Somewhere in Surprised by Joy, before he became ‘the most reluctant convert in all England’, C S Lewis wrote that he did not believe God existed, and that he was very angry at God for not existing.

Two contemporary atheists who do not believe God exists – Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens – also seem to be overly angry persons. Dawkins reckons that ‘good scientists who are sincerely religious… stand out for their rarity and are a subject of amused bafflement to their peers.’ He writes scathingly about these ‘specimens of good scientists… [among whom] the same three names crop up with the likeable familiarity of senior partners in a firm of Dickensian lawyers – Peacocks, Stannard and Polkinghorne’. Now these ‘Dickensian’ ‘specimens’ are/were, respectively, Dean of Clare College, Cambridge, head of the Physics Department of the Open University, and professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge…

Michael Poole, Visiting Research Fellow in Science and Religion at King’s College, London, has written a small book of ten chapters – 96 pages – which could (and should!) fit into anyone’s pocket or purse. His main question: do the ideas of the prolific and noisy ‘new atheists’ hold water? He devotes a little chapter to each of the ten most common arguments for not believing in the existence of God, and in summary, says: Science and religion are addressing different questions. For example, science cannot help us with ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ Everyone exercises ‘faith’ in something, someone, some ideology or other. Although Dawkins asserts in one place ‘Atheists do not have faith’… elsewhere he writes, ‘An atheist is somebody who believes [that is, has faith that] there is nothing beyond the natural physical world’ (Poole 21). Faith and reason are not opposites; neither are faith and facts (or evidence), unless faith = credulity.

Poole is critical of Dawkins’ assertion that the choice is between ‘evolution’ and belief in God. This illustrates what he calls ‘the fallacy of the excluded middle’ (a recurring phrase in this book) – choosing between only two positions when others are logically possible. (But two other options – creationism and Intelligent Design – are given short shrift: why can’t God choose an evolutionary process to create the earth/cosmos?).

Most of the favorite theoretical constructs are here: Planck’s constant, the god meme, functionalism, instrumentalism, direct vs. indirect vs. cumulative evidence, Ockham’s razor etc. etc. Poole quotes leading British apologists – among them Flew, Polkinghorne, Frederick Temple (father of William), and a few Americans – like Simon Greenleaf.

The target-audience is obviously undergraduates. The flavour is quite British: Chapter 10 is titled ‘Unpeeling the Cosmic Onion’ (a fascinating discussion of ‘universe’ and ‘multiverse’), there’s mention of ‘grown-up talk’ etc.

I believe that a serious flaw in Poole’s apologetic is the absence of a Christological basis for belief in the existence of God: the approach is mostly scientific and philosophical.

Finally how about this: ‘According to Stephen Hawking, a minute increase of about one part in a million million in the density of the universe one second after the Big Bang would have meant a recollapse of the universe after some ten years. A similar decrease in density would have resulted in a largely empty universe after the same time’ (Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, 1993, p. 130). Something to think about before you go to sleep tonight!

Rowland Croucher
June 2010

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