Difficulties with Atheism

The Christian thinker, Francis Schaeffer, used to visit Cambridge University regularly to teach groups of students  He frequently said was that when talking with people with a different world view, such as atheists, agnostics, existentialists or people from other religions, he would spend much time talking with them to show the negative, illogical  and often disastrous consequences of that way of thinking.  Only then would he go on to explain the reasons why he had become a Christian.  Many in western societies think that, in practice, God is dead.

The Consequences of the ‘Death of God’

If mankind accidentally evolved from slime in an atheistic world there can be no ‘real’ values, all must be make-believe and therefore optional. If there is no personal God who created us, such traits have to be downgraded to interesting side effects of our evolution. Clearly they can have no ‘otherworldly’ significance if life is an accident. These values would not be worth dying for. If however, we were created ‘in God’s image’, then God’s values would be part of our make-up. It is no coincidence that these values people admire are characteristics of Jesus Christ.

Some modern thinkers have recognised the importance of these values but want to try and give them substance without invoking a creator. They have been described as ‘ultimate realities’ although logically there can be nothing ultimate about them without there being an ultimate God, as Plato clearly understood. G. K. Chesterton astutely put it this way,

“God is not a symbol of Goodness: Goodness is a symbol of God.”

The instincts that recognise these essential values are common to all people. Goodness is recognised by our consciences, beauty in our imaginations and truth in our rational minds. Goodness is cherished when seen in others. A beautiful scene whispers to us that there is a transcendent aspect to our lives; it is a reflection of ‘another world’. George Steiner thought beauty was “an echo of the presence of other.”

We live in a society that increasingly thinks ‘God is dead’. Some still accept God in theory but in practice he is largely irrelevant – living as practical atheists. The strange thing is that many who think like this still think life should be lived on Christian principles – at least by others.

One hundred years ago the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche foretold that within a century God would ‘be dead’ in society. He rightly scorned those who acknowledged this in their thinking but kept the old morality and duties. George Eliot, the author who wrote ‘Middlemarch’ and ‘Mill on the Floss’ was such a person. She wrote,

“God is inconceivable and immortality unbelievable but duty is nevertheless peremptory and absolute.”

No basis for Truth

There is a universal conviction that there is an ultimate reality called truth. Society is dependent on there being a real value called ‘truth’. In the law courts, witnesses are giving their impressions of what really happened – the truth. In medicine, we use a wide variety of tests to make a correct diagnosis as to what pathology is causing a patients illness. We recognise that there is a true diagnosis even though we may have difficulties coming to the right answer. Society is dependent on there being a real value called ‘truth’.

What is truth? I discussed this with a group of medical consultants and they concluded, “Truth must be consensus”. This cannot be right as consensual support for an idea can be obtained using a variety of means. Politicians with power have often tried to rewrite history when the truth is not helpful to their political aspirations. Hitler had the consensus of Germany supporting his regime yet now most Germans strongly repudiate many of his repugnant views. The majority of people used to accept Aristotle’s teaching that the ‘heavenly bodies’ were made of an unearthly very light ‘fifth substance’ or, in Greek, the ‘quintessence’. The consensus at one time was that the earth was the centre of the universe. The consensus was clearly wrong in the light of subsequent research.

The only definition of truth that can stand is one that relates to an absolute, as Plato recognised. Truth may thus be defined as ‘a concept compatible with God’. If there is no God, there is no truth, only consensus. Some have argued that truth can only be found in physical reality but such a materialistic definition denies the value of many areas of life on which our society depends.  These would include love, integrity, honour, courage, and kindness.  Although these values cannot be proved, our instincts affirm that they are real and important.

Without there being an absolute God, there can be no absolute truth.  Everything is relative.  Your truth may be different to mine.  Yet in science we are searching for real laws, real explanations that explain our existence.  We believe in such truth.  In the legal world, though witnesses may give different accounts of what happened, it is widely accepted that there is a truth of what really happened.  If our existence is a random event, then there can be no assurance that our instincts concerning truth are valid, yet we cannot live without the concept of truth.

No basis for Logic

Logic also becomes unreliable. Professor Haldane astutely said,

“If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motion of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true, . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be compose of atoms.”

Charles Darwin himself was concerned about this and wrote,

“The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”

All of science depends upon the obvious finding that we live in a rational universe.

Einstein recognised that the basis of the scientific method was the fact that the universe is rational. He astutely said,

“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.”

It is this rationality that has led many philosophers to recognise that the universe must be the product of a very intelligent God.  He must have a rational mathematical mind.

Science is the search for truth. If truth is defined in Plato’s terms as concepts compatible with God, it is clearly nonsense to try to use science, which is a search for truth, to try to destroy a belief in God.   God is the only basis for truth’s validity.

No basis for morals

Without God, anything goes and the strong will control even the morality of society. It is only because there is a supreme being who will judge us all that the atrocities of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and the genocides in Ruanda, Sudan and Bosnia are wrong.

