The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

What's all the fuss about? Why the big atheist putsch?

Ever since the Big Bang, materialist science has come in for a lot of trouble. As I set out in By Design or by Chance?, things that cannot happen by chance in the lifetime of the known universe cannot happen - unless some force or law has overruled chance.

In that case, the most reasonable assumption is that the universe and life forms did not come about by chance, but by design. That does not prove that any specific intelligent design thesis is true; it just makes design a reasonable proposition. Denunciation of the fact base or anyone who asks questions about it changes nothing.

To make matters worse, life sciences are not confirming that everything just sort of happens by a Darwinian pathway and neuroscience is not confirming that mind comes from mud. It's just not happening the way it was supposed to.

Another development in recent decades is that the collapse of worldwide communism removed huge numbers of people from the percentage who could technically be described as atheists. So they are in the mix now, clamoring for attention to their real perceptions.

And, worse still for materialists, increasing numbers of people are refusing to permit employers, bureaucrats, and other "minders" to divorce them from their spirituality.

As if that wasn't bad enough, a growing number of biologists acknowledge that the way in which evolution is taught often promotes materialist atheism rather than science as such.

Put simply: Materialist science is in trouble. And the trouble does not stem from traditional religions, though materialists are - as one might expect - quick to blame their troubles on traditional religions and to reassure themselves that - despite all the evidence - traditional religions are doomed. But, materialists are also smug and thus cannot imagine or respond to any source of trouble arising from their interpretation of the evidence.

They have apparently decided instead to target the Christian religion as the source of their problems. One outcome is that, as we shall see, many materialists want to start a new religion to compete with the traditional ones, including a Darwin Day (Christmas, Eid al-Fitr, and Chinese New Year all rolled into one?). The new religion lacks at least one ingredient that you hear about every Sunday in a Christian church ... any guesses?

Next: Part 3: The Beyond Belief conference

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The main problem with atheists, it seems to me, is not their Godless Sunday at home. In bad weather, I envy them that, actually.

No, the main problem is that they can't resist starting a church - hence the Beyond Belief conference, essentially an effort to institutionalize atheism:

Just 40 years after a famous TIME magazine cover asked "Is God Dead?" the answer appears to be a resounding "No!" According to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine, "God is Winning". Religions are increasingly a geopolitical force to be reckoned with. Fundamentalist movements-some violent in the extreme-are growing. Science and religion are at odds in the classrooms and courtrooms. And a return to religious values is widely touted as an antidote to the alleged decline in public morality. After two centuries, could this be twilight for the Enlightenment project and the beginning of a new age of unreason? Will faith and dogma trump rational inquiry, or will it be possible to reconcile religious and scientific worldviews? Can evolutionary biology, anthropology and neuroscience help us to better understand how we construct belief, and experience empathy, fear, and awe? Can science help us create a new rational narrative as poetic and powerful as those that have traditionally sustained societies? Can we treat religion as a natural phenomenon? Can we be good without God? And if not God, then what?

Then what, indeed? A church without Jesus, apparently. The media were quick to pick up on that. As The New York Times described the meeting,

Somewhere along the way, a forum this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., which might have been one more polite dialogue between science and religion, began to resemble the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told.

Carolyn Porco, a senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., called, half in jest, for the establishment of an alternative church, with Dr. Tyson, whose powerful celebration of scientific discovery had the force and cadence of a good sermon, as its first minister.

Indeed, New Scientist went as far as to describe the meeting thusly:

IT HAD all the fervour of a revivalist meeting. True, there were no hallelujahs, gospel songs or swooning, but there was plenty of preaching, mostly to the converted, and much spontaneous applause for exhortations to follow the path of righteousness. And right there at the forefront of everyone's thoughts was God.

Yet this was no religious gathering - quite the opposite. Some of the leading practitioners of modern science, many of them vocal atheists, were gathered last week in La Jolla, California, for a symposium entitled "Beyond belief: Science, religion, reason and survival" hosted by the Science Network, a science-promoting coalition of scientists and media professionals convening at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. They were there to address three questions. Should science do away with religion? What would science put in religion's place? And can we be good without God?

