The ungrateful atheist

We have been told (and keep being told) that belief in God is old fashioned, outmoded, on the wane etc, but even a brief look at the figures disputes this. In the middle of the eleventh century it has been estimated that there were around eighty million Christians in the world. Today the number of Christian believers in the world is thought to be more than two billion and is on the increase (to say nothing of Muslims, Hindus, Jews and Buddhists). Novak suggests that this may be one of the reasons why atheists hate religion, why they are so angry with believers: there are just so many of them.

It appears that the default position of humanity is belief in God. Indeed it seems one has to work quite hard at non-belief. As Sartre noted on observing a sunset, one's natural inclination is to thank someone (God) for it. But who can the atheist be grateful to? He can hardly give thanks to God. Maybe this points to another deeper reason for the atheists fury, beyond a mere frustration at being outnumbered, an inability (or unwillingness) to express gratitude or give thanks for what has been received. Perhaps it is true that as Scruton suggests, 'gratitude is the precondition of joy. Only those who give thanks are able to rejoice, for only they are conscious that life, freedom and well-being are not rights but gifts'.

Michael Novak, No one sees God: The dark night of Atheists and Believers, New York 2008, p.177.
Roger Scruton, Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life, London 2005, p.238.

Dawkins on Anselm

Dawkins approach of ridiculing rather than addressing serious philosophical arguments and concerns is becoming more than a little tiresome to serious scholars. Here is what Ian Logan, an Oxford Anselm scholar, has to say about Dawkins' treatment of Anselm's famous philosophical argument to prove the existence of God.

'In the process of writing my book on the Proslogion, I came across hundreds of accounts of Anselm's argument, some more flawed than others, to the most serious and influential of which I tried to respond. Nothing, however, comes close to Dawkins' account in terms of sheer stupidity.'

It seems that Dawkins has failed to heed Anthony Flew's advice that in order to be taken seriously as an academic one should present one's opponents' arguments in their strongest form. Perhaps Dawkins is afraid that if he presents his opponents' arguments thus he will be unable to refute them?

From atheism to belief in God

Peter Hitchens has a new book out today called Rage against God which, according to the publisher, is 'an autobiographical and spiritual journey from atheism to faith in God through the power of reasoning'. In this article Peter Hitchens describes how his generation thought they 'had grown out of the nursery myths of God, angels and Heaven. We had modern medicine, penicillin, jet engines, the Welfare State, the United Nations and 'science', which explained everything that needed to be explained.' Hitchens later came to see the poverty of this vision, and the inadequacies and dangers of atheism led him to eventually reject it as a worldview and embrace belief in God. In this article he also discusses the lifelong rivalry between him and his brother, Christopher, and, interestingly, his brother's failure to acknowledge, let alone address, the problems with atheism.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

'Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe? Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence? Or does it need a creator, and, if so, does he have any other effect on the universe? And who created him?'

(Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, London 1988, p.174.)

Stephen Hawking is a scientist who recognises there is a distinction between questions which ask what exists in the universe and those that concern why the universe exists, even if his subsequent, and notorious, comment about knowing the mind of God is forgetful of this.

Atheists and Fairytales

At a literary conference in Oxford ten years ago Philip Pullman, talking about the final book in his well known children's trilogy in which God dies, said: 'We're used to the Kingdom of Heaven; but you can tell from the genera thrust of the book that I'm of the devil's party, like Milton. And I think it's time we thought about a republic of Heaven instead of the Kingdom of Heaven. The King is dead. That's to say I believe the King is dead. I'm an atheist.'

However, all this blatant atheistic propaganda didn't go down too well in the United States where they still care about the messages their children receive. And, in spite of Pullman's hypocritical attempts to conceal his atheistic message, The Golden Compass flopped at the American box office in 2007 and plans to complete the trilogy were dropped by the film studio.

This month Pullman is again talking in Oxford about another book which he is promoting at the Oxford Literary Festival. An atheist of long standing and as far as I know not a New Testament scholar, Pullman has written a book on Christ. According to Pullman his new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is part novel, part history and part fairy tale. This sort of thing, of course, has never been done before! Do I detect a slight whiff of desperation?

Pursuing The Truth

Contrary to persistent atheist rumours, Antony Flew has not backtracked on his commitment to theism, though, as he himself freely admits in this BBC interview, he has not reached a finally settled position. It seems that any degree of uncertainty in the pursuit of truth is anathema to atheists who mistake openness to enquiry as a sign of weakness, rather than strength.

Dawkins' sexed-up atheism

How does Richard Dawkins respond to Antony Flew's allegation that in The God Delusion Dawkins misrepresents Einstein's view of divine intelligence:

'Antony Flew, having lost the ability to write a book, was persuaded by a Christian ghost writer, Roy Varghese, to let him write it instead. It is one thing for a footballer or a supermodel to use a ghost writer, but there is something absurd about a philosopher using a ghost writer. Flew has now apparently lost the ability to read a book, too, for his 'review' of The God Delusion turns out to be a review of its index and nothing but its index. He only needed to read Chapter 1, in order to see the absurdity of his claims about my treatment of Einstein.'
(Quoted in The Telegraph)

The unashamedly personal nature of much of Dawkins' response, from someone who makes much of being a promoter of well reasoned argument, hardly amounts to an adequate rebuttal of Flew's charge. Leaving that aside, lets take up Dawkins' point that one only need read Chapter 1 of The God Delusion to see that he has provided an accurate representation of Einstein's view of God:

'A deist, too, [like a theist] believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a nonsupernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.

'There is every reason to think that famous Einsteinisms like 'God is subtle but he is not malicious' or 'He does not play dice' or 'Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?' are pantheistic, not deistic, and certainly not theistic. 'God does not play dice' should be translated as 'Randomness does not lie at the heart of all things.' 'Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?' means 'Could the universe have begun in any other way?' Einstein was using 'God' in a purely metaphorical, poetic sense. . . . .'
(Quoted on Dawkins' website)

Is it accurate to portray Einstein as an adherent of Dawkins pantheism as 'sexed-up atheism'? Here's what Einstein had to say on an occasion when he was asked to define God:

'I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist.'
(Quoted in M. Jammer, Einstein and Religion, Princeton 1999, p. 48.)

Looks like Flew might have a case.