Section 45 — What You Must Know Before You Speak

The Christian Statement

The disciple entering secular conversations needs preparation in three areas that most Christian formation programs do not adequately address.

1. The Philosophy of Science

Not the content of science — the philosophy of it. What are the limits of the scientific method? What questions can it address and which can it not? What is the relationship between scientific description and philosophical explanation? A disciple who cannot answer these questions will be unable to respond effectively to the most common secular objection: "science has made God unnecessary."

Recommended: John Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Lion, 2007). Read this before any conversation with a scientifically-minded secular person.

2. The Main Philosophical Arguments

The cosmological argument, the fine-tuning argument, the moral argument, and the argument from consciousness. The disciple does not need to be a professional philosopher. They need to know each argument well enough to explain it clearly and to respond to the most common objections. The appendices of this volume provide a quick-reference version of each.

3. The New Atheist Literature

Read Dawkins's The God Delusion. Read Hitchens's God Is Not Great. Not to be convinced by them but to know what they actually say rather than what you have been told they say. The disciple who has read the opposition earns immediate credibility with secular people who assume Christians haven't.

Section 46 — Reading the Secular Mind: Recommended Resources

For the Disciple Preparing for These Conversations

• Mere Christianity — C.S. Lewis. The foundational text. Read it at least twice.
• The Language of God — Francis Collins. The Human Genome Project director's account of how scientific inquiry led to faith.
• God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? — John Lennox. The most precise treatment of the science-faith relationship available.
• The Dawkins Delusion? — Alister McGrath. A former atheist biochemist responds to Dawkins with precision and charity.
• Mind and Cosmos — Thomas Nagel. An atheist philosopher's case that materialism cannot account for consciousness, cognition, or value.
• Reasonable Faith — William Lane Craig. The most comprehensive treatment of the philosophical arguments for God's existence.
• The Reason for God — Tim Keller. Written specifically for secular New Yorkers; some of the best contemporary apologetics available.
• Surprised by Joy — C.S. Lewis. His account of conversion from atheism. Essential for any conversation with a former atheist or current agnostic.
• A Secular Age — Charles Taylor. Scholarly but essential for understanding how the secular West arrived at its current position.