Greg Koukl - Best Argument Against Theism?

Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason answers the question, "What is the best argument you've heard against theism?". For more information, visit http://www.str.org.

Greg Koukl - The Flying Spaghetti Monster

Debating Athiesm: Wilson vs. Hitchens on Video

Hitchens/Wilson sneak peak from LEVEL4 on Vimeo.


PatrolTV: Christopher Hitchens & Douglas Wilson from Patrol Magazine on Vimeo.

The Ancient Sociological History of Atheism

Professor Edwin Judge briefly surveys the ancient sociological history of atheism in his interview with Greg Clarke:

Death: The Atheist's Nightmare

April 1: Happy (?) Atheists' Day —

In view of today, Dan Phillips @ www.teampyro.blogspot.com notes:
"It takes a particular kind of belligerent fool to look at creation and refuse to acknowledge his Creator. Confronted with an avalanche of evidence from without and within himself, he suppresses it all (Romans 1:18ff.)".

Gene Edward Veith @www.geneveith.com notes:" This festival of foolishness has an obscure origin. Since the new year used to be counted from the end of March, some scholars think that the day came when the Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1582, which changed New Year’s Day to January 1. Some people, though, were too ignorant to know about the switch, so they celebrated New Year’s on the wrong day, April 1, to the ridicule of those in the know who made fun of the April Fools. That’s a good story, but the day seems to have been celebrated before that! See this for background.

Can we be good without God?

From http://richardperkins.blogsome.com

This is a crucial question. It’s one answered in great measure by W.L Craig’s article ‘No God. No Good?’ But if misunderstood it might be taken for arrogance. We’re not saying that Christians are morally superior people. We’re not asking whether there’s any credible rationale for morality apart from the existence of God. It’s perhaps helpful to clearly articulate what the question is not asking.

The question is not must we believe in God in order to live moral lives? It’s clear that theists and atheists can alike live ethically.

The question is not is it possible to have a system of ethics without reference to God? It’s clear that a system of ethics can be formulated regardless of ideology.

The question is not can we recognise objective moral values without God? It’s clear that regardless of our spiritual, philosophical and ideological views people recognise that we ought to love our children.

The question is whether morality has any foundation apart from recognising the existence of God. I’ll argue that there isn’t. The answer comes in two parts.

1. Theism provides a sure foundation for morality

Let’s consider the case for morality built on the foundation of God’s existence.

a. The existence of God provides a rationale for moral values

To have objective moral values there needs to be an independent standard of right and wrong. This means that right and wrong remain unalterable regardless of whether anyone believes them or observes them. The existence of God provides that objective, independent foundation. Objective moral values are rooted in Him. His character and activity provides the norm by which morality is to be measured.

b. The existence of God provides a rationale for moral duties

The obligation to be moral exists because God issues divine commands that constitute our moral duties. These are not arbitrary requirements; they are derived from His nature. When asked, Jesus summarised the whole moral duty of man using two great commandments. We are to love the Lord our God with all our strength, soul, heart and mind and we are to love our neighbour as ourselves. That’s the foundation for affirming morality or condemning immorality.

c. The existence of God provides a rationale for moral accountability

Since God exists He will hold us accountable for everything we’ve said, thought and done. Righteousness will be vindicated and unrighteousness will be punished. From the perspective of eternity everyone will appreciate that we live in a moral universe. And so the moral choices that we make in this life are invested with an eternal significance. Therefore theism provides a coherent, rational foundation for morality. Then, there’s atheism.

2. Atheism provides no foundation for morality

Let’s consider the case for morality built on the foundation of God’s non-existence.

a. The denial of God provides no grounds for moral values

If God does not exist there is no independent standard of morality. There’s morality but there’s no basis for it. Atheists can’t deny the existence of universal morality nor do they want to. But they just can’t account for it. Many argue that as a result of socio-biological pressures a ‘herd morality’ has evolved which aids the perpetuation of humanity. For them, morality is nothing more than an advantageous mutation to ensure humanity is numbered among fittest that survive.

b. The denial of God provides no grounds for moral duties

On the atheistic view, God is the main casualty. But He’s not the sole casualty. There’s us. In throwing God out of the window we’ve also thrown out the conditions we need for morality and the conditions we need for human significance. For if we deny the existence of God then we also deny the uniqueness of humankind. There’s nothing special about us because if there’s no God then there’s no image of God. And so as Dr William Lane Craig put it, ‘we’re just an accidental by-product of nature which has evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time’ No God. No Good? In atheism human beings become worthless for two reasons. We become worthless because we’re just sophisticated animals, but no more than that. We’re not qualitatively different from any other animal species. And so if we’re prepared to do lab experiments on rats, guess who’s next! But we also become worthless because naturalism flattens the distinction between the mind and the brain. In amongst the assumption that our thought processes are little more than the reactions of various chemicals in the brain, we may have lost sight of the fact that what we might describe as ‘me’ has just been obliterated. Atheist morality therefore comes out of thin air. The humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz summarises the issue brilliantly when he writes, ‘The central question about moral and ethical principles concerns this ontological foundation. If they are neither derived from God nor anchored in some transcendent ground, are they purely ephemeral?’ Forbidden Fruit. If we accept the naturalistic explanation of reality then we have no grounds to condemn immorality or affirm morality. What we praise or criticise is nothing more than an opinion. And one opinion is no more significant than any other. What this means is that the Jew and the Nazi can disagree but there’s no grounds for saying that one of them is right and one is wrong. That’s frightening. And atheism can do nothing to stop it happening again.

c. The denial of God provides no grounds for moral accountability

If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether we’re a sinner or a saint. There’s no reckoning. There’s nothing we can say to someone who wants to live purely out of self interest. In fact we may as well follow their example. In fact, not to do so would be foolish. Atheistic ethicists know that this is the logical conclusion of their position. One of them writes, ‘We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons should not be egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me … Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality’ Kai Nelson Why Should I be Moral? Atheist friends of mine have argued that we’re moral because it fulfils our pleasures, personal self interest and provides social benefit. But there are lots of moral decisions that conflict with those so that can’t be right. Self sacrifice is perhaps the clearest example. It’s never in our self interest to sacrifice ourselves! Life is too short to jeopardize my comfort for the sake of someone else.

