Silly Dawkins!

A few weeks ago, I opened the cover of a thick and rather ominous looking book. This book was The God Delusion by none other than everybody's favorite atheist, Richard Dawkins. For many of my readers it will be no surprise that I'm writing on this topic as it is one that's provided great amounts of stimulating conversation around the lounges of Johnson and the lobby of the Grand Theater. I'm not a big fan of the man's principles, but I had decided that it was high time I read up on the atheists' arsenal of practical reasons why God ought not exist. Around a week later I was left wondering if maybe I had picked the wrong book! I'll admit that I didn't actually finish the book or even make it further than the first three or four chapters, largely due to my inability to suffer any further through his plethora of misinformed claims about Christianity and his inability to abstain from snide and often completely bogus jests.

Having given up on this valiant effort, I decided to instead delve into The Language of God, a (so far) astounding book by Francis S. Collins. Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project, was raised agnostic, later nearly became an atheist, yet through the guidance of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and a Methodist Minister instead found that God quite truly exists. The Language of God is primarily an attempt at finding some common ground between science and theology on the topics of evolution and the creation of the universe.

I wish not to respond to Collins' work because I haven't yet finished the book. I'm writing instead to comment on one particular section of a chapter on atheism in which he (in my opinion) tears Dawkins' argument to intellectual shreds. I will begin by sharing this quote from Collins:

"Dawkins is a master of setting up a straw man, and then dismantling it with great relish. In face, it is hard to escape the conclusion that such repeated mischaracterizations of faith portray a vitriolic personal agenda rather than a reliance on the rational arguments that Dawkins so cherishes in the scientific realm."

One point that I quickly noticed in reading merely the first few chapters of The God Delusion is that Dawkins assumes that because evolution can account for biological complexity and the origin of man, then there is no need for a God. He has, in making this assumption, failed to offer any reason why God could not have used evolution as a means to bring about the earth He desired. Ultimately, the first pillar of his argument crumbles in light of simple logic, only holding up against "Young Earth Creationism," the school of thought which believes the 6 days of creation to be 24 hours in length.

Dawkins sets up yet another "straw man" argument when he claims that religion is irrational (which he does VERY often). Again he jumps to conclusions and assumes that Christianity is really as basic and outlandish as Hollywood paints it to be (There Will Be Blood or Saved!, anybody?). I'd like to think that you'd agree with me when I say that Dawkins has a pretty watered down representation of the faith to go by. Collins likens it to a schoolboy characterized by Mark Twain who said "Faith is believing in what you know ain't so." On the contrary, the case for belief in God is quite strong. I won't go into detail, but Collins offers the arguments from the universality of both Moral Law and the desire to find God as evidence that has suited scholars from C.S. Lewis to St. Augustine (you can find the details behind both in Mere Christianity).

Collins offers one last objection to Dawkins' brash statements. Dawkins spends a considerable amount of time arguing from religious harms. He states that religion, because of the great amount of evil committed in its name, conveys that religion in itself is a negative and damaging force and ought to be abandoned. However, it seems that religious harms are merely a poor reflection of Christians rather than Christianity. One doesn't doubt the practicality of building houses for shelter simply because houses occasionally collapse or catch fire. Why would one doubt the good of religion on the basis of its imperfect followers?

Ultimately, I think we can agree that Dawkins has little to say against religion that is actually grounded in fact. Instead he relies on hazy misrepresentations of a faith that Collins and I believe can exist in harmony with Darwin's famous and widely accepted theory. I can say no more than that Dawkin's claims go beyond his own evidence. Collins calls upon Christian evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould to summarize his chapter, stating in reference to the large number of fellow Christians in his field:

"Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or the science of Darwinism is compatible with conventional religious beliefs -- and equally compatible with atheism."

Richard Dawkins, please open your mouth and kindly insert your foot therein

We live in a pretty messed up world... or do we?

So there I sat, in front of the television watching Rosanne Barr rant about the current way things are in a dreadful display of stand-up comedy. Generally, I would have just shrugged off all the anti-Bush propaganda and tried to smile in spite of myself. However, some of the things she said really hit home with me...

