The New Atheists: An Eastern Orthodox Critique

Copyright © 2017 by Fr. Michael Azkoul, PhD, MA, BD, BA.

ISBN:   Softcover              978-1-5245-9185-4

              eBook                   978-1-5245-9184-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

CEV

Scriptures marked as (CEV) are taken from the Contemporary English Version Copyright © 1995 by American Bible Society. Used by permission.

KJV

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, Septuagint Bible, Public Domain

Rev. date: 03/16/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

757882

CONTENTS

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER I: CHRIST AND THE NEW AGE

CHAPTER II: THE NEW ATHEISTS

CHAPTER III: THE NEW ATHEISTS AND THE TRUE GOD

CHAPTER IV: NEW ATHEISM AND THE CHURCH

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PREFACE

The fool hath said in his heart,

There is no God.

—Psalm 14:1

1.

This commentary is not an impartial work on atheism. The words analysis or critique or evidence will not be used as exclusively scientific terms. Atheism (a-theism) under investigation is a phenomenon, peculiar to the mentality of the West, which gradually developed after its separation from the church in the East. The latter produced a culture, Byzantine culture, which rested on the Scriptures as well as the Hellenism of the Church Fathers, Latin and Greek. The Scholastic West forged a synthesis of Christianity and Aristotle, a scheme anticipated if not initiated by Augustine of Hippo, and consummated in the summae of Thomas Aquinas. Their aspiration was to elevate faith into rational knowledge (fides quaerens intellectum), an enterprise that would eventually validate the autonomy of reason, or so it was believed.

By virtue of that synthesis, the evolution (secularization) of Western philosophy, atheism was inevitable. Wrestling over the concept of God, no longer the God of the Latin and Greek Fathers, the Schoolmen fashioned a philosophical deity or being (ens), a concept nuanced by the Scholastics fabricating the deus of Aquinas and Meister Eckhart, of the Renaissance of Pompanazzi and Ficino, of the Reformation of Luther and Jonathan Edwards, of the Enlightenment of Hume and Kant, and of the Romanticism of Hegel and Schleiermacher. From these came the nineteenth-century scientism of Darwin and Marx, the psychology of Nietzsche and Freud, and the most prolific era of atheism. More profound in every way, these were the predecessor to our Four Horsemen (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett). Atheism had been an elitist virus until the evangelizing New Atheists induced a plague for the masses.

A late convert to Deism (the world’s most notorious atheist), Antony Flew (1923–2010) excoriated them for not presenting a plausible world view that accounts for the existence of a ‘law abiding,’ ‘life-supporting’ and rationally accessible universe, their thinking muddled by the ups and downs of positivism. Ignoring Flew’s counsel, the New Atheists have placed their trust in evolution as well as cultural Marxism and social Darwinism, which they are certain will finally supply the answers to all the great ethical questions that have tormented the human race from its beginning, a tribulation that the New Atheists assigned to religion.

There is no more vituperative enemy of Christian theism than the biologist Richard Dawkins, who prefers anecdote to evidence, selective internet trawling for quotes which displace rigorous and comprehensive engagement with primary sources (A/J McGrath). He goes so far as to examine the traditional arguments for the existence of God but is clearly out of his depth when disparaging this weighty philosophical speculation. He displays, for example, no evidence of having read Anselm and Aquinas dispassionately, if at all. He knows nothing of the complexity of epistemological problems with all their philosophical, political and ethical, social, and economic ramifications. The writings of Dawkins give no evidence of his having read Kant, whose theology may be compared with the medieval Guanilo’s rejection of Anselm’s ontological argument. Among the Four Horsemen, he is not alone in unfairly deprecating what he has failed to honestly examine, such as Pascal’s wager. Incidentally, his supercilious The God Delusion was fiercely excoriated by many of his peers.

