In Defense of Faith

Religious faith is under assault. In books, movies and on television, secular critics are attacking religion and the religious with a renewed vigor.  These “new atheists” typically repeat a two-part mantra. First they claim that religious faith is irrational. Then they assert that irrational people possessed of such faith are responsible for most of the hatred and bloodshed that have plagued humanity. Abandon religion, they urge us, and the world will at last live in peace.

In Defense of Faith examines this proposition in the context of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition and asserts that, far from encouraging hatred and violence, the Judeo-Christian tradition has easily been the most effective curb upon the dark defects of human nature and our best tool in the struggle for humanity.

From the Christian activists who fought to stop the genocide of Indians in South America and their ethnic cleansing in North America, to the abolition of African slavery on both sides of the Atlantic, and on the modern human rights activists from Martin Luther King Jr. to the rock star Bono–In Defense of Faith rebuts the fashionable arguments against religion and presents the strong and lasting record of the Judeo-Christian idea. History has not been as kind to the atheist model: every time it is put to the test, we have reverted to the most base, violent instincts of our selfish genes.