Finding God in atheist arguments

Gen Z is more spiritual and more religious than older generations; atheism seems to have peaked. Those are two of the headline findings of the Belief in Britain survey. To be blatantly honest, when I commissioned the study, this was absolutely not what I was expecting the data to show. 

This upends the narrative about the future of Christianity in Britain being one of continuous decline. Instead, it seems to suggest that God is making a comeback. At the same time, it sets a challenge for the Church: how do we convert the growing interest in God among the younger generation into increased engagement in church services? 

In the biggest survey of spirituality and religion in Britain undertaken in the past decade, an online poll of 10,000 adults showed that 62 per cent of Britons aged between 18 and 25 claimed to be very or fairly spiritual, compared to just 35 per cent of over 65s. Thirty per cent of 18-to 25-year-olds claimed to worship regularly, compared to just eleven per cent of over 65s. Furthermore, the younger generation claimed to have become more spiritual and religious in recent years, while the older generation have become less so. Atheism – the idea that there is no God – is most popular among my own age group, Generation X, those born between 1965 and 1980. It is less popular among younger people and older people. 

It wasn’t religious belief that turned people off, it was what religions do that they found most offensive

Looking more closely at the data, another trend became clear. Religion in Britain is remarkably privatised. Some (eleven per cent) attend a place of worship regularly, and another minority are atheist (30 per cent) but that leaves the majority – 59 per cent – who have their own idea of God and don’t necessarily believe what the leaders of their religion expect them to.

There may be a number of reasons for this. It could simply be a reflection of the modern age: people today are less inclined to think what they are told to than previous generations. It is also a reflection of how people feel about organised religion. 

When we asked our respondents what they found most repellent about religion, it wasn’t religious belief that turned people off. It was what religions do that people found most offensive. Religious violence was considered the biggest problem, followed by “the way religions behave”. In an age of mass communication and social media, the core Christian message and values have become a lot more muddled. In the past, people might have heard Christian arguments from apologetics or religious leaders on TV. Now, anyone with an internet connection can broadcast their interpretation of doctrine. Not only that, Muslims, Hindus and Jews – among a sea of others – are all doing the same. No wonder that, faced with a torrent of conflicting and often contradictory views, people are looking to actions for a clearer depiction of what lies at the heart of a religion.

With the accelerating expansion of the universe, God’s act of creation is still ongoing; he is here with us

If people in Britain are open to religious belief but wary of organised religion, if they don’t want to believe what they are told to believe and if they are turned off by historic and ongoing scandals and abuse, then we must rethink what our faith is really about. Part of this means owning areas where Christianity has gone wrong. This is where the idea for my book, The Devils’ Gospels: Finding God in four great atheist books came from. It starts with the premise that atheism cannot stop God from existing, but that it does contain some good critiques of what religions get wrong about God. 

The Devils’ Gospels takes four books written by atheists – two by philosophers and two by scientists – and seeks to find God in them. The book is based on a discussion group that I ran for teenagers at the University Church in Oxford. What the young people really wanted was better answers to tough faith questions. In exploring some of the most difficult ideas of secular writers, I hoped their faith would be strengthened. In fact, it became an inspiration for us all. 

The problem of religious violence and abuse

Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Penguin Classics), a fictional prophetic figure who serves as the book’s central character and philosophical mouthpiece, announces that “God is dead.”. That doesn’t leave much space to find God except in a negative way. By imagining a world without God, Nietzsche helps us understand the essential difference Christianity brings into it. Zarathustra argues that if there is no God, we should throw away our old morality and duties to each other. What results is a lonely and selfish world. 

Nietzsche believed that humans could find purpose in life without God if we build it around our “will to power”. He defines this as the ambition in every living creature to be the greatest version of themselves. 

Nietzsche’s classic book helps us to understand that the pursuit of power is the opposite of the love preached by Jesus. If the Church is guilty of inspiring violence or abusing trust, it is because there are Christians who see it as a vehicle for power. If we are to make the Church attractive to the next generation of Christians, we must recognise this, repent and turn back to Jesus in all humility. 

