Scarcely a month goes by without the media running a story that the church in the UK is dying. For example, British newspaper, The Telegraph, recently reported that “more than half of the population has no faith and the share of the population who say they are Church of England Christians has fallen to just 15%—the lowest ever recorded.” So is Christianity in a death spiral and can secularists look forward to a godless Utopia? Well, as ever, things aren’t that straightforward.
I recently debated Andrew Copson, CEO of the British Humanist Association, on this important topic, at the University of Hull. The full debate — including the discussion and Q&A — can be watched here:
If you’re a skeptic, an agnostic, or a seeker, I encourage you to think about the issues this debate raises. If you’re a Christian, I’d also encourage you to watch it as this topic is a powerful way to introduce the gospel to friends, colleagues and neighbours.
One of my favourite movies is Braveheart. Who could forget that stirring speech made by Mel Gibson, playing Scottish hero William Wallace, as he motivates his troops at the Battle of Stirling Bridge with the cry: “They may take our lives, but they can never take our freedom!”
Freedom is a powerful idea and probably our culture’s supreme value. People want to believe they are free to choose their ethics, beliefs, values, and more. Our culture proclaims that choice is good, the more of it the better, and anything that restricts it is bad. And that’s a problem when it comes to God—surely, the protest goes, God is anti-freedom. Don’t I have to choose between my personal autonomy and a belief in God?
Some of what follows is drawn from chapter 8 of my book, The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist. If you enjoyed it, please do consider buying the full book, which is available both as a paperback and an ebook. It’s available online, or from all good bookstores.
A few years ago, I was having lunch with an old friend in a vegetarian pizza restaurant in London. Now I’m no fan of vegetarian food—I think I’m persuaded by the argument that the word “vegetarian” is derived from an old German word that means “bad hunter”. However, my friend, Garth, had just started dating a devout Buddhist, so he was not merely eating vegetarian, but vegan.
Halfway through the meal, I looked up from my lentil and sawdust pizza to see Garth surreptitiously produce a small plastic container from his pocket: he opened it and shook out the contents over his pizza.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Tuna,” he hissed in a whisper.
“Tuna?” I said.
“Shhhh!” Garth hissed. “Not every vegan takes the liberal approach that I do. Besides,” he added, “I don’t know what all the fuss is. So I eat fish. Big deal. Fish doesn’t count as meat, does it? It can’t be meat if it lives in water.”
“You claim to be a vegan and you eat fish?” I asked.
“Yes. And prawns, crab, shellfish, lobster, that kind of thing.”
“Strangest vegan I’ve ever met,” I said.
“Duck, too,” he added.
“Duck?!?”
“Well, they live in water don’t they.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said, “ you’re claiming to be a vegan—telling your girlfriend, your colleagues, and your family that you’re a vegan, subjecting your friends to vegan restaurants—all the while chowing down on anything that moves. Why not just come clean and admit you’re an omnivore like the rest of us: it’s the hypocrisy that galls me.”
“Hypocrisy?” Garth said, looking genuinely offended. “I thought you’d be more, well, progressive. And besides, who says that you get to define what the word ‘vegan’ means? Who died and pronounced you King of the Dictionary? I say ‘vegan’ to me means ‘occasionally eats meat when there is a vowel in the month’. How dare you tell me your meaning of the word trumps mine.”
At this time of year, our deck is one of my favourite places to read. I love the view of our garden and the rambling, overgrown pathway that leads into the small woods that lie at the rear. I love the sound of the wind in the trees and the patterns of sunlight cast by the leaves. And I love the feel of the warm wooden boards of the deck beneath my feet. It was sitting there in the sunshine one weekend, idly reading a newspaper, that my eye was drawn to an article on the front page: “Twenty-Seven Places to See Before You Die”. Always drawn to a potentially good travel piece, I turned to the article. There, accompanied by some stunning photography, was laid out a collection of beautiful locations—Yosemite Valley, Cape Tribulation, the jagged peaks of Torres del Paine; even the English Lake District.
