the twilight of atheism

Here are some quotes taken from Alistair McGrath’s book, The Twilight Of Atheism. I have taken these from David May’s excellent summary of that book. What interests me is McGrath’s thesis that the relation of atheism to the corruption of religion in general and the church in particular. Atheism is more a protest movement than it is anything else. I have bolded the text where this is emphasized. Read on…

Atheism was an imaginative and liberative response to the power and abuses of the church and the establishment. The movement is now seen as an alternative struggle for power that seeks to eliminate all opposition. Atheism fit the mentality of modernism but doesn’t fit with the tolerant ethos of post-modernisn.

“Paradoxically, the historical origins of modern atheism lie primarily in an extended criticism of the power and status of the church, rather than in any asserted attractions of a godless world.” (11)

The golden age of atheism was ushered in by the French Revolution of 1789. “Generations of accumulated popular resentment and intellectual hostility against king and church could finally be contained no longer.” Humanity was to be liberated from tyranny and superstition. A new future would dawn when God was eliminated. (21)

Voltaire suggested that the attractiveness of atheism was in proportion to the corruption of Christian institutions. (27)

The American Revolution was not accompanied by a serious move toward atheism. For many, Christianity motivated and guided their struggle. It was their ally. (27-8)

Nobody doubted the existence of God until theologians tried to prove it. The ‘proofs’ were faulty and undermined the prior certainty. (31)

Atheism, seen as novel and exciting, was a major driving force of the French Revolution. (45) But the movement that gave the world the Declaration of the Rights of Man also gave it the Reign of Terror. “To those who suggest that religion is responsible for the ills of the world, the Revolution offers an awkward anomaly.” “The new religion of humanity mimicked both the virtues and vices of the Catholicism it hoped to depose. It might well have a new god, a new savior, and new saints. But it also had its own inquisition and began its own particular war of religion.” (46)

But the real impact of the French Revolution was the impact on the minds and imaginations of alienated individuals throughout Europe. Seeds were planted. (47)

“Ideas originally limited to a small elite gradually percolated downward and outward into society as a whole.” Western society began to look to intellectuals rather than to clergy for guidance. (49)

“This dismissal of God was as slick as it was sweeping. The longings of the human heart needed no objective foundation in any external being.” “Man is a god to himself.” “Feuerbach thus laid the foundations of the discipline of religious studies as a means of deepening our knowledge of human nature.” (58) “The idea of God was a dream, and the church the perpetuator of this delusion.” (59)

Marx asserted that ideas and values are determined by the material realities of life. Religion arises because of sorrow and injustice, but these are social realities. God is simply a projection of human concerns. Religion eases pain by creating a fantasy world where sorrows cease. (63-5)

For Freud religion was a illusion that draws its strength from our instinctual desires. (68) As an atheist he felt religion was dangerous. (70) Freud’s impact was immense, especially in the West. He unlocked the repressed secrets of the human mind, enabling humanity to face its future without religion. Freud’s criticisms were accepted partly because they were considered scientific. Originally atheism was viewed as puzzling. Now, many considered the opposite true. (76-77)

The early twentieth century saw the development and domination of a mindset that assumed religion is a superstitious relic that has always been in essential conflict with science and will be until it is eliminated. (79)

Three cultural suppositions about science contributed to this divide:

1. The natural sciences have been liberated from bondage to superstition and oppression.

2. Natural sciences conclusively prove their theories whereas religion is irrational and mysterious.

3. Darwinian theory made belief in God impossible. (83)

“The interaction of science and religion is determined far more by their social circumstances than their specific ideas.” (87) “The golden age of atheism witnessed the relentless advance of the sciences and the equally relentless retreat of faith from the public to the private domain.” (88)

But there is no necessary discontinuity between religion and science. Some scientists are religious and some are not. (89)

