Jeff Ling

When I set out to read The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails , I knew I wasn’t in for a particularly pleasant experience. My anticipation was that the author, John Loftus, had surely gone out of his way to paint believers in the worst possible light and he did not disappoint. After a few weeks of being mocked, ridiculed, taunted and despised, I finished the book that one reviewer stated “destroyed Christianity.”

I don’t think so.

Loftus will simply dismiss people like myself as delusional and uneducated. It’s a fact that John does have more degrees than I do and the man has worked hard at what he does. Even so, I wont concede to the status of a pea brain who has given no serious thought to his beliefs. I stand in good company. Countless numbers of brilliant people in all fields ascribe to the same faith as I and do so with confidence.

I read The Christian Delusion in order to better understand the arguments put forth by atheists. The book, which is a compilation of articles with Loftus as editor and a contributor, presents it’s material in a well written fashion with copious footnotes. All the usual subjects of attack are here: the authority of the Bible, the resurrection of Jesus, faith as a social construct, the goodness of God and, surprisingly interesting chapters on cruelty to animals and Nazism as an extension of Christian prejudice and hatred.

What is obvious from the outset is that Loftus and company are interested in only one side of the proverbial coin. For the most part, their sources are those who are already atheists or skeptics. When they quote those who are sympathetic to Christianity, the quotes tend to come from those who hold extremely low views of scripture. This provides a very skewed presentation in regards to Biblical authority. When John Shelby Spong is one of your go to guys for a theologian… well now you just look foolish. There is another side to the coin. There are scholars who date the gospels and letters much earlier than those Loftus and company consult, and who refute with expertise the idea that nothing can be really known of the historical Jesus. There are those who wrestle with the hard questions of faith without succumbing to atheistic views. There are believers who study the neuroscience of belief without dismissing the mystery of spirituality. The saying “it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish,” does not apply here. It does natter where you start. Loftus and company are starting from a closed system which holds no option for a God who could have possibly inspired the Biblical authors. So case closed. But, it begs the question as to whether or not the atheists here are being intellectually honest. Persuasive? maybe. Sarcastic? Undoubtedly. Honest? Hardly.

There are those who have written a comprehensive response to the book.  The Infidel Delusion by Patrick Chan, Jason Engwer, Steve Hays & Paul Manata is a chapter by chapter refutation of The Christian Delusion and well worth pursuing. For those interested, you can watch a debate between John Loftus and one of his favorite targets, Dinesh D’Souza, here.

Do I recommend the book? By no means. Those who need to do research on an academic level may want to read it but the effort can only render results that are mildly but usually mis-informative, slightly entertaining and hopelessly biased.

I still believe.

Wouldn’t you love to lock C.S. Lewis and Sam Harris in a room and watch what happens? In this corner, you have Lewis of Mere Christianity’s right and wrong as evidence of God and in this corner, Harris and his new effort to bring morality and questions of good and evil under the guidance of science. Heavyweight indeed.

Sam Harris is trying so hard. He really would like science to have the answers to the great questions. His latest work, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, is an effort to make that happen. While science has touted the high ground of big bangs and evolutionary process as the explanation of “how” things have come into being, it has been unable to address issues of “why” things exist and the reasons for the categories of right and wrong, good and evil.

Richard Dawkins, mutual back slapper and colleague, writes in his endoresement of Harris’s book:

“I was one of those who had unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals. The Moral Landscape has changed all that for me. Moral philosophers, too, will find their world exhilaratingly turned upside down, as they discover a need to learn some neuroscience. As for religion, and the preposterous idea that we need God to be good, nobody wields a sharper bayonet than Sam Harris.”

Whether or not Harris makes the case convincingly, I’m quite sure that his understanding of Christianity (and make no mistake, Harris is at war with Christianity, not just “religion”) is so utterly flawed that he has no real clue what he’s referencing when it comes to the issue of why followers of Jesus do what they do.

In the latest issue of Wired Magazine, November, 2010, Harris does a Q&A with Olivia Koski in which he reveals some insight into his complete lack of who Christians truly are.

Olivia: Religion makes…truth claims all the time.

Harris: But religion is precisely the wrong software for analyzing human well-being. It’s the one area of our lives where people win points for saying, “I’m not going to change my mind no matter what happens.”

Mr. Harris would like us to believe that Christians are, in general, closed minded bigots with no tolerance for science. That there are such people masquerading as Christians cannot be denied. However, they are in fact, people religious by culture or upbringing who have no true understanding of what it means to follow Jesus in this world.  Bigotry, ignorance or hatred baptized by “religion” is dangerous and has nothing to do with the true church.

The truth is that Christians highly value the contributions of science at all levels. The ability of mankind to research, explore and create comes from the creator Himself. Advances in scientific fields are part of God’s common grace that help to alleviate suffering, improve the quality of life and help us to understand ourselves and the world we live in more completely.

In a recent appearance on the Daily Show, Harris makes one of the most unscientific statements I have ever heard:

“We have a problem. We have a kind of intellectual and moral emergency where the only people on the planet at this moment who think there are truly right answers to moral questions are religious demagogues who think the universe is 6,000 years old. Everyone else seems to think there is something suspect about the idea of moral truth.”

