Apologetics

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The Folly of New Atheism: The Argument From Outrage




If anything can be visibly ascertained when reading material penned or produced by New Atheism, it is the argument from outrage. Any Christian actively participating in the area of apologetics who is forced to reluctantly spend time combing through their ravings knows that about 90% of their arguments against the Christian faith amount to nothing more than emotional diatribes and exasperated complaining. For a fraternity of people always announcing to the rest of humanity how incredibly logical they are, their argumentation is strikingly devoid of any structured method of sound reasoning.

What is an argument from outrage? Well, permit me to quote Sam Harris, one of the regnant priests of the New Atheist movement, who excels at this type of sloppy reasoning:

“ In assessing the moral wisdom of the Bible, it is useful to consider moral questions that have been solved to everyone’s satisfaction. Consider the question of slavery. The entire civilized world now agrees that slavery is an abomination. What moral instruction do we get from the God of Abraham on this subject? Consult the Bible, and you will discover that the creator of the universe clearly expects us to keep slaves. “ -- Letter to a Christian Nation, pages 14-15

He then quotes Leviticus 25:44-46 to prove his point. This is a classic argument from outrage. He’s arguing against the Bible on moral grounds and implying, as he does throughout this little book, that because the contents of the scripture are allegedly immoral, therefore the Bible cannot be true.

But this is not a valid argument in any coherent sense, and no believer ought be afraid of it. In fact, we can ignore his inept and rather nauseating exegesis altogether because what he’s really saying is “ I find the Bible detestable, therefore it is false”. To which believers can reply “ So what?” Even if the Bible was exactly as he portrays it, it makes no difference: the truth or falsity of anything, let alone scripture, is not predicated on anyone’s taste. It is irrelevant whether or not Harris finds the Bible appealing when he argues against its truth claims.

Let’s put this into another context. Believers in Christ know that the religion of Islam is false, that it professes a fraudulent view of God and the nature of Jesus Christ. We know this from scripture. But what if we challenged the validity of Islam on the grounds that we found it personally abhorrent and socially destructive? Is that line of argumentation reasonable? No, because our preferences and its social impact lend nothing to determining whether or not this religion is true. Islam could be immoral and true simultaneously in any possible world. In order to erode the credibility of Islam, no one can argue merely on the grounds that it is deleterious to human societies. They must attack the credibility of the Koran--examining its historicity and logical consistency in order to produce evidence of its falsehoods.

We can’t do this with atheism either. That we find the notion of a godless universe loathsome, as I certainly do, is no argument against the non-existence of God. Nor can we argue against it from our repulsion of secular ideals. Regardless of whether or not we particularly like something, offers no evidence of either truth or falsity to the subject in question.

I read everything I can lay my hands on that is written by new atheism’s most prominent spokespeople. It strengthens my faith in Jesus Christ, and the majority of the contentions these people have with our faith amounts to nothing more than an argument from outrage, to which any of us can reply “ So what?” What difference does it make that they don’t appreciate the drowning of the entire world in Genesis 7, or the destruction of pagan tribes, or the coming judgment on mankind, or the existence of hell? Their moral objections ( which is another amusing topic, that an atheist, with no basis in his own worldview for even defining objective morality, would rail against a book he finds immoral) neither add nor detract a thing to the Bible’s genuine claims to truth.

You know in closing I must be openly frank here. I don’t like the idea of an everlasting hell. I never have. I don’t completely understand why it must exist, or why it has to be so terribly severe. Yet, I accept its existence despite my reservations because my emotional response to hell is irrelevant to the whole matter. When I committed to becoming a devout follower of Christ, I accepted freely the whole truth and the whole counsel of God, including those things that I could never possibly discern to my satisfaction. God is sovereign, the Bible is true, and that’s the end of it. Any hidden sparks of outrage that rest nervously in my being against the concept of damnation are essentially meaningless in considering the reality of it. Whatever emotions I’m destined to wrestle with is my own burden to bear because I’m at the moment residing on this side of eternity as an imperfect creature accountable to a perfect Creator, and I can be reasonably assured that God is not all that interested in whether or not the idea of hell ever sits well with me. All He ever desired was that I not go there, to which I can thank my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.

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