Part V: Christianity and Philosophy

15 - The World Beyond Our Senses: Kant and the Limits of Reason

Reason is not flawless. It is not the answer to every question. It can't tell us if our perception of reality is an accurate reflection of reality itself, because reason is an extension of our perception. This simple yet profound insight, first raised by the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, is taken up by D'Souza in chapter fifteen to argue for the limits of reason. "[T]here is one subject on which the atheist requires no evidence," he claims, and it is "the issue of whether human reason is the best - indeed the only - way to comprehend reality" (p. 168). Contrasting all of this with the theistic view of a supernatural reality that is inaccessible to human inquiry, D'Souza claims that he will probe for the truth on the "ground of empiricism and reason alone" (p. 169). Which view is right? Not surprisingly, D'Souza accuses atheists of dogmatically ignoring the limits of reason while he extols the religious believer for holding to a "modest and reasonable" position.

Do atheists really not recognize the limits of reason? Do we presume to have access to reality that is unfiltered by perception? I can't speak for Dawkins, Dennett, and the other atheists often criticized by D'Souza, but I can say that I have never met an atheist who denies the issue of subjective perception and its impact on reason. Science and reason are not taken to be absolute, but are rather seen as the most reliable methods for dealing with that subjective perception, in an attempt to minimize bias and try our best to get as close to reality as we can. It's possible that we may never get that close at all, but we currently have no other means for comprehending our world with the track records of science and reason. They at least allow us to form the most objective explanations from the human vantage point.

However, I can't agree with D'Souza when he claims that we have no basis for thinking our reason even "resembles" reality (p. 172). We have come to formulate ideas about the world that appear very consistent, some of which can even be used to make successful predictions relating to other ideas. Why should this be the case if our perception of reality doesn't even slightly resemble reality? It seems like such a conclusion is also rooted in the problem of perception: how can we claim reality is nothing like what we perceive unless we believe that we have some understanding of what reality is? This leads to a major and troubling omission from D'Souza's discussion of Kant.

From his realization of the limits of reason, Kant came to understand the fruitlessness of metaphysical illusions, as he called them. Reason is useful for contributing to our understanding of the world around us, because perception is precisely our understanding. It's good to recognize that our understanding may not always reflect what really exists, though, and part of this means that certain metaphysical claims are inappropriate to be reasoned for, since they are outside of our perception and experience. D'Souza's implication in chapter fifteen that Kant's argument on the limits of reason somehow vindicates religious belief in a supernatural reality beyond physical reality is a patently absurd distortion of Kant. A warning on the danger in equating perception with reality is NOT any kind of justification for postulating an imperceptible second level of reality populated by magical beings.

D'Souza fails to demonstrate his claim about atheism being an arrogant or dogmatic rejection of the limits of reason. While I don't doubt that there are some atheists who believe reason gives them unhindered access to an external reality, it is a fallacy to assume that all atheists fall under this view. D'Souza also fails to justify his assertion that theism is the more modest and reasonable position. If theism is the better view simply because it stresses the limits of human reason, then why isn't D'Souza a believer in other paranormal claims, like psychics, crystal healers, ghosts, fortune tellers, past life regression, and so on? Their advocates often stress the limits of reason.

Theism does not stop at the problem of perception, but proposes a very unreliable and inconsistent way of picking up where reason can't take us: faith. If we have faith, many say, we can experience the supernatural side of reality that is inaccessible to reason. This is a topic we will continue with in chapter seventeen, though for now it is enough to recognize that theism is not the more reasonable or modest view when it arrogantly claims for itself the capability of transcending the limits of reason by using faith.

16 - In the Belly of the Whale: Why Miracles are Possible

In chapter sixteen, D'Souza endeavors to show us that miracles are not impossible. This was curious to me at first, since I've found more arguments against the probability of miracles than against the possibility of them, but it all starts to make sense when we note that D'Souza pulls this 'refutation' out of his own misunderstanding of David Hume. Hume claims that a miracle is "a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined" [1]. The consequence of this, he says, is that "no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish." In other words, our experience of the laws of physics is no less of an argument than the experience of those who allegedly witness a miracle.

