Eric Metaxas is an author, radio host, and Yale University graduate. This book attempts to demonstrate the absurdity of Atheism based on increasing scientific evidence for fine-tuning, and the complexity of life. It also aims to establish the historicity of the Bible, by examining archaeological evidence. Finally, it offers a general critique of Atheism.
This is a very well-written, and thoughtful book. It's also quite long, so without further ado...
Click to Expand Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - In the Beginning Was the Big Bang, begins with a short history on the Big Bang theory, beginning with Einstein publishing a paper in 1915 AD, whose equations indicated that the universe was expanding. These equations were confirmed by the observations of Arthur Eddington, who proved that light is affected by gravity during a solar eclipse in 1919 AD. A Russian physicist named Alexander Friedmann further demonstrated that the universe was expanding, based on Einstein's physics, in 1922 AD, and this was yet further proven in 1927 AD by the Belgian Georges Lemaître. Then Edwin Hubble, who had first observed the universe expanding as early as 1924 AD, published his observational findings in 1929 AD, which confirmed what physics had already predicated.
Chapter 2 - Where Science Cannot Go: The Big Bang and Other Singularities, begins by noting that at first, the Big Bang theory was met with opposition, because it indicated that the universe had a beginning, which removed the Naturalist's crutch of appealing to infinite time to explain our existence.
This chapter then details how black holes are created from massive stars, which, after reaching the end of their lifespan, compress under the force of their own gravity. The gravitational pull is so strong for the largest stars, that even light itself cannot escape, and consequently, a black hole is observed. These eventually collapse into singularities, in which the laws of physics do not necessarily apply, due to the intensity of the gravitational force. This theory, which was well-known by the 1960's AD, gave credence to the Big Bang, which was also thought to be the result of a singularity, containing the entire universe.
Next, this chapter covers how physicist Bob Dickie predicted, based on the huge amount of heat present in the early universe just after the Big Bang, that there would still be evidence of that heat, dispersed throughout the universe. This background radiation was discovered in 1964 AD, by two radio antenna operators at Bell Labs. Metaxas notes that this discovery was popularly seen as the death-knell for the Steady State model, which had proposed an eternal universe.
Chapter 3 - The Fine-Tuned Planet, discusses conditions which had to be precisely as they are in order for life to be possible on earth. Metaxas gives many examples.
For instance, the size of earth:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 3
If Earth were any smaller, our magnetic field would be weaker, and what we call the "solar wind" would quickly strip our atmosphere down to almost nothing, so that we would end up like Mars, which is of course a lifeless world.
But if Earth were any larger, we would have other life-killing problems. In their book The Privileged Planet, authors Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards explain that a larger Earth would have more powerful gravity, so that no water or methane or carbon dioxide could escape our atmosphere, which would be so thick we couldn't breathe. Our air would be more "viscous." According to Gonzalez and Richards: "Earth may be almost as big as a terrestrial planet can get."
Earth's distance from the sun:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 3
If we were even slightly closer to the sun, most of our water would have evaporated, and life couldn't exist. By the same token, if we were slightly farther away, all water would have frozen, also making life untenable.
The asteroid interference effects of Jupiter and Saturn:
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But whoever would have dreamt that the presence in our solar system of the so-called "gas giants," Jupiter and Saturn, was just as crucial? After all, why should these colossally large and very distant planets have any bearing on whether life here could exist? And yet we now know that is the case, and it's one more thing we didn't know back when Carl Sagan was making his overconfident predictions. It turns out that Jupiter and Saturn - like planetary linebackers - run interference for us. In other words, if they weren't where they are, our planet would endlessly be pelted with meteorites and asteroids. Perhaps a thousand times as many would make it to our surface.
The size of the moon relative to earth:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 3
The size of our moon was outrageously large when compared to other moons in our solar system. But anything at all smaller would not have been sufficient to stabilize the wobble of our axis, as it has done ever since and is doing now. But science tells us that the moon's stabilization of our axis is another unavoidable prerequisite for an environment where life could exist. For example, it enables us to have just the right seasonal variation, with seasons mild enough that the temperature does not fluctuate wildly, which would make life impossible.