The outcome of the philosophy of logical positivism in the 1950s was the moral demand that human beings prove what they believe. Religion was simply incapable of providing the evidential basis of belief. Yet paradoxically, so was atheism. Both atheism and Christian belief are beyond the available evidence. “Both could be proposed; both could be defended; niether could be proved.” (92-3)

Thus Thomas Huxley coined the term, ‘agnostic,’ one who doesn’t claim to know. (93-4)

The natural sciences offer what they believe to be the best possible explanation of things, but they are perfectly prepared to abandon or modify this in the light of additional information. “A theory can be plausible enough to gain our trust, even though some of its predictions and promises lie in the future. In short: it is about faith…” (97) There is always some element of faith or trust in the natural sciences because so much cannot be proven. (98)

According to Dawkins, the appearance of design can arise naturally within the evolutionary process. “Evolutionary theory leads inexorably to a godless, purposeless world.” (108)

On the other hand, Stephen Jay Gould insisted that science can work only with naturalistic explanations; it can neither affirm nor deny the existence of God. “The bottom line for Gould is that Darwinism actually has no bearing on the existence or nature of God.” (109-10)

The Victorian crisis of faith was a failure of the religious imagination. (112) The images of God as a machine or a watchmaker were dull and uninspiring. William Godwin (1758-1836) radically proposed that humanity could be perfected through reason but this did not spark the imagination. There was no sense of transcendence. However, the beauty of the natural order, as suggested by Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, seemed to provide a satisfying alternative. (114-116) “If God is to be removed, there must remain some corresponding metaphysical category to which human emotions and imagination may be linked.” (118)

“By the 1870s the cheerleaders of Victorian culture were coming to the view that Christ had nothing distinctive to say, other than to encourage people to behave themselves properly.” (139) He came across as a glorified Sunday school teacher who lacked the ability to captivate the imagination of the culture. (140) “Suddenly it became meaningful to speak of the death of God in Western culture. God had ceased to be a living presence….” (143)

On October 22, 1965, TIME Magazine’s cover asked, “Is God dead?” “The public atheism that had taken its first faltering steps in the eighteenth century had finally come of age.” (145)

However, Dostoyevsky foresaw that to remove God is to eliminate the final restraint on human brutality. Nietzsche’s mature writings represent a cultural observation that belief in God had become unbelievable. The pragmatic fact was that God was being eliminated from modern culture. God has been eliminated, squeezed out. In short: we have killed God. (149-150) “Morality is no longer defined with reference to God, but solely with reference to human needs and aspirations. ‘Morality is the herd instinct in the individual.’” (151)

According to Camus, if there is no God to give meaning to events the only way to be happy is by acknowledging the absurdity of the situation. The world is unreasonable and meaningless. Yet, he longs for it to have meaning. This brings despair, the position of the absurd. (155-57) God’s death is marked by his silence more than his absence. (158)

In the 1960s everything was swept aside to begin again. Those with vision were unfettered by the outdated constraints of their parents. God was an outmoded idea of the past. It was a crisis time for Christianity from which it has not recovered. (158-59)

In American intellectual life, God is to be respected as long as people don’t get too serious about him. “Talking about God was seen as something that consenting adults do in private.” (160-61)

But atheism never really caught on in America. Its appeal was linked to a particular place and culture. In Europe it rested on its role as a liberator from the past and challenge to the state. But the social situation in North America was quite different. There was, for example, no state-established church to oppose. (162)

For most of its existence, atheism had to seek out an enemy to oppose. But it had an unwitting ally in the intellectual leadership of the mainline denominations and revisionist theologians. Its high point was the removing of Bible reading and prayer from public schools in 1963. (162-63)

The mainline denominations have suffered massive declines while churches that adapt to their populations and communicate in ways that connect with needs have grown. Many mainline ideas were so adapted to the ideas of modernity that they were fatally compromised by the death of modernity and the rise of postmodernity, which reacted against almost every aspect of modernity. (164)

“Marxism-Leninism held that a true socialist state was necessarily atheistic.” Since people didn’t give up faith willingly, the State tried to enforce it. The persistence of practicing faith among two-thirds of the Russian people more than twenty years after the revolution was an embarrassment to Marxist theory. (165-66)

“By 1970 many had come to the view that religion was on its way out.” (173) But the appeal of atheism is culturally conditioned and the culture is changing.

