Soft-core atheists

Today's prominent atheists (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens) are wimps, argues John F. Haught, writing in the latest issue of The Christian Century (thanks to my friend Brad Davis for pointing out the article to me). Compared to the serious atheist thinkers of the last century, who actually tried to think through the implications of "the death of God," the new atheists are tame, "soft-core atheists."

Haught makes two major criticisms of this new brand of atheist. First, they don't realize that their belief system requires just as much faith as a religion. Their worldview is what's called "scientism," the belief that science is competent to tell us everything there is to know about the universe. If a belief cannot be proven through the scientific method, then it cannot be true, the argument goes. However, there is a glaring flaw in this worldview: it defeats itself. The claim that science is the sole path to truth is itself a claim that has never been and can never be proven by science. The new atheists want to put every belief to the scientific test, except for their own basic assumptions. They too have a doctrinal statement which they hold by pure faith: Science alone can explain the universe. Ultimately, the new atheism is logically contradictory; it cannot even meet its own test.

The second criticism is the reason Haught calls Dawkins, Hitchens and friends "soft-core atheists." Atheists like Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre thought through what it means for human existence if there is no God, and realized that it is a terrifying prospect. "God is dead," Nietzsche's madman wails, "And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?" If there is no God, then we are adrift in a meaningless infinity; our existence has no meaning but what we create. Nietzsche's speaker continues:

"We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? . . . Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?" (The Gay Science, §125)

Without God, we lose the basis of meaning and of morality. Nietzsche was disgusted by the naivete of those who thought they could keep traditional morality intact without God:

When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident . . . Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God is the truth — it stands and falls with faith in God. (Twilight of the Idols)

Nietzsche, along with Camus and Sartre, recognized the huge implications of atheism, and they believed it would take incredible courage to face up to the bleak reality of such a universe in which there is no meaning above ourselves. In contrast to this "muscular" atheism, Haught points out that the new atheists want to remove God and religion from society, but keep everything else, including a basically traditional Christian system of right and wrong. They simply haven't bothered to face the implications of their ideas. They think that they can blithely rid themselves of the nuisance of a God who deserves to be worshiped, but they are denying the Person who upholds their entire universe. Only by the grace and mercy of God does Christopher Hitchens or any one of us breathe a single breath. In him we live and move and have our being.

We should weep and pray for those whose minds are blinded by the god of this world, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 4:4). We should never see them as enemies to be beaten, but as people in a bondage we all once shared. We should love them, reason with them, and pray for them that God would shine the same light into their hearts that he did into ours. And we should pray that God would continue to reveal the places in our own hearts where we think and act as if there is no God. Thank God for his infinite mercy in Christ Jesus our Lord.