Michael Novak on Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris

Much has been written about the "new atheism," but little of it matches the depth and insight of "Lonely Atheists of the Global Village." It's long, but it's a must-read.

Some samples:

"Meanwhile, all three pretend that atheists 'question everything' and 'submit to relentless, almost tedious, self-criticism.' Yet in these books there is not a shred of evidence that their authors have ever had any doubts whatever about the rightness of their own atheism. Self-questioning about their own scholarly indifference to their subject; about the horrific brutalities committed in the name of "scientific atheism" during the 20th century; about the restless and mercurial dissatisfactions in atheist and secular movements during the past hundred years; and about the demographic weaknesses thereof--all such questions are notable by their absence."

and...

"Among my favorite texts for many years, in fact, are certain passages of Alfred North Whitehead--in Science and the Modern World and Adventures of Ideas, for instance. In these passages, Whitehead points out that the practices of modern science are inconceivable apart from thousands of years of tutelage under the Jewish and Christian conviction that the Creator of all things understood all things, in their general laws and in their particular, contingent dispositions. This conviction, Whitehead writes, made long, disciplined efforts to apply reason to the sustained Herculean task of understanding all things seem reasonable. If all things are intelligible to their Creator, they ought to be intelligible to those made in His image, who in imitation of Him press onward in the human vocation to try to understand all that He has made.

"In addition, Judaism and Christianity have inculcated in entire cultures specific intellectual and moral habits, synthesizing them with the teachings of ancient classical traditions, without which the development of modern sciences would lack the requisite moral disciplines--honesty, hard work, perseverance in the face of difficulties, a respect for serendipity and sudden insight, a determination to test any hypotheses asserted. What would modern science be without belief in the intelligibility of all things, even contingent, unique, and unrepeatable events, and without culture-wide habits of honesty, intellectual rigor, and persevering inquiry? Whitehead pointed to this marvelous indebtedness many times, much more generously than Dawkins. In Science and the Modern World (1925), he wrote: 'My explanation is that the faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivation from medieval theology.'"

one more...

"[B]lasphemy is added to blasphemy, and this Son of God is condemned to death as a common criminal, and forced into the most disgraceful sort of death known to men of that time: public mockery, a scourging virtually unto death, and then put out to hang on a cross where the public can shout insults, until the vultures come to pick at his eyes.

"This is not a Pollyanna, this Creator. But what He does do is assure those who suffer and who groan under the weight of the Absurd that, though at times they feel icy fear, they do not in the end need to be afraid. God is a good God, and has His own purposes, and it is no mistake to trust His kindness, ever. The Creator did not make us to face a reasonable world in a rational, calm, and dispassionate way--like a New York banker after a splendid lunch at his Club, sunk into his favorite soft chair in the Library, where a fragrant cigar is still permitted, as he comfortably reads his morning papers. Instead, there is war, exile, torture, injustice. Life is to be understood as a trial, and a time of suffering. A vale of tears. A valley of death. Even in the bosom of wealth, and luxury, and plenty, cancer and failure and radical loneliness strike; but even more often, simple boredom.

"Not at all a land of happy talk, not at all the perfect world of Candide. Atheism is in the main for comfortable men, in a reasonable world. For those in agony and distress, Christianity has seemed to serve much better and for a longer time, not because it offers 'consolation' but precisely because it does not. For Christians, the cross is inescapable, and one ought always to be prepared to take it up. I myself have watched three deeply religious people die without consolation, bereft, empty of feeling for God. To be empty of consolation, however, is not to be empty of faith. Faith is essentially a quiet act of love, even in misery: 'Be it done to me according to thy will.'"

and finally...

"But atheism has a more severe limitation, one that shows itself in the actions of its proponents. One of my favorite parts of the Sam Harris book is his attempt to explain away the horrors of the self-declared atheist regimes in modern history: Fascist in Italy, Nazi in Germany, and Communist in the Soviet Union. Never in history have so many Christians been killed, tortured, driven to their deaths in forced marches, and imprisoned in concentration camps. An even higher proportion of Jews suffered more greatly under the same regimes, particularly the Nazi regime, than at any other time in history. The excuse Harris offers is quite lame. First he directs attention away from the declared character of the regime, toward the personalities of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin: 'While it is true that such men are sometimes enemies of organized religion, they are never especially rational. In fact, their public pronouncements are often delusional. . . . The problem with such tyrants is not that they reject the dogma of religion, but that they embrace other life-destroying myths.'

"In other words, delusional atheists are not really atheists. Would Harris accept a claim by Christians that Christian evildoers are not really Christian?"

You might also be interested to see responses to this on Dawkins's own website. To say there's a contrary view there would be quite an understatement.

Hat tip to Mere Comments

Posted: Fri - March 30, 2007 at 06:42 AM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

Michael Novak on Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson