Dinesh D Souza, The Greatness of Christianity: Table of Contents
Cf. Dinesh D’souza, What’s So Great About Christianity, at Amazon
“When Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts.” —St. Paul, Letter to the Romans, 2:14
RELIGION AND MORALITY SEEM TO BE TWO SEPARATE THINGS, and yet many people’s objections to Christianity seem to derive mainly from their resistance to Christian morality. To many, this morality seems arbitrary, authoritarian, and even cruel. Richard Dawkins puts it this way: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Gone is the measured scientific tone, and Dawkins shows that he doesn’t just disbelieve in the Christian God, he detests Him. Is morality, then, the universal set of rules issued by a divine scarecrow with a long beard and a wagging finger? Or is morality better understood in natural and secular terms, as adaptable rules that we make up as we go along in order to serve human objectives like peace and coexistence?
In this chapter I will show that this is a false choice. Morality is both natural and universal. It is discoverable without religion, yet its source is ultimately divine. Darwinist attempts to give a purely secular explanation of morality are a failure, and each of us knows—however disingenuously we deny it—that there are absolute standards of right and wrong, and these are precisely the standards we use to judge how other people treat us. It is not Christian morality that is the obstacle to our moral freedom; it is conscience itself, the judge within.