Below is the short essay titled “Answering Angry Atheists” by our brother Fr. Ashley.
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ANSWERING ANGRY ATHEISTS
It is always worthwhile to ask a good question, even when we know the answer, because if the answer is true, we can always deepen our understanding of it. That is why I am going to discuss the physicist Victor J. Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis, (Amherst, NY; Prometheus Books, 2007), along with some consideration of Richard Dawkins violently rhetorical The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), with a word on the most violent of all, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. who is not a scientist but a political writer, Christopher Hitchens. Currently there are also books advocating atheism by Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, and Brooke Allen in Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers. They all argue that our culture would be more moral if it were secular humanist liberal democracy.
These books all ignore or, as does Dawkins, the classical Catholic arguments for God’s existence, namely, the Five Ways summarily stated in St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae I, q.2, a. 3, c. after he has shown in a. 1 and a. 2 that God’s existence is not self-evident but requires rational proof from the evidence of its sensible effects. I will here confine my discussion to what he calls “The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion” because the other four Ways presuppose it. Note, however, that although St. Thomas insists in a. 1 that God’s existence is not evident to reason, nevertheless in answering objection 1 in that article he says,
To know that God exists in a general and confused way is implanted in us by nature, inasmuch as God is man’s beatitude. For man naturally desires happiness, and what is naturally desired by man must be naturally known to him. This, however, is not to know absolutely that God exists; just as to know that someone is approaching is not the same as to know that Peter is approaching, even though it is Peter who is approaching; for many there are who imagine that man’s perfect good which is happiness, consists in riches, and others in pleasures, and others in something else.
Stenger makes no explicit mention of this argument, and his only reference to Aquinas is to a one sentence summary of the Fourth Way which he calls “the moral argument” on p. 210. This he refutes by saying that if God were the “source of commonly accepted human morals and values,” then those who believe in him should be more virtuous than those who do not,” which Stenger claims they are not. This is not Aquinas’ basic argument for God’s existence, but rather that human virtue (and Aquinas admits…a fact Hitchens ignores, that non-believers can have human virtues) and everything positive in the universe must have a first, ultimate cause that is itself perfect.
Dawkins, however, attempts to refute this First Way that Aquinas calls the most evident and treats at greater length and more philosophically in the Summa Gentiles that in the Summa Theologiae from which Dawkins (p. 77) summarizes it as “’Nothing moves without a prior mover: This leads us to a regress from which the only escape is God. Something had to make the first move, and that something we call God.” Dawkins then refutes this by claiming that it is “an entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to regress” or to endow this Mover with “the properties normally ascribed to God.” He then grants that some processes have a “terminator” such as cutting a piece of gold until we reach its atoms, but then says, “it is by no means clear that God provides a natural terminator to the regresses of Aquinas” (pp. 78). Thus (a) Dawkins ignores the fact that Aquinas First Way formally only concludes to the existence of an Unmoved Mover, not immediately to God. Only after Aquinas has proved that an Unmoved Mover that is not material exists “which is what everybody means by “God,” does he go with further arguments to show that it must actually be a supremely intelligent and powerful personal being, as Dawkins supposes. Moreover Dawkins, by stretching the term First Cause to include material terminators such as an atom, ignores the fact that this is why Aquinas gives no proof from material causality. St. Thomas is not, like Dawkins, a reductionist for whom “to explain” always means to reduce to a things parts, but holds that we can explain in terms of all four causes of an observed effect, except in the case of spiritual things that have no material cause.
Therefore, the proper and only really effective way of refuting such atheists as these is to state correctly the First Way of Aquinas, derived from Aristotle’s Physic Book VIII and to show that if it is not certain then all of modern science collapses, because it is based on the fact of change and most evidently of local motion. I have tried to show this in detail my book The Way Toward Wisdom.
