They Say There Is No God

1
Making
the
Case
2
Making the Case for God
3
Portrait of the New Atheists
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Portrait of the New Atheists

• The Platform of New Atheists
• Faith is irrational and they are out to debunk it
• Evolution is true and undercuts any reason people
  used to believe in God
• Biological and social Evolution explain the
  origin of religion
• The Bible is archaic and its teachings harm us.
  So they will warn against it and attempt to
  discredit it
• The Jesus of history was mortal if He even
  existed
• Christians in the U.S. constitute a profound
  threat to democracy
• The world would be better without any religion
• - David Marshall, The Truth Behind the New
  Atheism, p.9

5
Portrait of the New Atheists
The point is not that we atheists can prove
religion to be the cause of more harm than good
(though I think this can be argued, and the
balance seems to me to be swinging further toward
harm each day). The point is that religion
remains the only mode of discourse that
encourages grown men and women to pretend to know
things they manifestly do not (and cannot) know.
If ever there was an attitude at odds with
science, this is it. And the faithful are
encouraged to keep shouldering this unwieldy
burden of falsehood and self-deception by
everyone they meet by their coreligionists, of
course, and by people of differing faith, and
now, with startling frequency, by scientists who
claim to have no faith Surely we can grow in
altruism, and refine our ethical intuitions, and
even explore the furthest reaches of human
happiness, without lying to ourselves about the
nature of the universe. Sam Harris,
http//www.edge.org/discourse/moral_religion.html
harris accessed July 29, 2008
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They Say There Is No God
Although it is possible to be a scientist and
still believe in God as some scientists seem to
manage it there is no question that an
engagement with scientific thinking tends to
erode, rather than support, religious faiththere
are few modes of thinking less congenial to
religious faith than science is. Sam Harris,
10 Myths and 10 Truths About Atheism, Dec.
24, 2006, The Los Angeles Times.
I. They Are Still People of Faith
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An Old Caricature Science is Simply Facts
The problem is to get people to reject
irrational and supernatural explanations of the
world, the demons that exist only in their
imaginations, and to accept a social and
intellectual apparatus, science, as the only
begetter of truth. Harvard geneticist
Richard Lewotin
It is worth observing that religion is the one
area of our lives where faith in dogma that is,
belief without sufficient evidence is
considered a virtue. If such faith is a virtue,
it is a virtue that is completely unknown to
scientific discourse. Science is, in fact, the
one domain in which a person can win considerable
prestige for proving himself wrong. In science,
honesty is all. In religion, faith is all. That
is about as invidious as comparisons get. Sam
Harris, Faith Wont Heal a Divided World, Nov.
14, 2006 Http//Newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfait
h/sam_harris/2006/11/faith_and_a_undivided_world.h
tml accessed July 29, 2008
8
An Old Caricature Faith is Simply Superstition
Faith is a kind of mental illnessa state of
mind that leads people to believe something it
doesnt matter what in the total absence of
supporting evidencenot only in the absence of
evidence, but in the teeth of evidence Richard
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 1976. p.198, 330.
In science, it is a cardinal sin to pretend to
know something that you do not know. Such
pretense is the very essence of religious faith.
Sam Harris, Faith Wont Heal a Divided World,
Nov. 14, 2006 Http//Newsweek.washingtonpost.com/o
nfaith/sam_harris/2006/11/faith_and_a_undivided_wo
rld.html accessed July 29, 2008
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Science Deals With
1. What can be Observed
2. What can be Reproduced in experimentation
10
When scientists dont know something like why
the universe came into being or how the first
self-replicating molecules formed they admit
it. Pretending to know things one doesnt know is
a profound liability in science. And yet it is
the life-blood of faith-based religion When
considering questions about the nature of the
cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to
draw their opinions from science. Sam Harris,
10 Myths and 10 Truths About Atheism, Dec.
24, 2006, The Los Angeles Times.
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They Say There Is No God
Thus, Atheism and Evolutionary Theory (Macro
Evolution) are Faith Systems!
I. They Are Still People of Faith
12
They Say There Is No God
I no more believe in the Biblical God than I
believe in Zeus, Isis, Thor and the thousands of
other dead gods that lie buried in the mass grave
we call mythology. I doubt them all equally and
for the same reason lack of evidence Sam
Harris, Newsweek, April 9, 2007. p.55
II. Their Reasons for Atheism are Unreasonable
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Cause and Effect
If it is reasonable to assume a First Cause as
having always existed, why is it unreasonable to
assume that the materials of the universe always
existed? David Brooks, The Necessity
of Atheism.
The Beginning of the Universe demands a Beginner
14
Scientific Evidence for the Beginning of the
Universe

