Atheism on Trial

Markos Markos Louis

Description

Answers You Need for the Tough Questions About Your Faith Atheists are launching a new wave of attacks against Christianity and faith in God. It's hard to know how to handle their claims that they have a more enlightened, scientific, and sophisticated worldview. How can you respond with precision to arguments against your faith? With instructive clarity, Dr. Louis Markos confronts the modern-day atheists' claims that new evidence disproves the existence of God. In fact, you will find that the "proof" they peddle is not new at all. Rather, they recycle claims that have already been disproven by Christian thinkers of the past...claims that you can silence today with the same solid logic. Equip yourself to defend your beliefs from a deep well of knowledge and conviction. Stand in confidence that the trial of public opinion versus universal truth has already been heldand God is the victor.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian theology

Informations

• Publié par: Harvest House Publishers
• Date de parution: 03 avril 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780736973083
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for Atheism on Trial
Louis Markos lives with the entire panorama of history before his mind. In Atheism on Trial , he ranges from ancient philosophers to contemporary scientists to show that the same fundamental objections to Christianity have been raised-and refuted-in every age. The so-called new atheists do not differ substantially from the old atheists, whose challenges have been met by competent Christian thinkers throughout history. It is time to avail ourselves of their wisdom, and this literate, colorfully written book is a good place to begin.
Nancy Pearcey , author of Total Truth, Finding Truth, and Love Thy Body
I was thrilled to read this new book by Louis Markos. I work every day in the academic world of Christian apologetics and have never seen a book quite like this. He shows very effectively that the major arguments set forth in the modern world against God and the Christian worldview have been answered by thinkers from ancient times. His survey of chronological snobbery is profound and beautifully written. And make no mistake, this book is for everybody-clear, accessible, and wonderfully encouraging.
Craig J. Hazen, PhD , founder and director, MA Program in Christian Apologetics, Biola University author of Five Sacred Crossings
Louis Markos s timely book Atheism on Trial shows that the claims of the new atheists are anything but new. Because of our modern-day culture s disconnection from intellectual history, we often don t realize that these same atheist arguments were raised in the ancient, medieval, and early modern eras-and addressed by some of the greatest philosophers and theologians in history, from Plato to St. Thomas Aquinas. As a result, many people don t realize just how strong the arguments for Christianity really are. In this readable and engaging book, Markos sets out to rectify this situation. With enthusiasm that draws us into the story, he gives the reader a guided tour through the philosophical insights of pagan and Christian thinkers of centuries (and millennia) past to provide a firm foundation for the consideration of the biggest questions of life. Atheism on Trial thus serves both as a valuable apologetics resource and as a lively and interesting introduction to the study of philosophy.
Dr. Holly Ordway , author of Apologetics and the Christian Imagination: An Integrated Approach to Defending the Faith
In this highly engaging book, Louis Markos takes the reader on an adventure through more than 2,500 years of ideas and arguments from the most influential thinkers in history. From Lucretius to Augustine, from Aquinas to Nietzsche, from C.S. Lewis to Stephen Hawking, journey with him through the thoughts of atheists, deists, and theists and judge for yourself whether it is reasonable to believe in the God of Christian faith. You will not be disappointed!
Chad Meister , Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Bethel College
Markos offers a clear, insightful, and revealing look at how all the modern arguments against God have been around for centuries and how they ve always failed to sufficiently explain reality. Very approachable for those new to the subject, yet filled with remarkable depth for a book of this length, Atheism on Trial is a highly valuable read for anyone interested in evaluating common atheistic arguments. It will undoubtedly leave you convicted of how strong the case for God actually is.
Natasha Crain , author of Keeping Your Kids on God s Side and Talking with Your Kids About God
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Scripture quotations are from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version ), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Cover by Jason Gabbert Design
Atheism on Trial
Copyright 2018 Louis Markos
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97408
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
ISBN 978-0-7369-7307-6 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-7308-3 (eBook)
All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author s and publisher s rights is strictly prohibited.
