Tag Archives: Richard Dawkins

“Who Made God?”, Part 2

Richard DawkinsLast week, we looked at how famed British atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell objected to God by asking the question “Who made God?” Then we saw why this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of God, and actually does nothing to invalidate the concept of God. But Russell wasn’t the only one to get stuck on that question. So, this week, I’d like to review Richard Dawkins’ similar objection. Let’s work through that today by jumping straight into the relevant quotes from Richard’s book “The God Delusion”.

“The whole argument turns on the familiar question ‘Who made God?’, which most thinking people discover for themselves. A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right. God presents an infinite regress from which he cannot help us escape.”[1]

“Seen clearly, intelligent design will turn out to be a redoubling of the problem. Once again, this is because the designer himself (/herself/itself) immediately raises the bigger problem of his own origin. Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as a Dutchman’s Pipe [a plant Dawkins was using as an example] (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman’s Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance…. Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is a better alternative. Indeed, design is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who designed the designer?” [2]

“In any case, even though genuinely irreducible complexity would wreck Darwin’s theory if it were ever found, who is to say that it wouldn’t wreck the intelligent design theory as well? Indeed, it already has wrecked the intelligent design theory, for, as I keep saying and will say again, however little we know about God, the one thing we can be sure of is that he would have to be very very complex and presumably irreducibly so!” [3]

Dawkins’ fundamental objection here is that he believes God would have to be “complex”, and that this would require a prior cause that leads to an infinite regress, like your kids asking “Why?” after every answer you give.  Now, I see two issues here.

First, he seems to be thinking of God as some kind of cosmic machine. For instance, even a simple plastic gadget might require a very complex, carefully controlled machine to manufacture it. That machine, itself composed of gears and pistons and electronics and whatnot, had to be produced by something prior. The machine’s complexity – i.e. it’s composition of multiple interrelated parts – requires explanation by a prior cause, like another machine that produced the gears, a designer, and so forth.  But the gadget and the machine that produced it are both contingent and not self-existent. Self-existence is what ends the infinite regress that Dawkins stumbles over. Of course, a materialist might opt for a self-existent universe, but even if that were possible, it can’t ever cause anything to change. You might as well wait for your pet rock to do some tricks. That need for a free agent to initiate anything drives us toward God, but that is the one place Dawkins can never let himself be taken.

A second issue is that he confuses the complexity of the brain with the simplicity (or unity) of mind. Hardly surprising for an materialist evolutionary biologist to only see the neurons of the brain at work during design, but this is an important distinction. While mind and brain are typically paired, it is mind that is essential to design. A dead brain perfectly preserved in a jar in the lab will never design anything, even though it is still quite complex. Why is that? Because design necessarily requires 2 things: purpose and choice. These two essential characteristics of design entail 1) a mind to plan out a purpose, and 2) agency to make a choice between competing alternatives so as to achieve that purpose. Therefore, rationality and consciousness are the key attributes of a mind that make design possible. God is immaterial mind, while the brain is a contingent, physical object; it is hardware that can form, develop during our lives, atrophy, and eventually cease to function. While the brain is a complex system of interconnected neurons, all of the aforementioned stages confirm that brains are also contingent; they begin to exist and cease existing at some point. Mind, however, is not complex, but simple. Now, what does it mean to speak of the simplicity of mind (not to be confused with being simple-minded)? Namely this: that mind cannot be subdivided. A mind is simple as opposed to complex; it is a unitary whole not composed of parts. In fact, if Dawkins were to open any of several systematic theology texts [4] and read the opposing side, he would find that “simplicity”, or “unity of being”, or “noncomposition”, or “indivisibility”, has been an attribute of God recognized by Christians for nearly 2000 years. If he were to argue his case for a “complex designer” because he objected to the traditional formulation of divine simplicity, I could be more sympathetic to his objection. But I’ve yet to see any indication that he has even engaged with that issue. So for him to object to God because of his complexity is to object to a god of his own making, and not to the God of Christianity.

 


[1] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Mariner Books, 2008), p.136.
[2] ibid, pp. 146-7.
[3] ibid. p. 151.
[4] For example:
Geisler (2011), Systematic Theology in One Volume, Chapter 30 – “God’s Pure Actuality and Simplicity”;
Grudem (2000), Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Chapter 11 – “Incommunicable Attributes of God”;
Berkhof (1938), Systematic Theology, Part 1, Ch. VI., Section D – “The Unity of God”.
Boyce (1887), Abstract of Systematic Theology, Section 2 – “The Simplicity of God”;
Hodge (1872), Systematic Theology, Vol 2;  Ch. 5, Section 4 – “Spirituality of God”;
Thomas Aquinas, 1274, Summa Theologica, Vol. 1, Question 3 – “Of the Simplicity of God (in 8 Articles)”;

Deconstructing Dawkins, Part 4 – Against the Flow

Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins

It’s been a while since I’ve looked at Richard Dawkins’ objections to Christianity here, but some of his bad reasoning got regurgitated by another atheist in a book I’m wading through right now, so it seems fitting to address this issue now. This common atheist objection to religion in general is that religion is merely a cultural phenomenon. In other words, I’m simply a Christian because I grew up in a Christian culture, and would most likely be Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist if I’d grown up elsewhere in the world. Is that a legitimate point? Let’s work through that this week.

