The Evangelical Atheist, Part VI: Sovereignty

Posted by Walter Scott Hudson, Apr 14 2010, 12:01 AM in Religious

We conclude our series on atheism by touching on an objection to divine authority. Nobel prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg declares:

Atheist reader Max offers similar criticism:



The implied argument seems to be, if the God of Abraham exists, He does not deserve worship or obedience. This is an interesting line of thought, if for no other reason than its betrayal of the atheistic sense that the standard arguments against God must be bolstered by rebellion against His “non-existent” dictates. Overlooking that curious suggestion, what of this charge that God is “the ultimate authoritarian,” some kind of cosmic tyrant making unreasonable demands?

Another atheist unwittingly guides us toward a response. English philosopher Colin McGinn, in his interview in The Atheism Tapes, counters a hypothetical theistic argument that morality must have a divine source, by citing Socrates. The ancient philosopher argued a moral rule is either sound or not and cannot be made sound by God. If God said murder was good, for instance, that would not make it so. Socrates was right, though he missed the larger truth.

God does not make things good. God is good. He does not arbitrarily declare right from wrong. He conveys a perfect knowledge of what is right and wrong. God no more determines good than a sphere determines roundness. Within the context of Judeo-Christian theology, which Weinberg and Max here address, holiness is one of God’s intrinsic qualities. When we receive the Law, we are not being told how to live so much as how we would live if we were, like God, holy. There are no “minor transgressions” against holiness. It is an absolute, black and white, yes or no, up or down dichotomy. God’s Law is no more authoritarian than a stop sign. The point is not to lord over, but preserve life! If you want to keep on living, you better stop your car before others cross. If you want to keep on living, you better align yourself to life’s source.

Let us dispense with this ill-conceived notion that worship and obedience of God is remotely comparable to worship and obedience of anything else. Random House defines worship as “reverent honor and homage.” If there is a God, provider of all that is, including our very existence, would we not owe Him worship? On a lessor scale, if we are employed, do we not respectfully defer to our employer? If we run a business, do we not respect and honor our customers? If our fellow man deserves deference for providing us so little, does not the Creator deserve deference for providing us so much? Human tyrants demand homage which is not theirs by right. God is owed homage for being what He is. There is simply no comparison. Morality is not “rationally constructed.” It merely is, as Socrates argument suggests. It is conveyed to us by the one being whose knowledge of it is not limited by localized perception and a finite mind. Those of us who know Him and worship Him do so, not because we “value obedience” to any random authority, but because we recognize the sovereignty inherent in the act of creation.

Part I: Why Theism Matters?

Part II: No Escape From Belief

Part III: The Cause of Cause

Part IV: Imagine No Religion

Part V: Temple of Reason

The Evangelical Atheist, Part V: Temple of Reason

Posted by Walter Scott Hudson, Apr 12 2010, 06:46 AM in Religious

Authority is necessary. It is a requirement of nature. Anarchy is a Platonic ideal which cannot truly exist. Without a government strong enough to protect inalienable rights, strong individuals will assert themselves upon the weak. The more successfully individuals can govern themselves – which is to say, restrain themselves from violating the inalienable rights of others – the less government is necessary.

Perhaps the greatest example of this truth in the last century was the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. There were so many individuals unwilling to govern themselves, to keep from violating the inalienable rights of blacks, it took federal intervention to force the issue. This was a tragedy for federalism which progressives perpetually leverage to justify further and less appropriate expansions of government. It demonstrates that the chief enemy of liberty is a people unwilling to govern themselves.

John Quincy Adams put it another way, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Observance of God as the chief authority enables what we call liberty, which is not an anarchical condition of absolute freedom, but the ability to act on one’s own judgment, constrained only by the rights of others, and accountable only to the Divine. When you remove God, you remove the accountability, and something else must take His place. Progressives understand this, which is why they have worked to deconstruct the religious aspect of our culture.