Nietzsche derided people as “odious windbags of progressive optimism, who think it is possible to have Christian morality without Christian faith.” In “Twilight of the Idols” he wrote,

“They are rid of the Christian God, and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality . . . when one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality from under one’s feet.”

This point was brilliantly put in a debate where an analogy between our reliance on God and air was made - both are invisible but are essential for life.

“Imagine a person who comes in here tonight and argues, ‘no air exists’ but continues to breathe air while he argues. Now intellectually, atheists continue to breathe – they continue to use reason and draw scientific conclusions (which assumes an orderly universe), to make moral judgments (which assumes absolute values) – but the atheistic view of things would in theory make such ‘breathing’ impossible.  They are breathing God’s air all the time they are arguing against him.”

This pressure to leave God out of our thinking is very dangerous for ours or any society. Dostoevsky wrote in ‘The Brothers Karamozov’,

“Is there no God? Then everything is permitted.”

The atheist, Richard Dawkins, has said,

“ . . . a universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without.”

Standards of behaviour and personal integrity will inevitably diminish, both in individuals and in society as fewer individuals do what is right before God, refusing to believe that God will ultimately be their judge. Winston Churchill reminded us that a nation cannot expect its citizens to follow Christian ethics if it fails to teach them Christian dogma.

It is perhaps significant that few recognise the opposite of integrity. It is dis-integrity or disintegration. When an individual loses the determination to do what is right before God, then first his personal life, then his family life, then his societies’ life and ultimately his nations’ life will tend to disintegrate. This is what Gibbon thought was the cause of the ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ and isn’t it what we are beginning to see in this country?

The novelist William Golding, who wrote ‘Lord of the Flies’ said,

“If God is dead, if man is the highest, good and evil are decided by majority vote.”

Adolf Hitler appreciated this.

Hitler developed some of Darwin’s theories into his social ideas. Darwin did try to dissociate himself from these extreme views that held that it was acceptable to exterminate the weaker people in society in order to strengthen the genetic pool and so make society stronger. Darwin thought racial groups such as aborigines and Negroes were intermediaries between apes and fully developed humans that were both intellectually and morally weaker than Europeans. He wrote in ‘The Descent of Man’,

“If we do not prevent . . . the inferior members of our society from increasing at a quicker pace than the better class of men, the nation will retrograde.”

He did think that human beings should control their own evolution,

“All do good service who aid towards this end.”

It was Ernest Haeckel, a Professor of Zoology in Germany and an ardent disciple of Darwin, who popularised the logical consequences of Darwinism. He wrote,

“What good does it do to humanity to maintain artificially and rear the thousands of cripples, deaf mutes, idiots, etc who are born every year with an hereditary burden of incurable disease?”

He encouraged ‘involuntary euthanasia’, the active killing of “the hundreds of thousands of incurables – lunatics, lepers, people with cancer, etc.” Haeckel also recommended the “indiscriminate destruction of all incorrigible criminals.”

Haeckel’s views became very popular in Germany. They were accepted by Hitler and became the basis for the extermination of the Jews, the insane, gypsies and other undesirables such as unwanted children, by the third Reich regime. It is important to remember that many of these killings were undertaken by ordinary doctors and nurses who were following approved protocols.

Jeremy Rifkin is a New Ager. Towards the end of his book ‘Algeny’ he discusses the effect that Darwinism logically brings with it.

“This is evolution. We no longer feel ourselves to be guests in someone else’s home and therefore obliged to make our behaviour conform to a set of pre-existing cosmic rules. It is our creation now. We make the rules. We establish the parameters of reality. We create the world and because we do we no longer have to justify our behaviour. We are now the architects of the universe. We are responsible, nothing outside ourselves. We are the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever and ever.”

The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky often wrote about the dangerous situation that ensues when men refuse to acknowledge their creator and instead make themselves gods.

When my wife and I visited the Nazi extermination camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau the truth of what happens when men become gods becomes grossly apparent.  Hitler had envisaged a generation that had rejected the old ideals and boasted,

“I freed Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience and morality . . . We will train young people before whom the world will tremble.  I want young people capable of violence – imperious, relentless and cruel.”

When man turns his back on God, morality becomes arbitrary.  The agenda can be set by the man who is most powerful.

Totalitarianism increases

So when integrity diminishes, external state control or totalitarianism increases with all its associated problems. Kafka’s book, ‘The Castle’, describes a world with problems similar to those we are beginning to see today. It describes a world where there is overwhelming bureaucratic power and authority. The telephone exchanges produce more muddles than connections. Bureaucracy drowns human beings in a deluge of files and forms. A stifling hierarchy makes it impossible to get through to any senior responsible people. Kafka says,

“The conveyor belt of life carries you on, no-one knows where. One is more of an object, a thing, than a living creature.”

The use of the word ‘creature’ is significant. A ‘creature’ has been formed by a ‘creator’.

