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While openly mocking
Christ and His atonement, all that New Atheists
can offer in its place is a "salvation"
through Darwinian environmentalism: Man's
environment must be "saved" so that the struggle
of the fittest to survive, climbing upon the
carcasses of the "unfit," can continue from
generation to generation.
Mocking Christ and His Atonement
New Atheists mock the Biblical doctrine of
salvation from sin through the atonement of
Jesus Christ. Richard Dawkins' rantings are
typical:
Well, there's
no denying that, from a moral point of view,
Jesus is a huge improvement over the cruel ogre of the Old
Testament. Indeed
Jesus, if he existed (or whoever wrote his script if he
didn't) was surely one of the great ethical innovators of history.
The Sermon on the Mount is way ahead of its
time. . . .
Notwithstanding
his somewhat dodgy family values, Jesus' ethical teachings were
— at least by
comparison with the ethical disaster
area that is the Old Testament
—
admirable; but there are other teachings in the New Testament
that no good person should support. I refer especially to the
central doctrine of Christianity: that of 'atonement' for 'original sin'. This
teaching, which lies at the heart of New Testament theology, is almost as
morally obnoxious as the story of Abraham setting out to barbecue Isaac,
which it resembles....Original sin itself comes straight from the Old Testament myth of Adam and Eve.
Their sin
— eating the fruit of a forbidden tree
— seems mild
enough to merit a mere reprimand. But the symbolic nature of the fruit (knowledge of good and evil, which in practice turned out to be
knowledge that they were naked) was enough to turn their
scrumping [apple-stealing] escapade into the mother
and father of all sins. They and all their descendants were banished
forever from the Garden of Eden,
deprived of the gift of eternal life, and condemned to generations of
painful labour, in the field and in childbirth respectively.
So far, so vindictive: par for the Old Testament course. New Testament theology adds a new injustice, topped off by a new sado-masochism whose viciousness even the Old Testament barely exceeds. It is, when you think about it, remarkable that a religion should adopt an instrument of torture and execution as its sacred symbol, often worn around the neck. Lenny Bruce rightly quipped that 'If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.' But the theology and punishment-theory behind it is even worse. The sin of Adam and Eve is thought to have passed down the male line...What kind of ethical philosophy is it that condemns every child, even before it is born, to inherit the sin of a remote ancestor?...Augustine, by the way, who rightly regarded himself as something of a personal authority on sin, was responsible for coining the phrase 'original sin'. Before him it was known as 'ancestral sin'. Augustine's pronouncements and debates epitomize, for me, the unhealthy preoccupation of early Christian theologians with sin. They could have devoted their pages and their sermons
to extolling the sky splashed with stars, or mountains and green forests, seas and dawn choruses. These are occasionally mentioned, but the Christian focus is overwhelmingly on sin sin sin sin sin sin. What a nasty little preoccupation to have dominating your life. Sam Harris is magnificently scathing in his
Letter to a Christian Nation: 'Your principal concern appears to be that the Creator the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. This prudery of yours contributes daily to the surplus of human misery.'
But now, the sado-masochism.
God incarnated himself as
Jesus, in order that he should
be tortured and executed in
atonement
for the hereditary sin of Adam. Ever since Paul expounded
this repellent doctrine, Jesus
has been worshipped as the redeemer
of all our sins. Not just the past sin of Adam: future sins as
whether future people decided to
commit them or not!1
New Atheism's
Offer of "Salvation"
What kind of "salvation" do
New Atheists offer instead?
Daniel Dennett tells us:
I,
too,
want the world to be a better place. This is my
reason for
wanting people to
understand and accept evolutionary theory: I
believe that their salvation may depend on it!
How so? By opening
their eyes to the dangers of pandemics,
degradation of the environment,
and
loss of biodiversity,
and
by informing them about some
of
the foibles of human nature. So isn't my belief
that belief in evolution is the path to
salvation a religion? No; there is a major
difference. We who love evolution do not honor
those whose love of evolution prevents them from
thinking clearly and rationally about it!...So I feel a moral
imperative
spread the word of evolution, but evolution is
not my religion.
I
don't have a religion.2
In other words, in the New Atheist view man's salvation centers on
Darwinian environmentalism: Man's environment
must be "saved" so that the struggle of the
fittest to survive, climbing upon the carcasses
of those who are not fit to survive, can
continue from generation to generation. But
don't you dare accuse those "who love evolution"
and believe that it is "the path to salvation"
of having a religion; and don't you dare say
that the death of the allegedly unfit among humanity —
through abortion, euthanasia, holocausts, wars,
disasters or any other means — is their religion's
"sacrament".
Authentic Christianity in Contrast
The Scripture-driven Christian understands that
God has not left mankind in the state of
despairing hopelessness that the New Atheist
describes.
We understand that while there is bad news about the
entire human race, but
there is also good news. We see
the evidence of that bad news everywhere we
look, in disease, natural disasters, hatred,
wars, and death.
Since the Bible is the Word of God, it is an accurate historical
record of mankind and the universe from the
beginning. So we can read the early
chapters of the Bible to
understand how mankind began. And before we
read very far at all, we find that the
human race was not always in its present
condition. It was once perfect. But
something happened —
something that changed everything.
The early
chapters of the Bible also introduce us to good news from God
— the best
possible news.
That good news is the answer to the bad news about mankind.
The Bible tells us that every human being is not merely seriously
ill, but is already dead
— born dead. Every
human being comes into the world spiritually
dead, and is therefore moving toward
inevitable physical death as well. But there is a cure, and it
is only found in one place, the Bible, and
in only one Person, the Lord Jesus Christ.
You can read more about the good news
here.
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References:
-
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), pages
250-252. Italics are in the original.
-
Daniel Dennett,
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural
Phenomenon (London: Penguin Books Ltd.,
2006), page 268.
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