Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I plan to start on another project of sorts tomorrow, but for tonight, I’ve been thinking about something for some time in reviewing the literature of the new atheists and now is the time to say it.
The more I read the new atheists, the more I want to thank God for them. Why is this? There are a number of reasons.
First off, new atheist literature is quickly heralded as gospel around the blogosphere. People are suddenly quoting Dawkins and Harris as authorities in areas that they are not authorities in. While that can be aggravating at times when you debate these people, I realize a blessing in it.
The new atheists are not skilled authorities in what they say. It is simply by doing some basic checking even that one can see what they say is just false. Consider how one can often hear that the New Testament is nothing like the original. The only name I ever see dealing with this is Ehrman, yet in the scholarly literature rather than the popular, even Ehrman speaks well of the veracity of the New Testament and there are numerous other sources one could check.
Second, the new atheists don’t know how to do good research. I have written further about this here. It’s not just that their bibliography is lacking. Consider how for the new atheists, an excellent rejoinder to ask a Christian is “Who made God?” This is the kind of question I expect from a small child in Sunday School. It is not one I expect from a serious thinker. Lo and behold however, there it is.
In this, they also get the argument wrong. How often have I seen this coupled with the argument that claims that we believe that “Everything that exists has a cause.” Never have I seen cited the Christian who makes such a claim. If you are out there, please be quiet. You’re hurting the cause.
They do the same with the moral argument. No one is making the argument that you have to believe in God to be a good person. I don’t deny that that should help, but that is not the argument. Yet time and time again the new atheists argue that atheists can be good people and think they’re making a point.
Lastly, the new atheists have lowered the standard for their side. If someone like Dawkins is seen as the pinnacle of atheistic thought and someone like P.Z. Myers is out saying “The Courtier’s Reply” which is simply admitting that one has not studied because one not need to because the opponent’s beliefs are just dumb, counts as having a real argument, then we are in good hands.
Of course, we Christians need to stick to our guns and do our hard study, but something like this can allow us to corner the market. The new atheists with their bad research just bring forth discarded myths about Christianity and we can deal with them even easier than we could in the past. More and more information comes showing the new atheists to be wrong about much of what they speak and their works being criticized by their fellow atheists.
So to the new atheists, I say this. Please keep writing books. Please keep going on speaking tours. Spread your message far and wide please. I just love reading your books and realizing how bad the competition is and it’s going to be so great to see the next generation of apologists, who are quite serious, rise up and be able to answer some of the weakest arguments if not the weakest arguments for atheism ever.
Tomorrow, I hope to start a new project.
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