[A few years ago] the World Congress of the International Academy of Humanism [took] place in upstate New York.  Its theme? “Toward a New Enlightenment”.

To judge from the publicity, the conference organisers have no doubt of the urgency of their theme. Religion is regaining the ascendancy. We are facing a new dark age. Only a return to the Enlightenment can save us. We need to create a road map for a New Enlightenment throughout the world.

Speakers such as Richard Dawkins, Britain’s best-known atheist, will address issues such as the “God Delusion” — one of the many barriers that need to be swept away if humanity is to finally come of age.

It is a fascinating glimpse of the crisis of confidence which is gripping atheism. Belief in God was meant to have died out years ago. When I was an atheist, back in the late 1960s, everything seemed so simple. A bright new dawn lay just around the corner. Religion would be relegated to the past, a grim and dusty relic of a bygone age. God was just a cosy illusion for losers, best left to very inadequate and sad people. It was just a matter of waiting for nature to take its course.

I was in good company in believing this sort of thing. It was the smug, foolish and fashionable wisdom of the age. Like flared jeans, it was accepted enthusiastically, if just a little uncritically.

Everyone knows it has not worked out like that. In The Twilight of Atheism, I try to find out what went wrong for atheism in the past 40 years. There’s lots to find. Hopelessly overstated arguments that once seemed so persuasive — such as “science disproves God” — have lost their credibility. Anyway, our culture’s criterion of acceptability is not “Is it right?” but “Does it work?” And the simple fact is that religious belief works for many, many people, giving direction, purpose and stability to their lives — witness the massive sales and impact of Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life. Atheism, already having failed to land the knockout punch by proving that God does not exist, has not even begun to engage with this deeper question; instead it mumbles weary platitudes about mythical “God-viruses” or mass “Goddelusions”.

It may once have been bold, brave and brilliant to argue that religion was an infantile delusion or a pernicious superstition. Now, atheism seems arrogant and uncomprehending; incapable of even the most basic act of intellectual empathy that tries to grasp why intelligent, articulate people might choose to believe something which we disagree with — and which might even be right.

The real issue, however, has to do with atheism being trapped in a time warp. Atheism is a superb example of a modern metanarrative — a totalising view of things, locked into the world view of the Enlightenment.

So what happens when this same Enlightenment is charged by its postmodern critics with having fostered oppression and violence, and having colluded with totalitarianism? When a new interest in spirituality surges through Western culture? When the cultural pressures that once made atheism seem attractive are displaced by others that make it seem intolerant, unimaginative and disconnected from spiritual realities?

The obvious answer would be for atheism to undertake a reformation — to examine itself in the light of its failings, and direct towards itself the negative criticism it has until now automatically fired off at anything religious.

The Enlightenment is over, the world has changed, and atheism must change as well. But that is not the answer they are looking for in upstate New York. Instead, they want the Enlightenment all over again.

I’m not an atheist any more. As a Christian, however, I still retain a deep respect for the serious, reflective, intensely moral atheism I find in writers like Ernst Bloch. Religion needs to be criticised, both internally and externally, to remain true to its roots and its heart. Yet its critics need to be credible.

Atheism has, quite simply, lost much of its moral and intellectual cutting edge in recent decades. And unless it sorts itself out, it is not going to regain it.

Alister McGrath is professor of historical theology at Oxford University, and author of The Twilight of Atheism and Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life

This article found at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article583993.ece

Is Atheism Feasible Alister McGrath, Enlightment, Humanism

Empiricism: A Glaring Flaw of New Atheism
by Brian Thomas, M.S.

Atheism is a worldview in which there is no God. Adherents believe that life sprang from natural forces, not an intelligence, and that the cosmos made itself–or at least organized itself out of raw materials that were just there. “New atheists” include Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion; Christopher Hitchens, who wrote God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything; and Sam Harris, with The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. Their bestselling books are characterized by vitriolic disdain for those who believe in God.

The new atheists do not restrict themselves to passive disbelief. Rather, they actively admonish others to not believe in God, and take strong steps to rid the world of its “contemptible” acknowledgement of any deity, and especially of theism.1 As Dawkins said, “I do everything in my power to warn people against faith itself.”2

An ironic feature of new atheism is its strong faith in the inferiority of having faith. Before they attack it, new atheists first redefine faith to mean “belief without evidence.” Then they limit evidence to that which can be tested through empirical science.3 This is absurd, like requiring an experiment to prove a father’s love for his children. Just as we use our senses, logic, and circumstantial evidence to deduce the truth of a father’s love, we can discover God through non-empirical means.