D'Souza interprets Hume as arguing positively against any possibility of miracles, but this is just not true. We can see in the statements quoted above that there is no absolute declaration of miracles being impossible. What Hume puts forward is more like Occam's Razor - it's a rule of thumb for judging the probability of an explanation by sorting out the wildly imaginative from the reasonable. A miracle claim has centuries of human experience working against it, Hume points out, and so it better have some darn good evidence to go with it if we're to suppose that the laws of physics were suddenly interrupted to allow decomposing matter to reconstitute itself into a living body, for example.

Our author makes an especially bold claim when he says that he will refute Hume's case against miracles by using Hume's own work (p. 181). We first find D'Souza making the foolhardy claim that Hume's verifiability principle is self-refuting. It isn't true by definition, nor can it be empirically verified itself, so therefore we can "commit his principle to the flames," as Dinesh puts it (p. 183). Unfortunately, the debate is not so simple, because D'Souza ignores the difference between theory and meta-theory. A theory is a unifying explanation of facts, and although theories are empirically verified to judge their worth, empirical verification as a method cannot be empirically verified itself. This is because the verifiability principle is a meta-theory that seeks to justify the theory of empiricism. Meta-theories do not need to be subject to empirical verification, because they demonstrate their reliability by how they function heuristically. Metaphysics is a meta-theory that tries to account for the observations of physics through questions about being and nature. Certainly D'Souza would object if we were to use his poor reasoning to dismiss all of metaphysics on the grounds that it is not empirically verified.

So does this mean that scientific laws could possibly be wrong? Well yes, but just as it would be an overreaction to never drive a car based on the sheer possibility of being killed in an accident, it is also an irrational overreaction to act like the possibility of scientific laws being wrong might bring science to a grinding hault, or might undermine scientific explanations that enjoy some of the best confirmation available. D'Souza is right to observe that scientific laws are not verifiable, but he neglects to mention that scientific facts are, and, as principles that relate scientific facts, scientific laws are still falsifiable. It's not as though we have no good reason for thinking scientific laws are likely true, and we definitely don't just accept them on faith.

It deserves to be shown exactly how little D'Souza understands science and reason (if it hasn't become clear already), while he yet feels knowledgeable enough to criticize them. To make his point on the unverifiable nature of scientific laws, he uses the discovery of black swans.

What do swans have to do with scientific laws? D'Souza seems to mistake longstanding conventional wisdom for "a scientifically inviolable truth," and he offers no sources or evidence for his claim that the Europeans took a metaphor like "white as a swan" to be a scientific law. The first European discovery of a black swan was made by Willem de Vlamingh in 1697, so it's not as if there was a substantial body of scientific literature propagating the idea that all swans are white. This poorly thought-out analogy just goes to show that D'Souza is truly grasping at straws to support some of his claims.

Another example of this comes from D'Souza's discussion of falsification. The discussion itself is actually pretty good, as Dinesh explains how scientific laws are not "laws of nature" (or laws of nature's god, I would add), but only human explanations of the world around us. If D'Souza had thought through this admission, he might have scrapped the entire chapter on the anthropic principle. If the parameters and laws of the universe are really just models formed from our observations, then there is no need to posit a divine law-maker that put them into place.

Miracles are improbable by definition, as D'Souza seems to agree (p. 188), and because of this, the refutation laid out in chapter sixteen hardly matters. It's possible that Xenu and his race of evil aliens are the reason for the many false religions in the world, but without some measurement of probability, what's the sense in believing it? I am perfectly willing to concede that miracles are a possibility. Even then, D'Souza is still left with the daunting task of justifying the probability of any given miracle.

17 - A Skeptic's Wager: Pascal and the Reasonableness of Faith

In chapter fifteen, D'Souza argued for the limits of reason, and in chapter seventeen he picks up the trail again in an attempt to justify religion's use of faith as a means for going beyond the limits of reason. I have to wonder why our author chose to put a chapter on miracles in between these two very related chapters. Perhaps he doesn't want you noticing the way that he chastises atheism for not respecting the limits of reason while he proceeds to claim that only religion has the proper way of getting past reason to the things of a 'higher' reality. The transition is quite a sloppy and questionable one, but with a chapter on miracles breaking the flow, maybe the readers will overlook that stuff anyway.