Alan Woods writes in a manifesto regarding Marxism and religion:

This is an articulation of the same goal the serpent offered Eve. “God knows that when you eat of [His tree] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:5).” It is a challenge to God’s authority. It is the world’s oldest lie, that man can be free of God by somehow replacing Him. Indeed, the deification of creation is precisely what happens when God is no longer regarded as sovereign. In some cases, as atheist reader Max attests, a cult forms around a state leader:



To Max’s point, it seems clear dogmatic certainty is not exclusive to religion. Nor is it confined to the deification of leaders. Adherence to the discredited theory of anthropogenic global warming has been criticized, by Lord Christopher Monckton among others, as religious belief. In his book Liberal Fascism, author Jonah Goldberg deftly traces the ideological roots of Nazism, Italian fascism, and communism to the French Revolution, ultimately defining fascism as “a religion of the state.” In all cases, the assertion of the secularized faithful is that theirs is the only rational course.

These dogmas arise from a kind of nature worship which is a predictable outgrowth of reason filtered through limited perception. Woods helps us understand:



Woods goes on to recite the standard case for evolution, conspicuously disregarding the scientific need to account for causation, concluding:



Dispensing with the notion of human uniqueness, and ignoring the question of origin, leaves us trapped inside our perception with no greater purpose than our drive toward self-preservation. To this end, the study and manipulation of nature becomes the most sacred pursuit, veering off in bizarre directions which are neither complimentary nor practical, but universally devaluing the individual in favor of some form of Nature God.

Ash Pemberton of Autrailia’s Green Left writes:



The planet is sacred. People are not. This is not a new belief. For as long as man has roamed the earth, he has worshiped resource gods – sun gods, water gods, gods whose pleasure ensured provision – and found it entirely reasonable to sacrifice the innocent to ensure good weather. The methodology has evolved. Infanticide upon pagan alters has given way to less spectacular but equally tragic abortions. Idols have given way to “scientific consensus.” Yet, the goals remain the same. The battle lines are still drawn between those whose religion convicts them to uphold the rights of the individual, accountable to God, and those whose paradigm (whether deist or atheist) convicts them to kill and enslave to ensure the harvest.

The declaration of reason as the consummate instrument of discernment, without regard to its obvious limitation in beings with infinitesimal perception, is the foundation of a faith as dangerous as that of an Islamic jihadist. In both cases, dogmatic certainty couple with an innate intolerance of dissenting opinion to manifest holy war against the infidel. For if one actually holds that belief in God is harmful to society, and actually cares about the world they live in, it will be incumbent upon them to affect the removal of belief in God. This can only be done through an application of force.

Atheist readers may object, citing the apparent authoritarian nature of the God of the Bible, and insist it is better to submit to a tyranny of human reason than one of mysticism. After all, the God of the Bible demands worship and warns of torment as a consequence of sin. How is that better than a human dictator? The answer will follow, as the series concludes…

Part I: Why Theism Matters

Part II: No Escape From Belief

Part III: The Cause of Cause

Part IV: Imagine No Religion

The Evangelical Atheist, Part IV: Imagine No Religion

Posted by Walter Scott Hudson, Apr 8 2010, 06:15 PM in Religious

At this point in our series on atheism as a political movement, having spent ample time demonstrating both the appropriateness of criticizing religious belief and the status of atheism as belief, we come to the heart of the issue. The endgame, according to English philosopher Colin McGinn, is the achievement of “post-theism.” McGinn defines post-theism as “the healthy state of mind where you’ve put all that [God stuff] behind you.”

“We can’t do that yet,” McGinn bemoans, “because there’s lots of religion in the world, and lots of bad results of it. To me, the ideal society would be the one where the question of religion didn’t really arise for people.”

What would such a world look like? In the final half of the viral internet film Zeitgeist: Addendum, Jacque Fresco of the Venus Project delivers a bold vision of an emergent post-theistic society. “We would declare all the earth’s resources the common heritage of all the earth’s people,” he told a New York audience earlier this year. The mission of the Venus Project is “to create a society of such abundance [through technology] that everything would be available without a price tag, and without submission to employment.” It is a world built upon the premise that the only sins are scarcity and exclusivity. “If you eradicate the conditions that generate what you call socially offensive behavior, [that behavior] does not exist,” said Fresco. “You might say, ‘Well, isn’t that [behavior] inborn?’ No, it’s not.”

Fresco’s colleague Roxanne Meadows goes into further detail:



“It’s going to take the redesign of our culture, our values,” says Fresco. “And it has to be related to the carrying capacity of the earth.”

