God and the New Atheism, Chapter 4

I haven't blogged on God and the New Atheism since March 18, but I want to pick up where I left off and finish reviewing it. The title of chapter 4 is, "Is God a Hypothesis?" He begins the chapter by noting that one of the underlying pillars of scientific naturalism is the "claim that science alone can be trusted to put our minds in touch with reality" (41). It is this claim that he addresses in the chapter.

The strategy that the new atheists use in their arguments are "to seduce readers into tacit agreement that faith in the existence of God is a 'hypothesis,' one that functions for believers in the same way as a scientific hypothesis does for scientists" (41). He then reviews the definition of hypothesis, a way of understanding and bringing intelligibility to a variety observations that are repeatable or through experiments. But, as Haught points out, God is not a hypothesis for believers. He writes,

Dawkins and the other new atheists have made things entirely too easy for themselves. In the first place, as is typical of all their writings, in order to dispose of God they first shrink the idea of divinity to that of a lawgiver, cosmic engineer, or intelligent designer. This sets the stage for showing everybody that Darwinian evolution obviously proves that nature was not intelligently designed after all, and that the God hypothesis has at least been decisively defeated...there is nothing terribly bright about debating creationism and ID while avoiding any direct engagement with theology. The new atheists make no mention, for example of the most important Protestant theologian of the past century, Karl Barth, who, along with most other recent theologians, has argued in effect that any God who functions as a "hypothesis" is not worth defending anyway. The new atheists are actually doing theology a favor by disposing of the God hypothesis (43).

Haught doesn't stop here however. He turns the tables on the new atheists and asks them about the status of the scientific method and independent method of justifying science. He writes,

Exactly what are the independent scientific experiments...that could provide "evidence" for the hypothesis that all true knowledge must be based on the paradigm of scientific inquiry? If faith requires independent confirmation, what is the independent (nonfaith) method of demonstrating that their own faith in the all-encompassing cognitional scope of science is reasonable?...there are many channels other than science through which we all experience, understand, and know the world...Do your new atheists seriously believe, therefore, that if a personal God of infinite beauty and unbounded love actually exists, the "evidence" for this God's existence could be gathered as cheaply as the evidence for a scientific hypothesis?

From here Haught argues that every truth claim at some level resorts to a leap of faith. "Most of us simply believe that seeking truth is worthwhile,"he writes. "We cannot prove it since even the attempt to do so already presupposes this trust...basic trust is not the outcome of any regime of scientific experimentation" (47).

The new atheists belief system in scientific naturalism at the end of the day is a leap of faith--there is no independent way to establish its truth claims. He concludes the chapter by saying,

Science is simply not wired to either detect or rule out the existence of God. God is not a hypothesis...at a usually tacit level of awareness, both the atheist and the theist participate in a common faith. They both believe that reality is intelligible and that truth is worth seeking. What theology adds is that the existence of God--that is of Infinite Being, Meaning, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty--provides an adequate justification of this belief, as well as an answer to the question of why the universe is intelligible at all (51-52).