The God Delusion Session 3: What if God was one of us ADULT FAITH EDUCATION SERIES 7:30 pm on Feb 12

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The God DelusionSession 3 What if God was one
of us?ADULT FAITH EDUCATION SERIES 730 pm on
Feb 12th, 2009.St. Augustines Parish, 1060
Baseline RoadOttawa, Ontario

• Timothy Lau,
• MD, FRCPC, MSc
• Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine,
  Department of Psychiatry, Geriatrics, ROMHC

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The God DelusionSession 1 War of the World
Views
The God DelusionSession 2 Son of Kong or Son
of God
The God DelusionSession 3 What if God was one
of us?

• Design and Causality
• Is the Universe fine tuned?
• The Anthropic Principle
• Designer Biosphere and Paleys Watch
• EVOLUTION
• Does evolution exclude God?
• Naturalism requires blind evolution
• Darwins theory of evolution and its problems
  (micro vs. macro, molecular evolution and
  biogenesis, gradual changes or leaps, Irreducibly
  complex machines, the Fossil Record, conservation
  of Information
• The problem of morality
• Summary of errors in logic

• Atheism Faith of the fatherless
• Arent religions basically all the same?
• Who was Jesus?
• How are we saved?
• What is the connection between love and
  suffering?
• Hasnt organized religion in general and
  Christianity in particular been corrupted?
• Why do we need the Church?
• Too Liberal or Conservative?
• Quo Vadis Where are we going?

• 3 First Principles
• The Forgotten Roots of Science
• Myths of Conflict Faith and Reason
• Naturalism vs. Theism
• The Scope and Limits of Science
• Reductionism
• The Five Ways
• The problem of evil
• The prayer experiment
• Spiritual and physical health
• Rumours of angels

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3 Sessions

• Session 1
• A RATIONAL GOD
• Reasonable arguments for Gods existence
• Session 2
• DESCENT OF MAN
• Atheism as irrational and dehumanizing
• Session 3
• ELEVATION OF MAN
• Faith and God, a family affair. A God different
  than any other.

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The New Atheists and their Faith

• There is no transcendent reality beyond the
  natural world that is to say there is no
  immaterial soul and no life after death.
  (Session 12)
• The natural universe is self-originating, not the
  creation of a divine being. (Session 1)
• Humans, like the universe have no ultimate
  purpose or meaning beyond that which they create
  themselves (Session 2).
• Science does a better job of explaining nature,
  including human nature, than religion. Belief in
  God is the source of much of the worlds violence
  and disorder, and mankind would be better off
  dispensing with religion (Session 2 and 3).

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What we have discussed so far

• There are rational arguments for the existence of
  God
• All things happen for a reason
• Explanation for existence of the universe, the
  origin or life and evolution, in addition to the
  problem of evil
• A belief in a materialistic universe requires a
  materialistic morality Humes guillotine
• Humanity is based upon a transcendent reality
• Man is not just an animal, but a rational animal
• The soul is not an epiphenomena of matter
• The soul is what animates us soulanima and
  allows us to have freedom, consciousness,
  creativity, and sentience

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The limits of reason

• Pascal begins with the Kantian postulate that
  "reason's final step is to recognize that there
  are an infinite number of things which surpass
  it."
• In several of his writings, Pascal contends that
  it is fortunate for man that the highest truths
  are accessible through faith rather than reason.
  In other words, faith is available to everyone.
  If the only way to find out about God was through
  reason, then smarter people would have the inside
  track and the less intelligent would be shut out.
  Getting into heaven would be like getting into
  Harvard.
• Apparently God wants to have people other than
  PhDs in heaven He seems to have made room for
  some fishermen and other humble folk. Reason is
  aristocratic, but faith is democratic.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
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Why cant we find happiness?

• Pascal notes that for thousands of years man
  employed great intelligence and effort to solve
  certain basic problems.
• We want to have peace in the world.
• We want to live in harmony with one another.
• We want to raise our children well.
• We want our lives to matter.
• Pascal says we have been at this for a very long
  time, so why haven't we solved any of these
  problems? Why does the pursuit of happiness
  remain largely a pursuit?

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Why cant we find happiness?

• For leading atheists like Dawkins and Harris, the
  simple answer is that man is ignorant, and
  science is the way to dispel that ignorance.
• The religious person knows that this is a
  half-truth. Ignorance is only half the problem
  the other half is the problem of good and evil.

• 2 points to reflect on that materialism
  ultimately denies
• We know from experience that we have free will
  (freedom) we can choose great acts of heroism
  but also great acts of depravity.
• We can be (consciously) aware of our depravity

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Why cant we find happiness?

• Moreover, science is only one way to achieve
  knowledge, and it is a certain kind of knowledge.
  But science provides no answer to the most
  important questions of lifeWhy am I here? What
  should I love? What should I live for?they lie
  outside the scientific field.
• Faith is an attempt to reach beyond the empirical
  realm and illuminate those questions. To look
  and find something larger than ourselves as an
  explanation for things. Inviting something
  bigger than the whole world to live inside your
  heart.
• To reduce all knowledge to scientific knowledge
  is to condemn man to ignorance about the things
  that matter most in life.

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Moral Progress?

• Human rights
• Gender and racial equality
• Loss of religious freedom
• But who is human
• Humane treatment of the handicapped
• Unless they are suffering
• Involuntary euthanasia
• Universal condemnation against torture, cruelty,
  slavery and racism
• Unless sex is involved

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Moral Progress?

