What’s been the response to posting on the Reason Rally? Let’s talk about it tonight at Deeper Waters.
Last week, several of us in conjunction with truereason.org blogged about the upcoming Reason Rally. What an amazing response we had! What was amazing was the amount of atheist responses and how it was the same thing over and over. For all the talk I hear about free-thinkers, atheists I meet on the internet seem to think exactly alike.
To be fair, there are some who don’t and these are even my friends on Facebook. There are a number of atheists who I respect. I do not want to give their names seeing as that’s their choice, but I can tell them that as friends of my who I’ve met on my internet travels on Facebook, if they’re on the list, they have my respect.
What is so interesting about all of this is the absolute horror the other atheists have at the thought of Christians wanting to show up at the Reason Rally. If I’m sitting at home and I hear the doorbell ring and I find out that there are Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door, I have sheer delight. Why shouldn’t I? I’m confident in what I know and I’m prepared to defend it.
I would think the atheists should be sitting back and thinking “Oh. The Christians want to come and play do they? Well let them come and challenge us and we’ll tear them to pieces!”
Some have asked if we would want them coming to our church services. My response to that would be “Please!” We do want you to come to our churches and be willing to challenge us. This is one reason I think every church should have at least one person who is a go-to on apologetics issues. That way, when the atheist comes knocking, someone can help. Sadly, too many churches would be prone to crumple immediately. This is not the fault of Christianity as Christ taught it, but of a lazy mentality in the world that has carried over to our Christianity. For these atheists who act with disdain at the thought of Christians coming, the same is going on with them.
As I have said, Richard Dawkins will be the main speaker at this event and too many exemplify Dawkins’s style. Dawkins, for instance, wrote a magnificent book called “The Blind Watchmaker.” This book was well-written and was able to sustain an argument. I do not think it works necessarily, but one can read that book and see Dawkins as intelligent and well-informed in it. Dawkins’s great weakness in it is that even if he can establish macroevolution, and I would have no problem if he did, macroevolution does not equal atheism.
Now compare that to “The God Delusion.” In this one, we have a childish rant that simply thinks the ultimate stumper is “Who made God?” As one who knows the Thomistic arguments that Dawkins deals with in the book, I can assure anyone that Dawkins does not know them. No Thomistic scholar would think Dawkins has answered anything. Dawkins’s own question of “Who made God?” would have been answered had he read the chapter on Simplicity, which would have been the very next chapter.
Unfortunately, since the new atheists have become popular, the debate has lessened in its quality. There is a benefit however in that if this rate continues, atheist scholarship will just decline more and more. If the atheist movement wants to strengthen itself, one of the best things it can do is keep its distance from the new atheists.
It is as if at this point the new atheists think that even having the debate is pointless. For those of us who are interested in real looks at the truth, this is not the case and books by the new atheists do not end the debate. New atheists are hardly convincing when they attempt to argue that there’s no evidence that Jesus even existed. It’s a position Bart Ehrman even says should not be taken.
What do we do now? Just sit back and enjoy watching how the so-called champions of reason just can’t seem to stand having anyone who could be intruding on their playground. Hopefully one day the ones who place so much stock in reason will learn to develop theirs.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
Support Deeper Waters on Patreon!