"[F]aith," D'Souza boldly states, "is the only way to discover truths that are beyond the domain of reason and experience" (p. 191). How does he know that faith actually gives us access to such truths? No explanation is given; in fact, there isn't any argument for the reliability of faith at all. That may be hard to believe, because it is so tremendous of an oversight for a chapter intent on showing that faith is a reasonable method for ascertaining truth, but D'Souza really gives us nothing. The closest he comes is in saying that the believer "hopes that revelation will expose truths otherwise hidden to reason" (p. 196), yet there is no attempted justification of that hope. Instead, D'Souza structures his case on the prevalence of faith in our decision making, coupled with arguments for the compatibility of reason and faith. Neither of these show that faith can actually impart truths to us, however. If faith is a delusional claim to truth, there is nothing reasonable about it.

First of all, let's look at how D'Souza defines faith. "Faith," he says, "is a statement of trust in what we do not know for sure. Faith says that even though I don't know something with certainty, I believe it to be true" (p. 195). This is too broad a definition. Because of the problem of perception, it's debatable if we can ever have absolute knowledge of anything, and so, according to D'Souza, it would seem that we take everything on faith. However, the real thing we ought to be considering is not if something can be known beyond any doubt, but with what degree of reliability it can be known. The more knowledge we have for a given subject, the more likely our belief about it is to be informed or justified. When we believe in something with little reason, that is just less-informed belief, and when we believe in something with a lot of reason, but not quite complete certainty, that is a highly informed belief.

D'Souza makes the mistake of conflating faith with trust and belief, but these terms are not synonymous, despite the fact that many of us also interchange them. Belief is a psychological state in which a person holds a particular statement to be true. Trust is the reliance of one party upon another. Although faith can, and often does, involve both belief and trust (i.e. faith in a religious belief, and faith as trust in a deity), it is not the same thing as these concepts. Faith is, like D'Souza claims, a means of attempting to uncover truth. Beliefs can be true or false, but belief itself is not a method proposed for finding the truth. Someone can believe their trust in another person comes from something true, but, again, trust is not itself a method proposed for finding the truth. If faith is a "way to discover truths," then it cannot be the mere trust or belief in something which is uncertain, because those are not methods for ascertaining truth. Faith is to believe or trust in something in spite of any reason or evidence to the contrary, and this is thought to be some way of arriving at the truth.

So what are we doing when we take the risk of dying in an accident by driving a car? Are we using faith, as D'Souza suggests? Actually, it is reason we are using. Our experience tells us that we've managed to survive in the past when we drive safely. We may not always consciously think this before each trip in the car, but it is part of what allows us to take the risk of driving. Unless there is good, probable reason for thinking that using a vehicle will be dangerous, we go ahead with it, and it is not faith that spurs us on. If we notice flat tires, bad weather, or we find that the car has been overheating lately, we will re-evaluate the risk of driving in light of that evidence. But if there is no substantial cause for us to fear for our safety, then we will reason that it's worth the very small risk of a fatal accident. Faith is not involved.

Based on Mark 9:17-24, our author tries to argue that there is room for doubt in faith. The passage gives the story of a father of a demon-possessed boy who pleads with Jesus to heal his child. Jesus tells the father that "Everything is possible for one who believes," to which the man responds, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" How is this meant to support the idea that skepticism is "natural" to Christianity, as D'Souza puts it (p. 195)? Clearly, the encouragement to believe is an encouragement to suppress doubt, not to persist in it or accept it. Ironically, while championing Christianity's alleged skepticism, D'Souza also blasts agnostics for 'refusing' to choose sides "when there is no option to abstain" from what is "a matter of life and death" (p. 198). Preach it, reverend! That's just the kind of conservative religious rhetoric we can expect from an unbiased and objective scholar like our friend Dinesh D'Souza.

Finally, we come to D'Souza's advocacy of Pascal's Wager, which he believes is an argument that demonstrates the reasonableness of religious belief. His conclusion has to be quoted to give the full effect of its absurdity.

It has already been pointed out many times before, by many different people, that Pascal's wager makes a major presumption about only the Christian god existing. What would if I have to lose if Zeus is the god that exists, or Odin, Osiris, Krishna, or some other deity? What if Allah exists and Christians might be damned to hell for rejecting Muhammad? If the Christian god exists and is the moral monster described in the bible, then couldn't I lose some integrity if I aligned myself with him just to gain entry to paradise? It's far from sure that Christians have nothing to lose and atheists have everything to lose, but D'Souza doesn't address a single sort of this criticism of the wager. It's also disturbing that our author seeks to impugn resilience in the face of doom by asking, "what would we think of a man who stands ready to face a horrible fate that he has a chance to avert?" (p. 198). Has D'Souza even read the story of Jesus? Socrates? Their willingness to accept preventable death is far from ridiculed in our Western society.

