Catholic Answers, a magazine billing itself as “[t]he premier magazine of Catholic apologetics and evangelization for more than two decades”, dedicates its cover story for the March-April 2013 to bashing New Atheism. The article (not online) by Trent Horn, titled “How to Respond to the “New Atheism””, in a pretty disorganized way, whines about our laughing at their laughable beliefs, offers advice on how to counter us (not very good advice as we’ll see), and has in it a hilarious, if holier-than-thou, “explanation” of why Christians are (according to Horn) better protecting women’s rights than atheists (which I will get to in a later post).
It starts with a subtitle showing profound ignorance:
Ridicule of religion is the ethos of the modern unbeliever.
It then goes on to cite a character from a C S Lewis novel who is critical of religion, and, while the character does not openly advocate ridicule, Horn sees this as a “prophecy” of unbelievers ridiculing faith.
Only it is not.
He then goes on to tell a story of the hostility against atheists during the Red Scare (with absolutely no mention of the incitement of hated against atheists by religious radicals and complicity of “moderate religion”), talks about the accomodationism of Paul Kurtz, and goes on to describe the grave sin of New Atheists’ failure to abide by the rule of “respecting” faith.
What made these atheists “new” weren’t their arguments against religion but their attitude that religion should be reviled.
(As an apologist, Horn appears to be pretty sloppy. He would be saving us all some time if he had done his homework.)
He then goes on to disapprovingly cite the church/state separation activism by organizations such American Atheists and Freedom From Religion Foundation, without as much as offering a rebuttal. Is keeping church and state self-explanatory in being wrong?
Horn then follows with a section titled “The Internet: The church of atheism”, where he laments “new atheists’ presence on the Internet dwarfs that of their religious counterparts”. While I think Jesus will forgive the sin of jealousy on the part of the good Catholic, Horn should be reminded that not every place people gather is a “church”. Why not “The football stadium” of atheism?
He starts giving advice to believers on how to counter atheists by quoting 1 Peter 3:15-16 where it says “keep your conscience clear so that, when you are abused, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame”. I am guessing Cardinal Keith O’Brien should have taken that to heart.
Horn then proceeds to accuse atheists of shifting the goalpost: “…if you present scientific evidnece for God (such the the universe’s beginning in time)…If you presented objective moral truths as evidence of an objective moral law-giver…”in each case, he claims atheists might come up with criticisms of the catholic church that do not directly address the above statements.
While believers do a good deal of goalpost-shifting themselves, I don’t see why anyone confronted with the degree of lameness Horn presents would want to do anything but directly confront and debunk him. If there is “scientific evidence” for God, then why can’t we find it in a peer reviewed journal? The “argument form Big Bang” that he is talking about here makes two assumptions: A) The Big Bang theory has to be true in its current form, meaning, without any physical explanation, such as quantum tunneling or “multiverse”, but this is not universally accepted by physicists; and B) That God had to have existed before the Big Bang (or else would need a creator too!). But if assumption A is true, then, there was no time before the Big Bang, hence God couldn’t have existed before that either. As for objective moral truths, they are not indicative of an “objective moral law giver”, only of objective existence of suffering. No moral “truths” (such as condemnation of homosexuality, which Horn’s church is so obsessed with) are ever going to be universally accepted, unless they have to do with decreasing suffering.
Horn has a suggestion for the kind of behavior he doesn’t think believers should engage in: harassment and threats. He mentions the case of Jessica Ahlquist. While this is nice to hear, Ahlquist’s case only represents the tip of the iceberg; the list of acts of vandalism against our billboards, for example, is practically limitless. Horn himself, as mentioned already, isn’t all so happy about atheists becoming church/state activists.
Horn wraps up by saying something very odd:
Instead of obsessively worrying about atheist mockery that makes the church look ridiculous, we should take steps to not become ignorant or offensive Christians who accomplish the same thing.
Not obsess about atheists? Great idea. Why didn’t he think of that before writing the article?
