- D'Souza, Dinesh.
What's So Great About Christianity.
Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2007.
ISBN 978-1-59698-517-9.
-
I would almost certainly never have picked up a book with this
title had I not happened to listen to a
podcast
interview with the author last October. In it, he says that
his goal in writing the book was to engage the contemporary
intellectually militant atheists such as
Richard Dawkins,
Sam Harris,
Christopher Hitchens,
Daniel Dennett, and
Victor Stenger
on their own turf, mounting a rational argument
in favour of faith in general and Christianity in
particular, demonstrating that there are no serious
incompatibilities between the Bible and scientific
theories such as evolution and the big bang,
debunking overblown accounts of wrongs perpetrated in
the name of religion such as the crusades, the inquisition,
the persecution of Galileo, witch hunts, and religious wars in
Europe, and arguing that the great mass murders of the
twentieth century can be laid at the feet not of religion, but
atheist regimes bent on building heaven on Earth. All this is
a pretty tall order, especially for a book of just 304 pages
of main text, but the author does a remarkably effective job
of it. While I doubt the arguments presented here will sway
those who have made a belligerent atheism central to their
self esteem, many readers may be surprised to discover that
the arguments of the atheists are nowhere near as one sided as
their propaganda would suggest.
Another main theme of the book is identifying how many
of the central components of Western civilisation:
limited government, religious toleration, individualism,
separation of church and state, respect for individual
human rights, and the scientific method, all have their
roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and how atheism
and materialism can corrode these pillars supporting the
culture which (rightly) allows the atheists the freedom
to attack it. The author is neither a fundamentalist
nor one who believes the Bible is true in a literal sense:
he argues that when the scriptures are read, as most
Christian scholars have understood them over two millennia,
as using a variety of literary techniques to convey
their message, there is no conflict between biblical
accounts and modern science and, in some cases, the
Bible seems to have anticipated recent discoveries.
D'Souza believes that Darwinian evolution is not in
conflict with the Bible and, while respectful of supporters
of intelligent design, sees no need to invoke it. He
zeroes in precisely on the key issue: that evolution cannot
explain the origin of life since evolution can only operate
on already living organisms upon which variation and selection
can occur.
A good deal of the book can be read as a defence of
religion in general against the arguments of atheism.
Only in the last two chapters does he specifically make the
case for the exceptionalism of Christianity. While
polemicists such as Dawkins and Hitchens come across as angry,
this book is written in a calm, self-confident tone and with
such a limpid clarity that it is a joy to read. As one who
has spent a good deal of time pondering the possibility that
we may be
living in a simulation created by an intelligent
designer (“it isn't a universe; it's a science fair
project”), this book surprised me as being 100%
compatible with that view and provided several additional
insights to expand my work in progress on the topic.
March 2008 