• Human rights
• Gender equality
• Loss of religious freedom
• But who is human
• Humane treatment of the handicapped
• Unless they are suffering
• Involuntary Euthanasia
• Universal condemnation against torture, cruelty,
  slavery and racism
• Unless sex is involved

• Loss of an objectively real, universally binding
  moral law
• Morality as subjective and relative.
• Rift between the rich and poor has never been
  greater
• 20th century has been by far the bloodiest
• 2 WORLD WARS, TOTALITARIAN REGIMES, COMMUNISM,
  INFANTICIDE ON A SCALE NEVER KNOWN

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An Inconvenient Truth for Atheists

• Christianity built Western Civilization
• Art and Architecture
• Science
• Universities
• Human Rights
• Law Government
• Hospitals
• The 20th century was an experiment in secularism
• whose result was secular evil, an evil that, if
  anything, was more spectacularly virulent than
  that which came before.

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Session Overview

• The Top 10 objections to Christianity
• 11th objection Does belief in God cause
  violence?
• What have been the effects of atheism in the 20th
  century?
• Why Richard Dawkins doesnt understand
  Christianity
• The Problem of Morality
• The Reduction of Man
• Christianity
• The Elevation of Man

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10 Objections to the Christian Faith

• All religions are the same, deep down.
• This is untrue. The objectors implicit
  assumption is that the distinctive teachings of
  each are unimportant, that the essential business
  about religion is not truth but something else.
• This is the main assumption of Dawkins God
  delusion. He assumes Islam, Judaism, and
  Christianity are the same, and he ignores the
  Eastern Religions. He mostly attacks
  Christianity because they are easy targets (they
  turn the other cheek) and because he thinks he
  understands it having been one once.

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Objections

• 2. But the essence of religion is the same at
  any rate all religions agree at least in being
  religious.
• I challenge anyone to define it broadly enough to
  include Confucianism, Buddhism, and modern Reform
  Judaism but narrow enough to exclude Platonism,
  atheistic Marxism, and Nazism.
• Hitchens and Harris would like to put atheistic
  Marxism and Nazism in the religious category so
  that they can condemn it without condemning
  themselves.

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Objections...

• You will find real, profound, and strong
  agreement between the Sermon on the Mount,
  Buddhas Dhammapada, Lao-Tzus Tao-te-Ching,
  Confucius Analects, the BhagavadGita, the
  Proverbs of Solomon, the Dialogues of Plato.
• Even Dawkins just so ethical surveys
  conducted by Peter Singer show some common
  agreement between believers and non believers.
• Yes, but this is ethics, not religion. The
  natural law.
• We will return to Peter Singers view of ethics
  later.

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Objections...

• 4.Many roads lead up to the single mountain of
  religion to God at the top. It is provincial,
  narrow minded, and blind to deny the validity of
  other roads than yours.
• the unproven assumption is that all roads go
  upwards, that man made the roads, not God.
• There is no human way up (tower of Babel) and man
  did not make the road.

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Objections...

• 5. Still it fosters religious imperialism to
  insist that your way is the only way. Youre on
  a power trip.
• No, we believe it not because we want to or
  because we invented it, but because Christ taught
  it. Every believer by definition believes their
  faith to be true.
• The objectors assumption is that we can make
  religion whatever we want it to be.
• If the one-way doctrine comes from Christ, not
  from you then He must have been arrogant.
• How ironic. No man was ever more merciful, meek,
  loving and compassionate. The objector is always
  assuming the thing to be proved that Christ is
  just one among many religious founders, human
  teachers.
• Self giving love was more than his message, it
  was his mission, it the person gift of himself

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Objections...

• 6.Hypocrisy. Christians often do not act like
  Christians are supposed to act.
• The best and worst arguments for Christianity are
  Christians
• Many bad things have been done in the name of
  Christianity
• There is wheat and chaff, wolves amongst the
  sheep, traitors amongst the apostles.
• Even if there were more sinners than saints in
  the visible Church that would not mean that
  Christianity is false. C.S. Lewis said as much
  in Mere Christianity, that churches are more
  hospitals for sinners than hotels for saints.
• Hypocrites at least have high standards

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Objections...

• 7.Do you want to revive the inquisition?
  Absolute truth is dangerous.
• The inquisition failed to distinguish the heresy
  from the heretic and tried to eliminate it both
  by force or fire. The objector makes the same
  mistake in reverse. He refuses to condemn
  either. The state has no business condemning
  heresy but the believer must do it, at least
  within himself.
• It is not truth that is dangerous but an absolute
  belief that what is false is true ex there are
  no morals but what man defines. Übermensch. The
  Hutus new ten commandments. Survival of the
  fittest race.
• 8. Im surprised at the intolerance. I thought
  Christianity was the religion of love
• It is. It is also the religion of truth. The
  objector tries to separate the two divine
  attributes. We are not. We are speaking of
  truth and love.

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Objections...

• 9. But all God expects of us is sincerity.
• How do you know what God expects? The objectors
  implicit assumption is that there is no objective
  truth in religion, only subjective sincerity, so
  that no one can ever be sincere and wrong.
• Following ones conscience is important but a
  person has to form their conscience correctly.
• 10. Are all Non-Christians doomed then?
• No. Father Feeny was excommunicated for teaching
  that outside the Church, no salvation meant
  outside the visible Church. You can be saved on
  earth by someone without realizing who it was
  that saved you. Wouldnt you expect the same of a
  merciful and loving Father?
• Paul in Romans 2 Gentiles judged by their own
  conscience
• Jesus in Matthew 25 The brotherhood of man and
  the Fatherhood of God.

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Matthew 2531-40

• Son of man judging the nations
• "When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all
  the angels with him, then he will sit on his
  glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all
  the nations,
• and he will separate them one from another as a
  shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and
  he will place the sheep at his right hand, but
  the goats at the left. Then the King will say to
  those at his right hand,

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Matthew 2531-40

• A Father who cares
• Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the
  kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
  the world for I was hungry and you gave me food,
  I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a
  stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you
  clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was
  in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous
  will answer him, Lord, when did we see thee
  hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee
  drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and
  welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when
  did we see thee sick or in prison and visit
  thee?' And the King will answer them,
• A shared humanity based on being part of a family
• Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the
  least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'

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Our Shared Basis for Humanity

• Equal not what we can do
• (how FIT we are)
• Brain power, intelligence
• Ability to suffer
• Are the disabled children of a lesser God or are
  they not children at all?

