"Evolution has reached the limits of what is possible on planet Earth. In particular our doors of perception can only be extended by scientific instrument, enabling a panorama from the big bang to DNA." Simon Conway Morris, University of Cambridge Eminent Paleontologist
"Real genius in nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought." Simone Weil
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (1 Corinthians 13:12)
Fifty or sixty years ago, the consensus from intellectuals across most Western world campuses were uniform -- inevitably, Theism would be replaced by Atheism. There was no more need to provoke a God to explain phenomena -- ( though a strange reason to believe in a personal God to begin with). So were these intellectuals correct?
Well, anybody keeping up with pollsters and even liberal media outlets know the answer.
The reasons for this spritual revival over the past five years are starting to manifest in all the oddest places. An example of this are books like the one from the historically anti-Theist Michael Krasney, titled, " Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic's Quest", or from the the eminent atheist philosopher turned Deist/Theist Anthony Flew, "There is a God." (For publicity reasons, I'm guessing, the "no" is crossed out and replaced with "a" on the book cover). Even more surprising, is where this revival is being led -- in the ivory towers of philosophy and sociology departments across America.
This is a topic that's intersting but cannot in any meaningful way be discussed in this kind of forum. I recently read the late Christopher Hitchens, "The Portable Athiest", which, I highly recommend to anybody. It is a signficant and thorough collection of essays and book excerpts from the leading Atheist voices over the past couple hundred years. Firstly, anything Hitchens writes, even if it's just added commenatary, is colorful and intelligent, although rough-around-the-edges (for instance, he refers to Billy Graham as a "boring racist charlatan"). At any rate, it's always important to understand the latest arguments against religion and Christianity (though they are almost somewhat recycled versions of Nietzsche, Marx and Freud's objections to Christianity, with some extra scientific twists). But, that is exactly all they are. Negative statements. And, as I have pointed out before, it's just too bad many (not all, Carl Sagan and Stephen Weinberg, two brilliant scientists, seem to have a good idea of Christian thought) leading Atheist/Agnostic voices don't have a complete, and in cases like Sam Harris (I would not recommend any of Harris' work) or Richard Dawkins (he is an excellent scientist and an even better science writer) their understanding of Christianity/Theology/Philosophy would be comical if their ignorance wasn't such a serious matter.
I and much more elegant thinkers and writers have harped on one of the major problems with Atheism: The religion of Atheism is just too far-fetched. Atheism at its heart (no facetious pun attended) posits that a Big Bang Program (whether originating from a multi-verse or whatever) has resulted in me writing these words and you comprehending and rolling your eyes at them, in the absence of an intelligent agent getting us from point A to point B. And, as it must follow, to come to that conclusion, we need to rely on something we call "senses" and "reason", which are analogous to the serendipitous construction of atomic molecules. Is it a worldview with explantory power? I would say no. If you can put your faith in that worldview, I envy your faith. And, for you, it will work out in the short-term, because obviously this world is set-up that it is precisely those folks that will get ahead -- and they will have much more pleasure in this world to boot.
When I was in graduate school, I became an Agnostic shortly after reading Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. I must have been close to get there before reading Dawkins, and I'm not sure I wasn't a lifelong Agnostic up to that point. At the time, in my extended family, there may have been two or three Christians, and within my nuclear family at the time, one Christian. Thus, it was much of an Agnostic household as anything else. We went through the routines of a post-modern "Catholic" household in 1990's America, but that was about it. I had essentially done no inquiry -- after all, I was young, into other things that were much more fun at the time, and had little to no use for God, nevermind if we could explain our physical existence through materialism.
It is here, I disagree with Morris (one of the most distinguished paleontologists of our time). I think we will one day be able to explain everything from the big bang to this moment in materialistic terms. I think a reasonable human being does not nor will ever have to invoke God, or Gods, or the marshmellow man, to explain their existence. While science is a million miles away from this reality (there is a real dissention from Darwinism right now, amongst all the origin problems, etc), I do think we will get there. And for my faith, that is a good thing.
The God the Bible has revealed to us, if my understanding is correct, would never allow this. One of the major reasons the Judeo-Christian God is the God that exists, amongst thousands and thousands of past gods from different cultures, is because this is essentially a primary component of the God the Bible reveals. Harris makes the recycled and aggregiousy ignorant argument in "Letter to a Christian Nation", wondering why God didn't write something in the Scripture that exhibited supernatural knowledge (If I'm remembering correctly he uses an example about including somewhere information about what DNA is in Scripture). I've read this argument from much more informed skeptics, in different forms. It's the, "I am God written in the Sky" argument. However, our idea of the Judeo-Christian God would collapse if this happened, or if the former happened. And, as an extension, I don't expect there to be any revelations that force people to consider a supernatural Creator as there only option of a worldview.
In this sense, Atheism should and needs to always be a viable option, or, pardoxically, it will effect our Jewish/Christian Theistic views.
But what Atheists are encountering as they are thinking and living through the decision to put aside God, is a giant hole, that success, love, and therapy aren't filling. Is this the whisper of God that Jews and Christains always speak of, or is it solely a product of evolutionary trickery, the unguided and meaningless process that Atheists attribute their feelings and logic to in the first place?
Hmmm. That's quite a tough position to be in. It's no surprise, that even in the poshest, most isolated offices in the post-modern world, where folks like Dawkins and Harris write their books from, and shrug off their colleagues' suggestions (for every Richard Dawkins there is a Simon Conway Morris, for every Sam Harris a Malcolm Jeeves) that things may be not as they think. Or to paraphrase the French Agnostic turned Christian Mystic and human rights advocate Simone Weil, "find that supernatural virtue of humility that will lead them down a different path". Folks like Krasney are indeed now on that path, with a herd of intellectuals in his shadow of his sojourn, out of the wilderness, and while some may only be in "spritual agnosticism" territory right now, perhaps one day their reasoning and new found humility may lead them to the Promised Land.
They hear that whipser, that echo. They listen to their reason. They use their brain that God has given them to understand their worldview has very limited explanatory power. Atheists like OW Holmes Jr. can imagine that his life has (or in his case, had) meaning, but, looking through the lens of his worldview, he mind as well never existed and it wouldn't matter at all. That isn't harsh -- it's an honest appraisal. The Fundamental Christian, the Anthony Faber, the Simone Weil, even Paul the Apostle -- see through a glass, darkly, of course, with all our pre-suppositions, our biases, and our limited knowledge of God and His creation. The absolute reductionist, indeed the Atheist, doesn't see through a glass, darkly -- not at all. Instead, he looks through everything -- and when you look through everything, you see, much less than if you look through a glass, darkly -- you instead see nothing.
And that may be ultimately the eulogy of Atheism. Not incontrovertible evidence of an intelligent Creator. Not Jesus flying through the sky with fire behind him. As Soren Kierkegaard rightfully points out, the proof of Christianity is in the "following". Fifty years after ordering the coffin and writing the eulogy of religion and Christianity, ironically, as Christianity enjoys a revival in post-modern university halls and globally, it appears we can now see others saying exactly the opposite -- the fallacy of Atheism is in the following.
