But you raise several different issues here, including the nature of science, the limits of science, the relationship between science and religion, scientism, and so on. I have discussed these elsewhere and so will not go over old ground here.

As to atheism and morality, yes I am familiar with the attempts by sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists to seek to explain morality (and all other non-material realities) from purely Darwinian and naturalistic means. I still believe such attempts are hopelessly misguided. Even skeptics like atheist philosopher David Stove could point out the absurdity of such attempts. See his Darwinian Fairytales in this regard.

Sorry, but I just do not have enough faith to be an atheist. The wild, speculative, counterintuitive (a term even Dawkins is forced to employ) attempts to explain away reality by forcing people into the reductionistic straightjacket of materialism is far too foolish and desperate.

Better to go with what the majority of mankind has always known: there exist non-physical realities which cannot be explained away by reductionist philosophies. Such naturalistic theories are not based on empirical findings – how could they ever be? – but are the result of a priori faith commitments on the part of those who simply do not want to believe in the supernatural and the metaphysical.

Of course the more honest atheists admit as such. For example, atheist immunologist George Klein said this, “I am not an agnostic. I am an atheist. My attitude is not based on science, but rather on faith … The absence of a Creator, the non-existence of God is my childhood faith, my adult belief, unshakable and holy.”

And again, the more consistent and honest atheists recognise that in a purely material world, there is no such thing as morality. Even Dawkins admits this: “In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

Attempts to build a system of morality from a purely material basis are doomed to fail, and are the desperate attempt of atheists to have their cake and eat it too. Atheists are simply stealing from the moral capital of theism here. They are concerned about morality for the simple reason that they are made in God’s image and live in God’s moral world. Their very attempt to discuss morality is a sure indication of the intellectual paucity of their own unbelief.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Thank you for your prompt response. I appreciated it.

I don’t believe there is a burden of proof on atheists. Our non-flat earth revolved around our sun long before we understood either to be true. Gravity and DNA pre-existed our understanding as well. There is a difference between falsity and that which we do not yet understand to be true.

I believe you would agree that a lack of evidence doesn’t render a hypothesis implausible or untrue. One of the advantages of science is its willingness to challenge that which we historically believed to be true with new evidence, fresh understanding and criticism. Such scrutiny should be applied equally to Darwin, Einstein, Newton, Aquinas, Aristotle, Paul, Origen, Augustine, etc.

I don’t believe the points of view raised in my earlier comment are philosophically absurd. I do believe we have yet to fully understand them. Our tendency to automatically attribute that which we do not yet understand to faith outcomes seems embedded in our psyche. I have found that many people of faith are simply not willing or prepared to accept the possibility that their understanding of the world may be incorrect. And many of them dare not critically question their beliefs as new information becomes available.

Regarding morality, if you have not yet had an opportunity to do so, I highly recommend that you read the recent work of Marc Hauser and Austin Dacey. Both men have put a great deal of thought into morality and moral evolution.

Joe Martins

But is the atheist who must provide evidence that morality arose from the purely amoral; that life arose from non-life; that personality arose from the non-personal; and that something arose from nothing. Not only is the evidence lacking for such claims, but they are philosophically absurd positions to cling to.

That fact that some people may not choose to kill their neighbours of course has absolutely nothing to do with the claim that morality somehow simply evolved out of nothing.

The Judeo-Christian position makes perfect sense of morality in general and particular cases of people caring for others. Neither make sense in the world of atheism and naturalistic evolution.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

I shall provide a more complete response as soon as I have more time, and once I have read Mr. Wilson’s book. For now I wish to leave you with a single thought.

Clearly you dismiss the possibility that our sense of morality could have evolved alongside our biological make-up as part of the evolutionary process. I am certain you have absolutely no evidence to support that point of view, other than your strongly held belief that morality originated with your God.

In fact, I am certain that faith alone provides a number of examples of precisely the type of moral evolution of which I write.

I believe history clearly shows the evolution of morality, and it is not unreasonable or irrational to believe that morality evolved out of necessity. After all, if we fail to care for, or choose to kill our neighbors, how long do you think the human race would last? Some state of morality long predated the writings and teachings of your faith….had it not, it is unlikely our early ancestors would have survived long enough to adopt it.

Joe Martins

But might I respectfully submit that it appears you have graduated from the same Atheist Academy as all the other atheists that have commented on this site. You simply parrot the same tired arguments, the same twisted objections, and the same red herrings and straw men. The atheist idea of argumentation seems to be to make a lot of reckless and wild accusations, and repeat them ad infinitum, and think they have somehow made their case.

Of course all these points have been dealt with by me and others, both here and elsewhere. But let me just pick up on one point you raise: your obvious dislike of God’s loving provision for your (and my) salvation. You use examples of suffering to make your case.

But as an atheist, where do you get this sense of outrage over injustice? It makes no sense from a purely materialistic and evolutionary worldview. Life is a bitch, and then we die, as the saying goes. With your belief in the survival of the fittest, and your understanding of humans as mere “survival machines” for their “selfish genes” (as Richard Dawkins puts it), then why should you care in the least about suffering?

Concern about suffering makes perfect sense in the Christian worldview, but absolutely none in your worldview. God made us with free will to have a love relationship with him. But we abused our free will and chose to reject God and his love. We are now engulfed in our selfishness, pride, and hatred of God. No wonder things are in such a mess.