New atheists believe that empirical science is the true path to understanding. However, since the very concept of “empiricism”–that science is the only way to “know” something–is not itself a product of any scientific experiment, it distills to a faith after all. Faith is not “belief without evidence,” but rather a decision to reckon as true (actual or real) something that is not visible. Empiricism is an idea. Ideas are not visible. New atheists therefore have strong faith, though not in God.4

Many popular philosophies are self-refuting, which means that they do not meet their own standards and thus self-destruct.5 One example of a self-refuting claim is the common statement “all truth is relative.” This cannot be. If all truth is relative, then the supposed truth that “all truth is relative” would itself be relative, and therefore not true. Consider the assertion “we cannot ultimately grasp meaning in an absolute way.” If that were true, then one would not be able to grasp the meaning of that very statement.

A good way to deal with self-refuting truth claims is to ask honest questions about them. For example, a response to the assertion “all truth is relative” could be to ask, “So, is that relatively true?” Likewise, one who denies that truth is knowable could be questioned with, “How can we then know for sure that truth cannot be surely known?”

Empiricism is also self-refuting, and therefore should not be believed. Its essence could be stated as “experimental science is the only way to know something for sure.” We might then ask, “What was the scientific experiment that demonstrated that experimental science is the only way to know something for sure?”

In contrast to the self-refuting doctrines that atheism must hold to, theism is aligned with the reality of a transcendent and necessary Being; not, as new atheists claim, with a fairy tale. Biblical theism begins with the sensible concept, assumed in Genesis, of an infinite Creator who formed a finite creation. Knowledge of our holy God is generally available through our observation of the natural world. This is enough to reveal man’s sin-induced separation from Him.6 However, only the Bible reveals that He has performed the necessary work to reconcile us back to Himself through His Son Jesus Christ, and for His glory.7 So based on the evidence of what He has made and done, we can believe in and know Him.

References:

• Theism is a worldview that holds that there is one God who exists outside the universe and who created and sustains the universe. The three theistic religions are Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.
• Dawkins, R. 2006. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 306.
• Empirical science uses the scientific method, and is therefore limited to investigating repeatable events in the physical realm.
• Geisler, N., and F. Turek. 2004. I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 25-27.
• Ibid, 38-41.
• Romans 1:20.
• 2 Corinthians 5:18.

Thomas, B. 2008. Empiricism: A Glaring Flaw of New Atheism. Acts & Facts. 37 (9): 15.

This article was found at: http://www.icr.org/article/4098/

Is Atheism Feasible

Why Atheism Fails: The Four Big Bangs
by Frank Pastore
Article found at www.townhall.com

Their titles sound so confident:

• The Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism and Islam by Michel Onfray.

• God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens.

• Letter to a Christian Nation: A Challenge to Faith by Sam Harris.

and of course, • The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Yet, like all atheists before them, they still can’t answer the fundamental questions of origins.

1) What is the origin of the universe? Why is there something rather than nothing? How do you get matter and energy from nothingness? How do you get a rock out of nothing?

2) What is the origin of life? How do you get life from non-life? How do you go from a rock to a tree?

3) What is the origin of mind? How does a living thing become a self-conscious being? How do you go from a tree, to an animal, to a human?

4) What is the origin of good and evil? How does an amoral being become morally aware?

Atheists respond to all these types of questions with essentially the same style answer. “We know God doesn’t exist. Therefore, since we’re here, though, it had to have happened this way. Thus, like the universe itself, life, mind, and mo-rality all ‘just popped’ into existence out of nothingness.”

I call them the Four Big Bangs:

1’) the Cosmological (the universe “just popped” into existence out of nothingness).

2’) the Biological (life “just popped” into existence out of a dead thing).

3’) the Psychological (mind “just popped” into existence out of a brain).

4’) and the Moral (morality “just popped” into existence out of amorality).

For their many obfuscating words, the authors still don’t improve much beyond the “just popped” thesis, if at all.

I was an atheist for 27 years. I used to play on that team. I used to pick on religious people too. I knew the arguments to press and those to avoid.

Attack with how unscientific theism is, how religious people aren’t very smart because they don’t chair any departments in the hard sciences at the right schools (it’s really called censorship). Raise the problem of evil: How could an omnipo-tent, loving God allow evil? Either God is not all powerful and can’t destroy it, or He doesn’t want to. Either way there can’t be a God because evil exists (don’t bring up the existence of good though, it’s too problematic). And, finally, go for the jugular with the hypocrisy of religious believers (You know, mention “all the wars in the name of religion,” and “all the fallen pastors” and especially, “the founders owned slaves” stuff, it’s really a good distraction.)