Conclusion

If God exists then there’s a sound foundation for morality. If He doesn’t then it’s a ‘free for all’. William Lane Craig wants us to go further than this. The existence of morality is evidence of God’s existence. And he’s right. How could it be otherwise? If we think that there are universal objective moral values then this must be evidence of the existence of a universal God. If we think that there are universal moral obligations then this must be evidence of a transcendent being that has the right to impose them upon us. If we think that there is universal moral accountability then this must be evidence that there is someone to whom we must give an account. In conclusion theological meta-ethics do seem to be necessary for morality. We need God to be good.

But of course, we need to recognise the absence of neutrality in this conflict of interest. We’re no spiritual Switzerland. We’d like God to be dead. You see, if He exists then there are objective moral values, there’s an ‘ought’ to our lives and there’s a reckoning to face at the end. But if God is dead then morality is just a human convention which we’re free to flout without any expectation of being called to account for how we’ve lived. That might sound attractive but it actually renders all of human existence meaningless. And it’s wrong!

Atheist? So you say you're an atheist?

By Charles Blair

Well, I don't believe you.

No, I'm not angry with you, and I don't want to debate all the
classical arguments for the existence of God; you've probably
considered them all already and rejected them because of your own
personal thoughts.

And no, I'm not going to use the familiar line "God doesn't believe
in atheists" as a premise here.

It's just that you, as an educated person, should know the virtual
impossibility of proving a negative, especially a universal
negative. To claim to do so implies omniscience, and frankly,
neither of us have that. We haven't been everywhere in the material
universe, nor have we explored the entire world of thought.

It's as if one were to say, "There is no such thing as a leprechaun,
or a unicorn." To be sure, none of us have seen such creatures, but
one documented sighting by an otherwise credible person would be
enough to disprove such a sweeping universal negative. And one
documented encounter with Deity from an otherwise credible person is
sufficient to disprove the universal negative "There is no God."

But there have been far more than one such encounter; millions of
otherwise credible people, many of them the best people in their
community in terms of human relations, the founders of hospitals,
schools, mercy missions by the hundreds, the kind of good neighbors
all of us love to have, all have claimed such "close encounters of
the main kind." Now, a claim to have seen a unicorn from someone on
heavy narcotics wouldn't impress me a great deal, and the fact that
the Authorized Version of the Bible uses the word isn't final
evidence; checking the Hebrew results in another term ("wild ox" in
some versions, though I still like the song where God tells
Noah, "And don't forget My unicorn.") And an Irishman heavy into his
celebration of St. Pat's with the "drinkin' of the green" might not
be the most credible witness concerning the "little people." But
when you have multiplied thousands of witnesses, many of whom would
be clinchers on the stand in any court case, over all 7 continents,
over thousands of years, all with the same testimony, there is surely
a presumption in favor of their words.

Which, of course, leads to the relatively small number of self-
professed atheists, agnostics, and skeptics (a recent
national "Atheist's Convention" drew some 500, according to the
news). More cautious thinkers prefer the terms "free-thinker"
or "agnostic" and simply state, "I haven't been able to find God,"
and with Confucius may say, "We do not yet understand man; how then
can we understand God? We do not yet understand this life; how then
can we understand another?" Interestingly enough, this is precisely
what at least three writers of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures also
said.

Isaiah, in the last portion of that book (55:8-9) quotes God as
saying, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My
ways," says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are my ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your
thoughts." The writer of Psalm 139 states (in v. 6) "Such knowledge
is too wonderful for me; It is high, I cannot attain it." And Paul,
in Romans 11:33, concludes an in-depth discussion of God's character
with the doxology, "Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom
and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His
ways past finding out!" Evidently these Bible writers believed that
for man to search out God on his own was not to be expected, and that
God to be known must choose to reveal Himself.

Thus the agnostic is correct in stating that he has not found God,
but the real question may be, are we willing to be found by Him? As
Augustine once said, as if it were God speaking: "Fear not, for thou
would not seek Me if I had not found thee."

My reason for writing this brief discussion is not to seek an
argument, or to try to win a debate; it is intended to help honest
doubters think their way through the most serious issue of life. If
God exists, then all else is insignificant in comparison to that
truth. If there is no God, then nothing else really matters; life is
ultimately, in the poet's words, "a tale told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury, signifying nothing." One thinker wrote that he could
not have the atheist's humility, to consider life insignificant. As
a believer in the One Creator and Sustainer of the universe, it is my
prayer for you that this brief essay will help create in your mind a
desire to enjoy that sense of meaning in life that can come in
knowing the One Who is beyond knowledge. Feel free to contact me if
you want to talk about these matters.

==

AUTHORS NOTE:
I hope most of us know someone who hides behind the label "atheist"
to keep preachers away. If you're not comfortable handing this
material to them, or forwarding it, possibly this line of reasoning
will be helpful as you witness to them. I am strongly convinced that
there are really no atheists, only skeptics and people who are so
inured in their sin that this argument scares off some witnesses,
and staves off some conviction for sin. If any of you are able to
use any of it, I would be pleased to know the results.

R. Charles Blair
pr.eprayer@ethixs.com.

Answering the Atheists

A Reader's Digest version of why I am a Christian.

