 |
| Dawkins' Flying Spaghetti Monster (with Meatballs) |
If
Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in
vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God . . . If Christ has not
been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those
who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we
have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied. (1Corinthians
15:14-19)
Sadly, Prof. Dawkins and I have little ground for agreement after
that. In fact, this little article,
whose main focus is he atheist apologist’s Anglican origins, is a good
illustration of the emotionalist and sheer illogic that underlies much of the
currently fashionable atheism. Consider
the following:
Dawkins,
Author of The Selfish Gene, went on to say he believed there was a “magnetic
pull” that kicks in if humans stray off the path they were destined to take.
“I think there are always paths not
taken but if a different path is taken, I think there is a magnetic pull. There is a sort of something that pulls you
back to the pathway having taken a fork in the road.”
In The Selfish Gene and in other places Dawkins, whose training is
in insect biology, has argued that our actions and choices are genetically
determined. A “destined path” sounds
quite a bit less random than simple genetic determination. And how is it that we “wander off the path”
in the first place if our genes are determining our actions?
Or how about this:
He
said he felt “grateful” to the Church of England because of its “benign tolerance”
that allowed people to be a part of its ceremonies and traditions without having
to believe in the faith.
He suspects, he says, that many Anglicans “don’t believe any of it”
but “vaguely enjoy” it, and goes on to compare “evensong in a country church”
to “a village cricket match on the village green”. If what he says is true, the Anglican Church
either lies that it believes what it does not, or really does believe it has a
truth vital to salvation but makes no effort to impress it upon anyone, not even
those who enter its doors. Shouldn’t
Dawkins be angry at its dishonesty?
Well, he is angry, in
fact – but he is angry instead at Christians who actually believe what they
claim to believe. According to the
article:
.
. . Dawkins admitted he was a little “angry” with God [!!] and those who
believe in him.
“I do believe in truth. I am moved by the beauty of life, as it has
evolved. I think any child who is being
denied that knowledge is being cheated.
It’s wicked that children are being brought up that way by parents,
teachers, priests – deliberately, systematically deprived of that knowledge,”
he said.
Where to begin with this emotion-charged pile of
inconsistencies? Claiming to be angry
with a God he says doesn’t exist is probably just a rhetorical trope, but what
is the “truth” he’s talking about? Most
Christians would agree that life “has evolved”; the difference is that they
believe that any “evolution” has been guided by the hand of an infinitely
loving God, while Dawkins claims that it is all a big, random, meaningless
accident. Is it “wicked” to find the
Christian view more beautiful? And given
that Dawkins’ position is unproven and, in fact, completely unprovable, how can
he assert an absolute like “truth”? Why
should he be angry with people who are just following their genetic
programming? And finally, how can
anything possibly be “wicked” (wicked!) in a world that is ultimately
meaningless?
And this,
of course, is the irony at the heart of atheism as a belief system: atheists
claim that theirs is the “rational” view because we can’t point to ironclad “proof”
of God’s existence. There is in fact
quite a bit of proof, both empirical and logical, of course, but even if we
concede their premise, nobody has ever offered a rational proof, or offered
physical evidence, of God’s non-existence. While one can come up with a logical defense
of agnosticism, perhaps, atheism is and can only be an opinion, no more. Notice how Dawkins himself answers this
criticism: he claims to believe in “The Flying Spaghetti Monster”; sure, he can’t
prove it, just like Christians can’t prove the existence of God, and therefore
his Spaghetti Monster is equally plausible.
He pretends that a critique of his own position is instead a defense of
his antagonist’s position, and having created a straw man, ridicules it with an
absurdity. That’s a pretty cheap trick
for the champion of “reason”.
One
final, interesting, detail: Dawkins, the article tells us, “became atheist in
his teens” (much like his fellow New Atheist, the recently deceased Christopher
Hitchens, who became an atheist as a preteen).
It’s theoretically possible, I suppose, that an adolescent could have
the knowledge, wisdom, and objectivity to come up with the logical argument
that disproves Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and other great minds throughout the
ages, but if Dawkins has done it, he hasn’t shared it with us. There are a number of well-written books that
fairly easily shred the arguments that he and his fellow militant non-believers
have offered (my favorite: The Last Superstition by Edward
Feser).
The
Richard Dawkinses of this world are badly in need of our prayers. It shouldn’t surprise us that he feels a
strange fondness for Christian observance: a rational person might even
conclude that if he feels a “magnetic pull” back to church that something –
someone? – is pulling him, well, back to church. Who knows? He may, like famed atheist
philosopher Anthony Flew [see here], reason his way back.
No comments:
Post a Comment