A person’s worldview is often much more than just some theoretical knowledge. Often it translates into action. And dangerous worldviews will lead to dangerous practices. Atheism and Darwinism are two worldviews that embrace similar presuppositions, and they both need to be held accountable for actions performed in their names.
As I have written before, the new atheism is not simply content to deny theism. The new militant variety is taking the offensive, claiming God, religion and faith are not only false, but nasty and dangerous as well. Dawkins’ The God Delusion is certainly a case in point.
In an interesting piece written back in November 25, 2006 for Christian Worldview Network.com, David Noebel of Summit Ministries in America offers a good take on Darwin and some of his latter day disciples and God-haters. In his article, “Dawkins, Dennett, and Darwin,” he makes it clear that those who have been disciples of Darwin have a lot to answer for.
Noebel points out that some of the earlier atheists could be pretty nasty as well. One thinks of the early Marxists for example, who did not hide their loathing of religion. “Indeed, Dawkins and Dennett remind me of V.I. Lenin, who insists that ‘every idea of God, even flirting with the idea of God, is unutterable vileness – vileness of the most dangerous kind’ (1913 letter to Maxim Gorky). Lenin also exhorts that ‘we must combat religion, that is the ABC of all materialism.’ Lenin advised his followers to distribute the atheistic literature of the French Encyclopaedists. They did, and the results can be read in Harvard University’s publication The Black Book of Communism. Every reader toying with atheism or thinking that Dawkins and Dennett are clever and smart needs to read this 850-page book before proceeding to the abyss.”
Given how so many institutions of power and influence are controlled partially or totally by those who have no religion or resist religion, it is surprising to find faith at all in much of the West. Yet most ordinary folk in the West still cling to faith:
“The fact that over 90 percent of Americans claim some belief in God simply staggers Dawkins and Dennett, who describe this state of affairs as ‘the surrounding gloom of America’s obsession with religion.’ They wonder how so many can be so ignorant, especially when they are products of an atheistically saturated educational system, when 94 percent of the hierarchy of the National Academy of Sciences are atheists, and when even mentioning God or His creation is disallowed in professional scientific journals. As a matter of fact, when one professional journal (related to the Smithsonian) challenged Darwin’s theory of natural selection and the neo-Darwinian mutations spoof the whole roof fell in and the editor (with two PhDs in science) was dismissed posthaste. This is an example of atheistic liberalism at its darkest hour, shattering the shibboleth of tolerance, academic freedom, and fair-mindedness once and for all.”
He continues, “Both Dawkins and Dennett insist that Darwin’s theory of natural selection makes belief in God unnecessary, irrelevant, and perhaps dangerous although Dennett does admit there is some kind of relationship between religion and health (it seems that those who practice religion are healthier than those who don’t). Both see Darwinism as a firm foundation for morality. However, Dennett seems troubled knowing that Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin (to say nothing of Hitler) believed essentially what he believes regarding God and Darwin, and they represent the moral monsters of the twentieth century.”
“While those who claim belief in God have indeed committed some horrendous acts (the St. Bartholomew massacre, for example) those who shout their disbelief in God have committed literally millions more. Jung Chang and her husband, in a recent book on Mao, estimate his tortures and killings at 70 million. And Mao believed in Darwin’s evolution and Dawkins’ atheism. Most Americans have forgotten that after the 1949 Communist takeover of China, Darwinism preceded Marx and Lenin in the classroom.”
“Let’s admit that the twentieth century was a century of putting into practice ‘atheistic, naturalistic, humanistic, evolutionistic science.’ The Communist and Nazi movements operated with such ‘science’ at the top of their ‘to do’ lists. The ‘science’ of eugenics, for example, had connections with humanism (Margaret Sanger), Nazism (Rudin), and Communism (Lewontin). Indeed, the Journal of Eugenics became the Journal of Social Biology.”
Of course every once in a while an atheist sees the light. World famous atheist Antony Flew is a case in point. He was delivered from his atheism after studying the claims of the Intelligent Design movement.
“What intrigues me is Richard Dawkins’ ridiculing Antony Flew for relinquishing his atheism for some type of deism (a form of theism). Speaking before a body of students and faculty in Lynchburg, Virginia, (not Liberty University) Dawkins asserted that Flew was foolish to rest his deism on Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe’s work on the cell. Dawkins claims Flew would have been better served to rest his case for deism on the constants of nature (e.g., if the strength of gravity, the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere, the length of the rotation of the earth, the centrifugal force of planetary movement, the charge of an electron, or the mass of a proton were the tiniest bit different, none of us would be here to discuss atheism or evolution) rather than the teleology of the cell. In truth, both sources make a powerful case for the existence of God!”
“(Incidentally, Flew says his conversion to deism from atheism resulted from reason and science, not revelation or irrationalism. It must surely strike rational human beings as rather strange that as an atheist, Flew was considered one of the brightest stars in the universe, but once he left his atheism, he suddenly became one of the dwarf stars in a far off galaxy if not in some black hole.)”
Other problems confront the disciples of Darwin. “The love fest between Dawkins and Dennett, however, may be short lived because neither they nor atheism can explain the origin of life from inorganic matter, nor can they find the fossils before the Cambrian period to prove their evolutionary scenario – something Darwin believed essential to prove that his theory was true. Nor can Dawkins and Dennett explain away the slaughter of the twentieth century (the bloodiest in all recorded human history – 170 million deaths, according to R. J. Rummel). No Christian idea was responsible for this terrible slaughter. All the ideas responsible are found in the camp of Dawkins’ and Dennett’s atheism, naturalism, humanism, socialism, and evolutionism.”
“Logic, too, counters Dawkins and Dennett, in that everything that comes into existence must have a sufficient cause. Even the skeptic David Hume says, ‘I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause.’ Only God fills this model of cause and effect. Belief in chance or accident is simply not logical. As Paul Amos Moody explains, ‘The more I study science the more I am impressed with the thought that this world and universe have a definite design – and a design suggests a designer’.”
Noebel reminds us that ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have bad consequences. “Who in Colorado can ever forget the names Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold? They were responsible for the murders of 12 of their fellow students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. ‘You know what I love?’ asked Harris. ‘Natural Selection. It’s the best thing that ever happened on this earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and ignorant organisms.’ On the day he killed his fellow students (deliberately seeking out Christians) and wounded 24 others, he was wearing a T-shirt bearing Darwin’s motto: ‘Natural Selection.’ Again, is there any rational human being who believes that if his T-shirt had said “Jesus Loves You” he would have committed such horrendous crimes? I don’t think so!”
The new militant atheists can rant and rave all they like about the terrible influence of religion, but until they come clean on atrocities committed by those who have embraced their worldview, it will be hard to take them seriously.
http://www.christianworldviewnetwork.com/article.php?&ArticleID=1293
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