Another flaw in Pascal's wager is that it treats belief as a choice that can be made on a whim. If someone thinks Christianity is untrue, the wager will not persuade them of its truth, since it only endeavors to serve as a cost-benefits analysis of sorts. A cost-benefits analysis can't help anyone to truly believe, because we are not capable of believing what we consider false. Thus, all that Pascal's famous and beloved wager can potentially accomplish is instilling fear into people that may prime one for eventual conversion. Noting that Dawkins offers this objection to the wager, D'Souza tries to dismiss it (and fails miserably): "the real issue is whether he wants to believe and whether he is open to the call of faith" (p. 199). Sorry, Dinesh, but that is a separate issue that will not salvage the wager. If it can't possibly persuade one to believe, then it can't be a successful argument for reasonable belief.

Part VI: Christianity and Suffering

18 - Rethinking the Inquisition: The Exaggerated Crimes of Religion

With the same gusto he used to defend the church for its treatment of Galileo, in chapter eighteen D'Souza takes up the defense of religion for its role in the crusades, inquisition, and witch trials. His intent, he states, is to show that "the widely held view that religion is the primary source of the great killings and conflicts of history is simply wrong" (p. 204). First up: the crusades.

Do you think the Christian crusaders were a bunch of bloodthirsty zealous knights bent on raping and pillaging innocent Muslim lands? If you've received the slightest education in history, you probably don't think this. Muslims took Jerusalem from Christian hands, and crusaders were not always knights, but even average men who felt called to defend the 'holy' land. On these details, D'Souza is correct: "The Christians fought to defend themselves from foreign conquest, while the Muslims fought to continue conquering Christian lands" (p. 206). Does this mean religion was not responsible for the crusades?

Consider what the value of Jerusalem is to Christians and Muslims. For Christians, it is part of the region where Jesus was born, lived, preached, and died. For Muslims, it is where Muhammad was taken before ascending to heaven, and it was also the original direction of prayer before later being changed to the Kaaba. Jerusalem is a sacred site and holy land for both Christians and Muslims, and this was the principle reason why each side desired to possess it during the crusades. Religion was the motivating factor for Muslims to conquer Jerusalem and it was the motivating factor for Christians to recapture the city. Pope Urban II promised that all who fought in the first crusade would be immediately forgiven of their sins [2], something that, in addition to his many invocations of god and Christ, certainly communicates a religious imperative behind the fight for Jerusalem. D'Souza does not address this point about the crusades at all.

Concerning the Spanish Inquisition, D'Souza observes that there are exaggerations surrounding it, as elaborated by Henry Kamen in his book The Spanish Inquisition. Two of Kamen's revisions are provided: only Jewish converts to Christianity were punished, and the Inquisition trials were fairer than most secular trials of the time (p. 206-207). Regarding the first revision, D'Souza notes that the Jews were expelled from Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, which forced those who wanted to remain to convert to Christianity. But of course many of these converts were Christian in name only, continuing to practice their Jewish faith in secret. D'Souza also claims that it was other Jews who turned these new 'converts' over to the Inquisition, feeling that they had betrayed their Jewish heritage just to avoid relocation. Kamen also shows that Torquemada himself had "known Jewish ancestry," D'Souza tells us.

Quite frankly, I am apalled by the asinine reasoning used in this part of chapter eighteen to basically blame the Jews for the Spanish Inquisition. What in the world does Torquemada's Jewish ancestry have to do with religion's role in the Inquisition? Christian Spain had no problem with Jewish ancestry, as long as the individual had sincerely converted to Christianity, as Torquemada had more than likely done. What else could D'Souza's implication be, other than that Torquemada's ancestry played some role in his persecution of the 'secret Jews?' It seems as if D'Souza wants to lay the blame on his stereotype of the self-hating Jew, however the Inquisition was more than the persecution of Jews who had converted to Christianity. Protestants, Muslim converts, and those found guilty of blasphemy, witchcraft, bigamy, and sodomy were all suppressed by the Inquisition.

