Foreword
Shortly after Sam Harris published his first poison pen letter against religion, The End of Faith, I invited him to debate a Christian on my television show. He came into the studio with a swagger, full of the same supreme confidence with which he ridiculed Christianity and other faiths in his book. But during the taping, Christian attorney Hugh Hewitt, piped in via satellite, skewered Harris’s inflammatory rhetoric, exposing the book’s inconsistencies, recycled arguments, and lapses in logic.
When Harris departed the studio, he looked ashen. His overheated attacks against Christianity might have brought applause in his inbred world of atheism, but I don’t think he had ever tried to test them against a well-informed and articulate defender of the Christian faith.
Nevertheless, that didn’t stop Harris. He went on to publish a second diatribe against religion, Letter to a Christian Nation, which again found a ready audience among those who lacked the training to see through its flimsy facade. Together with a wave of other books promoting militant atheism, authored by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and others, these books by Harris have confused spiritual seekers and even rocked the faith of some Christians.
The time has come for someone to slay this dragon of disbelief—and I can think of no better person to wield the sword than my friend Ravi Zacharias.
Ravi comes to the task with unique credentials. Himself a former atheist, Ravi personally knows the bankruptcy of living as if there is no God, and thus he is impervious to the false allure of atheism being promoted by this new breed of spiritual iconoclasts.
As an insightful and accomplished philosopher, Ravi is able to systematically dismantle the feeble case for skepticism built by Harris. And as an astute theologian, he is equipped to dispel the falsehoods and misinterpretations of Scripture that fuel Harris’s disdain for Christianity.
With relentless logic, an impressive grasp of the relevant literature, a deep understanding of world religions, and an unerring sense of grace and conviction, Ravi manages to unveil the embarrassing im-potency of Harris’s arguments. As Ravi concludes, the emperor of atheism has no clothes — and none of Harris’s frantic efforts can succeed in covering him up.
Unlike Harris, Ravi is willing to take the claims of atheism to their logical conclusions. In fact, Ravi’s own despair from atheism once brought him to the brink of personal destruction. Thus he is able to write not merely as a dispassionate observer, but rather as an impassioned champion of the spiritual truth that rescued him from a life of hopelessness and purposelessness.
I also spent much of my early life as a spiritual skeptic. During that time, I tried to be honest about the implications of an atheistic world. I didn’t pretend that my atheism would lead to a new era of enlightenment and altruism. I didn’t claim that a world without faith in God would somehow be a kinder and gentler place.
Instead, I knew that my atheism was drawing me down a path of narcissism, hedonism, and despondency. Yet I would rather have gone down that ultimately self-destructive road than to manufacture a belief in a phony god who doesn’t exist. My attitude was that if atheism represented the best description of reality, then so be it. It didn’t give me much to live for or look forward to, but truth is what it is.
In the end, though, I was prompted by my agnostic wife’s conversion to Christianity to thoroughly investigate where the evidence of science and history really point. I was utterly stunned by the avalanche of evidence that undergirds Christianity. In my view, the most rational response was to put my trust in Christ. As someone trained in journalism and law, I had no choice but to respond to the facts.
The result has been a series of positive changes in my character, values, morality, priorities, and relationships. Because of my faith in Christ, anyone who knows me would say that I’m a better husband, father, citizen, and person.
Ravi is thoroughly conversant with the evidence for Christianity. In this book, he doesn’t just refute Harris, but he also builds an affirmative case for the existence of God. Despite the protestations of Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, and their ilk, this is where truth resides. There are no answers in atheism.
If you’ve read any of Harris’s attacks on faith, then I urge you to consider Ravi’s words with an open mind. Says Proverbs 18:17 (NLT): “The first to speak in court sounds right—until the cross-examination begins.” In other words, often when we hear one side of a case presented, the evidence sounds persuasive. But then we hear the other side of the story, and suddenly we see the initial case crumble in the light of new facts and arguments. I suspect that’s what you’ll experience as you read this book.
So read on, and when you’re done, pass along this book to a friend who also has found his or her faith undermined by Harris and his spiritually cynical cronies.
Lee Strobel, author,
The Case for Christ,
The Case for Faith,
The Case for a Creator, and The Case for the Real Jesus