Fresco insists he is not advocating communism. However, it is telling how he proposes bringing this post-theistic Utopia about. “The [current] system has to fail, and the people have to lose confidence in their elected leaders,” Fresco says in Zeitgeist. The narrator puts it another way. “We have to alter our behavior to force the power structure to the will of the people (emphasis added).” This has the trademark twang of the progressive gospel increasingly familiar to viewers of Glenn Beck. It requires, as part of its “redesign” of our culture, a devaluation of individuals and surrender of inalienable rights.

“When we understand that it is technology, devised by human ingenuity, which frees humanity and increases our quality of life, we then realize that the most important focus we can have is on the intelligent management of the earth’s resources,” concludes the narrator of Zeitgeist. Implicit in the concept of intelligent management are intelligent managers. Conspicuously missing from the Venus Project’s Utopian vision is any indication of who these managers would be. One thing is for sure; if you happen to be Christian, it will probably not be you. Fresco declares, “If you give everybody a right to their own opinion, it becomes damaging.” Some animals would have to be more equal than others.

Here we arrive at the thesis of this entire series. Authority is necessary. Any intellectually honest examination of the human condition will conclude so. Under the authority of God, liberty is possible. Without God, there can only be variations of authoritarianism. A reader we will call “Max” unwittingly demonstrates this point:



Max’s concern, shared by Harris and many others, is that those who believe nature to be in a state of sin will not act to improve upon their terminal condition. This concern is understandable and largely justified. Indeed, those of us who believe we are not of this world do not aspire to cure all its ills. This is because we do not believe ourselves capable of addressing the root problem – deviation from holiness. The logical conclusion of the theist is not to panic regarding the ills apparent in nature, because we know there is an Authority in ultimate control. The logical conclusion of the atheist is that man must perpetually “progress” and “improve” in an evolutionary manner consistent with their understanding of nature, a conclusion which necessitates the suppression of those thwarting said progress. These two paradigms are the emerging political dichotomy. They cannot be reconciled. But it is incumbent upon both to accurately understand the other.

The goal of the theist and atheist is the same; they disagree as to the means. In a twist of scripture which would make Jim Willis proud, Fresco responds to the Christian doctrine of a heavenly hope by saying, “You forgot the Lord’s prayer. ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ There’s no business up there, no private ownership, no money; and that’s what Jesus said.” Fresco is right! His idea of a resource based economy is essentially no different than the teachings of Jesus regarding how we ought to live, with one crucial difference. In the kingdom of heaven, God is the intelligent manager. Without the Lord, man will lord over man with inevitably tragic results. For even if Fresco is right, and scarcity is the source of all our ills, and even if technology and cooperation might provide us with abundant resources, can it keep a man from coveting another’s wife?

More to follow…

Part I: Why Theism Matters

Part II: No Escape From Belief

Part III: The Cause of Cause

The Evangelical Atheist, Part III: The Cause of Cause

Posted by Walter Scott Hudson, Apr 7 2010, 06:29 AM in Religious

Despite the etymology of the word “atheism,” which does connote a lack of belief, atheism is expressed as a belief contrary to theism. It is a position on a factual scientific question. Some atheists are quite honest on this point. Consider English biologist Richard Dawkins, perhaps the most prominent agent of The New Atheism:

Dawkins atheism is altogether different from English philosopher Colin McGinn’s proposed lack of belief in anything “godlike.” Dawkins is taking what he recognizes to be one of two positions regarding the God hypothesis. He is expressing a belief.

Nobel prize winning American physicist Steven Weinberg, like Dawkins, recognizes the scientific nature of the God question, though he phrases it differently. Weinberg says religions “provide an alternative theory of the world… [which is] something that I feel I have something to say about.” Weinberg takes offense to religion, because he sees it as encroaching upon his scientific territory.

Why would scientists be repulsed by a scientific question? The answer is seemingly because, in this case, the scientific question has no scientific answer.

When Weinberg is confronted with the necessity to explain the regularity of the universe, a phenomenon which bolstered Issac Newton’s belief in a Regulator, he concedes, “There is a mystery, I have to admit.” He quickly adds the caveat that belief in a Designer “doesn’t answer anything, because then you have to answer, ‘Well, why is the Designer like that?’”

Dawkins says essentially the same thing. “Design is a very bad explanation for the complexity of life, because it’s got a regression built into it, because you have to explain the Designer… It’s a non-explanation. We shouldn’t even regard it as a candidate for an explanation.”

