Do You Prefer Hard-Core or Soft-Core?

A few hours after posting yesterday's blog entry, I read the following from Richard John Neuhaus in the May 2008 issue of First Things. It addresses the issue of "intellectually respectable" atheism versus the fuzzy logic of the so-called "new atheists."

Marx, Freud, and, above all, Nietzsche are atheists for whom one can have a measure of intellectual respect. They, says John F. Haught in his book God and the New Atheism, understood that when God and religion are eliminated life does not go on as usual. Haught calls them the hard-core atheists. It’s quite a different matter with the new crop of soft-core atheists. Haught writes: “Dawkins declares that the biblical God is a monster, Harris that God is evil, Hitchens that God is not great. But without some fixed sense of rightness how can one distinguish what is monstrous, evil or ‘not great’ from its opposite? In order to make such value judgments one must assume, as the hard-core atheists are honest enough to acknowledge, that there exists somewhere, in some mode of being, a realm of rightness that does not owe its existence completely to human invention, Darwinian selection or social construction. And if we allow the hard-core atheists into our discussion, we can draw this conclusion: If absolute values exist, then God exists. But if God does not exist, then neither do absolute values, and one should not issue moral judgments as though they do. Belief in God or the practice of religion is not necessary in order for people to be highly moral beings. We can agree with soft-core atheists on this point. But the real question, which comes not from me but from the hard-core atheists, is: Can you rationally justify your unconditional adherence to timeless values without implicitly invoking the existence of God?”

I had my own web conversation with some atheists regarding this topic about a year ago, as you may remember from an earlier post.

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Why The Constitution Prohibits The Teaching of Darwinism in Public Schools

An interesting excerpt from today's First Things blog:

The physicist Steve Barr tells the story of a lecture Daniel Dennett gave last year at the University of Delaware, in which he claimed that Darwin had shredded the credibility of religion and was, indeed, the very “destroyer” of God.

In the question session, a philosophy professor named Jeff Jordan suggested to Dennett: “If Darwinism is inherently atheistic, as you say, then obviously it can’t be taught in public schools.” “And why is that?” inquired Dennett, incredulous.

“Because,” said Jordan, “the Supreme Court has held that the Constitution guarantees government neutrality between religion and irreligion.”

Dennett, looking as if he’d been sucker-punched, leaned back against the wall and said, after a few moments of silence, “clever.” After another silence, he came up with a reply: He had not meant to say that evolution logically entails atheism, merely that it undercuts religion.

Barr notes that Jordan’s question reveals how the self-appointed defenders of the scientific method are trying to have it both ways. Don’t allow religious philosophy to intrude into biology classrooms and texts, they say, for that is to soil the sacred precincts of science, which must be reserved for hypotheses that can be rigorously tested and confronted with data. The next minute they are going around claiming that anti-religious philosophy is part and parcel of the scientific viewpoint.

There’s a kind of old-fashioned animus in it all, an Enlightenment claim of a sort of—oh, I don’t know—enlightenedness about our escape from the dark ages of religion....

But there are other pieces of the puzzle that are worth noticing. The tides of book publishing shouldn’t be discounted. The flood of atheism books over past two years followed the flood of theocracy books over the previous two years—and for much the same cause: Because publishers are sheep, they follow in droves, and they want their new books to be like their previously successful books. If Sam Harris’ End of Faith had not made the bestseller list, Christopher Hitchens would not have written his atheism book now, however atheistical he happens to be.

Still, there are reasons Sam Harris started the flood. The attacks of September 11 fit in here somewhere: the sudden unavoidable awareness of Jihadism and radical Islam put a weapon in the hands of opponents of religion. Here are crazies announcing they want to kill us in the name of God, and thus—by the logical fallacy known as illicit conversion—everyone who believes in God must be a murderous lunatic. Here are neo-fascists who are creating theocratic states across the Middle East; and, by that same illicit conversion, America’s evangelicals and Catholics—and Orthodox Jews, for that matter—must want to build Gilead in Harvard Yard.

Noted and Quoted: Can't Stamp Out Religion

Michael Novak, writing in the June/July 2007 edition of First Things (emphasis added):

Atheism is back—or so you might imagine from so many writers in recent months, one after another declaring a proud and militant rejection of God and all His works.

So, for instance, to his new book, God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens appends the insidious subtitle How Religion Poisons Everything. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins asserts that teaching children religion is “child abuse” and ought to be outlawed. In Breaking the Spell, Daniel C. Dennett, in the guise of studying religion objectively, dismisses religion. Sam Harris follows up his bestselling but dyspeptic The End of Faith with a slim but insulting Letter to a Christian Nation.

And yet, there’s an odd defensiveness about all these books—as though they were a sign not of victory but of desperation. Everywhere on earth except Western Europe, religion is surging. Each of the authors admits that most people, especially in America, do not agree with him. Each pictures himself as a man who spits against the wind. Each rehearses his arguments for atheism, mostly, it seems, to convince himself.

