1. Christians are Anti-intellectual, Stupid, and Against Education. The first scientists were Christians. The first universities in the world and in America were Christian, the first public school system in the West was established in Pennsylvania by Puritans. Hospitals were invented by Christians as were light bulbs, flight, the political theory of individual rights, and the economic belief of rewarding a man for his work. Some of the greatest authors in the history of literature were Christian: Chaucer, Dante, Milton, Spenser, Shakespeare, Austen, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy among them. The scientist in charge of mapping the human genome, Francis S. Collins, is a devout Christian and a leader in today’s scientific community.²

2. Religion, Especially Christianity, is Responsible for Millions of Deaths in History. No, Atheism is! Atheists have lied about history, saying that the Crusades and the Inquisition, for example, are responsible for millions of lives lost. Honest historians have noted that the Crusades were wars waged against Muslim aggressors by Christians who always volunteered and who seldom benefitted materially by going to the wars. They attempted to re-conquer lands taken by Muslim invaders who swept through Africa, Asia and the Middle East until Christians in the West put a check on their violence.³ The Spanish Inquisition certainly killed many people in the name of Christ and was wrong to do so. But it did not emphasize hunting down Jews with the intention of forcing them to convert. Historians have concluded that the Medieval burning of witches, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials all taken together could not have ended in more than 200,000 deaths. For a religion of love, this is indeed a black mark. But the Atheistic regimes of the twentieth century killed 100 million people. All the killings by people from all the religions of the world throughout all of human history don’t even come close.⁴ This is not merely because Atheistic regimes had better technology in the twentieth century. It is because the Atheistic philosophies of the leaders in Germany, Russia, China, Cambodia and elsewhere gave no room for compassion, human value, or the restraint that Christians, even in the midst of violence, were willing to show. I can’t say it any simpler than this: when you look at belief systems, whether religious or Atheistic, the ones responsible for the most crimes against human beings in all of human history are the Atheistic ones.

3. Religion is Dying Out and Secularism is Taking Its Place. Christianity is the fastest growing religion in the world. Christianity has expanded in Asia, Africa, and South America—it is the only truly global religion—and this growth has been taking place in recent decades, after the age of European Colonialism. A hundred years ago, ten percent of Africans were Christian. Now the number is fifty percent, and there are 100 million Christians in China today.⁵ Christianity is flourishing, not dying.

4. The Dark Ages Following the Fall of Rome are the Fault of Christianity. Not true at all. First of all, the Classical age that preceded the Medieval period had its share of dark practices, including slavery. Secondly, Rome fell because of its decadence and attacks by truly savage barbarians from Northern Europe. Christians preserved learning and classical texts in monastic libraries all over Europe. Without the influence of Christianity on the savage North—the conversion of the barbarian warrior into the chivalrous knight, for example— we might still be living in the Dark Ages.⁶

5. Religions Hate Women and Promote Slavery. Equal rights and human value are Christian inventions. The valuing of human beings for just being human was simply not a consideration in times past. The Greeks with their democracies never thought to value women or free slaves. No religion has done more to value women than Christianity. And no one in the whole history of the world sought to put an end to institutions of slavery until Christians did.⁷ William Wilberforce led the legislative drive to end slavery in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.⁸ Harriet Beecher Stowe’s dramatization of a Christian slave’s response to slavery in America in Uncle Tom’s Cabin woke the North out of apathy. Wherever Christianity has been allowed to achieve political prominence, slavery has eventually been defeated. This is utterly obvious when one considers how readily the governments of non-Christian nations today turn a blind eye to the sex slave trafficking still going on openly within their own borders.

We are, once again, only scratching the surface. There are more lies to uncover, and we will continue to do so next month.

¹ A reminder: Much of the material I cover here has been collected together by Dinesh D’Souza in his book, What’s So Great About Christianity.Return to Text
² Collins, who is both an M.D. and a Ph.D. has recently published The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Return to Text
³ D’Souza, Chapter Eighteen. Return to Text
⁴ D’Souza, Chapter Nineteen. Return to Text
⁵ D’Souza, Chapter One. Return to Text
⁶ In Chapter Five of his book, D’Souza names his sources: The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark, and The Triumph of the West by J. M. Roberts.Return to Text
⁷ D’Souza, Chapter Seven. Return to Text
⁸ If you have not seen the movie, Amazing Grace, by all means do so! Return to Text