we shall see, is meant to prove that even though the existence of God cannot be disproved, it is still far from likely. This warms Dawkins’s heart, because while he admits that one cannot completely disprove the existence of God, there is still no good reason to take Him seriously, any more than there is reason to believe in a “flying spaghetti monster” or an “invisible, intangible, inaudible unicorn.”[ii] He relies on Russell to demonstrate this. I will show you why Russell’s “tea pot” is cracked and leaking.

Here is the story as Russell told it, and as Dawkins affirms it:

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."[iii]

Why Russell chose a tea pot from among all of the possible silly images he could have produced, I don’t know, but considering some of the ‘angels’ he hung out with, it was probably part of his daily repertoire — and he probably held out his pinky finger when he sipped.[iv] Keeping in fashion, Russell’s argument is as fragile as its dainty subject.

One of the silliest fallacies that is circulating among the atheists — in fact, one of their staple arguments these days — is found in this attempt to shift the “burden of proof” in the debate over God’s existence. It is becoming more and more popular — and one can understand why — for the atheists to assume from the start that their atheistic worldview is the norm, and that any theistic claim is a deviation that must be “proven” (of course, what constitutes proof will be a factor, which we will deal with below). “Atheism” it is claimed, is not a worldview in itself, but merely the common-sense denial of the alleged “additional” and “extraordinary” belief in a god, over and above the natural world that we experience. It is time to dismantle this pure word game, and expose the shivering worldview that cowers behind it.

The Matter of the Matter

Russell’s intellectual ingenuity was almost certainly a product of the stalwart educational foundations he laid for himself during his university years. Part of an elite secret intellectual society at Cambridge — the “Apostles” — Russell would meet for late night discussions with the most brilliant minds of the era. Among intellectual giants the likes of John Maynard Keynes, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Alfred North Whitehead, Russell expanded his mind debating such head-scratchers as, “Does Youth Approve of Age?,” “Ought the Father to Grow a Beard?,” and “Is this an Awkward Age?”[v] An historian of the era recounts with candor, “It was that early Edwardian failing of the Apostles trying to be clever for the sake of being clever and often when there was nothing to be clever about.”[vi] It’s no wonder that Russell produced such forceful blows at God as his “celestial teapot.” One lump, Lord Keynes? Or two?

But there was a real philosophical shortcoming among Russell’s group. One of their influential peers, G. E. Moore, delivered a paper boasting their ultimate belief: “In the beginning was matter, and matter begat the devil, and the devil begat God.”[vii] Here is the underlying force of Russell’s atheism: the classic belief of “materialism,” that nothing exists except matter. Since God is by definition immaterial, therefore He can’t exist. Very simple, isn’t it? Just define your universe so that it can hold no God, and voila, God cannot exist. Words are so powerful!

With this as his background, Moore went on to argue that “then there was the death, first of God, then of the devil, and matter was left as it was in the beginning.”[viii] Even if Moore was talking tongue-in-cheek, it shows the utter circularity of the materialistic worldview. If all you have in the beginning is matter, then that’s all you will ever have — and you can bet that’s the way the atheist wants it.

Well, perhaps this view fits the atheist’s wishes, but it says very little about his philosophical rigor. With the phrase, “In the beginning . . .” taken right from the Bible, Moore reveals to us that the materialistic worldview, which is almost universally assumed by atheists today, is no less a claim of faith than the opening sentence of Holy Writ. And while the atheists pretend that their alleged “scientific” worldview is the norm, and thus superior to the Christian’s, they cannot even consistently answer the most fundamental questions that arise for their own system: where do laws come from? Is there ultimate justice? Why even care about justice? Why is murder, theft, rape, etc., wrong? What exactly is reason? Is it material? It’s no wonder that the historian to wrote this account of Moore and Russell, et al, concluded saying, “They thought they were the equal of the German philosophers, yet none of them were in the same class.”[ix]

