Written by Jerry Robinson
Originally Posted on 5/7/2005
Part 1: What Every Christian Should Know About the New Atheism
Look hard into the pages of world history prior to the year 1700 AD and you will be hard pressed to find any self-professed atheists. It is well documented that the absolute denial of a divine Creator was simply a foreign concept in the minds of our predecessors. No, our early ancestors were worshippers of the first degree. They worshiped the Sun and the Moon. They stood in awe of the gods who could control their food harvests through the miraculous creation of rain. They worshiped animals, trees, rocks, rivers. You name it, they worshiped it. These early humans invented gods, gave them names, and were motivated to placate these gods through a series of sacrifices and rituals. Strange birds, they were. Atheists, they were not.
It was into this environment in which the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were introduced. These new faiths proposed the idea of a single God. Not only was this God the only God, He was a personal God with equal balances of justice and mercy and was capable of love. The introduction of these three monotheistic faiths had a profound impact upon every nation that they touched. Christianity and Islam both taught that their faiths should be spread and promoted globally. Of course, Judaism was a more localized faith.
After the rise of these monotheistic faiths, the primary basis of authority slowly became vested in the religious leaders of the world. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, was extremely influential in both political and religious matters. This caused many to resent the absolute power that religion exerted over every area of life. And as the old saying goes: “Absolute power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Therefore, secular thought, in the fields of the natural and social sciences for example, was rejected if its conclusions conflicted with the views set forth by the dominating religious authorities. (This conflict was much more evident in Christianity than it was in Islam.)
However, in the 18th century, after being long stifled by religion, secular thinkers began to emerge and collaborate in a period that is now referred to as “The Enlightenment.” During this era, secular philosophers and thinkers made the bold proclamation that reason, not religion, should be considered as the primary basis of authority for mankind. This “Age of Reason” sparked a revolution in the fields of the natural sciences (e.g. astronomy,) and the social sciences (e.g. psychology.) The secular thinker had succeeded in finally freeing himself from the confines imposed by religion. Thus, he could now pursue human advances on the basis of his own logic and reason, without fearing reprisal from the gods, or as the monotheists now called it, God.
In his quest for reason, one of the secular thinker’s first assumptions was that God was now dead. Darwin’s theory of evolution had demonstrated a viable alternative that supplanted a need for a divine Creator. Secondly, the Bible, the chief document of a religion that had held so many captive, was placed under the new microscope of reason. This assault on the Bible came in the form of what is now known as German higher criticism, which sought to carefully and systematically debunk the Bible of all of its authority. The secular thinkers ravaged the status quo and found many willing adherents along the way.
Without doubt, the Age of Reason played a tremendous role in improving the quality of human life. And today, it is inescapable that mankind has embraced the fruit of reason: namely today’s medical, scientific, and technological advances. But more importantly to the secular thinker were the blows that reason had dealt to religion. Through the human ingenuity displayed in the Age of Reason, the secular thinker felt great triumph from beating back the superstitious beliefs that had held mankind captive for so many millennia. These revolutionaries viewed themselves as the heroes of mankind. They had finally provided the way of escape for men, women, and children, to emerge from the damp and dark regions of the Cave of Religion. This cave, according to the secular thinker, was obviously full of illogical tenets, with beliefs about complex rituals and invisible gods who exact punishment upon men at will. The secular thinkers dreamt of a day when all people would free themselves from the fear of the gods and finally see the folly of religion and would turn gratefully to the religion of reason. The effect that the Age of Reason had on religion was deeply profound and is deserving of its own separate discussion.
However, what has perplexed many atheists and secular thinkers since the dawn of the Age of Reason is the sheer number of men, women, and children, who seemingly refuse to emerge from the Cave of Religion. “Don’t they know that they have been freed? Don’t they know that the shackles that they think now hold them have been unlocked by me. Why do they persist in their error,” the secular thinker reasons to himself.
Jerry Robinson is the founder of Jerry Robinson Ministries, a ministry devoted to taking the Gospel of Jesus' First Coming to the unbeliever, and the Good News of Jesus' Second Coming to the Global church. He is an ordained minister, writer, and speaker and holds university degrees in International Economics and Religious Studies. Additionally, Jerry operates jerryrobinson.org, an internationally known website that archives and analyzes global events through the lens of biblical prophecy.