“Everywhere there are signs that atheism is losing its appeal.” “Its day of influence is passing.” The term ‘postatheist’ is now widely used as worldview in Eastern Europe. “Atheism, once seen as Western culture’s hot date with the future, is now seen as an embarrassing link with a largely discredited past.” (174)

“The principal cause of my atheism was Marxism, a movement that I believed held the key to the future (in the late 60s).” It offered a break from the religious past and promised to lead to peace and prosperity in my troubled homeland of Ireland.” “Its lure lay in its proposal to change the world.” It seemed to make a certain degree of sense of things and I believed it represented real integrity. Further it offered the hope of a better future and the possibility of being involved in bringing it about. (177)

However, “like my fellow countryman C. S. Lewis, I found myself experiencing ‘the steady unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.’” (178) “The ideas that once excited and enthralled me seem, on being revisited, rather humdrum and mundane.” (179)

“The philosophical argument about the existence of God has ground to a halt. The matter lies beyond rational proof, and is ultimately a matter of faith, in the sense of judgments made in the absence of sufficient evidence.” (179) “The belief that there is no God is just as much a matter of faith as the belief that there is a God.” (180)

“There has been a growing recognition of the ultimate circularity of the great atheist philosophies of recent centuries.” “…explanations of religious belief start out from atheist premises and duly arrive at atheist conclusions. They are, in their own way, coherent: they are not, however, compelling.” (180)

“For many, the trauma of Auschwitz can only mean the supreme triumph of atheism: who could believe in God in the face of such horrifying acts of violence and brutality? It is only fair to point out that those who planned the Holocaust, and those who slammed shut the doors of the Auschwitz gas chambers, were human beings–precisely those whom Ludwig Feuerbach declared to be the new ‘gods’ of the modern era, free from any divine prohibitions or sanctions….” (183)

“If any worldview is rendered incredible by the suffering and pain of the twentieth century, it is the petty dogma of the nineteenth century, which declared that humanity was divine.” (184)

In the twentieth century a growing number of Christian writers such as Chesterton, Lewis, Tolkien, Sayers, and others, gave rebirth to the Christian imagination. Atheism seems to have lost its appeal to the imagination about the same time. (186)

It is no longer necessary to imagine a world without God. We have seen the real thing in the Soviet Union. The failure of imagination of secularism is giving a rebirth to a fascination with the ’spiritual.’ There is something about human nature that impels it to seek the spiritual. (187)

The prophecies of the disappearance of religion from western culture were clearly failing by the 1980s. The reverse is true. This new interest has swept through Western culture in the last decade. (189, 191)

Christianity is a living organism, still in the process of developing. “Without in any way ceasing to be Christian, it has learned to exist in more accountable and responsible forms.” “Christianity is not a historically fixed monochrome entity, but a diverse and dynamic faith…” (192) The rapid rise of Pentecostalism is a good example. A massive transformation in global Christianity is taking place. (195-96)

“In part, atheism gained its appeal in the past through the failures of the churches, rather than on account of its own intrinsic merits.” “Pentecostalism changed all that, engaging directly with the cultural, social, and experiential world of the masses.” (197)

“If the arguments presented in this chapter are correct…there are clear implications for the futures of both Protestant Christianity and atheism, not least that certain traditional forms of Protestantism will decline further, while those which affirm and celebrate a direct engagement with the divine will grow at the expense of the former.” (213)

