Jeremy's Reviews > Enduring Divine Absence: The Challenge of Modern Atheism

Joe discusses the book here, suggesting that our technological culture gives rise to the idea that truly real things are material and manipulable; he also tries to deflate the idea that atheism is the most natural default position; toward the end of the book, he asks how it would help if God were more "obvious" (neither his dwelling in a cloud with Israel nor the the Holy Spirit's ministry to the NT church seemed to make those cultures super devout); a big goal of the book is to push back against a tendency to valorize doubt (while recognizing that doubt is understandable). More info here.

Positive review here (compares it to A Secular Age and says it's better than The Benedict Option). Horton calls it a "must-read."

Check out these related videos on a plausible faith:
Part 1: "I'm Having a Crisis of Faith"
Part 2: "Mortality & Doubt"
Part 3: "The Problem of Divine Absence"
Part 4: "Interpreting Divine Absence"
Part 5: "Responding to Divine Absence"

Chapter 1: Introductory Reflections
Joe explores the psychological pull of atheism, which happens even for Christians at times. With Taylor, Joe distinguishes the "Where are you, God?" of the psalmist (for whom the question of God's existence was not serious), from today's Christians, who feel a real defensiveness in the face of secular society, where belief in God is not assumed but merely one option among many (p. 4). As William James might put it, atheism is a "live option" these days in a way that belief in Superman is not (p. 5).

Chapter 2: Modernity and Divine Absence
Belief in God actually is a unique problem in modern times, requiring effort instead of being obvious or a default position. One proof is the number of anxious-seeming apologetics works that feel the need to defend the belief in God because His presence is no longer taken for granted. Such works sometimes also speak of recovering what has been lost, as if so much ground has been given away that we barely are allowed even to speak of our subjective, personal experience of belief. There is a sense of defensiveness and fragility to the Christian faith. Joe mentions several films in which the universe seems indifferent to humanity (pp. 12–14).

Some people say that the belief-in-God-is-difficult phenomenon is plausible because atheism is true. [Why is it plausible to think that the sky is blue? Because it is.] This explanation omits the reality that many initially plausible explanations are not ultimately true (pp. 19–21).

Two other ways of dealing with the belief-in-God-is-difficult phenomenon are to say that atheists have intellectual problems (bad ideas) or will problems (rebellion, having reasons to want atheism to be true). While this may be true, we cannot say that Christian belief is merely a matter of the mind or will, because the faith of many Christians includes thoughts and desires that are not strictly connected to clear thinking and desiring; for example, the belief of some Christians (who are true Christians) may be based on using God as a crutch [an intellectual problem?], or being afraid of the alternative [a will problem?]. Additionally, these two explanations (intellectual problems and will problems) don't account for the facts that 1) people who intellectually assent to theism still struggle with the suspicion that atheism might be true, and 2) being in ethical tension with God (being a rebel) doesn't necessarily correspond to disbelieving in Him (demons—James 2:19) (pp. 21–22).

Joe is nervous about those who insist that Christian belief depends on conversion, because he feels that this reduces the truth claims of Christianity to subjective experience (a "retreat to commitment," to use Bartley's book title), making persuasion depend on reality glasses that are not publicly accessible (pp. 22–23). [This sounds like a rejection of presuppositional apologetics.] Joe is similarly nervous about those who insist that we need an objective basis for morality, as if moral experience is subjective without such a ground (pp. 23–24). [I don't understand this concern.]

Chapter 3: The Silencing of God
The point of this chapter is to show the intellectual plausibility of atheism, even if one ultimately rejects it. The first part discusses the issue of causality, showing that throughout history, there's at least a plausible narrative of materialist/naturalist explanations overtaking religious explanations (e.g., geocentric vs. heliocentric theories). On pp. 33–34, he seems to agree that ID commits the "god of the gaps" fallacy [although Meyer disagrees]. The second part of the chapter discusses philosophical and historical retorts to modern materialism, and Joe later provides problems with those retorts.

The philosophical retort to materialism uses Aristotle's four causes and ultimately argues that nothing in our universe can be reduced to purely material causes. Anything that exists is contingent and must rely on something else (which is itself the ground of existence) for existence. To say otherwise is incoherent. The historical retort is basically that there has never been (historically) a truly critical evaluation of Aristotle. These retorts, while helpful, are inadequate and unpersuasive to many. The philosophical retort has a hard time standing up to Enlightenment criticism (ignore philosophical speculation and believe only what you can observe), and the historical retort doesn't account for why people eventually abandoned Aristotelian philosophy (if there was no critique, then what happened?). Joe briefly gets into medieval enchantment (the universe as a chorus), in contrast to a modern mechanistic view (p. 51).