Once the atheist’s ultimate assumption of materialism is exposed, then the claim that atheism is not a worldview in itself becomes a tea-time chuckle. It only removes the philosophical argument one step. The theist may simply reply, “Ok, supposing I grant your definition of atheism, please tell me why you adhere to this definition.” If pushed to reveal the standard by which he judges that atheism is the norm, the atheist will ultimately have to reveal his materialism at its root. If he does not, then he proves he either has little philosophical training, or is not really interested in serious debate. Of course he (or she) will try desperately hard not to admit their materialism, for it signals the philosophical funeral for atheism. You will more likely hear diversions like Dawkins’s: “I shall suggest that the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other.”[x]

“Like any other”? What does that mean? Push the atheist further, and get him to answer this question. If he is honest and consistent with his materialism, he will admit that he will only accept as “proof” finite, measurable, material evidences, and, of course, anything that is only finite and material is automatically disqualified for consideration as God.

This is the evasive failure of the materialistic worldview to honestly grapple the existence of God — and yet, this is the standard by which modern atheists are trying to set themselves up as the court which is to decide the matter. Once materialism is assumed up front, there is no sense in debating. In order to accept this as grounds for argument, the theist must methodologically surrender at the outset. Instead, he should point out the underlying assumption, and then combat that assumption, not just the mere word-cloak of the name “atheism,” at least not until that atheism is fully understood.

The God of Tea

It is time for a little more than a sip: here’s a hot dose of reality. Russell’s tea pot argument holds no water at all. It misses the point as widely as it is silly. It may sound at first like it proves a point, but it is intellectual Earl Grey: bland and unexciting.

Russell’s argument was meant to address an issue called the “burden of proof.” If the terms of proof are set as materialistic categories, then the best God you could ever “prove” the existence of would be a materialistic one. As I have written elsewhere, this kind of limitation imposed by unbelief is proof that if you set your bar low enough, you can achieve any philosophical goal.[xi] This procedure simply will not do. It may comfort some atheists while they huddle beneath its perceived philosophical shelter, and it may free us from the fierce cosmic tyranny of orbital teapots, but it says absolutely nothing about the Triune God of Christianity.

This refutation applies equally to a related argument that the modern atheists like to use. They claim that no one believes in the gods of ancient mythology: all (or most) people are, therefore, “atheists” with regard to these gods. The atheists, including Dawkins, boast that they just go “one God further.”[xii] This rhetorical saccharin vaporizes in the boil of real philosophy, and it doesn’t sweeten a thing. It is mere steam from the spout of Russell’s tea pot. It simply places the Christian God in the same category as “Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster,”[xiii] and is thus a categorical and definitional mistake. The object in question requires proof that is commensurate with the nature of the thing in question.

Thus the existence of the God of Christianity cannot be determined by gratuitous parallels to material objects like dizzy tea pots or frightening pasta, and, while we do not have time here to line them all up, the Christian God is also qualitatively and categorically different than any of the pagan gods one can list. We may rightly be “atheists” with regard to ninety-nine fables, and yet completely unjustified in simply going one step further, because that step is qualitatively different than all the others. If you are ninety-nine and a half paces from the edge of a cliff, and stride off the first nine-nine with confidence, would you, therefore, based on mere prior experience, simply take that next step? Or would you take a long hard look at the abyss before you, and consider how different one “leap” of faith can be from another?

It will take more than an attempt to straw-man the definition of God into something farcical and material, and then pretend you’ve ousted God from the universe. We can call this the “straw-god” fallacy. The real philosophical challenge is to disprove an all-powerful God Who created the material universe, upholds it, and thus transcends the material universe. Such a God defies any attempt to measure Him by finite standards,[xiv] or call Him to any finite bar of judgment. For Him to stoop to meet such a standard would be for Him to deny both His Sovereignty and His own existence. The very act of submitting Himself for verification implies that someone else is the ultimate Judge and the ultimate standard.

