Barry's Blog

The great Russian writer Dostoevsky penned these famous words over one hundred years ago, "If there is no God, then all things are permitted." When he wrote these words, I doubt that he knew how far reaching their influence would be, for even to this day, the phrase captures the Great Divide between the house of Faith and the house of Unbelief. Filmmaker Woody Allen echoes Dostoevsky's sentiment in arguably his best film, Crimes and Misdemeanors, mimicking Dostoevsky's great novel, and raising such perennial questions as: can a man commit a heinous deed and live with himself? Is there such a thing as legitimate guilt? Is our world truly a moral universe, where we will be held accountable for our actions in this world? Do things really matter in this life?

These kinds of questions come to mind in the light of  the New Atheism that is rearing its ugly head in recent days, led by such notables as the Oxford scholar Richard Dawkins, the leading evangelist for the Church of Unbelief. Dawkins, whose book, The God Delusion, has been a bestseller on The New York Times, was interviewed in the November, 2006 issue of Wired Magazine, and his vitriolic disdain for Christianity is undeniable. In the article, "The Church of the Non-Believers,"  Dawkins, who serves at Oxford as the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, opines that "the big war is not between evolution and creationism, but between naturalism and supernaturalism...the 'sensible' (he pauses to indicate it should be in quotes) religious people are really on the side of fundamentalists, because they believe in supernaturalism. That puts me on the other side."

It is important to understand that this new vanguard of New Atheists does not have a problem with any specific Christian doctrine, but with religion in general. As Dawkins writes in The God Delusion, "As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers." Dawkins prides himself on mudding the water, choosing to see no apparent difference between religious fanaticism and a reasonable, defensible Christian theism.

I wonder, though, if these New Atheists (who are really not 'new') have thought deeply about the consequences of a Godless world. For without God, can there truly be any basis for morality? Without God, is there a reason for believing that somehow, someway, this life's shattered hopes, disappointments, and frustrations will be made right in another world? Do not our deepest and most noble thoughts and aspirations "argue" for a better world to come, where True Goodness has its way? Writer Frederick Buechner expresses so beautifully the dilemma of the atheist:

"A true atheist is one who is willing to face the full consequences of what it means to say there is no God. To say there is no God means among other things that there are no Absolute Standards...To be consistent with his creed, an atheist can say no more than that to beat a child to death is wrong with a small w. Wrong because it is cruel, ugly, inhuman, pointless, illegal, and makes the gorge rise. But what is apt to rise along with the gorge is the suspicion that it is wrong also with a capital W--the suspicion that the law that has been broken here is not just a human law but a law as immutable as the law of gravity...A true atheist takes man's freedom very seriously. With no God to point the way, man must find his own way. With no God to save the world, man must save his own world if it's going to be saved. He must save it from himself if nothing else. A true atheist does no dance on the grave of God."

I think Dostoevsky was right.

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow