Today’s New Reason To Believe

Kenneth Richard Samples

The first two installments of this series addressed three reasons for the phenomenon known as the “new atheism.” This fresh breed of atheism distinguishes itself from its predecessors by the more militant (though nonviolent) and zealous behavior of its advocates, such as Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation), Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great), and Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell).

Part one of my series suggests that while traditional atheists have always viewed religion as being illusory, the new atheists now view religion as dangerous, due to the rise of radical Islam and the perceived mixing of religion and politics. Part two discusses how the growth of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement also contributed to this more strident type of atheism.

In this final article, I offer two more factors that I believe also impact the new atheism phenomenon.

4. Humankind’s Ultimate Concern
Philosophical theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965) argued that regardless of whether a person believes in the existence of God, everyone gravitates toward what amounts to an “ultimate concern.” In other words, every person, including atheists, identifies and seeks out an essential issue or source of value in life. For those who reject belief in a transcendent, personal God, this ultimate concern may be attached to an immanent, impersonal matter, such as hedonism, ethnicity, politics, and science.

Other philosophers and theologians have agreed with Tillich’s perspective, thus referring to humans as homo religiosus (“religious man”). Even if traditional religious expression is rejected, human beings have an inherently spiritual instinct and it inevitably takes on other forms. If Tillich’s assessment of mankind is correct, then human beings by their very nature need a “reason for being.”

The Bible seems to concur with this appraisal. It conveys that those who reject the true and living God engage in some form of idolatry. The apostle Paul states concerning the heathen nations that rejected God:


“They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).


From a biblical perspective, human beings can reject belief in God but they can’t shed inbuilt religiosity due to their being created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27).

As a Christian philosopher, I think this explains certain things about unbelievers in general and atheists in particular. Sinful human beings find themselves torn between needing God on one hand and desiring their own autonomy from him on the other. Part of the ferocity of the new atheism phenomenon arises from the atheist’s frustrating inability to truly separate himself from his spiritual need for the Creator.

5. The Biggest of the Big Questions of Life Philosophers are fond of talking about the so-called “big questions” of life. These interrogatives involve human origin and destiny, values, and meaning and purpose to life. However, the biggest of the big questions concerns the existence of God. Does God exist? How can God be known? What is God’s relationship to the cosmos and to humankind?

As a philosopher, I don’t think any worldview is truly neutral with regard to the God question. Inevitably, all worldviews either affirm God (theology) or deny him (atheology). Even agnostics (who claim to not know if God exists) either live their lives as if there is a God or they live as if God doesn’t exist (most choosing the latter, otherwise they would attend religious services every other week).

The new atheists seem consumed with the God question for the various reasons I have identified in this series. However, I think the ultimate reason for the new atheism is number 5: man cannot live without coming to grips with the God question. Belief in God is either the greatest of man’s illusions or it is man’s greatest truth and reality. As for me, God’s existence makes sense of the most meaningful realities of life, like science, mathematics, logic, and values, but especially human beings.

For more on the Christian worldview and how it relates to the atheistic worldview of naturalism, see my new book A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test. For an essay on why I think the God of the Bible exists, see chapter one of my book Without a Doubt: Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions.

by Hugh Ross

In the December 2007 issue of Astrobiology Stanford University geophysicists Norman H. Sleep and Mark D. Zoback note that the higher tectonic activity during Earth’s early history could have played a key role in cycling critically important nutrients and energy sources for life.¹ The production of numerous small faults in the brittle primordial crust released trapped nutrients. Such faults could also release pockets of methane gas and molecular hydrogen. The methane and hydrogen could then provide crucial energy sources for nonphotosynthetic life. Finally, the production of faults could bring water to otherwise arid habitats, such as rocks far below Earth’s surface.

Faulting, generated by active and widespread tectonics, allowed a youthful Earth to support diverse and abundant life. This enhanced diversity and abundance of life quickly transformed Earth’s surface into an environment safe for advanced life. Also, the buildup of biodeposits for the support of human civilization occurred more rapidly due to active tectonics.

The more rapid preparation of Earth for humanity is critical. Without such rapid preparation, humans could not come upon the terrestrial scene before the Sun’s increasing luminosity would make their presence impossible (due to excessive heat).² Thus, yet one more reason exists to thank God for His supernatural design of Earth’s tectonics.

1. Norman H. Sleep and Mark D. Zoback, “Did Earthquakes Keep the Early Crust Habitable?” Astrobiology 7 (December, 2007): 1023-32.
2. Hugh Ross, Creation As Science (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2006): 126-36.

David H Rogstad, Ph.D.

It isn’t often that a scientist correctly predicts something that will occur within less than two years in a galaxy 3.5 billion light-years away. Yet that’s what Finnish physicist Mauri Valtonen did last year as reported in the January 2008 the American Astronomical Society Meeting held in Austin, Texas, and published in both the January 18, 2008 issue of Science (requires subscription) and the February 2008 issue of Sky and Telescope.

The distant galaxy OJ 287 has garnered the attention of astronomers in recent years because its brightness was observed to increase 100,000 times for a short period every 12 years. Since this brightening was periodic, it was natural to attribute the occurrence to one object orbiting another. It has also been noted that the peak of brightness was, itself, split into two peaks separated by roughly a year.

In a paper published in the April 20, 2007 issue of the Astrophysical Journal, Valtonen proposed a model for this phenomenon. His proposal consists of a large black hole of a mass 100 million times the mass of our Sun orbiting an even larger black hole of a mass 18 billion times the mass of our Sun at the center of the galaxy. Valtonen’s model envisioned the largest black hole being surrounded by a disk of accreting material, with the smaller black hole in a highly eccentric orbit around it but in a plane tilted relative to the disk. In this way, the smaller object plunging through the disk twice in each orbit around the central black hole caused the double brightening.

In the model, the two-disk incursions were separated by a time difference that depended on some geometric and data-fitting details, but also, more importantly, on two predictions of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. In the extremely strong gravitational fields that distort space-time near a super-massive object like this black hole, general relativity predicts a rapidly changing orientation of the companion’s orbit as well as shrinkage of this orbit due to the emission of gravitational radiation.

At the time the paper was published in April 2007, the first of the most recent 12-year brightening had already occurred in November 2005. The model predicted the next crossover would occur in the range of September 9-16, 2007. However, if Einstein’s theory was wrong regarding the space-time curvature, then the peak would occur about ten days earlier, if wrong regarding gravitational radiation, the peak would occur about three weeks later.

Valtonen and a team of some 30 professional and amateur astronomers prepared to observe this next encounter using a variety of instruments. They were encouraged when the flare showed up as predicted by the model that included both predictions of relativity. This was a triumph for Einstein’s theory in a circumstance of intense gravity not previously tested. Additionally, the 18 billion solar-mass black hole is the largest ever detected (by a factor of 6 over the previous record holder). Its size is staggering at almost 10 percent of the mass of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Einstein has once again been proven correct. The research also provides key evidence in support of the big bang model for the universe and, because it incorporates the big bang, of RTB’s creation model.