Atheism Remix

ATHEISM REMIX
by
R. Albert Mohler Jr.

 
They see science as on their side and argue that scientific knowledge is our only true knowledge. They argue that belief in God is organized ignorance, that theistic beliefs lead to violence, and that atheism is liberation. (p. 12)

He [Nietzsche] also suggested that Christianity itself was a vile and pathetic faith that produced vile and pathetic creatures. Any creature, he said, who would need belief in God – any creature who would need prayer, any creature who would exercise faith – is a creature whose will is so corrupted by the virus of Christianity that it cannot contribute to society and the building of a strong people. (p. 22)

…British motto, “My mind is no longer a Christian even though my body is.” (p. 23)

In the twentieth century, the Victorian loss of faith was codified intellectually, first in the philosophy of logical positivism and secondly in protest atheism. It’s interesting to note that the Holocaust became – along with the other unspeakable tragedies of the twentieth century – the great cause of much protest atheism. (p. 26)

Great social changes affected the way most people in the West lived. People became more mobile than ever before, which led to unprecedented levels of social dislocation and, in turn, to the demise of the extended family. (p. 27)

Then arises the postmodern era, in which the very foundations of theism are denied, along with all other foundationalist thinking. God is made merely one thought among other thoughts, one principle among other principles, one socially constructed reality among others. (p. 28)

Max Weber spoke of this process as “disenchantment.” Eventually modernity would lead to society’s disenchantment with the enchanted world, by which he meant a world in which God is necessary and meaningful, and its entrance into a disenchanted (or secular) world. (p. 29)

They believed history was driving toward the utter removal of belief in God, and that education, technology, affluence, and the inevitable breaks with tradition that came with modernity would lead to a massive, civilization-wide loss of belief. (p. 30)

Whereas the church once defined reality across an entire range of intellectual fields, it does so no longer-even for most Christians. (p. 32)

Berger, speaking of the United States, said that what we have in America is a nation of Indians ruled over by an elite of Swedes. (p. 35)

First, there once was a time in which it was impossible not to believe. …. The second phase Taylor describes is when it becomes possible not to believe. ….. Taylor suggests that we have now entered a third stage of intellectual development. Having moved from a time in which it was impossible not to believe, through a time in which it became possible not to believe, we have now arrived at a situation in which, for the elites especially, it has become impossible to believe. (p. 36-37)

His argument is that the basic unit of natural selection is the gene. Put in simplest form, Dawkins’s theory is that genes are selfish, existing solely in order to replicate themselves, and as replicators they fuel the entire process of natural selection. (p. 40)

Dawkins has declared himself the “Devil’s Chaplain.” (p. 41)

… “meme” – which refers to an intellectual unit similar to a gene that helps to explain the replication of thought. (p. 42)

His [Dennett] point is this: as an intellectual tool, Darwinism is just as corrosive and powerful as his hypothetical universal acid. It burns away everything. Put simply, once Darwinism is fully understood, every other truth claim will cease to hold power and cease to have credibility. Darwinism will be all that remains. (p. 45)

If Darwinism is right, then there is no design in the universe and therefore no meaning, either. There is only Darwinism. (p. 45)

Harris suggests that belief in God is inherently evil, beginning in evil mental and spiritual impulses and leading finally to evil social effects. (p. 49)

One of the reasons Harris sees belief as so dangerous is tha tit makes persons self-centered. (p. 49)

For Richard Dawkins, the central evil is Jesus is restrictivism. In other words, Dawkins argues that religion poses a social danger because it creates an “in” group and an “out” group, which is the very definition of exclusivism. …. Any kind of restrictivist or exclusivist truth claim, Dawkins says, will have this problem. (p. 57)

Dennett will have to come up with a purely materialist interpretation of absolutely everything – from a mother’s love for her child to voting patterns in a national election to, of course, belief in God. every single emotive state, every single choice, every single action of the mind, every single artifact of consciousness must be explained in terms of chemicals interacting in the tissues of the brain. (p. 59)

Indeed, atheism may at times strengthen Christian theology by forcing the identification of bad arguments and the development of better intellectual defenses of the faith. (p. 67)

Plantinga, like McGrath, does not oppose evolutionary theory per se, but suggests that Dawkins has taken naturalism to an absurd conclusion. (p. 78)

In unusually acerbic prose, Plantinga suggests: “Why, you might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that will be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grad inflation aside), many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class.” (p. 79)

Given his absolute and uncritical acceptance of naturalism as a worldview, Dawkins is left with nothing but materialism, and his own lack of intellectual humility is seen in the fact that he simply assumes that his own worldview is the only possible or credible worldview in the modern age. (p. 81)

It is still only a very small minority who identify themselves explicitly as atheists, but the number of Americans who identify with no particular faith is rising, and the public profile of atheism has become far more prominent with the rise of the New Atheism. (p. 87)

Haught has already staked his theological reputation on the fact that there is no fundamental conflict between Darwin and Christian theology – at least the theology of liberal Protestantism and liberal Catholicism. (p. 96)

Evangelical Christians simply cannot surrender biblical authority, propositional revelation, and biblical theism in order to meet the various challenges presented to us in the twenty-first century. (p. 102)

Paul Tillich explicitly rejected the notion of a personal God. (p. 103)

Theologians, including those who style themselves as evangelicals, who urge an accommodationist posture with modern secularism, present a prescription for theological disaster. (p. 105)

…even the New Atheists recognize that the only God that matters is a supernatural God – a personal God – who will judge. (p. 107)

Harris defines a Christian as one who believes “that the Bible is the Word of God, that Jesus is the Son of God, and that only those who place their faith in Jesus will find salvation after death.”( p. 108)