Challenging the atheist manifestos

From May 30, 2007 Globe and Mail
LORNA DUECK

Since I heartily believe I should listen to people I disagree with, the latest titles on atheistic revivalism are on my night table. Alerted by media reports of an all-out assault on religious faith, it would be just as stupid for me to ignore these books as the authors contend it is to believe in God.

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris takes about an hour to read, and it caught my eye because it was packaged just like the 2000 inspirational book Prayer of Jabez, which sold millions of people on how God wanted them to ask for much more of everything in life. Mr. Harris and other atheist fundamentalist authors Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Michel Onfray and Daniel Dennett would not expect us to receive anything from God at all. If they have their way, every wedding or bar mitzvah would require that we create an artificial "power of ritual," as Mr. Harris calls it, rather than request divine blessing on lives and relationships being merged. 

Moms like me are child abusers, according to Mr. Dawkins's The God Delusion, because I've sent the kids to summer camp, where they will learn about God and the wonders of creation. Sitting in the dark around the campfire, perhaps they'll even be told about Hell.

Yes, I've been insulted in reading these authors, who fanatically argue that I am free to believe in whatever I want as long it's not God.

These challenges to faith aren't new, but while David Hume, Karl Marx, T.H. Huxley, even Friedrich Nietzsche waited until death for their ideas to spread, technology gives Mr. Dawkins and friends a missionary website designed to rebrand atheists as "brights" (http://www.the-brights.net), which leads me to conclude I must be among the "dulls."

Their zeal reminded me of the last book I read before I picked up Mr. Hitchens's God is not Great; it was Hard Times by Charles Dickens. Dickens opens his 1854 novel with a schoolhouse mantra: "Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts." Hard Times then unfolds a plot of what happens when, as philosopher Hume concluded, "you cannot derive an ought from an is." Informed only by science, Dickens's characters struggle over how they ought to act in the world, how they ought to respond to love, yearning, and imagination, but alas, they are only equipped with facts. When it comes to how to act in the world, I do believe I have benefited from the great metaphysical story of Christianity.

Mr. Hitchens, on the other hand, would argue with many illustrations through history that the same story has caused countless others to "poison everything." In fact, I'm thankful for the cogent summaries of abuse in religion and historical arguments against theism these books provide, as it's not a frightening thing to be pushed to apply reason to our faith, although it is time-consuming.

As a believer, I gravitate to narrative on the character of God, sin, Christ and redemption, while new atheists gravitate to their own narratives. This debate comes down to one of those Bible-inspired phrases that Mr. Dawkins complains infects our world: "Of making many books there is no end." There is a reason why after all this enlightenment, some of us still can't make God go away. It's the experience and integrity factor. Jordan Peterson, who teaches Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief at the University of Toronto, writes that "emotional stability of individuals depends upon the integrity of their stories, stories that had a nature so compelling that they gathered religious behaviours and attitudes around them."

What do you do when the stories of God (not religion), affect how you act with yourself and those around you? And what then when these actions generated are actually true with what you inherently hope life should look like? Bottom line, what do you do when the God story helps you make sense of the highs and lows of life?

You keep learning about the story of God, you let the atheists expound on the bestseller lists, you confront the doubt of their beliefs, and wonder if it couldn't be just like the character of God to find a fresh way to keep the discussion with humanity ongoing.

Lorna Dueck hosts Listen Up TV, a weekly newsmagazine on spiritual perspectives in current events, seen on Global TV, Salt and Light TV, CTS and Christian Channel