• Second Law of Thermodynamics (a.k.a. Law of
  Entropy)
• Universe Expanding 1927, Edwin Hubble
• Radiation from the Big Bang 1965
• Einsteins Theory of General Relativity - 1916

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Scientific Evidence for the Beginning of the
Universe
Well, the question of questions is what caused
the Big Bang, or what (or who) caused the
universes beginning. Natural forces are ruled
out because they were not the cause of the Big
Bang but were created at the Big Bang. Since a
cause cannot come into being after its effect,
something outside of nature must have been the
cause Norman Geisler Randy Douglass,
Bringing Your Faith to Work, p.84
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Scientific Evidence for the Beginning of the
Universe
Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads
to a biblical view of the origin of the world.
The details differ, but the essential elements in
the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis
are the same the chain of events leading to man
commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite
moment in time, in a flash of light and energy
Robert Jastrow, agnostic astronomer and founder
of NASAs Goddard Institute of Space Studies.
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They Say There Is No God
No one knows why the universe came into being.
In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can
coherently speak about the beginning or
creation of the universe at all, as these ideas
invoke the concept of time, and here we are
talking about the origin of space-time itself
Although we dont know precisely how the Earths
early chemistry begat biology, we know that the
diversity and complexity we see in the living
world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution
is a combination of chance mutation and natural
selection. Sam Harris, 10 Myths and 10
Truths About Atheism, Dec. 24, 2006, The Los
Angeles Times.
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Design demands a Designer
Anthropic Principle
Atmosphere
Distance
Water
Moon
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Design demands a Designer
DNA Molecule
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Design demands a Designer
Biology is the study of complicated things that
give the appearance of having been designed for a
purpose. - Richard Dawkins, The Blind
Watchmaker.
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Design demands a Designer
The major intellectual problem presented by the
origins of life is concerned with the next state,
the evolution of biological organization. How did
a complex self-replicating organism evolve from
an unorganized mixture of polymeric molecules?
Little experimental evidence is available, so one
is forced to attempt a speculative reconstruction
of this phase in the origins of life Biologist
Leslie Orgel, The Origins of Life Molecules and
Natural Selection, 1973. p.230
22
Design demands a Designer
According to this story, every tree, every blade
of grass and every creature in the sea and on
land evolved out of one parent strand of
molecular matter drifting lazily in a warm pool.
What concrete evidence supports that remarkable
theory of the origin of life? There is none.
Agnostic and evolutionist Robert Jastrow, Until
the Sun Dies, 1980. p.49
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A Moral Law demands a Moral Law Giver
Man is the result of a purposeless and natural
process that did no have him in mind. He was not
planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life,
a sort of animal, and a species of the Order
Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life
and indeed to all that is material Discovery
that the universe apart from man or before his
coming lacks and lacked any purpose or plan has
the inevitable corollary that the workings of the
universe cannot provide any automatic, universal,
eternal, or absolute ethical criteria of right
and wrong. - George Gaylord Simpson, The Meaning
of Evolution, 1971. p.314-315
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A Moral Law demands a Moral Law Giver
How is it fair for God to have designed a world
which gives such ambiguous testimony to his
existence? How is it fair to have created a
system where belief is the crucial piece, rather
than being a good person? How is it fair to have
created a world in which by mere accident of
birth, someone who grew up Muslim can be
confounded by the wrong religion? I dont see how
the future of humanity is in good care with those
competing orthodoxies. Sam Harris, Newsweek,
April 9, 2007. p.63
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A Moral Law demands a Moral Law Giver
In most cases, it seems that religion gives
people bad reasons to behave well, when good
reasons are actually available. Ask yourself,
which is more moral, helping the poor out of
concern for their suffering, or doing so because
you think the creator of the universe wants you
to do it, will reward you for doing it or will
punish you for not doing it? Sam Harris, 10
Myths and 10 Truths About Atheism, Dec. 24,
2006, The Los Angeles Times.
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A Moral Law demands a Moral Law Giver

