New Atheism

In 2004, Alister McGrath published The Twilight of Atheism, where he contended that 'the sun has begun to set' on an empire of the mind: 'Atheism', a phenomenon which 'seems to have lost so much of its potency in recent years...', a 'tidal wave...gradually receding.'  Readers must decide whether or not their judgement concurs or experience confirms this verdict. Let us simply note that there are social conditions under which the cultural power of ideas can grow even as their intellectual force diminishes, just as Hellenistic culture could expand even as the Greek (Macedonian) empire declined centuries before Christ. If there ever was an epoch when intellectual strength was a condition of cultural success, it is certainly not ours. 

Judged by the quality of its literature, what has come to be called 'new atheist' thinking is usually intellectually unimpressive. Much of it invites psychological explanation more than argumentative refutation. Take the following observations on Scripture. According to Sam Harris, 'Jesus seems to have suggested, in John 15:6, further [i.e., beyond the OT] refinements to the practice of killing heretics and unbelievers'.  It looks as though Richard Dawkins treats the accounts of the destruction of Sodom in Genesis and the rape of the Levite's concubine in Judges as contributions to his case that none of us in practice - and it is just as well - 'get our morals from scripture.'  It is hard to disagree with Tina Beattie's conclusion, picking up a remark made by Christopher Hitchens in God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, that '[o]ne cannot possibly have an intelligent debate with this kind of polemic, for Hitchens is so defiantly obtuse in his representation of Scripture and its role in the Christian life that there is no point of entry into a sensible and informed discussion.'  Ignorance of itself is no problem, if the ignorant are willing to learn. However, it is hard to rustle up the confidence that such new atheist willingness is abroad. From one angle, unwillingness is understandable: how many of us who find a world-view profoundly distasteful will spend time dispassionately studying and sympathetically trying to understand the texts which underlie it?

Should we, then, be contemptuous and dismissive of new atheism? Certainly not. Quite generally, contempt has no place in life and there are at least two important reasons for not dismissing new atheism. Firstly, it is influential. Secondly, there are arguments for atheism which, even if not well formulated (as a rule) in the most prominent new atheist literature, have long deserved intellectual consideration. Of course, questions legitimately arise about both the point and method of an apologetic response to new atheism in a world of sound-bites, blogs, and atheist summer camps for school-children. Even those who accord apologetic reason an important place may doubt its usefulness in the case of new atheism. However, without either taking any particular view of apologetics aside from affirming its general necessity or pursuing questions of method, three reasons may be adduced for taking new atheism with apologetic seriousness.

Firstly, apologetic engagement is worth it for the sake of the one in a thousand who might listen.  There are spaces and cultures where many more than one in a thousand might listen. Secondly, new atheists are not immune from the possibility, actualized in the case of some older atheists, of a change of mind. Amongst the latter, Antony Flew is probably the best-known example. Last, but not least, as Christians in a pluralist world we should constantly be thinking about the grounds and nature of our own beliefs. If theology is faith thoroughly seeking understanding, some of us will find it hard to espy a wide or fixed gulf between this and apologetic endeavour. All this holds good even as we acknowledge that the times in which we live lend themselves to massively sustained and illusory detachment from reality. In thinking that she saw that the tree of good and evil was desirable for gaining wisdom, Eve succumbed to illusion. Sustained illusion may be a species of insanity.

Is there such a thing as genuine atheism? Many conclude that there is not, particularly on the basis of Paul's observations in Romans 1: 19-20 which appear to declare God's existence to be evident, whatever human suppression and distortion are able to accomplish. It is certainly true that new atheists, whether heard or read, often come over as some kind of theists who intensely dislike God. Nonetheless, while I do not wish to interpret Romans 1 dogmatically, we must be cautious. The chapter as a whole portrays a dynamic: as humans persist in rejection, so God hands them over to concomitant states and consequences. This invites the question of whether Paul is committed to the claim that cultures can never degenerate and decay to a point where there is genuine atheism. We have to attend to the testimony of converts from atheism here. All I assume in what follows is that, even if we doubt the existence of true atheism, it is in order to use the designation, 'atheism'. In doing so, we note that atheists sometimes draw attention to their positive self-designation as 'humanists'. 

If we aspire to capture new atheism in a single formula, the sub-title of the work by Sam Harris cited earlier helps us: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason. While the sequence is not mapped out in the following way, it could be schematically rendered thus: (a) religion is irrational; (b) irrationality breeds dogmatism; (c) dogmatism breeds intolerance; (d) intolerance breeds violence. That last stage makes the attack on religious irrationality socially vital and urgent. A good deal of new atheist passion has been fuelled by the claim that religion is a - even, you sometimes get the impression, 'the' - cause of war. In response, Christians will (a) surely urge that the general category 'religion' is unhelpful; (b) emphasise that, however we read the Old Testament accounts of war and slaughter, Jesus Christ inaugurates a new dispensation and (c) draw attention to the violence perpetrated by atheist states precisely in the name of irreligion. All this doubtless needs to be said. However, the scene may now be changing. It is hard to say, but if statements by Richard Dawkins widely reported on the web earlier this year are anything to go by, there may now be a greater willingness than there was some  years ago to make religious distinctions between Islam and Christianity in relation to violence.  Meanwhile, it is sobering to read J. C. Ryle's comment on Jesus' rebuke to James and John when they entertained the thought of fire from heaven destroying Samaritan villages (Luke 9: 54): 'No saying of our Lord's, perhaps, has been so totally overlooked by Christ's church as this one. Nothing can be imagined more contrary to Christ's will than the religious wars and persecutions which disgrace the pages of church history.' 

We should welcome the gain in instilling into popular consciousness the notion that firm Christian conviction is no recipe for war. Yet, the gain must not be exaggerated. The penultimate step in the sequence of atheist reasoning formalised above remains decisive: Christianity is socially intolerant. Social oppression remains even if military aggression fades. War is just a contingent expression of a social mentality. The mentality is the problem.

In 1864, Nietzsche remarked that 'the ice-filled stream of the Middle Ages...has begun to thaw and is rushing on with devastating power. Ice floe is piled upon ice floe, all shores are being flooded and threatened.'  Later, he came up with his celebrated and dramatic expression of the belief that God was dead and, in that same work, he also said that we must get rid of God's shadow.  Christian morality gives the shadow its form. New atheism is apparently founded on the claim that science has dislodged religious belief. But is Christian morality equally as offensive or even more offensive to it than is epistemological folly? We take up morality first, in the next article.