The problem of understanding scripture

Writing and Difference - Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida is a relatively obscure French philosopher whose impact greatly outweighed his notoriety. In Writing and Difference (Routledge), he argued that it is impossible to reach a single definitive meaning of a text due to our inability to truly enter the mind of the writer, as well as the transiency and instability of words and their meaning. Like a dictionary, the meaning of words relies on other words: ie you look up the meaning of a word only to find other words that define it. But if you then look up those words, you find even more words defining them. 

This neverending rabbit-hole of meaning can help to explain the difficulties we find in understanding scripture. Clearly, God did not intend us to fight wars over the interpretation of the Bible, yet we have done so in the past. The multiple layers of meaning present in scripture are there to provide inspiration rather than discord. It is why we have four Gospels rather than one. There is a diversity in our understanding of God which is unavoidable due to the messiness of language and interpretation. As a result, our churches contain people who may differ on many theological issues. The real challenge lies in whether leaders are willing to accept this diversity – not by enforcing uniformity of thought but by fostering a community where differences in belief are acknowledged while unity is maintained around core principles.

The problem of the beginning 

A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking

The advance of science has a habit of embarrassing religion: think of the trial of Galileo or the difficulties caused by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Most Christians today are happy to accept that many parts of scripture are metaphorical rather than literal; that God does not cease to exist because the world rotates around the sun or fossil evidence suggests the universe is more than 10,000 years old. 

Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (Bantam Press) argues that the existence of an “unmoved mover” is unnecessary in explaining the beginning of the universe, because there was no time before the Big Bang and, without time, there is no causation. Hawking admits that he is not sure what might have caused the universe to start expanding from a single point but suggests it could have flickered into existence as a result of some quantum fluctuation.

While some Christian apologists look for God in the uncertainty around Hawking’s theory – a ‘God of the gaps’, as it were – what if physics does explain what happened at the beginning? Perhaps Christians should be bolder in embracing particle physics: any truth we learn about the world should reveal more about God. Hawking’s book allows us to see that God must be in the world, not just outside of it. He was there in that infinitesimally dense point of matter that was the early universe, detected by physicists as a quantum fluctuation, and he is still with us 13.7 billion years later. With the accelerating expansion of the universe, God’s act of creation is still ongoing; he is here with us.

The problem of unthinking belief

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

The God Delusion (Black Swan) is a tough read for any Christian. Dawkins believes that religion is dangerous nonsense, and his book was a bestseller in the years after the 9/11 terror attacks, in part because people began to view atheism as a more ethical choice than religious belief. 

A lot of what Dawkins says is unavoidably true. There is a terrible history of religious violence and abuse. We must reject that part of our Church’s history and do better in future. But much of this abuse was possible because religious believers are inclined to follow the commands of their leaders without thinking independently. As Voltaire said: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” 

A lot of what Dawkins says is unavoidably true. There is a terrible history of religious violence and abuse

Where Dawkins goes wrong is to assume that the Christian faith is primarily about believing absurdities. It is not. Someone who believes the world is 10,000 years old is no closer to God than someone who believes it is 13.7 billion years old. Faith is first and foremost about trust in Jesus as our saviour and a commitment to following his teachings. It does not require the rejection of reason. In fact, it absolutely requires our reason to understand how we should love God and our neighbour in everything we do. Once we allow ourselves to become the unthinking instruments of power for someone who claims to have a better understanding of God, we are committing sin against God. 

The future

Since the end of the second world war, four generations of people have grown up with progressively less respect for the authority of their elders and so-called betters. We are perhaps more inclined than ever to think: “I will be the judge” rather than defer to establishments or institutions such as the Church, the Royal Family, parliament – or even our own nuclear family. This is a huge challenge for the Church today because people have largely voted with their feet. The pews have been emptying out. The Baby Boomers were the first generation of free thinkers to stop going to church en masse and, without the exposure of their early years, their children and their children’s children have not found the habit of attending a local church. But they have not abandoned God. 

The Belief in Britain survey showed that most people are open to belief, but they want to do it on their terms. It suggests to me that in order to thrive, the Church has to meet them where they’re at. Christianity will always be about sharing. The question is: What do we come together to share? This is complicated in a world where everyone has their own idea of God. But churchgoing in future must be more about sharing the experience of the divine rather than suppressing it. We will all be richer for it. 

The Devils’ Gospels by Christopher Gasson is out now