Newish Atheists

I have been catching up with atheist literature.

First came God is Not Great by the late Christopher Hitchens. It is a racy read as befits a book by a journalist. In the end though it is not compelling - you look for arguments and get anecdotes. You expect a reasoned discussion about why atheist regimes (Stalin, Hitler) killed more than religious ones in the 20th Century and get an angry diatribe about the support given to said regimes by the Pope and the Orthodox church. I agree - it is appalling - but hardly demolishes Christianity or whitewashes atheism.

It is interesting to see the arguments these writers marshall: religion kills (all the wars religion has caused); it is hazardous to health (refusal to allow condoms in Africa); metaphysical claims for existence of God are unconvincing; arguments from design fallacious; revelation – OT is a ‘nightmare’, NT is evil, the Koran borrowed; the miraculous is tawdry; hell is immoral; religion's corrupt beginnings (Mormon - yes well...); religion not needed for moral behaviour; the East is as bad as the west (not according to Sam Harris who rates Buddhism as light years ahead of anything in the West); child abuse; collusion in secular totalitarian regimes (as above); it resists rationality and seeking truth; above all it is manufactured.

My appetite whetted I went for Atheist Universe - The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism by a less well known author, David Mills. Four fifths of this book is about the scientific issues of creation and evolution. Hardly in itself the answer to Christian Fundamentalism. There were a couple of other chapters - on hell, the non-danger as he sees it of internet porn and a brief dismissal of the notion that America was founded on Christian principles.

Most engaging was Sam Harris's The End of Faith. Like all the 'new atheists' he is fixated by a definition of faith I have yet to come across in any reliable Christian context - that it is 'unjustified belief', or believing without any evidence.

Armed with this mis-definition Harris brilliantly picks apart religions: it is anti-rational and dangerous, there is no place for it in civilised society; progress is not possible in religion; fear of death is at root of much of it; evidence – religion is satisfied with relying on none; there are legitimate experiences that we call religious but which can be brought under the government of reason and should be; good and evil – based on what causes happiness or suffering; we need a study of consciousness - spirituality without religion – Buddhism rocks, Christianity, Judaism and Islam suck; remember how Christianity treated witches and Jews; the horror that is Islam; we waste too much time and money fighting sin - especially drugs, and Christianity holds back medicine (embryo research etc).

And so on.

Harris has written other books, on ethics (The Moral Landscape) and spirituality without religion (Waking Up). He is the most penetrating of the new atheists so far but - I shall be interested to see what he makes of the morality and spirituality issues in his books. I know John Lennox has had a go at his morality without religion arguments (see Lennox, Against the Flow , a superb exposition of the book of Daniel).

But in the end I have not found a compelling argument to give up believing in God and in Jesus Christ. Or in the glories of a personal God, of the Trinity, of eternal love, of a personally created universe and of man in his image, of the beauty of holiness, of eternal life, of the wonders of God's law, of inviolable justice, and yes, of the horrors of hell, of the glories of the Bible and God's plan for his people, and of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Unverified belief Harris calls it. But there is plenty of evidence. And there is the human soul - an idea he plays with. And there is a knowing that is not based on the senses but does not contradict them (usually) and is stronger and deeper than them. How can these atheists be so sure that what they cannot sense is not there?

And I think what a skimmed milk universe these people live in, how thin, tawdry, empty. After all, their philosophy is bounded by what can increase happiness and decrease suffering. What? Is suffering the worst evil? And is earthly happiness the greatest good? How sad.