Another Christian concept, no less crazy the
concept of equality of souls before God. This
concept furnishes the prototype of all theories
of equal rights. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will
to Power

• Equal because of who we are.
• A child of God. Our fellow men and women and
  brothers and sisters.
• Made in His image and likeness. Equal in value.
  Equal in dignity regardless of our capabilities.

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Roots of injustice

• Love or Lust.
• Give or Take.
• 1 John 215-17
• Do not love the world or the things in the
  world. If any one loves the world, love for the
  Father is not in him.
• For all that is in the world, the lust of the
  flesh (FREUD) and the lust of the eyes (MARX) and
  the pride of life (NIETZCHE), is not of the
  Father but is of the world.
• And the world passes away, and the lust of it
  but he who does the will of God abides for ever.

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Reasons for SELFISHNESS(Violence, AKA sin etc.)
Lust of the Flesh Lust of property Lust for power
(pride)

• Religion is not the cause of lust
• Religion is an attempt at a remedy that doesnt
  always succeed in the conversion of lust into
  love
• The problem is human selfishness and a failure of
  love
• Atheism is not the cause of lust either
• But it is an effect of it

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Violence in the name of religion

• Religion can be a source of self- righteousness,
  and this tendency can lead to persecution and
  violence. In the past, this is true (the
  Crusades, the Inquisition and the European Witch
  hunts)
• In the Muslim world, violence in the name of
  religion is still a serious and unanswered
  problem.
• But for Christians the tragedy of violence in the
  name of religion is thankfully in the remote
  past.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
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Does the belief in God causes violence?

• If only atheism would take hold as the majority
  view throughout the globe, humans would lose
  their propensity for violence, lion would nestle
  beside the lamb, children would regain their
  long-lost happiness, swords would magically turn
  into plowshares, churches would empty and the
  resultant collapse in the market-price for
  incense would alone reverse global warming.
• Edward Oakes First Things, Jan 2008
• Richard Dawkins, for example, opens his recent
  book The God Delusion with a hilariously naïve
  depiction of the Eschaton that awaits us if only
  we would cast off the security blanket of
  religion

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Just Imagine

• Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no
  religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no
  7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder
  Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian
  wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no
  persecution of Jews as Christ-killers, no
  Northern Ireland troubles, no honor killings,
  no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists
  fleecing gullible people of their money (God
  wants you to give till it hurts). Imagine no
  Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public
  beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female
  skin for the crime of showing an inch of it.
• Richard Dawkins the God Delusion

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Dishonesty

• Prominent atheists have been very successful in
  convincing millions of peopleeven religious
  peoplethat religion has been the bane of
  history. In The End of Faith, Sam Harris calls it
  "the most potent source of human conflict, past
  and present.
• Daniel Dennett fears "a toxic religious mania
  could end human civilization overnight."
• As one reads Richard Dawkins one almost gets the
  sense he is descending into self parody without
  realizing it.

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A comparison

• Philosopher Daniel Dennett supplies a standard of
  judging religion in his book Breaking the Spell.
  He proposes that religion be judged by its
  consequences. Dennett is not especially
  interested in separating the true teachings of
  religion from its distortions.
• Let's use Dennett's standard. We will first
  explore violence that has been attributed to
  Christianity including the crusades, the
  inquisition, witch hunts, and the 30 years war .
• By this very same criterion we will look at the
  history of Stalin, Hitler, and Maonot to mention
  those of a range of lesser tyrantsare all
  atheism's responsibility, most of which have
  happened during peace time on its own civilians.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
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Dawkins uneven handedness

• Stalin was an atheist and Hitler probably
  wasnt, but even if he was, the bottom line of
  the Stalin/Hitler debating point is very simple.
  Individual atheists may do evil things but they
  dont do evil things in the name of atheism.
• So its not atheism thats the problem, only
  atheists!
• COMMUNISM HAS ATHEISM EMBEDDED IN ITS ROOTS
• And Christianity? Is it then not individual
  Christians rather than Christianity that is at
  fault?

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Too simplistic

• "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of
  Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and
  murder of millions more. After Martin Luther,
  Christians did bloody battle with other
  Christians for another three centuries." Richard
  Dawkins surveys the Middle East, the Balkans,
  Northern Ireland, India, and Sri Lanka and
  contends that "most, if not all, of the violent
  enmities in the world today" are due to the
  "divisive force of religion."
• The problem with this critique is that it greatly
  exaggerates the crimes that have been committed
  by religious fanatics while neglecting or
  rationalizing the vastly greater crimes committed
  by secular and atheist fanatics.
• They also forget that Christianity was the basis
  for Western Culture

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
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The Crusades(1096-1270)

• Without the Crusades Western civilization might
  have been completely overrun by the forces of
  Islam.
• The Seven Crusades can be seen as a belated,
  clumsy, and unsuccessful effort to defeat Islamic
  imperialism. Yet the Crusades were important
  because they represented a fight for the survival
  of Europe.
• There were expeditions of rape and murder
  committed during the Crusades that no one can
  justify. Even so, these rampages do not define
  the Crusades as a whole.
• In the context of the history of warfare, there
  is no warrant for considering the Crusades a
  world historical crime of any sort. The
  Christians fought to defend themselves from
  foreign conquest, while the Muslims fought to
  continue conquering Christian lands.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
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The Inquisitions

• Formed, mostly in France, Italy, Spain, and
  Germany.
• 5 distinct forms Episcopal (1184-France),
  Legatine (1198-Cisterians), Monastic
  (1231-Gregory IX-Dominicans), Roman (1542),
  Spanish (1478). The Spanish had the worst record.
  
