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The Reason Rally and True Reason

On March 24th, 2012, a large event will take place in Washington DC called the Reason Rally. The purpose of this event is to promote the naturalistic (atheistic) worldview as being not only compatible with but demanded by reason. Speakers at the rally will include Dr. Richard Dawkins and Dr. Lawrence Krauss. Both offer passionate arguments against religion and are sure to fire up the crowd.

As many Christians are aware, their worldview offers an understanding of the world that is not only reasoned through carefully but can explain much more of reality than can the naturalistic worldview. Christian apologist William Lane Craig offered a philosophical and scientific critique of Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" that can be found here. Craig also debated Krauss here.

There will be a Christian presence at the rally that will offer reasoned responses to the ideas and challenges that are proposed. They will be offering both positive arguments for the truth of Christianity and negative arguments against the truth of the naturalistic worldview (see my post on the importance of offering both positive and negative arguments here). I state this explicitly because the only arguments atheists (including Dawkins and Krauss) tend to offer are negative against religion (in general). They do not offer positive arguments for their atheism (atheism is assumed to be the default position if "religion" is argued to be inconsistent with reality or "evil"), nor do they address claims of specific religions. The web site for this coordinated Christian presence and response can be found at http://www.truereason.org/. The Christian Apologetics Alliance will also be publishing a book in response to the rally in early March.


I noticed that an atheist posted to Reddit one of the blog posts promoting True Reason. What caught me as interesting is the question that (s)he asked follow atheists: "Can we all agree to treat them with the civility and humility that fellow humans deserve?" (emphasis mine). Please notice that the question assumes that humans have intrinsic value. If they didn't, then there would be no reason to claim that humans deserve civility and humility. On the atheist worldview, man is just as valuable as any other form of life (or non-life too). If man has evolved from other life-forms, value must have evolved at some point or been intrinsic with the original life-form. Unfortunately, value is metaphysical; it is not a physical attribute that could evolve or exist in a naturalistic world. The atheist must borrow from the Christian worldview in order to make the claim that humans actually possess intrinsic value. This is the true irony of the idea of a "reason" rally for atheism. If they were truly being reasonable, they would assert that humans have just as much value as anything and everything else. If they want to ascribe intrinsic value to humanity, they must ascribe it to everyone(thing) else. I address this issue in more detail in my post on the logical problem with the idea "human equality" in the naturalistic worldview- Martin Luther King Jr. vs. Evolution

For more resources that offer reasonable responses to the claims of naturalists, please see My Favorite Apologetics and Theology Websites section in the right column of this blog.

Here are other posts regarding the Reason Rally:

The Reason Rally and the Westboro Invitation- Carson  Weitnauer
Reason Rally: Secular "Values" and Reason- Greg Reeves
Is Reason Reasonable?- Ratio Christi
Reason Rally 2012- Glenn Peoples
Come to the Reason Rally!- Tom Gilson
The Reason Rally and Reasonable Faith in an Uncertain World- Mikel Del Rosario
The Reason Rally- Carson Weitnauer
A Brief Word on the Reason Rally- Austin Gravely
Reason Rally- Stephen McAndrew
Reason Rally 2012- Christina Szymanski