The following article, which appeared in yesterday's USA Today, is adapted from my new book What's So Great About Christianity:
We seem to be witnessing an aggressive attempt by leading atheists to portray religion in general, and Christianity in particular, as the bane of civilization. Finding the idea of God incompatible with science and reason, these atheists also fault Christianity with fostering a breed of fanaticism comparable to Islamic radicalism. The proposed solution: a completely secular society, liberated from Christian symbols and beliefs.
This critique, which comes from best-selling atheist books, academic tracts and a sophisticated network of atheist organizations and media, can be disputed on its own terms. What it misses, however, is the larger story of how Christianity has shaped the core institutions and values of the USA and the West. Christianity is responsible even for secular institutions such as democracy and science. It has fostered in our civilization values such as respect for human dignity, human rights and human equality that even secular people cherish.
Consider science. Although there have been many civilizations in history, modern science developed in only one: Western civilization. And why? Because science is based on an assumption that is, at root, faith-based and theological. That is the assumption that the universe is rational and follows laws that are discoverable through human reason.
Science is based on what James Trefil calls the principle of universality. "It says that the laws of nature we discover here and now in our laboratories are true everywhere in the universe and have been in force for all time." Moreover, the laws that govern the universe seem to be written in the language of mathematics. Physicist Richard Feynman found this to be "a kind of miracle."
Why? Because the universe doesn't have to be this way. There's no particular reason the laws of nature that we find on Earth should also govern a star billions of light years away. There's no logical necessity for a universe that obeys rules, let alone mathematical ones. So where did Western man get this idea of a lawfully ordered universe? From Christianity.
Christians were the first ones who envisioned the universe as following laws that reflected the rationality of God the creator. These laws were believed to be accessible to man because man is created in the image of God and shares a spark of the divine reason. No wonder, then, that the first universities and observatories were sponsored by the church and run by priests.
No wonder also that the greatest scientists of the West - Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Boyle, Newton, Leibniz, Gassendi, Pascal, Mersenne, Cuvier, Harvey, Dalton, Faraday, Joule, Lyell, Lavoisier, Priestley, Kelvin, Ampere, Steno, Pasteur, Maxwell, Planck, Mendel, and Lemaitre - were Christians. Gassendi, Mersenne and Lamaitre were priests. Several of them viewed their research as demonstrating God's creative genius as manifested in his creation.
If modern science has Christian roots, so do our most basic political institutions and values. Consider Thomas Jefferson's famous assertion in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." He claimed this was "self-evident," but one only has to look to history and to other cultures to see that it is not evident at all. Everywhere we see dramatic evidence of human inequality. Jefferson's point, however, was that human beings are moral equals. Every life has a worth no greater and no less than any other.
The preciousness and equal worth of every human life is a Christian idea. We are equal because we have been created equal in the eyes of God. This is an idea with momentous consequences. In ancient Greece and Rome, human life had very little value. The Spartans, for example, left weak children to die on the hillside. Greek and Roman culture was built on slavery.
Christianity banned infanticide and the killing of the weak and "dispensable," and even today Christian values are responsible for the moral horror we feel when we hear of such practices. Christianity initially tolerated slavery- a universal institution at the time - but gradually mobilized the moral and political resources to end it. From the beginning, Christianity discouraged the enslavement of fellow Christians. Slavery, the foundation of Greek and Roman civilization, withered and largely disappeared throughout medieval Christendom in the Middle Ages.
The first movements to abolish slavery completely occurred only in the West, and were led by Christians. In the modern era, first the Quakers and then the evangelical Christians demanded that since we are all equal in God's eyes, no man has the right to rule another man without his consent. This religious doctrine not only supplies the moral justification for anti-slavery but also for democracy. Yes, the idea of self-government is also rooted in the Christian assumption of human equality. One reason the atheist philosopher Nietzsche hated democracy is because he understood its religious foundation.
Consider finally modern notions of human rights - the right to freedom of conscience, or to property, or to marry and form a family, or to be treated equally before the law - as enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The universalism of this declaration is based on the particular teachings of Christianity. The premise is that all human lives have equal dignity and worth, but this is not the teaching of all the world's cultures and religions. Even so, it's appropriate that a doctrine Christian in origin should be universal in application. Christianity from the start promulgated its message as one for the whole world.
There are some atheists and even some Christians who admit that theism and Christianity have shaped the core institutions and values of America and the West. But now that we have these values, they say, why do we still need God and Christianity? Oddly enough, the answer is supplied by Nietzsche.