By Stan Guthrie @http://www.christianitytoday.com

Let's face it: Atheism is in. Not since Nietzsche have disbelievers enjoyed such a ready public reception to their godless message—and such near-miraculous royalties. But even that hasn't put them in a good mood. Snaps Christopher Hitchens, who wrote God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (although not, presumably, the pronouncements of atheists), "Many of the teachings of Christianity are, as well as being incredible and mythical, immoral." A feuding Richard Dawkins suggests that believers "just shut up." Apparently, they didn't get the tolerance memo.

Other authors—including Douglas Wilson and Francis Collins—have quite capably refuted the new atheist shtick. But remembering Bertrand Russell's famous essay, "Why I Am Not a Christian," here is a Reader's Digest version of why I am.

Creation: The universe, far from being a howling wasteland indifferent to our existence, appears to be finely tuned through its estimated 13.7 billion years of existence to support life on this planet. Tinker with any one of scores of fundamental physical laws or the initial conditions of the universe—such as gravity or the cosmological constant—and we would not be here. As physicist Paul Davies has admitted, "I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact."

Beauty: Beethoven's Ninth, a snowflake, the sweet smell of a baby who has been sleeping, and a sunset beyond the dunes of Lake Michigan all point to a magnificent and loving Creator. And isn't it interesting that we have the capacity—unlike mere animals—to gape in awe, to be brought to tears, before them? Truly did David say, "What is man, that you are mindful of him?"

New Testament reliability: Compared with the handful of existing copies of seminal ancient works such as Homer's Iliad, the New Testament's provenance is far better attested. There are thousands of NT manuscripts in existence, some made within mere decades of the events they report. Scholar F. F. Bruce said, "The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar."

Scripture: Unlike other religious texts, the Bible gives us the good, the bad, and the ugly of its heroes: Abraham, Jacob, David, and Peter among them. Further, Scripture's message rings true. It has been said that human depravity is the only religious doctrine empirically verified on a daily basis. And the Bible's gracious solution to our predicament, Christ's atoning death on the Cross, uniquely emphasizes what God has done, not what we must do, for our rescue.

Jesus: Christ's life and teachings are unparalleled in world history, as any Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim—or atheist—worth his salt will admit. Napoleon reportedly said, "I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and whatever other religions the distance of infinity."

The trilemma: C.S. Lewis, commenting on Christ's claim to divinity, said: "You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

Resurrection: After the crucifixion, Jesus' tomb was found empty. His formerly despondent disciples then turned the Roman world upside down with the message that Christ had conquered death. And they were willing to die for it. The best explanation, according to N. T. Wright and other scholars, is that Christ rose from the dead.

Progress: Despite some horrific incidents perpetrated in the name of Christ, freedom and prosperity generally have followed Christianity. Sociologist Rodney Stark said, "The success of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians."

Testimonies: While many Christians have behaved badly, Christ specializes in turning sinners around. What other faith can boast of a Chuck Colson? A John Newton? A William Wilberforce? Then there are the innumerable soup kitchens, universities, hospitals, and orphanages founded to the glory of Christ. While many atheists are moral, how many such institutions has the atheistic ideal—uncoerced by Communism, which is itself a perversion of Christianity—produced?

My experience: Finally, as a forgiven sinner, I testify to an imperfect yet growing sense of God's peace, presence, and provision since receiving Christ more than a quarter-century ago. Despite occasional setbacks, my faith has deepened and strengthened, whatever life brings.

And that includes the angry rantings of atheists.

There Is a God

From Justin Taylor @ http://theologica.blogspot.com

Antony Flew was an atheist before atheism was cool.

Now he has co-authored a new book, the title of which describes an event that rocked the philosophical world: There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, by Antony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese (HarperCollin).

Varghese also pens the first appendix responding to the "new atheists." N. T. Wright writes the second preface, arguing for the historicity and plausibility of Jesus' incarnation and resurrection.

It's not that Flew is not a Christian; rather, he is currently a Jeffersonian deist.

The CT Liveblog has a good round-up of some of the controversy (including a recent NYT piece suggesting that perhaps Flew's mental abilities are fading and he is being exploited by eager colleagues).

You can read Gary Habermas's forthcoming Philosophi Christi review essay of the book (or as PDF)

For background it may be helpful to read the 2004 Discussion between Gary Habermas and Antony Flew (or as PDF)

Making Room for Atheism

By John Piper @ www.desiringgod.org

Our church exists "to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ." That is our mission. "All things" means business, industry, education, media, sports, arts, leisure, government, and all the details of our lives. Ideally this means God should be recognized and trusted as supreme by every person he has made. But the Bible teaches plainly that there will never be a time before Jesus comes back when all people will honor him as supreme (2 Thessalonians 1:6-10).

So how do we express a passion for God's supremacy in a pluralistic world where most people do not recognize God as an important part of their lives, let alone an important part of government or education or business or industry or art or recreation or entertainment?

Answer: We express a passion for the supremacy of God...

1) by maintaining a conviction at all times that God is ever-present and gives all things their most important meaning. He is the Creator, Sustainer, and Governor of all things. We must keep in our minds the truth that all things exist to reveal something of God's infinite perfections. The full meaning of everything, from shoestrings to space shuttles, is the way they relate to God.

2) by trusting God in every circumstance to use his creative, sustaining, governing wisdom and power to work all things together for the good of all who love him. This is faith in the future grace of all that God promises to be for us in Jesus.

3) by making life choices that reveal the supreme worth of God above what the world values supremely. "The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life" (Psalm 63:3). So we will choose to die rather than lose sweet fellowship with God. This will show his supremacy over all that life offers.

4) by speaking to people of God's supreme worth in creative and persuasive ways, and by telling people how they can be reconciled to God through Christ, so that they can enjoy God's supremacy as protection and help, rather than fear it as judgment.

