The New Atheism
What and Why?

Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens are the names associated with the new atheism. They have all written recent books which ratchet up the rhetoric against Christianity. Christians are no longer misguided, they are dangerous and demented. Religion should be eliminated, and that would be a good thing. This is a radical and aggressive position that is vogue today.

According to John Lennox of Oxford, who had debated Dawkins, this new atheism has three theses: 1] religion poisons everything; 2] there can be morality without God and 3] science [especially genetics] is the answer to all the problems of life.

Much of the hostility toward “intelligent design” as funky science is because the new atheists see it as smuggled in creation. That is clearly not the case, but the concern about the first eleven chapters of Genesis drives much of the hostility. In The God Delusion, Dawkins aims his guns at the idea of a Creator: If there was a Creator, who created the Creator? Of course that is a huge straw man. For a Christian believes in self-existent Creator Who spoke all things into existence. He is without beginning. Atheists believe in eternal matter and energy, just not an eternal Person. So, how did the matter and energy emerge?

It seems the new atheists were deeply affected by 9/11. Radical Islam lead to the destruction of that day and the war on terror that ensued. For these new atheists all religions are the same, and it is devotion to your religion that leads to acts of violence. The new atheism is a result of the new religious pluralism that has a foothold on western culture. There is a failure to discern that not all religions are alike. Jesus was not a terrorist, and He was acquitted by Pilate of that charge. While Islam has spread by the point of a sword, that was not the case for Christianity. God’s Kingdom is not of this world. We, as Christians, must do a better job of distinguishing true religious belief and practice. Furthermore, what about the atheistic regimes, such as Stalin and Pol Pot? Millions were slaughtered. Atheism poisoned everything for people subjected to atheistic tyrants!

The new atheists ground all their positions in a simple to complex progression, whether it is biology or morality. The new atheists insist they are moral folk because they have developed into moral folk. For them morality is not top down…morality from a moral lawgiver. But, to ague for an “ought” [what you should do] from an “is” [how I behave] is exactly why there is a widely divergent view of what is moral behavior. This fits nicely into the post-modern view of the autonomous individual and that all attempts at universal standards is an exercise in oppression and control. The secular view of this is: Anything Goes; the Biblical: “The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” [Judges 3: 7, 12; 4:1; 6:1; 10:6; 13:1].

We are faced with new challenges. Christians must live authentic Christian lives and espouse true Christian doctrine and belief. We must make it clear that Christianity is different from all other man made religions. We must make it clear that the Gospel is the Gospel of life, not death. We must make it clear that how we live is because of how we believe and in Whom we believe. And, we must make clear that our hope lies not in any secular pursuit but in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, our Lord and Savior. Clarity by what we say and how we live. That is the apologetic for the new atheism.