what the new a are s and how e should responddownloads.mabcmd.org/apologetics/what_the_new...god is...

WHAT THE NEW ATHEISTS ARE SAYING

AND HOW WE SHOULD RESPOND

MARVIN R PATRICK ASSOCIATE PASTOR

MOUNT AIRY BIBLE CHURCH

Who Are the New Atheists?

What Are They Saying?

Arguments from Atheists and Our Response

Closing Thoughts and Q&A

WHO ARE THE NEW ATHEISTS?

Richard Dawkins

Sam Harris

Christopher Hitchens

Daniel Dennett

Richard Dawkins

Evolutionary Biologist Author

The Selfish Gene The Extended Phenotype The Blind Watchmaker The God Delusion The Greatest Show on Earth

Sam Harris

Neuroscientist Author

The End of Faith Letter to a Christian Nation The Moral Landscape

(deceased)

Essayist & Journalist Author

No One Left to Lie To (Clinton) Letters to a Young Contrarian The Portable Atheist God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons

Everything Hitch-22 (memoir)

Christopher Hitchens

Daniel Dennett

Philosopher & Cognitive Scientist Author

Brainstorms The Mind’s I Darwin’s Dangerous Idea Freedom Evolves Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural

Phenomenon

WHAT ARE THEY SAYING?

The Goal of the New Atheist

They want to convince people:

1. In order to believe in God a person must be unintelligent or self-deceived.

2. All religions are dangerous.

Richard Dawkins The God Delusion

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”

Richard Dawkins The God Delusion

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction; jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic [hates women], homophobic racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal [killing one’s own child], pestilential, megalomaniacal [delusional fantasies of power], sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Bill Maher Real Time with Bill Maher

“We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. If you look at it logically, it's something that was drilled into your head when you were a small child. It certainly was drilled into mine at that age. And you really can't be responsible when you are a kid for what adults put into your head.”

Christopher Hitchens God is Not Great

“Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.”

“Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.”

AronRa The Thinking Atheist, interview 1/31/2012

“Science doesn’t answer all the questions. Religion answers none of them…. Religion has never gotten anything right; it’s gotten a heck of a lot wrong. That’s why I say, science doesn’t know everything. Religion doesn’t know anything.”

Sam Harris Letter to a Christian Nation

“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.”

“The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are.”

Daniel Dennett Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

“I should emphasize this, to keep well-meaning but misguided multiculturalists at bay: the theoretical entities in which these tribal people frankly believe—the gods and other spirits—don't exist. These people are mistaken, and you know it as well as I do. It is possible for highly intelligent people to have a very useful but mistaken theory, and we don't have to pretend otherwise in order to show respect for these people and their ways.”

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind

“I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in.”

ARGUMENTS FROM ATHEISTS AND OUR RESPONSE

Atheist Arguments Faith Is Unreasonable/Irrational

The Claim

“Mr. Hitchens said he realized that belief in God was irrational at age 9.”

—Sewell Chan, Hitchens, Sharpton and Faith

We saw the quote earlier, organized religion is “irrational.”

—Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

Belief in God is like a belief in Santa Claus. —Richard Dawkins (a regular comment)

The Response

How many people do you know became believers in Santa as an adult?

How many people do you know became believers in Jesus as an adult?

How many books of philosophy have been written about Santa?


The Response

Why has Richard Dawkins not written a companion book to The God Delusion called The Santa Delusion? —Andy Bannister

If Christianity is irrational, what are you going to do with all the great minds—philosophers, scientists, writers, and thinkers, past and present—who were and are Christians?

So we’re rational about all things but God?


The Response

We don’t know things to be true only because of evidence, but also because of our experience. Faith is placed in a person to whom we relate.

We don’t throw out science, but it has limits.

• Science cannot prove logic.

• Science cannot prove the scientific method.

• Science cannot prove—nor disprove—God.


Atheist Arguments Religion Leads to War/Evil/Suffering

The Claim

“Good people do good things and bad people do bad things, but for good people to do bad things—that takes religion.”

—Steven Weinberg, Facing Up

“Most, if not all, of the violent enmities in the world today” are due to the “divisive force of religion.”

—Richard Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain


The Response

These statements exaggerate the crimes of religious fanatics.

• Much has been done under the banner of Christ that is not condoned by Christ.

• Islam took the Middle East and parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia by force. More than 200 years later Christianized Europe retaliated (Crusades).


The Response

These statements neglect or rationalize the crimes of secular or atheistic fanatics.

• Mao Zedong – seventy million deaths

• Joseph Stalin – twenty million deaths

• Adolph Hitler – ten million deaths, six million of them were Jews

• Pol Pot – almost two million deaths


The Response

The idea that religion leads to war is overly simplistic. Seldom is war limited to one cause.

Typically governments create war. Should we remove all governments?

Islam does not compare to Christianity. If the four horseman attacked Islam in the same way they attack Christianity, they could all easily be dead (Hitchens has been more equitable about this than the others).


The Response

Jesus never did violence. Instead, violence was done to Him.

