Understanding the New Atheism

There's a new kind of atheism these days, the proponents of which stand in adamant opposition to religion. Dr. Douglas Groothuis gives us a rundown of this 'new atheism'. In Part 1 of this series, he shows us two key errors these new atheists make.

A New Breed of Atheism

"There is no God, and I hate him!" This seems to be the subtext for much of the 'new atheism' propounded in books by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and others. What distinguishes this new breed of unbelief is, in part, its vehemence and vitriol. The gloves are off. Religion – all religion – is not just false, but dangerous to civilization itself. Dawkins concludes his book, The God Delusion, by arguing that raising children to be religious is a form of child abuse. Hitchens concurs. God, given His bad reputation, must be banished from the universe.

Behind much of the atheism of today is a false view of God and religion. It's a straw man fallacy, which occurs when someone presents a weak or inaccurate view of a position and then cuts it down. Atheists are often guilty of this fallacy with respect to God. This may be called the 'straw god' fallacy: a false idea of God is easily refuted. While responding to all the fallacious arguments of the new atheists would take a book in itself, we can, nevertheless, highlight two of their basic errors.

Error #1: All Religion is Similarly Irrational

First, the new atheists view all religion as equally anti-intellectual and evidentially-challenged. Thus, a few deft blows to the sacred head can disarm and destroy all religion as irrational. Sam Harris is a particularly egregious offender in this matter. But religions differ markedly concerning their basic worldviews as well as their means of intellectually defending themselves. For example, Mormonism is based on indemonstrable historical claims and relies heavily on subjective experience to verify itself.[1]

the new atheists view all religion as equally anti-intellectual and evidentially-challenged.

Historic Christianity, on the contrary, is well rooted in objective historical facts. The New Testament was written a short time after the events it describes and by eyewitnesses or those who consulted eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1-4; John 21:24). Crucial events described in the New Testament are corroborated by extra-biblical historians and by archaeology.[2] The original manuscripts of the New Testament have been reliably transmitted over time.[3]Further, while spiritual experiences are central to Christianity,[4] it does not hang its entire credibility on them, since the evidence from history and nature is strong.

Therefore, Christopher Hitchens' arguments against Mormonism in his book God is Not Great may succeed without having any implications for Christianity.[5] Similarly, an atheist may argue against Buddhism and Hinduism by rightly claiming that they are mystical religions that are unanchored from history and deny the significance and worth of the material world. But these criticisms have no force against Christianity, given its stubborn historicity and its affirmation of the universe as created good by God and redeemed by God Himself through the Incarnation (John 1:1,14).

Error #2: No Arguments for God Succeed

The new atheists believe that the idea of God as Creator and Designer is irrational, a mere leap of blind faith. Atheists are (rightly) angry at this notion of a God who requires intellectual suicide for belief and worship. Yet their indignation fails to disprove God's existence. Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens decline to take seriously the strongest arguments for God. Instead, they present weak arguments and then tear them down. Yet there are powerful arguments for God's existence, which gain in power the more science reveals about the universe.

Evidence for Big Bang cosmology has accumulated over several decades, making it the most established scientific account of the origin of the cosmos. According to this account, everything came into being out of nothing in the far distant past.[6]This conclusion takes away atheism's old security blanket: there is no need for God, since the universe has always existed.

But if the universe came into existence at some point, we are left with only two options.

(1) It came into existence without a cause or 
(2) It came into existence with a cause.

The new atheists believe that the idea of God as Creator and Designer is irrational, a mere leap of blind faith

Option (1) is either impossible or profoundly unlikely, given our sense of cause and effect. We assume that material events have causes that explain their existence. To deny that the universe had a cause means that it popped into existence. This is what philosopher Dallas Willard calls "big bang mysticism". It is far more rational to believe that whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence. If this is so, then it must be inferred that something outside the universe was the cause of the universe. The best candidate is a personal agent of unlimited power.[7] "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1, NIV).

Evidence is also mounting that the universe is designed to be inhabited by humans. This is evidenced through the complex and intricate fine tuning of various aspects of the world. Many constants in the universe have infinitesimal margins of error. If any of them were only slightly off, there could be no humans. Physicist Martin Rees notes that:

1. Our universe could not have become structured if it were not expanding at a particular rate.
2. If the big bang had produced few density fluctuations, the universe would have remained dark, with no galaxies or stars.
3. If our universe had more than three spatial dimensions, planets could not stay in orbits around stars.
4. If gravity were much stronger, it would crush living organisms of human size, and stars would be small and short-lived.
5. If the nuclear force were a few percent weaker, only hydrogen would be stable: there would be no periodic table, no chemistry.

