Richard Dawkins Archives - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

October 18, 2024October 17, 2024

Modern Atheism Has Lost Its Momentum

Evolution News & Science Today published an article by Denyse O’Leary titled “How the New Atheism Fizzled.” The point is that modern atheism has lost its momentum.

A book titled The Four Horsemen (Random House Penguin 2007) presented the arguments against faith by Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins. Hitchens and Dennett are deceased, and no one has taken their place. Antony Flew and Ayaan Hirsi Ali were atheists who could pick up the slack. Ali was a Muslim turned atheist, but she became a disciple of Christ, and Flew wrote a book titled There is a God (HarperOne 2008).

Modern atheism has lost its momentum as more evidence for design has become available. The challenges include the fine-tuning of the universe and simple things like the fact that the existence of beauty is not part of survival. We now see books and articles about why there is something instead of nothing.

To add to the challenges to modern atheism, evidence shows the growth of suicide among atheists. Atheist Staks Rosch, writing in the Huffington Post (December 8, 2017), noted that depression leading to suicide is a significant problem in the atheist community. The fact that atheism offers no purpose for existence while faith does is a factor in how modern atheism has lost its momentum.

One of the leading proponents of modern atheism has been the work of the late brilliant scientist Stephen Hawking. However, believers with the academic credentials to address Hawking’s complaints against faith have responded. For example, Dr. John C. Lennox of the University of Oxford directly addressed Hawking in 2011 in the book God and Stephen Hawking – Whose Design Is It Anyway? Atheists have been unable to respond to Lennox’s material. Books by other scholars have addressed the claims of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett.

Even though modern atheism has lost its momentum, there have always been and will always be those who reject the existence of God. The bottom line is you don’t have to put your brain in “park” to be a believer. Jesus challenged the people of His day to look at the evidence. Those of us who believe in God and the Bible should follow His example.

— John N. Clayton © 2024
Reference: “How the New Atheism Fizzled” by Denyse O’Leary in the September 30, 2024, issue of Evolution News & Science Today

May 6, 2024May 6, 2024

Is Consciousness an Illusion?

Is consciousness an illusion, or is it real? Philosopher Rene Descartes insisted that consciousness was the only undeniable fact of our existence. He is known for the phrase, “I think, therefore, I am” (cogito, ergo sum). Daniel Dennett was an analytic philosopher who, until his death on April 19, 2024, spent his career suggesting that consciousness is an illusion. He also insisted that God is an illusion, and, in agreement with Richard Dawkins, design in nature is an illusion.

Daniel Dennett was also closely associated with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens as the “Four Horsemen of the New Atheism.” They all wrote best-selling books challenging the existence of God. Dennett was a vocal atheist, a Committee for Skeptical Inquiry member, and served on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America. He was also awarded the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s board of distinguished achievers.

Dennett believed that evolution by natural selection and adaptation accounts for every aspect of life, including morality. In his book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, he attempted to give a naturalistic explanation for religious belief. Is consciousness an illusion? According to Dennett, the answer is “yes.” If you have trouble accepting that concept, Dennett’s 1991 book Consciousness Explained attempted to explain it. His 2017 book From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds expands on Dennett’s concept of “competence without comprehension.”

According to Dennett, the Darwinian theory accounts for all aspects of our existence. No intelligent designer is needed because evolution explains everything. The “Four Horsemen of the New Atheism” alludes to the four horsemen of the apocalypse described in Revelation chapter 6. Those horsemen represent conquest, warfare, famine, and death, bringing judgment on the people of Earth. The four horsemen of atheism are now down to two since the death of Hitchens and now Dennett, but I am sure others will take their place.

What we need today are champions for God who will take the message of God’s love and redemption and peace and hope in Jesus Christ. If consciousness is an illusion, everything is meaningless, but if consciousness is reality, everything changes. Our lives have meaning, purpose, and value because God created and loves us.