• Entrusted mainly to Dominicans and Franciscans,
  these tribunals investigated charges of heresy,
  subject those accused of heresy to a legal trial,
  pass judgment on them, and then, if the
  defendants were found guilty and were
  unrepentant, turn them over to a secular power.
• The latter would inflict on the heretics those
  penalties approved by law. In serious
  situations, such penalties ranged from
  imprisonment to tortue, and, in extreme cases,
  death.

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The Spanish Inquisition

• Henry Kamen's book The Spanish Inquisition is
  subtitled "A Historical Revision."
• The Inquisition, Kamen points out, "only had
  authority over Christians." The idea that the
  Inquisition targeted Jews is a fantasy. The only
  Jews who came under the purview of the
  Inquisition were Jews who had converted to
  Christianity.
• There were quite a few of these, as King
  Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had issued an
  ordinance in 1492 expelling Jews from Spain. The
  only way to stay was to convert.
• Of course, many Christians suspected that some of
  these conversos or "new Christians" were not
  Christians at all. They were Jews pretending to
  be Christians.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
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Dinesh DSouza the Inquisition

• Inquisition trials, according to Kamen, were
  fairer and more lenient than their secular
  counterparts, not only in Spain but also across
  Europe.
• Frequently the only penalty given was some form
  of penance, such as fasting or what we would
  today call "community service."
• How many people were executed for heresy by the
  Inquisition? Kamen estimates that it was around
  2,000. Other contemporary historians make
  estimates of between 1,500 and 4,000. These
  deaths are all tragic, but we must remember that
  they occurred over a period of 350 years.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
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Witch hunts

• The classical period of witchhunts in Europe
  falls into the Early Modern period or about 1480
  to 1700, spanning the upheavals of the
  Reformation and the Thirty Years' War.
• Current scholarly estimates of the number of
  people executed for witchcraft vary between about
  40,000 and 100,000.1
• The total number of witch trials in Europe which
  are known for certain to have ended in executions
  is around 12,0002

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Dinesh DSouza 30 years war

• How about the Thirty Years' War? This conflict
  involving the Holy Roman Empire and the
  Protestant states in Germany lasted from 1618 to
  1648.
• We can see how political motives overrode
  religious ones in the role played by Catholic
  France in the latter phases of the war concerned
  about the strength of the greatest Catholic power
  in the world, the Holy Roman Empire, French
  statesman Cardinal Richelieu organized a force
  made up of Swedes and Frenchmen to help the
  Protestant side.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
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Ethnic rivalry

• Dawkins complains about the media's insistence on
  describing the conflicts in Northern Ireland, the
  Balkans, and Iraq as "ethnic" rather than
  religious. But the media is right and. Dawkins is
  wrong. These are ethnic rivalries.
• Israel Palestine
• Balkans
• North Ireland
• The problem is a failure of love (of our being
  human, of failing to see that at our most
  fundamental level we are brothers and sisters)
  not of religion per se.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
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Israel and Palestine

• The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, at its
  core, a religious one. Rather, it arises from
  disputes over self-determination and land. Hamas
  and the extreme orthodox parties in Israel may
  advance theological claims"God gave us this
  land" and so forthbut even without these
  religious motives the conflict would remain
  essentially the same.
• But aren't the Jews fighting for this land
  because it is holy?
• No, they are fighting because this is their
  ancestral land and, after the Holocaust, many
  Jews have become convinced that they can feel
  secure only in a country of their own.
• Together with the secular UN, the people who
  founded the state of Israel were secular, not
  religious, Jews. The Palestinian Liberation
  Organization was from its origin a secular
  nationalist group.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
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Ethnic Differences

• Ethnic rivalry, not religion, is the source of
  the tension in the Balkans.
• Christopher Hitchens gratuitously proposes that
  the "ethnic cleansing" of the Balkans be called
  "religious cleansing" even though he admits that
  "xenophobic nationalism" and territorial
  aggrandizement rather than religion are the
  primary motivations for the violence.
• Moving on to Northern Ireland,
• Hitchens tells a joke without realizing that it
  undermines his own argument. A man is walking
  down a street in Belfast when a gunman leaps out
  of a doorway, points a gun, and says, "Protestant
  or Catholic?" The man exclaims, "Neither. I'm an
  atheist." To which the gunman replies, "Catholic
  atheist or Protestant atheist?" The real point of
  the joke is that it doesn't matter because
  religion is not really the issue.
• In the same vein, the Protestants and Catholics
  in Northern Ireland aren't fighting about
  transubstantiation or some point of religious
  doctrine. They are fighting over issues of
  autonomy and over which group gets to rule the
  country.

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Effects of Atheism overlooked

• While faulting religion for its role in promoting
  conflict and violence, secular writers rarely
  examine the role of atheism in producing wars and
  killing.
• Five hundred years after the Inquisition, we are
  still talking about it, but less than two decades
  after the collapse of "godless Communism" there
  is an eerie silence about the mass graves of the
  Soviet Gulag. Why the absence of accountability?