Once again, we have to ask what the basis was for the oppression, and when we do this, the only answer we can arrive at is religion. Why were the Jews expelled from Spain and why was Judaism viewed as an intolerable offense? Because the Jews were seen as a threat, "always attempt[ing] in various ways to seduce faithful Christians from our Holy Catholic Faith," as quoted by Kamen [3], D'Souza's own source. Oppression of other religious minorities was due to the same perception of a seductive threat. There is no denying that the Inquisition was carried out for religious reasons, and it doesn't matter if most of the conflict was between Jews or between Christians, nor does it matter how fair the trials were in contrast to secular trials. Religion provided the climate for the Spanish Inquisition, and difference of belief is no justifiable reason to hold a trial against someone in the first place.

Throughout the chapter, D'Souza reveals a callous disregard for human life.

D'Souza doesn't inform us of why we should remember that the Inquisition killed so many people over a few hundred years. Does the amount of time that elapsed somehow diminish the tragedy? Does fewer casualties mean less horror and suffering? These are not just my interpretations of D'Souza, because he goes right on to make this claim himself.

The fact that D'Souza wants to question Harris' statement is bad enough, but that he uses such a poorly thought out example makes it even worse. For starters, 5,000 casualties is still double the amount of deaths at Pearl Harbor, so the biblical nonsense of "eye for an eye" couldn't even justify D'Souza in this hypothetical case. Secondly, the bombing of Japan killed mostly civilians, as our author even notes, while the attack on Pearl Harbor was an attack on a military base. I say this not to excuse or trivialize the horror of Pearl Harbor, but merely to show that D'Souza's claim about a lower number of casualties "virtually eliminating" moral debate on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is both offensively stupid and stupidly offensive.

I can't imagine how D'Souza can believe that fewer deaths would dispel the horror of anything. Shortly after the September 11th attacks, some news outlets were reporting as many as 6,000 casualties [4]. Does the eventual discovery that the death toll was actually less than half of that number mitigate the horror and injustice of 9/11? According to D'Souza, it should, and yet you won't probably ever hear him admit such a thing. We find an event tragic for a lot of reasons, and the death toll does sometimes factor into our sense of horror, especially in cases of genocide, like the massive number of concentration camp deaths at Nazi Germany. But to say that a revelation of less deaths than initially reported mitigates the horror of the situation is controversial because the death toll is not the only factor in our reaction. To downplay the disturbing nature of September 11th would consequently downplay the immorality of terminating life, the injustice of terrorism, and more. Whether 6,000 or 60 people had died, the fact remains that innocent lives were extinguished for an unjust cause, and that is the real horror - maybe not to Dinesh D'Souza, but at least to those who are rational and caring individuals.

I suspect that the actual reason for why our author feels comfortable downplaying these tragedies in human history is precisely because they are part of history. The Inquisition, crusades, and witch trials are all far behind us now, and they have taken on an almost mythical character with the various stories that have circulated about them. Events lose their intrinsic meaning to an extent when they pass beyond the veil of collective human memory, and this is why we must never forget the principles involved in those events that made them matter in the first place. D'Souza is either unable or unwilling to appreciate the principles behind the crimes of religion that truly made them crimes, and so he presents a lop-sided apathetic appraisal of their horror and injustice. We catch a glimpse of this when he says that "for Christians the tragedy of violence in the name of religion is thankfully in the ancient past" (p. 210). Out of sight, out of mind.

But is it the case that Christian violence is long behind us? Attacks on homosexuals and abortion providers have been carried out by Christians in the name of their religion, and the KKK in America was founded on an explicitly Protestant Christian platform. These cases may involve fewer Christians and fewer deaths than the religious violence of the middle ages, but it does not make them any less tragic, nor does it magically resolve Christianity of responsibility. D'Souza's argument for exaggeration in the crimes of religion is irrelevant, because it does not in any way point to anything other than religion as the primary source of conflict. Saying that 'x wasn't really so bad' tells us nothing about whether or not y was responsible for x. D'Souza doesn't even try to attribute the crimes of religion to other causes, like social, ethnic, or cultural tensions, and so his stated intent of exonerating religion is a complete failure.