Christopher Hitchens follows Dawkins in his abomination of God and religion albeit the former is more droll and glib. He is equally as ignorant of Christianity as Dawkins, etc. As most atheists, he is no partisan of logic. They are all inflexible materialists and monists, metaphysical theories that have been contested by philosophers time and time again, if not by the poets and novelists and, to be sure, theologians. David Bentley Hart has denounced Hitchens’s faith as equally doctrinaire secularist, which is, even now the least attentive among us who have noticed, a historical tradition so steeped in blood that it can hardly be said to have proved its ethical superiority. When confronted by the deeds of the most infamous atheists of the twentieth century—Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, Castro, and others not so great—it never occurred to him that all religions are not the same; all religions are not good; and for example, Hitler’s Gott is not the biblical God. Hitchens ought to know better. The God of Christianity is the Holy Trinity, a fact generally ignored in all those tiresome debates before college students, whose existence is the only one that should be under discussion.

2.

Most people interested in such things generally agree that the New Atheist movement began with the attack upon New York’s Twin Towers in 2001. Led by such luminaries, such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and the late Christopher Hitchens, they were inspired by the current secular zeitgeist, which included a vigorous opposition to religious fundamentalism. In fact, they were opposed to all supernatural religions, whatever their social value, without the idea of God. The fact that it gives life meaning, that it makes people feel good is not an argument for the truth of religious doctrine. Furthermore, it is no argument that it is reasonable to believe that Jesus really was born of a virgin or that the Bible is the perfect word of the creator of the universe. They likewise trash the Old Testament with the same vigor that they treated the New Testament. An important addendum is that among their ranks, especially Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens, cannot read Hebrew, Latin, or Greek.

As many have observed, the Four Horsemen display an abysmal ignorance of almost every topic they address, including the Scriptures. Materialist, hiding behind a clutter of antireligious sentiments. The benefits of religion have indeed brought wonder and beauty and consolation and heroism, something that Harris and his associates will not concede. Moreover, they have not the slightest notion about the concept of sanctity. Perhaps they should have given some of their time to reading works, such Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy, which might help revise their understanding of religion. Harris, etc., may come to view religion and the Holy as more than a state of mind and more than neural phenomena, that is, excitable cells that process and transmit information through chemical signals. Perhaps then the idea of the human soul might appear more than tentative.

Daniel C. Dennett, the philosopher who teaches at Tufts University, is perhaps best known as a cognitive scientist, that is, computationalism or that human thinking is a form of computing. Yet in his books, he offers no proficient display of philosophy. I have yet to see an analysis of Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Kant, Hegel, etc., and their relation to his understanding to the conceptual foundations of evolutionary biology without calling for the extinction of religion. In his Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, he argued that evolution extends far beyond biology. It has reached out to reconceptualize culture and science itself. The Darwinian revolution, he argues, is both a scientific and philosophical revolution, and neither could have occurred without the other.

Dennett’s denial of the existence of God begins with his rebuttal of natural theology (i.e., the knowledge of God from nature) for which he, not unlike the other New Atheists, invokes David Hume, his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, where he states that any attempt to prove the existence of God must end in disillusionment. He was unwilling to concede to God any rational bearing upon the destiny of man or that belief in him has any relevance to the conduct of human life. Hume, like the New Atheists, did not take the time to philosophically justify the materialism (empiricism) that their opinions presuppose. Of course, many of them simply hate philosophy. Massimo Pigliuchi refers to many of them as bores if for no other reason than their philosophy brings them problems the New Atheists cannot or are unwilling to resolve.

To be sure, they appeal to David Hume, but he is really no ally despite his rejection of miracles and arguments for the existence of God. He is not their ally if only because he is not an atheist. Also, my suspicion is that while he was in their camp, the late Antony Flew may have given them guidance if not example. It was he who said, To believe there is a God, we must have good grounds for the belief. But if no such grounds are provided, there exists no sufficient reason for believing in God, and the only reasonable position is to be a negative atheist or an agnostic (by negative I mean ‘a-theist,’ parallel to such words as atypical or amoral). What is more, the onus of proof must lie with the theists. He contended eventually that the evidence, drawn from the DNA, was sufficient to substantiate his conversion to Deism.

