The Bible tells Christians not to be of the world, sharing its distorted priorities, but it does call upon believers to be in the world, fully engaged. Many Christians have abdicated this mission. They have instead sought a workable, comfortable modus vivendi in which they agree to leave the secular world alone if the secular world agrees to leave them alone. Biologist Stephen Jay Gould proposed the terms for the treaty in his book Rocks of Ages when he said that secular society relies on reason and decides matters of fact, while religious people rely on faith and decide questions about values. Many Christians seized upon this distinction with relief. This way they could stay in their subculture and be nice to everyone.
But a group of prominent atheists-many of them evolutionary biologists-has launched a powerful public attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular; they have no interest in being nice. A new set of antireligious books-The End of Faith, The God Delusion, God Is Not Great, and so on-now shapes public debate. These atheists reject the Gould solution. They say that a religious outlook makes specific claims about reality: there is a God, there is life after death, miracles do happen, and so on. If you are agnostic or atheist, you have a very different understanding of reality, one that is formed perhaps by a scientific or rationalist outlook. The argument of the atheists is that both views of reality cannot be simultaneously correct. If one is true, then the other is false.
The atheists have a point: there are not two truths or multiple truths; there is one truth. Either the universe is a completely closed system and miracles are impossible, or the universe is not a closed system and there is the possibility of divine intervention in it. Either the Big Bang was the product of supernatural creation or it had a purely natural cause. In a larger sense, either the secular view of reality is correct or the religious view is correct. (Or both are wrong.) So far the atheists have been hammering the Christians and the Christians have been running for cover. It's like one hand clapping.
This is not a time for Christians to turn the other cheek. Rather, it is a time to drive the money-changers out of the temple. The atheists no longer want to be tolerated. They want to monopolize the public square and to expel Christians from it. They want political questions like abortion to be divorced from religious and moral claims. They want to control the school curricula, so that they can promote a secular ideology and undermine Christianity. They want to discredit the factual claims of religion, and they want to convince the rest of society that Christianity is not only mistaken but also evil. They blame religion for the crimes of history and for the ongoing conflicts in the world today. In short, they want to make religion-and especially the Christian religion-disappear from the face of the earth.
The Bible in Matthew 5:13-14 calls Christians to be the "salt of the earth" and the "light of the world." Christians are called to make the world a better place. Today that means confronting the challenge of modern atheism and secularism. My new book What's So Great About Christianity, which is just hitting the stores, provides a kind of tool kit for Christians to meet this challenge. The Christianity that is defended here is not "fundamentalism" but rather traditional Christianity, what C.S. Lewis called "mere Christianity," the common ground of beliefs between Protestants and Catholics. This Christianity is the real target of the secular assault.
I have written this book not only for believers but also for unbelievers. Many people are genuine seekers. They sense there is something out there that provides a grounding and an ultimate explanation for their deepest questions, yet that something eludes them. They feel the need for a higher sense of purpose in their lives, but they are unsure where to find it. Even though they have heard about God and Christianity, they cannot reconcile religious belief with reason and science: faith seems unreasonable and therefore untenable. Moreover, they worry that religion has been and can be an unhealthy source of intolerance and fanaticism, as evidenced by the motives of the September 11 terrorists. These are all reasonable concerns, and I address them head-on in this book.
This is also a book for atheists, or at least for those atheists who welcome a challenge. Precisely because the Christians usually duck and run, the atheists have had it too easy. Their arguments have gone largely unanswered. They have been flogging the carcass of "fundamentalism" without having to encounter the horse-kick of a vigorous traditional Christianity. I think that if atheists are genuine rationalists they should welcome this book. It is an effort to meet the atheist argument on its own terms.
Nowhere in this book do I take Christianity for granted. My modus operandi is one of skepticism, to view the claims of religion in the same open-minded way that we view claims of any other sort. The difference between me and my atheist opponents is that I am skeptical not only of the irrational claims made in the name of religion but also of the irrational claims made in the name of science and of skepticism itself.