Finally, the position of our solar system within our galaxy:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 3
Our solar system is located on the inner edge of the Orion Arm of our galaxy, about twenty-six thousand light-years from the center. Science now understands that this is crucial to life on Earth in several ways. If we were closer to the galaxy's center, the radiation hitting us would be far greater, because there are many more stars in the galaxy's center than out here on the spiral arms where we exist. So at the center there are more "active galactic nucleus outbursts" (AGNs), as well as more supernovae and more gamma ray bursts. That would make life here impossible. We would also be far more likely to be hit by comets, which are more numerous.
But if we were farther out from the center, there would be other problems. Stars farther out are orbited by planets significantly smaller than Earth, so as we have said, that would mean no atmosphere capable of supporting life. Neither would they be able to sustain plate tectonics, which is another element absolutely crucial to life as we know it that we will touch on in Chapter Five.
Chapter 4 - The Fine-Tuned Universe, details how "the universe as a whole bears evidence of fine-tuning that makes the fine-tuning of Earth seem small in comparison". Metaxas begins by quoting Stephen Hawking's 1988 book A Brief History of Time:
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If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it reached its present size.
Then, he gives more examples of the fine-tuning exhibited by the universe. Quoting Hugh Ross on the mass of the universe:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 4
At certain early epochs in cosmic history, [the universe's] mass density must have been as finely tuned as one part in 10 to the 60th power to allow for the possible existence of physical life at any time or place with the entirety of the universe. This degree of fine-tuning is so great that it's as if right after the universe beginning someone could have destroyed the possibility of life within it by subtracting a single dime's mass from the whole of the observable universe or adding a single dime's mass to it.
The strong nuclear force:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 4
If the force magically keeping protons and neutrons together were just 2 percent weaker than it is, it wouldn't be strong enough to hold the protons and neutrons together at all, and they would drift apart, giving us an entire universe consisting only of hydrogen - whose nucleus has only one proton and no neutrons. A universe consisting only of hydrogen would not allow for life to exist. But in case that's not impressive enough, we should say if that same strong nuclear force were just 0.3 percent stronger than it is, it would also be disastrous. It would cause protons and neutrons to attract each other too much, so that they would pile up and create only large nuclei, such as are found in heavier elements. So there would be no hydrogen at all, and any universe without hydrogen is just as useless as a universe with only hydrogen. No life could exist.
The electromagnetic force, as well as the ratio between it and the strong nuclear force, and gravity:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 4
It is the electromagnetic force that keeps the electrons in orbit around their nuclei. So science tells us that if this force were slightly weaker, electrons would leave their orbits too easily. But if it were slightly stronger, they would never budge from their original orbits....
But more impressive by far than the calibration of each of the four forces is the perfect calibration of the ratios between them. For example, Paul Davies has calculated that if the ratio between the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force were different by one part in ten to the sixteenth power, life could not exist....
We also need small stars, like our sun, which is able to burn steadily for billions of years, and we need stars smaller than our sun, too. But for such a variety of stars to exist depends on the ratio between the gravitational force and the electromagnetic force. As you may have guessed, this just happens to be perfectly fine-tuned. The ratio between them must be exact, down to one part in ten to the fortieth power.
And most astoundingly, the cosmological constant:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 4
The American Nobel Prize–winning physicist Steven Weinberg is an atheist with a particular disdain for religion. Before he was able to accept the Big Bang, he admitted that the Steady State theory was "philosophically the most attractive theory because it least resembles the account given in Genesis." But Weinberg nonetheless admits that life "as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values," as we have been saying. But nothing we have mentioned can compare to the number Weinberg has determined to be the most fine-tuned constant yet discovered. In talking about the energy density of the universe - what is often referred to as the "cosmological constant" - he gives us the most extravagantly grotesque number of them all, in the most confounding example of fine-tuning. Weinberg says that if the value of this cosmological constant were different by just one part in 10 to the 120th power, life could not exist.