So, I will hear no more about tea pots. I will consider only arguments that tackle the existence of the kind of God who created tea, and the rest of the world for that matter. Once atheists start to become honest about this issue, then the “burden of proof” will be re-established a bit more squarely, and the debate over God will move from the atheist’s comfortable tea-room of materialism, to the transcendental question that it is.

What does “Probable” Mean?

Dawkins, following Russell, argues that since God is allegedly like this teapot, then even though you can’t disprove His existence, it is still much less likely than it is probable. Dawkins says, “[A]vailable evidence and reason may yield a probability far from 50 per cent.”[xv] We have already seen the fallacy behind Russell’s teapot, which Dawkins is starting with here, so how does the critique of that teapot apply to Dawkins’s conclusion about probability?
Simple. Dawkins’s view of probability is limited and ruled, just like his definition and classification of God, by his materialistic assumptions. It only stands to reason that if you presume a materialistic world at the outset, then the most probable occurrence in that world can only be a materialistic occurrence. But that begs the very question under debate, doesn’t it? Again, Dawkins has merely defined God out of his mental world with mere words. It makes for a nice little chat over tea with an old chap, but not very careful thinking at all.

Rather, probability is something quite different in an materialist universe than it is in a Biblical universe. If the atheist is not allowed to impose his materialistic beliefs on the question of God, then he will have to take seriously the possibility that something other than a materialistic explanation is the most probable one. As Jesus said, “With God, all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26; Luke 18:27). Obviously, if God is denied from the outset, then an explanation that involves God will be not only unlikely, but impossible. But if the atheist’s gratuitous assumptions are kept from ruling the thinking, then it could very well be that the most probable answer is one which involves a supernatural God, and we will have to find a different way of approaching the question than through that very limited range of evidence that we can see, touch, smell, etc.

If the Christian makes the mistake of shifting into the arena of materialistic probability, then they have already subjected the idea of God to a category which denies the very possibility of His existence. Probability, as the scientist calculates it, deals only with empirical, sensory, phenomena. God by definition does not fit into this mold, so talking about Him in such a way which limits Him in those terms, denies Him at the outset. No wonder Russell, Dawkins, and other atheists love to talk about God in such a way. Probability is the devil’s ill-fated prayer, and Dawkins, the self-dubbed “Devil’s Chaplain,” kneels at its mention, chants it in rhythm, and crosses himself with its capital “P.”

Conclusion

Such is the recurring banality of atheism, especially the popular kind represented by Dawkins and others who repeat Russell: they can’t stand God, and so they try to define Him away with mere words. They try to reduce Him to something as superfluous as a celestial tea pot. Minimize Him, scrutinize Him, box Him in, trivialize Him — do whatever they can to suppress the knowledge of Him. They want to put Him in a bottle, like “I dream of genie.” Problem is, the God described in the Bible and throughout Christian tradition is no such character. The attributes ascribed to the Triune God of Scripture require the would-be critic to deal with God as God, and as nothing else. You cannot liken Him to some orbital fantasy, then critique that fantasy, and then pretend you’ve said anything at all meaningful about the God of Scripture. Yet this is exactly the bait-and-switch game that Dawkins plays.

This is just one more reason why, in the end, atheism should not be taken seriously as an intellectual system. It is not very serious thought at all. It is well-trained verbiage, selective propaganda, and well-funded marketing. It is not serious philosophy. It is a philosophical tempest in a teapot.

End Notes:
[i]. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006) 51.
[ii]. Dawkins, 53.
[iii]. Quoted in Dawkins, 52.
[iv]. See the chapter “The Higher Sodomy,” in Richard Deacon, The Cambridge Apostles: A History of Cambridge University’s Elite Intellectual Secret Society (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1985) 55-68, though Deacon notes that Russell himself was heterosexual (62).
[v]. Deacon, 71.
[vi]. Deacon, 70.
[vii]. Quoted in Deacon, 69.
[viii]. Deacon, 70.
[ix]. Deacon, 70.
[x]. Dawkins, 50. Italics mine.
[xi]. Joel McDurmon, Manifested in the Flesh (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2007) 115.
[xii]. Dawkins, 53.
[xiii]. Dawkins, 53.
[xiv]. I realize that Christian theology would make a qualification of this statement due to Christ, the Incarnation of God.
[xv]. Dawkins, 50.

