It comes down to nothing

After receiving a bit of response to last week’s entry in this series, I decided to do a follow-up that delves a little into the subject of atheism.

An atheist is defined as “a person who does not believe in the existence of a supreme being or beings.”

The opposite is a theist, or a person who believes in the doctrine of theism, or monotheism, which is the belief in one God as the creator and ruler of the universe.

As I mentioned last week, a British leader in Christian Apologetics, Dr. John Lennox, has more than once pointed out how atheists more or less believe everything came from nothing. With that in mind, Lennox has offered in his many writings and lectures that even from a purely objective standpoint, he has a much easier time reconciling and comprehending the existence of a vast universe resulting from a creative directive rather than a random series of chance incidents and circumstances. He has subsequently taken part in several debates with leading atheists, including Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, two members of “The Four Horsemen of New Atheism,” along with Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.

For the record, the New Atheist movement gained prominence in the mid-2000s. Its members draw on science for recommended alternatives to religion, believing verifiable and observable scientific material and information is the best source for genuine worldly knowledge, and they maintain that a belief can be justified only if it’s based on “adequate” evidence.

At the forefront of the movement is Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He was professor for public understanding of science at the University of Oxford in London, England, from 1995 to 2008, and is on the advisory board of the University of Austin in Texas. 

Dawkins’ books include “The God Delusion” from 2006.

Here are some quotes attributed to him, along with my two cents about each one.

• “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” 

Clever. 

But the thing is, that “one god” IS the one God. All the others are simply idols falsely recognized as having some sort of actual influence over peoples’ actions and lives in general. False gods are worthless.

“Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.” (Psalm 115:4-8). 

And believing in that one God matters – and He’ll quickly tell you that.

“Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the First and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God.’” (Isaiah 44:6)

• “When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.” 

Dawkins is a master of clever quotes. But when broken down to its actual content, all there is in this one is the opinion of a well-educated but sadly misguided man who has chosen to worship nothing over God. 

The reality is that when a few people gather in God’s name, He acknowledges their recognition of His sovereignty.

“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 18:20).

• “Religion is not the root of all evil, for no one thing is the root of all anything.” 

Um, beg to differ. God created literally everything.

“For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.” (Colossians 1:16)

• “We should always be open-minded, but the only good reason to believe that something exists is if there is real evidence that it does.” 

Here we go with the question of who defines “real evidence?” I’d say there’s a ton of it in the Bible, which is made up largely of firsthand accounts and descriptions from witnesses to many, many occurrences that make it hard to deny the existence of God or Jesus.

Christopher Hitchens (who died in 2011 at the age of 62), was the author of 18 books on faith, religion, culture, politics and literature. He was born and educated in Britain, graduating in 1970 from the University of Oxford with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. 

Hitchens described himself as an “antitheist” and saw all religions as false, harmful and authoritarian.

Here are a couple of his quotes, again with my little add-ons.

• “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” 

This quote is so renowned, it has come to be recognized as a general rule for rejecting certain knowledge claims and has been labeled with a nickname: “Hitchens’ Razor.” 

It’s obviously a dig aimed at Christianity, and while seeming to have merit on the surface, the statement is entirely flawed because it’s clearly an assertion without any evidence, so……

• “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him will believeth in anything. – Hitchens 3:16.” 

Again, clever.

But this odd, allegedly humorous and sort of blasphemous declaration fails to recognize the fundamental fact that people who believe in Jesus don’t believe in atheism. I feel confident in pointing out that stuff like this is very easy to argue against. 

One of the responses I received regarding last week’s column was from a reader who shared a great quote from the late Werner Heisenberg, a German physicist who was leader in the field of quantum mechanics: “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”

That’s awesome.

Anyway, the bottom line for me is I don’t get the whole atheist thing. Maybe that’s because the viewpoint God has given me includes needing Him in the driver’s seat, rather than struggling to exist in an autonomous, driverless vehicle traveling on a highway from nothing to nowhere.

I compare it to being a resident of the Show Me State, and I need to be shown more than nothing. That’s just ludicrous and absurd.