Metaxas also notes that after a point, these numbers become meaningless, as our minds simply fail to grasp the scale that they represent:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 4
If we said the ratio couldn't be different by one in a million - ten to the sixth power - anyone would understand that this ratio was astronomically fine-tuned. A million or billion are numbers we can begin to understand, or at least fool ourselves into thinking we can understand. But one followed by forty zeroes?
Chapter 5 - More Planetary Fine-Tuning: Water and Sunlight, covers the properties of water and sunlight, which were vital to life on earth. Metaxas discusses many remarkable properties of water, for instance, that unlike nearly everything else in nature, water gets 9% less dense when it freezes, which allows it to float. However, it actually does get more dense when cooling, until it gets to 39 degrees, whereupon it reverses, and begins getting less dense. Without this property, life on earth could not exist:
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For example, if ice did not float, lakes and other bodies of water would freeze from the bottom up, completely destroying their ecosystems - or never developing them in the first place. But because ice floats, it forms on the surfaces of lakes and ponds and rivers and arctic oceans. If it froze from the bottom up it would cause a runaway freezing of all the water above it. And because it floats on the top, it even creates an insulation barrier for the water beneath it, protecting it from the cold above the ice, and allowing the life beneath to survive.
Metaxas then details the precise convergence of the properties of sunlight and seawater, which allowed early organisms called cyanobacteria to do photosynthesis. This resulted in our atmosphere becoming more oxygenated as the cyanobacteria consumed carbon dioxide, and output oxygen, constructing our ozone layer.
Chapter 6 - How Did Life Originate? or "You Can't Get Here from There", deals with the topics of Abiogenesis, and Evolution from a single-celled lifeform into all forms of life. Metaxas covers the Miller-Urey experiment (1952 AD), details how far short it came of producing life from nonlife, and also that since that time, origin of life research has demonstrated how much further we are from ever creating life from nonlife. Metaxas then introduces James Tour, a chemist and nanoscientist who is involved in origin of life debates. Tour notes two issues which have made Abiogenesis seem less likely since Miller-Urey, which will be covered in the succeeding chapter - the increasing understanding of the complexity of the cell, and the awareness that deep time is actually a problem for Abiogenesis, rather than a necessary aid.
Chapter 7 - Life Is Far More Complex Than We Thought, covers the extreme complexity of cellular life - even the very simplest of cellular life:
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In A Meaningful World, Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt say that a cell of the most minimal function "would contain at least 250 genes and their corresponding proteins. The odds of a primordial soup randomly burping up a concoction even half its length are vastly lower than one chance in 10 to the 150th power.
These numbers are so outrageous that - again - they can seem comedic. We have to be able to laugh, because nothing else will really suffice in facing the hopelessness of scaling a sheer cliff reaching to what amounts to infinity. But many scientists even now remain unwilling to concede the reality of the situation. They seem philosophically unable to accept the idea that life didn't create itself out of nothing, despite the mountainous evidence.
Metaxas quotes Stephen Meyer to the same effect:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 7
Meyer calculates the odds of a single functional protein - or a single functional gene - coming into existence via random processes based "upon recent experiments in molecular biology establishing the extreme rarity of functional proteins in relation to the total number of possible arrangements of amino acids corresponding to a protein of a given length." And what did he find? Essentially that the odds of this ever having occurred are so astronomically low we can once and for all be certain that it never happened. To put it in his own words, "the probability of producing even a single functional protein of modest length (150 amino acids) by chance alone in a prebiotic environment stands at no better than a ‘vanishingly small' [one] chance in ten to the 164th power." That is, of course, one chance in one followed by 164 zeroes. In other words: it didn't happen.
Of course Meyer was only calculating what it would take for one single functioning protein to come into being. But the simplest living cell contains hundreds of specialized proteins, all performing their own tasks.
