William Petruzzo

Phew! I think I started Dr. Albert Mohler’s Atheism Remix about two months ago and I just finished. Took me long enough.

In his recent book, Mohler documents and reacts to four of today’s most prominent and evangelistic atheists. The new atheists, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens. Or, as Mohler likes to call them, “the four horsemen of the new atheism”.

Mohler himself is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville Kentucky. He also hosts a self-titled national radio program. He is the author of the recent book Culture Shift, and is one of my favorite bloggers, writing mostly about culture issues.

Mohler’s style of writing is easy to read. Like something you’d find in a commentary section of a newspaper. The content is compelling, but the language and structure is not overwhelming. It should be an easy read for most and a breeze for heavy readers.

Remix is short. Surprisingly short. 108 pages, spread over four chapters, sliced into about six chapter subsets (again, why’d it take two months to finish?). But length doesn’t necessarily mean much. Mohler says quite a lot in a little bit of space.

This New Atheism is unprecedented, as Mohler sees it. Unlike atheism movements in the past, it’s popular. Mohler sites how long these proponent’s books have taken residence on best seller stands. He also addresses the distinct lack of moral grieving over the loss of something previously seen as beautiful: faith. There’s quite a lot more to say. That’s why Mohler wrote a book.

The subtitle is “a Christian confronts the New Atheists”, but the subtitle is misleading. When I first received the book from Amazon, I was disappointed at the size. I thought to myself, “really? this dude is effectively going to go up against four of the most outspoken members of the atheist movement in just over a hundred pages?”. Well, he doesn’t. In fact, he doesn’t even try to. The final chapter of the book makes clear that this text was not written to confront them, or even their followers. It’s written for Christians, living in a culture that’s shifting as a result of this emerging “New Atheism”.

And for us, he writes convincingly, with conviction.

Dr. Mohler does an excellent job of bringing together information. Much of the pages are made up of discussing other opponents attacks on the New Atheists. I find this reads with a refreshing humility. It gives us the sweetest points of popular rebuttal but also lends to an argument that feels much larger that is actually contained in the book.

Mohler saves the biggest chunk of his own opinion for the final chapter (which is also typical of his blog), titled “New Atheism and the Future of Christianity”. In it he gives Christians an encouragement not to shrink from the discussion but to read, study, learn and pray.

Overall, I recommend this book to most all Christians. If you’re unfamiliar with this new movement, this will serve as an excellent introduction. If you’re already pretty well informed, this will be an easy read and an important reminder. It’s certainly no waste of time.

Albert Mohler (in his recent book Atheism Remix), while discussing Alister McGrath’s rebuttal to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, made one of the most interesting points. Perhaps not a new point. But in a realm where Richard Dawkins seems to be considered reasonable, it really is quite a thought provoking statement.

He writes:

“God is not ‘improbable’ in any sense greater than humanity itself is improbably on Dawkins’ own terms—for Dawkins himself makes the point that the emergence of humanity is itself highly improbably.”

Dang. That’s a pretty stellar point.

Okay, so the existence of God is improbable. But is my existence really any more probable than his? I don’t really think so.

I’m slowly reading through Albert Mohler’s new book Atheism Remix. The book is about the “new” atheism in America, which I won’t go to great length to describe right now. The gist is that the last 50 years has seen a shift from the intellectual elite down, in which it is not longer “dangerous” not to believe in God, but rather, it is dangerous to believe in God.

Mohler does a good job showing this in the context of our current culture, but you’re just going to have to take my word for it right now.

But, what struck me yesterday was something Mohler quoted while profiling Daniel Dennett, one of Mohler’s “four horsemen of the New Atheism”. Dennet believes that every aspect of existence can be described with the evolutionary theory. All consciousness can be reduced to that one basic process. He claims belief in deity to be part of that process. At one point in time, that belief must have produced a reproductive advantage, but now no longer does and so it will soon die out, but not immediately.

Dennett sees culture by and large, no longer believing in God, but rather, “believing in belief”. A strange statement to be sure, but it kind of makes sense. More any more people believe in a religious relativism. “What’s true for you isn’t true for me.” Of course, this kind of thinking has a short fuse. If something is true and we don’t believe it, wouldn’t that make us foolish? Stupid? And, if something is "true" for someone else, but we don’t believe it, then how can we really believe what is "true" for us? Hence, Dennett’s point. People believe less, but believe more in believing.

To support his point that few people actually believe in God these days, Mohler paraphrased Dennett saying:

"They really are not claiming cognitively to believe in God, because… if they really believed in God then they would have to live differently than they do."

He’s right. It’s logical. And, it’s the proof that much of the church isn’t really the church and the New Testament confirms it (1 John 1:6-7). If people had an honest belief in God, they would be forced to live differently than they do.

When a person believes they can be seriously injured in a car accident, they buckle their seatbelt. When a person believes they can be robbed, they lock their doors. When  person believes in God, in Jesus, they fall to their knees at the realization of their destitution and repent. They live differently than they do.

Dennett may be wrong about God, but I doubt he is wrong about the conditions of belief and the conditions of hearts. We would be foolish to ignore it.

Shocker, right? But I never really considered how important it was that we don’t live Luther’s life. The great reformer and had a tremendous faith and courage, but it was nothing like our faith and courage. Not to suggest that it was necessarily better or worse. Just different.

I read a quote from Dr. Heiko Obermann in Albert Mohler’s new book Atheism Remix. Obermann was a historian of the late Medieval and early Reformation eras and he had this to say:

“I can see that you do not understand what I am saying to you. What I am saying to you is that you do not live life as Martin Luther lived life. You do not wake up in the morning as he did, nor do you go to bed at night as he did. You need to understand something about changed conditions of belief. Do you not understand that in the time of Martin Luther, almost every single human being in European civilization woke up afraid that he would die before nightfall? Eternal destiny was a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute thought. Every night, as the late Medieval or early Reformation human beings closed his eyes, he feared that he would wake up either in heaven or in hell. You do not live with that fear. And that means your understanding of these things is very different from Martin Luther’s. That’s why he threw ink pots at the Devil, and you close your notebook and sleep well at night.”

Modern people, even Christians, are conditioned, on some level, to embrace doubt. Somewhere in the back of everyone’s mind rests the possibility, the plausibility that maybe, just maybe, we’ve got it wrong. It’s culturally ingrained in most everyone, whether we like it or not.

As much as I love classic theologians and preachers and have a deep respect and admiration for them, a sizeable portion of their words lack a very important sense if relatability. They can’t take modern culture’s doubt into account, because in no way did they share it.

Thank God for the enduring relatability of His Word.