by Stephen Rodgers
Where’s Garrett?
So in case you’re wondering what happened to Garrett, he needed a couple of weeks to take care of some personal business up north. And while normally I am a very “planned plans” kind of guy (as my fiancée says), when you’ve contributed an article a week for almost a year as Garrett has done, you’ve earned the right to call your editor, tell him to cover for you, and take some time off. So instead of Garrett you get me. I’m sorry.
You’re going to be sorry too when you see how long this article is. And since 1) Garrett gave me rather short notice, and 2) I’m the editor…I think we can safely assume that it sailed through editing without sufficient review. Such is life. But in the spirit of the Lord, I did not come to bring peace, but an essay of interminable length. Plus, I’ve exercised, I’m caffeinated, it’s been a good week in the Word, and I’ve been reading a lot of Frank Turk, so I’ve “got my mad on” as the kids say these days. Or whatever they say these days.
And as anyone knows, when I get worked up about something, working it out can take a while. So use the restroom if you need to. And pack a lunch. This could take a little while.
The New Atheism
Today I want to bring your attention to the so-called “New Atheism” that we’ve all heard of. Numerous books have been written by this group, in support of this group, in opposition to this group, and about this group. The whole movement has become something of a cultural lightning rod in certain circles, which is why I think that it will pretty much burn out in five to ten years. As a whole, Western thought in the 21st century seems to have been afflicted with a rather serious case of ADHD, and the shirt that begins a rational thought and concludes with “…oh look, a chicken!” seems rather prophetic. It’s been a fun diversion, but we’re starting to lose interest and it’s time to move on to the next all-the-rage-ideology in our marketplace of ideas.
That’s not what I wanted to talk about however. And all my predictions notwithstanding, I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. If we’re invoking genealogies however, my father does work for a non-profit organization.
Ok bad joke. Somewhere my fiancée is having a giggling fit. But that can be attributed to her sheer reckless joy in the wonder of wordplay that is possible in English, and how love of language covers a multitude of my sins against humor. You may say that in this arena, I sin so that grace may abound, and perhaps I do…but again, blame Garrett, not me.
However, for those who missed it the first time around, let me give you a rather brief recap of the New Atheism, it’s notable representatives, and it’s latest contribution to the discussion among worldviews.
The Four Horsemen
The so-called “New Atheism” movement is really nothing that new, per se. A few years ago, there was a flurry of books published pro-atheism/contra-Christianity, and from this body of literature four voices emerged as the primary spokesmen. Those voices were Richard Dawkins (a biologist), Daniel Dennett (a philosopher), Christopher Hitchens (a writer), and Sam Harris (at the time, a graduate student in neuroscience who has since completed his studies). And ever since they got together for a roundtable discussion of sorts in 2007, they’ve referred to themselves (and been referred to by the media) as the “Four Horsemen of Atheism.” As an amateur apologist of the Van Tillian variety, I can’t help but facepalm in noting that even their very name is “borrowed” from the Christian scriptures (Revelation 6:1-8). Truly, as the Preacher said, there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9-11).
I’m not particularly fond of the Four Horsemen label. For one, I don’t like loaning out Christian books to people who return them with the pages smudged and the corners dog-eared, not to mention the nasty notes written in the margins. Also, with the relatively recent revelation that Christopher Hitchens is in the final stages of cancer, drawing parallels between him and Pestilence seemed rather tasteless. It is the sort of shocking reference that I would actually expect Mister Hitchens to embrace rather than shrink from, but mine would be a most uncomfortable laughter.
To my mind, the “Four Horsemen” were more reminiscent of the modern boy band than the Biblical Apocalypse. Richard Dawkins is the front man; he is the catalyst, the rallying point, and the central pillar of the group. Daniel Dennett is the deep one, the writer, the (for lack of a better word), the soulful one (and he sports an epic beard to prove it, of which I am duly jealous). Christopher Hitchens is the bad boy; in a different world I can envision him sporting sleeveless undershirts in combination with a beanie, muscled arms covered in cryptic tattoos, and adorning the posters on teenage girls’ walls. And Sam Harris…well…not to be too insulting or dismissive but Sam Harris is that other guy. Every band has one, and those of you who play in one know exactly what I mean.
But more on Mister Harris later.