The suffering we see breaks God’s heart, and is not the way he created us to be. He sent his son as a supreme act of sacrificial love. He would have been fully just to simply let us go our own way of rebellion and defiance of him. But he has sought to woo us back with the most loving offer anyone can make: to die for one’s enemies, and hope they will be reconciled to God.

The fact that you care about suffering and injustice has nothing to do with your atheism. It has everything to do with the fact that you are made in God’s image, and you share with him in a very small way his passionate dislike of evil and injustice.

But as long as you shake your clenched fist at God, you cut yourself off from the very means by which things can be made right, our pride can be challenged, and our hatred turned to love.

It is as if a person is drowning at sea with no hope of self-rescue. At great sacrifice to himself, a sailor comes along and offers the man a lifeline. Yet he clenches his fist, curses the sailor, and complains about the way things are. Not only is he rejecting his only hope of rescue and life, but he arrogantly spurns this great offer of love. Most people would consider such a person to be mad to take such an irrational and arrogant attitude.

If you really care about injustice and suffering, the first thing you should do is stop pretending that you are God, and humble yourself and try to hear what God in his love is trying to say to you in his son Jesus. But if you harden your heart, and reject his only provision of rescue, then there is nothing more that God can do, or that I can tell you.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

I have nothing against Christianity or religion in principle; however to live your life by a set of rules laid out in a book which was written many centuries ago is simply ludicrous. The fact of the matter is god does not exist, in any of the various shapes and forms he has appeared throughout history. We calmly discredit ancient pagan beliefs such as the Greek Pantheon or Norse Gods – yet Greeks and Vikings pre-dating your good book held their beliefs in as high regard as you do yours now. Somehow they evolved beyond needing them. Loki, Odin, Hera and Zeus have outlived their usefulness in the modern world. The Christian god and Islamic Allah may be more sophisticated, or at least may have evolved to be more pertinent to the lives of people now but are no more real than Thor the god of Thunder.

You would ridicule someone if they believed that Thor’s hammer blows were the source of thunder – science has long since given reasonable evidence to suggest that thunder is the resulting noise of charged particles colliding with each other in the air – yet you are happy to believe that an omnipotent invisible man in the sky watches your every move and listens to the prayers of millions of people. If that wasn’t written in old book and I claimed it as truth you would laugh at me before having me wheeled off to the loony bin.

You theists are also happy to pick and choose the relevant parts of the holy book whose scripture you live by (but have probably never read in its entirety). According to Yahweh the god of the old testament – and father to Jesus (or so some of you believe) – it’s okay to keep foreigners as slaves (Leviticus 25:44-46) and sell your own daughter into sex slavery (Exodus 21:7-11). This is evidence that the book that you believe to be the teachings of an omnipotent god is no longer relevant and has ‘outlived it’s usefulness’ and coincidentally, is evidence that god doesn’t exist.

If he did, and he listened to the prayers of his followers he would write a new book that says – “Forget the Old Testament. That’s a load of old crock– here’s some more relevant stuff to worry about… Like tolerance to other religions. Let’s forget about the penalty of death for idolatry – it’s not really relevant to us in the modern world. Instead it would be a lot more useful if we all just got a long. Then Islamic separatists might not fly planes into your skyscrapers.”

But he hasn’t. For someone who is omniscient and omnipotent he certainly didn’t predict that he would have to fend off lucid arguments against his existence from the likes of Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris. And if he did use his omniscience to predict this why didn’t he use his omnipotence to arm his spokespeople, like Mr. Wilson, with better debating skills and… dare I say it… a shred of factual evidence for his existence.

Better that you suffer to atone for the sins of your fathers… Whatever the hell that means?! God knows all about suffering. How cruel that he sent his son to Earth to be martyred knowing (because he is omniscient) that Jesus’ death would spark thousands of years of anti-Semitism amongst Christians. He didn’t stop there, Adolf Hitler (though often mistakenly labeled an atheist) directly attributed his awful crimes against the Jewish people to his belief in the Christian view of Jews as ‘Christ-killers’. Surely an omniscient or omnipotent god would not have allowed anyone to commit such evil in his name? Even if Hitler was lying to convince the German people that what he was doing was okay, god could still have just stopped him – a well-timed car accident or virus would have sufficed – he kills plenty of innocent Christians this way. Why not kill an evil murderer?

Your faith will allow you to believe that there is some (usually preposterous and irrational) reason that god could have allowed Hitler to live and commit these crimes. Or why god might have killed your god-fearing grandmother with a stroke but let a child-molesting murderer commit heinous crimes in your home town. But you are wrong. And if you are able to justify god allowing these crimes – or the genocide in Darfur, or the tidal wave that destroyed much of Thailand and Indonesia, or Saddam Hussein’s horrific treatment of the Kurds – then you should be the one rotting in hell.

Tom DeFoy

Another good splattering of Harris is Letter to a Maladjusted Misotheist by James Patrick Holding.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

Thank you, Mr. Skinner! That’s as good an explanation and response as I’ve ever seen to those who claim Christianity is merely a crutch. May I feel free to quote you from time to time as the need arrises?

And thank you, Bill for posting the review. It’s unlikely I would ever see any of this were it not for your website.

Yours in Christ,

M.E. Huffmaster