Now, the church - as we all know - is the weak point of any religion. And when all you've got is a church - and remember, these people are supposed to be "beyond" belief - well, to me, that sounds a bit like getting married and finding out that you have no spouse but two mothers-in-law ... and more too, if you want them!

Here's a transcript of an exchange, courtesy of a friend, that gives the general idea of how the atheists would go about evangelism:

Tyson: I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don't. That's really what we've got to address here. Otherwise the public is secondary to this. [Moderator then turns to the panel for responses.]

Larry Krauss: It's hard to know how to respond to Neil, ever. But the question you asked about "Why 15%" disturbs me a little bit because of this other presumption that scientists are somehow not people and that they don't have the same delusions -- I mean, how many of them are pedophiles in the National Academy of Sciences? How many of them are Republicans? [laughter] And so, it would be amazing, of course, if it were zero. That would be the news story. But the point is I don't think you'd expect them in general to view their religion as a bulwark against science or to view the need to fly into buildings or whatever. So the delusions or predilections are important to recognize, that scientists are people and are as full of delusions about every aspect of their life as everyone else. We all make up inventions so that we can rationalize our existence and why we are who we are.

Tyson: But Lawrence, if you can't convert our colleagues, why do you have any hope that you're going to convert the public?

Krauss: I don't think we have to convert those people. They're fine. That's the point. They're doing science. I don't understand why you need to do that.

(Session 2, from the conclusion of a talk by Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium. (beginning at the 40:47 mark in the clip))

Hmmm. You see what I mean about no spouse but two mothers-in-law? Here are some other highlights:

Neil deGrasse Tyson tirade on Stupid Design

Melvin Konner mocking Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins on Religious Child Abuse

Sam Harris replies to Scott Atran

Steven Weinberg’s Crazy Old Aunt Analogy of Religion

Sam Harris—Religion is only for lunatics and idiots

Goodness, it's hard to think of a single reason for joining these people's sect unless you have a lot of hostility to vent! And $30 billion from Bill Gates isn't going to change that.

Actually, it's hard to tell whether some of these people hate Christians more than they hate each other. Thus I would argue against any atheist getting involved with them, on mental health grounds alone.

Advice to atheists: If you must be an atheist, stay away from the Church of Atheism (Hostile). They don't "just want your money" - it's worse than that - they want to mess your head. Stay home on Sunday then and listen to classical music. (Avoid finding out that most of the great musicians were believers as long as possible.)

But ... dear reader, lest you think that no atheist could come up with an idea that might attract the public, have a look at the teen-directed Blasphemy Challenge.

Next: Part 4: The "Blasphemy Challenge"

(Note: See also Dennis Wagner's comments, also on this site.)

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

"Hi my name is Lindy and I deny the existence of the Holy Spirit and you should too."

As Newsweek continues the story,

Jan. 8, 2006 issue - With that five-second submission to YouTube, a 24-year-old who uses the name "menotsimple" has either condemned herself to an eternity of punishment in the afterlife or struck a courageous blow against superstition. She's one of more than 400 mostly young people who have joined a campaign by the Web site BlasphemyChallenge.com to stake their souls against the existence of God.

The brainchild of filmmaker Brian Flemming, who directed the antireligion documentary The God Who Wasn't There and of atheist Web site RationalResponders.com 's cofounder Brian Sapient, the YouTube blasphemy challenge was a brilliant marketing device aimed and advertised directly at youth.

That is, it focused attention on the new militant atheism among a younger market segment that is most unlikely to buy and read books by Richard Dawkins , who provided the campaign with some help, or by Daniel Dennett or Sam Harris either.

As Jerry Adler's Newsweek article admits, most theologians do not interpret blasphemy against the Holy Spirit as simply making a statement of that type, so most of the kids are probably doing it for a lark, but their atheist elders are deadly serious. Atheists don't tend to have many children, so they must recruit.

Indeed, blogger Frank asks,

You want us to leave you alone. Fine. But why must you insult our spiritual background doing it? Couldn't you guys have made a video that said, "I'm a proud and open atheist" without bringing in the Holy Spirit or our Bible into it? You guys specifically chose Christianity. Why couldn't *YOU* guys leave *US* alone?

