On Wednesday night, John Lennox, professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford and veteran of several debates with prominent atheists, gave a talk on the truth of Christianity.
For the uninitiated, Lennox’s talk was a highly learned and lettered introduction to the God question, covering the basic tested arguments on the armory of the faithful. For all others, it was the latest in a long list of reiterations.
I guess the debate rages on, with much the same maneuvers, the same timeworn formulations, the same old everything. This cultural obsession with the question of God has ceased to be instructive and is beginning to be uninteresting.
Of course, there was a time when it was fun, when the tit for tat was exciting.
That was 2007, the springtime of New Atheism, a year which found a spate of authors, having published screeds on the absence of God, taking their books and ideas on debating tours across the country and the world, filling auditoriums and bookstores and energizing the conversation as they went. Some of these talks have found their way to YouTube, with views clocking more than 2 million.
And just as the year announced the nonbelievers’ position with a maximum helping of wit and insight, it also marshaled the strongest voices of religious apologetics to form an able counterweight.
Christopher Hitchens’ acid quips stung with casual disdain, and the retorts of a Dinesh D’Souza rang with unspent conviction. It was a time when the measured monotone of Richard Dawkins could still grip with clarity, while Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s pronouncements echoed with the finality of revelation.
But even then, each side already conceded that the ideas they were working with were old. The “new” in New Atheism was the directness and relentlessness of their attacks, which in turn triggered a commensurate strength in the opposite side. This made for an exciting read or listen. For a while.
Discussions about religion and God always fall into the familiar back-and-forth. Of course, there is the continuous rhetorical refinement, and the theater of debate is its own reward. But, personally, after years of intense interest in the topic, the repetition has begun to grate.
The ideas have stagnated, and it is exactly because the conversation has run out of new ideas that it has stopped being instructive, and, for that case, interesting.
“(The religious) have no new arguments,” said Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society. “They’ve all been done to death, and they’ve all been countered.”
Might I add, they’ve all been countered with arguments that are equally unoriginal.
The problem of unoriginality is not a failing of the apologist or the atheist. It is written into the God conversation; the centrality of the question of God means that basically all the greatest minds in history opined about it. This leaves very little room, if any, for novelty.
Every atheist rebuke of miracles is a rerun of David Hume. Every theist demand for a prime mover is an echo of late medieval theology. When unbelievers insist on a fully material reality, they are working under the shadow of the atomists of ancient Greece. When the faithful ask for an objective measure of morality without religion, they are quoting Dostoevsky.
But I seem to speak only for myself. Lennox’s talks still regularly fill lecture halls. His visit to UCLA alone drew an enormous crowd, causing lines that stretched from Moore to the bottom of Janss Steps and filling hall after hall past capacity.
Market demand is still extremely high. Public appetite still craves the old ideas.
Which brings me to a concession: While I have ceased to find it a particularly interesting discussion, it is still an extremely important one to have. The God question is, after all, one of the big questions, central as it is to that human search for meaning and reason, for purpose.
So by all means, carry on. Attend debates, read and keep contemplating.
In fact, that is exactly what I think the conversation needs ““ to simmer down into a completely democratic discussion, which requires turning the volume down just a tad on the polarizing voices of “experts.”
This conversation needs to fully embrace its identity as an amateur sport and lead a robust parallel existence in the private and personal discussions of laymen.
You will most likely also be stumbling onto the same old ideas. But at least then, everyone is sharing in the unoriginality.
Has the God debate tired you out? Email Dolom at rdolom@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to opinion@media.ucla.edu.