Scaling the Secular City

What a breath of fresh air Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianityby J.P. Moreland was to read while living in our 'God is Dead' culture. I generally feel comfortable while defending Catholicism to my protestant brothers and sisters, but always felt just a little inadequate when discussing God with agnostics or atheists. This book is a good foray into defending Christianity as a logical conclusion in our hyper-scienced culture.

As someone with a Math background I especially liked his appeal to the Kalam argument for the existence of god and the use of a mathematical understanding of infinity to argue the the universe must have a beginning. (Please don't shy away from this book if you don't have an aptitude in math, this is the only area in the book that deals with it and he explains it well enough, it just may seem odd to think that it is possible to have one infinite list larger or smaller than another infinite list. I assure you it is true or much of mathematics is wrong)

Moreland covers a lot of distance in this relatively short book including (but not limited to) Evolution, Physicalism (only mater exists), The Historicity of the Gospels, The Resurrection of Jesus and Morality. His logic throughout the book is impeccable and you may often be amazed of how the logic of most atheistic arguments lead one in a direction you (and most times the atheist themselves) do not want to go. The depth which each topic is covered is sufficient and well footnoted, some of which I will plan to read to dive into some topics with more depth than was covered here.

I only took one issue with Moreland when he used Jesus' brothers and sisters to make an argument. I understand that Moreland is not Catholic, but He must know that this would not sit well with us (as Mary's Perpetual virginity is Catholic Dogma) and he really didn't need to have it in there to make his argument, so I was saddened he felt it necessary to include it.

That small point aside this was a great book that would leave any skeptic questioning their beliefs (or lack there of). His chapter 'Science and Christianity' in which he explores the tension between the two, their proper balance, the limits of both and why we should actually put less faith in science than we do (again using inescapable logic), was a particularly good one. A point I will be sure to take with me: Consider this statement, "only what can be known by science or quantified and empirically tested is rational and true" (p.197) While I believe that much of our culture currently believes this statement as an unquestionable fact upon which their entire lives are based (whether consciously or unconsciously), Moreland exposes this as a logical fallacy by explaining that the statement itself cannot be known by science or empirically tested. Therefore the statement is not true by it's own standards. That is the type of clear reasoning you can expect from this well written book.

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