New Atheist icon and Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins lately posed a startling query to X. Referring to his most well-known guide, printed 18 years in the past, Dawkins wrote: “What do non secular individuals assume I acquired mistaken? God's delusion?”
The solutions had been insightful. One individual identified that Dawkins relied on methodological naturalism, the idea that solely materials explanations are legitimate, however which is itself a perception that can not be confirmed by materials explanations. One other famous: “[You] he spent a lot of the guide making ethical arguments towards faith; [but] in different works you state that there isn’t any such factor as goal morality.”
Certainly, Dawkins's “ethical case towards faith” is central God's delusion. He wrote:
The God of the Outdated Testomony might be probably the most disagreeable character in all of fiction: jealous and happy with it; a petty, unfair, ruthless management freak; a vengeful, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; … a willfully malicious tyrant.
These are unusual phrases from a person who has written elsewhere that:
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we must always count on if there isn’t any plan, no objective, no evil, no good, nothing however ruthless indifference.
So which one is it? Is the god of the Bible not value believing in as a result of he’s evil, or is evil an phantasm? It appears Dawkins wished to have his ethical outrage and eat it too.
The extra elementary error in his bestseller, nonetheless, is one which has been copied by nearly each outstanding New Atheist. As Susannah Roberts identified in her response to Dawkins, the primary factor he acquired mistaken was the which means of the phrase “God”. Dawkins wrote as if God had been only a larger and stronger individual, a being like the remainder of us who simply occurs to be very highly effective. The God he described was just like the polytheistic gods worshiped by the Greeks, Norse, and Egyptians. Dawkins confirmed that this was his view in a well-known line from the guide: “We’re all atheists about a lot of the gods that mankind has ever believed in. A few of us go one god additional.”
Years in the past I met a girl on a airplane who challenged me to show that God exists. I requested, “Properly, what do you imply by 'God'?”
She replied, “A grumpy outdated man with a beard within the sky who can't wait so that you can do one thing mistaken so he can strike you with lightning.”
“I don't imagine in god both,” I mentioned. Her definition of God was far more like Zeus than the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth and Father of Jesus Christ.
The God of Scripture shouldn’t be a much bigger and stronger man, a petty and egocentric being just like the pagan gods, not even a extremely highly effective angel. God is a class unto itself. It’s the foundation of being, the “unmoved mover”, timeless, spaceless, omniscient, unchanging, topic to neither passions nor suits of rage, and never solely describable by human language. His character shouldn’t be answerable to a better ethical legislation, however he himself is one supply of the ethical legislation. He’s, as James mentioned, “the Father of lights, with whom there isn’t any change, nor shadow due to change,” and as Daniel wrote, “nobody can keep his hand or say to him, 'What have you ever accomplished?' “
When Dawkins condemned God as a “petty, unjust and unforgiving” tyrant, he implied that God doesn’t dwell by the ethical requirements of justice and mercy. However the place did he get that commonplace to start with if not from God?
As CS Lewis put it Mere Christianity:
[T]right here is the issue of disagreeing with God. He’s the supply from which all of your energy of cause comes: you can’t be proper, and he’s no extra mistaken than a stream can rise increased than its personal supply. Whenever you argue towards Him, you’re arguing towards the very energy that lets you argue in any respect: it’s like reducing off the department you’re sitting on.
It’s refreshing and inspiring to see Richard Dawkins ask a query like this with such apparent humility. In spite of everything, up to now 12 months he's referred to as himself a “cultural Christian,” rebuked unscientific gender ideology, admitted he actually likes Christmas carols, and expressed real curiosity about why his girlfriend and former atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali transformed to Christianity. Maybe, God keen, Dawkins is on the verge of the same change. We will and will pray anyway.
Nonetheless, it's value noting that the straw god that Dawkins and his fellow New Atheists have been denying and condemning for 20 years seems nothing just like the God of the Christian worldview. Atheist authors might and will understand this, however because the thinker Thomas Nagle famously famous, the primary motivation is hope that there isn’t any God. A lot in order that Nagle additionally admitted how disturbing it was that a few of the finest knowledgeable and most clever individuals he knew believed in God.
It will be significant for each atheists and believers to ensure our understanding of God is right. Thank God for many who are keen to right their mistaken theology.
Copyright 2024 Colson Heart for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.org with permission.
