Four Books by Three Atheists
Book Reviewed
by John Scott
Four Books By Three Atheists
- The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
- God Is Not Great: How Religions Spoils Everything, Christopher Hitchens
- The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris
- Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris
The God Delusion, God is Not Great, How Religion Spoils Everything The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason Letter to a Christian Nation
Reviewed by John Scott,1
The world’s leading intellectual atheist for decades was Antony Flew. In 2004 he changed his mind and accepted the existence of God (Christian Ethics Today, “Another Atheist Finds God,” Fall 2005, 15). As if reacting to that news, the four books listed above have since been published. They defend atheism and vilify religion. Each has spent time as No. 1 on the New York Time’s list of best sellers in the nonfiction category. So I read them in view of the New Testament passage: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that is within you.”
The Authors
Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, is now regarded as the world’s leading advocate for atheism. He is a science professor at Oxford University.
Hitchens, author of God is Not Great, is a prolific British writer who recently became a U.S. citizen. He gained wide attention as a political leftist who nevertheless spoke out vociferously in favor of the war in Iraq. He is an amazingly quick thinker with a penchant for outrageous insults, as when he called Mother Teresa “a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.” When on TV Hitchens is the master of one-liners and soundbites, but that doesn’t carry over to his book. It contains so many long and sarcastic flourishes and innuendos, it’s hard to ferret out clear arguments for his atheism, other than his revulsion
for hateful religious people. Harris, author of The End of Faith, is a graduate in philosophy working on a doctorate in neuroscience. His book starts out in a clear direction but then wanders into a wilderness of speculation about everything from Eastern mysticism to the subject of his doctoral studies: whether there might be a neural basis for belief, disbelief, and uncertainty. His second book, Letter to a Christian Nation, responds to some criticisms of his first one, but adds little of substance.
Although written in distinctly different styles, all these books cover essentially the same territory. So I will mainly focus on just one of them: The God Delusion by Dawkins. It is more likely to recruit the undecided than the other three books, as they mostly preach to the choir (or however you’re supposed to use that analogy with atheists).
Threshold Question No. 1
While reading books by atheists over the years—beginning in 1957 with Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell—I learned to look for answers to two threshold questions. The first one is: Does the author acknowledge any possibility that God exists?
The answer is virtually always, yes. Some atheists make that concession reluctantly, but Dawkins is straightforward about it. For example, notice the word almost in what he calls his main conclusion: “God almost certainly does not exist.” When asked if his use of the word “almost” was intended to leave open the possibility that God does exist, Dawkins candidly acknowledged that “any scientist would leave open that possibility . . . . We can’t be dogmatic and say it is certain that God doesn’t exist.”
So atheism is a decision, not a discovery. An atheist isn’t certain there is no God, but chooses to guess there isn’t. An agnostic is one who doesn’t choose to make a guess, either way. In lieu of the word guess, a scientist might say hypothesis. Dawkins calls it an assumption when he defines a “strong atheist” as one who says, “I live my life on the assumption that [God] is not there.”
In short, atheists do not claim to be infallible. They acknowledge they could be wrong, so the existence of God is at least a possibility.
Threshold Question No. 2
How does the author deal with “Pascal’s Wager”? That’s a line of reasoning that’s been used by many people, but it’s named for the brilliant scientist Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) who puts it in one of his famous essays. It can be summarized like this: “One who is not absolutely certain about the existence of God has three options: (1) be a person of faith, by choosing to guess God does exist; (2) be an atheist, by choosing to guess God does not exist; or (3) be an agnostic, by not choosing to make a guess.
Here are some possible outcomes: If the person of faith has made a correct guess, he could live to rejoice because he did. If he has made a wrong guess, he will never know it.
If the atheist has made a correct guess, he will never know it. If he has made a wrong guess, he could live to regret it.
The agnostic is the only one who can be sure he has not made a correct guess, as he hasn’t made one. And he could live to regret that.
So choosing faith appears to be the only option with any possibility of a good outcome. Pascal considered that to be a no-brainer. Pascal also pointed out that faith is the best option for being worthwhile and happy in the present life as well.
Dawkins scoffs at Pascal’s Wager, but for two wrong reasons. He begins with an accurate summary of Pascal’s advice, but then shifts into a false assumption. He says Pascal was trying to make a case for conjuring up a forced belief or certitude in the existence of God. But Pascal said nothing of the kind. To the contrary, he began by assuming (at least in that essay) that we are “incapable” of being certain God exists. Then Pascal addressed the question: In view of that uncertainty, what should we do about any possibility that God does exist? Pascal concluded that wisdom requires a better- safe-than-sorry guess, or if you prefer, hypothesis or assumption.
