In his next chapter, Peter Hitchens compares the respective gullibilities of the believing Christian and the “scientific” atheist. Atheists believe this to be one of their strong points, which Peter appears to recognize. “How the materialists like to jeer at the naive faith of the peasant, fooled by relics, faith healers, and the general hocus-pocus …
If It Comes in a Bottle . . .
When pressed with the bad behavior of atheist regimes, one of the oddest (and funniest) answers that the new atheists offer is that Stalin (say) erred by having his regime take on religious attributes. Peter Hitchens puts it this way: “And so the escape clauses come thick and fast. If atheism in practice appears at …
A Moral Code Must Be Out of Reach
In Chapter 10 of The Rage Against God, Peter Hitchens nails down the loosest board on the side of atheism’s house. So to speak. Unfortunately for atheism, this does not repair the house, but rather causes the whole thing to fall down. According to Peter, the atheists “have a fundamental inability to concede that to …
The Trendy-Makers of Contempo-Evangelicalism
In Chapter 9, Peter Hitchens begins to take on some of the standard arguments advanced by the new atheists. The first, their Goliath taunting the armies of Israel, is the charge that religion is the source of endless conflict. If we want deliverance from strife and sectarian violence, we must have a secular state. And …
Atheistic Wrecking Balls and Bulldozers
The first half of Peter Hitchens’ book concludes with a short summary of how the Christian faith declined in England over the course of the last century or so. From here in the deep weeds of secularism, it is easy to forget that the two great industrial wars of the twentieth century were wars that …
The Prodigal Returns to a Ruin
In chapter 7, Peter describes his rediscovery of faith. But when he comes back to the Anglican church of his youth, he discovers the place greatly altered, and not for the better, because churchmen whose backbone had been carved out of a banana had been listening to the outside critics — critics who had shared …
Spending Moral Capital Can Result in Spent Moral Capital
The next chapter of Peter’s book is chilling. He describes the last days of the Soviet Union and the years he lived there, along with his experiences as a journalist in Mogadishu. The take away point from this chapter is found here, and it is a point that the church in the West — evangelicals …
Not Exactly From Pacifist Stock
Peter Hitchens’ next chapter was profound and moving. Entitled “Britain’s Pseudo-Religion and the Cult of Winston Churchill,” he makes the brave move of identifying the carnage of the two great wars of the 20th century as a massive blood sacrifice to false gods. He does this on the basis of the meaning that was assigned …
Utter Irrelevance
Here is Bruce Waltke, on why Christians should believe in evolution. HT: Joe Rigney. There are (at least) five confusions here. First, he wants to say that if we believe that the Lord is the Giver and Creator of all life, and we do so in a way that is not approved by our secularist …
Tattered Magnificence
Peter’ next chapter is a brief one, and I will be even more brief. It is more explicitly autobiographical, and concerns the tattered magnificence of an England that was clearly visible when Peter was a boy, and which is now almost entirely gone. It is important to note that this chapter is not Peter giving …