Jerry Falwell, RIP.

2007-05-15T14:36:00.000-04:00

Breaking news story out on CBN:

"The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority and built the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said. He was 73."

http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/158097.aspx

As founder of the Moral Majority and force behind the "religious right," Falwell has surely pushed back and impeded the forces of Village Atheists everywhere.

I suspect his death will be treated by both the Right and the Left as a landmark for the future of American religion.

May God rest his long-embattled but victorious soul.

Room for Comfort

2007-05-14T12:55:00.000-04:00

A few quick notes on the recent Comfort/Cameron vs. "Rational Responders" debate:

First, Comfort and Co. were a bit careless in stating their procedure, namely, that they could "prove that God exists, scientifically, absolutely, without mentioning faith or even the Bible." Their three arguments by themselves (design, conscience, and experience) did not necessarily need references to faith or the Bible, but Comfort made the mistake of referring to such. I understand what he was trying to do in framing the debate up front: you don't necessarily have to explicitly mention faith or the Bible, even though you will have to use Biblical concepts. Easy enough. But Comfort crossed his own line by using the "Ten Commandments" as the moral force behind conscience. He could easily have referred to our moral intuition in general.

However, does this mean he lost the debate? Hardly. What Comfort did not do, and it is being implied that he did, was to appeal to the Bible or faith as an authority. Comfort did not argue anything like, "The Bible says, therefore . . ." I'd say that considering the argument Comfort was trying to make, if he would have not referenced the Bible, Sapient would have had no real complaint. Whether atheists like it or not, even if we don't appeal to the authority of the Bible, the Bible still exists as a historical and very influential scientific piece of evidence. Comfort was on solid ground to refer to it's message as a piece of scientific data.

Secondly, despite the fact that there is still room for Comfort's argument, the debate as a whole shows the clear inferiority of the older methods of argument for the existence of God. No argument that assumes the believer and unbeliever are standing on neutral intellectual "reason" will ever be effective. Theistic arguments must transcend man, and consider the preconditions for argument, morality, etc., to begin with. Else, all we will have is a worldview yo-yo --- being jerked back and forth, slung around in circles, and always returning where we started, only dizzier. Christian apologists such as Comfort and Cameron need to read more about transcendental argumentation, such as that promoted by Van Til, Bahnsen, Frame, or Plantinga.

Finally, the atheist blogosphere is whirling with complaints and insults following the debate. One I find hilarious is from Brian Flemming's blog, where he complains in a footnote about journalists not taking Rational Response Squad leader Brian "Sapient"s name seriously. No wonder. Anyone who gives himself a media-name "Sapient" is asking for trouble. Read the latin, Flemming! It means "wise." And that arrogant self-appointed appelative should prompt everyone to another appeal to the Bible: "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:22).

One More Village Atheist

2007-05-11T13:57:00.000-04:00

There's a great example of the angry "village atheist" posted on Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron's "Way of the Master" website. After the debate, the atheist antagonist Brian Sapient is caught on camera in a tantrum against Todd Friel. The video is on their front page:

http://www.wayofthemasterradio.com/

See especially the last thirty seconds or so.

Another confirmation that the recent push of popular atheism is nothing more than The Return of the Village Atheist.

A Booger of an Atheist

2007-05-10T07:40:00.000-04:00

Sam Harris, in one of his speeches, complained as usual about the public perception of atheists. Related to statistics that place atheists as a group well below even the public acceptance of homosexuals and Muslims in American culture, Harris added that finding out you have an atheist next door is perceived to be worse than discovering even a sex offender there. The latter can only harm the body, the atheist could damn your child's soul.

