What's So Great About Christianity?

Dinesh D'Souza

Ch 1: The Twilight of Atheism: The Global Triumph of Christianity

There has been a revitalization of traditional religion worldwide, and Christianity is growing the most rapidly; especially in Asia, Africa, and South America.

p3-4 numbers for denominations

p4 growth of traditional religion

p5 Europe, Australia, Canada religion "expunged from the cultural mainstream"

p5 Europe 10-25% churchgoers, Ireland 45% Greece 90% believers only 5% atheist, Poland and Slovakia most religious with Ireland. US 40% attend church, >90% believe in God, 60% faith important. US the most religious in the western world.

p7 Islam fastest growing in Europe, Christianity only faith with a global reach

p7 In 1900 80% of Christians were in Europe, now 60% in the developing world. "vital centers of Christianity not in Europe, but in Brazil, etc.

p8 Numbers of Christians in different countries

p8-9 Numbers in Africa, South America

p9 South Korea has 12,000 Christian missionaries, second only to the US

p10 Peter Berger "the thesis of inevitable secularization has now lost its credibility"

p10 Wolfhart Pannenberg "Secular culture itself produces a deep need for meaning in life and therefore also for religion."

p10 "I am a native of India, and my ancestors were converted to Christianity by Portuguese missionaries." "When I came toAmerica as a student in 1978, my Christianity was largely a matter of birth and habit. But even as I plunged myself into modern life in the United States, my faith slowly deepened. G.K.Chesterton calls this the 'revolt into orthodoxy'. Like Chesterton, I find myself rebelling against extreme secularism and finding in Christianity some remarkable answers to both intellectual and practical concerns".

p11 "God is the future, and atheism is on the way out."

What's So Great About Christianity?

Dinesh D'Souza

Ch 2: Survival of the Sacred: Why Religion is Winning

Atheists are puzzled at the continual growth of religion and provide a number of naturalistic explanations (genetics, wishful thinking, survival function, etc.) DÕSouza rejects their reasons and gives his own reasons for why religion wins out: (1) It provides people with a meaningful, purposeful, hopeful existence and (2) it repopulates better.

p13 "The vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply." Darwin, The Origin of Species

p15 Randy Alcorn - two tribes, believer tribe healthy, happy, hopeful and atheist tribe in despair

p16 American Atheists organization 2500 members

p16 quote "You can throw a stone ..."

p17 Russia -- abortions outnumber live births 2:1 paragraph 1, Paragraph 2 low birthrates, birthrates of religious people 2:1 over non religious.

p18 last paragraph to p19 "not religion but Darwinism that requires a Darwinian explanation."

What's So Great About Christianity?

Dinesh D'Souza

Ch 3: God Is Not Great: The Atheist Assault on Religion

Some atheists are alarmed by the growing power of religion and have launched an all-out attack on religion. Atheists make up a small but growing percentage of the population in the US. Their attacks are characterized by (1) Intellectual militancy, (2) moral self-confidence, (3) moral pride. This sense of superiority over religious believers is due to the confidence in modern science to discover all truth.

p21 "far from dying quietly, religion is on the global upswing.." Pluralism pop 40 million, 15%, up from 10% in 1990.

p22 Paragraph 2 list of books and authors stating atheist position, atheist pride, "brights" from Dennett and Dawkins, quotes

p23 par 2, Weinberg, Majority of scientists atheists, 40% believe in personal God, National Academy of Sciences 7% believers.

p24 Sagan, Pinker, Harris, Dawkins, Sagan and the "god of the gaps"

p25 Dawkins, Dennett, Ayala, Provise, Crick, Wilson

p26 History including Voltaire, Diderot, d'Hobach, Freud

p27 Nietzsche's approach

p28 Bertrand Russell

p29 E. O. Wilson

What's So Great About Christianity?

Dinesh D'Souza

Ch 4: Miseducating the Young: Saving Children from Their Parents

Some modern atheists intend to transform the culture by (1) reeducating the youth, (2) marginalizing and ridiculing religious belief, (3) encouraging young people to throw off traditional moral restraints, specifically sexual restraints.

p31"Isn't it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought about?" Dawkins, The God Delusion

p32 "Darwinism has become an ideology." Political movement for Darwinism, but "Why isn't the ACLU filing lawsuits on behalf of Boyle's Law?" humorous couple of paragraphs.

p32-33 quotes from Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Weinberg, Wilson, Lewontin, Dennett railing against religion. Lewontin: objective of science education is to "get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world ... and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, science, as the only begetter of truth."

p34 Cosmos, Carl Sagan "The cosmos is all there is or ever was or ever will be."

p34 Carolyn Porco, Space Science Institute - quote on p35 science as God substitute

p35 suggestions along the line that children should be taken away from religious parents Dawkins, Dennett, Nicholas Humphrey, Richard Rorty - Rorty's outrageous and arrogant statements. The strategy of just ridiculing anything religious.

p Kenneth Miller "grow out of .."

p37 D'Souza's satire of this "ridiculing" strategy