The world\u2019s largest religious tradition has had more than its share of critics over the centuries.\u00a0 A not inconsiderable number of these have been men and women (but mostly men) of genius.\u00a0 And the brightest and most constructive of critics have tended to be Christ\u2019s own disciples.<\/p>\n
That popular funny man and political leftist Bill Maher, along with his millions of fans, think that this low brow comedian deserves to be included among the ranks of Christianity\u2019s ablest objectors is a tragic commentary on the condition of our culture\u2019s collective intellect.<\/p>\n
The saddest thing about all of this\u2014and I see it regularly among my college students\u2014is that most people who either explicitly reject Christianity or refuse to treat it with the utmost seriousness that it warrants do not have a clue as to what it is. <\/em><\/p>\n Christianity looks ridiculous only after it has been made to look ridiculous.\u00a0 In other words, High priests of the popular culture, pseudo-intellectuals like Maher, cheat: they attack, not Christianity itself, but a one-dimensional, cartoonish caricature of it.\u00a0 Socrates would have likened Maher and his ilk to shadow boxers who prefer to swing at the air rather than contend with a real opponent.<\/p>\n Considering that at no time or place has there ever existed an intellectual tradition as rich and complex as that of Christianity, we should expect nothing less\u2014and nothing more\u2014from lightweights like Maher.\u00a0 If they didn\u2019t have straw men<\/em> they would have nothing.<\/p>\n But it isn\u2019t just theological and philosophical illiterates like Maher who style themselves worthy adversaries of the Christian faith.\u00a0 Such public intellectuals as the late Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins have also jockeyed for this distinction\u2014but to no avail.<\/p>\n Despite the popular acclaim with which the intelligentsia greeted them, the critiques of Harris and Dawkins are indebted to a worldview that is as antiquated as Christianity appears to be to them.\u00a0 Though both men are scientists, the problem lies not in their science, but in their scientism.\u00a0 <\/em>The latter is the doctrine that all claims to knowledge can and should be brought before the tribunal of \u201cthe scientific method.\u201d\u00a0 Those claims and only those claims that satisfy this absolute criterion constitute genuine knowledge.\u00a0<\/p>\n Scientism collapses the variety of human voices into one voice, the voice of science or pseudo-science.\u00a0<\/p>\n But scientism, in turn, is a species of Rationalism, an intellectual orientation that reached its zenith during the Enlightenment.\u00a0<\/p>\n In other words, the ideas of Harris and Dawkins, far from reflecting some ideal of objective (and timeless) truth, are in reality a function of the prejudices\u2014indeed, the myths\u2014of an age.<\/p>\n Hitchens is no better.\u00a0<\/p>\n Though neither a scientist nor a proponent of scientism, this arrogant Englishman was as ignorant as Harris and Dawkins of the fact that the assumptions on which his atheistic critique of Christianity rests bear the unmistakable impress of his generation.\u00a0 Moreover, the content of his critique consists of the recycling of arguments that had been thrown up against Christianity for centuries\u2014but by men whose minds were far more discriminate than that of his own.<\/p>\n There exist intelligent objections against Christianity.\u00a0 But they come largely (if not exclusively) from its adherents.\u00a0 This is a paradox but it is true.\u00a0 As Saint Augustine famously said: \u201cBelieve in order to understand.\u201d\u00a0 Only those who are thoroughly immersed in a practice or tradition know all of its nuances.\u00a0 It is only they who know it inside and out.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hence, it is only Christians, when they are intellectually curious and honest, who can at once identify the challenges that their religion faces and <\/em>meet those challenges.<\/p>\n The \u201cnew\u201d atheists mentioned here are as competent to adequately critique, much less undermine, Christianity\u2014or any <\/em>religion, for that matter\u2014as is a person who has never been married eligible to do the same with respect to marriage.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The world\u2019s largest religious tradition has had more than its share of critics over the centuries.\u00a0 A not inconsiderable number of these have been men and women (but mostly men) of genius.\u00a0 And the brightest and most constructive of critics have tended to be Christ\u2019s own disciples. That popular funny man and political leftist Bill…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n