As I begin writing this post, this article has approximately 1000 diggs. Without question there is a new atheism rising. Not rising in popularity mind you, but rising in boldness. Books by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens have recently been given wide publication. Also soon the Bill Maher movie, Religulous, comes out. I blogged about it here, and another good blog about it is found here.) People do not seem to be becoming atheists but the atheists are becoming more bold.
This article, "why do people believe in God?" is written by an atheist.
The thesis of the article is found in the following quote. "No religion accepts us as the person we know ourselves to be. Rather, we are told that we are inadequate, unsatisfactory and helpless" (Emphasis mine) There is a fundamental problem with this statement that plagues most of the atheists.
Before addressing the problem with the previous statement I need to say this; atheism always seems to have one of 2 causes at the core. First, the vast majority of atheists do not know how to deal with the presence of evil. In other words, they cannot reconcile the existence of suffering in the world with the existence of a loving God. (If anyone actually wants to read it, I can write a couple of posts addressing this problem.) Secondly, the desire to be in control of one's own life. In other words the childish attitude that,"nobody can tell me what to do" extends even as far as to an all-powerful God. And I again remind you of the words of Ivan from The Brothers Karamazov, if there is no god there is no morality. (Somebody in Sunday School taught me this second one a while back and I've noticed it as a trend ever since.)
This article represents both of these viewpoints. But the author gives herself away at the end with the quote. "The person that we know ourselves to be." She does not want to be told that what she desires or does is wrong, or even that it may be. I wonder if she believes that Jeffrey Dahmer should feel free to "be the person he knew himself to be" That person just wanted to eat people. She obviously does not say, but I assume that she believes that there should be some morality.
Here is the real problem I suppose that it never has struck her that the reason that virtually everyone on the planet believes in a god is that the "person we know ourselves to be" is flawed.
It's not just that we are told we are flawed. We are, in reality, flawed. We know that we do wrong if left to ourselves, and without someone offering guidance, we will continue to do wrong. Religion is not the reason that we need police in the world, and religion is not the reason that there are wars and depression. Nobody has to teach a baby to do wrong or to lie about doing wrong.
In fact, with just a small bit of looking at the world, we find that the Bible is correct. We find that God's law is written on our hearts. (Jer 31:33 Psalm 40:8 Heb 8:10) We find that God has made himself obvious to everyone, not just through creation (Psalm 19 Rom 1:19-20) but through our conscience as well.
Sorry Ms. Rowe, "the person we know ourselves to be" is not good enough, no matter how well we are accepted by others. And if you look at the previous sentence and determine that I am the problem with the world, I'll just have to accept that criticism.