• Harriss antagonism toward God ends up proving
  that he intuitively finds some things
  reprehensible. But he cannot explain his innate
  sense of right and wrong the reality of Gods
  law written on his heart because there is no
  logical explanation for how that intuition toward
  morality could develop from sheer matter and
  chemistry.
• Popularly stated, I would put it in this way
• When you assert that there is such a thing as
  evil, you must assume there is such a thing as
  good.
• When you say there is such a thing as good, you
  must assume there is a moral law by which to
  distinguish between good and evil. There must be
  some standard by which to determine what is good
  and what is evil.
• When you assume a moral law, you must posit a
  moral lawgiver the source of the moral law.
• But the moral lawgiver is precisely who atheists
  are trying to disprove. Ravi Zacharias,
  The End of Reason, p.54-55

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A Moral Law demands a Moral Law Giver
We do not get our morality from religion. We
decide what is good in our good books by recourse
to moral intuitions that are (at some level)
hard-wired in us and that have been refined by
thousands of year of thinking about the causes
and possibilities of human happiness Sam
Harris, Sam Harris, 10 Myths and 10 Truths
About Atheism, Dec. 24, 2006, The Los Angeles
Times.
As an atheist my argument against God was that
the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how
had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man
does not call a line crooked unless he has some
idea of a straight line. What was I comparing
this universe with when I called it unjust?
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
28
They Say There Is No God
Atheism
Christianity
Origin?
Life is Purposed
Life is Random
Life is Meaningless
Life is Meaningful
Meaning?
Absolutes Judgment
No Absolutes
Morality?
Hope?
No Hope
Living Hope
III. Their Faith System Offers No Hope
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They Say There Is No God
Extraterrestrial Life
Atheists are free to admit the limits of human
understanding in a way that religious people are
not. It is obvious that we do not fully
understand the universe but it is even more
obvious that neither the Bible nor the Koran
reflects our best understanding of it. We do not
know whether there is complex life elsewhere in
the cosmos, but there might be. If there is, such
beings could have developed an understanding of
natures laws that vastly exceeds our own.
Atheists can freely entertain such possibilities.
They also can admit that if brilliant
extraterrestrials exist, the contents of the
Bible and the Koran will be even less impressive
to them than they are to human atheists Sam
Harris, 10 Myths and 10 Truths About Atheism,
Dec. 24, 2006, The Los Angeles Times.
IV. They Still Look for Something Greater
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They Say There Is No God
Extraterrestrial Life
If you look at the D-cells, the D-cells of
biochemistry molecular biology you might find
a signature of some sort of designerand that
designer could well be a higher intelligence from
elsewhere in the universe. Richard
Dawkins, from the documentary Expelled, released
2008.
IV. They Still Look for Something Greater
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They Say There Is No God
Extraterrestrial Life
Probably because a spaceship from another planet
brought spores to seed the earth. Francis
Crick, Nobel laureate, atheist, and codiscoverer
of the structure of the DNA molecule, answering
the question of how life around us began.
It is possible that the future of human
civilization depends on the receipt of
interstellar messages Carl Sagan, The Quest
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Cosmic Search
Vol. 1 No. 2. http//www.bigear.org/vol1no2/sagan.
htm accessed July 31, 2008
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great
enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all
this vastness, there is no hint that help will
come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994. p.9
IV. They Still Look for Something Greater
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They Say There Is No God
Christianity Assurance of Supernatural Life
IV. They Still Look for Something Greater
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Making the Case for God