Leading atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are convinced that they have discovered a devastating rebuttal to the traditional idea that the chains of causation in the universe imply the existence of a creator of the universe. In his book, The God Delusion, Dawkins concedes that the universe is fantastically complex, and this would ordinarily imply some external cause that produced this effect. Even so, Dawkins notes that we cannot infer a creator because such a creator would have to be at least as complex as the universe that he has supposedly designed. Therefore Dawkins concludes that “the theist’s answer has utterly failed” because it has only pushed the problem back by one level. “If God created the universe,” Sam Harris asks, “what created God?”

Both Dawkins and Harris are very proud of this argument. Harris triumphantly notes that to say the universe must have been created by God “poses an immediate problem of an infinite regress.” Why, in other words, does the chain of causation have to stop with God? Why can’t it go on forever? Harris argues that the Christian answer simply won’t do because “to say that God by definition is uncreated simply begs the question.” Dawkins haughtily concludes that “I see no alternative but to dismiss” the theistic argument.  These debunkers of religion think they have, with scientific precision, exposed a thousand years of metaphysical reasoning as irrational. Take that, Aquinas!

To see who is being irrational here, let’s revisit the traditional Christian argument in the form that Aquinas presented it. Aquinas begins with two principles that are today at the heart of all scientific reasoning. He argues that every effect requires a cause, and that nothing in the world is the cause of its own existence. Whenever you encounter A, it has to be caused by some other B. But then B has to be accounted for, and let us say it is caused by C. This tracing of causes, Aquinas says, cannot continue indefinitely, because if it did then nothing would have come into existence. Therefore there must be an original cause that is responsible for the chain of causation in the first place. To this first cause he gives the name God.

Let me clarify Aquinas’ argument with an example. Imagine yourself going to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a driver’s license. Upon arrival at the license counter you are asked to take a number before taking your test. Just as you are about to take the number, you are told that you must go to a different counter and take a number there.  And when you reach that counter, you are informed that you must first take another number. Suppose further that every time you attempt to take a number, you discover that there is a prior number that you must take before you can take the next number. At this point you would be extremely exasperated at what seems to be an unending process.

Now suppose that, just as you are ready to draw your weapon and start shooting, you see a man walking out of the DMV with his new license. You are extremely relieved, because you know instantly that the series of numbers must not in fact go on indefinitely. If the series were infinite, then no one would ever be able to reach the counter to take the test and get a license. So the fact that this fellow has done so proves that the series cannot be infinite.

Here’s a second example, which I borrow from historian Colin Brown. Think of the chain of causation in the universe as represented by a series of dominoes falling. Each domino that topples over is itself knocked over by another domino. The dominoes have been arranged so that, when the first one falls, it knocks over the second one, and so on. The trail of dominoes may be extremely long, but it cannot go on forever, because the whole process is only triggered by the fall of the first domino. If the first domino isn’t toppled, then the second and third and fourth ones aren’t going to fall either. Moreover, the first domino isn’t going to topple itself. It relies on some agent outside the series of falling dominos to knock it over.

We are in a better position at this juncture to see Aquinas’ point. Given that nothing in the universe is the cause of its own existence, the universe cannot be explained by an infinite regress of causation. If there were infinite regress then the series would not have gotten started in the first place. The universe is here, just like the fellow who has gotten his driver’s license or like the dominoes that we see toppling over before our eyes. And just as there had to be a first number at the DMV that got the sequence going, and someone or something that got the dominoes to start falling one by one, so too there must be a first cause for the universe that accounts for the chain of causation that we see everywhere in the world. We may not be able to say much about what this first cause is like, but we have logically established the need for it and the existence of it. Without a first cause, none of its effects—including the world, including us—would be here.

Aquinas can rest easy. It seems evident that Dawkins and Harris have not answered the theistic argument. Yet amusingly they think they have. What’s up with these self-styled paragons of reason?  Dawkins and Harris are experts in laboratory science. One is a zoologist, the other a student of neuroscience.  Here is the classic case of people who are experts in one field trying to issue authoritative pronouncements in another and embarrassing themselves in the process.

"Despite its inherent limits and frequent excesses, there is great dignity in the scientific vocation rightly understood---the dignity of confronting nature's facts in all their beauty and ugliness, and the dignity of seeking to make human life a little less miserable. Science is, or can be, a noble vocation, a realm of human endeavor that invites human excellence, including moral excellence. Against the sin of despair, the scientist stands for action. Against the postmodern revolt against reality, the scientist seeks truth. Thrown into a world that is mysterious, the scientist seeks to bring into light what is so often shrouded in darkness.

