Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we continue our dive into the ocean of truth! Tonight, we finally begin that project I spoke of which will involve tangling with one of the so-called sharks. As far as I’m concerned, this shark really has no bite and not even much bark. We’ll be looking at two books by Victor Stenger. The first one will be “The New Atheism: Taking A Stand For Science And Reason.”
You know it’s going to be good when even the title is logically fallacious.
For one thing, Stenger has begun by poisoning the well. The conclusion he wants the readers to follow is that defending atheism is the same as defending science and reason. In turn then, to defend that which is contradictory to atheism, namely theism, one is going against science and reason. So, if you are a theist, you are automatically opposed to science and reason.
Now I will grant that sadly, this is the approach that a lot of Christians do take and I even more sadly grant that a lot of these Christians are in the ministry. It is fine to oppose some proposed truths of science and reason, but these should be opposed on the grounds of science and reason. For too many, there’s just “The Bible tells me so” which leads us to a supposed battle between science and religion, which is exactly what the new atheists want.
Even more, the title will make someone who is exceptionally religious not want to go into science. The new atheists might think that all the better, except there can be no doubt that many of the greatest minds who have ever lived have been people who are theists. If it is stated that one either has science or one has religion, then those who think religion to be a greater good, and I think all Christians should, will not go into science and science will be diminished for this.
Nevertheless, let’s start getting into the book some. We will simply start with the preface tonight. In this, Stenger gives a history of some of the books that the new atheists have written. It is interesting to note that while the first mentioned is Sam Harris who wrote after 9/11 and seeing the destruction caused by followers of Islam, Harris decided to include Christianity and in fact, most of the book, The End of Faith, was devoted to attacking Christianity instead of Islam.
After all, the fruit of Christianity has been an increased spread of literacy, increased study of medicine, the scientific revolutions, the teaching that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, the belief in the equality of human beings ontologically, praying for your enemies, and giving to those less fortunate.
Yep. Definitely Christianity is the worst of the two.
Now some could object that in recent history there have been attacks on abortion clinics by Christians.
Yes. There have been. There have been so many you could count the number on one hand.
Meanwhile, how many attacks have their been by Islamic terrorists in the same time frame?
You could also note that Christians routinely condemn those attacks on abortion clinics. How many Muslims are doing the same? Have we seen statements from terrorist organizations denouncing the attacks on innocents?
Of course, you could also bring up the Crusades and the Inquisition. Absent from mention of the Crusades usually is the point that they were often defensive and the Muslims made the first attack. Now granted, not all that went on in the Crusades was good. At the same time, not all was evil, but rare is the atheist that has read anything scholarly on the Crusades. As for the Inquisition, it too was not the bloodbath it is often painted to be as recent looks at the period show. The reader is referred to the work of Henry Kamen as an example. Some reports have the Spanish Inquisition, the greatest of them all, having around 3,000 deaths. Indeed, 3,000 too many, but not the hundreds of thousands we’re normally told about.
To get back to Stenger, he goes on with the history of the movement of new atheism and writes the following:
All of us have been criticized for not paying enough attention to modern theology. We are more interested in observing the world and taking our lessons from those observations than debating finer points of scriptures that are probably no more than fables to begin with.
To begin with, if all of you are criticized for this, could it be because there is some truth to the criticism? I challenge the reader to go through a book by the new atheists and see how often they really tangle with the best ideas that theologians have put forward. Even a look at the bibliography of Sam Harris’s work “The End Of Faith” would be enough to see there is little or no interaction. It is almost as if no one is opposing atheism. Granted, Stenger does make some attempts to do such, but they are poor attempts as he seems to have chosen the weakest defenses.
If you want to criticize a worldview, you need to know the reasons the leading minds in that worldview hold to that worldview. One wonders if Stenger would accept it if I decided to go after evolution but said “I have been criticized for not paying enough attention to modern arguments for evolution. I am more interested in observing the world and taking my lessons from those observations rather than debating finer points of a scientific theory that’s probably a fable to begin with.”
I don’t care what your stance on evolution is. That would not be a valid approach to take. Stenger, Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens would all condemn such an approach and rightly so. However, it is the exact same approach that the new atheists take to theology. Even if you think it’s nonsense, it’s not enough to just assert that. You have to demonstrate that.
Note also that they think all the points are made from the Scriptures. Leading Christian philosophers will argue for the existence of God without the use of Scripture. Now there are times you have to use Scripture. If you are arguing for the historicity of Scripture, you will need to use Scripture. However, that is not the topic mainly in the works of the New Atheists. Absent however is serious interaction with members of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Arguments are waived away as if they’re nonsense on their face.
Why assume the only recourse these thinkers have is to say “The Bible says so?” Probably because Stenger and others have not interacted with these thinkers to really know what they say. They have simply written them off as nonsense because these thinkers are religious.
Finally, Stenger says the accounts are probably no more than fables to begin with. Absent is any reason to think this is the case. Now it could be the Scriptures are fables, but why presuppose that? It is once again a bifurcation that has been drawn. If you believe in the Bible, you must be irrational.
In writing later on about morality, Stenger says “Furthermore, we do not see morality as god-given but rather the result of humanity’s own social development.”
Development into what?
A better community? But we can only have a better community if we have some standard outside ourselves that we are progressing towards? As soon as Stenger sets up an ideal for the way humanity should be, he is positing something beyond humanity that humanity is to attain, which is the very reality he is denying.
If there are no ideals, then Stenger and his ilk need to drop their condemnation of the Old Testament and any other teachings they don’t like. They need to drop how some Christians supported slavery. They need to drop any supposed evils of the church. That was just the way society was at the time.
Of course, it could be that one society is better than another.
But then, that would only be determined by some standard outside of societies by which that can be determined.
We cannot even say modern society is better. Which one? The society of the Christian church in America? The society of secularism in England? The society of Catholicism in the Vatican? The society of atheism in Russia? The society persecuting Christians in China? Which one is better? By what standard?
But we will have more on this when we get to the chapter on morality.
Harris also says that the most unique position of the New Atheists is that faith, which is belief without supporting evidence, should not be given the respect and even deference it obtains in modern society.
Question Mr. Stenger.
Do you have any evidence that that is the definition of faith?
I challenge you to find one biblical dictionary that cites “Belief without supporting evidence” as the definition of faith. I cite you to find any authoritative source on the Greek language that tells me that that is what the word “pistis” means. If you cannot do this, then the conclusion I reach is that you are believing something without supporting evidence, the very act that you condemn.
Indeed, this will be pushed again on Stenger when he defines faith in another chapter. It is not only false, it is again poisoning the well, a logical fallacy. It’s quite odd that there are so many logical fallacies from those who think that they are the champions of reason. As we shall see, the new atheists are hardly reasonable and are in fact more emotional than anything else.
There have been several words written so far, and we are just in the preface! It will be interesting to see just how much we have to say about the new atheism as we continue going through. Keep in mind I’m also trying to only hit highlights. Much more could be said and I hope many will read the works of the new atheists, simply in to see how pathetically weak they are.
We shall continue tomorrow.
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