A while back I spent two days under the teaching of Dan
Dewitt, the former Dean of Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky. Boyce is the undergraduate arm of Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Dewitt
wrote a small book entitled “Jesus or Nothing” as a perspective on engaging
atheists with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
His attitude represents the best kind of thinking in this area.
Upon having read what many atheists (both the scholarly and
otherwise) claim about the reality around them, one thing Dr. Dewitt struck
gold with is the failure of atheism to provide a real basis for life’s
experiences. What I mean by this is that
atheists don’t really live based on their professed reality. Like the rest of us, atheists don’t like it
when they’re lied to, or when someone cheats them, or steals from them, or does
worse. Atheists often do kind things for
others, use clean humor, work hard at their jobs, pay their taxes, and
generally behave in a “moral” fashion.
The problem for the atheist, no matter how hard the atheist tries,
though, is explaining why the atheist cares about these things. I find the websites of American Atheists and
others instructive here, since there is always some effort to point out just
how pleasant and thoughtful atheists are but without reference to any
transcendent authority. It’s as if human
beings can somehow distill principles for living from somewhere but without
having to explain where that somewhere is or whether there is a someone behind
that something.
But why do atheists bother?
If we live in a cold-blooded universe which has no mind, no plan, no
purpose, no thoughts, and no intent, then isn’t the best we can offer is that we
are here because the universe is here.
Thus, you and I are borne of random activity which just happened to
spawn not only life, but, ultimately, human life. As a result, silly quaint notions of
morality not only don’t matter, they can’t matter. Yet, nonetheless, the American Atheists find
themselves compelled to justify that they are somehow “good.” Many atheists seem to not only claim they can
be good, they WANT to be good. It just
doesn’t follow that the concept of good ought to enter the atheist vocabulary.
I probably ought to have called this blog Ironic Musings of
a Puritanical Raver. While I understand
intellectually why the atheist doesn’t want God, because there are times when
the demands of the Christian life befuddle me as well, what puzzles me is how
often atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins insist religion is actually
a “bad” thing. Yes, sometimes Christians
can come across as arrogant and pugnacious, myself included. I repent of my arrogant and pugnacious
days. How is it not equally and more
profoundly arrogant to claim that you are so brilliant that your human
intellect, which by the way has its origins in a non-thinking, non-rational,
non-logical, non-intentional, non-caring universe, can determine what is good
and bad for people? More difficult to
fathom is from whence the atheist even derives such concepts as good and bad? How can an amoral universe cause such
concepts? And, yes, the universe must
have caused the concept, because the universe is all the atheist has from which
to claim such causation.
More importantly, though, setting aside the incredible
oddity that such a universe would cause us to come to a notion of good and bad
at all, doesn’t such a universe imply that all of our actions are programmed
into us from the very beginning? If the
first life that “sprang” into existence out of the primordial muck had a
certain DNA, did not that DNA therefore contain all information necessary from
which further life could spring? If so,
doesn’t it mean that we don’t have any control over ourselves, but simply
operate based on pre-existing code embedded in us through that original piece
of slime? Thus, good and bad mean
nothing since good and bad presuppose some sort of standard that transcends our
programming. Does anyone seriously say
their computer was acting morally reprehensibly because it followed its
programming when you hit certain key strokes? The only difference between us
and our laptop or pad is we apparently have sufficient capability to strike our
own keystrokes. But isn’t even that
simply part of the program?
The Christian worldview solves this problem and, frankly
does so with simplicity and elegance. A
creator whom we call God set the material universe into motion for his own
reasons, which we may never fully comprehend.
In doing so, he created human beings to bear his image – to provide a
basic understanding of who and what he is.
Unfortunately, we humans decided image bearing was insufficient for us –
we wanted it all – we wanted to be God, not just God-like. In violating God’s one rule, we violated our
image bearing status and warped and mangled it so that we now only faintly
resemble the creator God whose image he intended we bear fully and
completely. God however, determined to
save as many of us as he could, entered
the picture by becoming an image bearer himself. Someone had to pay for the warping and
mangling we caused and continue to cause.
God, in the form of a man, Jesus, the Christ, accepted the punishment we
deserved by taking it onto himself through the means of a Roman cross in first
century Palestine. The debt paid, he
rested in the grave for three days, only, by, yes, supernatural means, to rise
to life. If we repent of our sins and
believe this truth, we are saved for all eternity to be proper, unwarped, and
unmangled image bearers once again.
Yes, the gospel message sounds insane to worldly ears. Yet, if it is true, then it solves
everything, brings purpose, makes good and bad understandable, and provides a
rational basis for living. Atheism,
ironically, only brings irrationality since it doesn’t explain how people
actually live their lives. We WANT to be
good. We WANT others to treat us
rightly. We WANT to believe our lives
mean something more than mere existence.
We WANT to believe our choices matter.
If we are pre-programmed by the universe, it’s all meaningless. Yet, people, yes even atheists, don’t live
life that way. Only the Christian
worldview explains it.