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
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By the numbers

• In the past hundred years or so, the most
  powerful atheist regimesCommunist Russia,
  Communist China, and Nazi Germanyhave wiped out
  people in astronomical numbers.
• Stalin was responsible for around twenty million
  deaths, produced through mass slayings, forced
  labor camps, show trials followed by firing
  squads, population relocation and starvation, and
  so on.
• Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's authoritative
  recent study Mao The Unknown Story attributes to
  Mao Zedong's regime a staggering seventy million
  deaths. Some China scholars think Chang and
  Halliday's numbers are a bit high, but the
  authors present convincing evidence that Mao's
  atheist regime was the most murderous in world
  history.
• Stalin's and Mao's killingsunlike those of, say,
  the Crusades or the Thirty Years' Warwere done
  in peacetime and were performed on their fellow
  countrymen. Hitler comes in a distant third with
  around ten million murders, six million of them
  Jews.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
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More numbers

• Lesser Atheistic Tyrants
• Let us not forget other Soviet dictators like
  Lenin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and so on.
• There have been a host of "lesser" atheist
  tyrants Pol Pot, Enver Hoxha, Nicolae Ceausescu,
  Fidel Castro, Kim Jong-il.
• Even these "minor league" despots killed a lot of
  people. Consider Pol Pot, who was the leader of
  the Khmer Rouge, the Communist Party faction that
  ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.
• Within this four-year period Pol Pot and his
  revolutionary ideologues engaged in systematic
  mass relocations and killings that eliminated
  approximately one-fifth of the Cambodian
  population, an estimated 1.5 million to 2 million
  people.
• In fact, Pol Pot killed a larger percentage of
  his countrymen than Stalin and Mao killed of
  theirs. Even so, focusing only on the big
  threeStalin, Hitler, and Maowe have to
  recognize that atheist regimes have in a single
  century murdered more than one hundred million
  people.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
47
In comparison

• Even taking higher population levels into
  account, atheist violence surpasses religious
  violence by staggering proportions. Although it
  is easier to kill people today, large proportion
  were just starved to death (that is not high tech
  weaponry).
• Here is a rough calculation. The world's
  population rose from around 500 million in 1450
  AD to 2.5 billion in 1950, a fivefold increase.
• Taken together, the Crusades, the Inquisition,
  and the witch burnings killed approximately
  200,000 people. Adjusting for the increase in
  population, that's the equivalent of one million
  deaths today. Even so, these deaths caused by
  Christian rulers over a five-hundred-year period
  amount to only 1 percent of the deaths caused by
  Stalin, Hitler and Mao in the space of a few
  decades.

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48
In Comparison
1-3 million over 500 years
Crusades Inquisition Witch hunts
49
In Comparison
Crusades Inquisition Witch hunts
1-3 million over 500 years
Hitler Stalin Mao Tze Tung Pol Pot Ceausescu,
Kim Jong-il.
100 million over a few decades
50
Atheism intrinsic to Communism

• Dawkins seems to have deluded himself into
  thinking that these horrors were not produced on
  atheism's behalf. But can anyone seriously deny
  that Communism was an atheist ideology?
• Communism calls for the elimination of the
  exploiting class, it extols violence as a way to
  social progress, and it calls for using any means
  necessary to achieve the atheist utopia.
• Not only was Marx an atheist, but atheism was
  also a central part of the Marxist doctrine.
  Atheism became a central component of the Soviet
  Union's official ideology, it is still the
  official doctrine of China, and Stalin and Mao
  enforced atheist policies by systematically
  closing churches and murdering priests and
  religious believers.
• All Communist regimes have been strongly
  anti-religious, suggesting that their atheism is
  intrinsic rather than incidental to their
  ideology.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
51
Were the communists Atheists?

• Karl Marx said Religion is the sigh of the
  oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless
  world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is
  the opium of the people.
• from the introduction of his 1843 work
  Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of
  Right.
• Putting Atheism into practice
• Vladimir Lenin similarly wrote regarding atheism
  and communism "A Marxist must be a materialist,
  i. e., an enemy of religion, but a dialectical
  materialist, i. e., one who treats the struggle
  against religion not in an abstract way, not on
  the basis of remote, purely theoretical, never
  varying preaching, but in a concrete way, on the
  basis of the class struggle which is going on in
  practice and is educating the masses more and
  better than anything else could.
• Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

52
Pope Benedict XVI in Spe Salvi of Karl Marx

• What said here can be extended to most other
  atheists
• He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot
  man and he forgot mans freedom. He forgot that
  freedom always remains also freedom for evil. . .
  . His real error is materialism man, in fact, is
  not merely the product of economic conditions,
  and it is not possible to redeem him purely from
  the outside by creating a favorable economic
  environment.

53
Pope Benedict XVI in Spe Salvi of Karl Marx

• Since there is no God to create justice, it
  seems man himself is now called to establish
  justice. If in the face of this worlds
  suffering, protest against God is understandable,
  nonetheless the claim that humanity can and
  must do what no God actually does or is able to
  do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false.
• It is no accident that this idea has led to the
  greatest forms of cruelty and violations of
  justice rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic
  falsity of the claim. A world which has to create
  its own justice is a world without hope.
• Social order may be possible, but despite our
  efforts, justice on earth is ultimately an
  unreachable goal.

54
When an secular ideology becomes a religion

• Along the same lines, Sam Harris attempts to
  exonerate atheism by alleging that Stalinism and
  Maoism were each "little more than a political
  religion'
• Christopher Hitchens advances a similar line of
  argument, suggesting that as the Stalinists and
  Maoists sought to replace religion those
  ideologies should be considered substitute
  religions.
• Should religion now be responsible not only for
  its crimes but also for the crimes committed by
  atheists on behalf of atheist ideologies?

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
55
Nazism and Communism freed from the shackles of
Christianity

• EMPOWERMENT
• Nazism was a secular, anti-religious philosophy
  that, strangely enough, had a lot in common with
  Communism. While the Communists wanted to empower
  the proletariat, the Nazis wanted to empower a
  master race.
• WHO IS THE ENEMY
• For the Communists the enemy was the capitalist
  class for the Nazis the enemy was the Jews and
  other races deemed inferior. The Communists and
  the Nazis treated the Christian churches as
  obstacles and enemies.
• CREATING A NEW ORDER
• Both groups proclaimed that they were engaging in
  revolutionary action in order to create a new
  type of human being and a new social order freed
  from the shackles of traditional religion and
  traditional morality.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
56
Was Hitler a Christian?

