When Worldviews Collide

The other night I listened to the nationally broadcast debate between Dr. Richard Dawkins, atheist and author of The God Delusion, and Dr. John Lennox, an evangelical apologist and author of God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? Both men are professors at Oxford University in England.

As I listened, I was struck by the fact that in the on-going clash between the atheistic worldview and the theistic worldview, there is a logical disconnect between what the atheist says he believes and how he lives his life. The atheist says that there is no God; that all that exists is the result of pure chance. Yet he lives his life presupposing that the absolute constants of the universe will continue without interruption. Dawkins had no explanation how the universe is kept in perfect balance, even though cosmological physicists recognize that unless the structure, timing, and balance of the universe is somehow sustained, it would collapse into chaotic disorder. Dr. Dawkins even admitted that there is no scientific explanation for the origin of the universe and why it holds together, and said that cosmology is looking for its Charles Darwin to explain what took place. At times Dawkins seemed to grasp for something to make his argument sound logical, but the absolute lack of logic in his arguments was at times, laughable.

But he is so convinced by his own delusion of the non-existence of any kind of supernatural deity that he will postulate the most amazingly far-fetched ideas to explain the existence of the universe. When faced with the challenge to explain the order and structure and sustaining of the universe apart from God, he proposed that our universe is only one of billions of universes and we are simply fortunate to be in the one universe where all the random chances fell perfectly together and resulted in all that exists.

I was frankly astounded by the sheer stupidity of such an intelligent man. I know I shouldn’t have been surprised, because his unapologetic refusal to acknowledge even the possibility of God simply demonstrated the accuracy of Romans 1:21 which speaks of man’s rejection of God and the resulting futility of their speculations and darkened minds. And the result is that “professing to be wise, they became fools” (v. 22). Dawkins’ perspective is merely the end result of human wisdom which rejects any possibility of a supernatural, infinite, all powerful, all wise God.

At the end of the debate, Dr. Lennox very accurately stated that ultimately the whole argument between worldviews comes down to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If Christ was raised from the dead, then He is God and men must bow the knee to Him. Dawkins, while adamantly disagreeing over the person and work of Christ, agreed that the resurrection of Jesus is the central, core issue in the entire matter. That is exactly what C. S. Lewis said so many years ago. If Jesus was not who He claimed to be, then men are right to ignore Him. But if He was raised from the dead and is God, then every man owes Him their entire allegiance.

At the conclusion of the debate, I thought how awful an eternity in hell will be for Richard Dawkins. His audacious efforts to deceive thousands of others into believing his God-rejecting ideas certainly place him in danger of greater punishment in the lake of fire. But then the Spirit convicted me of the need to pray for Dr. Dawkins and men like him, and not to feel a sense of gladness over them going to hell. God is certainly infinitely more powerful than Richard Dawkins and if He chooses to change that man’s heart, He can do so. I pray that such is our Lord’s will.