5) by making clear that God himself is the foundation for our commitment to a pluralistic democratic order-not because pluralism is his ultimate ideal, but because in a fallen world, legal coercion will not produce the kingdom of God. Christians agree to make room for non-Christian faiths (including naturalistic, materialistic faiths), not because commitment to God's supremacy is unimportant, but because it must be voluntary, or it is worthless. We have a God-centered ground for making room for atheism. "If my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight" (John 18:36). The fact that God establishes his kingdom through the supernatural miracle of faith, not firearms, means that Christians in this age will not endorse coercive governments-Christian or secular.

This is why we resist the coercive secularization implied in some laws that repress Christian activity in public places. It is not that we want to establish Christianity as the law of the land. That is intrinsically impossible, because of the spiritual nature of the kingdom. It is rather because repression of free exercise of religion and persuasion is as wrong against Christians as it is against secularists. We believe this tolerance is rooted in the very nature of the gospel of Christ. In one sense, tolerance is pragmatic: freedom and democracy seem to be the best political order humans have conceived. But for Christians it is not purely pragmatic: the spiritual, relational nature of God's kingdom is the ground of our endorsement of pluralism, until Christ comes with rights and authority that we do not have.

The New Atheism

It seems like the atheistic responders are not being as rational as they had hoped.

Atheism Proves The Existence of God

Posted by William D@ http://reformingbaptist.blogspot.com

First of all, I have no respect for atheists because they are dishonest. They say they don't believe in God, but that is simply not true and they know it....

Romans 1:21-22
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

If they didn't not know it, then why the active hostility for the idea of a God? The very fact that these foolish people have to define themselves by the knowledge that they suppress proves that there is something that they are running away from....namely God. How can you not believe in something if that something doesn't exist? All ideas or images imagined come from something that exists. Even fantasy creatures, aliens, and the pagan gods are images formed by men who try to ascribe some form of something created to describe it. Everything we see has an origin therefore everything at it's origin must have had an Originator. How could the idea of a Sovereign God have been invented by those who would hate that very thing they have invented?

The thought of a God who holds them accountable for their doings, Who requires something of them did not come from self-serving, self-loving, self-glorifying fools. Man would never invent such a source of torment on his own conscience. So, for someone to define himself as an "atheist" is someone who just proves the point that he hates the fact that a God is ever present, ever watching and ever remembering his wickedness. By pretending that he doesn't exist, is as stupid as putting on blindfolds and saying that he doesn't believe in the sun.

Christian, don't be afraid of those who call themselves "atheists" the burden of proof that they are right is on them, not you. All effects have an originating cause, without an intelligent, all powerful God who has the power of self existence and self-sufficiency, how could all things have their existence? Eternal cosmic dust? or eternal God?

Eternal dust you say that created a big bang? Then you prove your foolishness in that answer.

Debating Athiests with presuppositionalism

Wilson introduces presuppositionalism to Hitchens

by jhg @ http://www.inlightofthegospel.org

When I was studying philosophy during my undergraduate days, I would not be exaggerating to say that Cornelius Van Til [see the Van Til web-site] and his apologetic known as persuppositionalism literally saved my convictions (and faith) on several occasions. During struggles with both theory and faith, many of Van Til’s arguments for the Christian faith were very influential in developing my “worldview.”

In the process of studying presuppositionalism, Greg Bahnsen’s introductory book on presuppositionalism is a great place to start, but be sure to move on to his large book on Van Til’s apologetics because it is as comprehensive as they come. At the risk of frustrating some, I might as well admit that I benefited from John Frame’s book on apologetics and Van Til .

One of the more helpful resources in pulling some of the loose threads together and seeing how it works practically is the so-called “Great Debate” between Greg Bahnsen and Gordon Stein. This was the first time I had heard someone use presuppositionalism in a debate format, and Bahnsen did it as well as anyone else.

Now you can see it worked out practically in the current debate between Doug Wilson and Christopher Hitchens over at Christianity Today. In this first round, Wilson is giving Hitchens an introduction to the basics of presuppositionalism. He is forcing Hitchens to come to terms with his own [i.e., Hitchens] presuppositions, and Wilson is pointing out each step along the way how Hitchens cannot make the claims he is making given his own worldview.

Notice a few of Wilson’s questions:

But why should this “damnation by history” matter to any of us reading Bible stories to kids, or, for that matter, to any of the people who did any of these atrocious things, on your principles?

Or again, Wilson says,

On your principles, why should he care?

Now notice the wave of questions at the end of Wilson’s exchange:

Given your atheism, what account are you able to give that would require us to respect the individual? How does this individualism of yours flow from the premises of atheism? Why should anyone in the outside world respect the details of your thought life any more than they respect the internal churnings of any other given chemical reaction? That’s all our thoughts are, isn’t that right? Or, if there is a distinction, could you show how the premises of your atheism might produce such a distinction?

Wilson is forcing Hitchens to come to terms with his own presuppositions, and Wilson is going to argue that Hitchens cannot give a satisfactory answers to these questions without borrowing from the Christian worldview.

Let us attend to Presuppositionalism 101.

The Gospel & Presuppositionalism

Tim Keller says in his article “Post-everythings” that presuppositionalism provides us with the tools we need to engage our culture with the gospel. The use of the gospel brings up another very important aspect of presuppositionalism.

One of the things I remember from Bahnsen’s debate [see previous post] is that he continued to challenge Stein’s unbelief.Arguing from the perspective of presuppositionalism gave Bahnsen the opportunity to present the gospel in a unique setting in order to explain belief and unbelief while calling for faith.

Notice how in the current “frank exchange of views” Wilson does not back away from his commitments in this debate in order to prove something about theism in general. He is concerned to demonstrate that Christian Trinitarianism is the only possible presupposition that can make sense of our experience in the world. In order to do that, he will challenge Hitchens with the gospel. Wilson says,

The second thing to observe in this regard is that Christians actually do not claim that the gospel has made the world better by bringing us turbo-charged ethical information…the world is not made better because people can understand the ways in which they are being bad. It has to be made better by Good News—we must receive the gift of forgiveness and the resultant ability to live more in conformity to a standard we already knew (but were necessarily failing to meet). So the gospel does not consist of new and improved law. The gospel makes the world better through Good News, not through guilt trips or good advice.