July 31, 2023July 30, 2023

The Thinking of Hitler and Dawkins

We sometimes get nasty letters and even threats when we point out the logical consequences of atheism and naturalism. A 1953 translation of Adolph Hitler’s “Table Talk” document clearly shows the thinking of Hitler and his justification for killing millions of Jews. It sounds very much like the modern writings of celebrated atheist Richard Dawkins. Hitler’s statement is:

“Today, war is nothing but a struggle for the riches of nature. By virtue of an inherent law, these riches belong to him who conquers them… That’s in accordance with the laws of nature. By means of the struggle, the elites are continually renewed. The law of (natural) selection justifies this incessant struggle by allowing the survival of the fittest. Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.”

We can further see the thinking of Hitler in a film that was shown in all German movie theaters at the time. The narration of the film says:

“Wherever fate outs us, whatever station we must occupy, only the strong will prevail in the end. Everything in the natural world that is weak for life will ineluctably be destroyed. In the last few decades, mankind has sinned terribly against the law of natural selection. We haven’t just maintained life unworthy of life, we have even allowed it to multiply! The descendants of these sick people look like this.”

Shortly after this film was released, German mental institutions began gassing to death thousands of innocent patients. In America today, we have “experts” like Peter Singer at Princeton University suggesting that we should euthanize those who are mentally ill or in prison. Richard Dawkins has written, “This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous – indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.” These leaders are repeating the thinking of Hitler.

The Christian belief is that the body is the dwelling place of God’s Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16), and all humans are of infinite value (Galatians 3:26-29) because we are created in God’s image (James 3:9). Leaders in our culture today challenge that idea. If we don’t learn from past human mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. Looking at the world today, it seems we are well on our way to repeating what happened in Germany.

Quotes from Reflections on the Existence of God by Richard Simmons pp 24-25.

July 20, 2022July 12, 2022

Tracing the Process of Creation

As we said in our previous post, scientists have been tracing the process of creation back to almost the beginning. However, they hit a roadblock called Planck density (named for German physicist Max Planck) just before they reach the starting point. So, thus far, science finds it impossible to go back to the precise moment when the universe began.

Since tracing the process of creation back to BEFORE the cosmic creation event will probably never be possible, scientists can only study secondary causation. They can see the processes that lead to the universe we live in, but they can’t study the primary causation. Could God be the primary cause operating behind the secondary causation we can see? Science cannot say. The best science can do is to suspend judgment. Personal beliefs are not science.

Science today has set limitations on itself, confining its study to the physical realm. To go beyond that would be considered metaphysics or theology. However, some scientists don’t hesitate to make theological statements. An example is the late Carl Sagan opening the old Cosmos series on PBS television with the statement, “The cosmos is all there is or was or ever will be.” That is not a scientific statement. It is a materialistic, atheistic theological statement beyond what science can measure and examine.

Biologist Richard Dawkins is also not afraid to venture beyond science into theology when he states in River Out of Eden, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Scientists such as Sagan and Dawkins contribute to the war between science and theology, and specifically science and the Bible. All the while, they fail to acknowledge that they are making faith statements.

If you have followed these discussions for the past week, I hope they help you understand why we say science and faith are friends, not enemies. We will have some final thoughts on that tomorrow.

April 7, 2022April 4, 2022

Designed with Purpose and Beauty

Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species in 1859, and Ernst Haeckel published drawings of embryos in his book The Natural History of Creation in 1868. Haeckel intended his somewhat inaccurate drawings to support Darwin’s theory by showing that embryo development reflects evolutionary development. As we said in yesterday’s post, those who reject the idea of a creator God try to explain what appears to be designed with purpose and beauty by saying it has no purpose and no designer. Beauty in living things can be a problem, or it can be a blessing, depending on whether you accept or reject the Designer of life.

Physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg is an atheist who rejects belief in God because of the problem of pain, which we can summarize as: “Why would an all-powerful and loving God allow pain and suffering?” Weinberg explains his view in his book Dreams of a Final Theory. However, he can’t explain the problem of why living things appear to be designed with purpose and beauty. He made the understatement of the century when he wrote, “I have to admit that sometimes nature seems more beautiful than strictly necessary.”

Evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins, writing in his book Climbing Mount Improbable, told about a time when he was driving through the countryside with his six-year-old daughter. The girl was excited about seeing “pretty” wildflowers. Dawkins asked his daughter what she thought was the purpose of wildflowers. She replied, “To make the world pretty, and to help the bees make honey for us.” Dawkins said he was sorry that he “had to tell her that it wasn’t true.” According to Dawkins, biology is the study of things that appear to be designed for a purpose, but his atheism forces him to argue that there is no purpose.

The living world around us shows many examples of the problem of beauty. Various species sing songs and perform dances that go beyond what survival would require. Gibbons sing duets, and birds of paradise display their beauty with song and dance. Bower birds go to excess extremes to create works of art. The peacock’s beautiful tail is extravagant from a survival perspective. These animal attributes seem inefficient and not a method to adapt to the environment. They certainly go beyond survival of the fittest to what David Rothenberg, a philosopher at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, calls “survival of the beautiful.”

Is it possible that the excessive beauty of living things is merely an accident, or is life designed with purpose and beauty? What is beauty, and why do we care? We will conclude this discussion tomorrow.

November 11, 2021November 9, 2021

Is Satan Real?

Is Satan real? When you hear the name “Satan,” what do you visualize? Some people think of a man in a red bodysuit, with horns, and holding a pitchfork. Many years ago, the movie “Damn Yankees” presented Satan as a human who wore a three-piece suit and made deals with humans. Charlie Daniels had a hit song titled “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” in which he told of a fiddle contest between “Johnny” and the “Devil.” Great music, but very little theological credibility. The comic strip “Far Side” frequently had a picture of Satan and people in hell, making it a childish belief to ridicule.

The biblical concept is very different and very real. The Hebrew word “satan” comes from a word meaning adversary or accuser. First Chronicles 21:1 says, “Satan rose up against Israel and excited David to take a census of Israel.” This is clearly not a physical person but a spiritual being with a purpose to incite David to oppose God’s will. In Job 1 and 2, Satan afflicts Job not as a physical person but by causing natural forces to bring pain and misery.

In the New Testament, two Greek words in Greek become relevant. “Diabolos” is translated as the devil. “Beelzebub” means “Lord of the flies” and is based on the name of a pagan Philistine deity. The Jews of Jesus’ day used it to refer to the chief among evil spirits. They accused Jesus of doing miracles by Beelzebub (See Matthew 12:24, 27). Ephesians 2:2 and 43 other passages, Satan is used to describe the sinful ways of the world. Is Satan real? The answer is YES, and here are five biblical concepts of Satan that we need to understand:

# 1. There is a war going on between good and evil. Atheists such as Ricard Dawkins deny that good and evil exist, but most of us have seen it first hand. Ephesians 3:10 and 6:12 tell us that God’s purpose for the Church is to join the spiritual conflict between good and evil.

#2. Angels are not a useful tool for this war. In 2 Peter 2:4, we find that some of them sinned, but they cannot repent since repentance needs time, and they don’t experience time.

#3. Satan’s attacks are primarily spiritual, not physical. Matthew 16:23 tells us that Satan entered Peter, and Luke 22:3 says the same about Judas. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 11:14-15 Satan masquerades as an “angel of light,” and his servants masquerade as “servants of righteousness.”

#4. Satans methods involve lying and sowing bad seeds. (See Matthew 13:24-30.) He also imitates and twists God’s blessings – sex twisted to porn, faith twisted to politics, drink twisted to intoxication, etc. James 4:7 tells us resisting Satan makes him flee, and God promises in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that there will always be a way of escape for Christians.

#5. Is Satan real? Logic and common sense make it foolish to deny Satan. Good and evil do exist. There is a spiritual force in evil. However, God is also real. First Peter 5:6-9 tells us that we have a purpose for our existence. Atheistic denial of evil leaves no purpose for human existence. Revelation 21:3-5 describes the ultimate result of following Christ. For those who oppose God, there is no future beyond the present.