The trouble is that most scientists---at least most modern biologists, whose work dominates the public imagination about science---do not seem to reflect much or deeply about the limits of their method, or about the moral significance of the ends they seek and the means they use. The recent book by human genome pioneer Francis Collins---a memoir of faith that might have been titled C.S. Lewis goes to the Laboratory---is notable precisely because it is such a striking exception to the norm. In the public realm, most biologists seem, all too often, like scientific geniuses and moral simpletons, applying rational rigor to their investigations of nature by relying on feeling as their only moral compass. And for all its appreciation of nature's complexity, the scientific mind seems no rival for the Bible or Aristotle or Machiavelli in understanding human complexity. Next to the philosopher, the neuroscientist still looks, all too often, like a fool."

Eric Cohen
The Ends of Science
First Things/November 2006

But it is precisely the greatness of scientists in the experimental sphere that sometimes deforms their political judgment. In the laboratory and the lecture hall, research scientists grapple intimately with the deepest mysteries of nature: the evolution of species, the biological workings of mind and body, the molecular underpinnings of the material world. But because their end is so noble--objective knowledge of nature, often "useful for life"--scientists sometimes forget that it is also partial and dependent. Even a fully demystified nature offers no obvious guide for living a decent life. And the activity of demystifying nature requires many non-scientific institutions and supports--such as a productive economy, a stable polity, and a culture that rears the young to follow in their elders' footsteps. Precisely because the scientific method works so well in acquiring objective knowledge of the natural world, scientists often forget that it cannot supply the wisdom individuals need to live well in the human world, or settle the hard political questions that citizens face about the role of science in a democratic society.

Eric Cohen
Science and the Public Square
The New Atlantis

Running Conservative and Moderate Candidates Works for Democrats

The Right Democrat: Blog for Conservative and Moderate Democrats cites a recent New York Times front page article titled "In Key Races, Democrats Run To The Right." in which Times writers Shaila Dewan and Ann Kornblut analyze "the center-right trend among Democrats candidates especially in 'red' states":

"Democratic officials said they did not set out with the intention of finding moderates to run. Instead, as they searched for candidates with the greatest possibility of winning against Republicans in targeted districts, they said, they wound up with a number who reflected a more moderate approach. That is especially true in suburban areas and some rural districts, according to Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee."

"As a group, they are moderate in temperament and reformers in spirit," Emanuel said.

Right Democrat: a blog for conservative and moderate Democrats

Ted Haggard Resigns

Last Sunday Ted Haggard's letter of resignation was read to the congregation of New Life Church in Colorado Springs as members grappled with the realization that the claim by a gay escort of having sexual trysts with Haggard are true.

"The last four days have been so difficult for me, my family and all of you, and I have further confused the situation with some of the things I've said during interviews with reporters who would catch me coming or going from my home. But I alone am responsible for the confusion caused by my inconsistent statements. The fact is, I am guilty of sexual immorality, and I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar. There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life."

The unfolding saga is a reminder of the wisdom of William Temple's saying "The only thing of my very own which I contribute to redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed."

Evangelism Plus
John Stott reflects on where we've been and where we're going.

Recent interview of legendary preacher John Stott has uncanny relevance to this week's disclosure by Ted Haggard of sexual immorality and his consequent removal from his role as Senior Pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

Pride is the ever-present danger that faces all of us. In many ways, it is good for us to be despised and rejected. I think of Jesus' words, "Woe unto you when all men speak well of you."

Christianity Today

Dawkins Questions Parental Right to Teach their Children about God

But the atheist movement, by his lights, has no choice but to aggressively spread the good news. Evangelism is a moral imperative. Dawkins does not merely disagree with religious myths. He disagrees with tolerating them, with cooperating in their colonization of the brains of innocent tykes.

"How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents?" Dawkins asks. "It's one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods?"

Dawkins is the inventor of the concept of the meme, that is, a cultural replicator that spreads from brain to brain, like a virus. Dawkins is also a believer in democracy. He understands perfectly well that there are practical constraints on controlling the spread of bad memes. If the solution to the spread of wrong ideas and contagious superstitions is a totalitarian commissariat that would silence believers, then the cure is worse than the disease. But such constraints are no excuse for the weak-minded pretense that religious viruses are trivial, much less benign. Bad ideas foisted on children are moral wrongs. We should think harder about how to stop them.

Wired Magazine

God vs. Science

We revere faith and scientific progress, hunger for miracles and for MRIs. But are the worldviews compatible? TIME convenes a debate

The recent "atheist literary wave" and the fact that "a growing proportion of the profession (scientists) is experiencing what one major researcher calls 'unprecedented outrage' at perceived insults to research and rationality..." spurred Time magazine to convene a debate between spokesmen for both sides of the God vs Science debate. They chose atheist Richard Dawkins and Christian Francis Collins for the 90 minute exchange at the Time offices last September.

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