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 school curricula so 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. This book provides a kind of tool kit for Christians to meet this challenge. The Christianity 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 aregenuine 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 would view claims of any other sort. The difference between me and my atheist opponents is that I am skeptical not only of the allegedly irrational claims 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, in this book I will demonstrate the following:
1. Christianity is the main foundation of Western civilization, the root of our most cherished values.