What these men are saying is; because theism raises a question for which science has no answer, theism is wrong. This is all at once a conceit, no less dogmatic than when clergy insisted the sun circled the earth, and an indication they fail to understand the essential nature of their own discipline. Science is the study of the natural world. A hypothesis regarding the cause of that world necessitates contemplation beyond it, and therefore beyond science.

It is perhaps the simplest aspect of the entire God question. We know, in nature, all that is comes from something. This very knowledge is the source of Weinberg and Dawkins’ confusion, leading them to assume the Designer would require a source. The Designer, as the author of natural law, of which causation is a statute, would exist entirely independent of it. From the perspective of creation, the Designer would be just what we intuitively describe – omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Nothing else could cause cause itself. “We’re talking about something that is off the map of creation,” explains Cambridge theologian Denys Turner.

Long before man contemplated spacetime, he knew of eternity, a concept which is counter-intuitive to human experience, yet ingrained in our consciousness. The eternal has no beginning and no end. It has always been and always will be. It is a state where cause has no meaning. It is the realm of God. Atheists are free to believe otherwise. But they must concede it is their belief, and not theists’, which fails to explain anything.

More to follow…

Part I: Why Theism Matters

Part II: No Escape From Belief

The Evangelical Atheist, Part II: No Escape From Belief

Posted by Walter Scott Hudson, Apr 5 2010, 06:56 AM in Religious

In Part I: Why Theism Matters, we explored the relevance of theism to politics. We saw that one’s regard for God affects their political ideology, and is therefore subject to the frank and open criticism common in political discourse.

Let us dispense with the notion one can somehow escape the necessity to believe. In his interview with fellow atheist Johnathan Miller for the BBC documentary series The Atheism Tapes, English philosopher Colin McGinn describes atheism as a lack of belief in anything “godlike.” This description of atheism is effectively meaningless, as one may not opt out of addressing the origin of all things. McGinn later describes himself as an anti-theist, one who is “actively opposed to [theism].” This is a substantial statement which actually means something. It conveys McGinn’s belief that there is no God.

Belief is a condition universal among humanity, an inevitable result of limited perception. Because we are not omniscient, capable of sensing all that is, we are burdened with the necessity to believe in that which is outside our direct perception. For instance, I believe there is a place called China. I have never been to China, but have reasons for believing there is such a place. Were I to come across someone who did not believe in a place called China, I would not be encountering a lack of belief, so much as a counter-belief. The claim there is a China is factual, meaning it is either true or false. One cannot simply evoke a “pass” on the question.

This truth seems to undermine the sense of intellectual superiority common among atheistic commentary. While the religious are criticized for believing in something beyond their perception, atheism is imbued with a pseudo-rational credibility, as if it is not also a belief regarding a subject beyond perception. One cannot escape the necessity to believe, one way or the other.

Put another way, the idea one need not hold a belief regarding anything “godlike” is a refusal to answer a question. “Even more important than the question of whether God exists is the question of what questions are legitimate,” Cambridge theologian Denys Turner told Miller on BBC. Turner describes a kind of intellectual box within which McGinn’s opt-out-of-the-question atheism is confined. In it, one may not ask questions for which we have no methodology to produce a definitive contextual answer. Turner states atheists are concerned with, “not how the world is, but that it is.” American playwright Arthur Miller simplifies the concept, “I think we’re stuck with the earth, and what we’ve got.” That is to say, there is only what we can perceive, and it is silly to conceive of anything beyond perception.

Strangely though, God seems to be the only intangible to which this thou-shalt-not-speculate rule applies. Colin McGinn said he is often asked, when he reveals his atheism, whether he believes in anything at all. “I say to them, ‘I believe in many things.’ And I don’t make jokes to them such as ‘I believe in tables and chairs.’ I say to them, ‘I believe in various ethical causes and political ideas and aesthetic values, intellectual values, lots of things…” Along with tangible objects, McGinn believes in intangible ideals which defy contextual evidence. What makes something beautiful? What is love? Speculation on these intangibles is entirely appropriate among professed atheists. Surely, the assertion there is no beauty, or there is no love, would seem as nonsensical to them as it would to theists.

More to follow…