Prognosticating about the future is risky business. One can really only be right, wrong or perhaps close enough that it still counts. Ever since the enlightenment, certain irreligious prognosticators have predicted that the faithful will finally “see the light”; that there is no God. The thought was that with the rise of modern science and modern thought, Christian claims will be seen as antiquated and therefore abandoned. Old theories are almost all false. Christianity is an old theory, therefore, it should be dropped as well, right?
Well, no, Christianity has not only survived throughout the rise of modern thought and science. It has also largely been responsible for many parts of its advance.
We still hear, from time to time, this sort of prognostication and indeed it often gets a bit shrill. Consider for example the famous 1966 Time magazine cover that read “Is God Dead?” and describing the so-called Death of God movement that was, get this, a trend in theology. Let’s just say the movement didn’t last long.
The expiration date on religious thought is also a common talking point of the New Atheists. Lawrence Krauss has said, “What we need to do is present comparative religion as a bunch of interesting historical anecdotes. And then show the silly reasons why they did what they did.” He goes on to say “Change is always one generation away. So if we can plant the seeds of doubt in our children, religion will go away in a generation, or at least largely go away — and that’s what I think we have an obligation to do.” All we have to do, according to Krauss, is to present religion as interesting but false and it goes away. Let me just say how adorable Krauss is in a New-Atheist-kind-of-way. Not only does Krauss seem to lack the first clue about why people believe in God and stand in particular religious traditions, he seems to be suggesting a form of indoctrination on a scale that would make any religious fundamentalist blush. Let’s hear it for Krauss the freethinker!
But here we all are. I think that it is safe to say that, despite Krauss’s head-in-the-sand prognostication, religious thought will continue to be alive and well. Christianity in particular continues to grow steadily. In fact, there has been an important return to orthodoxy and conservative theological values in certain sectors. In fact some attempt to return to a version of Christianity consistent with the values and outlook of the 1st century church! That’s amazing, if you think about it. Rather than thinking we need to progress from antiquated thought, many Christians (myself included) think we can take all of our scientific data and moral progress and fit it squarely (and much more naturally) within a 1st century theological framework.
Now there are a lot of reasons why religious thought is more popular than ever. Perhaps one of the biggest is that the naturalist view of Krauss and the rest of the New Atheists is one of the most philosophically impoverished views there is. It fails to explain the big bang, the fine tuning of the initial conditions of the universe, the regularity of the world upon which science is predicated, moral facts, the intrinsic value and dignity of human life, human and animal consciousness, etc. You know, just like the most important features of our existence.
There is also the fact that Christianity itself is rooted in evidence. This is a risky place to be because evidential claims provide for the opportunity of either being verified or shown false. So given the fact that there has been an explosion of scholarship on these matters, Christianity should be on its way out, right? Well that would be the case if it were clearly false as Krauss seems to assume. But this is not what we see. In fact, the case for Christianity is getting better and better all the time. It’s better than it was even a decade ago and it is much better than it was a century ago.
Let me just point to a few areas (note: none of these by themselves prove that Christianity and some do not lead straight away to Christianity but they all figure into a cumulative case for Christian theism).
The case has gotten better in Science. We continue to discover how unbelievably fine-tuned the universe really is for human existence and this has obvious theistic implications. Moreover, many standard cosmological views point to an absolute beginning, which is consonant with Christian theism.
The case has gotten better in Philosophy. We have had a generation of thoughtful responses to the Problem of Evil in many ways inspired by Alvin Plantinga’s work (and C.S Lewis before him). There is more work to be done but the Christian Theist has a very reasonable response to the existence of pervasive pain and suffering. Also the argument from Consciousness is an exciting new area of exploration. The so-called hard problem of consciousness is a problem for those who are attempting to explain consciousness naturalistically. However, consciousness itself defies a naturalistic explanation and points us supernaturally.
The historical case has gotten better involving both Archeology and Textual studies. In archeology, there has been an incredible amount of evidence unearthed (such pun!). There have been a variety of biblical facts long doubted by critical scholars that have turned up to be accurate (such as facts surrounding the Jericho event and the life of Daniel). Now I should mention that very specific conclusions in Archeology are difficult to reach and so there are a variety of issues that lack archeological support. But, these are arguments from silence rather than having any substantial archeological find that disconfirms claims made in the Old and New Testament.
The case has gotten considerably better textually. The Dead Sea Scrolls discovery has been a treasure trove of evidence for the reliability of the Old Testament Scriptures as well as 1st century cultural claims made in the New Testament. Before the Dead Sea Scroll discovery, our earliest complete Old Testament manuscripts dated to AD 1080. With this discovery, it pushed things back over a thousand years to BC 250 for a variety of the Old Testament books! The most striking part of the discovery is that there were not substantial differences in our late dating manuscripts and these new early dating manuscripts. The claim that there has been substantial Christian development has largely been put to rest. On the more recent front, there are reports about fragments of biblical texts being found in Egyptian mummy masks. These reports have yet to be published but if they are accurate, then they would be the earliest fragment manuscripts to date.
If Christianity were false, it seems that the case should be getting far more difficult to make. However, as I’ve indicated above, these are exciting times for the Christian Theist!