In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. –Richard Dawkins
As my DNA would have it (or something like that) I read this quote from Dawkins on December 2nd. The same day of the San Bernardino massacre. On a sunny day with the birds chirping I suppose a philosophy like this could perhaps gain a bit of traction. But in the face of global terrorism, I must say, it rang very hollow.
Now any philosophy which is worth anything needs to be able to hold up in the face of global terrorism. And let’s be honest, what Dawkins is saying here is philosophy. Words like purpose, evil, and good” do not belong in the realm of scientific investigation—they are philosophical words.
Apply his words to this massacre and see what you come up with. In the world of Dawkins, Syeed Farook and Tashfeen Malik are not evil nor are they capable of doing evil, they are merely dancing to their DNA. The folks who were massacred merely “got hurt” and were not the lucky ones that day. There is, according to Dawkins, no justice to this. It just is.
And yet if we are being honest isn’t there something within you which cries out for justice? Wouldn’t even Richard Dawkins acknowledge this? He has spoken these words:
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
Granted in his mind the God of the Old Testament is a fictional character, but is he not still analyzing this God based upon a world where there is good and evil? Is he not labeling this God unpleasant because being misogynistic, homophobic, racist, etc. is wrong (evil) in his mind? Applying his own belief about there being no good or evil, only DNA, if such a vile megalomaniac where to exist, a consistent Dawkins would be left without words to describe such a way. And that is the problem with such a philosophy. When one buys into moral relativism you either have to be inconsistent in the face of terror or rendered speechless.
Turn the dials in your DeLorean back to 1914 and you’ll see a somewhat similar world. Much like relativism is presupposed in our culture, in that day most people simply assumed progress was inevitably. They had swallowed what Montague David Eder termed “the myth of progress”:
“The myth of progress states that civilization has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction. Progress is inevitable… Philosophers, men of science and politicians have accepted the idea of the inevitability of progress.” (David Eder, Montague (1932). The Myth of Progress. The British Journal of Medical Psychology, Vol. XII. p. 1.)
When this emperor was shown to have no clothes, one of two things often took place; either you became disillusioned or you turned to the hope found in the gospel. You can see this in the writings of folks like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. They lived in an unsafe world and yet were able to hang onto trust in a good God. They could do this because they found the answer in Jesus. The gospel gives words in the face of global terror.
To use the words of Sam Gamgee, because of the work of Christ “everything sad is going to come untrue”. I’ll take that message over “blind, pitiless indifference” any day.