• Atheist Web sites routinely claim that Hitler was
  a Christian because he was born Catholic, never
  publicly renounced his Catholicism, and wrote in
  Mein Kampf, "By defending myself against the Jew,
  I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
• How persuasive are these claims? Hitler was born
  Catholic just as Stalin was born into the Russian
  Orthodox Church and Mao was raised as a Buddhist.
  These facts prove nothing, as many people reject
  their religious upbringing as these three men
  did.
• From an early age, historian Allan Bullock
  writes, Hitler "had no time at all for Catholic
  teaching, regarding it as a religion fit only for
  slaves and detesting its ethics.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
57
Propaganda

• The Lords work?
• How then do we account for Hitler's claim that in
  carrying out his anti-Semitic program he was an
  instrument of divine providence? During his
  ascent to power, Hitler needed the support of the
  German peopleboth the Bavarian Catholics and the
  Prussian Lutheransand to secure this he
  occasionally used rhetoric such as "I am doing
  the Lord's work."
• Sway the masses
• To claim that this rhetoric makes Hitler a
  Christian is to confuse political opportunism
  with personal conviction. Hitler himself says in
  Mein Kampf that his public statements should be
  understood as propaganda that bear no relation to
  the truth but are designed to sway the masses."

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
58
Secular Anti-Semitism

• Hitler's anti-Semitism was not religious, it was
  racial.
• Jews were targeted not because of their
  religionindeed many German Jews were completely
  secular in their way of lifebut because of their
  racial identity. This was an ethnic and not a
  religious designation.
• Conversion
• In fifteenth-century Spain, a Jew could escape
  Christian persecution simply by converting to
  Christianity.
• Religious beliefs didnt matter
• Hitler's objection to Jews, on the other hand,
  was not religious. A Jew could not escape
  Auschwitz by pleading, "I no longer practice
  Judaism," "I am an atheist," or "I have converted
  to Christianity." This mattered nothing to Hitler
  because he believed the Jews were inferior racial
  stock. His anti-Semitism was secular.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
59
Hitlers anti-Christian view

• Hitler's Table Talk, a revealing collection of
  the Furher's private opinions assembled by a
  close aide during the war years, shows Hitler to
  be rabidly anti-religious.
• He called Christianity one of the great
  "scourges" of history, and said of the Germans,
  "Let's be the only people who are immunized
  against this disease." He promised that "through
  the peasantry we shall be able to destroy
  Christianity."
• He also condemned Christianity for its opposition
  to evolution. Hitler reserved special scorn for
  the Christian values of equality and compassion,
  which he identified with weakness.
• Hitler and his leading advisers Goebbels,
  Himmler, Heydrich and Bormannwere atheists who
  hated religion and sought to eradicate its
  influence in Germany.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
60
Hitler quasi-pagan?

• Some atheist writers like Christopher Hitchens
  have sought to push Hitler into the religious
  camp by pointing to Nazism as a "quasi-pagan
  phenomenon."
• It's true that Hitler and the Nazis drew heavily
  on ancient archetypesmainly Nordic and Teutonic
  legendsto give their vision a mystical aura. But
  this was secular mysticism, not religious
  mysticism.
• The ancient Germanic peoples truly believed in
  their pagan gods. Hitler and the Nazis, however,
  relied on ancient myths in the modern form given
  to them by Nietzsche and Wagner.
• For Nietzsche and Wagner, there was no question
  of the ancient myths being true. Wagner no more
  believed in the Norse god Wotan than Nietzsche
  believed in Apollo.
• For Hitler and the Nazis, the ancient myths were
  valuable because they could give depth and
  significance to a secular racial conception of
  the world.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
61
Culmination of Christianity?

• Increasingly anti-Christian
• Once Hitler and the Nazis came to power, they
  launched a ruthless drive to subdue and weaken
  Christian churches in Germany. Historian Richard
  Evans points out that after 1937 the policies of
  Hitler's government became increasingly
  anti-religious.
• The Nazis stopped celebrating Christmas, and the
  Hitler Youth recited a prayer thanking the Fuhrer
  rather than God for their blessings. Clergy
  regarded as "troublemakers" were ordered not to
  preach, hundreds of them were imprisoned, and
  many were simply murdered. Churches were under
  constant Gestapo surveillance. The Nazis closed
  religious schools, forced Christian organizations
  to disband, dismissed civil servants who were
  practicing Christians, confiscated church
  property, and censored religious newspapers.
• Sam Harris cannot explain how an ideology that
  Hitler and his associates perceived as a
  repudiation of Christianity can be portrayed as a
  "culmination" of Christianity.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
62
Culmination of Evolutionary Ideology

• If Nazism represented the culmination of
  anything, it was that of the nineteenth-century
  and early twentieth-century ideology of social
  Darwinism.
• As historian Richard Weikart documents, both
  Hitler and Himmler were admirers of Darwin and
  often spoke of their role as enacting a "law of
  nature" that guaranteed the "elimination of the
  unfit."
• Weikart argues that Hitler himself "drew upon a
  bountiful fund of social Darwinist thought to
  construct his own racist philosophy" and
  concludes that while Darwinism is not a
  "sufficient" intellectual explanation for Nazism,
  it is a "necessary" one.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
63
Beyond Good and Evil

• The Nazis also drew on philosopher Friedrich
  Nietzsche, adapting his atheist philosophy to
  their crude purposes. Nietzsche's vision of the
  Übermensch and his elevation of a new ethic
  "beyond good and evil" were avidly embraced by
  Nazi propagandists.
• Nietzsche's "will to power" almost became a Nazi
  recruitment slogan. Hitler and his henchmen
  approved of Darwin's and Nietzsche's ideas.
• Sam Harris simply ignores the evidence of the
  Nazis' sympathies for Darwin, Nietzsche, and
  atheism. So what sense can we make of his claim
  that the leading Nazis were "knowingly or
  unknow-ingly" agents of religion? Clearly, it is
  nonsense. It is much more accurate to say they
  were agents, or victims, of carrying Darwinism to
  its logical conclusion

