Should We Respect Atheism?

Much of what I post here also finds its way to my ‘notes’ section on my facebook profile.  My post last night, “The Atheist Delusion,” received a gentle rebuke from a friend on facebook.  I believe that this paragraph is what he was responding to:

Anyways, if you or somebody you know has been affected by silly, little publishers who allow silly, little atheists to publish their silly, little arguments that try to disprove God, then I would greatly suggest that you delve into David Robertson’s “The Dawkins Letters.”

He encouraged me to “remember to stay humble.”  The most obvious place where humility was lacking was in calling these publishers, these atheists, and their arguments “silly” and “little.”

I’m not sure who it is that he quotes, but in C.J. Mahaney’s book “Humility: True Greatness,” he provides a quote that says something along the lines of, “at every stage of the Christian walk, pride is our greatest adversary/enemy, and humility our greatest friend.”  I give that idea (I would say quote, but there’s a good chance I’m misquoting it) a hearty ‘Amen!’

However, I would just like to think out loud a bit here.  On one hand, I believe that it is totally possible to be right in the wrong way.  By that I mean that you can be communicating truth, but do so in a way that turns people away from the truth.  Not on the basis of whether or not they believe it to be true, but on the basis of the way it was communicated.  If this is what my friend meant, then his gentle rebuke was warranted.

On the other hand, if what he meant is that I should show more humility by way of respecting atheism, then he was flat out wrong.  I believe that we sinners often sin in two ways when it comes to common misconceptions with regards to pride and humility.  Because our worldviews are far too often shaped by things outside of the Bible, we have a worldly view of pride and humility that is skewed.  Because of that, we often are guilty of sinful pride toward God when we keep our mouths shut in the name of humility.  The other side of the same coin is that we do not act as we ought in humility toward God for fear of being perceived as acting pridefully towards others.

So my answer to the question posed in the title of this post is a resounding “no!”  We should not respect atheism.  The reason that I wrote what I wrote last night was that I was greatly encouraged by Robertson’s book.  He is, for all intents and purposes, a nobody.  Conversely, Richard Dawkins is, for all intents and purposes, a somebody.  Robertson is a Scottish Presbyterian minister that I had never heard of until I picked up his book, and a man that few know.  Dawkins is a professor at renowned Oxford, and could very well be considered the current ‘Emperor of Atheism.’  Robertson discusses the children’s fairy tale about the Emperor’s New Clothes in his book.  And in his book he makes a very compelling argument that Dawkins, the ‘Emperor of Atheism,’ indeed figuratively has no clothes. 

So to see a relative nobody so effectively disarm arguably the world’s greatest atheist was very encouraging to me.  And when it comes down to it, atheists and their arguments are both “silly” and “little,” as I said in yesterday’s blog post. 

However, as my friend said, we need to remember to stay humble.  I need to remember to stay humble.  But for the grace of God, I would still be in the blissful ignorance of my atheism.  Therefore, what we need is to find a way to manage the tension between loving the atheist and giving their “silly, little” atheism no respect.  And make no mistake about it, atheism deserves no respect.  And men like Richard Dawkins deserve no respect.  He wrote “The God Delusion” to support atheism.  He wrote this book to try to do away with religion.  What is at stake with this book?

Souls and their eternal destination are at stake.  His book is an outright attack on Jesus Christ and His Gospel.  Let us have compassion for Richard Dawkins, and let us pray for God to send somebody to him with the Gospel.  And let us pray for his salvation.  But let us also pray for the failure of his work.  Let us pray that the great number of souls that come into contact with his book will see that they are nothing more than the Serpent’s lies.

The First Part of what, Lord willing, will be a three-part discussion in order to oppose atheism by providing evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is called “The Centrality of the Resurrection.”