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Introduction
Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens think that Christians are irrational and dangerous. Actually, it’s Islam that really gets their goat, but they dare not criticise Muslims too heavily in case they get the Salman Rushdie treatment. So Christians are, once more, a convenient whipping boy for atheist writers. They know that that Jesus’ command to love our enemies means that we won’t kill them.
Personally, I am grateful to these ‘New Atheists’, they get people’s attention. A couple of weeks ago we put a taster video on YouTube to advertise this talk, it was viewed 140 times in the first week, and a lot of people made comments. The temperature is rising as the feeling grows that atheism is ‘rational’, making sense of the facts, and religious belief of any persuasion is irrational and indefensible. Some have even used the word ‘evil’. OK, the gloves are off...
It is time to pull back the curtain and reveal the nasty truth about atheism.
First of all, atheism is a faith
Here’s a true story. A friend of mine has a son (I shouldn’t give you his real name so let’s call him Tom) in one of Sunderland’s primary schools. Recently Tom’s teacher was explaining the Big Bang theory to the class and he finished by saying, “So there is no need to believe in God, because science tells us how the world was made”. Tom immediately put up his hand and asked, “Who made the big explosion go off then?” The teacher was a bit stunned by his slightly impertinent question when another child chipped in, “Someone very, very intelligent!”
Towards the end of last year a group of atheists sponsored an advertising campaign on London buses. “There’s probably no God”, it said, “Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”. The word ‘probably’ gives the game away; they cannot be sure. If faith is building your life on something you cannot be sure about, then all my Christian friends and all my atheist friends are believers; they just believe different things! Atheism is a faith. To my atheist friends I would say, I admire your faith, I just don’t share it.
At this point atheists object and wearily point out that reason is on their side; the theory of evolution proves that there is no God. But even Tom and his friends know that this is cannot be true. What was it that really set everything in motion – where did everything come from – who lit the blue touch paper that created the universe?
Christians believe that reason points to an unchangeable being of unimaginable power brought the universe into existence. Atheists believe that it happened by chance. Both groups are believers.
Let me tell you what I do when I meet someone who is a downright atheist, you can try this yourself the next time you meet one. When someone says to me, “I am an atheist, I don’t believe in God” I am overcome with curiosity (really, I am) and I usually reply, “Hey, that is interesting. Most people pussy foot around calling themselves agnostics. What makes you so sure?” At this point atheists will usually raise the issue of suffering, or their belief in evolution, or just fall back on criticising the church. In every case, atheists assume the moral high ground, convinced that they are more rational than me. I usually reply, “Well, those are good reasons – do you want to know my reasons for believing in God?”
Yes, there are reasons for Christian faith; will look at those in a moment.
Meanwhile, atheists should be very careful about the moral high ground: it is an unsafe platform to fight from...
Secondly, atheism is really about morality.
Atheists claim loftily that what drives them is the search for truth, only they are honest enough to go wherever the truth leads them. Atheists are honest (or so they tell us) only Christians need an imaginary ‘crutch’ to lean on.
My experience is exactly the opposite. When Michael, an outwardly successful Christian minister with a large church to look after, began to voice his doubts to a couple of us he insisted that his was an agonising search in response to his growing intellectual doubts. He was lying, he had begun an affair with a married woman in the church and he needed to get rid of the God who would hold him to account for betraying his wife and her husband. Intellectual honesty is, in my experience, rare. People choose atheism because they just don’t want to have an inconvenient God telling them what to do.
Nevertheless, atheists will try to appear more honest-than-thou. They point out the atrocities and genocides that religions have encouraged. Well, I plead Guilty! Guilty as charged, organised religion has sanctioned misery on an infernal scale. But hold on a minute, if you want to see genocide done right - I mean on an industrial scale beyond the comprehension of the most perverted bishop - you need to call in the atheists. Good old Joe Stalin, Pol Pot and Mau Ze Tung make the most rabid religionists look like amateurs. Could it be that this most inhuman of behaviours is in more human that we dare admit, and that atheist ideology and religion are equally useful when we need to justify ourselves? Only atheism is less inhibited because there is no-one left to whom we must give an account. This tells me that the Christian doctrine of sin may be right on the money when it comes to explaining the way we really are.
