The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

If you believe that there is no God to which you are accountable or that there is no God who has provided redemption for you, you will live your life quite differently than one who affirms such propositions.  Consider the famous British philosopher of the 20th century—Bertrand Russell, one of the founders of analytic philosophy.  One of his most famous books was Why I Am Not a Christian.  For Russell, there was no God.  What was absolute for Russell was the material world, which is all there is.  If one traces the origin of all things, one arrives at impersonal matter and nothing else, he argued.  There is no spirit or immaterial world and there is absolutely no personal God.  The God of the Bible, to Russell, was myth—a human concoction.  His worldview actually did not produce optimism or a sense of anticipation about the future.  Instead, his worldview produced acute despair.  When there is no ultimate grounding for existence, existence becomes meaningless. From his book mentioned above, he wrote:  

“[Here then] is the world which science built for our belief:  That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of the universe in ruins. . . Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built” (p. 107).  How tragic!

Ideas do indeed have consequences.  The well-known atheist, Richard Dawkins, an Emeritus Fellow of New College at Oxford University in England, has spent much of his life attempting to disprove God and discredit Christianity.   His 2006 book, The God Delusion, attacked faith philosophically and historically, using the Darwinian hypothesis for its intellectual support.  [Dawkins was part of the New Atheism movement, which included Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens—the “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheism.]   But, this April, Richard Dawkins declared that he now considers himself a “cultural Christian.” Dawkins is beginning to notice that when Christianity declines, the benefits it affords to society quickly diminishes as well.  A decade ago, the infamous New Atheist professor whimsically confessed to Rowan Williams that he sometimes catches himself humming hymns in the shower. Today, he is calling for the defense of Christianity as the established religion of Britain: “I feel at home in the Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country.” The remarks were prompted by his discovery that Ramadan lights, rather than Easter decorations, were hung on London’s Oxford Street. Dawkins declared that it would be “truly dreadful” for the United Kingdom to substitute another religion, namely Islam, for Christianity. Since then, he has only doubled down on his newfound appreciation for the religion of peace.

Dawkins made these fascinating confessions to host Rachel Johnson of LBCNews:

• “I call myself a cultural Christian. I’m not a believer, but there’s a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian . . . I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos . . . We [in the U.K.] are a ‘Christian country’ in that sense.”
• Dawkins then told Johnson that he’s “horrified” to see Islamic holidays and mosques taking the place of Christian feasts and cathedrals in Europe:  “If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I’d choose Christianity every single time. It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not.”

Dawkins seems to be slowly realizing the implications of his position and the movement he helped unleash as radical Islam and secular ideology fill the vacuum in our post-Christian age.  As historian Tom Holland put it “. . . secularism and Dawkins’ own brand of evangelical atheism are both expressions of a specifically Christian culture—as Dawkins himself, sitting on the branch he’s been sawing through and gazing nervously at the ground far below, seems to have begun to realize.” Dawkins wants the fruit of the tree without the tree; he wants liberation from superstition and fundamentalist religion while keeping the yield of religion. As Murray Campbell argues, “In other words, Richard Dawkins is admiring and eating the fruit of Christianity. He is happily tasting the sweetness and embracing the aromas and feeling the textures of the fruit, but he still denies the reality of the living tree from which the fruit has grown. The tree is no more dead or invisible than is the fruit we eat.”

Paul Shakeshaft concludes, “Still, there would be none of the fruits of Christianity without its roots, specifically the essential beliefs in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord; and the rest. Another Oxford professor, C.S. Lewis pointed this out in the 1940s in The Screwtape Letters. Lewis wrote, ‘Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop.’ Lewis knew, better than Dawkins, that God will not be used as a means to an end. He is the end.”

In conclusion, I believe it is helpful to appeal to the book of Ecclesiastes.  The author, Solomon, wrote the book about 3,000 years ago.  He posits a thesis of what the world would be like if the box were closed and there were no God.  His conclusion is “vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”  If the box is closed and there is no God, then nothing ultimately makes sense.  Some of Solomon’s conclusions, peppered throughout the book:

1. Why do I seek to be wise, if there is no God?
2. He compares the fool and the wise man.  Intuitively, it seems far better to be wise and not foolish.  But both have the same fate—death.  So, why be wise?
3. Also, he suggests that working hard to save and invest makes no sense, if there is no God.  Why have I been so wise with my wealth, for, when I die, my children will get my wealth and they are foolish, he suggests.  Would it not be better to simply eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die?
4. Solomon probes the whole matter of physical work in a closed box universe.  It makes no sense if there is no God.  Why have a work ethic that includes sincerity, consistency and frugality?
5. He concludes in 12:13-14 that the “conclusion of the matter [is] fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of every human being.  For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”  In short, the box is not closed; it is open.  There is a transcendent God who exists and He has revealed himself.  That revelation is sufficient for life and for salvation.  To worship God and to obey God brings meaning and purpose to life.  Further, He holds everyone accountable.  In short, there is an eternal significance to all things.

Contrast Russell’s despair, mentioned at the beginning of this essay, with the hope and purpose of biblical Christianity.  The Bible makes clear that humanity does die, but that reality is due to sin and rebellion against God.  The resurrection of Jesus Christ, preceded by His substitutionary sacrifice for sin, paid the penalty for sin and conquered the mortal enemy death.  God did all of this because He loves His creatures and seeks to reconcile not only humanity but all of the physical creation to Himself.  The Bible helps us to see reality the way God sees it:  There is sin; there is salvation through faith; there is hope; there is eternal life; and there is a God who created us, desires to fellowship with us and provides an abundant, purpose-filled life.

So, humanity must choose:  Either the despair-based view of only materialism or the hope-filled salvation through Jesus Christ offered by the living, transcendent and loving God.   Blaise Pascal, a brilliant French thinker during the Scientific Revolution, posited his now famous “Wager:” Pascal stated that to believe or not believe in God’s existence is actually to wager that He exists or does not exist.  If we believe He exists and He does, the reward is eternal happiness.  If we believe and He does not exist, nothing is really lost.  However, if we reject God’s existence and He does exist, we are damned for eternity.  Thus, we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by wagering that God exists.  Although clever and subtle, Pascal’s wager is one Richard Dawkins should seriously consider, for his eternal destiny rides on its consideration.

See John Piper’s essay on Russell in World (24 October 2009), p. 46; Murray Campbell, “‘I’m a cultural Christian’ says Richard Dawkins” at www.anglican.ink (3 April 2024); John Stonesteet and Shane Morris at Breakpoint (9 April 2024); and Paul Shakeshaft in First Things (2 July 2024).