Avoid the pesky problem of freewill. If atheism is true, if all that exists is mere matter and energy, then I don’t have a brain, I am my brain. But if the brain is exhaustively physical, then it is just as incapable of acting freely as a computer or any other machine. Which is why the idea of Artificial Intelligence makes for such fun science fiction – the more peo-ple believe that a computer can become a person, the less likely they will have need to believe they were created in God’s image. Thus, more AI, less theism – that’s the game plan. Same with the search for ET. Find life elsewhere so we can dismiss Genesis.

But, above all, avoid being cornered and forced to answer the questions of origins. Throw out lots of words that people can’t understand. Talk over them. Blind them with science. Talk about the details of the leaves on the trees but don’t allow them to bring it back to “Why the forest at all?” Assert the fact/value distinction. Claim that only science deals with knowledge. Drop in some postmodern gobbledygook. Distract them with how science deals with the “what, where, how and when” and not the “who and the why.” Especially avoid people who have had training in the philosophy of science – they’re dangerous because they see through us and know who we are – they don’t see the shimmering lab coats that everyone else sees. They don’t see any clothes at all.

Since the pre-Socratics, atheists have been intellectual parasites living off the host of Western Civilization. Able to con-struct so very little of their own that is either true, good, or beautiful, they live on the borrowed capital of their believing intellectual parents. Atheists have been asserting the same basic mechanistic worldview, and with roughly the same suc-cess, for centuries. They sell books and win converts from time to time, sure, especially among those gullible enough to buy the “just popped” thesis. Don’t be gullible.

But, for me, the real value of atheism lies in bolstering belief in God. When I doubt, I can begin to doubt my doubts by returning to the Four Big Bangs. And, I eventually fall to my knees and worship, “In the beginning, God.”

The Frank Pastore Show is heard in Los Angeles weekday afternoons on 99.5 KKLA and on the web at kkla.com, and is the winner of the 2006 National Religious Broadcasters Talk Show of the Year. Frank is a former major league pitcher with graduate degrees in both philosophy of religion and political philosophy.

Is Atheism Feasible, Science

The Enlightenment is over, and atheism has lost it’s moral cutting edge
by Allister McGrath
Article found at The Times Online

THIS weekend the World Congress of the International Academy of Humanism takes place in upstate New York. Its theme? “Toward a New Enlightenment”.

To judge from the publicity, the conference organisers have no doubt of the urgency of their theme. Religion is regaining the ascendancy. We are facing a new dark age. Only a return to the Enlightenment can save us. We need to create a road map for a New Enlightenment throughout the world.

Speakers such as Richard Dawkins, Britain’s best-known atheist, will address issues such as the “God Delusion” — one of the many barriers that need to be swept away if humanity is to finally come of age.

It is a fascinating glimpse of the crisis of confidence which is gripping atheism. Belief in God was meant to have died out years ago. When I was an atheist, back in the late 1960s, everything seemed so simple. A bright new dawn lay just around the corner. Religion would be relegated to the past, a grim and dusty relic of a bygone age. God was just a cosy illusion for losers, best left to very inadequate and sad people. It was just a matter of waiting for nature to take its course.

I was in good company in believing this sort of thing. It was the smug, foolish and fashionable wisdom of the age. Like flared jeans, it was accepted enthusiastically, if just a little uncritically.

Everyone knows it has not worked out like that. In The Twilight of Atheism, I try to find out what went wrong for atheism in the past 40 years. There’s lots to find. Hopelessly overstated arguments that once seemed so persuasive — such as “science disproves God” — have lost their credibility. Anyway, our culture’s criterion of acceptability is not “Is it right?” but “Does it work?” And the simple fact is that religious belief works for many, many people, giving direction, purpose and stability to their lives — witness the massive sales and impact of Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life. Atheism, already having failed to land the knockout punch by proving that God does not exist, has not even begun to engage with this deeper question; instead it mumbles weary platitudes about mythical “God-viruses” or mass “Goddelusions”.

It may once have been bold, brave and brilliant to argue that religion was an infantile delusion or a pernicious superstition. Now, atheism seems arrogant and uncomprehending; incapable of even the most basic act of intellectual empathy that tries to grasp why intelligent, articulate people might choose to believe something which we disagree with — and which might even be right.

The real issue, however, has to do with atheism being trapped in a time warp. Atheism is a superb example of a modern metanarrative — a totalising view of things, locked into the world view of the Enlightenment.

So what happens when this same Enlightenment is charged by its postmodern critics with having fostered oppression and violence, and having colluded with totalitarianism? When a new interest in spirituality surges through Western culture? When the cultural pressures that once made atheism seem attractive are displaced by others that make it seem intolerant, unimaginative and disconnected from spiritual realities?

The obvious answer would be for atheism to undertake a reformation — to examine itself in the light of its failings, and direct towards itself the negative criticism it has until now automatically fired off at anything religious.

