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Truth Behind Atheism.Indd 1 12/26/07 9:38:50 AM Unless Otherwise Indicated All Scripture Quotations Are Taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW IN- TERNATIONAL VERSION®

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Truth Behind Atheism.Indd 1 12/26/07 9:38:50 AM Unless Otherwise Indicated All Scripture Quotations Are Taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW IN- TERNATIONAL VERSION® ® Copyrighted material Truth Behind Atheism.indd 1 12/26/07 9:38:50 AM Unless otherwise indicated all Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW IN- TERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Verses marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org) Verses marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Cover by Dugan Design Group, Bloomington, Minnesota Cover photo © Paul Souders / Photodisc Red / Getty Images THE TRUTH BEHIND THE NEW ATHEISM Copyright © 2007 by David Marshall Published by Harvest House Publishers Eugene, Oregon 97402 www.harvesthousepublishers.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marshall, David, 1961- The truth behind the new atheism / David Marshall. p. cm. ISBN:13-978-0-7369-2212-8 ISBN:10-0-7369-2212-1 1. Apologetics. 2. Atheism. I. Title. BT1103.M37 2007 239'.7—dc22 2007021425 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 /VP-KB / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyrighted material Truth Behind Atheism.indd 2 12/26/07 9:38:51 AM Contents Introduction .......................................................................... 7 Part One: God and Science 1. Have Christians Lost Their Minds? ...................................... 15 2. Are Scientists Too “Bright” to Believe in God? .................... 35 3. Does Evolution Make God Redundant? ................................ 51 4. Some Riddles of Evolution .................................................... 61 5. Did God Evolve? .................................................................... 79 Part Two: Word and Flesh 6. Is the Good Book Bad? .......................................................... 95 7. What Should an Atheist Do About Jesus? ............................ 115 Part Three: Truth and Consequences 8. Is Christianity a Blessing? ...................................................... 135 9. Or a Curse? ............................................................................ 155 10. What About the “American Taliban”? ................................. 173 11. Can Atheism Make the World Better? ................................. 189 12. Consilience ............................................................................ 207 Notes ...................................................................................... 221 Copyrighted material Truth Behind Atheism.indd 5 12/26/07 9:38:51 AM PART ONE GOD AND SCIENCE Copyrighted material Truth Behind Atheism.indd 13 12/26/07 9:38:56 AM 1 Have Christians Lost Their Minds? “Why, Madam, the greatest part of our knowledge is implicit faith.” —SAMUEL JOHNSON1 f the modern world is confused about anything, it is the idea that IChristianity demands “blind faith.” That Christians have a soft spot (their heads) for faith unsupported by reason is a core tenet of the New Atheism. One of Daniel Dennett’s chapters is called “Belief in Belief.” “People of all faiths,” he explains, consider it “demeaning” to ask God tough questions. “The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expe- dient of discouraging rational inquiry.” Christianity in particular, he asserts, is addicted to blind faith.2 He says this, ironically, without offer- ing any evidence it is true—quoting no Christian philosopher, scientist, or theologian who thinks so. In Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris calls faith “nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.”3 The title of Harris’s previous book, The End of Faith, set the point clearly in the wood. The fi rst two chapters, “Reason in Exile” and “The Nature of Belief,” pounded it home. Harris wrote, “It should go without saying that these rival belief systems are all equally uncontaminated by evidence.”4 15 Copyrighted material Truth Behind Atheism.indd 15 12/26/07 9:38:56 AM 16 s The Truth Behind the New Atheism One blinks at this. Why should the claim that there is no evidence for religion “go without saying”—in other words, be accepted with no evidence? Harris continues: Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept every incredible claim about the uni- verse, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.5 If opinions need to be supported by evidence, let’s begin with this one. How does Harris know Christians don’t support their beliefs with evidence? Dennett cites Pascal, Dawkins cites Harris, and everyone takes this alleged Christian doctrine for granted, but no one cites any Christians! Richard Dawkins set the tone. In his seminal 1976 work The Selfish Gene, he defined faith as “a kind of mental illness,” and, more specifi- cally, “a state of mind that leads people to believe something—it doesn’t matter what—in the total absence of supporting evidence.”6 Christians make a virtue of believing “not only in the absence of evidence, but in the teeth of evidence.”7 But what if this claim itself is held “not only in the absence of evidence, but in the teeth of evidence”? What if the real “blind faith meme” is the unsup- ported and false theory that Christians believe for irresponsible reasons? Much is at stake here for non-Christians as well. I will argue that in its idea of “faith,” the gospel defends us against simplistic and dehuman- izing models of truth. Christianity, I will argue, stands on the side of ordi- nary people against the intellectual imperialism of those who imprison the human spirit in credulous, tunnel-visioned scientism. We’ve been bamboozled into accepting (in the name of science, though not always from scientists) a lie about truth and how to find it, an untruth that narrows life and hands truth to tunnel-visioned specialists. “There is no way a tunnel can feel like home,” says Huston Smith.8 The Christian concept of truth, rightly understood, sets us free from some of the deepest intellectual errors of our time. Let’s begin with the allegation that the Bible recommends “blind faith.” Copyrighted material Truth Behind Atheism.indd 16 12/26/07 9:38:56 AM Have Christians Lost Their Minds? s 17 What Does the Bible Say About Faith? Information scientist Hubert Yockey doubts that life can come from nonlife by chance mixing of chemicals. He wants his readers to under- stand, however, that his doubts are scientific, not religious. Socrates said go to cobblers to learn cobbling. So go to theologians, he suggested, and see how they look for truth: The views of the theologians are discussed in the Letter to the Hebrews: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evi- dence of things unseen”...The same theme appears in the Gospel of John 20:24-28 where Thomas “The Doubter” demanded positive and specific evidence before he would believe. But he got chewed out by his Boss who gave him the evidence but reproved him: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.” So much for the point of view from religion.9 Yockey finds this “theological” attitude suspiciously similar to the Marxist mentality. True believers of every creed ignore experience and believe blindly based on holy writ. But look more closely at the holy writ quote mined here. The story of doubting Thomas is often cited to prove Christianity demands blind faith. When the other disciples reported they had met the risen Jesus, Thomas (true to character as developed in the Gospel of John) found the story hard to swallow. “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails…and put my hand into his side, I will not believe,” Thomas famously retorted. When he met Jesus he was told, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.” By contrast, Jesus blessed those who do not see, and yet believe (John 20:25,27-29). Dawkins cited the same text in The Selfish Gene: “Thomas demanded evidence...The other apostles, whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence, are held up to us as worthy of imitation.”10 There are several problems with taking this passage as a general repu- diation of critical thought. First, Jesus did give Thomas—and the other disciples—enough firsthand evidence of his resurrection that they were willing to die for him (Thomas, reportedly in India.) Second, Jesus often Copyrighted material Truth Behind Atheism.indd 17 12/26/07 9:38:56 AM 18 s The Truth Behind the New Atheism did miracles, calling them “signs,” which (even skeptical historians often admit) show strong evidence of historicity. In the very next sentence (usually omitted by those making the case for blind faith), John explains that the signs Jesus did were recorded “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ” (John 20:31). Is it rational to believe things on the basis of human testimony? It’d be a pity if it weren’t, because, as Samuel Johnson put it, most of our knowl- edge is based on “implied faith” in other people. Almost everything we know—not just about first-century Palestine, but about dwarf stars, neu- trinos, state capitals, vitamins, and sports scores—we believe because we find the person telling us the information is credible.
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