But Rees claims that this does not indicate that a Designer fine-tuned the universe for life. It is all sheer, dumb luck. "Some would argue that this finetuning of the universe, which seems so providential, is nothing to be surprised about, since we could not exist otherwise."[8] Rees dismisses these fine-tuned aspects of the universe – and there are many others – as accidental, not designed. But in doing so, he confuses two very different things:

(1) the factors that must be the case for us to exist and to observe the universe and 
(2) the explanation for the highly improbable configurations that allow us to exist to observe the universe.

This highly improbable arrangement surely cries out for an explanation, not a truism. If all these factors are in place, then we will exist and observe them, but this does not account for why these factors came into being in the first place.

Faced with the fine-tuning problem, atheists may also appeal to the 'many universe theory', which claims that our universe is not really unlikely because it is merely one of countless other universes that lack the sophisticated fine-tuning required for life. Ours is simply the lucky universe. But this theory is a desperate 'hail Mary' pass at the end of a game that the atheists are losing badly. There is no evidence for other universes; they are merely postulated to banish God from this one. This is purely ad hoc.[9]

New, but Not True

More could be said about the new atheists' straw god arguments. Their claim that all religions are irrational is false because it disregards the significant differences between religions – differences that make a difference. Moreover, their assertion that one must be irrational to believe in God is false. The existence of a God can be inferred rationally on the basis of solid and sufficient scientific evidence. Additionally, the historical evidence for Christianity is very strong – although I discussed it only briefly.

The atheism of Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens may be new, but it is not true. Their straw god is not the real God who created and designed the universe.

Notes

[1] See Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults, revised edition, Hank Hanegraaff, general editor (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1997), chapter six.
[2] See Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, 20th anniversary edition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007).
[3] See Timothy Paul Jones, Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman's 'Misquoting Jesus' (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007).
[4] For the argument for God from religious experience, see J.P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1987), pp.231-240.
[5] Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great (New York: Twelve Books, 2007), pp.161-168.
[6] See William Lane Craig and Paul Copan, Creation Out of Nothing (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004), chapter seven.
[7] See Douglas Groothuis, 'Metaphysical Implications of Cosmological Arguments', in James Sennett and Douglas Groothuis, eds. In Defense of Natural Theology(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).
[8] Martin Rees, 'Exploring Our Universe and Others', Scientific American Special Issue: The Once and Future Cosmos (2002), p.87.
[9] See J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations of a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), pp.482-490.

© 2005 Douglas Groothuis
All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
This resource is used by the kind permission of the author. It was previously available on the Denver Seminary website.

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God: Fact or Fiction? John Lennox at Vanderbilt University

"A changed of Mind For Anthony Flew"

On 1st November 2007, Professor Antony Flew’s book There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind was published by HarperOne. Professor Flew, who died in April 2010, has been called ‘the world's most influential philosophical atheist’, as well as ‘one of the most renowned atheists of the 20th Century’ (see Peter S. Williams’ bethinking.orgarticle “A change of mind for Antony Flew”). In There is a God, Professor Flew recounts how he came to believe in a Creator God as a result of the scientific evidence and philosophical argument.

Not surprisingly, his book caused quite a stir – as can be seen from the miscellaneous customer reviews on Amazon.co.uk. Some of those comments (and those elsewhere) implied that Flew was used by his co-author, Roy Varghese, and did not in fact know what was in the book. This is a serious charge to which Professor Flew responded and which he reiterated in a letter (dated 4th June 2008) to a friend of UCCF who has shown it to us. Professor Flew wrote:

I have rebutted these criticisms in the following statement: “My name is on the book and it represents exactly my opinions. I would not have a book issued in my name that I do not 100 per cent agree with. I needed someone to do the actual writing because I’m 84 and that was Roy Varghese’s role. The idea that someone manipulated me because I’m old is exactly wrong. I may be old but it is hard to manipulate me. That is my book and it represents my thinking.”

Professor Flew has written a forthright review of Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. His article, reproduced below, shows Professor Flew’s key reasons for his belief in a Divine Intelligence. He also makes it clear in There is a God (page 213) that it is possible for an omnipotent being to choose to reveal himself to human beings, or to act in the world in other ways. Professor Flew’s article is offered here as testimony to the developing thinking of someone who is prepared to consider the evidence and follow its implications wherever it leads.

Professor Antony Flew wrote:

The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. (Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’).