Seriously? Who exactly is the closed minded bigot here? Sam, you may actually want to scientifically test that hypothesis. The results may surprise you.

Harris is upset because believers are not willing to change their minds on fundamental  truth claims that would let the world off of the moral hook. Understood, but to suggest that we are unwilling to change our minds on things is woefully far of the mark. One of the basic aspects of our beginnings in Christianity is “repentance” which means to “change one’s mind.” We’ve changed our minds about many things and we’ll continue to do so. The Bible tells us that we are being transformed by the renewal of our minds and Proverbs is replete with admonitions to get the facts, weigh things carefully and make adjustments for new information. For instance, believers are constantly changing their minds on the issue of creation all the time. Yes, there are many 7 days/24 hour die-hards out there but there are also countless numbers of believers who fundamentally believe in a Creator while holding to numerous views on the interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2, the age of the earth, evolutionary process, etc… and while Harris may dismiss such people as ignorant, many of them are very well educated and competent peers of his. All of us would agree that “religion” is poor software for anything but, believing in a Creator is not unreasonable. For believers it is a non-negotiable.

Much harm has been done in the name of Christianity. It is tragic and lamentable. Power, greed and lust have infected popes, televangelists and everyone in between. Many of these were never true believers or genuinely regenerate. The wheat and tares grow together until now and will until the day that God sets the world to right. Being sinners, we’re stuck with ourselves. We make lots of mistakes. Harris would like to suggest that we’ve done it all for the wrong reasons. :

Olivia: But hasn’t religion made some people behave more morally?

Harris: The problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good. Is it better to alleviate famine in Africa because you think Jesus Christ is watching and deciding  whether to reward you with an eternity of happiness after death? Or is it better to do that because you actually care about the suffering of your fellow human beings?

I find it remarkable that such a premiere atheists with his guns aimed at Christianity, knows so little about it.

Sam, there are many atheists who care about people who are suffering. There are people of all stripes who do. It’s the human condition. We’re all rebels against our Creator but in His common grace he keeps us from all sinking to the lowest common denominator and inspires us to help one another. Compassionate action is not the sole property of anyone. Should Christians display it? Of course! But not for the reasons you suggest. We don’t do it to “earn points” or to impress Jesus in hopes that he’ll reward us with eternal life. The issue of eternity is settled for the believer because he or she has trusted in the work of Christ upon the cross. We know full well that no amount of morality or compassionate works could ever gain us favor with a holy God. We are rebels in need of forgiveness. Whatever fruits of kindness and generosity in our lives (which, if you pay any attention at all,  pours out all over the world) is not the result of obligation but gratitude.

Sam Harris

Mr. Harris would have our basic values, and sense of right and wrong, be left for the human sciences to determine. After all, we’ve had a gadzillion years of evolutionary development to  show the way.

Olivia: How can you scientifically determine whether something is good or bad?

Harris: The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health… Obviously it would be a good thing to stop nuclear proliferation and genocide and climate change, and to better educate our children… People seem to believe that there’s  no ground for truth claims about human values – that these are not the sort of facts that science can ever deal with. But there is a place for science to argue that the Taliban is really wrong. Its beliefs lead to unnecessary human suffering…”

Frankly, this is laughable. Harris knows that he can’t have his cake and eat it to. But, unless he wants the world to finally dissolve into a morass of relativistic confusion, he has to reach for the high ground. It is a profound thing to want no accountability to a creator, to an ultimate moral compass, but rather than eat that apple, Harris would like science to ride in on a white horse as the new dean of morality. Can’t be done. No true materialist can be an effective apologist for moral absolutes. If, in fact, we are accidental, then you have to leave things in Darwin’s camp.  Social health? By whose definition? By the strongest, by the powerful, by the elite. Survival of the fittest. Period.

The truth is more accurately stated by the British atheist intellectual Aldous Huxley:

“I have motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption . . . For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality.  We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”

At least Huxley admits the reality.

In the same appearance on The Daily Show, Harris used the Catholic child abuse scandal as evidence for what a bad job religion does in the morality arena. But then, how does Mr. Harris account for all the atrocities of atheistic governments?  Christians would assert that both religion and atheism result in the same dead end: unregenerate people using a system to their own ends. Both groups have the same problem, a heart that is sick and in need of redemption. Regardless of what good we may do, the bottom line is we’re rebels against God. We reject his benevolent rule. We’re not a mixed bag morality wise because we’re religious, atheists or anything between. We’re a mixed bag because we’re spiritually dead. Religion won’t cure that and science has no answer for it.

Nietzsche was a far more honest atheist than the new breed could hope to be. He was, at least, courageous enough in his opinions to follow them to their horrific end. Nietzsche knew that the death of God meant the death of morality. To be clear, any appeal to equality, kindness, self sacrifice and shared values is groundless. In Sam Harris’s world we are only left with what he doesn’t want to admit: the abyss.