What’s So Great About Christianity

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Christianity and Science: Notes from “What’s So Great About Christianity?”

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The following are chapter synopses and short quotes from the third section of Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About Christianity? This third section is entitled: “Christianity and Science”

Chapter 8:
D’Souza argues that Christianity is based on reason–and that Christian theologians throughout the ages have been masters of reasoned defenses of Christian thought.

“My point is that the kind of reasoning about God that we see in Augustine, Aquinas, and Anselm is typical of Christianity. There is very little of this in any other religion. And out of such reasoning, remarkably enough, modern science was born.”

Chapter 9:
D’Souza states that a fundamental assumption of the modern scientist is that the world is ordered, logical, rational, and law following. He argues that this belief in an ordered natural universe is directly pirated from Christianity.

“God is sacred and made the universe, and the universe operates lawfully in accordance with divine reason. At the same time Christianity held that the universe itself is not sacred….The Christian universe is ordered and yet disenchanted. Moreover, Christianity…teaches that man was made in the ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ of God. This means that there is a spark of the divie reason in man, setting him apart from other things and giving him the special power of apprehending them. According to Christianity, human reason is derived from the divine intelligence that created the universe.”

Chapter 10:
D’Souza argues that the story of Galileo being persecuted by the church for his heliocentric theory is just that–a story.

“Galileo was a great scientist who had very little sense. He was right about heliocentrism, but several of his arguments and proofs were wrong. The dispute his ideas brought about was not exclusively between religion and science, but also between the new science and the science of the previous generation. The leading figures of the church were more circumspect about approaching “

Categories Book Notes

Christianity and the West: Notes from “What’s So Great About Christianity?”

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The following are chapter synopses and short quotes from the second section of Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About Christianity? This second section was entitled: “Christianity and the West”

Chapter 5:
D’Souza argues that Christianity is originally responsible for the concept of limited government and separation of church and state

“Augustine argued that during our time here on earth, the Christian inhabits two realms, the earthly city and the heavenly city….To each of these realms the Christian citizen has duties, but they are not the same duties….some remarkable conclusions follow….It means that the earthly city need not concern itself with the question of man’s final or ultimate destiny. It also implies that the claims of the earthly city are limited, that there is a sanctuary of conscience inside every person that is protected from political control.”

Chapter 6:
D’Souza argues that Christianity’s conception of the value of the ordinary but fallible individual has led to many of the features of Western civilization that we hold most dear, including separation of powers and checks and balances for governments, and capitalism as an economic system. (He also argues that the value of the ordinary but fallible individual led to giving family a prominent role in society, but I felt that his argument was hard to follow and rather weak.)

“…Capitalism satisfied the Christian demand for an institution that channels selfish human desire toward the betterment of society. Some critics accuse capitalism of being a selfish system, but the selfishness is not in capitalism–it is in human nature.”

Chapter 7:
D’Souza argues that Christianity is fundamentally responsible for the concepts of human rights and individual freedom.

“The preciousness and equal worth of every human life is a Christian idea. Christians have always believed that God places infinite value on each human life He creates and that He loves each person equally. In Christianity you are not saved through your family or tribe or city. Salvation is an individual matter…These ideas have momentous consequences.”

Categories Book Notes

The Future of Christianity: Notes from “What’s So Great About Christianity?”)

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I’m cheating somewhat and just using my book notes from What’s So Great About Christianity? for this week’s Week in Words.

The following are chapter synopses and short quotes from the first section of Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About Christianity? This first section was entitled: “The Future of Christianity”

Chapter 1:
D’Souza argues that Christianity is experiencing worldwide growth, while atheism is declining worldwide.

“Nietzsche’s proclamation “God is dead” is now proven false. Nietzsche is dead. The ranks of unbelievers are shrinking as a proportion of the world’s population….God is very much alive , and His future prospects look to be excellent.”

Chapter 2:
D’Souza argues that, while atheists search for an evolutionary reason for religion, it is really atheism that lacks an evolutionary basis. After all, the religious are rapidly reproducing their genes while atheists fail to (biologically) reproduce.

“The important point is not just that atheism is unable to compete with religion in attracting followers, but also that the lifestyle of practical atheism seems to produce listless tribes that cannot even reproduce themselves.”

Chapter 3:
D’Souza describes the rise of militant atheism and its desperately offensive (think Hail Mary) “war on religion”.

Chapter 4:
D’Souza argues that atheists attempt to use schools (both primary schools and universities) to indoctrinate children and young adults to atheist ideology.

“For the defenders of Darwinism, no less than for its critics, religion is the issue. Just as some people oppose the theory of evolution because they believe it to be anti-religious, many others support it for the very same reason. This is why we have Darwinism but not Keplerism; we encounter Darwinists but no one describes himself as an Einstainian. Darwinism has become an ideology.”

The Week in WordsDon’t forget to take a look at Barbara H’s meme “The Week in Words”, where bloggers collect quotes they’ve read throughout the week.