If I might use the title of my blog, Wilson is showing Hitchens that everything changes “in light of the gospel.” We pray that God might change Hitchens heart as well.

Presuppositionalism 102

CT has posted the second part of the debate between Wilson and Hitchens here. I thought we would be able to move on to Presuppositionalism 201, but it seems we need another semester of the basics.

Hitchens completely disregarded Wilson’s questions and presuppositional analysis of his own [Hitchens] thought. He even failed to understand Wilson’s point. Now Wilson is going to come at it another way: through atheistic hypocrisy.

Now my question for you is this: Is there such a thing as atheist hypocrisy? When another atheist makes different ethical choices than you do (as Stalin and Mao certainly did), is there an overarching common standard for all atheists that you are obeying and which they are not obeying?

Wilson has backed Hitchens into a corner. Will he answer this question? Will he condemn the acts of Stalin or Mao? If he does, then why? As an atheist, he simply cannot agree to some “common objective standard” because it doesn’t make sense given his worldview. If he does condemn them, he is being a hypocrite. So Wilson concludes:

And if there is not a common objective standard which binds all atheists, then would it not appear that the supernatural is necessary in order to have a standard of morality that can be reasonably articulated and defended?

This argument by Wilson is really very important. He has moved to atheistic hypocrisy because he is moving toward the gospel. The business at hand is the issue of “intellectual repentance.” So Wilson is addressing his [Hitchens] need for repentance before addressing his need for Christ as Savior. The gospel is at work in presuppositionalism even from the beginning of the debate because presuppositionalism shows the contradictions of atheism, the hypocrisy of atheistic thought.

Then Wilson gives a brief reminder of presuppositionalism 101 and Hitchens intellectual responsibility:

So I am not saying you have to believe in the supernatural in order to live as a responsible citizen. I am saying you have to believe in the supernatural in order to be able to give a rational and coherent account of why you believe yourself obligated to live this way.

Of course you can live a morally upright and ethical life if you do not believe in the supernatural. That is not the purpose of this debate. This debate deals with intellectual and rational reasons why we do what we do. Hitchens cannot give a rational and coherent account of his behavior given his belief system.

In conclusion, Wilson does exactly what he is asking Hitchens to do; Wilson gives a rational basis for the Christian faith. He is demonstrating true Christian love for his neighbor: providing an example to Hitchens of what he needs to do with his own intellectual thought.

The Christian faith is good for the world because it provides the fixed standard which atheism cannot provide and because it provides forgiveness for sins, which atheism cannot provide either. We need the direction of the standard because we are confused sinners. We need the forgiveness because we are guilty sinners. Atheism not only keeps the guilt, but it also keeps the confusion.

The Atheist Within

By tony reinke @ http://spurgeon.wordpress.com

Recently I engaged with an atheist in a short dialogue. I was drawn into the conversation because of the young man’s honesty and from a sense of love towards him and his soul. He stumbled into this blog by “accident” and he started asking some very good questions. But he also came in with a lot of presumptions, expecting responses from me like “of course you must believe because X, Y and Z are true.”

Instead, I felt led to share the struggles of unbelief in my Christian heart. I could tell that my response shocked him. He was saying he could not believe and I was saying — because of my sin — I too find it hard to believe. He assumed, as many atheists do, that faith is easy. In a sinful world that is a false assumption. Faith is not easy. Apart from God’s grace, faith is impossible.

Three interesting (and unexpected) conclusions resulted from this conversation.

First, because of the climate in our culture, the difference between atheists and Christians seems suited for a debate. Truly one is right, one is wrong. God is or He isn’t. Both opinions cannot be correct. But while I agree with this, the public polarization of the debate makes arbitrary distinctions between faith and reason, religion and science. Rather, the debate is solved by both faith and reason. God is not unreasonable. To ultimately conclude there is no God is not to lack faith, but to be a fool without knowledge (Ps. 14).

Secondly, belief is not easy or natural. He staked his claim in atheism and I stake my faith in the Cross, but there was a common conclusion: there is nothing easy about faith. The atheist assumes, for those living in a culture projecting Christianity, that faith is the easy response. Faith is never easy.

We assert with Peter, “Lord, I will never deny You” and then in our actions deny Him three times over. “I believe; help my unbelief!” is our cry (Mark 9:24). Christians transgress the greatest commandment every day by living in unbelief because at some level, all sinners (whether redeemed or unredeemed) are atheists. Atheism is not only a supposedly rational conclusion that a god does not exist, but also the practical conclusion that God is unworthy of my affection. The idols of my own heart reveal the depth of remaining atheism!

Look at your commitment to private prayer. Does it show a lack of faith in God’s existence? And only remaining unbelief would permit sin to continue our hearts. Each sin communicates the unworthiness of God. Paul says atheism is revealed by sexual sin, covetousness, envy, strife, lying, pride, disobedience to parents, being unloving, untrustworthy, unforgiving and unmerciful (Rom. 1:18-32). As long as sin remains, a level of atheism remains.

Third, the atheist assumed that God is pleased with me because I believe. This, too, is incorrect. God is pleased with me because His pleasure has been purchased in the blood of Jesus Christ! The blood of Christ shed on the Cross, not my faith, merits salvation from the guilt of sin and perfect righteousness. I have been embraced as the prodigal son into the arms of my adoptive Father through Christ (Luke 15:11-32).

