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Taking the New Atheism Seriously

The greatest argument for atheism is a poor argument for theism. The best way to build this poor argument is to play on the field designed by the atheist. To see these theses played out, visit this blog, which I find to be often well-reasoned within their parameters but too frequently giving in to the frustration that inevitably arises when they see people who don’t accept their premises or who aren’t as smart as they.

If you want to engage in this debate (naturalism/atheism/evolution), if your faith depends on winning it, or you want to make your children’s faith depend on winning it, then I recommend you read blogs like this. If you just read Christian apologists, your faith will not be strengthened and your children’s faith will become dependent on inadequate arguments and unsharpened knives.

Take it seriously and with genuine humility or you will enter a journey full of tears.

I point this out because I continually find Christians surprised at the number of Christian kids who go to college and lose their faith. The response is often to give them an apologetics class or, lately, a worldview class.

Two problems: one, the teacher rarely became a Christian because of an apologetic defense of the faith and two, the teacher usually, therefore, doesn’t understand apologetics very well.

I mean no insult by those comments. I take the issue too seriously for that.

My concern is that if the student sits through apologetics classes under teachers who aren’t all that serious about apologetics (which can be a frightening experience for people not otherwise inclined to it – or even for those so inclined), when they get to college they will have been more poorly equipped than had they never had such a class.

This holds particularly true at those schools who are driven by standardization and certification, two forces that do not arise from within the Christian “worldview” and therefore, by their very presence, risk undercutting every apologetic a school has to offer.

It would be more effective to build a school on a genuinely Christ-centered curriculum in a meaningful way (i.e. actually figuring out the relationships among the subjects and to Christ).

Atheism often results from the failure to cultivate the spiritual faculties of perception. To argue on their playing field without cultivating those faculties is to ask a blind man to describe light to one without eyes.

We value perception to little.

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