The End of Reason

A Response to the New Atheists

Ravi Zacharias

(Zondervan, 144pgs, $13h)

The old joke goes, What do you get when you cross an atheist with an encyclopedia salesman? Answer: Someone who knocks at your door for no apparent reason. Not so, these days. Atheism is presenting a more aggressive face to the world: more vocal, more, um, evangelistic. New Atheism is out to make converts by attempting the impossible: defending a negative, a non-belief. I mean, I do not believe in leprechauns, either, but I am not writing books to prove their non-existence, and it really does not bother me if you happen to believe in them. I have bigger fish to fry. But the "new" breed of atheists, like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris, appear more anti-theist than atheist. The "Four Horsemen of New Atheism" not only do not believe in a higher power than themselves but it appears they do not want you to believe there is, either.

A positive view of this new assault on faith is that it is giving Christianity a needed wake-up call from a long complacent nap. Perhaps Christians have had it too easy for too long with no trendy in-your-face antitheist voices since the likes of Bertrand Russell and Robert Ingersoll. Not that atheists haven't been around; they just haven't been so hostile (with the possible exception of the late Madelyn O'Hare, of course). With New Atheism books flying off the shelves, theologians are abruptly aware that atheism is alive and well and in our face. Not surprisingly, books to counter the revival of evangelistic atheism are now hitting the shelves, like Alister McGrath's "The Dawkins Delusion" and noted apologist, Dr. Ravi Zacharias' just-released "The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists."

In particular, Zacharias takes on Sam Harris' 2004 bestseller, "The End of Faith," written in the wake of 9/11 and a bestseller, which remained on the New York Times Bestseller list for more than six months. Harris' contention is that extreme religious intolerance is the major evil of civilization. Not just extremism, he argues, but also its ugly stepsister, religious moderation, the ferment for fanaticism. Religion, Harris blatantly (and, one might think, intolerantly) alleges, is a form of mental illness, going so far as to say, "Knowingly or not, the Nazis were agents of religion."

But Zacharias wonders if Harris has really thought through his arguments. For example, Harris claims that any God who would allow the devastation of 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina would be an immoral deity. Zacharias responds, in the tone of C.S. Lewis, that, without acknowledging God, who is the arbiter of what is immoral and what is not? Where does the universal human concept of morality come from? It could only exist because God exists. For that matter, where would our universal notion of love come from? Or justice? Or evil? Zacharias, in 144 concise pages, carefully dissects Harris' assumptions to find that beneath their thin skin there is little of real substance. In fact, there is little "new" in the New Atheism. Rather, it is the same tired centuries-old arguments against faith dressed in new wardrobe. If Christianity seems unreasonable, Zacharias contends, atheism is the more so.