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.”