Bullying and intimidation inevitably increase.  No opposition to the dictator’s wishes can be permitted as the ‘best’ and even ‘truth’ are now defined by what benefits the regime

Joseph Stalin had, in his youth, been a theological student, preparing to become a priest.  However his ambitions mixed with Nietzsche’s teaching caused him to reject any belief in God.  He pursued with great ardour the goal of atheistic communism instead.  The name Stalin was not his real name – it means ‘steel’.  It was given him by his fellow communists to reflect his steel like determination to reach his goal.  It was this characteristic that led Lenin to appoint him to lead the Communist party.  His daughter , Svetlana, was present when he died and said he was troubled by awful hallucinations.  Suddenly he sat up in bed, defiantly threw  a clenched fist into the air as a defiant gesture against God and died.

No basis for Meaning

The existentialist writer, Jean-Paul Sartre, wrote a book called ‘No Exit’, saying that he can see no exit from the human dilemma. If there are no real answers, make up your own and live them to the full.

A French perfume manufacturer sold its fragrances to the English with the catch phrase,

“Life is to be played by your own script.”

This reflects other current phrases such as,

“Just do it.”

“Just be.”

“Follow your dream.”

Yet Sartre’s logic and conclusions are right only if you start with his atheistic presumptions.

No answer to Guilt

“A guilty conscience never feels secure,” said the Roman Publius Syrus.

“Guilt is the source of sorrow, 'tis the fiend, th' avenging fiend, that follows us behind with whips and stings,” said Nicholas Rowe.

“Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind,” said William Shakespeare.

“From the body of one guilty deed a thousand ghostly fears and haunting thoughts proceed,” said William Wordsworth

Such opinions could be multiplied many times. There is no doubt that guilt is a very destructive force in individuals. It has a ‘compound interest’ effect. The more sinful and guilty a person feels, the less chance there is that he will be a happy, healthy, and satisfied citizen.

Yet is this sense of guilt bad for us and society? It is easy to complain when you pick up a hot cooking utensil mistakenly. Yet that feeling of pain is definitely to your benefit. It took many years for doctors to understand why people suffering from leprosy found their fingers and toes disappearing. It is because the slow growing bacterium, Mycobacteria leprae, invades the nerves which subsequently cease to function. Sufferers therefore have limited or no feeling in their extremities. They don’t feel the heat of a boiling kettle when they pick it up. They don’t feel their toes rubbing on their sandals. Ulcers develop which slowly cause degeneration.

Guilt can be painful yet it is necessary both for our society and ourselves. Some have tried to explain it away as a product of our upbringing or the effect of the church, but it must be deeper than that. People who have no connections with church tend to feel more and not less guilty.

Eric Fromm wrote in his book, ‘The Sane Society’,

“It is indeed amazing that, in as fundamentally an irreligious culture as ours, the sense of guilt should be so widespread and deep rooted as it is.”

The book, ‘Realised Religion’, reviews research on the relationship between religion and health. It concludes, “Mental Health workers need to be aware of the positive potential of religious involvement”. Overall ‘fully eighty per cent of psychiatric research on religion and health conclude that a faith is advantageous’. Many studies in ‘Life Satisfaction’ all show that there is a direct relationship between spiritual commitment and contentment. A number of studies conclude, “materialistic people generally have been found to be unhappy”. This sense of well-being is accredited to the effect of individual beliefs as well as from active involvement in religious communities and activities.

The amazing fact is that we all like to be tempted. There is something exciting about it. “We won’t be harmed by a little thought, will we?” A vicar was trying to help a man whose marriage was on the rocks. He had had an affair.

“I don’t know how it happened,” the unhappy man complained.

“I do,” replied the wise vicar, “You had been thinking about these things in your imagination and found them attractive. Then when you found yourself in the same situation it was all too easy to fall.”

An American preacher put it this way,

“Sinful pleasure lures us only in anticipation, dancing before us like Salome before her uncle Herod, quite irresistible in fascination, happiness seems focused on her. But on the day that deed, long held in alluring expectation, is actually done, how swift and how terrible the alteration in its aspect. It passes from anticipation to committal into memory, and will never be beautiful again.”

There is not one of us who can look God in the eye with our head high. We have all failed to live as we know we should have done. Does everyone have these standards? Oh, yes. Just think how we criticise others for the things they do. Everyone knows about guilt.

It was the reality about himself that finally led the agnostic C.S.Lewis to realise how much he needed Jesus Christ.

“For the first time I examined myself with a seriously practical purpose. And there I found what appalled me. A zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a misery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds. My name was Legion.”

Marghanita Lasky, a humanist, was involved in a television debate with a Christian. She said,

“What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness. I have no-one to forgive me.”

The reality about my guilt and my need to be forgiven for wrongdoings are powerful arguments supporting the claims of Jesus.

Atheism does give rise to real problems, but the answer to them is that God has stopped into his world to solve these problems.  There is much confirmatory evidence  for Jesus really being God’s true solution.  The Jewish prophecies about the Messiah are very strong, the evidence of the disciples who were clearly convinced about Jesus, the evidence for his death and resurrection and the extraordinary expansion of the church as people saw that what Jesus taught was really right. I have tried to outline these arguments in the book, ‘Stepping Stones to Faith’.

BVP