THE UNSHAKABLE FAITH OF ATHEISM

Atheist Tim O’Neill, former state president of the Australian Skeptics and medievalist, complains that:

·       Many New Atheists don’t seem capable of putting their emotions aside and looking at the evidence…

·       like perpetuating the myth that the medieval Church taught that the earth was flat, to full blown conglomerations of elaborate fringe theory, like the cluster of fervid and contrived pseudo history that is the Jesus Myth hypothesis.  But the list of historical ideas the New Atheists and their online acolytes get wildly wrong is long.  Amongst other things, many of them believe:

·        That Christianity caused the “Dark Ages” by systematically destroying almost all ancient Greco-Roman learning,

·        That Christians burned down the Great Library of Alexandria and that Hypatia of Alexandria was murdered because of a Christian hatred of science

·        That Constantine was a crypto-pagan who adopted Christianity as a cynical political ploy (and personally created the Bible [see also here – VJT])

·        That scientists were oppressed during the Middle Ages and science stagnated completely until “the Renaissance”

·        That “the Inquisition” was a kind of Europe-wide medieval Gestapo and that the medieval Church was an all-powerful totalitarian theocracy

·        That Giordano Bruno was a wise and brave astronomer and cosmologist who was burned at the stake because the Church hated science

·        That the Galileo Affair was a straightforward case of religion ignoring evidence and trying to suppress scientific advancement

·        That Pope Pius XII was a friend and ally of the Nazis [article upvoted by O’Neill – VJT] who turned a blind eye to the Holocaust and helped Nazis escape justice

It would be nice if I didn’t have to continually prove to the atheist hoards that Hitler wasn’t a Christian. However, this belief works for them, and that seems to be what matters.

Can we Learn Anything from History?

Some believe that history doesn’t teach us any lessons. At a round table discussion with a group of secularists, I asked:

• Do you think we can learn from the past? Can we apply the lessons of yesterday to today and to the future? Can they instruct us to build a better world?

Almost all proclaimed that this was a new day – a New Age – and, therefore, the lessons of the past no longer applied.

Their answer was shocking. I had worked for the New York City Department of Probation for 15 years. There was an underlying assumption that the past would tell us a lot about the future. Therefore, when we wrote a report to the court, we always included a copy of the Rap Sheet, which recorded the perp’s criminal history, assuming that the past said a lot about one’s present legal entanglements and his future.

However, progressives seem to be unwilling to regard these lessons. Why? Jason Morgan calls it “the pathology of pride”:

• Most of today’s intellectuals are still lost in this present progressive tense, deaf to the subtle tones that ought to modulate their voices from behind. They dismiss all who came before them, rejecting whatever wisdom our ancestors might have won through hard trial and costly error. They want the future now, and will not let any notes of caution dissuade them from their project. (Salvo Mag., #33, 12)

This is most apparent in the area of human sexuality. Morgan writes:

• Gender Studies departments assure us that there are no differences in sex, only in gender indoctrination. Our bodies seem to indicate otherwise, but dual sexuality is so last century. (13)

Do these departments provide any historical justifications for their bizarre proclamations? No! In fact, they overlook all of the historic lessons, which point to the contrary. These same departments had claimed that traditional values and family had enslaved wives, depriving them of sexual fulfillment. However, studies have shown the exact opposite thing:

• Women without religious affiliation were the least likely to report always having an orgasm with their primary partner – only one in five … Protestant women who reported always having an orgasm [had] the highest [percentage], at nearly one-third. In general, having a religious affiliation was associated with higher rates of orgasm for women. (The Social Organization of Sexuality, 115; quoted by Salvo, Spring 2013, 35)

This is consistent with previous studies. A Redbook Magazine survey of 1970 found that:

• The more religious a woman is, the more likely she is “to be orgasmic almost every time she engages in sex.” Conversely, irreligious women tended to be the least satisfied with the quality and quantity of their intercourse. (35)

Writing for USA Today, William R. Mattox:

• Suggested that “church ladies tend to be free from the guilt associated with violating one’s own sexual standards” – a factor that a University of Connecticut study found to hinder sexual satisfaction among unmarried college students. 