"Half of the world is starving to death while the other half is trying to lose weight."

"We lock up the poor to keep them off illegal drugs while we pump the rich full of every prescription drug you can thing of."

The ironic (and at least partly true) statements kept on coming until she concluded, in reference to a one-liner about anti-depressants, by saying:

"I don't understand why people are so keen on taking drugs to keep themselves from being depressed. Have you looked at the world we live in? Maybe things are so "messed" (I'm censoring right now) up nowadays that we're supposed to be depressed!"

Throughout the following week I was unable to keep from thinking about this. Could Rosanne Barr, the loud mouthed self-proclaimed "queen of all trailer trash", have taken such a startling view on life and been correct in doing so? I worked the entire week at the hospital, covering for a sick coworker. Every day, I witnessed the struggles of countless patients from all walks of life. In addition to this, I watched the news every morning (something I haven't done while trapped in the "Wake bubble") and was blown away by the consistent reports of earthquakes, forest fires, floods, shootings and many other catastrophes. The more I took in, the more I started to think Rosanne may have been right. Things do look pretty bleak... in Dublin, in Pulaski County, in Virginia, in the United States, and most definitely in the world.

This troubled me. It couldn't be that things were as bad as the news media made them out to be. I recalled my mother telling me over and over again "You know, nobody publishes the good news. It's the bad that people will pay for." Maybe this was more accurate, maybe not. That's aside from the point I'm trying to make. Even if things are as terrible as television would have us to believe, the words of Martin Luther's famous 1500's hymn still ring true today:

"A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing. Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing."

and, from the lesser known third stanza (not verse... Justin):

"And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us."

THIS IS IT!!! (remember that all caps and bold marks importance) We have nothing to fear no matter what the world can muster up to try and shake us. God still remains in spite of fire and flood and even death. What's more is that, in my opinion, these tragedies heighten our awareness of that voice inside that cries out in need of a God. God allows such tragic events to occur, not as punishment for disobedience, but as a means to reveal his greatness and his capacity to deliver us mortals from our current state and elevate us to a higher existence. Through disasters, followers of Christ are called to recognize that God is still in control of the universe and, because He is still in control, greater and more powerful than we can comprehend. Through trying times, we realize the greatness of our Creator, who is able to produce tremendous good and still inspire us to worship Him in spite of what seems to be overwhelming evil.

Agape,
Joe

Some quotes...

I'm not writing this particular post in the sense that it will not contain any of my original thoughts. All that comprises this post comes from a book called Patches of Godlight, the journal of a fictional pastor. The journal is made up of quotes from the likes of C.S. Lewis, Wordsworth, Martin Luther King Jr., John Wesley, and many other famous authors, theologians, etc. I may come back to some of these quotes in some later writings, but for now I want to let them stand as what they are. I won't add any interpretations or relate them to any personal anecdotes. They will serve only to convey the meanings intended by their authors and the God who ordered their thoughts. I hope you find them insightful and enjoyable. There will probably be more to come...

We -- or at least I -- shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have "tasted and seen." Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are "patches of godlight" in the woods of experience. -C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

"The Bible without the Holy Spirit is a sundial by moonlight." -Dwight L. Moody

"I have been tortured with longing to believe... and the yearning grows stronger the more cogent the intellectual difficulties stand in the way." -Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Let the Stable Still Astonish

Let the stable still astonish:

Straw-dirt floor, dull eyes,

Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;

Crumbling, crooked walls;

No bed to carry that pain,

And then, the child,

Rag-wrapped, laid to cry

In a trough.

Who would have chosen this?

Who would have said: "Yes,

Let the God of all the heavens and earth

Be born here, in this place"?

Who but the same God

Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms of our hearts

And says, "Yes,

Let the God of Heaven and Earth

Be born here --

In this place."

--Leslie Leyland Fields

"Were there no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts, and no one to thank." -Christina Rossetti

"It is not a question of our equipment but of our poverty, not of what we bring with us, but of what God puts into us." -Oswald Chambers