James Tour, also, is quoted detailing how origin of life experiments have not created the molecules required to produce life from nonlife in prebiotic conditions, but also that even if the necessary molecules were all present, they would still need to be meticulously arranged:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 7
First of all, we don't know how to build... the four classes of molecules that are needed for [life. And even] if we had those four classes of molecules, we don't know how to assemble them even into the simplest of bacterium. We don't know how to do that.... Anyone who would say something contrary does not know what they are talking about. Show me the demonstration. Nobody has ever done it and it's not because of a lack of effort; it's not because of a lack of will. First of all they haven't been able to get the molecules to do this and if they could make the molecules - even if we were to give them the molecules - they wouldn't have the information. There would be no inherent information in the DNA. But even if we gave them the DNA in the structure that they wanted, they wouldn't know how to put all the components together because of the sophistication within a cell. The interactomes - meaning the interacting connectivity between the molecules, the Van der Waals interactions - all of these have to be in the right place and in the right order for a cell to function. We don't even know how to define life, let alone know how to spark it to begin.
Finally, James Tour is again quoted at length describing how adding more time does not solve Abiogenesis's problems, but rather adds more difficulties:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 7
Some people argue that there's a chance these things could happen in hundreds of millions of years, but Tour explains that time can be the enemy when it comes to organic synthesis. Many of the chemicals needed are kinetic products, meaning they are not thermodynamically stable. For example, carbohydrates - the main class of compounds - are the units that hook together DNA. These are the units that have identifying aspects on cell structure; these are the units that the cell is going to need for the energy of life. But once they form they begin to decompose. Tour says "unless somebody is there... to fish them out, to stop the process, and put them in a bottle under inert conditions in a freezer," they go away as quickly as they came into being.
Tour explains there are many other similar problems. For example, if random processes somehow succeeded in miraculously creating a carbohydrate or another necessary compound, the random processes don't know how to do it again. They have no capacity to "learn." If they happen to hit it just right by accident, they have no ability to say, "Let's try that again!" Tour says:
Say it took you four hundred million years to get to a certain point on a synthesis, [but] now you have to go back and make more. But how do you go back and make more? Nature never kept a laboratory notebook.... So even if it could make more, it doesn't know how to, so it's got to start all over again. But it doesn't know how to. [It] doesn't know why to start over again because it doesn't know what it's going toward.
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 7
Time is not going to solve the problem. You let these chemicals that have been made... sit around, even for months, and you can [see that] - even in the origin of life researchers themselves, when they've let these go for weeks - they show the degradation of these in a period of weeks. Weeks is the twinkling of an eye when it comes to prebiotic timescales.
So the notion that this sort of thing might have happened out in the wild of the oceans billions of years ago becomes even more ridiculous. He goes on:
The chemicals decompose.... The ammonia environment and cell itself is quite basic. You're going to have extended Aldol reactions coming on. So to think that the molecules could be made and sit there waiting for other molecules to come in, it doesn't happen. Organic chemistry doesn't work that way. Any student that is lazy enough to set up reactions and likes to go home for the weekend without working them up pays the price for that. With a depressed yield, generally.... As soon as the reactions are done or as soon as what you want is the optimized yield, you have to stop that reaction and get it away from the starting materials or else what happens is it goes on to polymerize product. Especially when you're making kinetic products, which is not the thermodynamically most stable product, which is exactly what you get in many of the chemicals that are needed for life. So time is actually the enemy.
This entire chapter was excellent. I wish I could quote the entirety of it here.
Chapter 8 - More on Origins of Life: Now What?, mostly discusses the Atheist attempts to justify their disbelief in spite of overwhelming evidence. It also touches on the dishonesty of attempts to smuggle the term "evolution" into discussions on Abiogenesis:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 8
In the strange and inaccurate use of this word in these definitions, the term "evolution" has moved beyond the idea of living creatures changing over time to become an entire paradigm, so that like a miasma it flowed in every direction and settled over everything, as though unconstrained by the laws of science. Suddenly everything that changed over time could be spoken of us as having "evolved," even though this is obviously not true....
But because of scientific progress we know that nitrogen and hydrogen and silver and ammonia do not reproduce. Neither do amino acids or carbohydrates. Nor do any of these things eat or excrete or metabolize in any way. Only life does that. So how can non-life be said to "evolve"? It cannot. Unless one is being unintentionally sloppy in the service of a philosophical paradigm one thinks more important than actual science.
