A person tossing aside the Word of God to enter neutral ground finds himself on a slippery slide to the rejection of God

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins argues that morality is grounded in evolution rather than in God or religion. He explains morality through his concept of the “selfish gene” by which genes, through natural selec- tion, ensure their own survival by selfishly encouraging altruistic behavior. He proposes four types of such behavior. First, a gene may program an organism to favor its genetic kin. Second, through reciprocal altruism an organ- ism grants favors and receives favors in return. Third, through altruism an organism can acquire a reputation of being generous and kind and thereby benefit itself. Fourth, an organism can use generosity to demonstrate its superiority. Dawkins then asks why we are good to people we have never met and will probably never see again.

“But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the MostHigh.’ “

Isaiah 14:13-14 NASB

Well-known atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins authored the now best selling book The God Delusion which was published last year.¹ This is just one of several recent popular science books by atheists to hit bookstores in the last few months. This essay will discuss selected scientific and philosophical arguments made in the Delusion.

The phrase "intelligent design" is heard a great deal lately in the media, usually in the context of secondary school science education.

Those who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s lived through a revolutionary transformation of Western culture from a Judea-Christian worldview to the prevailing secular views of today. The turbulent sixties saw the assassination of president Kennedy, the Vietnam war, the emergence of rock'n roll, the rise of radical feminism, the "sexual revolution," the emergence of the drug culture, the space race culminating with the landing of man on the moon, the Civil Rights movement, the "generation gap," Woodstock, the banning of school prayer, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the nuclear arms race, the peace movement, hippies, the rise of the "counter culture," the rise of Eastern Mysticism, the rise of the ecology movement, founding of the "Great Society," mini-skirts, and so on. In the early 1970s we had the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision, which gave us mass murder via abortion.