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Grappling With Atheism Chris Watkin | chriswatkin@cantab.net | christopherwatkin.com | @DrChrisWatkin

Introduction

The two main ideas of the seminar up front

1. There is more than one way to grapple with atheism.

2. There is more than one atheism to grapple with.

1: There is more than one way to grapple with atheism

1. Fighting fires

The atheist says that religion is the source of war and conflict: we need a response

to that.

The atheists says that Christianity is misogynistic or anti-gay: what are we going to

say in reply?

Evaluation:

+ scratches where atheists are itching intellectually

+ equips Christians with helpful ways of thinking about the sort of questions that

circulate in conversation and in the media

- Atheists set the agenda

- Christianity is always on the back foot

- It can just lead to more questions and not advance the debate in any meaningful

way

- You never get an overall view of Christianity

2. Finding common ground

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Corinthians 1:22-25)

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Evaluation:

+ More bridge-building, at least at first and shows people that the gospel “meets

them where they are at”

+ In its 1 Corinthians 1 guise it is more pro-active than fighting fires, leading to the

heart of the gospel message

- Easy for people to mistake the gospel for just another way of meeting their felt

needs

- In its worst form it is apostasy

3. Storming fortresses

By what standard, where are you standing when you make the claims that you do? You're borrowing from the Christian faith in order to attack the Christian faith.1 Begging the question like a champion, Dawkins simply assumes what he needs to prove. The Zeitgeist is doing good things as long as it is moving in a “progressive” direction. But how on earth are we supposed to define progress?

[quoting Dawkins] The Zeitgeist may move, and move in a generally progressive direction, but as I have said it is a sawtooth and not a smooth improvement, and there have been some appalling reversals.

Appalling reversals? By what standard? A generally progressive direction? By what standard? Improvement? By what standard? The standard for how fast and in what direction the car should go cannot be how fast and in what direction the car is currently going. The car is not a map. An internal combustion engine is not a map. But Dawkins dismisses all of this with a facile “look at us go.”2

Evaluation:

+ Often, people are not willing to hear a position other than their own before they

sense that the ground on which they stand may not be as solid, self-evident and

common-sensical as they had always assumed. Storming the fortress sometimes

shakes people out of their certainty and opens them to hear other positions.

- This way of grappling with atheism need not mention Jesus or the gospel at all; it

can come over as a very negative way of proceeding: confrontational not

inspirational.

1 http://hitchensdebates.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/hitchens-vs-wilson-kings-college-post.html 2 Doug Wilson, The Deluded Atheist: A Response to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2008) 57.

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4. Setting out our stall

Evaluation:

+ It is not limited to just one sort of atheism.

+ You can get everything out on the table.

+ It is well balanced.

+ It can explain atheism itself within the story of Christianity.

If theology no longer seeks to position, qualify or criticize other discourses, then it is inevitable that these discourses will position theology: for the necessity of an ultimate organizing logic […] cannot be wished away. 3

- Takes more time.

Grappling with the different ways of grappling

Paul and Augustine: master grapplers

Paul setting out his stall in Acts 17: the Bible’s “structure” and “story”.4

Structure: What reality is like, its fundamental building blocks and how we can

know about them.

Story: Where history is going. How the structure plays itself out through time.

The “structure” and “story” of the bible: John 1:1-18

3 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) 1. 4 The terms “structure” and “story” are adapted from Al Wolters’ Creation Regained. Wolters, following the Dutch Calvinist philosopher D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, prefers “structure” and “direction”.

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The bible’s “structure”

Personhood

Relationship

Unity and diversity

“values”

Revelation

The bible’s “story”

Salvation/emancipation from failure to know (Jn 1:10) and receive (Jn 1:11) Christ

To a new restored intimate relationship with our Creator and Redeemer.

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2: There is more than one atheism to grapple with

The atheist’s “hopping” tactic

“Imitative” and “ascetic” atheism.5

The world is like a drunken peasant. If you lift him into the saddle on one side, he will fall off again on the other side. One can't help him, no matter how one tries. He wants to be the devil's.6

Imitative atheism [very broadly: New Atheism]

Imitative atheism takes something from the created universe and tries to put it in the place of God (as the thing that provides a standard of truth, a source of knowledge, or ethical principles).

We no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems; Is there

meaning to life? What are we for? What is Man? After posing the last of these questions, the

eminent zoologist G. G. Simpson put it thus: ‘The point I want to make now is that all

attempts to answer the question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if

we ignore them completely’

[…]

5 In his address “Augustinian Christian Philosophy” the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga uses two similar but not identical names: “perennial naturalism” and “creative anti-realism”. See https://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosophy/virtual_library/articles/plantinga_alvin/augustinian_christian_philosophy.pdf 6 Martin Luther, Table Talk #630 (1533). Luther-Werke vol. 54, p. 111.

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Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand

what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have a chance to upset

their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.7

Ascetic atheism [very broadly: postmodernism]

This form of atheism is “ascetic” because it denies itself any God substitute. It seeks to put

nothing in the empty place of God.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he

cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him – you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how

did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the

entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither

is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging

continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down?8

7 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) 1,3. 8 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 119-20.

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The emancipation narratives of imitative and ascetic atheism

For Dawkins’ sort of imitative atheism, we emancipate ourselves from superstition

and enter into the pure light of reason.

For the Nietzschean sort of ascetic atheism, it is the very proliferation of different

meanings and ideas that becomes normative: diversity in itself becomes a value.

Suppose we think of a man made of water in an infinitely extended ocean of water. Desiring to get out of water, he makes a ladder of water. He sets this ladder upon the water and against the water and then climbs out of the water only to fall into the water. So hopeless and senseless a picture must be drawn of the natural man’s methodology based as it is upon the assumption that time or chance is ultimate. On his assumption his own rationality is a product of chance. On his assumption even the laws of logic which he employs are products of chance. The rationality and purpose that he may be searching for are still bound to be products of chance.9

So what?

Recognize who we are grappling with

Recognize how we are grappling at the moment

Think about how we should be grappling

Train the church to recognize the biblical structure and story

9 Van Til, C., & Edgar, W. (2003). Christian apologetics (2nd ed.). The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Phillipsburg, NJ.

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Discussion questions

Of the four ways of grappling with atheism, which do you think the church in

Australia today is best at, and where is it weakest? What should we do about that?

How would you explain the distinctives of the biblical “structure” and “direction” to

a) a Christian friend, b) an unbelieving friend?

With which sort of atheism do we most have to do in Australia today?

How, practically speaking, can we better “set out our stall”?

Further Reading

Fighting fires

Greg Koukl, Tactics

Finding common ground

Tim Keller, The Reason For God Tim Keller and Ed Clowney, Preaching Christ in a Postmodern World (on iTunesU)

Storming fortresses

Augustine of Hippo, The City of God G. K. Chesterton, Heretics G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man John Frame lectures on iTunesU Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture Blaise Pascal, Pensées Richard Pratt, Every Thought Captive Francis Schaeffer, The Francis Schaeffer Trilogy Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith Cornelius Van Til lectures on iTunesU Doug Wilson, The Deluded Atheist

Setting out our stall

Augustine of Hippo, The City of God G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy Alvin Plantinga, “Augustinian Christian Philosophy”, available at

https://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosophy/virtual_library/articles/plantinga_alvin/augustinian_christian_philosophy.pdf

Al Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview

General Reading

D. A. Carson, Christ and Culture Revisited

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Appendix 1

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Appendix 2