“Nevertheless, some sects of Western Protestantism, often deeply influenced by the rationalism of the Enlightenment, continue to …place an emphasis upon ‘theological correctness,’ stressing the overarching importance of having right ideas about God.” “The mind is engaged; the emotions and imagination remain untouched.” “The contrast with Pentecostalism on this point could not be greater.” “Pentecostalism declares that it is possible to encounter God directly and personally through the power of the Holy Spirit.” “When you become a Pentecostal, you talk about how you’ve been healed, or how your very life has been changed.” “Pentecostalism today addresses the whole of life, including the thinking part.” “How can God’s existence be doubted, when God is such a powerful reality in our lives?” (214-16)

Atheism was the ideal religion of the modern period, reflecting its ideas, values, and agendas. (216)

“What was entirely plausible in one cultural context now becomes seen as eccentric, possibly even irrational.” (218)

“Reacting against the simplistic overstatements of the Enlightenment, postmodernity has stressed the limits to human knowledge, and encouraged a toleration of those who diverge from the ‘one size fits all’ philosophy of modernity. The world in which we live is now seen as a place in which nothing is certain, nothing is guaranteed, and nothing is unquestionably given.” (218) The all-knowing mind has been replaced by the searcher, questing for truth. “Atheism, as a totalizing system, is ill at ease in such a world….” (219)

“The forcible suppression of religion is one of the most troubling aspects of atheism–especially to those of a postmodern inclination, for whom tolerance is the supreme social and personal virtue.” (230) “A demand to eliminate deficient beliefs leads to an obsession with power as the means by which that elimination can proceed.” (233)

“The appeal of atheism to generations lay in its offer of liberation.” “Yet wherever atheism became the establishment, it demonstrated a ruthlessness and lack of toleration that destroyed its credentials as a liberator.” (234) “No longer could anyone take the suggestion that atheism was the liberator of humanity with any seriousness.” (235)

“Postmodernity is intolerant of any totalizing worldview, precisely because of its propensity to oppress those who resist it.” (236)

“Individual atheist writers and thinkers are more than happy to appear on the nation’s chat shows to promote their latest books. But they have failed to communicate a compelling vision of atheism that is capable of drawing large numbers of people and holding them securely.” (269)

“The real significance of atheism has to do with its critique of power and privilege.” “When religion becomes the establishment, an abuse of power results that corrupts the worldview. When religion starts getting ideas about power, atheism soars in its appeal.” And vice versa. (276)

“The future looks nothing like the godless and religionless world so confidently predicted forty years ago.” “Where religion manages to anchor itself in the hearts and minds of ordinary people, is sensitive to their needs and concerns, and offers them a better future, the less credible the atheist critique will appear.” (278)

November 18, 2007 | Filed Under reviews, theologia |

Comments

25 Responses to “the twilight of atheism”

Janet on November 18th, 2007 3:23 pm

Interesting post Alan.

It’s interesting that the best hope for the growth of the church posited by this book is Pentecostalism. I agree with the idea that charismatic / experiential expressions of faith have more dynamism and relevance in a most-modern setting than more “intellectual” expressions of church. However, I’m seeing quite a bit of evidence that Pentecostal churches in the West are being excessively influenced by “prosperity” teaching (wealth = a sign of God’s blessing) and unhealthy concentration of power in the pastor / leader (”submit to your leaders” + “touch not the Lord’s anointed” teaching.)

I certainly hope I’m wrong about this, because both ideas strike me as a highly toxic virus released in a vital population. I’d be interested to get the perspectives of others from different countries.

I know withing Forge there are many young Pentecostals exploring new ways of being and doing church and mission.
Janet on November 18th, 2007 3:24 pm

Should be “within” Forge, not withing!
Eleanor Burne-Jones on November 18th, 2007 7:26 pm

It also raises questions for me:

While I understand where Alistair is coming from, it also sounds a bit like a put-down to atheists, as though they have nothing positive to advocate. While those atheists I’m closest to do advocate atheism in the context of arguing that religion is the cause of terrible suffering and conflict in the world and endangers all of us, they also express a disappointment in what they see as people clinging to religious beliefs as a way of avoiding facing the hard stuff in life. They accuse us of cowardice in the face of life!

