When a Worldview Doesn’t Work
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 : By Hugh Williams
One of the main points to remember about our “God Questions” series is that we are seeking to show that Christianity provides a coherent worldview that adequately answers the full range of life’s greatest questions.
It’s a clear sign that you need to rethink your position if you have to use one way of thinking to answer a certain set of questions, but then switch to a different way of thinking to answer others. Case in point: in 2006, Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) was asked about the consistency of his views as an atheist, and it looks like he knows his worldview doesn’t work:
Questioner: …You seem to take a position of a strong determinist who says that what we see around us is the product of physical laws playing themselves out. But on the other hand, it would seem that you would do things like taking credit for writing this book and things like that. But it would seem, and this isn’t to be funny, that the consistent position would be that… the authoring of this book [was necessarily set] from the initial condition of the big bang…
Dawkins: …What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don’t feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do. None of us ever actually, as a matter of fact, says, “Oh well, he couldn’t help doing it; he was determined by his molecules.” … I mean, when we punish people for doing the most horrible murders, maybe the attitude we should take is, “Oh, they were just determined by their molecules. It’s stupid to punish them.” What we should do is say “This unit has a faulty motherboard which needs to be replaced.” I can’t bring myself to do that. I actually do respond in an emotional way and I blame people, I give people credit, or I might be more charitable and say this individual who has committed murders or child abuse or whatever it is was really abused in his own childhood…
Questioner: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views?
Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with—otherwise life would be intolerable. But it has nothing to do with my views on religion—it is an entirely separate issue.
“It is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with,” says Dawkins. Nonsense! Yes, you have to acknowledge the morality of the matters at hand, but you don’t have to persist in neo-Darwinian atheism. The Christian worldview gives a compelling answer: the existence of the universe, the life within it, and the objective moral values we cannot deny are all best explained by a powerful, personal, immaterial, transcendent God.
About The Author
Hugh Williams is one of the Connections teachers at Grace Fellowship and is also one of the webmasters for the forGodsfame.org website. You may notice him playing bass with the music team on Sunday mornings, too, when he works hard on smiling while reading music and keeping rhythm at the same time. A native of the New York City area, Hugh and his wife, Krista, have lived in the Atlanta area since 1997.
More entries by Hugh Williams
17 Comments
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This makes me think of a quote I came across years ago when doing a class on Creation vs. Evolution. A British anthropologist named Sir Arthur Keith said:
“Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable”
In other words he clung to his belief in evolution because he was desperate not to believe in God, not because evolution could be tested and found legitimate using the means he would use to test any other scientific proposal.
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“Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable”
Do you have a source for this quotation?
I doubt its accuracy.
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To be honest I don’t know where I originally came across this quote but its not difficult to find it cited many places. Here’s one on the Mississippi State Univ. site:
Of course its also not hard to find those who claim it is bogus as well. However, I’ve found that to be true for virtually anything that questions the party line where evolution is concerned.
Take care,
Larry
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I think the quote is inaccurate. We have an obligation as Chrstians not to bear false witness. If called to substantiate a quote we should be able to send a person to the book and page number.
I put this quote in the urban legend category.
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The claim is that the quote is in the foreword of the 100th Edition of Origin of the Species.
The 100th anniversary edition would have been published in 1959 — Sir Arthur Keith died in 1955.
Sir Arthur did write an introduction in 1928 but there is no quote like this to be found. It remained the foreword until 1958.
Keith, Arthur. Introduction to “The origin of species by means of natural selection”, by Charles Darwin. London: J.M. Dent, 1928.
Thompson, William Robin. Introduction to “The origin of species”, by Charles Darwin. London: J.M. Dent, 1958.
I’d say strike that quote but let’s get back to the topic at hand.
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Not all quotes come from pages in books. Many people will say things in private correspondence, etc. that they would not put in the books they write.
However, I agree that there is some question around the origin of this one and that we should be careful as Christians not to be inaccurate.
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Yes, to the topic at hand.
The Dawkins quote isn’t accurate either.
Apparently the topic is “bearing false witness.”
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“The Dawkins quote isn’t accurate either.”
UC, how do you come to this conclusion?
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Actually, Questioner has been taken out of context and horribly misrepresented here. He was just asking for Dawkins’ autograph and where the restrooms were.
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The point is that neo-Darwinian atheism, with its philosophical naturalism, cannot provide an adequate explanation for questions like “why is intuitively obvious that some things that people do are meritorious and other things are horrible?”
Go back and read Immanuel Kant and brush up on The Categorical Imperative.
Here’s another good refutaiton of your position.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/mfound.html
and
http://hem.passagen.se/nicb/atheism.htm
And, finally, if your a double predestination Calvinist, you’re either elect or reprobate, and there’s nothing you can do about it, God has determined your future and you can’t change it.
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“…the moral experience of the individual is what is important.”
Why is it important?
“…abandoning one’s children is not morally acceptable.”
This happens every day around the world, why is it not acceptable?
“A good atheist parent probably looks after her children because she loves them - love itself gives her every reason to not abandon them.”
Please define “good” and “love”, on whose authority should I accept that definition if the moral experience of the individual is what is important?
How dare Vuletic push his morals on people that abandon their children like that?!
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Re: #4, this is the famous “divine foot in the door” quote taken from an article by Richard Lewontin in 1997:
http://darwinianfundamentalism.blogspot.com/2005/07/darwinian-fundamentalist-manifesto.html
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re Kant: Kant’s Categorical Imperative only gives an algorithm for deciding if a thing is moral or not. By applying a particular to the maximum, i.e. taking the roof off, the algorithm supposedly shows if an action is moral or not. However, it gives no basis for why it is moral or not. To live with Kant, you have to have a precondition of what is moral and what is not. Further, it does not even offer a very good algorithm for testing actions. Pretty much all action taken in maximum will be immoral.
re Vuletic: The argument is not that those who don’t believe in god can’t be moral, most are. The argument is those who don’t believe in a transcendent, eternal, and universal God have no basis to judge whether or not something is moral or not; whether or not something will be moral tomorrow; and whether or not something is moral everywhere.
I think the truth offered by the blog is exactly that of Romans 1:21. Even these supposedly smart guys can’t put together a world where God does not exist and be consistent.
Larry : April 16th, 2008 at 11:52 am