review of S. T. Joshi ed., Atheism: A Reader, 2000, Prometheus Books
Copyright 2001 by Jeffrey Stueber, all rights reserved
My essay seeks reviewers, see how
Review other pillars of unbelief if you like - Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Chester Dolan, S. T. Joshi, B.C. Johnson, Ruth Hurmence Green, and Steve Allen
Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict was the first Christian apologetic book I read nearly twelve years ago and remains a megaseller at my local Christian bookstore along with other "classics" as John Whitcomb and Henry Morris' Genesis Flood. Evidence shows its age compared to recent works (as do works on scientific creationism) and is considered, by me, a beginner's text, a launching pad from which to fly into deeper apologetic issues. In More than a Carpenter, McDowell writes of the peace that is in his heart after his conversion to Christ, a peace that removed his hatred for his father and inculcated an ability to love and accept not just his father but others. Here is a man who has undoubtedly found the calm inside a believer's heart, the peace inside theism, a feeling only intensified by and more fully revealed in his frequent citations from converts ranging from former Dallas Cowboys football coach Tom Landry and actor Dean Jones to Charles Colson.
This admiration for Christianity, and theism in general, is strikingly different from the opinions offered in S. T. Joshi's anthology of atheist tracts which include the likes of the more famous as Antony Flew, Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Clarence Darrow, and the less famous like Percy Bysshe Shelley and Robert Ingersoll. These atheists and agnostics don't have a minor disagreement of taste with McDowell, as if one liked vanilla and the other chocolate. What they demonstrate is more like outright animosity bordering on hatred of God (or any god) and religion. Thus remains the obvious question of whether Mcdowell is in touch with something precious or simply disillusioned and crazy. Perhaps it is these atheists who know the truth and aren't afraid to say so. Or, perhaps, it is they who are disillusioned and crazy.
Such contempt usually involves no shortage of verbal barbarism and Joshi et. al. fulfill all expectations. Actually, many of the barbs remind me of the now famous Saturday Night Live routine between Jane Curtin and Dan Akroyd who hosted the news segment "point-counterpoint." Akroyd's frequent retort to Curtin, "Jane you ignorant slut," received a thunderous roar of laughs from the audience, an intended result since this was late-night farce and not serious political debate. We do get from Joshi's fellows something like this - hurling of insults instead of philosophy worth exploring. For instance, Emma Goldman writes, "The conception of gods originated out of fear and curiosity." She quotes Michael Bakunin as saying "All religions . . . were created by the prejudiced fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties." Robert Ingersoll says religion has never made man free and issues a summary judgement of it: it is fear and slavery. Anatole France tells us "the notion of miracles belongs to the infancy of mind" while H. L. Mencken, echoing France, claims opponents of the teaching of evolution were "conspiracies of the inferior man against his betters." Gore Vidal, not mincing words, dismisses monotheism as the "great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture."
It is not the many scholarly works that have relevance and rebuttal to modern Christian apologetics of the likes of William Lane Craig and Peter Kreeft that makes this book worth having, although there are some worthy arguments to be made. Rather, one can appreciate Joshi's skeptics for their unanimous assent that the religious are idiots, to put it bluntly, for believing as they do. While such opinions may seem noxious to read, at least one can respect the candor of these philosophers. One can't fail, however, to ignore the fallacies in the writings of Goldman and Ingersoll who think the religious believe as they do out of fear and ignorance. This characterization fails to account for the desire for religious meaning not just for Christians, Scientologists, Buddhists, and others but for, yes, even humanists who might agree with Goldman and Ingersoll. Yet this attitude toward the religious persists and those who are able to awaken from such beliefs might find, as atheist and former Communist Ignace Lepp did, Christian philosophers might even be the atheist's master. It is not that religion succeeds because of Mammon and power, as Goldman supposes, but due to its appeal as a world view.