As well as starting all the conflicts on earth! lol I never quite got how that one works.

The next question has to be that if the big problems of modernity churches are their excessive adaptation to modernity, making change almost impossible, how do we avoid falling into the same trap as we create churches in postmodern settings?

In the wave of pentecostal growth and experience-affirming churches, are we laying foundations for our next crisis?

Blessings
Eleanor
Janet on November 18th, 2007 8:59 pm

You just have to love your forward-thinking Eleanor… I just love good questions.
Janet on November 18th, 2007 9:43 pm

This makes me wonder how the strengths and weaknesses of the current emerging church movement will be identified in 100 years time or so… Mmmm… is it possible to know? Certainly it’s another interesting “perspective” question.
Terry Cheek on November 19th, 2007 1:46 am

“You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. 5 “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.” (Gen 3:4-5 )

It seems that men have always wanted to be their own god. But each time we put ourselves in His position, we screw it up.
Alan Hirsch on November 19th, 2007 2:56 am

Yeah but Terry, what I find interesting is that so much of atheism is actually a reaction to OUR distortions and stuff-ups as a church. I think we have to wear that this is a real part of the reason for atheism.
Espen on November 19th, 2007 8:20 am

I think McGrath is right that atheism for a very great part is a reaction against church abuse. And the church having almost no authority left in public matters here in France, most of my atheist friends are atheist only because of that is what they have been taught (in school, at home), but not very convinced. I don’t think very much is needed to tip the balance (I hope to find out!).
Matt Stone on November 19th, 2007 8:10 pm

It is important to note the initial comment, that “Atheism fit the mentality of modernism but doesn’t fit with the tolerant ethos of post-modernisn.”

It has been noted by many, McGrath included if I recall correctly, that the “new” Atheism is following a similar dynamic to “fundamentalist” Christianity, in shifting to a reactionary stance in response to cultural threats.

I conversations with Atheists I have found that many are quite perturbed by the emergence of pluralism, which undermines their tried and true dualistic arguements formulated in modernity. They are also perturbed by any hint of an evangelical left and contextual readings of the Bible by the same which seem to significantly threaten their world view.
Alan Hirsch on November 20th, 2007 4:29 am

Welcome back Matt you smarty!
Matt Stone on November 20th, 2007 3:23 pm

Thanks Alan. Actually I never really left, I just dropped into passive lurking mode while busy with assignments, exams, laptop failures, missional contemplations, etc. Shifting back into a more social mode now though. Seemed like a good topic to jump on board with

Actually, for those interested in missional engagement with Atheists, a good guy to chat to is fellow Thin Place dude Nigel (aka Kalesin) who runs the http://www.jesus.com.au website. He specializes in missional engagement with atheists, mythicists and all manner of hard core skeptics and is a fount of knowledge on the subject. Those keeping track of my blog should note he was the third conversation partner with me and Mike Frost in that post on “witch doctor” leadership about two weeks back. What I didn’t mention at the time is he is also talking of more deeply incarnating into the mythicist scene in the year coming and he has just completed a thesis on the subject at Morling College. With a reasonable degree of overlap between mythicists and new atheists I find he has very interesting perspectives on both. Going much futher into the atheist’s post-modern dilema than I have.
Matt Stone on November 20th, 2007 3:31 pm

Back again, here is the link that is probably of most interest as far as this topic is concerned
http://www.jesus.com.au/html/page/skeptical
Contains some of the better quality links, particularly in terms of Australian content.
Patrick on November 20th, 2007 10:40 pm

This quote hit me: “The appeal of atheism to generations lay in its offer of liberation.”

Which is so true and so indicative of how the church has wrongly presented its own message. Reading the NT is reading about liberation. Romans 7 is life in slavery, Romans 8 is the new life of liberation, the life we have been given by the Spirit. Which again pushes me to think that it’s not necessarily Pentecostalism which is the likely renewal movement but rather the work of the Holy Spirit. Pentecostalism sticks in its own biases, making people conform in certain responses and styles.