Taking as my foil the anti-religious arguments of prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and the others, What's So Great About Christianity shows the following: 1) Christianity is the main foundation of Western civilization, the root of our most cherished values. 2) The latest discoveries of modern science support the Christian claim that there is a divine being who created the universe. 3)
If you want to read more about the book, check out my website dineshdsouza.com
Reader Comments ( Page 6 of 36)
76. Glen, go pray up a rope.
Brian at 4:48PM on Oct 12th 2007
77. Brian, you are correct. Jesus was not in the first category. He was in the fourth. He stood up to the evil he perceived in his day and exposed it for what it was.
"empathy" means the feeling of sympathy or compassion for another". Frankly it is impossible for me to feel empathy for one who would prey on another, whether he be human or deity. In that regards I am different from you for you say "I am empathetic, but to good and to evil both". I actually doubt, however, that you are using empathetic correctly here. there seems to be too much good in you that you should sympathize with evil, perhaps with the victim in the one who acts out evil.
You still have no plan for the elimination of evil, only a hope that men will become better. And you still have nothing other than your pride to help you define good.
Dale Greenlee at 4:51PM on Oct 12th 2007
78. I stopped reading this drivel here..
"Rather, it is a time to drive the money-changers out of the temple."
Painting atheists as those who would use religion to line their own pockets... is ...satanic... in the sense that it is deceitfully adversarial.
Shame on you, Dinesh D'Souza... if debating the truth of Christianity were a boxing match... you'd be an ear-biter, a low-blow artiste....
... are you TRYING to to be 'assholy'...'cos it is close enough to 'holy' for you?
pboyfloyd at 4:50PM on Oct 12th 2007
79. "The latest discoveries of modern science support the Christian claim that there is a divine being who created the universe."
(1) that is not a particularly christian claim
(2) modern science does not support it
That's a lot of B.S. in just one sentence...
Joe Bob at 4:59PM on Oct 12th 2007
80. Dale, talking to you is throwing pearls before swine. You misperceive and distort. Of course I didn't mean one person standing up to authority, it requires the exposure that you cited, not one martyr. Are you so simple that you think that all atheists are simple too?
I can see the evil of the nazis without any god to help me. All it takes is to ask yourself the question "Is what this group is doing good for all humanity or does it hurt some of them, even kill them?" and the answer flows effortlessly. If I'm balanced, I can see that regardless of how the person couches it or spins it. So it is with Bush as well. All you need is balance, which is attained sometime after you realize that you're imbalanced, as most people are. As I was too. After that, you can work on yourself and bring your beliefs into line with consensual reality, thus you will be able to judge evil versus good fairly accurately.
Perhaps this is the problem with religion? A blind spot where your ability to see evil should be.
Brian at 5:01PM on Oct 12th 2007
81. "Either the universe is a completely closed system and miracles are impossible, or the universe is not a closed system and there is the possibility of divine intervention in it."
Or, the third possibility: there is a race of beings out there, not divine, just highly evolved - who have realized how to warp the laws of this universe with their own wills and science so that they can do things that would appear 'miraculous' to us at first but they are not really 'gods', just imperfect beings like ourselves who have more knowledge than us: like in the Trillium series of books.
Christopher Kidwell at 5:00PM on Oct 12th 2007
82. "Christianity is the main foundation of Western civilization"
The ancient Greeks were not christian. The Elightenment philosophers weren't christian, for the most part. Contemporary scientists aren't christian, for the most part.
Joe Bob at 5:03PM on Oct 12th 2007
83. @ glenn horlacher ..72
Haven't you been paying attention glen... or are you just 'new'? Justifying assholiness using the Bible or b'liefs... is idiocy.
Pride is a sin... says you... well you are a bunch of prideful pricks... then you say... ah, yes.. we ARE all sinners... but your sin is lookdownuponable(you imply)... ours(that's you glen) somehow isn't.