Chapter 9 - The Evidence of Archaeology, after a brief introduction to the field of archaeology, chronicles the discovery of the Hittites - a major civilization mentioned over 40 times in the Bible (2 Kings 7:5-7, etc.), which was lost to history until the 19th century:
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So we know that the Hittites existed, and in such height and breadth as the greatest of any civilizations. But the Bible alone held their name aloft through the darkness of three millennia, until at long last the new fields of archaeology and philology could catch up with it. Those who clung to the Bible as a source of inerrant truth in all matters - whether geographical or historical or other - had in the story of the Hittites been vindicated once more.
Chapter 10 - The Black Obelisk That Became a Golden Spike, begins by recounting the discovery in 1846 AD of an obelisk from the 9th century BC, buried in Iraq. Five years later, in 1851 AD, it was identified to contain a reference the Old Testament King Jehu.
Next, Metaxas covers the Moabite Stone, also known as the Mesha Stele, which was discovered in 1868 AD, and dates to the 9th century BC. It was written by the Mesha mentioned in 2 Kings 3:4. It also mentions King Omri - "Omri was king of Israel", and directly mentions the name of God, Yahweh.
Lastly, the Merneptah Stele, which was discovered in 1896 AD, and dated to 1200 BC, is covered. It contains a reference to the Canaanites ("Canaan is despoiled") - who had been lost to non-Biblical history up to that point. Its inscription also said "Israel is wasted, its seed is naught".
Chapter 11 - More Biblical Archaeology: Three Misbehaving Boys Who Changed History, covers three Biblically-relevant archaeological discoveries which happened to be found by young boys. First discussed are the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947 AD, located in jars placed in caves near the Dead Sea. There were nearly 1,000 scrolls, many of which were Hebrew Scriptures - 37 of the 39 books of the Old Testament were represented. Many of the scrolls dated from during and before the time of Christ, and verified that our Old Testament text was faithfully preserved.
Then, the discovery of Hezekiah's tunnel - mentioned in 2 Kings 20:20 and 2 Chronicles 32:2-4 - is discussed, which was evidenced by an inscription in Paleo-Hebrew, discovered by a young boy in 1880 AD.
Lastly, the Silver Ketef Hinnom Scrolls, discovered in 1979 AD, was a trove of metal items, some of which bore inscriptions, dating from the 6th century BC. One silver scroll contained Numbers 6:24-26, and it is the oldest witness to the Biblical text found thus far.
Chapter 12 - More Archaeology: The New Testament Manuscripts, begins by noting that three non-Christians, Josephus (37-100 AD), Tacitus (56-120 AD), and Suetonius (69-122 AD), are extremely early witnesses to Christianity's existence. Then, Metaxas makes a good case for the reliability of the New Testament text.
For example, Quoting J.P. Moreland:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 12
Approximately 5,000 Greek manuscripts, containing all or part of the New Testament, exist. There are 8,000 manuscript copies of the Vulgate (a Latin translation of the Bible done by Jerome from 382–405 AD) and more than 350 copies of Syriac (Christian Aramaic) versions of the New Testament (these originated from 150–250 AD; most of the copies are from the 400s AD). Besides this, virtually the entire New Testament could be reproduced from citations contained in the works of the early church fathers. There are some thirty-two thousand citations in the writings of the Fathers prior to the Council of Nicea (325 AD)....
Many of the manuscripts are early-for example, the John Rylands manuscript (about 120 AD; it was found in Egypt and contains a few verses from the Gospel of John), the Chester Beatty Papyri (200 AD; it contains major portions of the New Testament), Codex Sinaiticus (350 AD; it contains virtually all of the New Testament), and Codex Vaticanus (325–50 AD; it contains almost the entire Bible).
Chapter 13 - More New Testament Archaeology, covers a few more Biblically-relevant archaeological finds:
Chapter 14 - Jerusalem in Jesus's Day, begins with a brief history of the Jews up to the time of Christ, beginning with Abraham. It then covers Herod's extensive renovations to the Second Temple, and beautification of Jerusalem. It also recounts the discovery of the Pool of Siloam in 2004 AD, which was mentioned in the Gospel of John (John 9:7-11). This chapter concludes with the destruction of the Temple by Titus in September of 70 AD.
