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Reader dismisses Charles Johnson issue, recommends D’Souza
James R. writes:
I feel you’re wasting your time arguing against the Charles Johnsons of this world. It would be better if you turned VFR’s focus on to something more substantial. Dinesh D’Souza has just written a magnificent book—What’s So Great About Christianity. I recommend it to you and think it would be worthwhile for VFR’s readers to know about it and subsequently to discuss it.
D’Souza’s themes are grand indeed—Christianity and civilization, Christianity and science, belief and atheism—core concepts. Strong meat for VFR to chew on and digest.
D’Souza recently debated Christopher Hitchens on the issue of atheism and roundly trounced him. The basis for D’Souza’s address was this book. The debate can be seen here.
LA replies:
D’Souza reached the absolute nadir of his career (which has had other major low points—see this and this) just a few months ago with his shamelessly dishonest book in which he apologized for Islam, covered up the realities of Islamic jihad, and told us all to align ourselves with “traditionalist Muslims”—an alliance, he told us, that would require us to stop criticizing jihadism. So the man is not only a professional intellectual prostitute, devoid of intellectual conscience, he’s a traitor to the West. The idea that he’s now done something so deep and worthwhile in defense of the Christian West is hard to swallow. It would be like telling me that Britney Spears has become the lead singer at the Metropolitan Opera and that I must rush out and see her perform in Aida.
Here, in chronological sequence, are my posts on D’Souza’s Islam book from last January:
D’Souza’s latest twist
D’Souza dilates on our natural friendship with Muslims
Neocon D’Souza leaves AEI and (apparently) turns anti-Israel
D’Souza’s thesis in the raw
Why I agree with D’Souza
Is D’Souza’s book anti-Israel? Piatak and Wolfe disagree
How D’Souza came to his knowledge of Islam
D’Souza calls for the silencing of Islam critics
The sexually libertarian patriot versus the socially conservative appeaser—what a choice!
Spencer on D’Souza
Trifkovic vs. D’Souza
D’Souza’s brilliant career, cont.
Of course anything’s possible in this world, and maybe D’Souza’s book on Christianity is as good as you say. I’ll have to take a look at it and attend to this debate to see if there is something worthwhile there. But believe me, it’s a stretch.
Also, while I appreciate receiving recommendations on what I ought to be writing about, please do not tell me that something I consider important and have written extensively about is a “waste of time.” This is a disrespectful thing to say, and damages your credibility with me. One could literally say about any writing that it’s a waste of time. It’s on the same intellectual level as saying “Get a life”—a mindless way of dismissing any topic that the speaker doesn’t happen to care about.
In this case in particular, you are way off base in telling me that dealing with the Charles Johnson issue—an effort by one of the most popular conservative bloggers to demonize and marginalize leading Islam critics and immigration restrictionists—is a waste of time. Frankly, it makes me question your bona fides. On one hand you feel that criticizing Johnson, who is seeking to silence and marginalize Islam critics, is a waste of time; on the other hand you promote D’Souza, who says that we must drop all criticisms of Islam and ally ourselves with it. Am I wrong to detect a pattern here?
LA continues:
D’Souza’s book is extremely highly praised at Amazon. Here’s a comment:
MY SUMMARY AS READER: As a past Christian missionary, with seven Christianity-raised children and still a high-principles person who has remained morally true to one woman for over 50 years, I strongly relate to the author’s values and I strongly recommend this book, though I wish I could believe the truth-claims of Christianity to be currently even remotely as convincing as its relative-beneficiality and relative-utility features. I think that, overall, this is the most competent piece of Christian apologetic writing that I’ve seen in decades. This is as good as Christian defense gets, in my opinion.
Here’s another:
But DSouza spends far less space on the greatness of Christianity as he does on demolishing the aethistic creed articulated by the likes of writer Christopher Hitchens, biologist Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, physicist Victor Stengel, philosopher Daniel Dennet et al. The funny thing is that DSouza starts his polemic by showing that, contrary to the atheists belief that secularism and atheism is spreading and displacing theism to the waste heaps of history, theism is now the dominant world view of most of the world’s population, and is gaining strength and power. So why debate the defenders of a declining persuation? DSouza does not tell us why, but when you figure that DSouza makes his living by evangelising college kids in the world views of the conservative, pro-Christian Republican Party, it is easy to see why he’s so charged up by the atheists…. In this situation, DSouza is compelled to challenge the atheists in an attempt to stay in the game on behalf of the Republicans. He is, in a sense, merely doing his job, like any professional would.
Nevertheless, DSouza comes to his task of demolishing the atheists with solid scholarship and well developed argument. Many of his adversaries are no intellectual featherweights, even if they are no intellectual giants either, so the fact that DSouza carries the day is no mean feat.
Another:
This book is more than just a volume listing the achievements and positives of Christianity, as the title suggests. It is really a major head-on confrontation with the neo-atheists. The steady and strident attack on theism in general and Christianity in particular by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens and others is here powerfully and capably countered.
As such, this is really a book of Christian apologetics, defending the faith against the charges made against it by the new militant anti-theists. It covers a wide range of issues, such as philosophy of religion, history, culture, ethics and science.
Another:
D’Souza has written a theological masterpiece that stands among Christian apologetics with the nailing of Martin Luther’s Theses to the castle church door. All fair-minded atheists (which they all claim they are) are obliged to a man to study this work and come to grips with its claims. It will be an unhappy travail. For the rest of us—the fence sitters—at last we have a very capable defense of Christianity. It is so refreshing!
Eric E. writes:
The D’Souza book is absolutely brilliant! You can check out the contents—its layout—here.
I was pleasantly surprised at the extent of D’Souza’s knowledge. He applies so many diverse disciplines—theology, history, physics\Intelligent Design—to the subject of Christianity’s impact on and greatness for Western civilization.
I saw D’Souza on the Hannity-Colmes show the other day. Hitchens was supposed to be there as well but never showed up. I expect he was still licking his wounds after the debate with D’Souza.
The last few weeks I’ve been reading his book plus Anthony Flew’s “There Is A God.” Both are dramatic in their own ways. Flew especially since his seminal thesis “Theology and Falsification” provided so much theoretical support for the ideology and system of atheism. D’Souza provides the much needed background and context for the debate over atheism (he mentions Flew in his book).
LA replies:
Morally compromised men have done great things for Christianity in the past, it could happen again.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 14, 2007 03:18 PM | Send
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