Compartmentalized thinking... war is peace, ignorance is bliss(or strength), freedom is slavery.
pboyfloyd at 5:04PM on Oct 12th 2007
84. Dinesh, I just have to say that all of those points are bunk, especially the 'moral escapism' one.
I am an atheist, and yes, I do disregard most of the 'morality' that other people have.... because it does not make sense.
"Why would nature or 'god' make us with genitals from birth unless we are supposed to have sex from birth?" is one of the greatest things that I have said, that no one can explain except as a 'test of faith'.
Frankly, any 'god' who thinks that he has to 'test me' isn't worthy of my worship, even if I wanted to worship a 'god'. That is just simply being mean to humanity to make us with a powerful sexual nature (more powerful than any other animals) and then try to make us not act on it!
It's stupid, wrong and EVIL!
Yes, some atheists like myself are 'moral escapists'..... but that is because most of your 'morality' in this world doesn't make sense and in reality, you people know that it doesn't and have to be feared into adhering to it by thinking that there is some 'divine being' who is going to punish you after death if you don't adhere to his foolish and insane morality.
Christopher Kidwell at 5:05PM on Oct 12th 2007
85. Frankly it is impossible for me to feel empathy for one who would prey on another, whether he be human or deity.
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Then you fall short of Jesus' ideals as He espoused them in the bible.
It's all about balance. I can empathize with a hitler, and thereby be more able to defeat him, since it is by empathy that we can best know the mind of another, no matter how repellant that mind may be to us.
Brian at 5:09PM on Oct 12th 2007
86. I also have to say that 'good' and 'evil' are two things that are in the eye of the beholder. I say that killing any civilians in Iraq is evil, whether or not they are being used as human shields by terrorists, but other people say that it is okay to kill them in order to get those terrorists.
Some people say that it is right to beat children in order to teach them "discipline" and "morality", but I say that if your 'morality' and 'discipline' were really such good things that you would not have to brainwash and beat people into adhering to them.
I have a good example for that: my own children, who are very 'moral' (they adhere to the three rules that I gave them and some others that they made up themselves for us in certain situations, just like myself), but they do not adhere to 'conventional' morality and I never had to 'beat' them to make them understand that my moral rules were pretty good, sane and BELIEVABLE.
Christopher Kidwell at 5:09PM on Oct 12th 2007
87. Brian, I also can see the evil of Nazism, as well as of Communism, as well as of many of the evils committed in the name of religion, especially by pieces of the Christian religion. What amazes me is that the German nation, a nation which is without doubt one of the great nations on earth both in will and in intellect, could not see it (as perhaps you think) or chose not to, as I think. (BTW, I am not German). I think we are capable of choosing good or evil, but it is defined not by me, you, or us, but by one how has the right to be the authority in this matter. That many who claim to worship him do not live by his law in no way diminishes his authority, any more than some in America refusing to live by our laws diminishes the authority of our government.
I choose not to have so much pride as to define for myself good or evil, rather I try to live by what God has defined as good. And he has somehow managed to define good generally the same as you have. (Or maybe it's the other way around.)
Dale Greenlee at 5:12PM on Oct 12th 2007
88. "Darwin 's theory of evolution, far from undermining the evidence for supernatural design, actually strengthens it."
That's like saying that modern cosmology supports the idea that the universe is 6,000 years old. Totally absurd.
Joe Bob at 5:14PM on Oct 12th 2007
89. Christopher: Frankly, any 'god' who thinks that he has to 'test me' isn't worthy of my worship,
Didn't your teachers in school test you? I know in my experience the tests made me a better student, and now a more successful adult.
Dale Greenlee at 5:18PM on Oct 12th 2007
90. "There is nothing in science that makes miracles impossible."
There is nothing in science that makes it impossible that we were all created 5 milliseconds ago with false memories planted in our brains by an invisible pink unicorn. But it's not a very useful concept.
Joe Bob at 5:18PM on Oct 12th 2007