Are the gender studies people creating a better society? The evidence would not suggest so. According to Brian Fitzpatrick, the most “definitive work on the rise and fall of civilizations, was published in 1934 by Oxford anthropologist J.D. Unwin”:

• In Sex and Culture, Unwin studied 86 human civilizations ranging from tiny South Sea island principalities to mighty Rome. He found that a society’s destiny is linked inseparably to the limits it imposes on sexual expression and that those sexual constraints correlate directly to its theological sophistication and religious commitment.

• Unwin noted that the most primitive societies had only rudimentary spiritual beliefs and virtually no restrictions on sexual expression, whereas societies with more sophisticated theologies placed greater restrictions on sexual expression and achieved greater social development.

• In particular, cultures that adopt what Unwin dubbed “absolute monogamy” proved to be the most vigorous, economically productive, artistically creative, scientifically innovative, and geographically expansive societies on earth. Absolute monogamy is a very strict moral code. Under absolute monogamy, sex can occur only within one-man/ one-woman marriage. Premarital and extramarital sex are not tolerated and divorce is prohibited.

Even from our limited, contemporary perspective on human thriving, we can see how Unwin had been spot-on:

• According to the Family Research Council… more than half (54 percent of American teens 15-17 years old do not live in a home with their married mother and father. The benefits to children of being raised by their married parents are significant, including higher educational attainments levels, better emotional health, and better self-esteem. Conversely, the risks to teens of not living with a father in the home are notable. Teenage boys are more likely to engage in delinquent behavior, and girls are seven to eight times more likely to experience a teen pregnancy. (Salvo, 19)

Besides, if we regard the stats, the fallout from extramarital sex is horrendous. We can only close our eyes to history at great cost, even in terms of lives.

The French Revolution, which promised freedom, brought a Reign of Terror through their “enlightened” reason. However, the communists were unwilling to learn from this horrible experiment. Morgan writes:

• Communism, which promised the ultimate in a rationally based society, found, much to their embarrassment, that in order to liberate humanity it was necessary to put tens of millions of its members into an early grave. A clearer view of history might have reminded man of his record of depravity and of the inadvisability of relying on his fallen nature to achieve perfection.

Morgan is not simply concerned about the disregard of history, but he claims that the “pathology of pride” is actively involved in tearing down or revising history to coincide with their narrative:

• The problem, beyond bad scholarship, is that young people flock to these madhouses every year, told by cynical university bureaucrats that they need to learn contempt for their own tradition if they want to get a well-paying job. Professors are being paid to take battle-axes to the roots of Western civilization.

In such a repressive climate, even conservative professors are afraid to come to the defense of Western Civilization. Oddly, commendation for the Christian West is more likely to come from Muslims turned atheists. Pakistani former-Muslim, Ibn Warraq, has written:

• The great ideas of the West—rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy—are superior to any others devised by humankind. It was the West that took steps to abolish slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in Africa, where rival tribes sold black prisoners into slavery. The West has secured freedoms for women and racial and other minorities to an extent unimaginable 60 years ago. The West recognizes and defends the rights of the individual: we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live lives of our choosing.

• In short, the glory of the West, as philosopher Roger Scruton puts it, is that life here is an open book. Under Islam, the book is closed. In many non-Western countries, especially Islamic ones, citizens are not free to read what they wish. In Saudi Arabia, Muslims are not free to convert to Christianity, and Christians are not free to practice their faith—clear violations of Article 18 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

• The edifice of modern science and scientific method is one of Western man’s greatest gifts to the world. The West has given us not only nearly every scientific discovery of the last 500 years—from electricity to computers—but also, thanks to its humanitarian impulses, the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. The West provides the bulk of aid to beleaguered Darfur; Islamic countries are conspicuous by their lack of assistance.