The standard we see from Christianity is peace, care, love, and understanding. That does not mean that all people who claim Christianity follow these tenets.

Atheist Arguments Science and Religion Are Incompatible

The Claim

“As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion [believers in the Bible] because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise.”

—Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Fundamentalist religion is hell-bent on ruining the scientific education of countless thousands of innocent, well-meaning, eager young minds.”

—Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion


The Claim

“A modern believer can say and even believe that his faith is quite compatible with science and medicine, but the awkward fact will always be that both things have a tendency to break religion's monopoly, and have often been fiercely resisted for that reason.”



The Heart of the Matter

“In the dimension of describing and explaining the world, science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not.” —Wilfrid Sellars,

Science, Perception, and Reality

“Naturalists are extremely skeptical of claims about reality that are not justified by scientific methods in the hard sciences.”

—J. P. Moreland, God is Great, God is Good



Stephen Jay Gould proposed a popular view of science and religion commonly called NOMA—”Non-Overlapping Magisteria.” The basic idea is that science handles the domain of facts while religion handles the domain of values. Since these domains are completely separate, there is no room for conflict. The new atheists do not hold to this view.

The Response

Understand, religion makes claims about truth/facts. Anyone who believes in God is making a claim that God’s existence is a fact.

Understand, science says there is no way to provide empirical evidence that God exists, therefore religion cannot make this claim.

What empirical evidence will you provide that proves empirical evidence is the only kind of evidence?


The Response

Over history, religion and science have gotten along just fine.

Real science and Christianity will always line up with each other. There are numerous scientists who are Christians.

On www.DissentFromDarwin.org over 700 scientists have signed a statement saying they are skeptical of Darwinian evolution.


The Response

Christian Scientists:

John Polkinghorne – theoretical physicist and prof. of mathematical physics at Cambridge

John Lennox – prof. of mathematics at Oxford

Francis Collins – physician & geneticist; former director of the Human Genome Project

Michael Behe – biochemist and prof. at Lehigh University


Atheist Arguments Darwinian Evolution Is a Fact

The Claim

“The evidence that makes [evolution] a fact is partly fossil evidence, partly comparative evidence, looking at modern species and comparing their bones, their organs, their structures generally, and especially their molecules, their genes, at a molecular level. This is extremely persuasive and powerful evidence.”

—Richard Dawkins, bigthink.com/ideas/17048


The Claim

“To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant—inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.”

—Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea



“The three most important ideas that are wrapped together under the name of ‘Darwin’s theory of evolution’ are 1) random variation, or mutation, 2) natural selection, and 3) common descent.”

—Michael Behe, God Is Great, God Is Good



“In Darwin’s theory, random mutation is the fuel that allows natural selection to operate, giving rise to different creatures in the process of common descent.”

—Michael Behe, God Is Great, God Is Good


The Response

“I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transition in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them... Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils... I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument. ” (Personal letter from Dr. Colin Patterson, Sr. Paleontologist at British

Museum of Natural History in London and author of Evolution, to creationist Luther Sunderland, author of Darwin’s Enigma.)


The Response

Speciation


The Response

“C. longipes was a bird-like dinosaur that

walked on two long thin legs. It had short

arms with two clawed fingers on each hand.

No feathers have yet been found

for the species.” www.dinosaur-world.com/feathered_dinosaurs/flight_evolution.htm


The Response

Archaeopteryx (the so-called missing link between lizards and birds)


The Response


The Response

“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.”

—Charles Darwin, Origen of Species

The problem is that there is still no fossil evidence for vertical transitions from one species to another.


The Response

Irreducible Complexity

“By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.”

—Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box

Irreducible Complexity

What part of the mouse trap can you remove and it still function properly?


The Response – bacteria cell


The Response – bacteria flagellum


By random chance, this…

…turns into this.


The Response

“But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”

—Charles Darwin 1881 letter to William Graham about Graham’s book on the universe

GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR RESPONSES

General Guidelines for Responses

1. Pray. “When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don’t, they don’t.”

—Sir William Temple

2. Be patient—wait on God. Even if you can’t lead them to Christ you can still put a stone in their shoe.

—Greg Koukl


3. Ask questions. Get to know them, and make sure you understand their points.

4. Character is important. Many atheists are in their position because Christians have failed them.

5. Be humble. If you don’t know something, admit it. You can always talk again later.


6. Consider the individual. Talk to them as a person. We are all made in the image of God.

7. Point them to Jesus. This is not about winning an argument. This is about leading people to Christ.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Closing Thoughts

“We [atheists] may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness [sic], and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.”


Closing Thoughts

“There can be no open-mindedness in atheism. I consider it very closed-minded to completely deny or reject God's existence considering there is no way to prove it. I once claimed atheism. But once I realized how closed-minded it is I decided it wasn't for me.”

—Garrett Maness

“Don’t you think you should keep the door open in case God shows up?”

—Steve Schrader talking to a humanist skeptic that said there’s no way God exists

QUESTIONS

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