God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) by William Lane Craig & Chad Meister

Author:William Lane Craig & Chad Meister
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion, Christian Theology, Apologetics
ISBN: 9781459636071
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited
Published: 2012-02-15T19:57:52+00:00

Concluding Remarks

As indicated throughout, I have attempted to condense much material into this brief essay. I’ve argued that Christians can readily acknowledge that the Mosaic law isn’t the ideal, ultimate ethic. We can, with Daniel Dennett, “thank heaven” that those thinking that blasphemy or adultery deserves capital punishment are a “dwindling minority.” However, let me here make a couple of statements regarding the New Atheists’ trivialization of Yahweh and the inconsistency between their “objective” moral outrage and naturalism.

First, like Narnia’s Aslan, gracious and compassionate Yahweh (Ex 34:6) isn’t to be trifled with. He is good, but not “safe.” The New Atheists resist the notion of Yahweh’s rightful prerogatives over humans; they seem uncomfortable with the idea of judgment or cosmic authority. Yet God must reveal himself with holy firmness (at times, fierceness) to get the attention of human rebels—including Israel (Deut 9:6-7).

Dawkins’s charge that God’s breaking into a “monumental rage” when Israel “flirted with a rival god” is “sexual jealousy of the worst kind” seems to diminish the meaning of the marriage covenant—and, in particular, this unique bond between God and his people. Israel hadn’t simply “flirted” with rival gods but cohabited with them, “playing the harlot” (cf. Ezek 16; 23); Israel did so on the “honeymoon” (Ex 32)! Hosea’s notable portrayal of Israel as a prostitute—no mere flirt—is quite serious despite Dawkins’s casual dismissal. The appropriate response to adultery is anger and hurt (cf. Is 5:4; 65:2-3; Ezek 6:9). When there is none, we rightly wonder how deeply and meaningfully committed to marriage one truly is.

Second, despite Dawkins’s moral outrage, his metaphysic disallows it, admitting that a universe full of electrons contains “no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”[57] Indeed, science “has no methods for deciding what is ethical.” Individuals and society decide.[58] Well, isn’t this Dawkins’s own individual preference—a merely contextual, relative matter rather than an objective one? As I’ve argued elsewhere, naturalism doesn’t have the metaphysical resources to move from valueless matter to value (including rights-bearing human beings and objective morality). Theism is immensely better equipped metaphysically to provide such a context.[59]

Harris’s attempt to “demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity” is quite ironic for several reasons. First, despite historical deviations from Jesus’ teaching (e.g., the Crusades, the Inquisition), biblical theism has historically served as a moral compass for Western civilization’s advances.[60] Second, despite the New Atheists’ appeals to science, they ignore the profound influence of the Jewish-Christian worldview on the West’s scientific enterprise. In Paul Davies’s words, “Science began as an outgrowth of theology, and all scientists, whether atheists or theists . . . accept an essentially theological worldview.”[61] Third, the New Atheists somehow gloss over the destructive atheistic ideologies that have led to far greater loss of human life within just one century than “religion” (let alone “Christendom”) with its wars, inquisitions and witch trials. Atheism has proven to be a far more destructive force than “religion.” Finally, though Harris correctly defends knowledge of objective moral truths “without reference to scripture,”

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