What a glorious Savior that He saves even through faith the size of a mustard seed (Luke 17:6). By this, Jesus reminds us our salvation is not through great faith but through the great Savior. In the age of the telegraph C.H. Spurgeon said,

“There is no difference between one believer and another as to justification. So long as there is a connection between you and Christ the righteousness of God is yours. The link may be very like a film, a spider’s line of trembling faith, but, if it runs all the way from the heart to Christ, divine grace can and will flow along the most slender thread. It is marvelous how fine the wire may be that will carry the electric flash. We may want a cable to carry a message across the sea, but that is for the protection of the wire, the wire which actually carries the message is a slender thing. If thy faith be of the mustard-seed kind, if it be only such as tremblingly touches the Savior’s garment’s hem, if thou canst only say ‘Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief,’ if it be but the faith of sinking Peter, or weeping Mary, yet if it be faith in Christ, he will be the end of the law for righteousness to thee as well as to the chief of the apostles.”

Unbelief is a very serious sin, a sin Christians grieve over in their own hearts. This personal struggle equips believers to be especially sensitive and knowledgeable of atheism. Added to this, atheistic chatter always reaches a pinnacle near presidential elections. This discussion will continue heating up and provide excellent opportunities to share the greatness and beauty of Jesus Christ and His Cross that redeems us from our sin. It just may be that a slender wire of faith, rather than a polemical debate, separates our hearts.

When we as Christians see the atheist within our hearts we begin to understand the glorious greatness our Savior! What a beautiful Savior that holds on to sinners and never lets go.

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:27-30)

"Is Christianity Good for the World?"

Part 2 of the ongoing debate between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson.

Theologian Douglas Wilson and atheist Christopher Hitchens, authors whose books are already part of a larger debate on whether religion is pernicious, agreed to discuss their views on whether Christianity itself has benefited the world. Below is their exchange, one in a series that will appear on our website over the course of this month.

Douglas Wilson is author of Letter from a Christian Citizen, senior fellow of theology at New Saint Andrews College, and minister at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. He is also the editor of Credenda/Agenda magazine and has written (among other things) Reforming Marriage and A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking. His Blog and Mablog site inevitably makes for provocative reading.

Christopher Hitchens wrote, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve Books). Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School. He is the author of numerous books, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man," Letters To a Young Contrarian, and Why Orwell Matters. He was named, to his own amusement, number five on a list of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect.

Part 1 | Part 2

From: Christopher Hitchens
To: Douglas Wilson
Subject: Is Christianity Good for the World?

This is mildly amusing casuistry which—aside from its recommendation of Wodehouse—contains nothing that distinguishes it from Islam or Hinduism or indeed humanism. Were I a Christian, I would be highly unsettled by the huge number of concessions that Wilson makes. Since I am not a Christian, I mutter a mild "thank you" for his admission that morality has nothing at all to do with the supernatural. My book argues that religious belief has now become purely optional and cannot be mandated by anything revealed or anything divine. It is one among an infinite number of private "faiths," which do not disturb me in the least as long as its adherents agree to leave me alone.

Since Wilson does not even attempt to persuade me that Christ died for my sins (and can yet vicariously forgive them) or that I am the object of a divine design or that any of the events described in the two Testaments actually occurred or that extreme penalties will attend any disagreement with his view, I am happy to leave our disagreement exactly where it is: as one of the decreasingly interesting disputes between those who cling so tentatively to man-made "Holy Writ" and those who have no need to consult such texts in pursuit of truth or beauty or an ethical life. The existence or otherwise of an indifferent cosmos (the overwhelmingly probable state of the case) would no more reduce our mutual human obligations than would the quite weird theory of a celestial dictatorship,whether Aztec or Muslim or (as you seem to insist) Christian. The sole difference is that we would be acting out of obligation toward others out of mutual interest and sympathy but without the impulse of terrifying punishment or selfish reward. Some of us can handle this thought and some, evidently, cannot. I have a slight suspicion as to which is more moral.

On a recent visit to Arkansas, I ran into a huge billboard near the Little Rock airport which simply said "JESUS." This struck me as saying too much as well as too little, and I had almost forgotten it until Wilson's evasions brought it back to mind.

— Christopher Hitchens

* * *

From: Douglas Wilson
To: Christopher Hitchens
Re: Is Christianity Good for the World?
Part 2

I am glad that you found my response mildly amusing. I am also grateful we share an appreciation for Wodehouse. And I am extremely glad that you would like me to begin talking about the death of Christ for sin—which I fully intend to do. But the pattern the New Testament gives us is to address the need for repentance first and then to talk about the need for faith in Christ as Savior. Within the boundaries of our discussion, repentance would be necessary because you have embraced the internal contradictions of atheism, all for the sake of avoiding God (Rom. 1:21; Ps. 14:1-2). So we will get to the gospel, but I am afraid I am going to have to ask you to hold your horses.

So, back to the business at hand, the business of intellectual repentance. Dismissing something as casuistry is not the same thing as a demonstration of casuistry, and refusing to answer questions because the other guy is being evasive is quite a neat trick … if you can pull it off.

I am afraid you misconstrued my acknowledgement that—with regard to public civic life—atheists can certainly behave in a moral manner. My acknowledgement was not that morality has nothing to do with the supernatural, as you represented, but rather that morality has nothing to do with the supernatural if you want to be an inconsistent atheist. Here is that point again, couched another way and tied into our topic of debate.

Among many other reasons, Christianity is good for the world because it makes hypocrisy a coherent concept. The Christian faith certainly condemns hypocrisy as such, but because there is a fixed standard, this makes it possible for sinners to fail to meet it or for flaming hypocrites to pretend that they are meeting it when they have no intention of doing so. Now my question for you is this: Is there such a thing as atheist hypocrisy? When another atheist makes different ethical choices than you do (as Stalin and Mao certainly did), is there an overarching common standard for all atheists that you are obeying and which they are not obeying? If so, what is that standard and what book did it come from? Why is it binding on them if they differ with you? And if there is not a common objective standard which binds all atheists, then would it not appear that the supernatural is necessary in order to have a standard of morality that can be reasonably articulated and defended?

