Fear and Trembling

A very interesting article, “Is Richard Dawkins still evolving?” by Melanie Phillips ( The Spectator.co.uk ; Thursday, October 23, 2008), notes an interesting statement in Richard Dawkins’ last debate. It seems Dawkins recently made the statement: “A serious case could be made for a deistic God.” The article is a very interesting read. Here’s an excerpt from the article: ...I asked Dawkins whether he had indeed changed his position...He vehemently denied this and expressed horror that he might have given this impression. But he also said other things which suggested to me that some of his own views simply don't meet the criteria of empirical evidence that he insists must govern all our thinking. For example, I put to him that, since he is prepared to believe that the origin of all matter was an entirely spontaneous event, he therefore believes that something can be created out of nothing -- and that since such a belief runs counter to the very scientific principles of verifiable e...

I just finished Al Mohler’s book Atheism Remix . It’s a short, pithy call to Christians for a distinctly biblical response to Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Crossway’s new book blog has a link to a clip of Mohler talking about the topic. The book is a good read. Mohler summarizes a response from Alvin Plantinga in an article on the web called “The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum.” The web article was worth the price of Mohler’s book. Mohler chooses to summarize other people’s arguments instead of putting forth his own, and that does trouble me.

Stand to Reason’s blog contains a great post on the new video from our modern aethiest group. Here’s a sample from the post. Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris are actually doing us a favor. The thing I appreciate about these men is that they don't view religion as a relativistic, subjective enterprise. They take the claims of Christianity seriously by addressing them as truth claims, not preferences. In the first ten minutes of a video they've titled The Four Horsemen , they express frustration about the fact that people have made religion untouchable--that if a person tries to argue against the truthfulness of a religion, even the non-religious will shake a finger at him for criticizing it. I couldn't agree more with their frustration... I agree. I dislike the way most people in the modern church make religion subjective. When religion moves into the are of “blind faith,” our critics are right to ridicule us. The Christian faith...

An interesting article by Jonathan Barlow over at CRTA concludes as follows: I would do well at this point to break away and leave Dawkins in the morass of his purely contingent universe in which not even logic, science, and morality make any sense. For all of his huff and puff against faith, Dawkins lives in a drafty house of pure scientism that he has sealed up with faith -- faith in logic, of whose foundations he can give no account, faith in induction, upon which he builds science, and faith in the evolving human brain and the evolving human society to more often produce Martin Luther Kings than John Wayne Gacys. Strong words. Other links on the site back up these claims.

I have been a subscriber to Charles Colson’s Breakpoint newsletter for a long time now, and I find it helpful. The commentary and intights are almost always worth the time to read. This week’s was especially interesting as it begins a series on modern, militant atheism. Here’s a sample: In a recent issue of Scientific American, arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins and physicist Lawrence Krauss discussed the relationship between science and religion. Dawkins, whose latest book, The God Delusion, is only one of a slew of recent books attacking religious beliefs, prefers an "in your face" approach. He once wrote that "if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane." He then added "or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that." In his discussion with Krauss, Dawkins stood by his statement, calling it "a simple and sober statement of fact." … All of this begs the question: "Is faith, in partic...

As promised in the last post, I will discuss Richard Dawkins’ treatment of the argument from Scripture from his book The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006, p. 92-97): The historical evidence that Jesus claimed any sort of divine status is minimal … there is no good historical evidence that he ever thought he was divine. (p. 92) A wealth of textual evidence is used to validate the New Testament as an historical record. This historical record was written by eve-witnesses who had firsthand knowledge of the events they recorded or close companions of those eyewitnesses. This testimony can not be shrugged off with a sentence or two. Gary Habermas , who holds a Ph. D. in the History and Philosophy of Religion, puts it succi nctly, “We have in the New Testament essentially what the authors originally penned, and the texts have been confirmed time and again by various means.” Dawkins goes on, “Moreover, Luke screws up his dating by tactlessly mentioning events that histor...

Next in Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion , we find a discussion of the teleological argument, or argument from design. Stated the way Dawkins does, the argument goes from evidence of design in the universe and in living things to the existence of an ultimate designer. On page 139-140, he says: It is clear that here on Earth we are dealing with a generalized process for optimizing biological species, a process that works all over the planet, on all continents and islands, and at all times … This is a recurrent, predictable, multiple phenomenon, not a piece of statistical luck recognized with hindsight. And, thanks to Darwin, we know it is brought about: by natural selection. In Dawkins’ world, life appears and evolves into increasingly more complex organisms by a “process.” I am not a biologist. I am not a chemist, or a physicist. I am, however, an industrial engineer. Another name for industrial engineering is “process engineering.” I have spent a considerable portion of my life in the ...

Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006) evokes strong feelings. Most of the arguments presented are not cogent, and the next post or two will address some of them. Not everything will be addressed. Some of the statements he makes about probabilistic arguments seem intelligent. Some do not justify a response. The case presented will outline a strong confirmation of the basic tenants of Christianity. Dawkins quickly dismisses all of the classical arguments for God’s existence without reason. His issue is the infinite regress. This argument, called the cosmological argument because it is an argument from the existence of the cosmos, is more fully stated in the post Logic and God 3 . There are other forms of this argument ( what Norman Geisler calls the horizontal form for example ), but those are better stated elsewhere. In brief, the argument proceeds backwards through the series of causes that arrive at us. We cannot expect that an infinite reg...

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. – Romans 1:18-20, ESV Richard Dawkin’s book The God Delusion is an interesting set of polemics. If it were possible to win an argument based on insults and innuendo, this book would have ended all positive discussion of belief in God. Future posts will contain some of the more interesting quotes. Once again someone states that there is no positive argument which proves God’s existence. To answer with one line of thinking out of several, God is eternal. He has no beginning and no end. This is foundational for a very reasonable argument for His existence...