The New Atheism Debate: What's at Stake?

If you haven't already seen it, check out the Dawkins-Lennox debate: http://www.dawkinslennoxdebate.com/

I thought Lennox did a good job hitting the major issues with Dawkins' atheism in general, and some of his more outrageous claims in his ('I'm just trying to be rational here...') provocatively titled book, "The God Delusion." Though, I do admit I was hoping he would be a bit more aggressive. Chalk it up to British diplomacy, I suppose.

As I watched the debate, I was struck by Dawkins' fascinatingly stubborn and narrow grasp of reality and history. He is also arrogant, and amusingly, apparently totally oblivious to the fact.

Did you note his frustratingly confused conception of (Christian) faith, on which Lennox rightly calls him to task?

Also note his remarkable statement: "I cannot see how one can logically derive evil from atheism"? Such a comment defies all reason and credibility, and I think, betrays the depth of his historical and philosophical naivete.

Of course, neither atheism nor theism, as abstract concepts, necessarily entail or logically require any particular behavior - good or bad. Dawkins' argument runs both ways! After all, as such, they're ill-defined. Belief in what kind of god(s)? And disbelief in what sort of divinity? Remember, the early Christians were called "atheists" because they rejected the local Greek and Roman deities!

Nevertheless, such 'naked concepts' as "atheism" and "theism" do not exist by themselves. Atheism and theism are always embodied within a particular set of beliefs, values, and practices. Theism, even when divorced from any historic religious tradition (a more and more common form of 'faith' today), by whomever and wherever it is held, is always embedded and contextualized within a complex ideological and cultural web - a worldview. Not all theists (nor theisms) are alike.

Dawkins' point of course is that religious incarnations of theism, entailing the authority of sacred books and/or traditions, with their various ethical instructions and ceremonial observances, are more liable to be used by religious fanatics to justify and even guide them in their violence. Atheism, on the other hand, he argues, is purely negative. As such, it has no such body of traditions, religious authorities, or ceremonies. But here is where his naivete is so apparent: he fails to see that atheism too, historically, has its own 'religious' garb! Atheism always exists, everywhere and at all times, within a network of social, political and even religious traditions, authorities and ceremonies. Behold Stalin's Marxism! Behold Pol Pot! Atheism was hardly incidental to their atrocities. It was, as Lennox rightly points out, fundamental in their 'cultural revolution' as Marxists. A stronger case might be made for social Darwinism, modern eugenics and the cold logic with which the Nazi's carried out "the final solution."

Atheism, in one form or another, may not require violence (though here Dawkin's brutish, Darwinian naturalism stares us in the face, "red in tooth and claw"); but, neither does atheism forbid violence. How can it? It is absolutely amoral, and for that reason, utterly unworthy as the foundation for our comprehension of the world. Even Dawkins confesses that his naturalistic atheism cannot guide us at all in moral decisions - a fairly large swath of the human experience, wouldn't you say?

And here is where I see Dawkins as not only an amusingly confused and arrogant man, but dangerous. Just as he sees Christianity as a delusion, and hardly harmless - containing within it the seeds of irrational evil, following blindly "by faith" a morally horrific book - so I see his brand of atheism (refreshingly committed to belief in the truth as universal and absolute, I admit with Lennox) as not only deluded, but fundamentally depraved. Just as he fears the religious fanatic, absolutely committed to his faith (quite apart from reason and evidence, as Dawkins' frames these), so I fear the likes of Dawkins: a 'religious' zealot, absolutely convinced in his faith (his conception of 'rationality'). What's scary is that, unlike Christianity, his is fundamentally amoral. And amorality isn't amoral; as Augustine pointed out, a lack of good is nothing other than evil itself.

What is this brave, new ideological amorality Dawkins thrusts upon us - in the guise of the objective scientist ("....just following the facts," we are told)? Does he himself understand that it signifies the deconstruction of all moral values - do we see that it represents the unhinging of the world as we know it? What "rough beast" has been unleashed in our civilized and modern age? What sort of delusion is this (2Th.2:11)?

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?