So I am not saying you have to believe in the supernatural in order to live as a responsible citizen. I am saying you have to believe in the supernatural in order to be able to give a rational and coherent account of why you believe yourself obligated to live this way. In order to prove me wrong here, you must do more than employ words like "casuistry" or "evasions"—you simply need to provide that rational account. Given atheism, objective morality follows … how?

The Christian faith is good for the world because it provides the fixed standard which atheism cannot provide and because it provides forgiveness for sins, which atheism cannot provide either. We need the direction of the standard because we are confused sinners. We need the forgiveness because we are guilty sinners. Atheism not only keeps the guilt, but it also keeps the confusion.

— Douglas Wilson

Back to Hitchen's response

Back to Wilson's response

Christian Youth Challenge YouTube Blasphemy

By Lillian Kwon

Christian Post Reporter

More than a month ago, atheists began to blaspheme the existence of God on the popular YouTube network. Today, Christians are turning the tables and taking up the challenge to stand up to their faith in Jesus Christ publicly.

"I'd like to personally praise the Lord for all He does for me," said one young participant in the newly launched "Praise the Lord Challenge" on YouTube. "He's done so much for me and I've only known him a few years."

The Praise the Lord Challenge counters a $25,000 campaign launched before Christmas where atheists, many of whom are young students, videotape their blasphemy, denying the existence of the trinity. "The Blasphemy Challenge" is giving away 1,001 DVDs of the documentary "The God Who Wasn't There" to participants. The only price, the campaign states, is "your soul."

One respondent departed from religion six years ago, he said in his YouTube taping. His grandfather is a preacher and everyone he is related to is "very Christian." Yet ever since his "freedom from religion," he has not looked back, he said as he renounced his belief in God.

With YouTube drawing millions of teens and young adults, the Blasphemy Challenge – launched initially as part of the Rational Response Squad’s war on Christmas - is aimed at young people. The main target audience is the same for the campaign’s opposing side.

Mid-January, Michael Mickey launched his own war against the blasphemy challenge on YouTube. Mickey's campaign is appropriately called "The Challenge Blasphemy Project" and under it, the "Praise the Lord Challenge."

"What happens when we take a stand for the Lord?" Mickey said on YouTube, encouraging believers to videotape their love for Christ. "The word of God will bring people to faith in Jesus Christ."

"When we fail to stand," he added, "no good thing comes."

Mickey called Christians to take a stand for the Word of God.

Only a week has passed since the launch of the Praise the Lord Challenge and several Christians have already posted their testimonies, most of them young students.

"I believe every word that's in [the Bible]," said one young respondent as she held the Bible up close to the camera. "Praise God."

"Blasphemy Challenge has seemed to reach a lot of young people, so our hope is we can get youth leaders and pastors ... to try to get young people [particularly] to reach out to that young audience that visits YouTube and demonstrate their faith in the Lord Jesus," said Mickey, according to One News Now.

And the young Christians say they want to make an impact with their message.

"My purpose is to spread the Word and worship Him with every part of me," said one Praise the Lord Challenge respondent. "I've given Him my life, my heart, my very soul. I will never deny my Lord, my Father, my very reason to live."

More Intellectual Folly: Sam Harris

Posted by Kirk M. Wellum @ http://redeemingthetime.blogspot.com

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in". Sam Harris, author (1967- )

Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The End of Faith and A Letter to a Christian Nation. According to his website he is a graduate in philosophy from Stanford University and has studied both Eastern and Western religious traditions along with a variety of contemplative disciplines for 20 years. Mr. Harris makes regular appearances on television and radio to discuss the danger that religion poses to modern societies.

All that aside, I wonder if Mr. Harris ever talks about the dangers of atheism and the horrible things that have been done throughout history by those who do not believe in the transcendent, holy, sovereign God who has revealed himself in the written scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and in the person of the Lord Jesus. Furthermore, equating Christianity with the arbitrary and irrational belief that Star Wars or Windows 98 are uniquely inspired bits of work is absurd in the extreme. One wonders about the academic sanity of someone who would suggest such a thing given the abundant external and internal evidence for the truthfulness of the Bible.

But this is the kind of world in which we live. And it is further proof that human beings suppress the clearly revealed truth of God in unrighteousness. Human beings are not objective viewers of reality. Not only are they finite, but they are sinful and perverse, and their minds and hearts are darkened. Professing themselves wise, they reveal their foolishness, when their attempt to escape from God leads them to misread and misinterpret the evidence.

It has been said before that the greatest proof of the existence of God is the impossibility of the contrary. And nowhere is this more relevant than in this discussion. If Mr. Harris, and his ilk, want to liberate the human race from God, they need to explain life as we know it without him. How does the impersonal give way to the personal? How does he account for the laws of logic, rationality, language, love, faith, hope, peace... and on and on and on. And what about the resurrection? Does he really expect us to believe that it did not happen? This historically attested fact of the Christian faith changes the discussion forever. Sure there are doubters, just like some people doubt that the Americans ever landed on the moon. But that does not change the fact that Jesus of Nazareth died, was buried and rose again, that he ascended on high and that at the end of the age will come to judge humanity, including Mr. Harris.

Many years ago King David wrote about those who think and live as though there is no God. His words are as appropriate today as when they were written: "Fools say in their hearts. 'There is no God.' They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is not one who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the human race to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one. They devour my people as though eating bread; they never call on the Lord. But there they are, overwhelmed with dread, for God is present in the company of the righteous. You evildoers frustrate the plans of the poor, but the Lord is their refuge. Oh, the salvation for Israel would come out of Zion! When the Lord restores his people, let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!"

Atheism, not religion, is real source of conflict

From Preaching Now @ preaching.com

Author Dinesh D'Souza wrote in a recent commentary: A spate of atheist books have argued that religion represents, as End of Faith author Sam Harris puts it, "the most potent source of human conflict, past and present." Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany: "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did bloody battle with other Christians for another three centuries." In his bestseller The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins contends that most of the world's recent conflicts -- in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, in Kashmir, and in Sri Lanka -- show the vitality of religion's murderous impulse.

