You can download this file at nobtsapologetics.com/cw

Bob Stewart, NOBTS

You can download this file at nobtsapologetics.com/cw

Introducing the New Atheism

Their Core Beliefs Science and Religion are mutually exclusive ways of looking at life. In short, Religion and Science are at war.

Daniel Dennett Almost no one is indifferent to Darwin, and no one should be. The Darwinian theory is a scientific theory, and a great one, but that is not all it is. The creationists who oppose it so bitterly are right about one thing: Darwin s dangerous idea cuts much deeper into the fabric of our most fundamental beliefs than many of its sophisticated apologists have yet admitted, even to themselves. Darwin s Dangerous Idea, 18

Stephen Hawking The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can't understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second. Laura Roberts, Stephen Hawking: God was not needed to create the Universe, The Telegraph, 2 September 2010.

Their Core Beliefs Science and religion are mutually exclusive ways of looking at life. In short, Religion and Science are at war. Faith is a superstitious blind leap based on the denial of evidence.

Faith as Superstition Faith is the great copout, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. Edinburgh Science Festival 1992

Their Core Beliefs Science and religion are mutually exclusive ways of looking at life. In short, Religion and Science are at war. Faith is a superstitious blind leap based on the denial of evidence. Religion is inherently evil.

Nobel Prize Winner Steven Weinberg With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. The New York Times, April 20, 1999

Richard Dawkins Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing

Richard Dawkins others.... And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let s now stop being so damned respectful. Has the World Changed? Part Two, The Guardian, October 11, 2001

Sam Harris Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, 52-53.

Their Characteristic Practices They have a superficial knowledge of the Bible

Their Characteristic Practices They have a superficial knowledge of the Bible They are theological novices

Oliver Burkeman God, in short, isn't one very impressive thing among many things that might or might not exist; not just some especially resplendent object among all the objects illuminated by the light of being,... Rather, God is the light of being itself, the

Oliver Burkeman answer to the question of why there s existence to begin with. In other words, that wisecrack about how atheists merely believe in one less god than theists do, though it makes a funny line in a Tim Minchin song, is just a category

Oliver Burkeman Error. Monotheism s God isn t like one of the Greek gods, except that he happens to have no friends. It s an utterly different kind of concept. The One Theology Book All Atheists Really Should Read, The Guardian, 14-1- 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/news/oliverburkeman-s-blog/2014/jan/14/the-theologybook-atheists-should-read?cmp=twt_gu

Their Characteristic Practices They have a superficial knowledge of the Bible They are theological novices They are primarily irreligious, esp. anti-christian and anti-muslim

Greg Epstein While atheism is the lack of belief in any god, anti-theism means actively seeking out the worst aspects of faith in god and portraying them as representative of all religion. Anti-theism seeks to shame and

Greg Epstein embarrass people away from religion, browbeating them about the stupidity of belief in a bellicose god. Less Anti-theism, More Humanism, Washington Post, 1 October 2007.

Their Characteristic Practices They have a superficial knowledge of the Bible They are theological novices They are primarily irreligious, esp. anti-christian and anti-muslim They are Naturalists (all that exists is made up of matter/energy)

Is Science Incompatible with Belief in God?

Believing Scientists Nicholas Copernicus, Heliocentric Solar System Galileo, Observational Astronomy, Kinematics Johannes Kepler, Laws of Planetary Motion Isaac Newton, Laws of Motion Joseph Lister, Antiseptic surgery Louis Pasteur, Bacteriology Robert Boyle, Chemistry and Gas Dynamics Georges Cuvier, Comparative Anatomy Charles Babbage, Computer Science Lord Rayleigh, Dimensional Analysis John Ambrose Fleming, Electronics James Clerk Maxwell, Electrodynamics Michael Faraday, Electromagnetics and Field Theory Lord Kelvin, Energetics Henri Fabre, Entomology of Living Insects George Stokes, Fluid Mechanics Sir William Herschel, Galactic Astronomy Gregor Mendel, Genetics

Agnostic Stephen Jay Gould To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth millionth time... science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God s possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can t comment on it as scientists....... Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else

Agnostic Stephen Jay Gould the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs and equally compatible with atheism, thus proving that the two great realms of nature s factuality and the source of human morality do not strongly overlap. Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge: Book Review of Darwin on Trial by Phillip E. Johnson Scientific American 267. 1 July 1992, 119.