How sad it is that Christianity, the religion of liberation to those caught in all sorts of prisons, became the religion of more bondage, all to secure power and authority and human need for control.

We don’t trust the Spirit, and we replace the Spirit with all sorts of systems, then people reject the god of our systems and methods, and we think they are rejecting God.

It’s also interesting to me to think about how the early Christians were charged with atheism, because they rejected the false gods of the Romans.
Matt Stone on November 21st, 2007 12:32 am

I think of Pentecostalism as ‘a’ renewal movement more than ‘the’ renewal movement. I don’t critique Pentecostals for their biases, we all have them, rather I try to reserve my critique for when Pentecostals insist their ways should be normative for all Christians, when they start talking like they have some monopoly on the Spirit. In a pluralistic culture I thin we have to acknowledge, nay celebrate, that the one Spirit can move in plural ways.
Peggy on November 21st, 2007 2:47 am

Matt and Patrick…great comments!

Yes, I agree that the renewal will come by the Holy Spirit being invited to lead in the lives of more and more Christians, in every group or movement or denomination (or non-denomination ).

Reminds me of the disciples coming back to Jesus complaining that some people, who were not one of THEM, were casting out demons in Jesus’ name… and so were told to stop. Jesus wondered why they had been told to stop….

None of our “experiences” can be insisted upon as the one “normative” path when the Spirit can blow from any direction!
Penney Winiarski on November 21st, 2007 5:31 am

So, true Peggy! I just shared with some pastors many of the things I’ve learned from these blogs and from Alan at Willow Creek. They allowed me, a nobody, non-member, prepare a presentation.

It was awesome to bring up the question of identity and the various ways we can be missional. They allowed me to share how our fences edge God out of our object of worship.

I really have to thank you Alan! You began to speak of reverence at Willow. I think your right that we lack this. The interesting thing is I personally needed to see this myself. Simply because I was also boxing in my leaders with my own image of God. Your pretty cool, ya know, as far as christians go.
Isaiah on November 21st, 2007 8:21 am

Sorry, but this made me think of a Joseph Cambpells Monomyth. Any western system of belief that isn’t Christan ultimately has one “self-evident” truth and that is “Christianity is wrong.” In an interview, Joseph begins by saying all myths are essentially the same, then in the middle of the interview he reacts really negatively to the story of the fall (Genesis 3 ), unintentionally contradicting himself. It’s interesting Atheists attack mainly Christianity, almost exclusively in fact.
In conversations with my friends, some of whom are avide athiests, they attack Christianity, again, almost exclusively, with the occasional passing mention of Islam. Nothing else. Their main argument, their only one worth any credibility, is the history of Christianity.
If the twilight of Atheism is coming, be careful. Atheism is the natural break down of deism, so maybe for a few years we’ll se that.
Deism is the conviction of a intelligent, moral creator with the fear of his involvement in the world, as I see it.
Matt Stone on November 21st, 2007 9:40 am

In “Humble Apologetics” John Stackhouse identified a number of varieties of pluralism in operation in our culture, one of which was a sort of faux pluralism whereby ‘all religious truths are relative and I have seen the grand truth behind all of this’. Joseph Cambell very much falls into this category. It is contradictory, or at least disengeneous.

And your observation that Atheists focus on debunking Christians is exactly what I mean when I accuse them of modernist polarizations.

Many Atheists are stuck in this lost world where debunking Christianity eqates to debunking all religion, where debunking Old Earth Creationism equates to debunking all religious cosmologies, where debunking old man in the sky archetypes equates to debunking, not only the Christian God, but all understandings of God and spirit.

Maybe once upon a time is did. Maybe. But point out to them that such a position fails to account for Buddism and Paganism (not to mention post-modern contextalized Christianity), point out to them the logical falicies of presupposing that a negative apologetic against Christianity equals a positive apologetic for Atheism, the irrationality of it, and they go into apocalyptic fits.

