Friends, I believe our human minds are God’s greatest gift to us, and that it is God who gives our brain its greatest workout. Some experts agree. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #895

January 9, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

‘Atheism is Rather Simplistic’

By Bob Walters

“The fool says in his heart, there is no God.” Psalms 14:1, 53:1

I lived the first 47 years of my life blankly unaware – not hostile to, not angry at, just, unaware – of what it would mean to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

When faith arrived, church became a weekly thing and the Bible began making sense.  Through no discernable work on my part, the Holy Spirit did what it does and life was redirected toward new thoughts, new friends, new priorities, and mammoth, new curiosities. I had no preconceived notions, nor a shopping list of expectations.

I didn’t “want” anything; and I wasn’t begging forgiveness for anything.  Maybe I should have been, but it wasn’t greed or guilt, nor even hope or peace, that drew me in.

What truly sucked me in was 1. how many smart people seemed to be around church, and 2. how immediately I was intellectually sure this was no wild goose chase.  The mystical reality of God, faith, eternity, humanity in God’s image, and this unseen but deeply felt realm of transcendent purpose set like quick-dry concrete.

And when study began in earnest, meeting more people at church, and over time encountering Christian history’s preachers, authors, saints, thinkers, and philosophers, it was surprising and exciting to learn how many smart people over the past 2,000 years – including today – really “got” this whole Jesus thing.  Christianity isn’t going away.

Today’s breathless Christian pollsters incite panic about a culture of descending faith and diminishing church attendance, tracking “the nones” – those folks who claim no “religious” affiliation.  Well, I don’t think God depends on polls.  People are wise to depend on truth, which can be plainly stated as that which is always true, always real. 

America and England are arguably the most tolerant religious cultures on the planet, and also where religious nay-sayers find ample room at the public trough.

In the past 20 years we’ve seen the rise and fall of something called the “New Atheism.”  British scientist and renowned atheist Richard Dawkins wrote a book called The God Delusion in 2006, which was more of a harsh attack against believers than a reasoned debate against faith.  While its criticism was leveled primarily at Christians, the book’s timing – five years after 9/11 – proposed that all religion is bad because all religion causes violence.  So … let’s get rid of God.  Even Dawkins can’t do that.

Dawkins is prickly and condescending in his public statements about Christianity, and presents Darwinism as the be-all-end-all explanation of all things moral and existential.  His vigor, over time, has boomeranged, and “New Atheism” has faded.

I’ve just ordered Oxford Theologian Alister McGrath’s new book, Coming to Faith Through Dawkins.  It’s a compilation of essays by a dozen intellectuals from around the globe describing how they left atheism and found faith in Christ specifically because of Dawkins’ unkind and draconian – and some would say intellectually specious – polemics.  He called for examination of God … and the truth revealed itself.

Dawkins is happy to call those of faith something less than cerebrally gifted, but shies away from taking on a first-rate Christian thinker in an open debate.  William Lane Craig comes to mind; many Christians have read Craig’s “A Reasonable Response.”

McGrath – I’ve read his popular Christian Theology college textbook (twice) and his The Intellectual Life of C.S. Lewis – notes of Dawkins’ misfire that “life is complex and atheism is rather simplistic.” A rejection of everything will never illuminate the truth.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), age 69, offers this link (HERE) to a good, 28-minute podcast with McGrath by First Things contributing editor Mark Bauerlein. His review to follow soon.