Chapter 15 - Two Amazing New Testament Discoveries, covers the alleged discoveries of Peter's house in Capernaum, and the place of Jesus's trial before Pilate. I am personally unconvinced of the identification of Peter's house, but the section on Jesus's trial before Pilate was good.
Chapter 16 - The Nazareth Home of Jesus, covers the alleged discovery of Jesus's actual childhood home in Nazareth. I didn't find this chapter very compelling, because I don't think the case is strong enough for the location's authenticity.
Chapter 17 - Ur of the Chaldees Discovered: The Surprising Resilience of the Ancient Past, covers the discovery of the ancient city of Ur, which was where Abraham's family was from (Genesis 11:28-31, 15:7). Metaxas then covers the discovery of Hammurabi's Code, which had some possible Biblical parallels. Lastly, this chapter covers the discovery of King Jehoiakim's palace.
Chapter 18 - The Discovery of Biblical Sodom, covers the discovery of the city of Sodom in the 21st century - relatively recently.
Chapter 19 - The Four Horsemen, is about the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism - Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Metaxas critiques the illogical, dogmatic vitriol of the New Atheists, focusing on Christopher Hitchens particularly.
Chapter 20 - Is Atheism Evil?, contends with the New Atheist's characterization of religion as evil, turning the focus to the inexpressibly more manifest evils of Atheism, especially in light of the disasters of the 20th century's Atheistic regimes. For instance, Metaxas quotes David Berlinski, who writes:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 20
Somewhere in Eastern Europe, an SS officer watched languidly, his machine gun cradled, as an elderly and bearded Hasidic Jew laboriously dug what he knew to be his grave. Standing up straight, he addressed his executioner. "God is watching what you are doing," he said. And then he was shot dead.
What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe, and what Mao did not believe, and what the SS did not believe, and what the Gestapo did not believe... and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, Intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Blackshirts, Gauletiers, and a thousand party hacks did not believe was that God was watching what they were doing.
And as far as we can tell, very few of those carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that God was watching what they were doing either. That is, after all, the meaning of a secular society.
Metaxas further presses the issue of the practical outcomes of Atheism in the very recent past:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 20
So however such apologists for atheist murders might hope to deflect us, we must press on. The murder's the thing. It is so well documented as to be starkly beyond dispute. There is simply no way to escape this indictment other than to ignore it by shouting anything else as loudly as possible. But if we are interested not merely in facts but in truth, we cannot be distracted. We cannot ignore it. Because these are telling facts, telling of an inhumanity beyond imagining, telling of the sky-scraping evil of a world without God.
Of course numbers like 150 million people are so huge and so abstract that they can be numbing. So let's be more specific. In the year 1937 alone, the dedicatedly atheistic Soviets murdered 106,300 clergymen. They hoped this would help in eradicating the evil of Christian religion. If you ever have been in a stadium capable of holding this many persons you will have some idea of what the most evil regime in the history of the world is capable, and in the space of a single calendar year. And of course this was only the number of clergymen whom the Soviets murdered in that year. It is a level of wickedness that must take the breath of any sensitive human being away but is of course merely a fraction of the far wider evil done in the name of eradicating "religion" by violent means. The Soviets - in the course of their adoption of what they called "scientific atheism" - murdered between twelve and twenty million human beings.
Chapter 21 - Atheists Who Found God: Sartre, Flew, and Camus, Metaxas wonderfully tells about the conversions of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Antony Flew. I especially liked his comment on deathbed conversions, in his discussion on Jean-Paul Sartre:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 21
This is of course one of the things about so-called deathbed conversions. As much as they are often discounted as fearful and desperate leapings toward some chimera, they are often the opposite. Dr. Samuel Johnson famously said: "When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." The conversion of someone close to death is often evidence that they at last had the ability to think clearly, with none of the distractions of life, such as having to face friends who disagree with you or having to give up some of the things you fear turning to God might mean giving up.
Chapter 22 - Problems with Atheism: Faith and Science Are BFFs, is an excellent treatise on the compatibility of faith and reason, and how faith is not the abandonment of reason, as it is so commonly misconstrued by Materialists. This chapter is excellent.