The Integrity of Doubt in General
The literature of the New Atheism is often said to be bracing in its assertions. The authors do not shy away from making their claims, rather they proclaim them boldly, assert them aggressively, and even take a rather perverse joy in blasphemously sticking their finger in the eye of religion in general and Christianity in particular. And once the initial shock wears off, there is something almost endearing about this; after all, at least they are honest about it right? These are not knives in the dark; this is a gunfight at high noon.
But when one reads further, something is not quite right about their assertions. They muster seemingly-impressive arguments to justify their disbelief. Their objections seem almost righteous in their fury, and their claims that they are simply following the evidence wherever it might lead seem almost noble…but one can’t help but feel a bit uneasy. To paraphrase the Bard, something is fishy in Denmark, and while it isn’t immediately apparent, it’s there…just beneath the surface.
It took me a while to put my finger on it, but I think I’ve finally sorted it out. While it’s easy to get carried away by their claims, there is an undercurrent of disingenuity to the whole affair. And in that understanding I was finally able to understand while after nearly five years of dealing with the fallout that this movement has produced, I can honestly say that while I have been exhausted, I have not been enriched. In other words, there is a good reason that the whole affair has made me tired, but not smarter.
You see, the whole movement, when the veneer of glamour, rage, and panache is stripped away, is empty inside. It’s a parody of the Trojan Horse: hollow yes, but the soldiers overslept and the arborous equine was delivered without its martial payload.
The Integrity of Doubt in Dawkins
Take Richard Dawkins for example. He quotes early and often the atheist argument (technically categorized under “multiple-attribute disproof”) that if God did exist, He could not possibly be both omniscient and omnipotent. After all, a God who knows the future in absolute terms is actually powerless to change it, is He not? For if He knows something about the future, and He knows it in the past, then when He eventually arrives at the time of the event in question, He’s stuck. If He knows the event, He can’t change it (and is thus not omnipotent). If He changes the event, then He didn’t really know it (and is thus not omniscient). And so Mister Dawkins crosses his arms, leans back in his chair and feels that in 30 seconds he has dismissed the question of the existence of God.
Now don’t get me wrong; this might be a great argument to use against me if I ever were to claim that I were God, with all the divine properties and human limitations therein. But who EVER suggested that the Christian God is like me? Who said that He knows things as I do, subject to the vicissitudes of space and time? The God of Christian theism is not subject to the universe He created, caught up in His own creation and along for the ride whether He likes it or not. Rather He stands over and outside it; this is precisely what we mean when we describe God as transcendent, when we speak of the Creator/creature distinction, and is even hinted at when we invoke His attribute of Holiness.
And this is no cheap equivocation on the part of the Christian; we aren’t making this up as we go along. In several of my conversations with modern atheists they have been unable to grasp the irony of mocking my “bronze age holy book” with one breath, and then faceplanting into the most basic descriptions of deity it espouses with the next. “That argument,” they will sputter, “was advanced by Plantinga, and has yet to be proven!” No friends. That argument was advanced by Isaiah (and I detect echoes of Moses in there as well) and has yet to be refuted. I realize that being fashionably belligerent is all the rage these days (another pun; the audience groans and my fiancée laughs), but please, a modicum of respect for history. We have gone over this ground before: the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 46:8-10), the apostle Paul (Acts 17:24-28; Romans 11:36; Colossians 1:16), the church father Augustine (in his declaration the prior to God creating it, time was not)…and these men have been on record for thousands of years. There comes a point in debate when your opponent refuses to abandon a pointless line of argument, and we all channel our inner James White and finally resort to praying for patience as we repeat our mantra of “asked and answered” through gritted teeth.
And so, as a Christian theist I am forced to admit that perhaps Mister Dawkins has done some damage to the God of deism. If these arguments were assembled, put in good order, and aimed well then we might conclude that they strike the god of Spinoza. But the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob watches the missiles sail harmlessly by, and were He not omniscient, would no doubt be wondering what the heck the archer thought he was aiming at.