19 - A License to Kill: Atheism and the Mass Murders of History

Chapter nineteen begins with a quote from Dostoevsky which suggests that without god, "everything is permitted." Here D'Souza argues not only that atheism is responsible for the mass murders of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, but that, as Dostoevsky states, godlessness leads to an amoral outlook on life. The irony with the opening quote is that the apostle Paul declared that everything was permissible for him, while also noting that not everything is beneficial (1 Corinthians 6:12). You may notice that Paul doesn't repudiate or reject the notion, but he simply attaches a disclaimer to it. I can do whatever I want... but some things probably aren't such a good idea. This is not only honest, it actually shows some regard for using reason in matters of morality!

Our author, on the other hand, is no fan of reasoning our way to truth or moral values. D'Souza is a divine command theorist, which means that he wants rules laid out for him and he wants them to be enforced to the letter. If we don't recognize these rules, he believes, then we aren't moral, making us therefore capable of the most horrendous moral behavior. We will deal more with the absurdities and assumptions of divine command theory in the next chapter, where D'Souza addresses it, but it's worth pointing this out here to show that there is already a gross assumption made from the first few sentences of chapter nineteen. Being permitted in everything does not mean one will act on everything. As a self-professed small government conservative, D'Souza should be well aware of this. There are many things that we permit as a right or freedom and yet do not partake of ourselves. Paul puts the ethics of the believer on equal footing to the ethics of the atheist, as characterized by D'Souza, and so we can see that the thesis of chapter nineteen is off to a bad start already.

"Can anyone seriously deny that Communism was an atheist ideology," D'Souza asks (p. 215). Yes. In fact, anyone who has read the writings of Karl Marx can see that D'Souza has gotten things backwards. Marx wanted to free the working class from the oppression of the bourgeoisie, and one of the tools of oppression that he identified was religion, the "opium of the people." However, the real issue Marx was noting was that problems in religion are problems in society, not that religion itself is a disease to be exterminated, as D'Souza and many others carelessly imply. We can tell from the way that religion is discussed in Marx's writing that it was part of a larger concern - a political concern - and so rather than Communism being an atheist ideology, it is more accurate that atheism is only incidentally associated with Communism, because Marx interpreted religion as a symptom of social inequity. I think a better question for D'Souza might be: can anyone seriously deny that religion has been a major force for social conflict in human history?

Unfortunately, Dinesh goes beyond sources that are fair game for debate and plunges into the realm of pure fallacious speculation. "All Communist regimes have been strongly anti-religious," he notes, "suggesting that their atheism is intrinsic rather than incidental to their ideology" (p. 215). It appears that D'Souza was progressively losing brain cells as he wrote What's So Great About Christianity, because there's little other explanation for how he could write such a sentence and miss two major mistaken assumptions. First of all, anti-religious sentiments are not synonymous with atheism. There are anti-religious atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, but then there are other atheists who have more of a "live and let live" philosophy toward religion, such as Stephen Jay Gould, Bill Gates, and Dave Matthews (not to mention atheists who actually praise religion, like D'Souza's fellow conservative S.E. Cupp).

Secondly, correlation does not necessitate causation, so if D'Souza wants to argue Communism is intrinsically atheist, he has to demonstrate a clear line of causality, not just throw up a vague and unsourced claim about how all Communist regimes have been anti-religious. Like I've mentioned in other articles, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao were all men, but it's unfair to say that the male gender in general is responsible for the crimes of a few select men. No one questions that Stalin and Mao were atheists, but the more controversial thing here is to assume that their actions somehow stemmed from their atheism, rather than their own moral (or amoral) compasses, unrelated to their rejection of theism. D'Souza would have to make some kind of argument for this, yet he relies only on observation and carelessly draws a conclusion from correlation alone.

Finally, there is a major problem with a generalization based on observation, and D'Souza explained this fallacy himself in chapter sixteen when he talked about the presumption that only white swans exist. Europeans had only observed white swans, so they assumed that swans are intrinsically white; D'Souza has only observed Communist regimes of an anti-religious strain, and so he assumes that Communism is intrinsically atheist. However, it's even worse for our author, since he conflates opposition to religion with atheism, with no justification for it at all, as previously noted. D'Souza could, at best, argue that Communism appears intrinsically anti-religious, but as the 'swan fallacy' shows, such a conclusion is highly suspect. Would Dinesh be willing to recant his statement if an oppressive Christian Communist regime arose tomorrow?