Well, let's not allow the atheists to play such sympathy cards for themselves. As I document in Return of the Village Atheist, atheists have earned their reputation in history. Futhermore, I don't know anyone who would make the "worse than a sex offender claim," though I guess it is possible.

Rather, I think that the revulsion you get from finding out that your neighbor is an atheist is more like discovering that the guy in the car next to you has his finger in his nose up to his elbow. Moreover, it's like knowing that guy, due to his naturalistic nasal distraction, is about to crash head-on to his own demise. Atheists are self-consciously self-absorbed (epistemologically speaking), and refuse to see the highway of reality.

There's just something viscerally repugnant about someone who's great concern in life is to do away with any concept of God. Harris as others love to play the sympathy card, but atheists have always tried to do so: during the French Revolution, and even Karl Marx, as I write in the book. But a wolrdview like atheism that destroys the foundations of love and morality deserves no sympathy, epsecially when it's proponents are the ones driving the strife to begin with.

"Surely . . . the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood: so the forcing of wrath bringeth forth strife." (Proverbs 30:33)

One Steeler and a Million Stealers

2007-05-09T10:13:00.000-04:00

By Joel McDurmon
6/28/2006

For some unknown and probably irrational reason I have been a Pittsburgh Steelers fan since I was a boy. The Steelers seem to epitomize toughness and consistency when it comes to professional football. Even though I grew up in Arkansas, I have always watched them with some interest. That's one reason it crushed me to hear about Ben Roethlisberger’s motorcycle wreck on June 12th—a wreck that left him in seven hours of surgery. My heart and prayers go out to him and his family, as well as to the poor lady driving the car that collided with him.

What sickened me even more, however, was that within hours, the Statist news media had “experts” exploiting the accident for political leverage. One woman interviewed on ABC News, I didn't catch her name and don't care to, tried to make helmet laws a public health issue. She argued that since more than half of motorcycle riders don't have private health insurance, then not having helmet laws was a matter of tax dollars. Well, as long as health insurance is a public matter, she has a point. As long as people rely on the state to take care of their persons, then the state should logically call the shots when it comes to prevention. But do we have to settle for this?

I have a better remedy: get rid of public health insurance as well. If we want freedom, then fight for it consistently. People who ride motorcycles—I used to—will tell you that the feeling of freedom it gives is unmatched. But if you enjoy that feeling on the one hand, and then rely on socialist health care schemes on the other, then you are living an illusion. Of course, nothing is more American than open road and Harley Davidson, except for the illusion of freedom.

The whole tactic of using such a tragedy as a political launch pad relates exactly to what Ann Coulter has said in her latest book Godless. She recognized the leftist doctrine of infallibility: they use untouchable suffering people to promote their agendas in the public square, and conservatives can’t answer without looking heartless. But Coulter only has half the story. It is not a Leftist tactic; it’s a Statist tactic. The Right does the same thing. How do you think the Patriot Act got pushed through Congress in a week? It has always been—from ancient times on—the method of the State to use tragedy and calamity to its advantage. In order to control a group you need them to think in unison, and the easiest way to get a group to think (or not think) in unison is to use fear or guilt. When we fall for such shameless reactionism, we sell our freedom for the Statist deception of safety and peace.

The Roethlisberger incident is just the latest case, and within hours the media had rounded up enough mouths to make a political segment of it. Let’s hope they don't convince the young Super Bowl champion to use his stardom as a platform for petitioning Congress for more Statist coercion and tyranny. Like so many stars do these days. One wonders why they don't start private foundations with their own money.

It's funny that the Statists on both sides will send young men into their wars claiming, “Freedom has a price,” but refuse to see that price when it's paid in the private world. What happened to Big Ben is truly horrible; but it is the true price of freedom. Let the State pay that price for you, and you lose the freedom as well. Good luck and keep fighting, Ben.