Patheos has an interesting piece in which they invite various contributors to give an annotated list of the books that changed their lives. In the course of his selection Tim Dalrymple mentions a book whose thesis it is that atheism got started when Christians undertook to respond to challenges to present a philosophical argument for the existence of God. The book is Michael Buckley's At the Origins of Modern Atheism. Here's Dalrymple:
Buckley, a Jesuit scholar and professor, has the kind of fine-grained vision of the whole canopy of western theological and philosophical traditions that has all but vanished from the universities today. The path toward atheism began, he argues, when Christians suggested -- in order to defeat skeptics at their own game -- that they could, and must, provide a philosophical demonstration of the existence of God and the revelatory status of scripture before there could be any consideration of the God who reveals Himself within scripture.
Descartes, among others, proposed that the essential elements of Christian thought could be reconstructed essentially without the aid of the Holy Spirit, the witness of the church, and God's self-revelation in Christ; all that is required to demonstrate the truth of Christianity, he argued, is objective rationality reflecting upon its conditions and experience. Proving this proposition became the (hubristic) great task of modern philosophers, and the inability to find any such unassailable proof, when it was made to appear that this was the lynchpin upon which responsible assent to Christian faith must rest, has proven devastating beyond measure to western Christianity. If responsible rationality means believing only that which cannot be doubted, and it is not possible to construct an indubitable series of proofs for the whole of Christian belief, then our faith is an abdication of our responsibilities as rational beings.
I haven't yet read Buckley's book, but I have to say that I'm dubious about laying such enormous blame at the feet of those who desire to demonstrate God's existence. It's true that none of the "proofs" are airtight, but what of that? Suppose Christians had never made the effort to construct such arguments, many of which are compelling even if they do fall short of providing total certainty, would they not still be vulnerable to the charge that their faith is irrational because they refuse to argue for it?
It seems to me that the fault is not with trying to construct logical arguments but with the belief that unless one can prove apodictically that God exists one's faith that He does is irrational.
Anyone who would understand the rise of skepticism, agnosticism, and atheism in the modern west -- and every Christian who seeks to comprehend contemporary western culture should desire to understand these things -- should purchase Michael Buckley's book today and read it as soon as it arrives upon the doorstep. Christians were wrong to attempt to answer philosophically what were essentially theological questions, and wrong to abandon the witness and revelation that are intrinsic to its own tradition in the face of life's most fundamental problems.
Well, perhaps, but this is like saying that it's wrong to speak to others in a language they can understand. The attempt to persuade others requires that we talk to them in their own idiom and vocabulary, much as Paul did on Mars Hill. Throughout much of the last millennium this has meant talking to the very well-educated in the language of philosophical discourse.
It doesn't follow that because someone argues philosophically for the existence of God that that person bases his own faith on the success of his argument. It simply means that skeptics should be helped to see that even on the principle of rational thought which they accept reason is not necessarily their friend.
Maybe I just need to read the book.
RLC