Here we have yet another bold claim from D'Souza that has no accompanying sources, and, as usual, we are only given half of the story. The Nazi Party certainly opposed churches that denounced the ideologies of Nazism and fascism, but there were also churches that endorsed Hitler's regime, such as the German Christian Movement. As historian Doris L. Bergen reveals in her important book, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich, some churches did have support from the Nazi Party, and were not the marginal institutions they are often portrayed as by religious apologists. The simple fact that D'Souza misses here is that the oppression of a number of churches does not mean Nazism was secular, anti-religious, or atheistic. Indeed, the history of Christianity is filled with schisms and subsequent fits of violence that erupted over religious disagreements!

In attempting to rewrite historical evidence and claim that Adolf Hitler was an atheist, D'Souza relies on a text called Hitler's Table Talk (p. 218). The text includes several purported statements of the fuhrer, given in private, that show a less-than-favorable opinion of Christianity. Historian Richard Carrier has persuasively argued that many of the anti-Christian passages in the table talk are likely forgeries from one erroneously produced manuscript, which may be contrasted to better and more accurate sources [5]. "No one who quotes this text," he states plainly, "is quoting what Hitler actually said." Predictably, D'Souza tells us nothing about the debate over the authenticity of these passages in the table talk, even though Carrier and others were raising suspicions at least five years before the publication of What's So Great About Christianity. Even if there were no doubt of the authenticity of the passages, Hitler could have criticized certain dogmas and sects in Christianity while still ultimately holding his own faith in Christ, as many Christians have been known to do. D'Souza gives us no real argument for Hitler being an atheist.

After citing the questionable Hitler's Table Talk, D'Souza moves on to citing Richard Weikart's From Darwin to Hitler in order to conclude that "Without Darwinism, there might not have been Nazism" (p. 219). This suggestion is made on the grounds of loose connections and disjointed quotes strung together in a mish-mash of bad logic. Social Darwinism, survival of the fittest, favored races... ta-da: Nazism! Of course, it was Protestant theologian Martin Luther who sowed the seeds of anti-semitism in Germany long before Darwin was even born, but that's another correlation D'Souza will choose to ignore because it doesn't fit his predetermined vilification of atheism. From Darwin to Hitler is a supremely biased and unreliable source as well, funded by the creationist Discovery Institute, and overwhelmingly criticized by Weikart's fellow historians [6][7][8].

So far in defense of his argument for atheism's responsibility in the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, we've seen D'Souza offer us correlations that are by no means universal, appeals to sources that are by no means objective or indisputable, and hypothetical fever-dream scenarios conceived by the author himself to draw that line of causality from atheism to mass genocide. This pathetic 'evidence' is the best D'Souza can muster because atheism alone has no basis for such ideology. Atheism is the absence of theism, or the lack of belief in god(s). There is no logical progression from this to Nazism, Communism, amorality, or any of what Dinesh implies. That lack of belief doesn't mean an atheist is anti-religious, nor would being anti-religious mean that one supports violent opposition to religion. Recall what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:13 - "everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial." How might an atheist reason his or her way to valuing life and the diversity of human beings? It could be as simple a thing as accepting the idea that you should do to others as you want done to you (or do to others as they want done to them). No god or god-belief required.

Go to Part VII: Christianity and Morality.

1. Hume, D. (1748) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. p. 86-87.
2. Fulcher of Chartres. Medieval Sourcebook: Urban II. Retrieved Sept. 22, 2011.
3. Kamen, H. (1998) The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. p. 20. Yale University Press: London and New Haven.
4. (2001) Source: Hijacking suspects linked to Afghanistan. CNN.com. Retrieved Sept. 22, 2011.
5. Carrier, R. (2002) On the Trail of Bogus Quotes. Freethought Today, Vol. 19, No. 9. Retrieved Sept. 24, 2011.
6. Allen, A.T. (2006) "Book Review of From Darwin to Hitler." The Journal of Modern History. 255-257.
7. Gliboff, S. (2004) Darwin on Trial Again. H-German. Retrieved Sept. 24, 2011.
8. Zimmerman, A. (2005) Response to Richard Weikart. American Historical Review. Retrived Sept. 24, 2011.