April 19, 2021April 17, 2021

Design of the Laryngeal Nerve in Giraffes

Atheists try to refute any notion of design in the natural world. They look for examples of what they call “bad design.” In a National Geographic documentary titled Inside Nature’s Giants, Richard Dawkins criticized the design of the recurrent laryngeal nerve in giraffes. He said, “No engineer would ever make a mistake like that.” The distance from the brain to the larynx is about two inches, but instead of going directly to the larynx, the nerve runs from the brain all the way down the giraffe’s neck and into its chest. There it makes a U-turn and runs back up the neck to connect to the larynx. In a mature giraffe, that distance can be more than 16 feet (4.9 m).

Dawkins calls it “a ridiculous detour.” Atheists refer to Jerry Coyne’s book Why Evolution is True, in which he calls this “one of nature’s worst designs.” The question is whether there is any reason for this design of the laryngeal nerve.

The laryngeal nerves activate muscles that make sounds and also aid the animal in breathing and swallowing. What atheists fail to mention is that two nerves connect the brain to the larynx. The primary nerve, called the superior laryngeal nerve, makes a direct connection from the brain to the larynx. The recurrent laryngeal nerve, which goes to the chest before returning to the larynx, also connects to the heart and has branches to the mucous membrane and muscular coat of the esophagus.

The design of the laryngeal nerve is not a ridiculous detour but an example of incredible technique, making efficient use of the nerves to allow the animal to have its long neck so it can reach food that other animals can’t. Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig of Germany’s Planck Institute says that the system’s design demands that “the recurrent laryngeal nerve needs to be, indeed, very long.”

The lack of integrity in the best-known atheists of our day is as distressing as the hypocrisy of some TV preachers. Dawkins’ videos are popular on YouTube, even though it is hard to believe an expert in biology would not be aware of the complexity of the giraffe’s nervous and vascular system. When assuming there must be bad design, a scientist must resort to explanations that don’t match the facts. The design of the laryngeal nerve shows the wisdom that God has demonstrated in every corner of creation.

Reference: Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center

HERE IS A LINK to the video where Dawkins makes his argument for evolution.

HERE IS A LINK refuting what Dawkins said.

March 22, 2021March 22, 2021

What Design Looks Like

In his book The Blind Watchmaker biologist and militant atheist Richard Dawkins wrote, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” He then argues that we must ignore appearance and realize that those complicated things were not designed. Can we recognize what design looks like?

Francis Crick, also an atheist, was one of the scientists who solved the mystery of the DNA molecule’s structural design. In his book What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery, he wrote that “biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”

Even Charles Darwin admitted in a paragraph near the end of his book On the Origin of Species that many scientists rejected his theory, and he concluded that it was because they had closed minds. It seems that scientists in Darwin’s day and most people in our day see design in living things, and design calls for a Designer.

It is counter-intuitive to think that the rich tapestry of life is merely a chance accident with no design and no Designer. In our everyday experience, we know what design looks like. We never see anything complex and functional come into being without intelligent operatives designing it. That is true of buildings, automobiles, computers, books, and websites. Those and many other things around us show design, and they don’t happen without a designer. To believe that dead molecules came together on their own, came to life, and began to reproduce and breathe and think and write books and ask questions requires a great “leap of faith.”

Atheist Thomas Nagel, a professor of philosophy at New York University, wrote a book titled Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. In that book, he wrote, “It is prima facie implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.” On the other hand, in his book “The Last Word,” Nagel wrote, “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers…I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God…”

For years, Antony Flew was a renowned philosopher described as “the best-known atheist in the English-speaking world.” He had a successful career of disputing God’s existence until he examined the design in living cells. His last book published in 2004 was titled There Is a God.

There is something within us that tells us we see design when we look at living things. We know what design looks like, and we have to go against our intuition to accept the idea that everything, including ourselves and our thinking, is an accident. As you look around at the many things that appear to be designed, ask yourself, “Do I know what design looks like?” And then ask, “Could there be a Designer?” How you answer that second question will make a world of difference in your life.