The Integrity of Doubt in Hitchens
This is getting long, so I must move along, and so I skip past Dennett for reasons of space rather than fear to arrive at Hitchens. Now to be fair to Mister Hitchens, he is rather fun to listen to. Of all the exemplars of the New Atheism he is the cleverest, the most humorous, and far-and-away the most entertaining. But nestled among his bon mots and his scorching sentences is a rather alarming vapidity of scholarship. His book God Is Not Great betrays a rather obvious dearth of philosophical argumentation, historical accuracy, and logical reasoning.
David B. Hart goes into far greater detail on the matter, and is more fun to read as well, so I would simply recommend to you his essay on the subject. (And in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, was a source of inspiration for this essay as well). But at the end of the day, to my mind at least, Hitchens’ objections to Christianity fail to even find Christianity in the first place, and then fail to even rise to the level of argumentation in any event. So we have arguments that aren’t against a target that isn’t…which is politely known as “nonsensical” to those in academia. Others may employ harsher language, but this is, after all, a church newsletter.
The Integrity of Doubt in Harris and Fast Company
Now you’ve been quite patient to come this far with me. I would beg your indulgence to go a little further, with the encouraging comment that, (as Henry VIII perhaps said to one of his wives), “I shan’t keep you long.”
You see, this brings us to Sam Harris and his most recent foray into the fray, armed with nothing less than an infographic. For those of you who haven’t been blessed or cursed so as to have relatives who forward a veritable bounty of these to you daily (in my family the less scholarly inclined seem fond of GraphJam, whereas the more educated have a preference for FlowingData), and infographic is simply a visual representation of some data set. If that’s still confusing, think of it simply as a “graph on steroids” and that should be a sufficient basis for moving on.
You see, all that to say that late last week Mister Harris emerged onto the scene with a graphic showing the alleged contradictions within the Bible. One writer has even crowed her triumph by crowning her endorsement of the graphic with the proclamation “So to anyone who thinks the Bible’s the last word on anything, remember this: It isn’t even the last word on itself.”
Alright…got it. Flag on the play. A claim against Biblical inerrancy has been lodged, and the ball, as they say, is in our court. But is this really a case of novel argumentation, or once again do we find ourselves well-lit and in the presence of something rather old?
Integrity MIA: Info-
First there is the question of where these objections came from. Apparently they came from someone named Steve Wells…and apparently Mister Wells has been able to put his copy/paste skills to good use in appropriating (that is the correct term, we do not say “stealing” when it comes to works of literature and art!), the very same questions raised by the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible (see here and here). For those unfamiliar with the work, it is pretty much exactly what you would expect given its name: a series of objections and questions to the Bible, often relying on an overly-literal hermeneutic of some kind, in annotated form. And just to muddy the waters further, it typically uses the KJV, but that’s another issue for another day.
Now please understand, my point here is not to fault Mister Wells in using a readily available set of data. And to be fair, it doesn’t seem to be an exact match since the graphic in question cites 439 alleged contradictions and the latest version of the SAB cites 457. My point is simply to show these are not new objections; they have been asked before, they have been answered before, and this whole exercise is one in retracing our steps rather than boldly going where no man has gone before. And more to the point, the SAB at least has the intellectual honesty to link to a fair number of Christian explanations and refutations regarding these alleged contradictions. (And I do emphasize “alleged” since a large number of them can be resolved simply by restoring one or both verses to their context, and then reading them there). In fact, the SAB is sometimes used in seminaries to underscore the importance of hermeneutics; it’s not considered a strong argument raised against inerrancy (at least, properly understood).
Alright, so at the very least this presentation is predicated on specious argumentation and a lack of intellectual charity. After all, as the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen observed, when your opponent presents an argument that can be understood in either a weak or strong sense, it is incumbent on any scholar wishing to preserve their integrity to deal with the strongest possible form of the argument. Otherwise at best you are a coward, and at worst you’ve committed the logical fallacy of arguing against a straw man.
But does it end there?
Integrity MIA: -graphic
You see, as I observed earlier in my essay (we’re being charitable remember, so let’s call it an essay), that I am both a Van Tillian in my apologetic orientation, and an artist/statistician by training who is often besieged by emails from well-meaning family members containing just such infographics. And while those might seem unrelated, they converge precisely at the point of Mister Harris’ allegedly-novel presentation (alternatively described as “stunning” and “provocative”) of alleged Bible contradictions. And since my theological betters have already addressed the issue of the contradictions well enough (see contributions from Justin Holcomb, Douglas Wilson, and Matt Perman…which interestingly enough pretty much covers a decent range of my theological library as well…if Phil Johnson wades into the mix I’ve got a complete set). There may be others; that’s merely what I found in the first 24 hours. That leaves very little for me to deal with, except the “graphic” part of the infographic. But I have a BA in Visual Arts…sort of…and so with sketchbook in hand and beret perched at a rakish angle, into the fray I go.