DEDICATION
For Gilbert Farah -
for his friendship, his hospitality,
and his willingness to engage in discussion,
dialogue, and debate,
even, and especially, when we disagree.
CONTENTS
Praise for Atheism on Trial
Dedication
Introduction: Nothing New Under the Sun
Part 1: The Nature of the Universe
One: In the Beginning
Two: The Laws of Nature
Three: Miracles
Part 2: The Nature of Knowledge
Four: Seeing Is Believing
Five: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful
Part 3: The Nature of God
Six: More Moral Than God?
Seven: The Problem of Pain
Eight: The Watchmaker God
Part 4: The Nature of Man
Nine: The Illusion of Choice
Ten: Good Without God?
Conclusion: What If It s True?
Annotated Bibliography
INTRODUCTION:
Nothing New Under the Sun
A ccording to the wisest man who ever lived, there is nothing new under the sun. Though the truth of that statement may appear self-evident, the modern age has fashioned a competing story that has been accepted, mostly unconsciously, by the vast majority of Americans and Europeans. According to that story, or narrative, the history of human civilization can best be portrayed as a staircase or ladder that begins in darkness, ignorance, superstition, and barbarism and slowly ascends toward light, truth, science, and secular humanism.
The modern world, so the narrative goes, has decisively judged the past and found it sorely lacking. Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of religion. The court of empiricism, skepticism, and utilitarianism has put theism, particularly Christian theism, on trial, and the verdict of all logical, rational, objective jurors has fallen against belief and in favor of nonbelief. True, those who need God and religion as a crutch may be allowed to cherish their illusions, but they must understand that their faith is purely emotional and personal and that it has no standing in our enlightened Age of Reason.
It is a compelling narrative; in fact, it has become the controlling narrative of our age, the metanarrative which gives meaning and authority to all other narratives. But it has one serious flaw. It is not true.
Back in my high school days, I took a history class with the provocative title From Barbarism to Humanism. After learning that the class would begin with the ancient Greeks and finish with the twentieth century, I respectfully suggested to the teacher that the class should be more accurately titled From Humanism to Barbarism.
Okay, maybe I was being a bit snide, but when the teacher graciously agreed with me, it started me off on a lifelong quest to look- really look-at history in order to gauge how much we really had progressed as a species. That quest was strengthened during my college years when I first encountered, from C.S. Lewis s spiritual autobiography Surprised by Joy , the phrase chronological snobbery. It seemed like everyone around me, both my fellow students and the adults of my parents generation, had taken for granted that everything necessarily improves with time. Lewis opened my eyes to see that newer is not always better-that, while our technology was superior to that of the past, our ancestors often surpassed us in courage, wisdom, loyalty, joy, and in what I would call basic sanity.
He also taught me that no trial had ever been held in which atheism had defended its (non) beliefs and emerged victorious. Atheism had no more been proved than Christianity had been disproved. To the contrary, the more I studied the past, the more I discovered that a long line of theists and Christians had, again and again, successfully put atheism on trial and shown it to be sorely lacking in intellectual force and integrity.
No, atheism (then or now) had not won the debate against theism; it had merely convinced everyone that it had somehow evolved past theism. And it was that word, evolved , that, taken together with Lewis s chronological snobbery, opened my eyes to how potent and wide-ranging the myth of Darwinian evolution is. So ingrained has the evolutionary mindset become in the Western world that little resistance is raised, either by believers or nonbelievers, when the past is dismissed, or at least patronized, as backward, unenlightened, and riddled with prejudice. Of course, that word past is a slippery one. It can be used to mean any number of things that the critic doesn t like (or understand): the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church, belief in miracles, wars of religion, pre-Copernican science, the epistles of St. Paul, traditional families, social and political hierarchy, original sin, absolute standards of goodness, truth, and beauty, feudalism, and so forth.
As a corollary to this evolutionary ladder, the modern world, deeply infected with chronological snobbery, has taken for granted that its scientific, philosophical, theological, sociological, and aesthetic advances have superseded what was believed and practiced in the past. Those people who lived back then thought x, but we know better today. If only they could have had access to all the things we now know to be true, they would have been able to step out of their ignorance and blindness. But Europe just had to wait for the coming of Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Nietzsche to find out how the world reall