Fear and Trembling

I just finished Al Mohler’s book Atheism Remix . It’s a short, pithy call to Christians for a distinctly biblical response to Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Crossway’s new book blog has a link to a clip of Mohler talking about the topic. The book is a good read. Mohler summarizes a response from Alvin Plantinga in an article on the web called “The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum.” The web article was worth the price of Mohler’s book. Mohler chooses to summarize other people’s arguments instead of putting forth his own, and that does trouble me.

Stand to Reason’s blog contains a great post on the new video from our modern aethiest group. Here’s a sample from the post. Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris are actually doing us a favor. The thing I appreciate about these men is that they don't view religion as a relativistic, subjective enterprise. They take the claims of Christianity seriously by addressing them as truth claims, not preferences. In the first ten minutes of a video they've titled The Four Horsemen , they express frustration about the fact that people have made religion untouchable--that if a person tries to argue against the truthfulness of a religion, even the non-religious will shake a finger at him for criticizing it. I couldn't agree more with their frustration... I agree. I dislike the way most people in the modern church make religion subjective. When religion moves into the are of “blind faith,” our critics are right to ridicule us. The Christian faith...

I have been a subscriber to Charles Colson’s Breakpoint newsletter for a long time now, and I find it helpful. The commentary and intights are almost always worth the time to read. This week’s was especially interesting as it begins a series on modern, militant atheism. Here’s a sample: In a recent issue of Scientific American, arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins and physicist Lawrence Krauss discussed the relationship between science and religion. Dawkins, whose latest book, The God Delusion, is only one of a slew of recent books attacking religious beliefs, prefers an "in your face" approach. He once wrote that "if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane." He then added "or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that." In his discussion with Krauss, Dawkins stood by his statement, calling it "a simple and sober statement of fact." … All of this begs the question: "Is faith, in partic...

I have been reading Christopher Hitchens’ new book: God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2007). Hitchens skillfully builds a wall of rhetoric around his firmly entrenched atheism. He walls himself off from Christianity with subtile and effective insult. Unlike Richard Dawkin’s recent book, it is more difficult to pin down an actual argument against the Christian faith in God is not Great , but I would like to answer a few points. ... there would be no ... churches in the first place if humanity had not been afraid of the weather, that dark, the plague, the eclipse, and all manner of other things now easily explicable. And also if humanity had not been compelled, on pain of extremely agonizing consequences, to pay the exorbitant tithes and taxes that raised the imposing edifices of religion. (p. 65) In this short passage, he refers to two ad hominem arguments. Men like Sigmund Freud and Ludwig Feuerbach developed the first in the past. It has been calle...