ie:missional teaching. glocalizing. living. serving. repenting. incarnating. loving. repeating.

Written as a response to anti-theist authors (Hitchens, Dawkins, et al), Hoover Institute scholar Dinesh D’Souza has amassed a thorough and thoughtful volume with chapters as varied as “Render unto Caesar: The Spiritual Basis of Limited Government” to “Christianity and Reason: The Theological Roots of Science” and “An Atheist Fable: Reopening the Galileo Case” to “The Ghost in the Machine: Why Man is More Than Matter.” From the preface, D’Souza indicates that his writing is to provide “a tool kit” to help Christians live out their responsibility to be “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” He also hopes to help “genuine seekers” who are looking for “an ultimate explanation for their deepest questions.” His stated sevenfold goal is to demonstrate:

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. Darwin’s theory of evolution, far from undermining the evidence for supernatural design, actually strengthens it.
4. There is nothing in science that makes miracles impossible.
5. It is reasonable to have faith.
6. Atheism, not religion, is responsible for the mass murders of history.
7. Atheism is motivated not by reason but by a kind of cowardly moral escapism.

It is a large task and one for which Dinesh D’Souza is ready.

Beginning with a picture of massive growth of global Christianity, he makes these observations,

If secularization were proceeding inexorably, then religious people should be getting less religious, and so conservative churches should be shrinking and liberal churches growing (p.4)…Perhaps the greatest problem for the secularization theory is that in an era if increasing globalization and modernization, the world as a whole is becoming more religious, not less.

This, of course, is in opposition to the anti-theist claims that religion is a relic from an era in which humanity did not have a full understanding of the world and invented the myths of God and gods to explain what now is understood in the domain of science. D’Souza’s effective counter is that based on that line of thinking, the more that is discovered by science the fewer believers in God there should be, but that is not the case.

Chapter 2 is a mere six pages but unpacks one of the more devastating questions for the anti-theist: If natural selection is the beginning and end of all things, then why has it produced a system (religion) that has no practical value for ensuring survival of the fittest? In this question we see that the materialist is caught in his own trap. If religion is entirely man made and there is no deity of any kind, then why did the most highly evolved species on the planet invent it? Various religions call on people to do things (build houses of worship, give the best calf for an offering rather than eating it, give money away rather than keeping it) that mitigate against their own survival. Are we to assume that every single religious person is deficient? Although some anti-theists hold that position, it flies in the face of their argument. [Christopher Hitchens writes, “All religions and all churches are equally demented in their belief in divine intervention, divine intercession, or even the existence of the divine in the first place,” while Richard Dawkins intones, “Faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.”]

The balance of the book is just as strong as D’Souza invokes the “sacred” names of Hume and Kant in examining miracles and the role of reason in having faith. Hume’s denial of miracles is turned upside down by his own observation that, as D’Souza states it, “human knowledge is so limited and unreliable that it can never completely dismiss the possibility of miracles,” while Kant’s argument was “that beyond the precincts of reason, it is in no way unreasonable to make decisions based on faith.” D’Souza continues,

The important point here is that in the phenomenal or empirical world, we are in a position to formulate opinions based on experience and testing and verification and reason. In that world it is superstitious to make claims on faith that cannot be supported by evidence and reason. Outside the phenomenal world, however, these criteria do not apply, just as the laws of physics apply only to our universe and not to any other universe.

Examining the role of reason in Christianity, especially as it relates to the development of science, Chapter 8 begins with a quote by Thomas Aquinas:

We shall first try to manifest the truth that faith professes and reason investigates, setting forth demonstrative and probable arguments, so that the truth may be confirmed and the adversary convinced.

Asking why science developed in “Christendom” he concludes, echoing Pope Benedict XVI, that it was

due to Christianity’s emphasis on the importance of reason. The pope argued that reason is a central distinguishing feature of Christianity…An unbiased look at the history of science shows that modern science is an invention of medieval Christianity, and that the greatest breakthroughs in scientific reason have largely been the work of Christians. Even atheist scientists work with Christian assumptions that, due to their ignorance of theology and history, are invisible to them. [Emphasis mine.]

[It should be noted that D’Souze is a theistic evolutionist seeing no discrepancy at all between the biblical account and Darwin’s theory in general. The argument he advances is that Darwinism need not be materialistic in and of itself.]

What’s So Great About Christianity is worth the read. I see it as a 21st century Evidence that Demands a Verdict though it is much more philosophical than those volumes were. It is filled with page after page of thought stimulating ideas and conclusions. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Institute, recommends What’s So Great saying, “Assembling arguments from history, philosophy, theology and science, he builds a modern and compelling case for faith in a loving God.” Even the publisher of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer, was forced to conclude, “Although non-Christians and non-theists may disagree with some of his arguments, we ignore him at our peril. D’Souza’s book takes the debate to a new level. Read it.”

[Second in a series.]

Sam Harris (also here) is an American writer and philosopher. Perhaps without intending to do so, he has joined the cabal of authors and speakers who are atheistic in their approach, but in reality they are “anti-theists”–going far beyond a lack of belief in God, they are virulently opposed to the idea of God and the existence of religion. Harris’ book, The End of Faith, was followed by a second New York Times bestseller, Letters to a Christian Nation, which was a response to (apparently) accusatory correspondence received from Christians following the volume being reviewed here.