First we need to make clear that modern thought since Descartes at the time of Galileo has generally based human knowledge on Platonic innate ideas, or since the Eighteenth Century Enlightenment, on the innate logical categories of Immanuel Kant. Yet it has claimed to be “empirical.” If we are to be really empirical we must like Aristotle and Aquinas reject this idealism and base all our rational knowledge on the evidence of the senses as these atheists falsely claim they are doing. We must not, however, fall into the common error usually taught students of science that everything in science is merely more or less probable. If that were the case everything in science would be improbable. Why? Because when we say that something is “probable” we must have reasons for saying it is probable. But if these reasons are also only probable then the probability of that hypothesis decreases. If this goes on infinitum because every scientific statement is only probable, then all of science has zero probability. In fact, while very much of science, particularly when we get to microscopic or macroscopic hypotheses that are very difficult to verify or falsify empirically, is hypothetical and subject to revision, there are certainties in science, such as that the world is spheroid not flat! Thus, while we should be cautious about claiming scientific certitude, it is absurd to call it all merely probable, especially the fact that all the world we can observe is changing and moving on which the First Way is based, is certain.
The most evident and certain information given us by our senses is that all we sense is moving. If it were not we could not sense it, since it has to change us for us to sense it and hence must move into contact with our body directly or through a changing medium. This fact of change is the only fact required to prove that change is ultimately the effect of an absolutely unmoved mover that, since it causes that effect to exist, must also exist. This is true because it is a contradiction to say that something changes itself, because a thing cannot give another thing the existence which it does not already have itself. Thus the existence of the whole universe of moving things studied by science depends on the existence of the first Unmoved Non-Material Mover and science would be mere speculation if this were not true.
Yet many today trust modern science mainly for pragmatic reasons, namely, that it has produced our remarkable technology. They forget that for over a thousand years Ptolemy’s remarkable geocentric astronomical science “worked” very well in predicting eclipses, setting the calendar, and guiding navigation, but then turned out to be quite false, as have many other scientific hypotheses. With Einstein and modern quantum theory also the former notion that all physical events are deterministic turned out to be false. In the 18th century the great physicist Pierre-Simon Laplace claimed that if he knew the initial conditions of the universe at any point in time he could predict its entire future and this was exhibited before Einstein. Now quantum physicists claim that such predictions can only be probable. Oddly Aristotle and Aquinas had said the same in ancient and medieval times, since they said that God is the Prime Mover not only of natural events determined by natural law, but also of chance events, and free events.
Much, but not all, of modern science is based on mathematical hypotheses which are certain only as to negative conclusions, since what is mathematically impossible is certainly physically false, but not vice versa, since many mathematical models can fit the same facts, as Ptolemy’s astronomy did. Hence the fact that it ‘works” does not mean that it must be true. Therefore Protestant writers and most Catholic ones who have tried to refute these atheists are, I believe, making a big mistake in relying on what they call the Argument from Design, which is either, according to its formulation, the Fourth or Fifth Way of Aquinas. The best case for the design Argument, in my opinion has been made by a Catholic microbiologist, Michael Behe, of Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, 1996b. Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (The Free Press, New York, 1996) and numerous replies to his critics. He holds for the fact of evolution, as did Pope John Paul II, but insists that the “irreducible complexity’ of living things at the level of microbiology cannot be explained simply by the survival of the fittest as Neo-Darwinism attempts to do. An additional issue, that I would emphasize, is whether or not the inability to reproduce is as an adequate definition of a biological species.
I believe, of course, that argument from design, which are like Aquinas Fourth and Fifth Way, are valid, but unfortunately they appeal to evidences of design that are obscure and much debated. For example, it is popularly believed that science has discovered a “law of evolution” and the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin had great popularity in the 60’s and 70’ (even among some Dominicans!) based their whole philosophy on this. Now the evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould’s (recently deceased) has argued that results of evolution are purely a matter of chance. It might just as well have ended not in man but in insects or bacteria or never even have begun!
Why then are these scientists atheists? St. Thomas says that all arguments against God’s existence come down to two: first that the universe needs not efficient cause and this is refuted by the First Way and second that if there is a God he must be good but then he would not have caused the many evils we observe in the universe. I believe that the underlying argument that influences most atheists, including the ones I have mentioned is not really about whether the universe needs God to exist, but the second from evil. For example Charles Darwin became an atheist or at least an agnostic not because of his belief in evolution but, as he said in a letter to a friend,
With respect to the theological view of the question: This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars or that a cat should play with mice… On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.