Dawkins’s second false assumption is that Pascal thought the only thing one must do to play it safe is to “believe” in God. Dawkins belittles that notion, saying that God would surely require more—such as “kindness, or generosity, or humility.” But Pascal would agree with Dawkins on that point. To place Pascal’s bet one cannot stop with the hypothesis or assumption that God exists. One must make it a working hypothesis or an operating assumption. An idle guess is not enough. A person must actually live as if the guess is true, just as a scientist can test an unproven hypothesis by acting as if it is true. Indeed, it is not unusual for scientists to prove something is true as a result of an “act as if ” experiment notwithstanding having had serious doubts beforehand.
The famous medical doctor-psychologist- philosopher-Harvard professor William James (1842-1910) observed that many of our personal beliefs—both religious and non-religious— result from living as if they are true before we really know they are. Some of the most important, and pleasurable, facts of life can be known in no other way.
Bad Things Done by Religious People
Concluding his discussion of Pascal’s Wager, Dawkins asks, “Is it possible, finally, to argue for a sort of anti-Pascal wager?” Dawkins suggests it might be safer to bet God does not exist and thereby avoid “the evil consequences that can flow from religious belief and observance.”
Then Dawkins tries to make the case that the world would be a better place if all religion vanished and we all became atheists. To support that view Dawkins quotes Sean O’Casey: “Politics has slain its thousands, but religion has slain its tens of thousands.” But how does he account for political purges such as those by Stalin that led to the deaths of an estimated 30 million of his own people? Stalin was an atheist and dictator of the largest nation in history with an enforced doctrine of atheism.
Dawkins absolves atheism of any responsibility for such atrocities by saying [I’m not making this up] that the perpetrators were not influenced by their atheism, but were motivated “by economic greed, by political ambition, by ethnic or by racial prejudice, by deep grievance or revenge,” or they were just insane or otherwise demented. “Individual atheists may do evil things but they don’t do evil things in the name of atheism,” he explains.
While practicing law 40 years I heard many people strain beyond the limits of veracity in efforts to justify their preordained conclusions. But none of them outdid this effort by Dawkins so far as I’m concerned. Does he really think we’re naïve enough to believe that Stalin’s being an avowed atheist did not leave him more open to murdering those millions than if he had been a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church? If Dawkins himself had been one of those sent to die of starvation in Siberia, would he have not welcomed, indeed prayed for Stalin’s religious conversion? Even if Stalin’s atheism did not directly motivate such atrocities, at the very least it enabled them by not putting any restrains on his evil desires.
Nevertheless, Dawkins excuses atheism for the evil acts of atheists on the grounds they must have had other motives. But he refuses to grant that same defense to religion. Religious excuses have been used throughout history to hide non-religious aims. And the underlying causes of many so-called “religious” conflicts are not really religious— such as the economic tensions between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, and the territorial disputes between Israel and its neighbors. And religion is no exception to the rule that all great institutions can attract some fanatics, fools, and frauds. But that’s also true of governments, and even charities, and most certainly universities, including the one where Dawkins serves on the faculty.
All of these authors persist in speaking of “religion” as if it is one monolithic entity. They point to some regrettable doctrine or practice of one religious person or group as if it were a fly in “the” religious soup. For example, Hitchens accuses the Dutch Reform Church of helping to maintain apartheid in South Africa, but he fails to mention the role of the Anglican Church in ending it. Harris mentions the refusal of some members of the denomination known as Christian Scientists to accept medical help, even to save their children. But that tiny minority hardly represents the entire Christian religion, which is divided into an estimated 37,000 denominations.2 And some of those so-called denominations are actually categories of separate groups, such as the 35 different kinds of Baptists just in the U.S.
Nevertheless, these atheists repeatedly recite various misdeeds by religious people and groups as evidence against all the others, but they explicitly refuse to do the same concerning atheism. (I must say, however, I also think it’s unfair to judge all atheists by the actions of those who are infamous for their evil ways. I’ve done volunteer work with an atheist to help some people with disabilities. He’s very kind and does enough charity work to put many Christians to shame.)
Good Things Done by Religious People
In trying to make the case that the Christian religion had done more harm than good, all these authors ignore massive amounts of evidence to the contrary. Christians were the prime movers behind the establishment of charities, hospitals, universities, personal freedoms, and even the advancement of science.3 Recent in-depth studies show that people of faith donate far more money and volunteer many more hours to charities, even to secular charities, than secularists; and they give a lot more blood as well.4 Only three percent of the people in India are Christians, yet Christians provide almost 30 percent of the health care in that country. Moreover, studies show that people who are religious and charitable are likely to be much healthier, in every way, than those who are not.5
One of the good things done by religious people is to stop bad things being done by others, including other religious people. Take slavery, for example. Many Christians in England and the U.S. once owned slaves, but other Christians led the abolitionist movements in both countries. And Christians are still trying to wipe out slavery in other places. Between 1995 and 2000 Christian Solidarity International freed nearly 21,000 Sudanese slaves by the peaceful means of buying and freeing them. I’d like to see someone try to convince those former slaves they would be better off without Christianity. But, believe it or not, these authors say “enlightened” atheists would fill that void with more good deeds, and fewer bad ones.