The Enlightenment is over, the world has changed, and atheism must change as well. But that is not the answer they are looking for in upstate New York. Instead, they want the Enlightenment all over again.

I’m not an atheist any more. As a Christian, however, I still retain a deep respect for the serious, reflective, intensely moral atheism I find in writers like Ernst Bloch. Religion needs to be criticised, both internally and externally, to remain true to its roots and its heart. Yet its critics need to be credible.

Atheism has, quite simply, lost much of its moral and intellectual cutting edge in recent decades. And unless it sorts itself out, it is not going to regain it.

Alister McGrath is professor of historical theology at Oxford University, and author of The Twilight of Atheism and Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life

In The News, Is Atheism Feasible

Atheism: An Intellectual Revolt or Pelvic Rebellion?

Atheists would love for everyone to believe that their motive for not believing is an intellectual one. Yes, the atheists ardently suppose that they are wise and the Christians, well, we’re the buckle-shoed buttheads.Yes, darling, the atheists would love all of us to suppose that they cannot believe because they are so astute and rational, and we theists, heck we’re toads . . . a veritable troop of abecedarian simpletons who believe in God and Christ simply because we’re straight goofy.

I think the atheists believe in not believing, however, not because they’re intellectual little dandies but because they want to be autonomous, loose and randy.

As Dinesh D’Souza said about the atheist’s faith in no faith in his new book What’s So Great About Christianity: “Atheism is not primarily an intellectual revolt, it’s a moral one.” God, that’s got to hurt you guys because you pride yourself on being so wise . . . so sophisticated . . . and here he/we are saying that your atheism rises out of hedonism instead of intellectualism. Ouch. Need a bandaid?

Look, I’m not buying that the atheists’ altruistic self-professed pursuit of reason is what undergirds their conclusion that God does not exist; I believe it’s because they want to believe that they’ll never be called into eternal accountability for their temporal actions by a holy God. Talk about an opiate for the masses!

But to heck with what I think, eh? I’m just a hayseed, cross-eyed Christian with an IQ of 50 who believes in Jesus, loves his mama, salutes the flag and collects guns. I’m an idiot. Let’s go to the atheists and hear it from the horse’s mouth—or backside (411 taken from D’Souza’s book, What’s So Great About Christianity):

• Biologist Stephen Jay Gould: “We may yearn for a higher answer—but none exists. This explanation, though superficially troubling if not terrifying, is ultimately liberating and exhilarating.”

Biologist Julian Huxley, the grandson of Darwin’s buddy and ally Thomas Henry Huxley, put it this way: “The sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the idea of God as a supernatural being is enormous.”

• Julian’s brother Aldous Huxley, not to be outdone by his bro, stated, “I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently I assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption . . . For myself as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation . . . liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”

Bertrand Russell: “The worst feature of the Christian religion is its attitude toward sex.”

• Christopher Hitchens: “The divorce between the sexual life and fear . . . can now at last be attempted on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse.”

Sounds like these atheist apostles are simply putting a nuevo twist on an ancient bent. They appear to be humming the Marquis de Sade’s tune more than Sagan’s. Looks and sounds like a moral revolt to me. Yes, this is Epicurus all over again.

You remember Epi, don’t cha? His whole goal was to “get rid of the gods.” He and his other pre-Socratic “thinkers” like Lucretius and Democritus didn’t like all that duty and responsibility to higher powers and fellow mortals crap. It put a hitch in their get along. It brought them pain and they liked pleasure. They believed that such an obligation to men and the gods caused too much anxiety. They didn’t like the thought of being responsible and having to account for their lives in the afterlife. Such thoughts really screwed with getting their groove on, ya know what I’m sayin’?

They were the first metrosexuals. Yep, they figured that if they could just get the gods out of the way they could focus on selfishly milking this life for all it’s worth and then die without any eternal repercussions. They were living in a material world, and they were material girls. Pretty ballsy. Or stupid. But at least they were honest about their motivations.

In addition, ladies, Darwin didn’t lose his faith because he discovered natural selection; he dumped God because he couldn’t stomach the doctrine of eternal accountability and damnation. That’s what made him switch teams. I think that was about ten years after he had married his first cousin. Git-R-Done, Charlie!

Y’know, Karl Marx said religion is the “opiate of the masses.” I think the real poppy derivative is the black tar belief that tells you atheist lads and lasses that when you take the big dirt nap that’s it. Ah what peace. What a high. No God. No accountability. All our sins of commission and omission will never ever come up again. No pain. No penalty. No heaven. No hell. Imagine. Yeah, dude. Hold that hit. Let it out slowly. Ahhh. Feel better?

There’s your opium.

Article written by Doug Giles at http://townhall.com

Is Atheism Feasible