Chapter 23 - The Boundaries of Science: More Than Meets the Eye, discusses the limits of observational science, and Materialism's inadequacy for a truly comprehensive understanding of reality.
Chapter 24 - The Impossible Bleakness of Materialism, points of the hypocrisy of the staunch celebrity Atheists - particularly Richard Dawkins - praising immaterial things like artistic beauty, literary excellence, and engineering brilliance, given their materialistic worldview. For example:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 24
Dawkins and Hitchens have been so wildly opposed to anything touching on God or the eternal - and so brutally dogmatic in their pronouncements that the material world is all there is - that to find them praising art or artists is strange and almost reckless, like the thief who almost wishes to be caught and leaves more clues than he should.
I also enjoyed Metaxas's Presuppositionalist comment on Richard Dawkins, who noted Christopher Wren's architectural brilliance:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 24
And surely he must know that many in England despise St. Paul's and much else that Christopher Wren created precisely because Wren did what he did to glorify the God in whom Dawkins pretends not to believe and whose devotees he curses with such florid expressions of contempt.
Chapter 25 - The Founding Myth of Atheism: Galileo, Copernicus, and the Church, covers the cases of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543 AD) and Galileo Galilei(1564-1642 AD), which are often touted as prime examples of faith repressing science. Both men advocated for a heliocentric model, and both of them were devout Christians. Metaxas makes the case that most of the resistance to Galileo in particular stemmed from a nearly fanatical adherence to Aristotelian philosophy in Catholic Europe at that time, rather than anything related to the Biblical text.
Chapter 26 - Christianity Begat Science, is essentially a small essay with the thesis "It was the specifically religious thinking about the doctrine of Creation - "during the Catholic late Middle Ages and Protestant Reformation" - that changed everything, that set the stage for what we now call the Scientific Revolution".
Chapter 27 - Further Problems with Atheism, is another short essay on the way the an Atheistic worldview logically devalues life, and the incoherence of the actions of celebrity Atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens in light of the utter meaninglessness that their worldview ascribes to our experience.
Chapter 28 - Atheism Unhinged, is another general critique of Atheism, focusing again on Hitchens and Dawkins.
Chapter 29 - Great Scientists Who Were Devout Christians, after a brief mention of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630 AD), Robert Boyle (1627-1691 AD), Isaac Newton (1643-1727 AD), offers a profile on James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879 AD), who did pioneering work in electromagnetism and photography. Other standouts amongst the many scientists of faith listed by Metaxas are Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976 AD), who did pioneering work in quantum mechanics.
Chapter 30 - Conclusions: The Meaning of Meaning, concludes the book well. It stresses that we have an obligation to the truth, which can be known, and that fact gives us tremendous meaning:
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 30
Many things in each of our lives have been hints and clues that there really is a God, that what we think is not merely our own crazy idea but is in fact the truth. In this book we have shown that science in a way never dreamt possible has on several fronts pointed so vigorously and overwhelmingly to God that to look away from this evidence would be not merely tragic but a kind of betrayal. We cannot look at such things and then shrug, as if they require nothing of us. Truth is not so easy to come by, and when we do come upon it, we have a responsibility to it. Truth and goodness and love all require something of us.
Is Atheism Dead? - Chapter 30
So even today in the so-called free cultures of the West, where freedom of speech and religious liberty are enshrined in our laws, we know that it's not that simple, that there are cultural forces at play that still have the power to shut most of us up. Will you let them?
Because as it happens, you have power, too. You have the power to speak the truth or to be silent. But if you don't speak the truth when you are able, you yourself become complicit in the false paradigm. Will you participate in silencing the truth? And if you are quiet about what you know to be true, are you not perhaps worse than those who genuinely don't know it to be true?
This book was fantastic - especially Part I, which included a lot of scientific fine-tuning data. Each of the three parts come together to make a very compelling case against a Materialistic worldview, and for the trustworthiness of the Bible. Everything is well-written, and most of the points Metaxas makes are compelling.
Be aware that Metaxas writes from an Old Earth perspective, although most of his points stand totally independent of that viewpoint, and can be used just as well by Young Earth believers.