As with Hitchens’ volume (reviewed here) the best place to begin with The End of Faith is at the end. Harris states on pages 221-225:

Religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time…Our religious traditions are intellectually defunct and politically ruinous. While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it. Clearly, it must be possible to bring reason, spirituality, and ethics together in our thinking about the world. This would be the beginning of a rational approach to our deepest personal concerns. It would also be the end of faith…In the best case, faith leaves otherwise well-intentioned people incapable of thinking rationally about many of their deepest concerns; at worst, it is a continuous source of human violence…Our religious beliefs can no longer be sheltered from the tides of genuine inquiry and genuine criticism.

(That last sentence leads me to believe that Harris had previously live a life devoid of any research at all involving the history of Christianity.)

According to available information, Harris began writing End on September 12, 2001, precisely due to the ramifications of the terror attacks. The seems obvious by the fact that much of the book deals with the problems of Islam and the Koran. At one point fives pages (117-123) are given to scores of direct quotes from the Koran which, in the mind of Harris, form the basis from which any devout Muslim may justify violence against any unbeliever. And, while Harris’ volume is not a harsh, one the whole, as god is not Great, he saves his most of his sternest criticisms for the followers of Muhammad. He does not, however, cut the followers of Jesus any slack, as evidenced by his suggestion that the Bible be “respectfully shelved next to Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Egyptian Book of the Dead.”

Harris writes:

The idea that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention-distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence-is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory…Our world is fast succumbing to the activities of men and women who would stake the future of our species on beliefs that should not survive an elementary school education. [Emphasis in original.]

These “beliefs” would include anything from suicide bombings to opposition of condom based AIDS prevention in Africa to opposition of embryonic stem cell research in the U. S. Anything that is not “rational” is seen as dangerous; so dangerous, in fact, that Harris makes this astounding statement:

The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.

Make sure you read that carefully. I’m not sure whether pre-emptively killing people for what they believe will ultimately be considered pisticide or “genocide of the faithful,” but Harris’ suggestion astounds me. I’m further astounded that he has not been roundly condemned by those in his own camp.

Another surprising suggestion is his careful assertion that the only way to lasting peace in our world is through a one world government. An extended quote from page 151:

We should, I think, look upon modern despotisms as hostage crises. Kim Jong Il has thirty million hostages. Saddam Hussein had twenty-five million. The clerics in Iran have seventy million more. It does not matter that many hostages have been so brainwashed that they will fight their would-be liberators to the death…The developed world must, somehow, come to their rescue. Jonathan Glover seems right to suggest that we need ‘something along the lines of a strong and properly funded permanent UN force, together with clear criteria for intervention and an international court to authorize it.’ We can say it even more simply: we need a world government. How else will a war between the United States and China ever become as unlikely as a war between Texas and Vermont?

Now, I’m not prepared to go all John Hagee or Left Behind on everyone, but if an accurate interpretation of Revelation includes Antichrist as the world’s leader, then Harris and his ilk will be lined up first with right hands extended.

The book slowed considerably for me when Harris turned to the concept of consciousness as he sounded, I thought, strangely Buddhist. My thoughts were confirmed in the Afterword for the paperback edition where he defends himself from atheists who were upset with him for espousing Buddhist philosophy. Unfortunately that has not let to a book entitled Letters to an Atheist Nation, and I’m sure one is not in the offing.

In what seems to be a unique consistency among anti-theist writers, Harris displays little understanding of the Bible. Page seventy-eight features a passage from Bertrand Russell:

The Spaniards in Mexico and Peru used to baptize Indian infants and then immediately dash their brains out: by this means they secured these infants went to Heaven. No orthodox Christian can find any logical reason for condemning their action, although all nowadays do so.

While I cannot speak to the capability of Roman Catholics to find a logical reason for condemning infanticide committed by the Conquistadors, I’m fully able to condemn them myself.

Then this assertion concerning the Biblical imperative to be like Christ:

The effect of [Christian] dogma is to place the example of Jesus forever out of reach. His teaching ceases to be a set of empirical claims about the linkage between ethics and spiritual insight and instead becomes a gratuitous, and rather gruesome, fairy tale. According to the dogma of Christianity, becoming like Jesus is impossible.

Again we have a complete misrepresentation of scripture or a complete misunderstanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in the believers’ sanctification–I suspect both.

In the end, I cannot shake the sense that an underlying motivation for Harris’ assault is the fear of his own death, though he obviously thinks it means the end of his existence. He repeatedly turns to the illogical behavior of Muslims who he fears will ultimately acquire dirty bombs or some other weapon of mass destruction for his diatribe. (At two points he asks the question, “Where are the Palestinian Christian suicide bombers?”) His motive for writing even reveals this very issue:

What follows is written very much in the spirit of a prayer. I pray that we may one day think clearly enough about these matters to render our children incapable of killing themselves over their books. If not our children, then I suspect it could well b too late for us, because while it has never been difficult to meet your maker, if fifty years it will simply be too easy to drag everyone else along to meet him with you.