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
64
Big bad bloodbaths

• Ideologies
• Some people have expressed bafflement that
  atheist regimes have produced bloodbaths that no
  other force in history has matched. Dawkins
  himself raises the question of how an absence of
  belief can possibly cause social harm. Little
  does Dawkins realize that his own deepest beliefs
  provide a clue to the "final solution." The
  atheist killers regarded their cause as so grand
  and noble that nothing should be allowed to stand
  in its way. They viewed themselves as acting on
  behalf of inexorable and incontrovertible forces
  like science, reason, and progress.
• Science?
• Yes, the Nazis saw themselves promoting the
  survival of the fittest, in precisely the way
  evolution has always done.
• Reason?
• he Communists saw their project as an
  institutionalization of the age of reason. Marx
  was in the Enlightenment tradition of the French
  Jacobins, who enthroned a goddess of reason in
  the Cathedral of Notre Dame and then unleashed
  the Reign of Terror, in which "unreasonable"
  peoplenoblemen, priests, and other
  representatives of the old orderwere sent to the
  guillotine.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
65
The forward march of society

• And progress? As the Communists and the Nazis
  always stressed, history was on their side, and
  therefore their opponents were religious or
  bourgeois reactionaries who should be eliminated
  because they were retarding the forward march of
  society.
• This secular apotheosis of science, reason, and
  progressa doctrine that is very much with us
  todayis precisely what licensed men to do things
  to other people in a manner and on a scale that
  were previously unthinkable.
• A second reason for the horrors of atheist
  regimes is that they operated without any of the
  moral restraints that are the product of religion
  and that, however slightly, held back the
  bloodthirsty tyrants of the past. Nietzsche saw
  this coming.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
66
Predictions

• Writing in the nineteenth century, he predicted
  that the next two centuries would be cataclysmic,
  with wars and violence beyond all imagining.''
• The death of God, Nietzsche wrote, would result
  in the total eclipse of all values. Since values
  no longer came from God, they would now be made
  up by man.
• And since man is descended from the animal
  kingdoman idea Nietzsche adopted from Darwinman
  was likely to embrace the value of the libido
  dominandi (the lust to dominate) that we see
  everywhere in nature. Superior humans would
  eliminate inferior ones for the same reason that
  lions eat antelopes. "Master morality" prevails
  over "slave morality." It becomes useless to
  appeal to pity and compassion and decency any
  more. That would be like telling lions that they
  should stop being lions.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
67
Mankind liberated

• In other words, the atheist bloodbath is the
  product of a hubristic modern ideology that sees
  man, not God, as the creator of values. In
  rejecting God, man becomes scornful of the
  doctrine of human sinfulness and convinced of the
  perfectibility of his nature.
• Man now seeks to displace God and create a
  secular utopia here on earth. In order to achieve
  this, the atheist rulers establish total control
  of society. They invent a form of totalitarianism
  far more comprehensive than anything that
  previous rulers attempted every aspect of life
  comes under political supervision.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
68
Mankind liberated

• Of course if some peoplethe Jews, the
  landowners, the unfit, the handicapped, the
  religious dissidents, and so onhave to be
  relocated, incarcerated, or liquidated in order
  to achieve this utopia, this is a price the
  atheist tyrants have shown themselves quite
  willing to pay.
• The old moral codes do not apply, and ordinary
  atheist functionaries carry out behavior that
  would make a church inquisitor quake. The atheist
  regimes, by their actions, confirm the truth of
  Dostoevsky's dictum if God is not, everything is
  permitted.

Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
69
Atheism is not the solutionto mans fallen nature

• It's time to abandon the mindlessly repeated
  mantra that religious belief has been the main
  source of human conflict and violence.
• Atheism, not religion, is responsible for the
  worst mass murders of history.
• The conviction that one group (or idea or race)
  was superior to a different one coupled with a
  lust for power, control, and real estate that
  mankind so often goes to war. The problem isnt
  the idea that we are different, unless than
  difference is one of human value, but the lust (I
  do not GIVE, I TAKE).

70
The problem with Richard Dawkins

• Richard Dawkins is a good biologist but a not a
  good
• Philosopher
• Historian
• Theologian
• Christian
• Monkey
• None of the above
• All of the above

71
The God Delusion, a book that never squarely
faces its opponents.

• You will find no serious examination of Christian
  or Jewish perspective in Dawkins book
• Does he know Augustine cautioned biblical
  literalism in the early fifth century?
• No attempt to follow philosophical debates about
  the nature of religious propositions (How they
  make claims about everyday matters),
• No effort to appreciate the relationship between
  Church and science (does he know the Church had
  an important part in the rise of non-Aristotelian
  science and the scientific method not to mention
  Universities etc.)
• And no attempt to understand even the simplest of
  religious attitudes (Does Dawkins really believe,
  as he says, that Christians should be thrilled to
  learn they're terminally ill?). As Christians we
  are called to be detached from things in this
  world but only so that we can love. We love and
  are attached to persons, family etc.

72
A summary Dawkins Objections to Christianity in
Particular

• Original Sin
• Sex
• Atonement
• Sadomasochism
• Who is your neighbour?
• After looking at this you will realize that
  Dawkins doesnt have the first clue of what it
  means to be Christian

73
Richard Dawkins on Family Values

• Jesus' family values, it has to be admitted,
  were not such as one might wish to focus on. He
  was short, to the point of brusqueness, with his
  own mother, and he encouraged his disciples to
  abandon their families to follow him.
• 'If any man come to me and hate not his father,
  and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren,
  and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot
  be my disciple.
• Jesus also made comments about if your eyes cause
  you to sin etc.. The message of Jesus is that we
  have to first embrace God, the foundation and
  perfection of Truth Goodness and Beauty, for us
  to accomplish anything good. You have love the
  good to be good.
• We have to be able to let go of worldly things
  that may separate us from the ultimate source and
  strength of the family bonds we cherish.

