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Apologia Report

ISSN: 1088-1107

Publisher: Apologia

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Editor: Rich Poll

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Apologia Report 15:24 (1,029)
June 30, 2010

ATHEISM

“Atheist Crusaders” by Phillip E. Johnson — the emeritus U.C.
Berkeley law professor and Intelligent Design visionary responds to
the “new atheism,” reporting that “What is new about these atheists
is not their arguments, which will be familiar to anyone who has
read the classics of religious skepticism. The new element that has
made these writers famous or notorious is their insistence that it
is time not just to stop believing in religion, but to stop treating
religion with any respect whatsoever.”
Christopher Hitchens “has two besetting faults: He does not
define his terms carefully, and he does not know where to stop. …
“Looseness with definitions helps Hitchens blame whatever is
wrong with the world on ‘religion.’” Johnson uses Hitchens’
treatment of Communism as an example of where Hitchens confuses
ideology with religion.
“One point Hitchens makes that I do appreciate is that the worst
totalitarianisms often stem from a desire to perfect the human
species in this world, under human rulers. And yes, at some times
and places, priests have provided ideological justification for
utopian projects and oppressive governments. The ideologues of
Communism are materialist priests of that sort.
“Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are materialist priests
themselves, with their own vision of a perfected world, one in which
everyone turns away from God and worships at the altar of human
reason. If the true believers in that vision become rulers, I
shudder to think how much coercion they would have to employ to
achieve the godless society they envision.” Touchstone, Mar/Apr ‘10,
p9.
Johnson’s new book, Against All Gods [1], expands on this and
more.

CHURCH HISTORY

The Lost History of Christianity, by Philip Jenkins [2] — this
review offers the most insightful critique we’ve seen. Thomas
Carlson acknowledges that “A book like this needed to be written.
Most Americans consider Christianity a Western religion and the
Middle East as the ‘Land of Islam.’ In his 2002 book The Next
Christendom [3], Philip Jenkins argued that Christianity would not
long remain a predominantly Western religion, and in this book he
argues that for most of its history Christianity has not been a
predominantly Western religion. Coupled with his historical and
sociological analysis of non-European Christianity, Jenkins also
challenges theologians to grapple with the fact that large, vital
portions of historic Christianity have vanished.”
It is about this last segment that Carlson provides his most
significant criticism. He explains that Jenkins “describes each
position in the ancient christological debates through antagonistic
polemical caricatures and he erroneously equates medieval Asian
Christian theology with primitive Semitic theology and Gnostic
theological diversity, while bypassing theological continuities
among major medieval Christian theologies which distinguish them
from Gnostics and Muslims (such as the Trinity or the deity and
atoning death of Christ). Many evangelical readers will oppose his
rejection of doctrinal criteria for evaluating other Christian
groups. When Jenkins asserts that most Christians no longer think
Jews need to be evangelized, and calls us to reevaluate Islam’s
validity as well, many evangelicals will disagree. His theological
discussion is consistently inaccurate and simplistic.
“The volume is a fascinating, challenging introduction to a world
too long unfamiliar, that of Eastern Christianity, but his claims,
especially regarding theology, need examination.” Trinity Journal,
31:1 – 2010, pp164-165. [6]

COMPARATIVE RELIGION

God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World—and Why
Their Differences Matter, by Stephen Prothero [4] — reviewer Leo D.
Lefebure opens: “The tradition known as the perennial philosophy has
long argued that all of the world’s religions lead ultimately to the
same goal. As expressed by the so-called Traditionalist or
Perennialist School of René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon, Huston Smith
and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, this approach distinguishes the exoteric
level of religious expression and belief, where there are obvious
and important differences, from the esoteric, mystical dimension,
where the differences are not of decisive importance. It does not
deny differences but argues that all paths converge toward the same
end. In recent decades, the discipline of religious studies has seen
a sharp backlash against these sweeping claims. So great has the
skepticism been that many scholars have questioned the merits of any
broad comparative efforts at all.
“Stephen Prothero attacks the perennial philosophy, but he passes
over the entire scholarly debate in silence and leads his readers to
believe that the field of religious studies today is predominantly
represented by perennialists. …
“Prothero never presents a serious theory of religious
difference; nor does he engage the arguments of the perennialist
philosophers; nor does he explain how these religions run the world.
…
“Prothero ends his discussion by writing: ‘Any genuine belief in
what we call God should humble us, remind us that, if there really
is a god or goddess worthy of the name, He or She must surely know
more than we do about the things that matter most. This much, at
least, is shared across the great religions.’ Unfortunately,
Prothero never fulfills the promise of his challenging title.”
Christian Century, Jun 1 ‘10, pp37-38.

ORIGINS

The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence, by
Paul Davies [5] — the unnamed reviewer notes that “Fifty years
after a West Virginia astronomer first pointed a radio telescope
toward the heavens, hoping to pick up a message from space, Davies
is breaking with his colleagues at the international organization
known as SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). He points
out, among other things, that their satellite-dish approach is
batty.” Nevertheless, “Davies won’t rule out the possibility that
intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. …
Davies just wants “less sky-watching and more efforts to detect
whether life on Earth was just a one-off stroke of luck. But Davies’
hypotheses get ’stranger and stranger’ as his book proceeds,
something he himself acknowledges. He wants geologists to consider
whether they’ve ever seen hints that, in prehistory, an alien
culture may have drilled for minerals, and for biologists to muse on
the possibility that visitors have encoded messages into our
genome.”
Davies “worries that the spontaneous creation of even rudimentary
life on Earth might have been an unrepeatable fluke. … Davies,
curiously, pays little attention to how vast an evolutionary leap
was needed to go from crow or even chimpanzee smarts to human-level
brainpower. Given the actual odds, ‘there are probably plenty of
dumb animals scattered across the universe, but nobody worth talking
to.’” The Week, May 7 ‘10, p24. [7]
It is ironic how closely this sort of reasoning can parallel
creationist concepts without the light going on.

——-

SOURCES: Monographs

1 – Against All Gods: What’s Right and Wrong About the New Atheism,
by Phillip E. Johnson and John Mark Reynolds (IVP, 2010, paperback,
128 pages)

2 – The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age
of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia -and How It Died,
by Philip Jenkins (HarperOne reprint, 2009, paperback, 336 pages)

3 – The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, by
Philip Jenkin (Oxford Univ Prs, Updated ed., 2007, paperback, 336
pages)

4 – God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World -
and Why Their Differences Matter, by Stephen Prothero (HarperOne,
2010, hardcover, 400 pages)

5 – The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence,
by Paul Davies (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, hardcover, 256
pages)

——–

SOURCES: Periodicals

6 – Trinity Journal (Trinity Evangelical Divinity Sch.),

7 – The Week,

—- End, Apologia Report 15:24 —-

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