The fault of Dawkins as an academic (which he still was during the period in which he composed this book although he has since announced his intention to retire) was his scandalous and apparently deliberate refusal to present the doctrine which he appears to think he has refuted in its strongest form. Thus we find in his index five references to Einstein. They are to the mask of Einstein and Einstein on morality; on a personal God; on the purpose of life (the human situation and on how man is here for the sake of other men and above all for those on whose well-being our own happiness depends); and finally on Einstein’s religious views. But (I find it hard to write with restraint about this obscurantist refusal on the part of Dawkins) he makes no mention of Einstein’s most relevant report: namely, that the integrated complexity of the world of physics has led him to believe that there must be a Divine Intelligence behind it. (I myself think it obvious that if this argument is applicable to the world of physics then it must be hugely more powerful if it is applied to the immeasurably more complicated world of biology.)

Of course many physicists with the highest of reputations do not agree with Einstein in this matter. But an academic attacking some ideological position which s/he believes to be mistaken must of course attack that position in its strongest form. This Dawkins does notdo in the case of Einstein and his failure is the crucial index of his insincerity of academic purpose and therefore warrants me in charging him with having become, what he has probably believed to be an impossibility, a secularist bigot.

On page 82 of The God Delusion is a remarkable note. It reads ‘We might be seeing something similar today in the over-publicised tergiversation of the philosopher Antony Flew, who announced in his old age that he had been converted to belief in some sort of deity (triggering a frenzy of eager repetition all around the Internet).’

What is important about this passage is not what Dawkins is saying about Flew but what he is showing here about Dawkins. For if he had had any interest in the truth of the matter of which he was making so much he would surely have brought himself to write me a letter of enquiry. (When I received a torrent of enquiries after an account of my conversion to Deism had been published in the quarterly of the Royal Institute of Philosophy I managed – I believe – eventually to reply to every letter.)

This whole business makes all too clear that Dawkins is not interested in the truth as such but is primarily concerned to discredit an ideological opponent by any available means. That would itself constitute sufficient reason for suspecting that the whole enterprise ofThe God Delusion was not, as it at least pretended to be, an attempt to discover and spread knowledge of the existence or non-existence of God but rather an attempt – an extremely successful one – to spread the author’s own convictions in this area.

A less important point which needs to be made in this piece is that although the index ofThe God Delusion notes six references to Deism it provides no definition of the word ‘deism’. This enables Dawkins in his references to Deism to suggest that Deists are a miscellany of believers in this and that. The truth, which Dawkins ought to have learned before this book went to the printers, is that Deists believe in the existence of a God but not the God of any revelation. In fact the first notable public appearance of the notion of Deism was in the American Revolution. The young man who drafted the Declaration of Independence and who later became President Jefferson was a Deist, as were several of the other founding fathers of that abidingly important institution, the United States.

In that monster footnote to what I am inclined to describe as a monster book – The God Delusion – Dawkins reproaches me for what he calls my ignominious decision to accept, in 2006, the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth. The awarding Institution is Biola, The Bible Institute of Los Angeles. Dawkins does not say outright that his objection to my decision is that Biola is a specifically Christian institution. He obviously assumes (but refrains from actually saying) that this is incompatible with producing first class academic work in every department – not a thesis which would be acceptable in either my own university or Oxford or in Harvard.

In my time at Oxford, in the years immediately succeeding the second world war, Gilbert Ryle (then Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy in the University of Oxford) published a hugely influential book The Concept of Mind. This book revealed by implication, but only by implication, that minds are not entities of a sort which could coherently be said to survive the death of those whose minds they were.

Ryle felt responsible for the smooth pursuit of philosophical teaching and the publication of the findings of philosophical research in the university and knew that, at that time, there would have been uproar if he had published his own conclusion that the very idea of a second life after death was self-contradictory and incoherent. He was content for me to do this at a later time and in another place. I told him that if I were ever invited to give one of the Gifford Lecture series my subject would be The Logic of Mortality. When I was, I did and these Lectures were first published by Blackwell (Oxford) in 1987. They are still in print from Prometheus Books (Amherst, NY).

Finally, as to the suggestion that I have been used by Biola University. If the way I was welcomed by the students and the members of faculty whom I met on my short stay in Biola amounted to being used then I can only express my regret that at the age of 85 I cannot reasonably hope for another visit to this institution.

Note on Lord Gifford (Adam)
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Lord Gifford as ‘judge and benefactor’. He endowed lectureships at four Scottish universities ‘for promoting, advancing and diffusing natural theology, in the widest sense of that term, in other words the knowledge of God’ and ‘of the foundation of ethics.’ The first lectures were delivered in 1888.

© 2008 Antony Flew

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Antony Flew on God and Atheism

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