Science and Religion
Dawkins refers to an old survey indicating that a 40 percent minority of scientists believe in God. He must not have been aware of a more recent survey by Elaine Howard Ecklund, Ph.D. sociologist at Rice University, that puts the figure at a two-thirds majority among scientists on the faculties of 21 elite research universities in the U.S. But such surveys don’t really matter anyway, as God’s existence obviously doesn’t depend on a majority vote by scientists.
Dawkins discusses his favorite subject at great length—Darwinian evolution. He seems to think that a belief in evolution almost precludes a belief in God. Perhaps that is why some Christians devote huge amounts of time and money to oppose the teaching of evolution. However, these efforts may be backfiring. The intensity of Christian opposition to evolution signals to some young people that if evolution is true, then there must be no God. As many of those young people have already been persuaded that evolution is a proven fact, that may explain in part, the recent spike in atheism among young people. In any event, a different approach has been suggested by Francis Collins, the medical doctor, preeminent scientist, and former atheist who is now a committed Christian. In his book The Language of God Dr. Collins explains why a belief in evolution is in no way inconsistent with a belief in God.
Aside from evolution, Dawkins points out that the history of religion is strewn with mistaken beliefs about the physical world. But that’s also true of philosophy, science, and medicine. Nevertheless, Dawkins implies that no competent scientist can believe in God. Yet his own scientific credentials pale in comparison to those of many scientists who do believe in God.
Believers include Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine, and physiology who have spoken openly about their faith. The book Spiritual Evolution (Templeton Foundation Press, 1998) contains personal religious testimonies of preeminent scientists, including S. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, whom Dawkins recognizes as a great scientist without seeming to be aware of her religious faith. The cover story in Newsweek on July 20, 1998, was “Science Finds God.” It reported that many scientists, including some former atheists, believe in God. Time ran a similar story in 1992.6
Bad Arguments by Some Believers
Dawkins also points out why certain arguments made to prove God’s existence are not valid. Then he implies that this refutation proves God’s non-existence. But an invalid argument doesn’t prove the opposite of its conclusion. In fact, it just doesn’t prove anything. Such an argument may even reach a correct conclusion, albeit for a wrong reason.
Unanswerable Questions
Atheists often ask unanswerable questions about why God does and does not act in certain ways, as if to say, “If God existed we could read God’s mind and know all the answers!” This reminds me of a question I asked my Dad when I was a child: “Does outer space have a boundary, and if it does, what’s on the other side if it’s not more space?” Dad explained that our minds can’t grasp either answer, but that doesn’t prove either answer is wrong, or that there’s not some other explanation beyond the boundaries of our minds.
Sure enough, some theoretical physicists later came up with another theory: that space is a curved and closed system. I don’t have the foggiest notion of what that means, but that doesn’t prove them wrong. Just as our hands cannot lift every object we can touch, so our minds cannot answer every question we can ask. Such questions are just that—questions, not answers. If we refuse to believe in anything until we have all the answers about it, we will never believe in anything. Everything is a mystery beyond a certain point. That includes God. It would require delusional arrogance to think otherwise.
Recommended Reading
Lengthy books may be written to rebut, point by point, the four books in question. But the following books already contain enough hard data and sound reasoning for that purpose:
£The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. (Free Press, New York, 2006), $26.
£Christianity on Trial: Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry by Vincent Carroll & David Shiflett (Encounter Books, San Francisco, 2002), $15.95
£The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World by Alister McGrath (Doubleday, New York, 2004).
1 Copyright 2007 John R. Scott. This review contains some material from a forthcoming book A God for Skeptics.
2 Christianity Today, July 2005, from the article “Is Christ Divided?” by Timothy George.
3 Christianity on Trial: Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry, by Vincent Carroll & David Shiflett (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002).
4 Arthur C. Brooks, Who Really Cares?—America’s Charity Divide (New York: Basic Books, 2006). This book reports on extensive research that shows people of faith are far more charitable in every way than secularists. My review of this book appeared in Christian Ethics Today, Winter 2007, 29.
5 Arthur C. Brooks, Chapter 7: “Charity Makes You Healthy, Happy, and Rich,” 137.
6 “Science, God and Man,” Time magazine, December 28, 1992, 38- 44.
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