Lux Lucet

Christopher Hitchens now believes in God. I can say this with certainty, because the noted journalist and outspoken atheist died this week. News of his passing prompted me to skim through an anthology he put together a few years ago called The
Portable Atheist. And even though I haven’t made it very far, I have a few thoughts on what he wrote.

Hitchens isn’t the first writer of the “new atheist” school whom I have read. A number of years ago I read a book by Richard Dawkins called The Blind Watchmaker, in which Dawkins claimed to have overthrown the Biblical doctrine of creation, or at least intelligent design (they’re not the same thing, but that’s another article). As a Christian, I approached the book with a bit of fear and trembling, concerned that the Oxford scholar would offer some brilliant, irrefutable argument in favor of evolution that would utterly devastate my faith the Bible.

I read and read. I waited and waited.

Nothing.

It turned out that the best Dawkins could offer in the way of proof of evolution was a computer based experiment, in which a program was able to produce the image of some sort of insect after going through several steps supposedly simulating Darwinian natural selection. This, the reader was told in so many words, was proof that behind all the glorious, apparent design in nature stood a cold, insentient mechanical process, not a mind. For Dawkins, this was a QED moment.

I was less than impressed.

Now to be fair to Dawkins, who took the title of his book from 18th Christian apologist William Paley’s invalid argument for the existence of God, perhaps he thought that by doing away with Paley he had at the same time overturned the Bible. But there are two problems with this. First, I’m not convinced that Dawkins’s computer model actually refuted Paley. After all, the computer program that evolved the insect image was designed by someone, and a presumably intelligent someone at that. Second, even had Dawkins succeeded in refuting Paley, this still would have left unscathed the Biblical doctrine of creation. For the Biblical creation does not rest on Paley’s argument, but on the words of Scripture. Christians believe that God made, “all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days and all very good,” not on the basis of clever arguments, but on the testimony of Scripture.

Back to Hitchens, one thing he and Dawkins have in common in addition to their contempt of Christianity and Christians, is an over-the-top confidence in their own wisdom, intelligence and debating skills. Reading through the introduction to The Portable Atheist, a Christian who knows his Bible can find any number of foolish statements to pick apart, but I’ll limit myself to just one. Pouring contempt on religious believers, Hitchens boldly writes,

“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.”

Now of course one elementary problem with this statement is that it conflates widely diverse belief systems under the big tent of religion. In the mind of Hitchens and other new atheists, all religions are of a piece to be set over against their urbane and scoffing unbelief. This is simply wrong. Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Judaism and Islam do not hold propositions in common and cannot logically be lumped into the same group. Had Hitchens read his Gordon Clark, perhaps he would have understood that Christianity is not a species of the genus religion, but rather the religion of which other belief systems are false derivations.

Hitchens’ in your face challenge, the one about which he says, “As yet, I have had no takers,” is the language of a bully. The playground tough who shoves you to the ground and dares you to do something about it. Mocking and scoffing just like Goliath, Hitchens and his ilk can be pretty intimidating. But the Christian need not fear them. For as Goliath fell to David, so the atheist bullies will fall before the word of the Lord. And when I think about this, it makes me want to exclaim with Paul, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” For God, “catches the wise in their own craftiness,” and, “has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise.”

I’m not sure what those beholden to false faiths would say or could say to Hitchens, but any Christian with a Bible can easily answer him. And the answer is this: please God. No unbeliever can ever do this. The author of Hebrews tells us, “By faith, Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, ‘and was not found for God had taken him,’ for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God” (Heb. 11:15). But without faith, “it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him” (Heb.11:6). To this Paul adds, “those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom.8:8).

Christians need not be afraid of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins or any other atheist bully. God has given us the sword of his word. Let us read it, memorize it, understand it, and by God’s good grace defend it against all comers.