Francis Collins For quite a while in my twenties I was a pretty obnoxious atheist. At the age of 27, after a good deal of intellectual debating with myself about the plausibility of faith, and particularly with strong influence from C. S. Lewis, I became convinced that this was a decision I wanted to make, and I became by choice a Christian, a serious Christian, who believes that faith is not something that you just do on Sunday, but if it makes any sense at all, it is part of your whole life. It s the most important organizing principle in my life.

John Lennox When it comes to thinking about God, why do some otherwise rational, intelligent people seem unaware that they become irrational?... They insist on offering the public a choice between God and science, when elementary logic should tell them that theology and science are not alternatives but

John Lennox complementary. God is an explanation in terms of agency, and science in terms of mechanism and law. I find it easy to explain this distinction to most teenagers. John Lennox, Against the Flow: The Inspiration of Daniel in an Age of Relativism 167-68.

Is Faith Belief in Spite of the Evidence?

C. S. Lewis I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of evidence is against it. That is not the point at which faith comes in.

Does Religion Poison Everything?

Friedrich Nietzsche Another Christian concept, no less crazy, has passed even more deeply into the tissue of modernity: the concept of the equality of souls before God. This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights: mankind was first taught to stammer the proposition of equality in a religious context, and only later was it made into morality. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Aphorism 765

Thomas Crean Still, one point is worth making in answer to the author s claim... that religion causes people to do evil things. Insofar as this is true, it has no tendency to show that religion is itself a bad thing, or that its message is false. Love causes people to do evil things; so does patriotism. The love of a man and a woman can lead to unfaithfulness, to the

Thomas Crean destruction of families and even to murder. Patriotism can lead to hatred and to the indiscriminate bombing of cities. None of this means that either love or patriotism is a bad thing. It simply means that the weakness of human nature is such that any great object or cause may stir our emotions as to lead us to act against our better judgment. If religion occasions evil as well

Thomas Crean as good, this is no sign of its falsity, but simply of its power of attraction over human nature. That in the name of religion good men may do bad things is no argument against religion, unless crimes of passion are arguments against human love. God is No Delusion, 118-19

So Why Am I Not a Naturalist (an Atheist)?

Why I Am Not a Naturalist Because Naturalism is Self-Refuting.

Center for Naturalism Naturalism as a worldview is based on the premise that knowledge about what exists and about how things work is best achieved through the sciences, not personal revelation or religious tradition... Scientific empiricism has the necessary consequence of unifying our knowledge of the world, of placing all objects of understanding within an overarching causal context. Under naturalism, there is a single, natural world in which phenomena arise. http://www.naturalism.org/tenetsof.htm

Why I Am Not a Naturalist Because Naturalism is Self-Refuting. Because Naturalism undermines human rationality.

J. B. S. Haldane If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms within my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true... and hence I have no reason to believe that my brain is composed of atoms. When I am Dead, in Possible Worlds ed. Carl A. Price (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002), 209.

Patricia Churchland Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive... Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary

Patricia Churchland advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost. Patricia Smith Churchland, Epistemology in the Age of Neuroscience Journal of Philosophy, 84 (October 1987), 548.

Richard Rorty The idea that one species of organism is, unlike all the others, oriented not just toward its own uncreated prosperity but toward Truth, is as un-darwinian as the idea that every human being has a built-in moral compass a conscience that swings free of both social history and individual luck. Untruth and Consequences, The New Republic, 31 July 1995, 27.

Why I Am Not a Naturalist Because Naturalism is Self-Refuting. Because Naturalism undermines human rationality. Because Naturalism undermines human free will.

Center for Naturalism From a naturalistic perspective, there are no causally privileged agents, nothing that causes without being caused in turn. Human beings act the way they do because of the various influences that shape them, whether these be biological or social, genetic or environmental. We do not have the capacity to act outside the causal connections that link us in every respect to the rest of the world. This means we do not have what many people think of as free will, being able to cause our behavior without our being fully caused in turn. http://www.naturalism.org/tenetsof.htm

Sam Harris Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware

Sam Harris and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have. Free Will, 5

Why I Am Not a Naturalist Because Naturalism is Self-Refuting. Because Naturalism undermines human rationality. Because Naturalism undermines human free will. Because Naturalism undermines morality.

