Posted by
Jason Cunningham on Thursday, July 05, 2007 7:15:35 PM
One of the current trends in nonfiction publishing is that of anti-God manifestos by militant atheists, most notably god is not Great by Christopher Hitchens and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Considering the small number of atheists in the world, it would seem that these publishers are taking quite a risk, but thankfully, for them, the thoughts expressed in these books are inflammatory enough to generate sales.
As for those thoughts: Their basic premise is that God not only doesn’t exist, but that belief in Him is actually a bad thing. If Hitchens and the like were doctors, however, they’d have to be considered bad ones, because they’re treating a symptom instead of the disease.
While it is beyond dispute that many bad things have been done in the name of God or religion, it is something else that’s the real cause of trouble in this world: a flaw in the human heart. This flaw, which usually meets with little or no resistance from us, is the desire to be in control, the desire to be in power – the desire, in fact, to be God. And religion is merely one way to acquire this power. Consider radical Muslims. They claim to be acting in the name of Allah (their god) – and I’ve no doubt that they truly believe that they are – but they have publicly stated that their ultimate goal is not the conversion of the masses to their religion, but world domination. They don’t actually care whether you believe as they do – if you do, they let you live; if you don’t, they simply kill you – they just want to be in charge. The root problem, then, is not religion; it is the desire for power, the desire to be in control, the desire to be God. Their religion is merely one means of accomplishing this.
Which leads to my second point of contention: Hitchens et al. have singled out one symptom (misuse of religion) – the one that aligns with their cause (the annihilation of God) – while neglecting all other symptoms, most notably greed (the love of money) and materialism (the love of possessions). For it is indisputable that money and possessions are effective in acquiring the power that humans crave. Consider, for example, how much damage has been done by the love of money (which, by the way, the Bible tells us is the root of all kinds of evil) – the corporate financial scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other large companies being some recent notable examples: Jobs were lost, pensions depleted and lives destroyed – and religion had nothing to do with it.
The third primary flaw that I see in the arguments of militant atheists is that they ignore all the good that religion has produced in the world. Religion, after all – like most everything else in life – is not an end in itself, but a means to an end (in this case, the means of discovering God and the truth about Him). Religion, money, sex, public office, lawyering – none of these are inherently bad; we simply often choose to make bad use of them – which is our fault, not the fault of the things themselves. And when I consider, for example, just the small sphere of life that I inhabit, I see much good (and no bad) done in the name of God and religion (particularly in the name of Jesus): In my hometown alone I see a food bank run by the town’s two churches – a food bank that gave away more than 10,000 meals last year; I see an annual Walk for Hunger put on by those same churches to raise money for the aforementioned food bank; I see food baskets from my church given to the needy at Thanksgiving; I see fruit baskets and other gifts (including the singing of Christmas carols) given from my church at Christmastime; I see emergency heating-fuel aid given out in the winter; I see people paying visits to, and running errands for, the sick and the elderly; I see gifts of cash given to those in financial need; I see people praying for others; I see aid given to the homeless and to the local soup kitchens; I see kindness shown to those whom society has cast aside; I see once-hopeless people given hope; I see the growth of smiles on people’s faces and confidence in their hearts as they experience the love of God shown by His true followers. Now atheists will say that you don’t need religion in order to do good works, but that isn’t the issue here; the issue is whether, as Hitchens claims, religion poisons everything, and as you should be able to see just from my short list above, it assuredly does not.
It has been my experience that you can curse a cough as loudly, as viciously and as often as you want, but that won’t cure you of the cold. Likewise, the complaints of atheists against religion will do nothing to solve the world’s problems, because those complaints are not directed at the source of those problems.