Summit Ministries

Some facts worthy of careful consideration.

Due to the newness of the Summit Oxford program, the deadline for applications to the 2008 autumn term have been extended from the 15th of April until the 15th of June.

Due to the newness of the Summit Oxford program, the deadline for applications to the 2008 autumn term have been extended from the 15th of April until the 15th of June.

An increasing number of people turn to Wikipedia for information on everything from apples to zebras, from asteroids to Zippo brand lighters. Some have warned that given the user driven content, there is a danger in incorrect or misleading information. Apparently that may be the lead of our worries since there are some who prowl the site seeking to control various entries and deny alternative -- even correcting -- voices. Lawrence Solomon writes an article telling of his recent adventures in, "Wikipedia's Zealots: The Thought Police at the Supposedly Independent Site Are Fervently Enforcing Climate Orthodoxy." Apparently even editors at Wikipedia are patrolling the site to silence dissenting voices. Something to think about.

Another piece of wisdom from Lewis.

While we are on the subject of science, let me digress for a moment. I believe that any Christian who is qualified to write a good popular book on any science may do much more by that than by any directly apologetic work. The difficulty we are up against is this. We can make people (often) attend to the Christian point of view for half an hour or so; but the moment they have gone away from our lecture or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite position is taken for granted. As long as that situation exists, widespread success is simply impossible. We must attack the enemy's line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects -- with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way round.... It is not the books written in direct defence of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian. The first step to the re-conversion of this country is a series, produced by Christians, which can beat [the competition] on their own ground. ("Christian Apologetics," in God in the Dock: Essays in Theology and Ethics)

Of course, this would apply not only to science by to any and all disciplines and professions. Precisely how "latent" -- how implicit or subtle -- one's Christian faith should be within the work would be decided by the wise judgment of the author(s), possibly in consultation with others in the body of Christ who know the profession or discipline. It is a matter of being wise and subtle and yet also innocent and honest.

C.S. Lewis was a scholar of great grace and great wisdom. As you may ponder studying with us in Oxford, consider well the following wise words Lewis written in a previous generation -- penned for all generations.

The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us. Of course it will be so only so long as we keep the impulse pure and disinterested. That is the great difficulty. As the author of the Theologia Germanica says, we may come to love knowledge -- our knowing -- more than the known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us. Every success in the scholar's life increases this danger. If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his scholarly work. The time for plucking out the right eye has arrived. ("Learning in War Time," in The Weight of Glory)

On February 29th, George Weigel (author of Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action) and Philip Jenkins (author of God's Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe's Religious Crisis) engaged in a discussion regarding their slightly different visions of the future fate of Europe. The audio (mp3) is available for download at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Their respective concerns and comments are well worth pondering . . . prayerfully pondering.

Perhaps it goes without saying that the "new atheists" have arrived. Richard Dawkins, [2] Sam Harris [3] and Christopher Hitchens [4] (among others [5]) have recently published volumes capturing many intellects and imaginations. As international bestsellers, their publishing efforts are likely to produce challenges to our faith for years to come. These authors have superb rhetorical skills and deploy the English language to great effect. Dawkins and Hitchens have particular appeal with their posh British accents and witty idioms.

It is not that their polemics are novel, however, nor their arguments especially successful. And they have not gone unanswered. [6] Yet it appears they have not always understood or felt the weight of their opponents’ objections. [7] For instance, Hitchens regularly denounces people, their beliefs, and their actions as "immoral." Nevertheless, within an atheist universe it is difficult to see how such moral disdain rises above a merely emotive, "I don’t like them/that." After all, within that perspective, what precisely is good or evil? Does atheism have the resources necessary to produce coherent accusations of immorality? It is most difficult to see moral assessment as meaningful within an atheist worldview.

Morality and Materiality

Atheists tend to suppose that what exists is only that which is open to scientific scrutiny, that which is natural. Yet moral truths are not entities amenable to such analysis. As one atheist perceptively observed:

If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else. [8]

It simply is the case that one does not discover moral truths through microscopes or telescopes. However, neither does one so discover numbers, the laws of logic, other minds (as distinct from brains), or love. This, of course, doesn’t keep anyone from enjoying each of these!

