“Religion poisons everything.” -Christopher Hitchens “I regard it [Christianity] as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.” -Bertrand Russell What I’m not going to do: - Talk about whether or not specific Christians are good. - Try to prove the truthfulness of Christianity. - Talk about whether or not all religions are good. By Christianity I Mean: The person, message, ministry, life, death, burial resurrection, ascension, and future return and reign of Jesus. By Jesus, I mean the one anticipated by the Old Testament and from whom the New Testament flows. Christianity is Good: 1. In an Absolute Sense 2. In an Approximate Sense 3. In an Artistic Sense I. Christianity is Good in an Absolute Sense Hitchens argument against Christianity being good: #1: Christianity didn’t give us moral precepts like “love thy neighbor. Hitchens argument against Christianity being good: #2: Many of the teachings of Christianity are immoral. (especially the idea of atonement) From one of Hitchens’ last public debates: “[the atonement is] a doctrine I think is strictly immoral, the idea of vicarious redemption . I then have to be told that the torture and human sacrifice of somebody which had I been present would have been my duty to try to prevent, which I did not ask for, over which I have no control, it took place thousands of years . Commits me, I have no choice in the matter . (continued) From one of Hitchens’ last public debates: “And that my sins are forgiven by this human sacrifice . Vicarious redemption is scape-goating . It’s throwing your sins onto an animal, it’s an old primitive practice from the Middle East. It doesn’t deserve the attention of civilized or thoughtful people.” The biblical depiction of the atonement: For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8) The biblical depiction of the atonement: . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:23-26) Hitchens argument against Christianity being good: #3: Christianity must own up to both the good and the bad examples of followers of Jesus. But these critiques assume moral categories that Hitchens’ atheistic worldview cannot provide. “In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” – Richard Dawkins from “River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life” “Scientism starts with the idea that the physical facts fix all the facts, including the biological ones. These in turn have to fix the human facts – the facts about us, our psychology and our morality…The biological facts can’t guarantee that our core morality (or any other one, for that matter) is the right, true or correct one. If the biological facts can’t do it, then nothing can. No moral core is right, correct, true. That’s nihilism. And we have to accept it [113].” – Alex Rosenberg, philosophy professor at Duke University “We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons should not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me . Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.” – Kai Nielson (Philosophy professor emeritus at University of Calgary) in “Why Should I Be Moral” in American Philosophical Quarterly (1984) p.90 Here’s a few more examples provided with sources from a helpful article “The Indispensability of Theological Meta-Ethical Foundations for Morality” by philosopher and apologist William Lane Craig at his website: Reasonablefaith.org http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-indispensability-of- theological-meta-ethical-foundations-for-morality#text3 “. ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says 'Love they neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves . Nevertheless, . such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . and any deeper meaning is illusory .” – Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262, 268-9 “The modern age, more or less repudiating the idea of a divine lawgiver, has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong, not noticing that, in casting God aside, they have also abolished the conditions of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well . “Thus, even educated persons sometimes declare that such things are war, or abortion, or the violation of certain human rights, are 'morally wrong,' and they imagine that they have said something true and significant . [they] are really just weaving intellectual webs from thin air.” – Richard Taylor (Ethics, Faith and Reason) II. Christianity is Good in an Approximate Sense. As An Atheist, I Truly Believe Africa Needs God Article by Matthew Paris, The Times, 2008 “Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.” “Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to- man, without looking down or away.” “Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.” Richard Dawkins claims that belief in God is a delusion. Is it? “[God is] a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser , a misogynistic, homophobic racist, an infanticidal, genocidal, phillicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” - Richard Dawkins But . The word delusion is a precise psychiatric term. Does the evidence, literature from psychiatry, affirm his point? Andrew Sims, former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and former Professor of Psychiatry in the University of Leeds. In his book “Is Faith Delusion? Why Religion is Good for Your Health” responds to Dawkins claim based on extensive research. Based on the major work “The Handbook of Religion and Health,” based on 1200 research studies and 400 reviews, they demonstrate that religious involvement is correlated with: “Well-being, happiness and life satisfaction; hope and optimism; purpose and meaning in life; higher self-esteem; better adaptation to bereavement; greater social support and less loneliness; lower rates of depression and faster recovery from depression; lower rates of suicide and fewer positive attitudes towards suicide; less anxiety, less psychosis and fewer psychotic tendencies; lower rates of alcohol and drug use and abuse; less delinquency and criminal activity; greater marital stability and satisfaction.” “If the findings of the huge volume of research on this topic had gone in the opposite direction and it had been found that religion damages your mental health, it would have been front page news in every newspaper in the land!” – Andrew Sims (p. 221) “Religion May Be a Miracle Drug” 2016 USA Today op-ed piece by Harvard School of Public Health professor Tyler VanderWeele and journalist John Sniff “The piece begins, ‘If one could conceive of a single elixir to improve the physical and mental health of millions of Americans – at no personal cost – what value would our society place on it?’ The authors go on to outline the mental and physical health benefits that are correlated with regular religious participation.” III. Christianity is Good in an Artistic Sense. Every worldview is a story. Each has an author, a beginning, and an end. The Christian story is simply more beautiful and to borrow a pet expression from Henry Kissinger, it has the added benefit of being true. “It [Atheism] pictures the universe as a natural system, a system not guided by intelligent design and not traversed by spirits; a universe that can be explained by science, because it consists of material objects operating according to physical laws . Ironically, this is similar to the totalizing worldview of religion – neither can be shown to be true or false by science, or indeed by any rational technique . ” “Whether theistic or atheistic, they are all matters of faith, stances taken up by tiny creatures in an infinitely rich