Now, the design of the graphic itself is attributed to Andy Marlow. But it seems rather familiar to me…probably since I wrote about one suspiciously similar back in January. This has been done before. It has been done better, and ironically enough, it has been done by Christians. And so, interestingly enough, we have a very real example of atheism propping itself up on borrowed capital. However, lest I mistake charity for lying, it is worth noting in passing that when the capital is borrowed without the original artist’s knowledge, we call that “stealing,” and when the capital is abstract and epistemic or artistic in nature we call that “plagiarism.”
Oh. Oh dear.
Now to be fair, do I have any real evidence that Mister Marlow simply stole Mister Harrison’s work, made a few minor changes, and is now passing it off as his own? Well, again in good presuppositional fashion, that is going to depend entirely on what sort of propositions you accept as “evidence” in the first place. If you are asking if I have video evidence of Mister Marlow talking aloud to himself about how the inspiration of his work came from elsewhere…then no. If you are wondering if perhaps certain emails have come into my possession wherein he admits to having prior knowledge of the original piece, and elects to use an almost-identical style without attribution…then no. However, I do have two perfectly good eyes, and when point out that this is Mister Harrison’s work from at least ten months ago, and this is Mister Marlow’s work from last week…well, decide for yourself. To my trained eye, the appropriation seems completely obvious.
Integrity and Lack Thereof
Part of the oft-referenced title of this piece is “the integrity of doubt.” I originally latched onto that idea in confronting the claims of the New Atheists that their doubt and disbelief stemmed honestly from their examination of the evidence available to them. Some of you might realize that as a Van Tillian I already reject that notion on Biblical grounds, while conceding the possibility that perhaps, in their self-deception, they believe it to be true. As I showed several times, this “doubt” is not really doubt at all; what they disbelieve is not what the Christian believes. They have not refuted Christian theism so much as they have simply failed to understand it.
In his letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul writes “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Corinthians 1:20) Simply put, it is an open challenge: if you want to go head to head with God, then show up and do so. Step into the ring. And like Job, (I’m paraphrasing here), you will find that in the end, your arms are simply too short to box with God.
The New Atheists act like prizefighters. They strut around, chests puffed out, flexing impressively. Oh sure, they talk a good game. Initially they sound dangerous. On paper, their record seems good. And we start to wonder if when they finally get into the ring, if perhaps God might be in a bit of trouble after all.
But they never get in the ring. They run around the ring. They shout insults into the ring. Occasionally they may even climb into some other ring and administer a beatdown to some lesser conception of deity. But they never actually fight the Christian God; He is evaded, He is made fun of, but He is never actually engaged.
But this comes to a head of sorts in this latest offering from Harris. All manner of problems are both inherited and invented here. You see, it is one thing to exhibit shoddy scholarship in selecting your data set. And into that general realm of intellectual feebleness I would include things like broadly construing words like “contradiction,” and ignoring elements of the case that undermine your argument like context, metaphor, and genre. But it is something else entirely to blatantly rip off another’s work without even passing attribution. As someone instilled with a particular form of academic ethos, I am outraged; in respectable scholarly company, this is simply not done. And as an artist, I can’t help but notice that it is also utterly unnecessary. After all, atheism in general and the New Atheists in particular have a history of using traditionally Christian forms of argument in a satirical and subversive way. I may not always enjoy or appreciate their doing so, but when done so honestly, it is a valid form of expression. However, this is not satire; this is lying.
And all this brought to us by the so-called “Horseman” whose most notable academic work is in the area of morality and ethics. I trust the irony is not lost on you.
Update: The Fast Company page now contains a line stating “Inspiration: Chris Harrison.” It’s about the bare minimum that could be done in terms of attribution, but at the very least, they have now done that.
Editor’s Note: An updated version of this article was featured in the journal “In Antithesis.” More information can be found here.