If moral truths cannot be scrutinized as physical entities or forces of physics – because they are not entities or forces of that sort – then do they exist in the naturalistic universe of the atheist? And if moral assessments cannot meaningfully be made of such things as granite or grass or gaggles of geese, then can they be leveled at human beings – entities that are, on atheistic and naturalistic assumptions, merely alternate forms of the same material stuff? Thus the moral disapproval of atheists appears to reduce to an expression of preference or personal disapproval – nothing all that serious, unless you desire their approbation. The naturalistic worldview of atheism is unable to account for the reality of moral truths or provide for their meaningful expression.

Atheists and Moral Actions

Along a different path, Hitchens places great confidence in this challenge: "name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer." [9] He triumphantly proclaims that he has yet had no takers. Now, Christians might be tempted to troll about to find that one exceptional deed on which to pin this tail. That, however, would be a mistake for Hitchens’s challenge is an evasive maneuver, a red herring. Of course atheists can perform moral actions. They can tell the truth, remain faithful to their spouses, feed their children, be generous with their possessions, forgive others their faults – each of which is wholly commendable. The problem is in making sense of the alleged morality or immorality of actions within an atheist perspective. In other words, what eludes atheism is an objective standard of assessment, the precondition for deeming such actions moral and not merely preferable. Their counterfactual worldview lacks the requisite resources for coherent moral assessments.

Again, this problem is one the new atheists so often fail to see. For example, Sam Harris once asserted, "If religion were the only durable foundation for morality, you would expect atheists to be really badly behaved." [10] But the argument is not, if you are an atheist, then you’ll necessarily behave badly; rather, it is an observation that within an atheistic worldview there appears no objective means of assessing actions as good or bad. Additionally, atheists do pronounce moral assessments, and often Christians agree (or at least we should). Even so, these assessments do not appear to cohere with the atheistic worldview, a perspective that lacks the preconditions for such moral categories.

Atheists and Innate Moral Sense

Regardless, one can’t help but suppose that since the new atheists were raised within cultures influenced by a Judeo-Christian worldview, they have absorbed and retained many such values. Perhaps this is no more visible in one of Hitchens’s autobiographical anecdotes.

There is something about [donating blood] that appeals to me, and I derive other satisfactions as well from being of assistance to a fellow creature… Nobody has to teach me any of this... The so-called Golden Rule is innate in us, or is innate except in the sociopaths who do not care about others, and the psychopaths who take pleasure from cruelty. [11]

One may doubt that Hitchens was not taught to share. He may not recall the lesson; but it remains pervasive in Western culture. It is embedded in our histories, movies, fairy tales and poetry. Our culture rewards generosity both socially and emotionally. Thus Hitchens’s feelings are, at least in part, a resonant with his culture. In addition, lesser forms of the Golden Rule have been used to support distinctly ethnocentric ends throughout history, with "the other" to whom one should do good being restricted to members of one’s family, tribe, nation or ethnic group. [12] This is precisely the limitation countered in the parable of the good Samaritan, a parable that likely has also informed Hitchens’s moral sensibilities. Our neighbor in need is our neighbor indeed.

But this anecdote takes us back to our earliest suspicion, that within a atheistic and naturalistic worldview moral assessments reduce to emotive expressions of preference. In the anecdote above, Hitchens conflates a feeling of satisfaction with a moral imperative. He supposes that mimicking personal sacrifice (and it is only mimicry that he admits to, as he sees blood donation as not truly sacrificial since he loses nothing), he is aping something altruistic and ethically upright. Would it remain good to donate blood even if it had no appeal and provided no such satisfactions? Of course it would. But would it be so within an atheistic worldview? One is at pains to see how it would be. After all, Hitchens does it because he likes the resultant feelings. It appears that what we encounter here is precisely what we noted earlier: moral claims reduce to preference claims within an atheistic world. Hitchens prefers the appeal, the satisfaction of helping other people.

Morality without God?