First off, let’s make sure we have the objection correct. Here’s two quotes, the first from a relative newcomer on the atheist publishing scene, David Madison, and the second from Dawkins himself.

“[I]f I had been born in Croatia instead of Indiana, I would have been taught that another religion is the only one that is worthy of my full devotion. In one of the more memorable confrontations between Richard Dawkins and a devout Christian during a Q& A session, the gentleman claimed to have a personal relationship with Jesus. Dawkins bluntly pointed out that the fellow would not even have been a Christian if he’d been raised in another culture or another era. Instead of believing in Jesus, he might believe in Thor, Wotan, or Allah.”
– David Madison [1]

Lest you think Madison’s recounting of Dawkins’ Q&A dialogue was simply an off-the-cuff remark by Dawkins made without thinking it through beforehand, the following is from Dawkins’ book “The God Delusion”, which one would hope had involved some careful review prior to publishing.

“If you are religious at all it is overwhelmingly probable that your religion is that of your parents. If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam false, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan, you are the victim of childhood indoctrination.” – Richard Dawkins [2]

Now, does this actually help the atheist? Not really. For one thing, the fact that other cultures may have opposing beliefs does nothing to invalidate the Christian’s beliefs. The most Dawkins could say from that fact alone is that they can’t both be true (if  actually contradictory). In that case, one would indeed have to be wrong, but the atheist is assuming both are wrong, which just doesn’t follow. Secondly, this appears to be an example of the genetic fallacy, where the origin of a belief is attacked rather than the actual content of the belief. I did learn about Christianity from my parents, my church, and the general culture around me here in the “Bible Belt” of the US. But as long as that knowledge I received was true, then it doesn’t matter where it came from. That’s the thing about truth – it’s objective and independent of the messenger.

But what strikes me as the bigger issue is that Dawkins undercuts many of his fellow atheists with this attack. We could just as easily say that atheists in communist China aren’t atheists because of reason or “progress”, but only because that happens to be what is promoted in their culture. On the flip side, many of the atheists parroting Dawkins’ delusion (like Madison) are here in the US, which is still a predominantly Christian nation. Their own existence as members of an atheist minority in a majority “Christian” nation also demonstrates that people’s beliefs are not determined by their culture. By Dawkins’ own reasoning American atheists should be Christians (or at the very least, theists), but they aren’t. They made a choice in spite of the dominant culture around them.

Can one’s culture be a contributing factor? Certainly. If you are only presented with certain choices by your culture, then you are more likely to pick from the choices given. But even that is no guarantee. Some countries over the last century have tried to enforce state atheism and actively persecuted believers. These included the former Soviet states, the Eastern Bloc countries during the Cold War, Communist China today, and Albania, the country that declared itself the “world’s first atheist state” in 1967. They all actively punished and often executed religious believers. And yet people still chose to believe in God in spite of that societal pressure. My own mom used to write to a woman who was imprisoned in Russia for being a Christian. Muslims have been converting to Christianity in the Middle East in growing numbers the last few years, also in spite of very heavy societal pressure not to, which has included being disowned by one’s family, being jailed for years, or being beheaded by ISIS (among others). While one’s surrounding culture may influence our beliefs, it clearly does nothing to support or refute the truth of a particular belief.

As an aside, is it “indoctrination” to pass on one’s beliefs to your children? Well, technically, indoctrination is simply “the act of indoctrinating, or teaching or inculcating a doctrine, principle, or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view.”[3] Kinda like atheists teaching their kids that science is the only way to know truth (This is called a self-defeating statement. Just ask by what scientific test one arrives at that conclusion. But I digress…) It’s actually pretty cumbersome to teach anything without some specific point of view. The real issue is whether the doctrine being taught is true or not. If it is, then we shouldn’t shy away from that, but rather seek to teach that.

