Machen Foresaw Dawkins Clearly in 1923

J. G. Machen's little book, Christianity and Liberalism, written in 1923, was prophetic in that it predicted accurately the course liberalism would take in the future. It ends with Richard Dawkins wanting to make belief in God illegal - or at least handing on that faith to the children of believers.

Here is Machen:

"Admitting that scientific objections may arise against the particularities of the Christian religion - against the Christian doctrines of the person of Christ, and of redemption through his death and resurrection - the liberal theologian seeks to rescue certain of the general principles of religion, of which these particularities are thought to be mere temporary symbols, and these general principles he regards as constituting 'the essence of Christianity.'

It may well be questioned, however, whether this method of defence will really prove to be efficacious; for after the apologist has abandoned his outer defences to the enemy and withdrawn into some inner citidal, he will probably discover that the enemy pursues him even there. Modern materialism . . . is not content with occupying the lower quarters of the Christian city, but pushes its way into all the higher reaches of life; it is just as much opposed to the philosophical idealism of the liberal preacher as to the Biblical doctrines that the liberal preacher has abandoned in the interests of peace. Mere concessiveness, therefore, will never succeed in avoiding the intellectual conflict. In the intellectual battle of the present day there can be no 'peace without victory;' one side or the other must win. (p. 6)

How can anyone deny that things have played out just as Machen predicted in the 90 or so years since he wrote this book?

Islam and Communism are great threats to the survival of our culture, yet the materialism of a Dawkins is a greater threat still - mainly because it emanates from within the heart of the culture rather than from the outside. And if Machen is right, only one side will emerge victorious in the culture wars. If the conservative side loses - as it very well might - then the bright flame of liberty and justice that has flashed across the sky in the West will dim and burn out.

In that case, God and His Church will stand forever, but in Africa and Asia, not in the West.

Richard Dawkins is a Coward

Tim Stanley has a nice piece on Richard Dawkins cowardly refusal to meet William Lane Craig in public debate about the existence of God. Presumably Dawkins has access to the internet and has watched a few YouTube videos of Craig making mincemeat out of atheist philosopher wannabes. No wonder he is desperately seeking excuses to avoid what would surely be a world class humiliation.

Stanley writes in the Daily Telegraph:

Finally, Richard Dawkins has given his reasons for refusing to debate the American theologian William Lane Craig. We have waited a long time for this. The invitation to discuss the existence of God at Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre was extended to Dawkins many months ago. Craig is an excellent speaker who has made mincemeat out of better men, including Christopher Hitchens. He has a witty, deliberate style that often makes his opponents look (and probably feel) a little ridiculous. Therefore, everyone just presumed that Dawkins refused to debate Craig because he’s scared. He is, after all, only human (or a talking monkey, depending on your point of view).

But Dawkins is a proud man (or arrogant chimp), and the accusation of cowardice probably ate at him from within. Finally, on Thursday, he gave a proper excuse for his no show to The Guardian. Its intellectual emptiness says so much about his particular brand of atheism.

It seems that Dawkins has been doing a little internet trolling. He has dug up an online debate in which William Lane Craig apparently defends the massacre of a city of heathen Canaanites ordered by God in Deuteronomy 20:13-15. “Listen to Craig,” Dawkins writes, as if imagining Craig were a demon sitting on his shoulder. “He begins by arguing that the Canaanites were debauched and sinful and therefore deserved to be slaughtered. He then notices the plight of the Canaanite children [and concludes] … ‘We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven's incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.’” Dawkins writes that he is so disgusted with Craig's thesis that he cannot possibly agree to meet him in person. “Do not plead that I have taken these revolting words out of context," he adds. "What context could possibly justify them?”

Actually, the context is called “Christian apologetics”, and it’s been around for centuries. It's the attempt by scholars to present a rational basis for belief in God. Part of that process is running difficult bits of the Bible past the tests of reason and ethics. To return to the entire post that Dawkins quotes from (because, contrary to what he wrote, context does matter to a serious thinker), Craig begins thus: “These stories offend our moral sensibilities. Ironically, however, our moral sensibilities in the West have been largely, and for many people unconsciously, shaped by our Judaeo-Christian heritage, which has taught us the intrinsic value of human beings, the importance of dealing justly rather than capriciously, and the necessity of the punishment’s fitting the crime. The Bible itself inculcates the values which these stories seem to violate.”