Nietzsche argued that since the Christian God is the foundation of Western values, the death of God must necessarily mean the erosion and ultimate collapse of those values. Remove the base and the whole building will slowly crumble. For a while, Nietzsche conceded, people would out of custom or habit continue to respect human life and treat people with equal dignity, but eventually there would be ferocious assaults on these values, and practices once unthinkable such as the killing of people deemed inferior or undesirable would once again occur. This is precisely what we have seen in our time, and Nietzsche predicted that it will only get worse.
If we cherish the distinctive ideals of Western civilization, and believe as I do that they have enormously benefited our civilization and our world, then whatever our religious convictions, we will not rashly try to hack at the religious roots from which they spring. On the contrary, we will not hesitate to acknowledge, not only privately but also publicly, the central role that Christianity has played and still plays in the things that matter most to us.
What's So Great About Christianity, Regnery, 2007
Reader Comments ( Page 14 of 15)
196. Quite simply, christians are ruining the United States of America. I used to be more passive, believing that these freaks should be able to believe whatever the hell they want to, subscribe to any ancient mythology they desire, have any IMAGINARY friend they need, even believe that their imaginary friend wrote a book, BUT NOT ANY MORE! These whackos are dangerous, plain and simple. They refuse to keep their ridiculous beliefs to themselves and are now wanting government endorsement for their idiocy. Time for all true Americans to stand up and say NO! NO to christian extremists!!! I don't care what what they do in the privacy of their homes and churches, just keep it the hell out of my wallet, off my body, out of my bedroom, and MOST CERTAINLY out of OUR GOVERNMENT!!!
Tim at 11:58PM on Oct 24th 2007
197. Can order come from chaos????
That is the proof that there is a creator. Order cannot come from chaos.
The universe is order. The Laws of Science are order. This cannot come randomly from chaos.
Laura at 12:02AM on Oct 25th 2007
198. I admit that many people do evil things in the name of God, does that make God evil, or the people evil?
Laura at 12:08AM on Oct 25th 2007
199. Laura:
You said:
"That is the proof that there is a creator. Order cannot come from chaos."
Order coming from chaos has nothing to do with the existence of a creator. Even if it did, it doesn't lend any support to any specific creator (i.e., the Christian one).
"I admit that many people do evil things in the name of God, does that make God evil, or the people evil?"
That depends. Hypothetically speaking, is it a good act for someone to stand idly by and not help someone else in trouble, when it's within their power to do so? Is it a good act to knowingly allow someone else to commit an evil one?
Tem at 4:17AM on Oct 25th 2007
200. Exactly, Brian. I'm sure Jesus would be very happy that his teachings have become GOD PORN.
J Boyd at 8:37AM on Oct 25th 2007
201. Actually, order can indeed come from chaos. (If chaos couldn't produce order, it wouldn't be truly chaos, would it?) There are plenty of circumstances where order *must* arise, even in the face of the worst possible chaos:
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/07/order_from_chaos_using_graphs_1.php
Ray Ingles at 9:21AM on Oct 25th 2007
202. It never ceases to amaze me how so many people are willing to believe anything as long as it is not biblical. Richard Dawkins states that faith is one of the world's great evils. However, faith, by its very definition, is "confidence in or dependence on a person or thing as trustworthy." In my mind it takes far more faith to be an atheists then it does to be a Christian. Their dependence is on the trustworthiness of self. Well, here is one more "fact" for you. In a hundred years no one will remember who Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens even were...but the Word of Lord endures forever.
Beth at 8:17PM on Oct 25th 2007
203. Actually, we have many examples of order arising from randomness, even in the "Laws" of the universe. When you start studying Quantum Mechanics, you find that most of the laws are really just averages that arise from lots of little random outcomes. As Bertrand Russell noted quite a while ago:
"[W]here you can get down to any knowledge of what atoms actually do, you will find they are much less subject to law than people thought, and that the laws at which you arrive are statistical averages of just the sort that would emerge from chance. There is, as we all know, a law that if you throw dice you will get double sixes only about once in thirty-six times, and we do not regard that as evidence that the fall of the dice is regulated by design; on the contrary, if the double sixes came every time we should think that there was design. The laws of nature are of that sort as regards a
great many of them. They are statistical averages such as would emerge from the laws of chance; and that makes this whole business of natural law much less impressive than it formerly was."
Ray Ingles at 9:29AM on Oct 25th 2007
204. Beth said: 197. It never ceases to amaze me how so many people are willing to believe anything as long as it is not biblical.
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I know. And it also never ceases to amaze me how so many people are willing to believe anything but the collected stories of Mother Goose, too. It's amazing because we've actually evolved brains that can see the difference between a fairy tale and real life. That's really amazing! If only you were one of us! But as in any bell curve, there's some at the front, and some at the rear. No insults intended to you, Larry Craig or the Right Honorable Reverabd Ted Haggard.