Well now, that is an interesting question. Part of the answer, as we shall see, is sheer spite at the unexpected robustness of spirituality. But a look at the social landscape might suggest other answers as well.

Next: Part 5: Why the acclaim for atheist authors?

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Richard Dawkins was recently named Person of the Year by BBC Belfast. That is only one of many examples of the acclaim that authors who used to market science but now market atheism have received throughout the media.

Typically, they are regarded as making bold, new, and highly controversial statements. Bold, yes, but, as a matter of fact, there is little that is new or highly controversial in any of it. It was all said much better back in the18th century. Only the dust covers have been updated.

One thing I have learned from a lifetime in media is that most media people are unidirectional skeptics - they are very skeptical of non-materialism but not the least bit skeptical of materialism.

Two things follow: Journalists in the legacy mainstream media are regularly astonished by phenomena that better informed people might have predicted - for example the prevalence of religious belief in a high tech age. Journalists are among the least likely people to be devoutly religious or to know many people who are, and they naturally assume that everyone is like them.

Second, you can make them believe just about anything about religion - as long as it is materialist - as the curious saga of the God Helmet* demonstrated. Indeed, any thesis about human behaviour, no matter how ridiculous, will be treated with respect if it is called "evolutionary psychology." In that respect, evolutionary psychology seems to have inherited its dunce cap from Freudianism. What the two have in common is, of course, materialism.

Not only that, but religion is in fact the only large subject in which ignorance is actually sort of "cool." People who would be embarrassed to know nothing of sports may not be the least bit personally embarrassed by referring to Carmelite nuns at John Paul II's funeral as "karma light" nuns. Well, yes, they will admit it is a mistake. But it's not necessarily embarrassing to know so little about the world's great faiths as to regularly make such errors.

Biola historian Richard Flory offers the interesting thesis that many journalists see their role as actually replacing traditional religion as a source of beliefs and values:

Richard Flory nicely documents the ways in which journalistic "professionalization" went hand in hand with secularization. According to the doctrine of the professionalizers, journalism was uniquely essential to civilization; the evolution from primitive to professional journalism was inevitable; journalism was the "educator" of the masses; religion was reduced to morality and ethics, and all religions were to be treated equally; professional journalism was the functional equivalent of and successor to religion. As Flory shows, journalists were very explicitly instructed in these doctrines, and he illustrates the effectiveness of the instruction in the treatment of religion in the New York Times over the past century."
- Richard Neuhaus, FT March 2005: The Public Square

It's worth keeping in mind that for fifty years, media have worked with the assumption that traditional religions would die out. A number of false guesses were made. Here are two of them:

1. The troubles of dying liberal Protestant denominations were regularly mistaken for a decline in interest in religion; few noticed the new storefront churches that had begun to dot the urban landscape or the megachurches of the suburbs.

2. Media stereotypes were never updated and became increasingly at odds with reality - leading to many further bad calls. If we look at the worldwide Anglican communion today, for example, the average Anglican (Episcopalian) is NOT an upper crust British gent but a thirty-year-old black African woman. And her bishop is probably a graduate of a world class university who regularly sends missionaries from Africa to darkest Europe ... And he regards the American Episcopal Church as apostate (seriously heretical).

People who don't know that sort of thing should not be writing about religion, but often are.

The fact that materialism, not religion, is in decline has provoked in an institutional tantrum that vents itself in the great deal of attention paid to the spate of anti-God and anti-Christian books - despite the fact that they say nothing new and are generally off the mark. Let's take a look at a few of the better known authors and their books.

(*That's in Chapter 4 of the forthcoming book The Spiritual Brain by neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and myself).

Next: Part 6: Profiles in militant atheists - Daniel Dennett and Breaking the Spell

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

While most people who have paid any attention to the current spate of anti-God books have heard of Richard Dawkins, they may have overlooked the much greater academic influence of Tufts philosopher of mind, Darwinist guru, and Darwin look-alike Daniel Dennett.

