The Smidgin

Leslie Tomory, who has just finished a PhD in the history of science and technology at the University of Toronto, has an excellent piece entitled “The shock and awe of creation.” In it he takes aim at the idea that evolution is inherently atheistic (an idea he labels “evolutionism”) and examines the roots of philosophical resistance to evolution.

The science of evolutionary biology is very well established, and the residual tension between religion and evolutionary biology harms both. On one hand, it makes the scientific work evolutionary biologists suspect in the eyes of many, and on the other, it makes religion appear like a regressive force. It is far better to reject the bundling of evolutionary biology with evolutionism, the real crux of the problem, than to wage a war over the minutiae of evolutionary biology, which should not be problematic from a religious point of view. Finally, accepting theistic evolution does not diminish the beauty and awe we can feel when contemplating God’s creation. On the contrary, God’s is manifest in his works, including in evolution.

This is exactly the sort of thought that we need in the struggle to combine these two fields in the popular mind.

A useful corollary to this article would be one examining the idea of God’s ordinary providence as paradox. The universe functions according to it’s own rules, yet it could not function without God. God is more directly involved than a watchmaker with his machine, yet at the same time less involved.

But, until I find or write said article, you can start by reading “The shock and awe of creation.”

The New Yorker has an excellent article, which I only learned later was a book review, on faith and atheism.  For quite some time now I have found the modern debate about the existence of God to be unfortunately unintelligent.  Denizens of the Internet, especially, tend to characterize it as a duel between Bible-toting, young-earth, fundamentalist Christians on one side and super rational, intelligent scientists on the other.  But I think James Wood gets it right:

What is needed is neither the overweening rationalist atheism of a Dawkins nor the rarefied religious belief of an Eagleton but a theologically engagcd atheism that resembles disappointed belief. Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Dawkins recently posted an open letter on his blog in response to a Jew who was upset after seeing the film Expelled.  Most of the letter is very good; Dawkins exposes some of the foolish connections made by the film between Darwinism and Nazism.  It also recognizes the problems created by Expelled when the film tricks people into believing untruths by using inflammatory rhetoric and examples.

There is one point where Dawkins goes wrong, however. When disproving the link between Darwinism and Nazism, Dawkins brings up the connection between Nazism and Christianity. Here he makes the same mistake that “Mr J” made: condemning a belief because radical people or ideas drew upon that belief.  He even makes this mistake using the same radicals as “Mr J,” the Nazis.  Dawkins should know better than to do this.

Specifically he says:

Hitler had a lot of support in Germany. His horrible bidding was done by millions of ordinary German footsoldiers, and the great majority of them were Christians. Many were Lutheran, and many (like Hitler himself) were Roman Catholic. Very few were atheists, and whatever else Hitler was he most certainly was not an atheist. It is sometimes said that Hitler only pretended to be Catholic, in order to win the Church’s support for his regime. In this he was very largely successful. So, whether or not Hitler was himself a true Catholic (as he often claimed) the Church bears a heavy responsibility for what happened. And Hitler himself used religion to justify his anti-Semitism.

Here Dawkins is playing with the facts, but not presenting the whole picture.  We can look at any religion or culture in this world—Christianity, Islam or Buddhism; American, Japanese, or German; religious or atheist—and find people who have done horrible things.  That does not mean the core of the system they self-identify with is the cause of their atrocities.

Second, the argument that very few were atheists means nothing for two reasons.  First, it says nothing about the percentage of atheists in the general population.  Second, and related, is the fact that Germany was a historically Christian country.  Therefore many people who self-identified as Christians may not have held firmly to the tradition.

Dawkins then states that “the Church bears a heavy responsibility for what happened.”  This is very true in one sense.  Both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church often stood by and allowed anti-Semitism to continue unchecked.  In so doing they implicated themselves with the regime.  This does not mean, however, that their beliefs caused the regime’s actions.

Finally, Dawkins ignores the strong responses of many Christians during the Nazi era.  One very prominent example is, of course, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church.  When it comes to defining the core of Christianity, examples such as Bonhoeffer must hold as much weight as the fact that Hitler nominally identified himself as Catholic.

Dawkins then continues by expanding to Christianity as a whole:

Anti-Semitism has been rife in Europe for many many centuries, positively encouraged by most Christian churches, including especially the two that dominate Germany. The Roman Catholic Church has notoriously persecuted Jews as “Christ-killers”. While, as for the Lutherans, Martin Luther himself wrote a book called On the Jews and their Lies from which Hitler quoted. And Luther publicly said that “All Jews should be driven from Germany.”

Again Dawkins is providing several true facts outside of their proper context.  He ignores the entire socio-cultural context surrounding European anti-Judaism. Note the distinction between anti-Judaism, which was a cultural prejudice prevalent during the ninteenth century and anti-Semitism, a racial prejudice which arose around the time of the Nazis.  Dawkins makes no mention of any such distinction.

On the whole, Dawkins’ open letter is a great response to “Mr J.”  Dawkins should not, however, have taken this chance to put in a jibe at Christianity.  By doing so he both propogated false information and weakened his own argument by falling prey to the same error as “Mr J.”

Recently I have been pondering both the concept of existence and arguments such as Anselm’s Ontological Proof. In doing so, I have found that the idea of being created is key to many of my thoughts. But what necessitates creation?

Being an evangelical Christian, I hold to the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, wherein God brought all that exists forth from nothing. This solves, for me, the problem of existence: where we came from. Of course, one could pose the question of where God came from, but for the Christian God falls in another realm, the supernatural, which is a matter of faith.

I recognize, however, the appeal of atheism. In an effort to understand it better, I wish to pose a question to anyone reading this who may be an atheist: How do you explain the fact of existence? Is it that we exist without having been created (just as Christians believe God simply exists)?

To make it clear, I am not trying to start a flamewar here. I am honestly curious about how atheists would answer this question. If I don’t know what the other side of a debate believes, I cannot call myself an educated person. If some of you could help explain the atheist viewpoint to me, I would greatly appreciate it.

Edit (4/1/08): A good comment by NOK shows me that I have not been specific enough.  By existence, I mean the fact that anything exists at all.  We know that something exists, as we are having this discussion.  (Either we exist or something imagining us exists.)  Even if we are talking above the scope of the universe, we know that things exist there.  (If we accept M-theory, for example, we accept the existence of branes that collide to produce universes.)  So my question is how do we explain the fact that anything at all exists, or can it not be explained?