74
Richard Dawkins on Original Sin

• What kind of ethical philosophy is it that
  condemns every child, even before it is born, to
  inherit the sin of a remote ancestor?
• The Old Testament was an illustration of Gods
  relationship with his chosen people. He wanted
  them to see that they were dependent on him and
  that everything they had was a gift from him.
• If our lives, including our time, our families,
  our abilities are gifts, why is it so hard to
  accept that we do not deserve what we have? Did
  we deserve to be born? Do you deserve an
  inheritance if your parents threw away their
  gifts?

75
Richard Dawkins on Sex

• Sam Harris is magnificently scathing in his
  Letter to a Christian Nation 'Your principal
  concern appears to be that the Creator of the
  universe will take offence at something people do
  while naked. This prudery of yours contributes
  daily to the surplus of human misery

Christianity does NOT devalue sexuality, if
anything it OVER values it. Sex and marriage is
a sacrament (sacred). Our sexuality is, within
us, both the choice and the call to life giving
communion. Our bodies do not make sense on our
own (complimentarity).
76
Richard Dawkins on Sex

• Malcolm Muggeridge, the noted commentator and
  convert to Catholicism, pointed out that
  eroticism is the mysticism of materialism.
• Oddly enough, this doctrine is set forth most
  clearly in the work of that apostle of sexual
  deviancy, the atheist Marquis de Sade.
• Knowledge of evil
• In Philosophy in the Bedroom, de Sade features a
  fifteen-year-old nun who has shed her faith in
  God and discovered in its place the delights of
  incest, sodomy, and sexual flagellation. The
  descent of man below animalsduring sex
  urinating, deficating, choking, snuff etc..

77
Richard Dawkins on Atonement

• I refer especially to the central doctrine of
  Christianity that of 'atonement' for 'original
  sin'. This teaching, which lies at the heart of
  New Testament theology, is almost as morally
  obnoxious as the story of Abraham setting out to
  barbecue Isaac, which it resembles - and that is
  no accident, as Geza Vermes makes clear in The
  Changing Faces of Jesus.
• Original sin itself comes straight from the Old
  Testament myth of Adam and Eve. Their sin -
  eating the fruit of a forbidden tree - seems mild
  enough to merit a mere reprimand.
• But the symbolic nature of the fruit (knowledge
  of good and evil, which in practice turned out to
  be knowledge that they were naked) was enough to
  turn their scrumping escapade into the mother and
  father of all sins. They and all their
  descendants were banished forever from the Garden
  of Eden, deprived of the gift of eternal life,
  and condemned to generations of painful labour,
  in the field and in childbirth respectively.

78
Richard Dawkins on Original Sin

• So far, so vindictive par for the Old Testament
  course. New Testament theology adds a new
  injustice, topped off by a new sadomasochism
  whose viciousness even the Old Testament barely
  exceeds.
• It is, when you think about it, remarkable that a
  religion should adopt an instrument of torture
  and execution as its sacred symbol, often worn
  around the neck.

79
Sadomasochism

• But now, the Sadomasochism. God incarnated
  himself as a man, Jesus, in order that he should
  be tortured and executed in atonement for the
  hereditary sin of Adam.
• Ever since Paul expounded this repellent
  doctrine, Jesus has been worshipped as the
  redeemer of all our sins. Not just the past sin
  of Adam future sins as well, whether future
  people decided to commit them or not!
• I have described atonement, the central doctrine
  of Christianity, as vicious, sado-masochistic and
  repellent. We should also dismiss it as barking
  mad, but for its ubiquitous familiarity which has
  dulled our objectivity.
• Richard Dawkins the God Delusion.

80
Sadomasochism

• If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just
  forgive them, without having himself tortured and
  executed in payment Richard Dawkins
• This criticism makes sense only if you presume
  that the Christians made the whole thing up,
  which would be horrible of them to do to their
  God.
• Christians view the atonement of Christ as a
  beautiful sacrifice. Somehow God not only became
  man but took on all his sins and burdens.
• BY UNITING HIMSELF WITH US HE KNOWS US ALL
  INTIMATELY AND TRANSFORMS US.
• Humanity is elevated and transformed.

81
God becomes man

• An infinite God becomes man.
• No other religion can even conceive this. The
  Greek and Roman gods of antiquity often disguised
  themselves as mortals, but they would not
  actually become mortal, although they would have
  super strength they had our super weaknesses
  (vice).
• In this new story, the author of everything (the
  Creator) enters his story (his creation)
• Power made perfect in weakness
• Mexican author Carlos Fuentes writes that when
  the Christian missionaries first presented their
  doctrines to the Aztecs, the Aztecs were totally
  uncomprehending. Fuentes writes, "In a universe
  accustomed to seeing men sacrificed to the gods,
  nothing amazed the Indians more than the sight of
  a god who had sacrificed himself to men. Yet what
  other religions hold to be absurd and scandalous,
  Christianity holds to be true.

82
In our fallen world, love is connected to
suffering

• "Christ paid a debt he didn't owe because we owe
  a debt we cannot pay."
• "Christ offers us something for nothing," C. S.
  Lewis writes. "He even offers everything for
  nothing.
• In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in
  accepting that very remarkable offer." So what is
  the difficulty? The difficulty is in realizing
  that we are sinful and that there is nothing we
  can do to solve this problem.

83
In our fallen world, love is connected to
suffering

• THE TIE THAT BINDS
• Two trees, two gardens, two choices. The first
  Adam chose to TAKE lust