God and Father Christmas
In recent years, atheism has enjoyed something of a resurgence, especially with the rise of the so called “New Atheism”. That term was first coined back in 2006 to describe the group of media-savvy atheists—men like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and the late Christopher Hitchens—whose books attacking religion in general and Christianity in particular have sold by the truckload. Yet despite its popularity, much of contemporary atheism thrives on poor arguments and cheap soundbites, making claims that simply don’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny. Like a cheaply made cardigan, they’re full of loose threads that quickly unravel if you tug them.
Let me illustrate with an example from New Atheism’s founding father, Richard Dawkins, whose books have sold millions of copies. Dawkins thinks religion isn’t merely wrong, but insane, that those who believe in God are quite literally deluded. Faith in God is as crazy as belief in—well, let’s allow Dawkins to speak for himself:
Holy Proof
Today I’m giving space to Sheridan Voysey, whose new book Resilient: Your Invitation to a Jesus-Shaped Life launches on Wednesday (don’t miss the free giveaways here). Resilient is a book of 90 readings tracing the theme of resilience through the Sermon on the Mount and beyond. Here’s an excerpt.
“But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:44–45)
In his book The Evidence for God, Loyola University philosopher Paul Moser offers a fascinating case for the existence of God. His basic argument goes like this:
If there is a God, this God would need to be worthy of worship. (We may worship lesser gods like Thor or money, but that doesn’t make them worthy of worship.) To be worthy of worship, a God would need to be loving—even to the point of loving his enemies. And if there was such a God, this God would want his creatures to love each other too, as love always wants love shared.
Moser then asks if there’s evidence for such a God in human experience. As humans clearly have a selfish bent, what accounts for their loving acts toward others? Why does our conscience often feel pricked when we’re selfish? How can people like Wade Watts or Martin Luther King Jr. radically love their enemies? Moser suggests these experiences are evidence for the God of Christian belief. And, Moser adds, as we respond to his invitation of relationship, God transforms us into his loving character, proving his existence even more.
The Loch Ness Monster’s Moustache
(or: The Terrible Consequences of Really Bad Arguments)
What follows is a sample first chapter of my book, The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist. If you enjoyed it, please do consider buying the full book, which is available both as a paperback and an ebook. It’s available online, or from all good bookstores. (You can also download a PDF of this sample chapter).
I remember the first time that I saw the bus. An old friend of mine had telephoned me out of the blue a few days before, and in a conspiratorial whisper had hissed: “You need to get down to London. There are atheist buses here”.
“Atheist buses?” I replied, bleary eyed. It was long past midnight. “How much have you drunk, Tom?”
“Only four pints,” Tom indignantly replied.
“Well, I’ve always personally thought that the slightly devil-may-care attitude to road safety of many London bus drivers tends to bring people closer to God, rather than drive them away.”
“This bus didn’t try to drive me away, it tried to drive over me. Admittedly I was lying semi-comatose in the road at the time—”
“I knew it!”
“—at Hammersmith and the atheist bus almost ran me over.”
“You do realise,” I explained, in the patient tone I reserve for small children and airline check in agents, “that just because a London bus almost flattens a liberal Anglican lying on a zebra crossing, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Richard Dawkins is resorting to hit-and-run attempts to keep the religious affiliation statistics favourable.”
“I’m used to being nearly run over, I’ve holidayed in France many times,”[1] snapped Tom. “But this was an atheist bus I tell you.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“Yes! Now come down to London and see. Besides, you owe me a beer from that time when you lost the bet about the Archbishop’s beard.”[2]
And so it was that I found myself, a few weeks later on a rainy July afternoon, standing among a crowd of damp tourists outside Oxford Circus tube station. We watched the traffic as cars, taxis, lorries, and the occasional sodden cyclist trundled past. And, then, at last, a bus rounded the corner. A big, red London bus sporting a huge advertisement on the side which announced in large, friendly letters: “There’s Probably No God. Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life”.
A Little Summer Reading
One of the things I love about summer is the opportunity afforded by the slightly quieter pace to tackle the pile of reading that’s been growing on my desk over the last year. Having a seven-week old baby puts a cramp on the quiet reading time, but here are a few of the things I’ve managed to get my teeth into in the past few weeks. There are some great books here: do check a few of them out.
The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist
“A breath, a gust, a positive whoosh of fresh air. Made me laugh, made me think, made me cry.” — Adrian Plass
In the last decade, atheism has leapt from obscurity to the front pages: producing best- selling books, making movies, and plastering adverts on the side of buses. There’s an energy and a confidence to contemporary atheism: many people now assume that a godless scepticism is the default position, indeed the only position for anybody wishing to appear educated, contemporary, and urbane. Atheism is hip, religion is boring.
Shining Like Stars
I recall with clarity a night a few years ago when my wife and I were on vacation in southern California. We’d spent the day hiking in the mountains and, in the afternoon, had descended to explore the mysterious and ancient landscape of Mono Lake—one of the oldest lakes in North America. Pinned to the information board by the parking lot was a sign advertising a talk by a Park Ranger that evening: “Stars over Mono Lake”. And so it was, at 9pm, we found ourselves lying on the ancient sands, looking up a night sky in which a million points of light glowed with an intensity I’d never seen before. The air was cold and clear, the hauntingly beautiful desert silence broken only by the occasional howl of a lonely coyote, cry of an insomniac gull, or scream for help of a distant and woefully lost tourist.
The Measure of Mankind
One bright spring morning in the early 1630s, a wealthy Dutch merchant was delighted to receive a visit from a sailor bringing a tip-off that a very valuable cargo had just arrived at the docks. As a reward for the information, the merchant presented the sailor with a fine red herring. Whilst the merchant was distracted for a moment, the sailor saw, lying among the debris on the shop counter, what he thought was an onion. Thinking it would go nicely with his fish breakfast, the sailor surreptitiously slipped it into his pocket. That, however, was no onion — it was a Semper Augustus tulip bulb and this was the height of the “Dutch Tulip Craze”, which saw bulbs valued higher than gold and sold for extraordinary sums of money. That one bulb alone was worth three thousand florins (over $1,000)! As soon as he spotted it missing, the furious merchant launched a search of the docks. Finally the sailor was found, sitting happily on a coil of ropes, chewing the last mouthful of his herring and “onion”.[1]
Character and Conviction
In a fascinating essay in Education Forum, the magazine of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, Stephen Anderson tells a chilling story of a philosophy class he was teaching on ethics.[1] Wanting an “attention getter” to shock his students into thinking morally, he displayed a photo of Bibi Aisha. She was a young Afghani girl who, aged just 14, was forced into marriage with a Taliban fighter, who proceeded to horribly abuse her. After suffering four years of violence, Aisha fled but was soon captured. Her husband and other family members then hacked off her nose and ears and left her to die in the mountains where she was later rescued by aid workers.