In recent years, atheism has enjoyed something of a resurgence, especially with the rise of the so called “New Atheism”. That term was first coined back in 2006 to describe the group of media-savvy atheists—men like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and the late Christopher Hitchens—whose books attacking religion in general and Christianity in particular have sold by the truckload. Yet despite its popularity, much of contemporary atheism thrives on poor arguments and cheap soundbites, making claims that simply don’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny. Like a cheaply made cardigan, they’re full of loose threads that quickly unravel if you tug them.
Let me illustrate with an example from New Atheism’s founding father, Richard Dawkins, whose books have sold millions of copies. Dawkins thinks religion isn’t merely wrong, but insane, that those who believe in God are quite literally deluded. Faith in God is as crazy as belief in—well, let’s allow Dawkins to speak for himself:
Today I’m giving space to Sheridan Voysey, whose new book Resilient: Your Invitation to a Jesus-Shaped Life launches on Wednesday (don’t miss the free giveaways here). Resilient is a book of 90 readings tracing the theme of resilience through the Sermon on the Mount and beyond. Here’s an excerpt.
“But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:44–45)
In his book The Evidence for God, Loyola University philosopher Paul Moser offers a fascinating case for the existence of God. His basic argument goes like this:
If there is a God, this God would need to be worthy of worship. (We may worship lesser gods like Thor or money, but that doesn’t make them worthy of worship.) To be worthy of worship, a God would need to be loving—even to the point of loving his enemies. And if there was such a God, this God would want his creatures to love each other too, as love always wants love shared.
Moser then asks if there’s evidence for such a God in human experience. As humans clearly have a selfish bent, what accounts for their loving acts toward others? Why does our conscience often feel pricked when we’re selfish? How can people like Wade Watts or Martin Luther King Jr. radically love their enemies? Moser suggests these experiences are evidence for the God of Christian belief. And, Moser adds, as we respond to his invitation of relationship, God transforms us into his loving character, proving his existence even more.
What follows is a sample first chapter of my book, The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist. If you enjoyed it, please do consider buying the full book, which is available both as a paperback and an ebook. It’s available online, or from all good bookstores. (You can also download a PDF of this sample chapter).
I remember the first time that I saw the bus. An old friend of mine had telephoned me out of the blue a few days before, and in a conspiratorial whisper had hissed: “You need to get down to London. There are atheist buses here”.
“Atheist buses?” I replied, bleary eyed. It was long past midnight. “How much have you drunk, Tom?”
“Only four pints,” Tom indignantly replied.
“Well, I’ve always personally thought that the slightly devil-may-care attitude to road safety of many London bus drivers tends to bring people closer to God, rather than drive them away.”
“This bus didn’t try to drive me away, it tried to drive over me. Admittedly I was lying semi-comatose in the road at the time—”
“I knew it!”
“—at Hammersmith and the atheist bus almost ran me over.”
“You do realise,” I explained, in the patient tone I reserve for small children and airline check in agents, “that just because a London bus almost flattens a liberal Anglican lying on a zebra crossing, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Richard Dawkins is resorting to hit-and-run attempts to keep the religious affiliation statistics favourable.”
“I’m used to being nearly run over, I’ve holidayed in France many times,”[1] snapped Tom. “But this was an atheist bus I tell you.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“Yes! Now come down to London and see. Besides, you owe me a beer from that time when you lost the bet about the Archbishop’s beard.”[2]
And so it was that I found myself, a few weeks later on a rainy July afternoon, standing among a crowd of damp tourists outside Oxford Circus tube station. We watched the traffic as cars, taxis, lorries, and the occasional sodden cyclist trundled past. And, then, at last, a bus rounded the corner. A big, red London bus sporting a huge advertisement on the side which announced in large, friendly letters: “There’s Probably No God. Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life”.
