I was recently stunned to find, in an interview with Daniel Dennett published in Third Way <\/em>(July\/August 2013, p. 14), the following exchange:<\/p>\n Interviewer:\u00a0 What might constitute an insuperable problem for naturalism, then?<\/p>\n Dennett:\u00a0 Well, I thought of one thing in a little reverie just yesterday.\u00a0 If you take all the integers \u2013 one, two, three, four \u2013 starting with zero and you arrange them in a sort of a square spiral and you put a red circle, say, around each prime number, you discover that there are some interesting patterns \u2013 it\u2019s a very tantalizing fact about prime numbers.\u00a0 Well, suppose someone said, \u2018I\u2019m going to arrange the number in a slightly different way and just see what happens,\u2019 and they did it and, after a while, when they\u2019d [arranged] enough millions of numbers, we saw that [the pattern that had emerged] was a crucifix\u2026 If something like that was embedded in the number system, my timbers would be shivered, no doubt about it \u2013 because you can\u2019t fake the number system.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I must confess to being utterly baffled by this argument.\u00a0 I have my doubts as to whether such an occurrence (or something analogous) actually would<\/em> convince Dennett, should it turn out to be true, but one thing of which I am fairly certain is that it would not convince me nor the vast majority of professional theologians and philosophers I know and\/or read.\u00a0 It is a mere magic trick.\u00a0 And if it proved the existence of anything, it would not be the God of Jesus Christ, but of simply one more thing among other things, albeit a thing of great power and, it would seem, whimsy.<\/p>\n (As an aside, the idea of a crucifix being the symbol for God in the number system is an interesting one.\u00a0 It highlights something many have noted, namely that atheism does not emerge independently of religion.\u00a0 It is utterly dependent upon religion.\u00a0 Dennett isn\u2019t interested in disproving the God of philosophy, but the God of the Bible.\u00a0 In other words, for all the blustery appeal to \u2018evidence\u2019 and \u2018common-sense,\u2019 the new atheist project remains, in its essence, reactionary.\u00a0 Furthermore, it is worth noting that it is precisely the God of the Bible, that One who has done more than any atheist philosopher in history to unmask the idols of this world and demonstrate that what we thought were the gods, were, in fact, nothing of the kind \u2013 it is this<\/em> God who makes atheism possible by a relentless demythologization of the cosmos.)<\/p>\n All of my professional training, and indeed even my temperament, inclines me to put the best possible read on the comments of those with whom I disagree.\u00a0 And I know, theoretically, at least, that Dennett is a bright guy.\u00a0 But how does a bright guy find no trouble for his worldview whatsoever in the indisputable fact that there is something rather than nothing, and yet confess that a curious plant in the number system would shiver his timbers?
\nOh, and in the same interview, Dennett refers to Jesus as \u201cprobably a mythical character.\u201d\u00a0 (p. 16)\u00a0 Seriously?\u00a0 It\u2019s like arguing with a young-earth creationist.<\/p>\n
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