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July 10 - July 31, 2019
How can two intelligent, inquisitive, Oxford-trained scientists arrive at such different conclusions about God?
not all atheists are cut from the same cloth and many do not employ or endorse the New Atheists’ shrill rhetoric. In fact, some of the strongest criticisms of the aforementioned books have come from professionally trained, atheistic philosophers. For example, New York University Professor of Philosophy Thomas Nagel found Dawkins’s attempts at philosophical argument “particularly weak” and the work of an “amateur.”*
the vast majority of The God Delusion is not the popularized scientific writing for which he has become famous, but philosophical arguments against God, religion, and Christianity.
Nagel is not the first to point out that Dawkins is clearly out of his element. Prominent Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse went as far as to say that “The God Delu...
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See Thomas Nagel, “The Fear of Religion,” review of The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, The New Republic (October 23, 2006). One of the leading theistic philosophers in the world, Alvin Plantinga, called Dawkins’s philosophical arguments sophomoric: “You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside), many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class. This, combined with the arrogant, smarter-than-thou tone of the book, can be annoying. I shall put
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The “God is dead” movement so popular in philosophy departments during the 1960s is being reversed by the resurgence of contemporary philosophers who are theists.
See the cutting-edge arguments for God’s existence in William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland, The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). An intermediate work is Paul Copan and Paul K. Moser, The Rationality of Theism (London: Routledge, 2003). To begin exploring these questions, see Francis Beckwith, William Lane Craig, and J. P. Moreland, To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004).
how faith and doubt can coexist, and whether the Bible has been corrupted through the centuries).
No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers, Michael Novak
The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine
biblical faith is trust in God because he has shown himself to be reliable and trustworthy.
Miracles preceded the call to belief and laid the foundation for a rational step of faith.
“Faith derives its value not from the intensity of the believer but from the genuineness of the one she believes in.
the characterization of faith as “blind faith” is not the historical Christian understanding but one that Dawkins invented to suit his own agenda.
EVERYONE HAS FAITH
Consider a few examples of “unseen” things that the New Atheists have faith in:
Presently, as a result of the movement, “atheism, though perhaps still the dominant viewpoint at the American university, is a philosophy in retreat.”
In recognition of this revolution, Time magazine ran a second major story in 1980 titled “Modernizing the Case for God.”
Biblical faith isn’t wishing; it’s confidence. It’s not denying reality, but discovering reality. It’s a sense of certainty grounded in the evidence that Christianity is true—not just “true for me,” but actually, fully, and completely true.
God does not want your leap of faith. He wants your step of trust.
If you believe this rendition of history, there’s a good chance you’ve been reading a public school textbook or the New Atheists.
“Once upon a time, back in the second half of the nineteenth century,” says Alister McGrath, “it was certainly possible to believe that science and religion were permanently at war…. This is now seen as a hopelessly outmoded historical stereotype that scholarship has totally discredited.”
During the sixteenth century, people from every culture studied the natural world, and yet modern science emerged in Europe, a civilization primarily shaped by the Judeo-Christian worldview. Why? Because Christianity provided the philosophical foundation as well as the spiritual and practical motivation for doing science.
“The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order which has been imposed on it by God, and which he revealed to us in the language of mathematics.”
However, in the same year that Dawkins published The God Delusion (2006), three leading scientists released books favorable to theism.
Galileo was neither executed nor persecuted by the Church for his diplomatic blunders.
Naturalism is a scientifically oriented worldview that denies the existence of God and the soul.
Here is what’s interesting about the foundational beliefs of naturalists: naturalists place enormous trust in nature’s order and their powers of reason, but their worldview ultimately undermines any basis for such confidence. Science is only possible if the world is ordered and if we can trust our senses and reason.
Albert Einstein once remarked that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
Einstein understood a basic truth about science, namely, that it relies upon certain philosophical assumptions about the natural world.
These assumptions include the existence of an external world that is orderly and rational, and the trustworthiness of our minds to grasp that world. Science cannot proceed apart from these assumptions, even though they cannot be independently proven.
the heart of all science lies the conviction that the universe is orderly. Without this deep conviction ...
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Dawkins admits that since we are the product of natural selection, our senses cannot be fully trusted.
Since a human being has been cobbled together through the blind process of natural selection acting on random mutation, says Dawkins, it’s unlikely that our views of the world are completely true.
Dawkins is on the right track to suggest that naturalism should lead people to be skeptical about trusting their senses. Dawkins just doesn’t take his skepticism far enough.
But this raises a particularly thorny dilemma for atheism. If the mind has developed through the blind, irrational, and material process of Darwinian evolution, then why should we trust it at all? Why should we believe that the human brain—the outcome of an accidental process—actually puts us in touch with reality?
Even Charles Darwin was aware of this problem: “The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust the conviction of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
If Darwinian evolution is true, we should distrust the cognitive faculties that make science possible.
To quote C. S. Lewis, “If the value of reasoning is in doubt, you cannot try to establish it by reasoning.”
Science is based on the assumption that the universe is thoroughly rational and logical at all levels. Atheists claim that the laws [of nature] exist reasonlessly and that the universe is ultimately absurd. As a scientist, I find this hard to accept. There must be an unchanging rational ground in which the logical, orderly nature of the universe is rooted.
People like Dawkins believe there is a conflict between science and religion because they think there is a conflict between evolution and theism; the truth of the matter, however, is that the conflict is between science and naturalism, not between science and belief in God.
It’s not simply that the order of the universe fits better with theism. The connection goes deeper.
FAITH FOUNDED ON FACT
only if atheism were proven to be true could we rationally deny the possibility of miracles. Without such a proof, we ought to be open to the occurrence of a miracle and be willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
If we begin our investigation assuming naturalism, as Dawkins does, then certainly miracles are improbable. However, if we consider all the evidence for God’s existence, including the cosmological argument (chapter 5), the design argument (chapters 6–7), evidence for the soul (chapter 8), the moral argument (chapter 15), and the historical evidence for the resurrection (below), then miracles seem quite probable.
If it’s even possible that God exists, then we can’t rule out his intervention in the natural world before we consider the evidence.
Even atheist Michael Goulder, a staunch critic of miracle stories says, “We ought not to rule out ‘miracles’ as explanations of striking events.”7 In other words, we ought to consider the evidence before determining the verdict.
DIDN’T HUME DISPROVE THE CASE FOR MIRACLES?
Hume challenged the identification of miracles with both “in principle” and “in fact” objections.
Despite Hume’s continued influence today, philosophers agree that Hume overstated his case.