Shifts in how we perceived reality occurred when we became more able to control nature as we control tools. Disease and threats of nature (e.g., droughts) became more distant because of medicine and infrastructures, rendering "agentic" aspects of the cosmos more invisible. Correlations between technological advances and the plausibility of materialism include the parallel increase in the use of the scientific method and what appeared to be its payoff (technological control over nature); for example, the Enlightenment occurred roughly around the same time as the Industrial Revolution (18c/19c), and a comfortable lifestyle is often synonymous with materialist assumptions. Of course, correlation does not imply causation. But Joe argues that viewing nature as a tool to manipulate for personal gain is a cause with an effect: it renders the cosmos into something passive which humanity shapes. Technology mediates our sense of reality and our imagination (placing us in a kind of bubble)—it becomes easier to view ourselves as the ones in control (see Ellul, Postman, etc.). The need for God seems less imminent. Dystopian fiction messes with the bubble somewhat, introducing a natural crisis that destroys humanity's sense of technological control.

Chapter 4: Seeking, Finding, and Being Found
Joe warns against romanticizing the allegedly enchanted past, which was often filled with superstition. After all, neither New Testament folks nor medieval folks were less prone to error, despite being "closer" to the enchanted time when the god-man walked among us. Any attempt to recover the past, which could be fine [think of adults recovering a childlike wonder at our world], should be done with maturity and with thanksgiving for legitimate advances we've made. He uses "second naiveté" (p. 64) positively.

Joe recommends three spheres of activity as we move forward: remembering why we believe what we do, participating in the life of the local church, and practicing spiritual disciplines that reorient our desires.

In particular, three things to remember are that God is pure act, he is for us in Christ, and we are guilty before him. In discussing the first point, Joe gets into the problem of evil. It's not punting to recognize that finite creatures will experience mystery in a world created by an infinite Creator. In discussing the second point, Joe uses Keller to show that we know a bad argument for the existence of evil: God doesn't care. Christ's death shows us this. We are guilty, but many of the world's sages cannot acknowledge this fundamental problem, as they nevertheless offer solutions. No world literature acknowledges human guilt and shows a God willing to take the punishment himself. Honestly, such a story is almost too implausible to believe. The last few pages of this chapter are powerful.

Chapter 5: Concluding Reflections
The Bible shows God to be a God who comes and goes. But his absence is a way for us to develop trust. God made us to be contingent, developing, maturing creatures who grow in endurance. Presence can't be a given, taken for granted. We seek, ultimately realizing that we are being sought (middle voice).

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On a personal level, one of the benefits of thinking about why atheism seems more plausible these days is that it can reframe one's evangelistic attitude. Westboro Baptists (or whoever) may be right in using Romans 1 to think of atheists as rebels, but is that attitude going to be persuasive? An attitude that looks at the situation and acknowledges that "it may be more difficult to be a Christian in an age filled with technologies that make us feel self-sufficient" could come across to an unbeliever as a genuine attempt to be understanding and sympathetic, and it could have a softening effect. This doesn't excuse the rebellion that atheism certainly is, but a change in posture could be used by the Holy Spirit to persuade someone who may otherwise be resistant to "you rebel" language. Perhaps an analogy could be a crime of passion. A man shouldn't murder another man, but if a husband comes home to find his wife with another man, the murder is—to some narrow extent—understandable, if only in the sense that the husband had unique factors working hard against him. Similarly, it's possible that living in an age filled with technology contributes to factors that make belief in God more of an effort, and conceding this fact could lead to a more compassionate evangelism.

Another benefit of thinking about the plausibility of atheism is that it's helpful even as a Christian to consider how reality is mediated, for example, through technology. I don't wake up every morning and fervently thank God for keeping me safe during the night, providing my food and water for the day, etc. This is largely because I often don't feel my need for God. I intellectually assent to the reality that God protects and provides, but I often take that protection and provision for granted, because in a wealthy and technologically advanced culture, it's easy to do so; technology makes them feel like givens. Surely the magic box that is the iPhone has some effect in orienting us to our world, and it's probably more often than not a device that contributes to a condition of being incurvatus in se. Being aware of this tendency is perhaps half the battle, and the solution need not be to abandon technological tools.