Ergo, Craig’s purpose in writing this piece is to unravel the paradox of a moral Bible that also includes lashings of apparently random violence. Craig stresses that these passages of the Bible are difficult for us to read because we are not of the age in which they are written – they are just as alien to us as Beowulf or the Iliad. That’s because Christian society has been shaped by the rules of life outlined in the New Testament, not in the section of The Bible in which this massacre occurs. Far from using this passage to celebrate the slaughter of heathen, Craig is making the point that the revelation of God’s justice has changed over time. The horrors of the Old Testament have been rendered unnecessary by Christ’s ultimate sacrifice. That’s why the idiots who protest the funerals of gay soldiers or blow up abortion clinics aren’t just cruel, they’re bad theologians.

The irony is that Dawkins is outraged - outraged I tell you - about Canaanite babies 3500 years ago, but he thinks that blood-stained abortion clinics all over a modern country like Britain are perfectly normal and necessary. He is a total prisoner of intellectual fashion and thinks that the offending of modern sensibilities is the sine qua non of what constitutes a knock-down argument. It is the equivalent of "Well, all the best sort think this way, you know darling."

That he uses such a transparent dodge to evade being decimated by a debater who simply knows far more about philosophy and theology than he will ever know would be excusable if it were not for Dawkins' air of smug Oxbridge superiority, which he assumes with regard to ordinary Christians.

He is the classic school yard bully who runs home to momma when the older brother comes back to invite him to pick on someone his own size.

"The fool has said in his heart that there is no God" . . . and he refuses to debate opponents who are too smart.

Richard Dawkins: Shameless Self-Promoter

Shameless self-promoter and amateur philosopher, Richard Dawkins, isn't afraid of anybody. He wants the world to know that he is going to bring down the big guy all by himself. What a hero!

I don't like the ridiculous way in which the anti-Catholic Times of London makes room for him in their paper when he is clearly a joke, but I do at least like the way they refer to him: "Richard Dawkins, atheist campaigner." Right: not "Richard Dawkins, public intellectual," not "Richard Dawkins, renowned scientist," not "Richard Dawkins, Oxford Professor" but just "Richard Dawkins, atheist campaigner." He is probably most proud of that title though, seeing as how he is barking mad.

RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”.

Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.

Pope Benedict XVI stands for a humane and reasonable morality that is rooted in natural law and reason and if we would listen to him we would have a good reason to join him in fighting child sexual abuse.

On the other hand, anyone who takes Richard Dawkins' philosophy seriously has no way to condemn pedophilia as morally wrong. It's just in the genes, you know, exactly like homosexuality and other sexual orientations. But just because the current social consensus is against pedophilia, Dawkins sees an opening he can exploit and so he is off to the races. The irony is lost on him.

Richard Dawkins is a joke; a bitter, angry, little man who is not worthy to carry Pope Benedict XVI's shoes. And he is a menace to society. We are just lucky that not everybody believes what he is peddling. If the day comes that they do, we will long for the good old days of religious fanaticism.

Richard Dawkins and the Little Green Men

I watched Ben Stein's "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" today (thanks to my daughter and son-in-law's suggestion) and it was much better than I expected. I suppose I had been brainwashed by the review of the "controversy" it had generated. (Sigh . . .) In fact it was very well done.

All the Christians were open to believing in both some form of biological evolution (at least to some extent) and also in design by an intelligent Creator, while the scientests generally held that one must accept naturalism (ancient Epicureanism) and reject Christianity in order to believe in science. Of course, the science establishment doesn't speak for all working scientests, many of whom are believers, but there is not doubt that the crusading atheists hold the high ground when it comes to funding and science education and are not prepared to cede an inch of it.

I find it funny that they constantly talk about "believing" in science. I never hear of anyone talking of "believing" that 2+2=4. They talk of "knowing" it. Many atheistic science educators seem obsessed with polls measuring how many people "believe in Darwinism." This is not healthy. It bespeaks a deepseated insecurity and a mania for a certain religious point of view that they wish to impose dogmatically on all of society in the name of truth and academic freedom. It is totalitarian and inimical to free thought.

Anyway, the most eye-opening moment for me came when Stein was talking to Dawkins and asked him the question of what he would say if in the course of his scientific investigations he came to the conclusion that life could not have gotten started by accident and that it appeared to have required an intelligent designer to get it going. Would that not constitute evidence for design? Dawkins' reply was competely unexpected. Instead of hewing to the party line, he suggested the hypothesis that perhaps a highly advanced race of aliens had visited earth and dropped off some "life" that they had created in their (highly advanced) labs. Now, I think it was clear that he was not joking, although that was my first thought.