Even so, he tries hard to retain the objectivity of morality by locating in evolutionary biology (something unsuccessfully attempted by others). I find it interesting that he even attempts to retain some semblance of universal moral standard and impulse? Perhaps Friedrich Nietzsche was suggestive when he criticized Georg Eliot, and English atheists more generally, in Twilight of the Idols. "They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality…," wrote Nietzsche. "In England one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there." He continued:

We others hold otherwise. When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet… Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands….When the English actually believe that they know "intuitively" what is good and evil, when they therefore suppose that they no longer require Christianity as the guarantee of morality, we merely witness the effects of the dominion of the Christian value judgment and an expression of the strength and depth of this dominion: such that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, such that the very conditional character of its right to existence is no longer felt. For the English, morality is not yet a problem. [13]

Now, to be fair, Christopher Hitchens became a U.S. citizen on the 13th of April, 2007. He has expatriated from Britain. Nor need one wholly agree with Nietzsche to notice the rationality of his comments: when one removes God, one removes the foundation for morality. The attempt to retain morality absent the Deity is desperate and incoherent. Of course, we can be glad that many atheists insist on recognizing a difference between good and evil. We can be glad for their intuitions, the thoughts that arise from them as human beings made in the image of the Deity they deny. Thankfully, that image is permanent.

In the end, the philosophical naturalism of atheism, the fallacious diversions, and the non-physicality of moral truths combine to show that the "new atheists" strike an implausible pose. It also explains why their bullish announcements of moral criticism smack of so much bluster. Having misplaced the foundation for moral outrage, they pilfer from the Christian worldview. But it’s wrong to steal.

Notes

1. An earlier and shorter version of this essay appeared in the January 2008 edition of the Summit Oxford Quarterly, a publication that may be downloaded here.
2. C. Richard Dawkins (b.1941) holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and is the author of numerous books, including The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin, 2006).
3. Sam Harris (b.1967) holds a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and is pursuing a doctorate in neuroscience. He is the author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason (W.W. Norton, 2004) and Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf, 2006).
4. Christopher E. Hitchens (b.1949) is an ex-patriot Britain now an American Citizen (as of 13 April 2007, his 50th birthday), an awarded journalist, and an incredibly prolific author. Among his most recent books is his bestselling God Is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve Books, 2007).
5. E.g., Daniel Dennett (b.1942), Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Penguin, 2006); Michael Shermer (b.1954, editor of Skeptic magazine); Victor J. Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis (Prometheus, 2007).
6. Among a heavy stream of published responses, see especially Dinesh D’Souza (b.1961), What’s So Great about Christianity? (Regnery, 2007). There are many other very helpful responses being published right now. I highlight this volume since it interacts with several of the significant "new atheists," and does so with regards to so many facets of their arguments. I would note, however, that I see D’Souza’s work as inadequate or misleading particularly with regards to his embrace of evolutionary theory and his attempts to downplay the tensions between this theory and tenets of the Christian faith.
7. This seems particularly acute in the case of Hitchens’s debate with Rev. Douglas Wilson on the Christianity Today website: "Is Christianity Good for the World?" http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/mayweb-only/119-12.0.html (accessed 18 January 2008).
8. J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (New York: Penguin, 1977), 38.
9. C. Hitchens, "Introduction," in The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever, ed. C. Hitchens (London: De Capo, 2007), xiv.
10. As quoted in, "The New Atheists," Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, PBS, January 5, 2007; http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week1019/cover.html#, accessed 18 January 2008. See also Hitchens, "Introduction," xvi.
11. Hitchens, "Introduction," xvi-xvii.
12. This was pointed out to me by Prof. George H. van Kooten (of the University of Groningen) during a discussion of the Golden Rule (and its many permutations) at the British New Testament Conference at the University of Exeter in early September 2007.
13. Available online: http://www.handprint.com/SC/NIE/GotDamer.html, accessed 18 January 2008.

Kevin James Bywater directs the Summit Ministries Oxford Study Centre. For information on the centre, please visit the Summit Oxford homepage. Applications for the fall of 2008 are now being received.

Here is the first installment of the new Summit Oxford Quarterly, a scheduled publication including updates on the ministry, the students and some cultural engagement(s). In this issue you’ll find an introduction to Summit Oxford, an article engaging the “new atheists,” profiles of three students who participated in our precursor program, and some notes on three books we recommend.

Here is our Bywater family newsletter for the end of 2007. It is in PDF and easily downloaded. It is in full color, so a color printer would be most helpful, if you care to read it in hardcopy. Otherwise, it is nicely viewed on your computer screen. Cheers!