In his recent book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon , he candidly announces,

"I appreciate that many readers will be profoundly distrustful of the tack I am taking here. They will see me as just another liberal professor trying to cajole them out of some of their convictions, and they are dead right about that--that's what I am, and that's exactly what I'm trying to do."

and proclaims

"It is time for the reasonable adherents of all faiths to find the courage and stamina to reverse the tradition that honors helpless love of God--in any tradition. Far from being honorable, it is not even excusable. It is shameful. And most shameful are the priests, rabbis, imams, and other experts whose response to the sincere requests from their flock for moral guidance is to conceal their own inability to give reasons for their views about tough issues by hiding behind some 'inerrant' (read 'above criticism') interpretation of the sacred texts. It is one thing for a well-meaning layperson with a deep allegiance to a religious tradition to delegate authority to his or her religious leaders, but it is quite another for those leaders to pretend to discover (thanks to their expertise) the right answers in their tradition by a process that has to be taken on faith and is inaccessible to even the most well-meant criticism."

In Dennett's Breaking the Spell, as in the entire recent spate of atheist books, there isn't a single new idea of any significance, as noted earlier. The two main things that the current crop of atheist books have going for them is the unperturbable certainty of their authors that they are conferring a great public benefit - a certainty that they uncritically project onto others - and the assurance of a good deal of flattering attention from the legacy media.

The flattering attention will usually not include references to the highly illiberal elements of the anti-God extremists' message - elements that typically come to the fore whenever Darwinism is questioned, on whatever ground. For example, as philosopher Alvin Plantinga notes, regarding an earlier Dennett work, Darwin's Dangerous Idea ,

Dennett doesn't confine himself to matters just of theoretical interest. He sees serious religion as steadily dwindling with the progress of science, but suggests that we should keep a few Baptists and other fundamentalists around in something like cultural zoos (no doubt with sizable moats to protect the rest of us right-thinking nonfundamentalists). We should preserve a few Baptists for the sake of posterity--but not, he says, at just any cost. "Save the Baptists", says he, "but not by all means [Dennett's emphasis]. Not if it means tolerating the deliberate misinforming of children about the natural world." Save the Baptists, all right, but only if they promise not to misinform their children by teaching them "that 'Man' is not a product of evolution by natural selection" and other blatantly objectionably views.

Essentially, he doesn't mind children knowing about religions other than Darwinism; the problem comes when they take any other religion seriously and act on it.

Recently, Dennett had major heart surgery and announced his belief in a sort of "goodness" (in "Thank goodness" ), about which Gonzaga law prof David DeWolf notes,

What is interesting in "Thank Goodness" is that Dennett does not reject the search for meaning, but instead proposes an obviously ersatz religion, which displaces traditional theology. Dennett doesn't say, "Look, I'm a scientist. I'd like to believe in tooth fairies and Santa Claus, and a benevolent God. But my scientific integrity demands that I recognize that we are nothing but selfish creatures, endowed with a fierce desire for survival, and a number of socially constructed illusions that make us more successful as a species. Like everyone else, I'll indulge my infantile wishes when I choose to. But if you want to know what the answer is to the question of whether there is meaning in the world, I'd have to say there is none." Instead, Dennett proposes the ersatz religion of "Goodness," which is a silly form of rationalism and panglossian progressivism that wouldn't stand up for one moment of the kind of skepticism that he directs toward traditional theology.

But the really interesting thing about Dennett is that he is a philosopher of mind. Well, so far, most of the key problems that materialists would need to solve about mind in order to demonstrate the legitimacy of their position are unsolved, and they have no idea where to look in order to solve them. That sheds an interesting light on the certainty with which they attack all traditional perspectives on life, mind, and humanity. Whatever else their certainty is, it is not the certainty of people who actually know something better or truer.

But perhaps the anti-God crowd feels no need to know something better or truer if they can convince themselves and others that anyone who disagrees with them is merely deluded. Which brings us to Richard Dawkins.

Next: Part 7: Profiles in militant atheists - Richard Dawkins and the God Delusion

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).