Hi and welcome back! Yesterday, we checked out the 2019 bookAtheist Overreach: What Atheism Cant Deliver by Christian Smith. Amazingly, we didnt even get past the title of the book. Today, we dive into the books introduction where we discover that yes, indeed, wecanjudge a book by its cover. Let me show you how this book completely mischaracterizes Christianitys decline and then blames the wrong people for it.

Immediately at its start,Atheist Overreachutterly mischaracterizes Christianitys decline. Im not exaggerating. Here is the very first sentence of his Introduction (p. 1; you can follow along with a lot of this on Amazons preview):

People the world over today are engaged in big struggles over the viability and importance of religion in personal and private life.

Annnnnnd let me stop us right there.

See, that is not the problem. Thats not why the struggle exists.

What the struggle actually involves is exactly how much power Christian leaders will be allowed to wield over the lives of people who do not want to comply with their demands.

More and more of us dont want Christian dominance enshrined into law and government, nor to subsidize its social clubs when well never enjoy a single benefit (even indirectly) from their operations. We fight to stop its culture wars gaining the teeth to rend human rights, and most of all its fists gaining iron gloves to batter others into obedience.

This aint aboutviability and importance. Rather, its aboutcoercive power over others.

By the same token, non-Christians dont care about Christianitys value in adherentspersonal and private lives. Instead, we despise toxic Christiansongoing efforts to force us to play along with theirhappy pretendy fun time game.

Im guessing that a Christian wont want to talk about their tribes own role in ending their dominance, though.

Smith continues:

Religions throughout human history have been an important feature of most cultures and have been practiced by billions of people.

So?Hes trying to make religion sound like a wondrous thing that people practiced for millennia, and his implication is not lost on me: those mean ole atheist meaniepies are out there trying to destroy this venerable human practice.

But its easy to demolish this argument.

An appeal to antiquity in the second sentences of his book?

Thats not a good look for an academic.

Smith introduces his villains early on at least. Heres the rest of his first paragraph:

But the modern worldhas set in motion powerful forces of secularization and, as part of that, recurrent waves of activist atheism have confronted and criticized religion. Most recently in the West, the so-called New Atheism has pressed hard to discredit belief in God and undermine religious influences in society.

Annnnnd hes wrong again.

Yes, the modern world trends increasingly toward secularization. That trend began centuries ago and has only accelerated despite the Catholic Churchs kicking and screaming. Its not even complete yet, largely because of that kicking and screaming.

Catholics (and their pals in fundagelicalism) are not kicking and screaming against secularization because theyre just so saaaaad about their imaginary friend religion being discredited or their influence being undermined.

Rather, these leaders are visiblypanicky andfurious over losing their coercive power over nonconsenting people. What Smith complains about ultimately reflects that loss of power. Nobodyd be doing that stuff if Christianity still held all the power it did once.

And Christians like Christian Smith want that power back.

He doesnt assign 100% of the blame for Christianitys decline on atheists or even New Atheists, just to keep the air clear. He appears to view atheists as one aspect of secularization (p. 131), not the entirety of it. However, atheists are in fact the only group he specifically names as driving secularization. He names no others, at least in this introduction. Though he also seems to understand that not all atheists hold the same views about morality, he presents them overwhelmingly as a mostly-unified group of smug cranks who just hate Christians for their, um, I dunno, theirepistemic justificationI guess?

I dont even know what New Atheism even means to Christian Smith in Atheist Overreach.The phrase itself lost relevance years ago. Smith names some of the big names from years ago but doesnt specifically explain what New Atheism might involve. Maybe hell do that later.

However, whoever Smith thinks is involved with Christianitys decline, theyve had next to nothing to do with the matter.

Atheists didnt do this.

Nor even Nones.

This ones all on his fervent tribemates.

Christians and in particular Catholics are losing their power because they have a solid history of abusing it. From the very first day they gained the kind of coercive power I describe, they began using it and they have always used it to its fullest extent.

Nothing any non-Christians could say could ever compare to the hundreds of skeletonsCatholics hid in Tuam. Or to the brutality they inflicted with the Magdalene Laundries. Or to the Crusades and the Inquisition, or to their long-standing habit of stealing babies from poor women to adopt out to nice Christian families. And the mind boggles at exactly how far and how deep the entire child-rape scandal really goes.

No. New Atheists, whoever they are, had almost nothing to do with the exposure of any of these scandals or the deep financial scandals Catholic leaders appear to be doing their best to conceal even now.