The problem with this critique is that it exaggerates the crimes attributed to religion, while ignoring the greater crimes of secular fanaticism. The best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials. How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually, fewer than 25. Yet the event still haunts the liberal imagination.

It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.

These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.

Moreover, many of the conflicts that are counted as "religious wars" were not fought over religion. They were mainly fought over rival claims to territory and power. Can the wars between England and France be called religious wars because the English were Protestants and the French were Catholics? Hardly.

The same is true today. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, at its core, a religious one. It arises out of a dispute over self-determination and land. Hamas and the extreme orthodox parties in Israel may advance theological claims -- "God gave us this land" and so forth -- but the conflict would remain essentially the same even without these religious motives. Ethnic rivalry, not religion, is the source of the tension in Northern Ireland and the Balkans.

Yet today's atheists insist on making religion the culprit. Consider Mr. Harris's analysis of the conflict in Sri Lanka. "While the motivations of the Tamil Tigers are not explicitly religious," he informs us, "they are Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of life and death." In other words, while the Tigers see themselves as combatants in a secular political struggle, Harris detects a religious motive because these people happen to be Hindu and surely there must be some underlying religious craziness that explains their fanaticism.

Harris can go on forever in this vein. Seeking to exonerate secularism and atheism from the horrors perpetrated in their name, he argues that Stalinism and Maoism were in reality "little more than a political religion." As for Nazism, "while the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominantly secular way, it was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity." Indeed, "The holocaust marked the culmination of . . . two thousand years of Christian fulminating against the Jews."

One finds the same inanities in Mr. Dawkins's work. Don't be fooled by this rhetorical legerdemain. Dawkins and Harris cannot explain why, if Nazism was directly descended from medieval Christianity, medieval Christianity did not produce a Hitler. How can a self-proclaimed atheist ideology, advanced by Hitler as a repudiation of Christianity, be a "culmination" of 2,000 years of Christianity? Dawkins and Harris are employing a transparent sleight of hand that holds Christianity responsible for the crimes committed in its name, while exonerating secularism and atheism for the greater crimes committed in their name.

Religious fanatics have done things that are impossible to defend, and some of them, mostly in the Muslim world, are still performing horrors in the name of their creed. But if religion sometimes disposes people to self-righteousness and absolutism, it also provides a moral code that condemns the slaughter of innocents. In particular, the moral teachings of Jesus provide no support for -- indeed they stand as a stern rebuke to -- the historical injustices perpetrated in the name of Christianity.

The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth. Of course if some people -- the Jews, the landowners, the unfit, or the handicapped -- have to be eliminated in order to achieve this utopia, this is a price the atheist tyrants and their apologists have shown themselves quite willing to pay. Thus they confirm the truth of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's dictum, "If God is not, everything is permitted."

Whatever the motives for atheist bloodthirstiness, the indisputable fact is that all the religions of the world put together have in 2,000 years not managed to kill as many people as have been killed in the name of atheism in the past few decades. It's time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.
(D'Souza's new book, The Enemy at Home, will be published this month. Click here to learn more.)

Worldview Wednesday: Atheists Should Be Monsters

Why Atheists Should Be Monsters
By Gary DeMar

If we follow the materialists consistently down the materialist road, apart from biology and chemistry, there is nothing. No mind. No logic. No reason. No soul. No love. Even the conceptualization of these non-entities can’t be conceptualized using matter-only presuppositions. If something (a contradiction in itself) can’t be studied using a probe or a microscope, not only doesn’t it exist, it can’t exist. As you can understand by this line of argument, this is more than a debate about the existence of God, since once God is pushed out of the cosmos into the black hole of nonexistence, everything associated with His attributes follows.

Harris and Dawkins weren’t the first to propose a DNA-only existence. The rationalist (atheist) philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) constructed a similar paradigm more than a hundred years ago:

That Man is the product of causes which had no provision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.1

The reason most atheists aren’t monsters is that they are not consistent with their atheistic assumptions. If man is nothing more than the “collocations of atoms,” then why did Russell bother opposing the Vietnam War and nuclear proliferation since we are all “destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system”? What’s the difference between a fiery end caused by man or one caused by the heat death of the universe? Why should atoms care? But Russell did care. He cared because he was an inconsistent atheist.

In his religious ode to evolution, River Out of Eden, Richard Dawkins relates the story of how “the British newspapers all carried a terrible story about a bus full of children from a Roman Catholic school that crashed for no obvious reason, with wholesale loss of life.” He reports that a priest responded to the tragedy by stating, “But the horror of the crash, to a Christian, confirms the fact that we live in a world of real values: positive and negative. If the universe was just electrons, there would be no problem of evil or suffering.”2

Dawkins offered the following response: “On the contrary, if the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies like the crashing of this bus are exactly what we should expect, along with meaningless good fortune.”3 How can Dawkins refer to the bus crash as “terrible” and tragic? Was he referring to the death of the children or the destruction of the bus?

In Dawkins’ view of his evolutionary Eden, is there a difference between the chemical entities, one consisting of electrical impulses passing through meat and bones and the other of electrical charges surging through generators and wiring? Of course, like most of the rest of us, Dawkins does not live consistently with his own belief that Darwin’s natural selection is “blind, unconscious, automatic,” and with “no purpose in mind.”4 This keeps him from being the monster he ought to be if he was a faithful practitioner of the Darwinism he promotes and defends.

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1. Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship” (December 1903): http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/fmw.html

2. Quoted in Dawkins, River Out of Eden, 132.

3. Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: HarperCollins/BasicBooks, 1995), 132.

4. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: Norton, 1986), 5.