God’s Not Scared of New Atheism

Grace in the Hole

Sometimes it comes down to speech and the way it’s wielded. The tone of dialogue on atheist websites varies widely—from pleasant and gracious jousting to bitter hatred, bad language and vitriol. The latter is symptomatic of underlying problems—and a guide to effective response. In such environments, Christian grace can win the day.

One high-profile inquirer disturbed by the hostility she encountered in the New Atheism camp was the great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, Laura Keynes. Keynes witnessed the rise of the New Atheism debate while working on her doctorate at Oxford University.

She shared in an interview, “One of the things that made me wary of ‘new atheism’ was the strange mix of angry emotion I encountered there: anger at the thought of God; anger at any restrictions on behavior; anger at thwarted will; pride in the exertion of will; pride in feeling intellectually superior; contempt for anyone who reveals human vulnerability in asking for the grace of God.”

She became a convinced Christian.

It’s in the Science

Distinguished biotechnologist Dr. Matti Leisola says he had been, without realizing it, “a typical product of the Western naturalistic educational system and … actually hated the idea of God interfering in [his] life.”

But when Leisola became a Christian through his wife’s influence, further study convinced him evolution “stood on a shaky foundation.” In an interview with Creation magazine, he said, “I first realized it when studying biochemistry and the weak efforts to explain the origin of life based on some rudimentary experiments.”

Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Richard Smalley, who discovered buckyballs and remained a skeptic most of his life, also became a Christian late in life partly due to his intensive study of intelligent design. A closer look at evolution riled him.

His wife wrote of this aspect of his conversion, “I remember him pacing the bedroom floor in anger, saying evolution was bad science. Rick hated bad science more than anything. He said if he conducted his research in the same way that they did he would never be respected in the scientific community.”

Oddly, one of the most significant science-influenced conversions to Christianity was that of a philosopher—professor Antony Flew. Flew was a giant in the atheist cause. One of his papers, “Theology and Falsification,” was the most widely reprinted philosophy publication of the last century.

But Flew’s Achilles’ heel was his commitment to a directive of Socrates: “Follow the evidence wherever it leads.” So when science uncovered monumental complexities in DNA, which in Flew’s view swamped evolution, he swapped sides. He wrote a book, There Is a God, reversing his old ideas and drawing howls of protest from atheists around the world.