One of the curious things about the new (fundie) Atheism is its irrationality and reliance on emotive arguments. They actually NEED a fundie Christianity to react against as the alternative, facing a plurality of competing worldviews, is too disconscerting to contemplate. So curiously I find them more and more stridently affirming fundie Christianity as the only true Christianity, and thus the only religious option they need debate with.

The irony of Atheists angrily asserting this one brand of Christianity is the only true Christianity seems to escape them.
Matt Stone on November 21st, 2007 10:02 am

I think this is why McGrath can speak of the “Twilight of Atheism”. When organized Atheism decends to the level of fundamentalist Christianity, you know a new level of despiration has been reached.

The ‘liberation’ of westerners from state sponsored Christianity has not led to the embrace of Atheism its leaders prophecied. Seculization has not led to Atheization as predicted. Atheists are now searching for a new guiding mythology in the wake of that prophecy failure.
Glenn Davies on November 21st, 2007 11:51 am

I am just completing a theology course and one of the texts required was McGrath’s Christian Theology. A good writer and thinker he certainly is.

My take away from all of this is that the most recent upswing of the atheist view (Dawkins et al) in the USA in particular, is clearly in response to the politics of the nation and the religious rights’ propensity to believe that they need a good old boy (Christian) in the White House.

Non-Christians and atheists alike are sensing that the war on terror and other ‘policies’ of their current administration are closely aligned with the church. It is therefore reasonable to expect that atheists see the church and state once again warring against the world.

My hope is that the church in America will recognize this relationship and return to being ‘the church’ and going where the church needs to go (the fringes of their communities where people need the gospel) and put much less emphasis on the world of politics as a means of maintaining or asserting a Christian worldview.
Eduardo Buck Schmidt on November 22nd, 2007 12:51 pm

Here in Northern Brazil, there is a definate abuse of power in the leadership of the largest churches, especially the pentacostal churches. There is this huge backlash of people that are hostile to “church”, and huge percentages of the population consider themselves “backslidden”. This presents a definate problem, like they have been vacinated against the gospel, but they still know that they want/need Jesus. If we can figure out how to call these prodigals to return to their Daddy, without that darn older brother church scolding them, there will be a whole lot of partying with fattened calfs going on.
Becky Garrison on November 23rd, 2007 3:07 am

Alan - Thanks for bringing people’s attention to this book. I found “The Twilight of Atheism” an excellent book for me to use in my book “The New Atheist Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail” as a way to systematically disprove the New Atheists’ claim that a world without religion is paradise. As McGrath proves “been there, done that, didn’t work. Next.” If you get a chance, pick up his book “The Dawkins Delusion” if you want to read one of the few reasoned accounts that really takes Dawkins to task. Too many of the anti-New Atheist tomes come from a Reformed tradition where they employ what I call a “Four Spiritual Laws” approach. Hitting people over the head with tracts never works, IMO.
Alan Hirsch on November 24th, 2007 6:30 am

Thanks Becky. I had heard of that book. Will look at it. McGrath is a great thinker.
Patrick on November 24th, 2007 12:02 pm

Eduardo, what you are saying is at the heart of my critique of many pentecostal churches. The problem as I see it is that while such churches emphasize the Holy Spirit they really have quite a poor understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit. They get caught up in the shiny things and miss the fact that in the Old and New Testaments the Spirit is working justice and freedom and hope. They, all of us, need to hear the whispers of the Spirit who speaks to both the high and the low.

This isn’t to dismiss Pentecostalism, just those particular churches that miss the mark by losing sight of the Scriptural teaching on the Spirit for the sake of egos and power.
Brian Humek on December 1st, 2007 5:02 pm

Hi Alan,

I love page 27. I converse with people all the time that may not be athiests but they hate God, the church or Christians. They feel these ways due to corruption in Christian institutions or more plaingly put, due to the corruption in Christians and the mismatch between what Christians say their core values are and what their actions proclaim.