• Moreover, other parts of the world recognize Western superiority. When other societies such as South Korea and Japan have adopted Western political principles, their citizens have flourished. It is to the West, not to Saudi Arabia or Iran, that millions of refugees from theocratic or other totalitarian regimes flee, seeking tolerance and political freedom. Nor would any Western politician be able to get away with the anti-Semitic remarks that former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad made in 2003. Our excusing Mahathir’s diatribe indicates not only a double standard but also a tacit acknowledgment that we apply higher ethical standards to Western leaders.

• Nor does the West need lectures on the superior virtue of societies in which women are kept in subjection under sharia, endure genital mutilation, are stoned to death for alleged adultery, and are married off against their will at the age of nine; societies that deny the rights of supposedly lower castes; societies that execute homosexuals and apostates. The West has no use for sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems, that make no provisions for the handicapped, and that leave 40 to 50 percent of their citizens illiterate.

Another Muslim-turned-atheist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, also speaks highly of the Christian West, in a way the Western scholars would not dare to:

• The Christianity of love and tolerance remains one of the West’s most powerful antidotes to the Islam of hate and intolerance. Ex-Muslims find Jesus Christ to be a more attractive and humane figure than Muhammad, the founder of Islam. 

These are willing to listen to history, as any rational person would. A good farmer once told me:

• If you want to grow corn, find the farmer who always has a good stand of corn, and ask him how he does it. 

His advice was unimpeachable. However, I had asked my secular associates a similar question - if we could learn anything from the principles that had made the USA wildly successful. They were even appalled at my question.

The Bible, Geocentrism, and Theistic Evolution

How does the theistic evolutionist (TE) believe in both the Bible and evolution – an ostensibly impossible marriage? The TE has a very easy solution. He claims that the two are not in competition because evolution is only concerned about the physical world and the Bible is all about the spiritual. How then does the TE treat the many verses where the Bible does address history and God’s physical creation? The TE claims that these verses that seem to be addressed to history and science really aren’t. Instead, they are teaching a strictly inerrant spiritual message, even while they are making use of errant history and science material.

How does the TE prove this dismissive and diminished understanding of the Bible? He claims that the Bible reflects an ancient and errant understanding of science typical of the ancient Near East and cites the example of egocentricity – the belief that the Earth is in the center of our world and everything revolves around the Earth, even the sun. Here are the strongest three verses they cite:

• On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel: "O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon." So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. (Joshua 10:12-13)

• It [the sun] rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat. (Psalm 19:6)

• The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. (Ecclesiastes 1:5) (These are all cited from RationalWiki)

These three verses seem to indicate that the Bible is erroneously teaching that the sun revolves the Earth. However, is this what the Bible is teaching, or is the Bible merely using the common language of the people – phenomenal language, the language of appearances – in order to be understood?

Even though we know better scientifically, this is the very language that we use! We know that the sun doesn’t rise, but we say this anyway in order to be understood. Even the weather experts will say, “The sun will rise at 6 AM today.” This doesn’t mean that they are scientifically ignorant and are teaching geocentrism. Rather, they want to be understood and therefore use the language of appearances.

If they used technical, scientific language, no one would understand what they are talking about! Just try to express “The sun will rise at 6 AM” in scientific language, and you will see the problems that this entails.

In light of this, it requires an unwarranted interpretive leap to claim that the Bible teaches geocentrism. Why then does the TE make this leap? Because the TE has a vested interest in promoting Darwin, even where it disparages the Bible!

De Tocqueville, Morality, and Democracy

 Today’s secularism is an aggressive bulldozer. It will not tolerate any competition, pushing aside any opposition to its reign. Arrogantly, it believes that it can retain the benefits of Western civilization, while discarding its foundation – Christianity.

Alexis de Tocqueville, French statesman, historian and social philosopher, wrote “Democracy in America” (1835). It has been described as "the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the relationship between character and society in America that has ever been written." According to Tocqueville, freedom and morality both found their American incarnation in Christianity:

• Religion in America ... must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it.

Tocqueville had been well acquainted with the demands for freedom and equality that had arisen from his own French revolution, albeit grounded in the hatred and murder of the clergy. This revolution had confidently sought to push aside anything that stood in its way.  However, with the advantage of decades of hindsight, this had become something that the French wanted to avoid at all costs. Tocqueville, therefore, wrote,

• The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom.