Richard Dawkins is so determined to disbelieve in God that he is willing to entertain a hypothesis that space aliens created us? Is that what it has come to? Space aliens? It reminds me of the saying (was it by Chesterton?) that when modern man ceases to believe in God, he does not for long believe in nothing, but rather is willing to believe anything. The recent Baylor study that found that religious believers (including Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians) were less likely to be superstitious than atheists and agnostics is interesting in this regard. Christians were less likely to give credence to spiritism, astrology, etc. than the general population. Religion makes superstition less likely. Atheism does not.

But what can one say about poor Richard Dawkins? He has a hard time posing as a martyr in the train of Galileo. Here he has been given a prestigious chair at Oxford which demands nothing so hard as scientific research - all he has to do is spew out atheist propoganda full time. His books sell in the millions and he is lionized by the elite of Western culture for putting those dastardly Christians in their place. And all he has to offer us intellectually is little green men?

During the first Dark Ages it was the Church that kept the flame of reason and science alive and it appears that the Church had better gear up to do it again. The leading scientests have apparently gone mad en masse and have substituted wish fulfillment and juvenile rebellion for hard thinking and logic. Little green men - but no fairy tales. Really now!

C. S. Lewis and Alan Jacobs on Richard Dawkins

Alan Jacobs has a short piece on Dawkins called "Sir Richard Rides Forth to Slay Another Dragon" that treats Dawkins and his anti-fairy tale crusade with just precisely the degree of seriousness it deserves.
http://theamericanscene.com/2008/10/29/sir-richard-rides-forth-to-slay-another-dragon

As I was reading the piece by Dawkins the other day, the thought occurred to me that perhaps C. S. Lewis prophecied the coming of Dawkins in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. This evening, I looked it up. Lewis began his book as follows:

"There once was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. . . . He didn't call his father and mother "Father and "Mother," but Harold and Alberta. They were very up-to-date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotallers and wore a special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on the beds and the windows were always open." (1)

Apparently, Dawkins regrets not growing up in such a home as this. He laments the fact that his parents actually allowed him to read fairy tales and wonders if it might have "damaged" him. He concludes that it is a subject for "research." Lewis again:

"Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card. He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools." (1)

It is interesting how Lewis' description fits our earnest scientest so well. Maybe that is because Dawkins' viewpoints are not at all "up-to-date," but rather the same old "modern" stuff we have been hearing about ever since the 18th century. It says something disturbing about our society that all you have to do is put a white lab coat on a guy and people think he is a great prophet and oracle of wisdom - when he wouldn't even recognize a dragon upon meeting one.

"At the bottom of the cliff a little on his left hand was a low, dark hole - the entrance to a cave perhaps. And out of this two think wasps of smoke were coming. . . . Something was crawling. Worse still, something was coming out. Edmund or Lucy or you would have recognized it at once, but Eustace had read none of the right books. . . " (68)

What a pity. He had read none of the right books. A pity indeed.

Richard Dawkins: A Narrow Minded and One Dimensional Thinker

One feels sorry for Richard Dawkins and those who look up to him. He is poorly read, philosophically shallow, theologically illiterate and able to think only in concrete and one-dimensional terms. His latest crusade is on how to bring up children "scientifically." He thinks fiction (specifically, myth) is dangerous and that debunking the supernatural is crucially important. In fact, he thinks that teaching religious beliefs to a child is child abuse.

According to a story in the Daily Telegraph, he is going to write a book on children and, although he hasn't read Harry Potter, he is fairly sure it is dangerous material. An excerpt from the article:

"The prominent atheist is stepping down from his post at Oxford University to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales. Prof Hawkins said: "The book I write next year will be a children's book on how to think about the world, science thinking contrasted with mythical thinking."

According to the story, he thinks people lack the ability to distinguish between fiction and fact and to draw inspiration, truth and hope from fiction. "If it isn't literally true - it isn't safe" is apparently his motto. He is quoted as saying:

"I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's something for research."

If I were an atheist I would cringe to have this person speaking for my beliefs. He seems to be a caricacture - almost a straw man - except that he is real. I'd be willing to wager that if Richard Dawkins did not exist and some Christian apologist invented him as a character in a dialogue between science and religion everyone would look at that character and accuse the author of creating the easiest possible straw man to knock down.

It does raise the question of how someone who, by all accounts, is very good at his narrow speciality in science could be so ill-educated generally. It is a black mark on modern education, I suppose, and its determination to turn out technicians rather than liberally educated men and women.

Or maybe, he is such an extreme case that one should be careful not to place all the blame on the educational system and treat him as simply a person who just isn't intellectually curious outside his narrow specialization. After all, for every Dawkins Oxford turns out there is also a Tolkien. People like Dawkins are hardly dangerous to educated people, but they are dangerous to those who lack discernment or whose educational background is shaky.