To be sure, some atheists have courageously stood against evil, so have many Christians. Strangely, when it comes to helping the poor and oppressed, atheists seem to be in the minority, Christians in the (vast) majority.
Here’s the beef: atheism is not morally neutral. It springs both from a desire to do what we like and justifies any behaviour we want whilst being powerless to change the evil we see in the world, and ourselves.
Third, atheism is not more rational than Christian faith
As a Christian, what evidence can I advance that there is a God?
First, the universe exists, and the best explanation is that a transcendent being set it in motion. Think about this for a moment: atheists believe that all this came from – nothing – it takes faith to believe that! Theists believe that its more likely that an immaterial, timeless, space-less being of unfathomable power brought the universe into existence and from that moment, matter, energy, time and space began the cosmic dance that today is the subject of scientific study.
Second, the universe is fine-tuned to support intelligent life. Don’t take my word for it, this is Stephen Hawking:
“If the density of the universe one second after the Big Bang had been greater by one part in a thousand billion, the universe would have re-collapsed after ten years. On the other hand, if the density of the universe at that time had been less by the same amount, the Universe would have been essentially empty since it was about ten years old. How was it that the initial density of the universe was chosen so carefully? Maybe there is some reason why the Universe should have precisely the critical density?”
Stephen Hawking
There is no physical law which makes this essential, nor is it remotely likely that this happened by chance, which leaves you with a third possibility, that it happened by design.
Third, the existence of life itself. I personally have a great respect for Darwin and the theory of evolution – I spent six years of my life studying this stuff. Evolution is an attempt to understand how life forms have changed over time, new species have been created, and less well adapted ones have died out. What evolution does not explain, despite the many claims to the contrary, is how life got here in the first place. We are so blasé we can forget how amazing life really is. Don’t take my word for it, let Simon Conway Morris (Prof of Palaeontology at Cambridge) shake us out of our complacency:
“What is life? A spectacular tightrope walk on a gossamer thread between vast regions of crystaline immobility and chaotic flux. If you don't like that metaphor, try thinking of a pack of cards a mile high with an elephant perfectly balanced on top. And then there's it's uncanny self-organisation. Cells to consciousness - impressive isn't it?”
Simon Conway Morris
As a Christian I am convinced that a personal God must be the creator of life. I respect Darwin, but he was a canny old boy and called his book the Origin of Species and not the Origin of Life. I wish that today’s scientists were as wise! The more we understand about the natural world, the more we are bowled over by its Creator. These two ways of thinking are not enemies; they make wonderful friends if only we will let them.
Fourthly, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection is especially important because it was witnessed by believers, unbelievers, sceptics and enemies of Jesus. Nothing other than a physical resurrection explains the historical data we have available. Mainstream scholars maintain that this is the testimony of eye-witnesses. If this really happened, and the power of God is active in our world that is evidence we can build a reasonable faith upon.
Christian faith is reasonable – at least as reasonable as atheism.
A word for Christians: making the Case for God
I have dared to suggest that atheism may have its roots in moral wilfulness rather than the pursuit of truth. However, Christians need to be aware that they are another reason people become atheists – let’s call it ‘reverse evangelism’!
Atheists look at people who believe in God and don’t like what they see. Some Christians are a disgrace. Here is a comment from an atheist blogger who had been asked ‘Why do you have to be so angry?’ Here’s what she said:
I get angry when religious leaders opportunistically use religion, and people's trust and faith in religion, to steal, cheat, lie, manipulate the political process, take sexual advantage of their followers, and generally behave like the scum of the earth. I get angry when it happens over and over and over again. And I get angry when people see this happening and still say that atheism is bad because, without religion, people would have no basis for morality or ethics, and no reason not to just do whatever they wanted.
She’s right; all this makes me mad too. She continues:
I'm angry that so many believers treat prayer as a sort of cosmic shopping list for God. I'm angry that believers pray to win sporting events, poker hands, beauty pageants, and more. As if they were the centre of the universe, as if God gives a s**t about who wins the NCAA Final Four.
She’s right: if we are going to make the case for God in a secular society we have got to stop this trivial nonsense. Peter tells us how it’s done:
‘Be careful how you live among your unbelieving neighbours. Even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honourable behaviour, and they will believe and give honour to God when he comes to judge the world.’
There are times for speaking up clearly and unapologetically but only those who live out what they believe will ever be heard.