He therefore appreciated the moral constraints that he found so ubiquitously associated with democracy in the USA:

• I do not question that the great austerity of manners that is observable in the United States arises, in the first instance, from religious faith...its influence over the mind of woman is supreme, and women are the protectors of morals. There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated...

Continually, he found that the fruitful expression of democracy was inseparable from its underlying Christian roots:

• In the United States the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people.... Christianity, therefore, reigns without obstacle, by universal consent; the consequence is, as I have before observed, that every principle of the moral world is fixed and determinate.

• I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

In contrast, today’s secularism believes that it can retain some of the fruits of Christian society without its roots. It seeks to replace the Christian foundation with its own materialistic, relativistic presuppositions and expects that these will support the house of their dreams. Secularism wants to retain the ideas of equality and equal protection under the law – the Bill of Rights - but it fails to see that their materialistic foundation can’t support this structure.

Historically, materialism has not been able to provide the basis of these prized values. Just look at the workers’ “utopia” of communistic, atheistic nations! Why have these nations been so characterized by oppression and violence? From a strictly materialistic worldview, there can be no possible basis for equality or “unalienable rights.” Regarding humans materialistically, we find that some are tall and some are short; some are likable and some are not; some promote justice, while some undermine it; some contribute to society, while some prove to be very costly, even undermining the common good. Consequently, as seen through the materialistic lens, some have a positive value and some a negative one. Is there therefore any basis for equality from this perspective? No!

Christians also have a materialistic lens. However, we are not limited to this lens. We also have a transcendent one. We see equality and great human value, even in the murderer, because God sees these values. We protect, because God protects, even the most unworthy. We maintain that all have unalienable rights because all have been created in the image of God. We, therefore, cannot deprive anyone of their unalienable rights, because they don’t come essentially from us but from God.

However, according to the lens of secularism, it is secularism that grants the rights. Consequently, it is secularism that can also deprive those rights. There is nothing in a materialistic worldview that requires that our rights be unalienable. After all, everything is in flux, and so too should our rights be so!

Even worse, there is nothing in secular materialism that would argue in favor of equal treatment. If some humans have a positive social value and some have a negative, there is no justification for not treating the negatively-valued humans in a negative way. Consequently, materialism cannot honestly value our understanding of equal and unalienable rights.

The same argument can also be applied to the concept of “freedom.” Where there is no material basis for equality, perhaps there is also no basis for equal freedom. (In fact, many secularists deny the reality of freewill and therefore culpability!) After all, some are intelligent and some aren’t. Some have ideas that are objectionable and some have ideas that we like. Some even vote “Republican” and against gay marriage. Why should their ideas be tolerated? Well, as secularism secures its grip, any ideas that impede its agenda are no longer tolerated. The popular vote can be overturned by a single judge. The charge of “unconstitutional” can be brought against any objectionable idea or popular vote.

The secularism of today has lost its taste for freedom as the quest for self-fulfillment has proliferated. Tocqueville warned that democracy is vulnerable in this regard :

• Men who are possessed by the passion of physical gratification generally find out that the turmoil of freedom disturbs their welfare before they discover how freedom itself serves to promote it.

What is not honored – our freedoms and liberties - will eventually whither and disappear.

Tocqueville realized that the pursuit of “equality” could produce some bad fruit:

• But there exists in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.

The argument in favor of “equality” can be applied in many illegitimate ways. It can be used to produce “equality” between parents and their children, depriving parents of their rightful authority in favor of the Secular State. It can be used as a bulldozer to push aside any sexual distinctions. Consequently, it is argued that we should be allowed to marry or to sex anyone and any number we please. It is only our appetites that should set the limit. Meanwhile, there is no longer a willingness to regard the many studies that have unequivocally demonstrated that children (and society) do far better, in a myriad of ways, with their biological parents.

