This Atheist Crew

The title is taken from Paradise Lost, which I am currently listening to (piecemeal) in my truck. Moscow is not very big, and so I usually only get three or four minutes at a time. That said, listening to that glorious poem read is far more compelling than simply reading it quietly to yourself. At any rate, as Milton is describing the war in heaven between Satan and Michael, he tags the rebels in this way, and it is a fitting description. Atheism is fundamentally rebellion against God, and not a mere “take it or leave it” disbelief. In the poem, Satan did not disbelieve in God’s existence — rather he did not believe in God’s right to occupy any position above him. And that is atheism.

In the providence of God, we are currently engaged in an open clash between the Christian faith and the secular worldview — which usually wants to manage religious America from behind the neutrality curtain they have set up for us, and which some of us still believe in for some reason. But they have recently moved from nervousness to panic as it has become increasingly obvious that more and more Christians are not taking directions very well from behind the curtain anymore. That is the meaning of the new atheism. The older unbelief was patronizing — silly little Christians would get an education someday, and if we didn’t, our children would. But somewhere along the way, we stopped being breeders for the secularism of the government schools, and have started to push back in a number of important areas. That is what I have been talking about on the Moody network this entire week (yesterday’s talk on the arts is at the same place, at about the 47 minute mark).

And here in Moscow tomorrow night, I will be debating Eddie Tabash on whether the Christian God exists. Let me share with you something that Tabash said in 2007 to the Atheist Alliance International — in a moment of ill-advised candor. He was talking about the recent practice that some secularists running for office have adopted, that of picking up some “my faith community” Jesus-speak.

“We don’t care what they say in order to get elected in this religious country. We care about what kind of judges they give us on the Supreme Court, because only the Supreme Court determines if we’ll have secular government . . . Don’t look to the rhetoric they need to pander to, remember what country they’re running in. I don’t care what kind of verbal obeisance they pay to religion if that’s what it takes to get a person in the White House who will give us church-state separationists on the Supreme Court.”

It is starting to dawn on them that secularism might actually lose in this country. Progress might not be an evolutionary necessity. And when that idea dawns on you, you will lie, cheat, or steal to keep the prize from slipping away from you. There is no God, right? Then right and wrong are determined solely on the basis of what helps or hurts the Cause. And you will certainly be willing to unleash the bad cops of atheistic secularism — Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins, et al. If we are frightened enough, we will turn back to the good cops of “neutral” secularism.

But a lot of us have seen through all this, and this means we now have a golden opportunity. Here is what you can do — aside from getting your own copy of the book. Let me ask you to please consider some strategic purchases. Ask for the book in your local Barnes & Noble. Purchases on Amazon affect the rankings, and the rankings affect the sales. You all (the readers of this blog) are in a position to give this book the buzz it needs to keep from being a simple seasonal publishing event. If this book does as well long-term as I believe it can do, that will provide us with the platform we need in order to be able to address this whole issue of militant secularism across the entire waterfront. Between us girls, Christopher Hitchens didn’t do so well in this exchange, and it has already surprised more than one of his fans. I would like it to surprise a bunch more of them.

Click on each image for help in purchasing a copy of whichever one it is. The first is a copy of the ad that Canon Press ran in the latest Atlantic Monthly. The last is my small book replying to Sam Harris. In between are the two new releases from American Vision, my replies to Richard Dawkins (The Deluded Atheist) and Christopher Hitchens (God Is) respectively. And remember, don’t confuse my debate with Hitchens with my chapter-by-chapter reply to Hitchens’ book, God Is Not Great.

Believe me, I would much rather be doing this than debating what the Westminster Confession says about the efficacy of water baptism with fellow Presbyterians.