Atheists Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson Human beings function better if they are deceived by their genes into thinking that there is a disinterested objective morality binding upon them, which all should obey. We help others because it is right to help them and because we know that they are inwardly compelled to reciprocate in equal measure. What Darwinian evolutionary theory shows is that this sense of right and the corresponding sense of wrong, feelings we take to be above individual desire and in some fashion outside biology, are in fact brought about by ultimate biological processes. Moral Philosophy as Applied Science, Philosophy, 61 (1986): 179.

Center for Naturalism From a naturalistic perspective, behavior arises out of the interaction between individuals and their environment, not from a freely willing self that produces behavior independently of causal connections... Therefore individuals don t bear ultimate originative responsibility for their actions, in the sense of being their first cause. Given the circumstances both inside and outside the body, they couldn t have done other than what they did. Nevertheless, we must

Center for Naturalism still hold individuals responsible, in the sense of applying rewards and sanctions, so that their behavior stays more or less within the range of what we deem acceptable. This is, partially, how people learn to act ethically. Naturalism doesn t undermine the need or possibility of responsibility and morality, but it places them within the world as understood by science. http://www.naturalism.org/tenetsof.htm

Why I Am Not a Naturalist Because Naturalism is Self-Refuting. Because Naturalism undermines human rationality. Because Naturalism undermines human freedom and free will. Because Naturalism undermines morality. Because Naturalism undermines human relationality.

Why I Am Not a Naturalist Because Naturalism cannot explain human consciousness.

John Searle Physical events can have only physical explanations, and consciousness is not physical, so consciousness plays no explanatory role whatsoever. If, for example, you think you ate because you were consciously hungry, or got married because you were consciously in love with your prospective spouse,...

John Searle or spoke up at a meeting because you consciously disagreed with the main speaker, you are mistaken in every case. In each case the effect was a physical event and therefore must have an entirely physical explanation. The Mystery of Consciousness, 154

Thomas Nagel on Consciousness The existence of consciousness is both one of the most familiar and one of the most astounding things about the world. No conception of the natural order that does not reveal it as something to be expected can aspire even to

Thomas Nagel on Consciousness the outline of completeness. And if physical science, whatever it may have to say about the origin of life, leaves us necessarily in the dark about consciousness, that shows that it cannot provide the basic form of intelligibility for this world.

Thomas Nagel on Consciousness There must be a very different way in which things as they are make sense, and that includes the way the physical world is, since the problem cannot be quarantined in the mind. Mind and Cosmos, 53

Paul & Patricia Churchland One afternoon recently, Paul says, he was home making dinner when Pat burst in the door, having come straight from a frustrating faculty meeting. She said, Paul, don t speak to me, my serotonin levels have hit bottom, my brain is awash in glucocorticoids, my blood vessels

Paul & Patricia Churchland are full of adrenaline, and if it weren t for my endogenous opiates I d have driven the car into a tree on the way home. My dopamine levels need lifting. Pour me a Chardonnay, and I ll be down in a minute. Larissa MacFarquhar, Two Heads: A Marriage Devoted to the Mind-Body Problem, in The New Yorker (February 12, 2007), 69.

Practical Strategies for Talking to Atheists

General Strategies Use their authorities. DO NOT ARGUE EVOLUTION. This is like trying to get to Baton Rouge by going through Australia. Don t argue the age of the earth. Focus on Physics and Cosmology rather than Biology. Use questions.

Strategy #1 Ask them how old the universe is. They will frequently say that the universe is more than 13 billion years old (because that s what standard big bang cosmology indicates). They often assume that all Christians believe in a young universe.

Strategy #1 Point out to them that if something has an age (any age at all), then it has a beginning. Point out that if something has a beginning, it has a cause and that they have already agreed that the universe has a beginning. Therefore the universe has a cause.

Strategy #1 Note: This does not prove God, and certainly not the Christian God, but this cause is consistent with the Christian view of God. Note: The age of the universe is NOT the issue with this approach. The key is getting them to admit that the universe has an age!

Strategy #2 Ask them if they believe in investigation and research. Ask them how they have investigated the question of God. Ask them how important this issue is. Ask them if the intensity of their investigation has been proportional to the importance of the issue.

Q & A

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Bob Stewart, NOBTS