Our personal comforts and pleasures tend to reign over concerns about distant abstract principles such as freedom and justice. Therefore, Tocqueville warned:

• A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Democracy is a fragile flower, which requires regular cultivation. While history is the test tube for our ideas, the future will cast its dispassionate verdict on them. It will also give us what we deserve. Already, anti-Christian secularism is bearing its fruit unto abortions, STDs, suicides, criminality, and broken families throughout the Western world, starting with its radical incarnation in the sixties.

We will reap what we sow, and sadly, we will probably find that Tocqueville’s words – “The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom” - have been prophetic.

Creation, Jonah and Turning the Bible into Allegory

Is it important to know whether or not the Bible as historical? One respondent correctly pointed out, “Parts of Scripture are history--other parts are not.” So then, how can we determine the historical from the non-historical? Well, if we take the Bible seriously, we try to determine how the Bible regards these “parts.” We compare Scripture with Scripture.

This same respondent, took the position that we shouldn’t regard the Book of Jonah as historical. However, it seems obvious that Jesus took it and used it as history:

• He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. (Matthew 12:39-41)

Consequently, Jonah should not be taken as parabolic (non-historical) for several reasons:

1. Jesus doesn’t say, “According to the tale, Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish.” Instead, He speaks as if this actually happened.

2. Jesus then states “so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” If the “Book of Jonah” is no more than a parable and Jesus knew this to be the case, then He is affirming, “In the same way that Jonah was fictitiously in the whale, I too will be fictitiously buried for three days. However, this could not have been His meaning.

3. Jesus warned Israel that “Nineveh will stand up at the judgment” of them. However, if all knew that Jonah was simply parabolic, they would have scorned Jesus: “As it is fiction that Nineveh repented, so too is it fiction that Nineveh ‘will stand in judgment.’”

However, there was no such retort, as appropriate as this retort would have been had Jonah been regarded as a mere allegory or parable.

It seems obvious that Jesus regarded the Book of Jonah as history. If we are followers of Jesus, then we are constrained to also be followers of His thinking and reasoning. He regarded Scripture as the undefiled Word of God (Matthew 5:16-18) and submitted to it in all regards. Quoting Deuteronomy 8, He responded to Satan:

• “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4)

This means that we too must live by “every word” and to understand them as Jesus did. If He regarded the first several chapters of Genesis as history – and we find that the Apostles also regarded these chapters as history – then we too are constrained to regard them as history.

Jesus based His teaching on marriage and divorce on the historicity of Genesis 1 and 2:

• "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female' [Gen. 1:26-27] and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh' [Gen. 2:24]? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (Matthew 19:4-6)

Jesus’ entire argument is based upon the history of God’s work, that:

• He created them,
• He made them one flesh,
• And “joined [them] together.”

If God had only figuratively (not historically) created and joined them, then we would have every right actually divorce as long as we don’t figuratively divorce. Therefore, one who is contemplating divorce could reason that, “I’ll divorce my wife, but I’ll remain married to her figuratively, in my heart.” Of course, this is absurd, but this is because a non-historical understanding of Jesus’ words is also absurd. Instead, Jesus’ clear intent was to demonstrate that divorce is wrong and that the Pharisees were wrong for justifying divorce.

Jesus built His case on the common understanding that Genesis is history. If Genesis hadn’t been widely regarded as history, the Pharisees could easily have retorted, “Well, God didn’t actually join them together, so we are not prohibited from actually divorcing our wives!” in which case, Jesus’ argument would have completely collapsed.

This is not to deny that Genesis 1 and 2 are difficult to interpret. However, if we start with the conclusion that these chapters are not history – and also that the New Testament’s interpretation of them shouldn’t guide our interpretation (Scripture interpreting Scripture) - then we consequently reject our most important interpretive guidelines and constraints. Operating with this “freedom,” the door is opened to just about any interpretation we’d like to paste on Genesis.

Perhaps the “God” of Genesis is a blind, impersonal force – gravity, according to Stephen Hawking? Perhaps instead, he is the universal consciousness – Eastern monism? Or perhaps he’s naturalism anthropomorphized. If we refuse to allow Scripture to interpret Scripture, anything is possible, and if any interpretation is possible, we are left in utter confusion and our faith is for naught.