In closing, I did grow up in a Christian home, and my faith does happen to be the same faith of my parents. But Christianity does not recognize belief by proxy. My parents’ beliefs will not save me, so it is still on me (and you) to decide, regardless of what our parents or peers believe. Every person who will be saved must make that decision for themselves. Moreover, mere lip service, “going through the motions”, or performing rituals without any understanding of them and without sincerity of heart (i.e. “just repeat these words after me”) are repeatedly condemned in the Bible. Saving faith requires knowledge of the truth of the Gospel, belief that it is true, and trust in Christ’s sufficient work, regardless of culture or geography.


[1] David Madison, “Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: A Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith”, (Tellectual Press, Kindle Edition, 2016), pp. 152-153
[2] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Mariner Books, 2008), p. 25.
[3] “Indoctrination”, http://www.dictionary.com/browse/indoctrination, accessed 2018-04-03.

Hell vs Love

“Hell”, photograph by Robert Doisneau, 1952

Is the concept of hell as a place of eternal punishment incompatible with the concept of a loving God? I’m reading a couple of books right now written by atheists who both view hell not only as a moral outrage, but as contrary to the nature of God as loving. Are they right? Let’s dig in to that tonight.

Atheist David Madison wrote in 2016, “Hell and eternal punishment fall into the category of the cruel and unusual. Pain and torture that go on forever can’t be part of sound theology. ” [1] Eight years prior, Dan Barker wrote, “Love is not hatred or wrath, assigning billions of people to eternal torture because they have offended your fragile ego or disobeyed your rules….” [2] Of course, Richard Dawkins gave his own sensational statement on hell back in 2006: “I am persuaded that the phrase ‘child abuse’ is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like the punishment of unshriven mortal sins in an eternal hell.” [3] But this opposition to hell is hardly limited to the so-called “new atheists.” Bertrand Russell, back in 1927, stated that “There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.” [4]

With that brief survey of some of the objections to hell, lets consider a couple of responses.

  • Is damnation an act of ego-driven hatred masquerading as love, as Barker alleges? Actually, this has nothing to do with ego or hatred, for it is justice, not love, that condemns people to hell. Too many people construct a very one-dimensional image of God they can feel justified in rejecting, and this is just such a case. Yes, God is loving; but He is also holy, righteous, just. One might be tempted to say that the love of God should override this harsh justice, yet people don’t seem to approve if a human judge lets an unrepentant criminal go unpunished. But in God’s solution at the cross, love actually satisfied the need for justice rather than ignoring it. While God’s justice condemns us to an eternal punishment we all deserve, His sacrificial love offers us freedom if we’ll accept it.
  • Is the duration of the punishment unloving or inhumane? These skeptics, and many others, specifically object to the “everlasting” part of hell. There are two responses here. First, this objection stems from a lack of appreciation of the seriousness of sin – any sin – from the view of a perfect judge. We tend to excuse “little sins” and “white lies” and such, but anything less than perfection is a failing grade before a perfect God. True justice, when perfection is the standard, requires any infraction, no matter how minor in the defendant’s eyes, to be a guilty sentence. Another response to this objection is that the sin and lack of repentance of those condemned to hell don’t seem to stop once they get there. I don’t want to read too much into a story, but it is worth noting that in Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar [Lk 16:19-31], the rich man, while being tormented in hell, continued acting selfishly toward Lazarus, even as he asked favors of Lazarus. If one never repents of sin (i.e. turns from it), then one continues in sin, and therefore in condemnation. Thus, the eternal nature of the punishment may very well be due to the eternal continuation of the sin.

Does the existence of hell rule out the love of God? Not when understood in it’s context. As Douglas Groothuis points out, “The doctrine of hell does not stand alone as a kind of ancient Christian chamber of horrors. Rather, hell is inseparable from three other interrelated biblical truths: human sin, God’s holiness, and the cross of Christ…. Only by understanding hell can we grasp the immensity of God’s love…. This is a costly love, a bloody love that has no parallel in any of the world’s religions.”[5] The tragic fate awaiting so many is not something Christians relish. On the contrary, it is concern and love for our fellow humans that drives us to warn them of the disastrous path they are on. It is a love motivated by that costly love with which God first loved us. If you are one who has rejected God because of the offensiveness of hell, I ask – no, I plead – that you reconsider, and accept God’s free gift of salvation. For in the end, if you will not have His love, sadly, you will have His justice. Choose wisely, friend.


[1] David Madison, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: A Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith (Valley, WA: Tellectual Press, 2016), p. 277. Kindle Edition.
[2] Dan Barker, godless (Berkeley: Ulysses Press, 2008), p.89.
[3] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Mariner Books, 2008), p. 358.
[4]  Bertrand Russell, “Why I Am Not A Christian”,  a lecture given March 6, 1927, to the National Secular Society at Battersea Town Hall, England.
[5] Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2011), Appendix 1: “Hell on Trial”, p. 658,660.