The herald reports on the short documentary called 'the root of all evil?' by famed atheist Richard Dawkins.
Is radical scientific materialism a remnant of the modern era uttering its final dying screams?
Does Dawkins represent a serious challenge to faith and religion, one we should be concerned about?
An interesting start to the discussion, again in the herald, by Rachel Kohn, 'despite what the scholars say god isnt dead yet'.
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Check out an interesting talk by Professor Alistair McGrath (the main critic of Dawkins - in published terms) discussing Dawkins' recent book 'The God delusion'
http://www.citychurchsf.org/openforum/Audio/OF_Alister_McGrath.mp3
I don't think Dawkins himself is a serious challenge. His arguments reflect a certain "religious zeal" which is rather ironic, and I don't think it seriously considers the amount of reasonableness of Biblical Christianity.
What will become more challenging would be if there become a large enough number of serious atheists along Dawkins' lines, ie. not simply agnostic. Atheism hasn't really had any true proponents or "evangelists", if you will, for a long time, and hasn't really had any appeal beyond "we're not those guys". It's a religion whose only hope and motivation for people to join is making life now less "evil" by eradicating religion. Of course, to this end, we can cite the "goodness" of the atheism of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.
And have you read McGrath's Twilight of Atheism? He was actually here last year talking on that topic, and I completely missed it.
The myth that religion is the root of all evil in the world is on its makings to being re-labelled as an established truth. Not only is there is plenty of evidence to fall back on, both correctly and incorrectly contextualised, but this provides a highly convenient solution to a universally accepted problem and comfortably feeds the general bitter scepticism of the both the uneducated and educated of the secular world. It is tempting for Christians to laugh this off as a real threat because it is so ridiculous at face value. Yet the widespread willingness of people to accept a certain fictional crime novel, which also claimed religion as the root of all evil, as fact, should make us think again. Christians must engage with this issue, and I suggest the following as a good beginning:
1.Don’t rewrite our own history where we got stuff wrong: apologise.
2.Don’t let the world re-write history where we got stuff right: be informed and vocal.
3.As individuals, small groups, churches and the world-wide body of believers work in both the micro and macro of life to be like Christ. Love, heal, hope, restore, raise up, reach down, flee evil, avoid hypocrisy, be strong, and speak the truth uncompromised.
Professor McGrath presented the 2006 Smith Lecture in Sydney (the talk Jason was probably referring to) on the topic The Twilight of Atheism.... The transcript is available from Smith Lecture. For other resources and lectures, see also the website of the Centre for Apologetic Scholarship and Education ("CASE") at UNSW.
jason - is there a growing number of militant atheists?
Laura - I agree that there is a willingness to accept atheistic reasoning. I like point 3 of you 'good beginnings' - sounds to me a lot like the whole of Christian witness.
Shamozzle - cheers for the links. Great to hear from you.
> jason - is there a growing number of militant atheists?
It's hard to tell when you've been outside the walls of a university for a while.
There have always been militant atheists, but I think most people have taken them, much like fundamentatlist tele-evangelists, not really seriously.
What this "new generation" of atheistic proponents - Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. - seems to be doing is trying to make serious academic atheism mainstream, and selling it with "blockbuster titles". We've had this treatment before from different fronts (I don't think anyone has mentioned Da Vinci to me in a very long time).
Are people catching on? Don't know, but I'd like to find out, and if they are, I'd like to find out why.
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