One philosophical issue worth debating comes from the pen of Ingersoll and Walter Kaufmann, one that reveals two familiar contradictions in atheist writings. God granted man free will and is now withdrawn from the world and, because of His reluctance to involve Himself with earthly matters, the fault of all sorts of ills from Auschwitz to cancer. Atheists flinch at the possibility of God having any dealings with man but flinch equally at a world left alone by God. Wanting a fix for what ails mankind, they seek a god who is like a doctor that makes house calls, then quickly runs out the door making no demands of you. Yet, it is quite often man's foolishness and innate sinfulness that causes our ills and God would have to make us all robots in order to ensure tranquility. This, however, is the ultimate fulfillment of a god that orders and directs and allows no freedom. It is the ultimate divine determinism, like artificial intelligence run by a cosmic puppeteer. I don't think atheists would find that attractive because they would be destroyed as freely choosing individuals, but few deeply explore the implications of their theology or the solutions to their dilemma.
Modern atheists believe God is ever more unnecessary as an explanation for anything; nature suffices to explain all, even the origin of consciousness and morality itself. Yet, many of Joshi's writers inject God in matters where no divine will need be manifested. Ingersoll, for instance, thinks God created the deformed and the helpless, the microbes and the diseases. God, if he exists, Ingersoll would have us believe, sends cyclones to wreck our villages. Bertrand Russell claims God, if He exists, gives "many thousands" cancer each year, a claim that I'm sure would set medical science back centuries. It's as if there are two strains of thought fighting against each other. One attributes the world's evils to God and the other claims God is nowhere to be found, not even in the recesses of nature - the "tiny" miracles. What is one to make of this? I react to it as G. K. Chesterton would; I find it is not God that is faulty but atheists who desire reality their way - in a way so as to dismiss God but continue to fault Him for whatever ails us.
A more worthy discussion of the theological implications of divine will interacting in a sinful and ailing world was explored by Robert Morey in his rendition of a past debate during a summer job at General Motors. John, a man Morey describes as "an aggressive atheist," delighted at playing the devil's advocate with Morey and engaged him on the problem of evil. "If your God is good," asked John, "why hasn't he solved the problem of evil?" Morey's response suggested there existed more than one way to deal with evil and engaged John by bringing up the one solution possible: elimination of all evil. If God brought an end to all evil at this moment, Morey stated, man would go up in a puff of smoke. Wouldn't this be the appropriate solution? Upon Morey's query, John asked a most predictable question, "Can't He just make everyone good or stop people from doing evil?" Morey's response shot back as if he was engaged in a philosophical chess match and the move was preplanned.
But this would mean the destruction of man as man. Would man be man if he no longer could choose? Aren't you saying that all men should become robots? This still means that man, as we know him, would be destroyed.
This is probably a worthwhile interaction between believer and unbeliever and, I suspect, John was never talked to in the manner Morey debated with him. Most Christians, I believe, don't know Morey or, for that matter, can't speak on the philosophical level to answer John's issues. That doesn't relieve John of his obligation to explore theism as deeply as Morey to the point of resolving the issue as Morey does. What John does reveal is his kinship with atheists such as Russell and Ingersoll in seeing a need for a quick fix to evil while their philosophy, at its core, denies evil's existence.
I doubt that any reconciliation would have ever been possible between Joshi's atheist's and McDowell because they approach religion from such divergent starting points. For Ingersoll, religion is illogic and slavery. For McDowell, the Christian religion is peace, serenity, and truth. Ingersoll is dead and McDowell is still peddling his craft which once again brings up the question I asked in the opening. Is McDowell disillusioned and crazy or are the atheists in Joshi's work crazy and misinformed? Undoubtedly McDowell's apologetics suffer because of their lack of including more recent anti-Christian arguments, but one can't fault him for making a stupendous effort. Joshi's atheists, undoubtedly, fail by the same immensity simply because they are too shallow in their analysis of the philosophical issues at hand. Many of these atheists have passed on to the next life, too soon to encounter the likes of McDowell and Morey. At least Joshi has given as a keen insight to the apologetic task at hand and the mind of atheists long gone and those still with us.
Jeffrey Stueber