Brian at 7:01PM on Oct 25th 2007
205. Dyslexic Christians Untie!
Dog bless us.
Brian at 7:21PM on Oct 25th 2007
206. We can look to the past and see that when christianity actually ruled the earth, it presided over something called the "Dark Ages..."
The rise of secularism brought on the "Enlightenment..."
Today we've accomplished much that would have made men of that day cross themselves in disbelief. Science has allowed us to amelioriate the discomfort of the human condition to a great extent, with signs of more to come, much more.
But now the remnants of the Old Ways seek to re-establish themselves. Old Scratch is not so easily overthrown, even by the light of reason, as long as men willingly blind themselves through their own weakness and fear.
If christianity had total control of this world tomorrow, and if they had the armies to back them up, and held absolute power over us, this earth would know a second "Dark Ages..."
They'd be building the ovens the next month, for people like me, that speak out to them.
They call themselves christians, but do not follow the ways of Christ. They can thus be easily known to others as the wolves in sheep's clothing that they are. The Hypochrists. The Evil Ones.
I sound dramatic, but it's true. If you think I'm wrong, well, either I am, or you are. But you are SO willing to take that chance, aren't you, since you're all INFALLIBLE like your OMNISCIENT tribal deity Yaweh.
In spite of your convictions and your FAITH, you ARE utterly and almost laughably wrong. It's so sad, really.
But we laugh at their antics at our own peril. People used to say that Hitler wouldn't amount to anything with such a silly moustache... He looked so comical. Not dangerous at all.
Brian at 7:41PM on Oct 25th 2007
207. 200. Beth said: 197. It never ceases to amaze me how so many people are willing to believe anything as long as it is not biblical.
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I know. And it also never ceases to amaze me how so many people are willing to believe anything but the collected stories of Mother Goose, too. It's amazing because we've actually evolved brains that can see the difference between a fairy tale and real life. That's really amazing! If only you were one of us! But as in any bell curve, there's some at the front, and some at the rear. No insults intended to you, Larry Craig or the Right Honorable Reverabd Ted Haggard.
Brian at 8:44PM on Oct 25th 2007
208. In my mind it takes far more faith to be an atheists then it does to be a Christian.
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The first three words invalidate the last sixteen. Your mind is hardly a reliable source.
You are belief-based, not thought-based, therefore what you believe about reality is not necessarily relevent to what reality actually is. I do not expect a blind man to describe the color red to me, and I do not expect a belief-based mind to be able to think very well. If you can't change, you can't LEARN. That's only one of your handicaps.
Being an atheist absolutely requires that you have NO faith. Zero. None. And you can't call atheism a faith, either. It's the lack of one. So what are you blathering on about again?
Brian at 9:13PM on Oct 25th 2007
209. 160. Yeah--
Thank God for the burning of the library at Alexandria,
Thank God for the murder of Hypatia,
Thank God for the closing of Plato's Academy,
Thank God for the Dark Ages,
Thank God for the Inquisition,
Thank God for the rack,
Thank God for the thumbscrew,
Thank God for the iron maiden,
Thank God for burning of books,
Thank God for burning of people,
Thank God for the burning of Joan of Arc as a "witch",
Thank God for the burning of other "witches" at Salem, Mass.,
THANK GOD FOR THE ENLIGHTENMENT THAT PUT A STOP TO ALL THAT SHIT !!!
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Yeah! You go emelpe!!! Very nicely put, and so obvious, and yet they deny and obfuscate.
Liars are so unattractive, don't you think?
Brian at 9:28PM on Oct 25th 2007
210. Oh yeah, and I seem to recall someone, perhaps DD, and perhaps on a previous blog, say something about believing in a unicorn. Something like "I don't believe in unicorns, but I don't go around blogging about how bad it is to believe in them, so why do atheists go around persecuting christians about something that they say that they do not believe in?" (God)
Sounds good at first think, and you fundies don't get much beyond that, I know, but if you REALLY think about it, it's hogwash.
There aren't MILLIONS of unicornists (unicorn-believers) that try to influence American politics to fit their unicornist agenda, change the supreme court to eliminate Roe V Wade because it's offensive to one-horned mammals, and tell us a-unicornists that we'll spend eternity in searing unicorn pain for not believing as they do in unicorns, and being morally self-righteous about how unicornists are the BEST and GOODEST people on the planet, so you'd better become one, or else be "left behind" or perhaps face unicorn hell yourself, even though you don't believe in it, and then be glad and gloat about it, since after all, unicornists are the great UNICORN GOD'S CHOSEN ONES, so whatever they decide to do is by definition, moral and upright and pleasing to all. Except dirty sinner a-unicornists, of course. And the Buddhists.
Brian at 9:47PM on Oct 25th 2007