Observation #3 (How
Atheists Fail at Philosophy): Full disclosure—philosophy is a weaker field
for me than is theology or history, so here I lean on the authority of some of
the philosophers I’ve read in depth, most of them hailing from the classical
period (Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Boethius, and later Thomas Aquinas), as
well as what I’ve gleaned of modern philosophy during my academic studies.
There was a season in my life where I was wrestling with
serious doubts about the Christian faith. I was working through many of the
same intellectual issues that others in that same position face: reconciling
scientific discoveries with the way we’ve been taught to read the Bible,
questioning whether the Bible can be read as “infallible” or “inerrant,”
tortured by the problem of evil, and all this accompanied by a long drought in
my personal experience of God. My intellectual momentum at that time was all
going one direction: away from the faith. But there were a few things that kept
me grounded: my mystical sensibilities, my understanding of the range and depth
of good theology, and, most of all, my desire, which remained pointed, often in
blind hope, in the direction of the beauty of God.
But during that journey, I was surprised that of all the
intellectual defenses of the faith that I read, searching for something that
sounded remotely persuasive, it was the philosophical ones that I had the
hardest time discounting. Especially powerful were arguments that made a
significant case for the existence of God simply on the basis of logic alone. I
wasn’t expecting them to be convincing, but they were—remarkably so. And here’s
where the “new atheists” tend to underestimate the Christian tradition once
again.
There tend to be two criticisms of recent atheist attempts
in the field of anti-Christian philosophy. The first has to do with atheists’
attempts to pick apart the classic proofs for the existence of God, of which
there are several prominent ones that have been around in various forms
throughout the ancient and medieval worlds; these are still actively debated
today. In general, the new atheists are critiqued for not having done their
homework very well and for having failed to understand the philosophical force
behind the arguments. In a few cases, the new atheists have quite obviously not
bothered to study the actual terminology which Aquinas uses in his arguments
for the existence of God; and so their rebuttals of those arguments fall short because
they haven’t even understood what Aquinas was saying. (For more on the
continuing force of such arguments, read Robert J. Spitzer’s New Proofs for the Existence of God or Michael
Augros’ Who Designed the Designer?).
The second criticism is that these new atheists often try to
make the natural sciences work overtime for them, and, particularly in the field
of cosmology, tend to wander into scientifically-untestable speculations about
ontological metaphysics rather than physics itself (for example, the much-noted
remarks of Stephen Hawking regarding the idea that the universe simply created
itself). And yet, despite this affinity for scientific study, they seem
reticent to make an honest and cumulative social-science study of miracles
within the Christian experience. Miracles, of course, are untestable under
laboratory conditions, but social-science studies could make effective use of
the reported data that exists, some of it well-documented. (A good exposition
of miracles can be found in Craig Keener’s monumental study, Miracles.)
Another main topic of concern in the field of philosophy is
the problem of evil, but I won’t deal with that here, since it’s one of the
main concerns of my “95 Theses,” regularly posted here on Saturdays.
There are other failings we could talk about here, but I
think I’ll leave it at that. For Christians reading this, know that you have
little cause for worry if you hear atheists making statements about theology,
history, or philosophy that sound like they might be serious arguments against
Christianity. In the vast majority of atheist literature that I’ve read, this
simply isn’t the case. For any atheist/agnostic readers, my best advice would
be to do your homework well, do it respectfully and not in a spirit of disdain,
looking not to cherrypick faults but to truly understand the Christian
tradition, and to present your views in a spirit of winsome humility. (These
are rules, incidentally, that I try to follow myself, whenever I research the
views of atheism, Islam, Buddhism, or Native American religions, all of which
I’ve studied in some depth.) In polemics, as in life, the best rule is simple: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
(Painting, inset: "Saint Thomas Aquinas," by Carlo Crivelli, 15th century; image is in the public domain)