July 12, 2020July 11, 2020

Designed for a Purpose

On this website, we often talk about design in living things. Everyone sees design in the world around us. It’s impossible not to see design. Even the leading atheist biologist Richard Dawkins said that biology is the study of things that appear to be designed for a purpose. However, he believes they only appear to be designed because he knows that design requires a designer. The trick is to pretend that it is not design but merely a pattern produced by natural selection acting on random chance mutations.

Our study of design is not the ancient god-of-the-gaps concept where we say, “I don’t know how this happened, so there must be a god who did it.” Instead, we consider the evidence for the possibility of these “designs” happening by pure chance. Is chance or intelligence a better explanation for what we see in living things? Can the features we observe be explained more effectively by natural selection acting on random mutations; or by intelligent design? Which alternative has greater explanatory power and is, therefore, more plausible? Can you say with confidence that living things were not designed for a purpose?

Every day, we see machines and devices created by human intelligence. We marvel at the complexity of such things as computers, automobiles, or vehicles for space travel. The intricate design of living things, including humans, is far greater than any of those human-designed devices. Do we ever question whether the human inventions came together by accident? But some would say, “Those things are not alive, and therefore they can’t design themselves. Living things can change on their own through natural selection.”

That brings up the question of where did the first living thing come from? It came from non-living matter. How did that lifeless material assemble itself into something as complex as a living cell that could take in nourishment and reproduce? Where did the information in the DNA come from? Random text can’t assemble itself into intelligent language, and the DNA contains a language so complex that it took modern computers to decipher it. What intelligence wrote the code within the DNA of each plant and animal, giving them the ability to change and adapt to stay alive?

We see random patterns in clouds, or sand, or waves blown by the wind. We see patterns of sunlight on the forest floor as it shines through the tree leaves. Those things are random. Though they may be beautiful, they are not examples of design. When we see the biological systems working within a living animal or plant or study biomes and ecosystems working in harmony to make life possible, we observe more than a chance pattern. We are beholding something that was designed for a purpose by an intelligent Designer.

Bringing it closer to home—that means an intelligent Designer designed YOU for a purpose.

June 21, 2020June 17, 2020

Atheism and Defective Fathers

There seems to be a connection between atheism and defective fathers. If you were to make a list of the most famous atheists of all time, what would they have in common? Such a list would include Freud, Nietzsche, Hume, Russell, Sartre, Camus, Schopenhauer, Hobbes, Meissner, Voltaire, Butler, Wells, Feuerbach, Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Stalin, Hitler, Diderot, and Marx. They all had in common that they had either no relationship to their fathers or a defective one.

A book that explores this is Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism by Paul Vitz. Vitz quotes Freud as saying: “Psychoanalysis, which has taught us the intimate connection between the father complex and belief in God, has shown us that the personal God is logically nothing but an exalted father, and daily demonstrates to us how youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of their father breaks down.”

It is essential to understand that just because you had a bad father doesn’t automatically mean you will be an atheist. But I have personally seen people who were mistreated or abandoned by their biological fathers and had a difficult time accepting the concept of a heavenly Father. It’s easy to see how there could be a connection between atheism and defective fathers. If all you know of “father” is someone who abused you, then any notion of a loving heavenly Father may be hard to accept fully.

In this day of single parents, fatherless children, and dysfunctional father figures, we can expect further growth in faith problems. The New Testament writers were aware of this and frequently addressed the need for fathers to have the strength to be the men God called them to be. “You fathers, don’t rouse your children to resentment, but raise them by letting the Lord train and correct them” (Ephesians 6:4). “Fathers do not fret and harass your children, lest they become discouraged and quit trying” (Colossians 3:21).

The biblical concept of a father is not that of an abusive tyrant, but a loving provider. Children can understand the spiritual father is one of love and care and compassion even if they have not had the best of experiences with their biological father. Thank God for Christian fathers.

NOTE: Biblical quotes are from The New Testament from 26 Translations by Zondervan Publishing.