To answer this problem of evil we must first make a major distinction in the term “evil” which Darwin and these current atheists ignore. Physical evil is vastly different from moral evil. If God wills to create a material universe it will naturally contain physical evils. Cats will eat mice. The rise of higher and more perfect physical beings necessitates the destruction of the less perfect things out of which they are made. Hence this is no argument against a good Creator. As for human bodily origin from evolution, Pius XII made clear that this is not contrary to Church teaching. No wonder, since St. Augustine interpreted the six days of creation as a literary device not to be taken literally and though Aquinas cautiously took it as literal, he quotes St. Augustine to show this is debatable. What the Church teaches is that the human soul in its spirituality can only be created by God since it is not made out of matter. God, however, uses his creatures as instruments when this is possible, so it is quite fitting that he should have produced our body by using natural causes as evolutionary theory holds and is trying to explain, although Neo-Darwinism, the current explanation, does not seem very satisfactory, since, as I have quoted Stephen Jay Gould saying, this makes it purely a matter of chance, not of natural law.
On the other hand moral evil is not the work of God, but of his creatures. Thus the question becomes why does God permit creatures to freely choose to do what is contrary to his will? This is indeed a great mystery! Yet since our knowledge of God’s existence and nature come by analogy from effect to cause, we must ask ourselves whether good people ever permit bad people to have their way, or must we always force them to do what is right. These atheists certainly would defend the “right of privacy! The best example of why a good God permits his creatures to choose for themselves, is a wise parent who lets an adolescent child to learn from their own mistakes. So God has made a good universe that includes at its highest levels creatures with free will and has permitted them to sin, thus injuring themselves, others, and the lesser creatures, in order that they might learn not to sin. God permit his creatures to sin, however, only to occasion some greater good that he will ultimately bring out of this mixed state of affairs. What that greater good will be Christian revelation answers, but reason can only guess until it happens.
We have seen that in the past the crucifixion of Christ founded the Catholic Church, the greatest and most consistent agent of good in today’s world. Hitchens violently denies this and lumps together everything that can be called, in his understanding, “religion,” Christianity, Judaism and Islam, in one mass of evil. He seems to think that Christians deny that atheists can recognize right and wrong by reason. That is certainly not the Catholic view, which holds for a natural moral law, accessible to reason, but claims that revelation supports and perfects this understanding, while grace assists us to live by what we see to be right. Our faith and hope thus reassure us that the immense evils in our world today, physical and moral, in so far as they hurt human existence have their origin in creatures not in God.
Hitchens, on the other hand, has no explanation of how if we are purely material beings, as he supposes, we are able to go beyond animal instincts. Indeed he mocks the design argument people who marvel at the complexity of the human body, since it is merely the result of random evolution, as is evident from… to quote Hitchens, “our easily worn-out knees, our vestigial tails, and the many caprices of our urinogenital arrangements.” He has to admit that atheism such as is former Marxism and quasi-atheism such as Nazism have done damage comparable to “religion.” He also confuses Christian heresies such as Islam and Protestantism with Catholicism and as regards Catholicism dwells on its political distortions. He then puts his trust in secular humanism without weighing against it, as he does against other religions and quasi-religions, such effects as our destruction of the environment, the family, invention of nuclear war, etc. Since Catholic Christianity claims to support reason and has justified this by its long tradition of rational argument the best way to answer Hitchens wild polemics is to ask him for a consistent rational proposal for living, which he never supplies.
I would conclude that our best way to preach and teach against such atheism is to make sure that people understand that in the face of modern science and its pragmatically impressive technology is to clearly explain the proof of the existence of God from motion and show that if it is false science becomes impossible. To make this more vivid to our audience we should picture the world in its perpetual process of change, but also point out (1) the proof does not depend, as Aquinas shows, on whether the world had a beginning in time; (2) modern science by supporting the Big Bang hypothesis against the hypothesis of a Steady-State universe, although this can never be finally proved, makes it even more evident that a timeless Creator exists.
