Some of my recent reading has been by authors in the New Atheists camp. You know, all those bestselling authors who love trying to dismantle Christianity and other faiths. They’ve grown highly recognized in the last decade or so.
Reading the arguments put forth by the critics of my faith sharpens my own thinking. There are several authors who make strong arguments. I don’t agree with the arguments, but they are well thought out and presented without a lot of emotional angst or condescending insults. They are well worth reading.
Sadly, there are some who are total nut cases. They are the atheistic equivalent of a cable TV op-ed program: loud, bombastic, and unwilling to actually listen. Their mantra essentially boils down to, “You can’t prove the existence of God, therefore God does not exist.” They criticize some of the faults and mistakes of organized religion, and then leverage those faults into a dismissal of the very idea of faith.
Even those who sympathize with their viewpoints recognize the flaws in that logic. Not to say that there aren’t a lot of Christian nut cases who won’t listen and spend more time ranting than thinking — there certainly are. But that’s something I’ve criticized for decades. Today I’m taking on the crazy types among the New Atheists.
Anyway, what strikes me about these Christian critics (the crazy ones) is how out of touch they are with where the Church is today. They are attacking Western Christianity. What they completely miss is that such criticism is actually a form of cultural arrogance.
You see, the demographic and spiritual center of the Church today is not in Rome, Salt Lake City, or London. It’s not in Colorado Springs.
The Church today is in Africa. It’s in Latin America. It’s throughout Asia. Those are the dynamic and growing centers of Christian faith.
So when those nut case atheists pour criticism on the Christian faith, when they lambast the “ridiculous superstition” that Christians believe, when they dismiss the very idea of faith as a relic of an ignorant people, they are indirectly and unknowingly expressing a cultural arrogance against hundreds of millions of people across the world. They are making anti-Christian arguments for a Western mindset without realizing that the real faithful don’t even think that way, much less pay attention to them.
People in the 2/3rds world are perplexed by all of the noise coming from the New Atheists. To them, the idea that faith is meaningless is laughable. There is Western arrogance in the idea that reason, logic, empirical evidence and the scientific approach can replace faith.
I’m thankful that the more esteemed atheists join panels with bright Christian apologists. The exchanges are often excellent. But imagine how different those panel discussions would be if the Christian members were African or Asian. Imagine the different tone and perspective if the Christian panelists came from Brazil, Kenya or China. It would be a completely different conversation, one that the atheist proponents had no idea how to handle.
I’ve long argued that the Church is in a unique position as we enter an age of globalization. The Church was the first truly global concept and it’s in the DNA of the Christian faith to connect the world. Somewhere along the line the Church got the reputation as being insulated and disconnected from the world. Perhaps some of the desk jockeys in Rome, London, and Colorado Springs can be accused of that. But they aren’t the center of the Church. The Church is much broader, more decentralized, and more globalized than most people know.
So as the atheist crazies rant and rave about the meaninglessness of faith, I can’t help but chuckle at the irony that a bunch of Western intellectuals are again acting like they have all the answers. Boy, are they going to be surprised when they realize they aren’t even taunting the right people.