Certainly these authors are not convincing many others. According to a 2007 Princeton Survey poll for Newsweek, 91 percent of Americans believe in God. Only 3 percent say they are atheists. The whole group of nonbelievers—adding in persons who say they are of no religion and agnostics—account for 10 percent, at best, of all Americans. Worse for the new atheists, a full 87 percent of Americans identify with a specific religion: 82 percent Christian, 2 percent Jewish, and 1 percent each Muslim, Buddhist, and other.

Hitchens vs. Hitchens

Peter Hitchens is Christopher's brother, and in this article from The Daily Mail, he reviews his atheist brother's book. In short, he thinks Christopher is out to lunch.



Sibling rivalry can be ugly, but in this case it's kind of fun.

Kong Fights Godzilla, and The Winner Is . . .

Well, the 6th and final installment of the web debate between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson has now been posted on the Christianity Today website.

Contrary to my earlier predictions, this has been a surprisingly "flat" debate. Considering that there were only one or two posts per week, I would have expected a higher level of discussion, especially out of Wilson. Is this really the best he could do? With all his acolytes, disciples, and hangers-on? I feel that half of my friends could have debated Hitchens as well - in substance, if not in style.

Most tellingly, the debate never seemed to stay on topic for long, which was supposed to be, "Is Christianity Good For The World?" Instead, it devolved (I use that word on purpose) into the standard Atheist v. Christian Theist debate. Been there, done that.

I still like Wilson's thinking on a lot of issues, but this feels like a missed opportunity.

King Kong vs. Godzilla

The big boys have come out to play. Doug Wilson and Christopher Hitchens are conducting a web debate/exchange over the course of this month around the question, "Is Christianity Good For The World?" The first two installments show that this has the potential to be interesting, indeed. It certainly shows promise of being a juicier engagement than my own attempts on the Evolution Blog.

(I've talked about both Wilson and Hitchens in previous posts. If you want to see where, click on the labels at the bottom of this post.)

Part 1 of the debate is here, which will provide you a link to Part 2 - and, presumably, all subsequent installments. I don't know how many "rounds" there will be when all is said and done.

People Poison Everything

Richard Dawkins wrote The God Delusion, which has been on the NY Times bestseller list for some time. Then Sam Harris wrote Letter to a Christian Nation, which has been similarly popular. Now Christopher Hitchens weighs in with God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. I predict it'll spend several weeks (or more) on the bestseller list, as well. What's up with the onslaught of anti-religion books?

Here's an excerpt from Doug Wilson's blog, in which he reviews Hitchens' new book. I suspect that if you read this excerpt, you'll know just about everything you need to know about the book.

But the second response is to point out the logical problem with how Hitchens has arranged his thought experiment. Suppose his thesis was not that religion poisons everything, but rather that trousers poison everything. Since trousers are common enough, just like religion, it would not be much work at all for a person of Hitchens' abilities to assemble one horrendous story after another of one atrocity after another, and all committed by men in trousers. See, trousers poison everything.

The problem here is immediatley seen in the availability of counterexamples. We betake ourselves to look at this society, and then that one, and all the men in those societies wear togas. And, sure enough, we find that all the same atrocities are being committed in these differently-appareled cultures. Maybe trousers don't poison everything. Maybe men are a disgrace to trousers. For if trousers poisoned verything, one would think (naturally enough) that to get into a trouser-free zone would pretty much take care of the problem. But toga-men do all the same awful stuff. And then, so do loin-cloth men. Maybe togas don't poison everything either. Maybe men are a disgrace to togas.

The subtitle of this book is "How Religion Poisons Everything." And in this chapter, "Religion Kills," Hitchens points to example after example of religious people behaving badly. And I, for one, don't think he is making this stuff up. But for someone who bases an awful lot on reason, I think he needs to pay closer attention to what he is doing in the name thereof. His conclusion does not follow from the evidence being presented, not unless wet streets cause rain.

Perhaps Hitchens should take a step farther back and argue a much more plausible point, which is that "People Poison Everything." Go back to our trouser example. If trousers were the problem, then getting rid of them should get rid of the basic problem (making all due allowance for societal inertia). In the same way, if religion is the toxic waste in the system, then purging it should deal with the problem. So, then, what did almost a century of religion-free societies (Soviet Union, Red China, and so on) teach us about all this? We had quite a few trips around the sun enjoying life to its fullest, now that religion (that which poisons everything) was banished and gone. But son of a gun, the atrocities sort of picked up speed. The "poison" was purged from the system but the patient was still flat on his back on the hospital bed with his tongue hanging out.

When you look at abominable theistic societies and abominable atheistic societies, the variables are probably not the thing you want to appeal to in order to account for the constant, horrific result. We need to look for the constant. What might that be? People. People poison everything.