Despite the validity of their arguments (now strengthened by Flew’s action), the opponents of the New Atheists are yet expected to surrender their agenda to them. Not only is New Atheist’s undeclared philosophy burdened with all the great metaphysical and epistemological questions asked throughout the intellectual history of the West, but their arguments are also impeded by their visceral and almost hysterical opposition to theism. If there is any opposition between religion and science, it is they who erect it. In truth, there never has been any contradiction between them so long as each remained within the arena of their competence, that is, science confining its queries to the natural world, while religion dealing with matters of transcendence, the realm of the spirit. Hence, it is not the business of science to prove or disprove the existence of God. Nevertheless, as the history of science itself has shown, science has always naturally assumed the existence of a supernatural designer. Religion need not meddle in matters concerning the electromagnetic field or the nature of energy, save that God is the author and designer of the cosmos.

Watching the debates between the atheists and the theist, which are usually parallel speeches rather than aller et retour disputes, one is often astonished to observe the latter to be disarmed or intimidated by his antagonist. The theist compulsively retreats to the traditional arguments for the existence of God and is put on the defensive when charges hurled against religion (e.g., the Inquisition, the Crusades). Also, they are often caught off balance when Dawkins or Hitchens mock their creeds as full of contradictions, superstitions, and legends and that the God of the Old Testament is not a moral monster, for instance, in the mythical tale of Noah and the Flood, where he saved eight people and destroyed the world, along with the innocent children and animals. Likewise, in the New Testament God the Father kills his own Son for the sins of others, the human race, which inherited the guilt of Adam and Eve. It seems never to have occurred to Christian theists that there might be another explanation for the atonement, that is, Christ died on the Cross to destroy the power of death. In the language of the Paschal Troparion (fifth tone), Christ is risen from the dead, having conquered death by death and on the dead bestowing life. The error of the New Atheists is the result of their presupposing in their criticism an erroneous occidental Christology.

In other words, if the arguments of Christian apologists (most notably John Lennox, professor of mathematics at Oxford, and William Lane Craig, professor of philosophy at Biola University) have no effect on the dedicated atheist, it is not only because of the conflicts of faiths but also strangely because they initiate their clash with the same religio-philosophical categories. The New Atheists are not being persuaded that we can leap from physics and biology to the existence of a personal God. Also, the theists have hoped also to confute atheists with an appeal to religious experience, even philosophy, when they might have taken the offensive with a charge against the New Atheists spiritual condition, an impediment that blocks their access to spiritual truth to which the human being has access only by piety and divine enlightenment. Finally, there is nothing compelling in the answer No one. He is eternal to the infantile question Who made God? Reason alone cannot change the heart.

In other words, the right tactic is to avoid confronting the New Atheists on their own level. At best, only a stalemate has been achieved. To be sure, the atheist cannot prove that the universe has no spiritual dimension, but the theist by mere logic cannot demonstrate it does. The New Atheists seem to hold the field despite their often clumsy and erroneous arguments, holding it because the conventional Christian and theist apologist fears his religious stance prejudices his case, while any accusation of sinfulness against atheist gives the appearance of holier than thou with no help from the hypocrisy of so many believers.

In any case, the God defended and denied is unaware to them an idol, an abstraction, a philosophical God as cause, as object, an analogy to our created being, albeit, to be sure, supremely perfect. But the true God must be sought outside the realm of the Western philosophical and theological tradition, which has blinded them to the truth. There is another religious vision that places the one true God beyond all rational knowledge, beyond the ken of human rationality, beyond being (hyperousios), the knowledge of that God and the worldview that surrounds him offer a unique perspective on all the questions raised, all the conclusions drawn concerning him and his relation to his creation. It is the purpose of this book to show that the debate between the occidental theist and atheists is futile because it rests on false premises.

We cannot hope to provide in the few pages of this paper the holy grail, but perhaps we can open new avenues of thought. Yes, there can be comments on the moral and intellectual foibles of the Four Horsemen but not