One of the main points to remember about our “God Questions” series is that we are seeking to show that Christianity provides a coherent worldview that adequately answers the full range of life’s greatest questions.
It’s a clear sign that you need to rethink your position if you have to use one way of thinking to answer a certain set of questions, but then switch to a different way of thinking to answer others. Case in point: in 2006, Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) was asked about the consistency of his views as an atheist, and it looks like he knows his worldview doesn’t work:
Questioner: …You seem to take a position of a strong determinist who says that what we see around us is the product of physical laws playing themselves out. But on the other hand, it would seem that you would do things like taking credit for writing this book and things like that. But it would seem, and this isn’t to be funny, that the consistent position would be that… the authoring of this book [was necessarily set] from the initial condition of the big bang…
Dawkins: …What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don’t feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do. None of us ever actually, as a matter of fact, says, “Oh well, he couldn’t help doing it; he was determined by his molecules.” … I mean, when we punish people for doing the most horrible murders, maybe the attitude we should take is, “Oh, they were just determined by their molecules. It’s stupid to punish them.” What we should do is say “This unit has a faulty motherboard which needs to be replaced.” I can’t bring myself to do that. I actually do respond in an emotional way and I blame people, I give people credit, or I might be more charitable and say this individual who has committed murders or child abuse or whatever it is was really abused in his own childhood…
Questioner: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views?
Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with—otherwise life would be intolerable. But it has nothing to do with my views on religion—it is an entirely separate issue.
“It is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with,” says Dawkins. Nonsense! Yes, you have to acknowledge the morality of the matters at hand, but you don’t have to persist in neo-Darwinian atheism. The Christian worldview gives a compelling answer: the existence of the universe, the life within it, and the objective moral values we cannot deny are all best explained by a powerful, personal, immaterial, transcendent God.
This makes me think of a quote I came across years ago when doing a class on Creation vs. Evolution. A British anthropologist named Sir Arthur Keith said:
“Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable”
In other words he clung to his belief in evolution because he was desperate not to believe in God, not because evolution could be tested and found legitimate using the means he would use to test any other scientific proposal.
“Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable”
Do you have a source for this quotation?
I doubt its accuracy.
To be honest I don’t know where I originally came across this quote but its not difficult to find it cited many places. Here’s one on the Mississippi State Univ. site:
MSU
Of course its also not hard to find those who claim it is bogus as well. However, I’ve found that to be true for virtually anything that questions the party line where evolution is concerned.
Take care,
Larry
I think the quote is inaccurate. We have an obligation as Chrstians not to bear false witness. If called to substantiate a quote we should be able to send a person to the book and page number.
I put this quote in the urban legend category.
The claim is that the quote is in the foreword of the 100th Edition of Origin of the Species.
The 100th anniversary edition would have been published in 1959 — Sir Arthur Keith died in 1955.
Sir Arthur did write an introduction in 1928 but there is no quote like this to be found. It remained the foreword until 1958.
Keith, Arthur. Introduction to “The origin of species by means of natural selection”, by Charles Darwin. London: J.M. Dent, 1928.
Thompson, William Robin. Introduction to “The origin of species”, by Charles Darwin. London: J.M. Dent, 1958.
I’d say strike that quote but let’s get back to the topic at hand.
Not all quotes come from pages in books. Many people will say things in private correspondence, etc. that they would not put in the books they write.
However, I agree that there is some question around the origin of this one and that we should be careful as Christians not to be inaccurate.
Yes, to the topic at hand.
The Dawkins quote isn’t accurate either.
Apparently the topic is “bearing false witness.”
C’mon, “false witness?” Red herring.
The topic at hand is whether philosophical naturalism is an adequate worldview for answering the biggest questions we face as human beings.
UC, how do you come to this conclusion?
Guiroo… don’t bite. That’s the red herring.
I’ve given the link showing where I got the quote from, but just for the sake of discussion, let’s go ahead and say it’s inaccurately attributed to Dawkins. Let’s even say it’s a work of fiction — let’s suppose it was a line from a character in a movie.
The point is that neo-Darwinian atheism, with its philosophical naturalism, cannot provide an adequate explanation for questions like “why is intuitively obvious that some things that people do are meritorious and other things are horrible?”
If all we are is molecules bouncing around, concepts like “merit” and “horrible” are meaningless, but as the quote says, that would be “intolerable.” To make it tolerable, the atheist has to commit to an inconsistent position that maintains that objective moral values do not exist, and yet, are somehow indispensable.
This is tantamount to saying that embracing contradiction is more tolerable than facing the facts.
Actually, Questioner has been taken out of context and horribly misrepresented here. He was just asking for Dawkins’ autograph and where the restrooms were. 😉
The point is that neo-Darwinian atheism, with its philosophical naturalism, cannot provide an adequate explanation for questions like “why is intuitively obvious that some things that people do are meritorious and other things are horrible?”
Go back and read Immanuel Kant and brush up on The Categorical Imperative.
Here’s another good refutaiton of your position.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/mfound.html
and
http://hem.passagen.se/nicb/atheism.htm
And, finally, if your a double predestination Calvinist, you’re either elect or reprobate, and there’s nothing you can do about it, God has determined your future and you can’t change it.
Why is it important?
This happens every day around the world, why is it not acceptable?
Please define “good” and “love”, on whose authority should I accept that definition if the moral experience of the individual is what is important?
How dare Vuletic push his morals on people that abandon their children like that?!
@UC: Vuletic misunderstands the thrust of the moral argument. To wit:
His rendering of the Christian’s moral argument works like this:
1. If God exists, then I must obey his moral laws.
2. God exists.
3. Therefore, I must obey his moral laws.
So by denying premiss (2), he concludes — quite rightly — that his obligation to obey moral laws is unaffected. There is no logical conclusion that one can draw by denying the antecedent.
However, the moral argument actually works like this:
1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.
2. But objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.
If you choose to deny premiss 1, you must supply a grounding for objective morality apart from God. If you choose to dispute premiss 2, then you must affirm that torturing babies for fun (etc.) is morally equivalent to jumping on a live grenade to save someone’s life.
In other words, the moral argument reasons to God’s existence — not from it.
Sorry I didn’t get to read Kant… I hope to get there…
Oops, in my last comment I made a typo in the line following “His rendering of the Christian’s moral argument…” If anyone was confused it’s fixed now.
New rule: never syllogize while supervising a sleepover for a bunch of girls age 7 and under!
Re: #4, this is the famous “divine foot in the door” quote taken from an article by Richard Lewontin in 1997:
http://darwinianfundamentalism.blogspot.com/2005/07/darwinian-fundamentalist-manifesto.html
re Kant: Kant’s Categorical Imperative only gives an algorithm for deciding if a thing is moral or not. By applying a particular to the maximum, i.e. taking the roof off, the algorithm supposedly shows if an action is moral or not. However, it gives no basis for why it is moral or not. To live with Kant, you have to have a precondition of what is moral and what is not. Further, it does not even offer a very good algorithm for testing actions. Pretty much all action taken in maximum will be immoral.
re Vuletic: The argument is not that those who don’t believe in god can’t be moral, most are. The argument is those who don’t believe in a transcendent, eternal, and universal God have no basis to judge whether or not something is moral or not; whether or not something will be moral tomorrow; and whether or not something is moral everywhere.
I think the truth offered by the blog is exactly that of Romans 1:21. Even these supposedly smart guys can’t put together a world where God does not exist and be consistent.