However, Christian Smith wants to point at those darn dirty ATHEISTS as the cause of all this trouble!

Blame atheists! Not toxic Christians! Not the people actually doing the scandalous stuff!

Now, lets move on ahead to page 2. (Yes, we have finally made it to the second page, yall! Were blazing full steam ahead now! Red hot maximum overdrive, thats us!) Smith writes:

At stake in this global struggle is the long-term character of human civilizationswhether religions will continue to have a significant place in human life or instead fade into implausibility and irrelevance.

And well pause there.No, that is not whats at stake unless by significant he means coercively dominant.

I think hes using very euphemistic language here. He sets up a false dilemma as well, because the truth of Christianitys ultimate fate will likely be found between those extremes.

But yes, Christian leaders will lose their coercive power eventually. Not a single chance they wont. If nothing else, theyll lose that critical mass of butts-in-pews (BIPs) they must have to raise the funds ($$$) they need to keep their operations going.

Hey, lets be fair, now. Buying politicians must cost a lot of money.Heres more stuff that seems very spendy: endless church programs; potentially-illegal political meddling; fruitless evangelism campaigns; forced-abduction indoctrination/re-education camps; constant payouts to abuse victims; luxuries (like yachts) for their Dear Leaders; real-estate scams; and eyesore statues.

All of that stuffs at stake too!

Gosh, yall! Wont anybody think of theyacht partiesthat are soon to be lost forever?

The biggest thing at stake is Christian dominance itself, however. Thats the Big Kahuna Burger of this whole struggle.

Without dominance, Christians cant reverse their decline.

Indeed, Christians have never been able to sell their religion without coercion. For most of their history, they havent had tosellit at all. They hadforceto do the talking for them.Thus, they never developed the skills necessary to persuade new people to join up. Nor do they want to develop those skillsnow for a variety of awful reasons.

But things are changing quickly, whether Christians like it or not.

We are quickly entering a whole new world: one where almost everybody can freely reject or accept Christian demands without fear of retaliation or repercussions.

Christianitys decreasing coercive power is a game-changer, yall. Thats why they keep losing people and why fewer and fewer people care what they think about anything. Thats why their leaders scandals keep getting exposed and why all the shielding around their criminals and abusers seems to be disintegrating all at once.

The more we learn about how Christians use power, the firmer our resolve grows to never let them have it back.

In that new world, Christian leaders wont be able to stop people from leaving their ranks. Nor will they be able to stop even their own flocks from freely choosing their desired level of engagement in devotions like tithing and church attendance, which directly translate to $$$ and BIPs.

Oh, but their losses will go even further than that into cultural declines in power.

Soon and very soon, almost everybody will feel perfectly free to criticize Christians/Christianity and be very vocal about rejecting their demands and overreach. Every Christian leader guilty of shocking hypocrisy and criminal deeds might even be caught and held accountable in that future world.

Best of all, almost nobody will fear Christian love.

What I describe is already the case formostof us.

But soon, oh soon! Itll be the norm for almost everyone. You watch and see.

And well,Atheist Overreachsees this societal change as an awful, terrible, no-good disaster for literally everybody.

So inAtheist Overreach, we have an author who doesnt seem able to engage with exactly why his religion isdeclining. Consequently, he blames the wrong people and the wrong forces for that decline.

Weve seen this problem many times in apologetics and Christian how-to roadmaps. If Christians cant even correctly identify the causes of the problems theyve identified and if they cant actually accurately identify the problems themselves in the first place then theyre not bloody likely to come up with solutions that actually address even their misidentified problems.

Instead, theyre going to offer go-nowhere, do-nothing non-solutions that amount to busy-work while their damaged yacht sinks under the waves.

It wont work. Thatll keep some of the flocks in place for a little while longer, but it wont persuade normies outside the sheepfold to obey. Not while Christian leaders are still out there committing crimes, being shockingly hypocritical, and abusing people.

And whats really offensive about this book so far is that it assigns atheistseven a bit of the blame for Christianitys decline. Thats nothing more than scapegoating, and really offensive scapegoating at that.

No, #sorrynotsorry, this ones entirely Christians own fault. Thered be nothing to criticize if they had actually abided by their own moral code and wielded their power well and justly and wisely. Nobodyd be chipping away at that power and publicizing their scandals if Christians werent such hypocrites. That hypocrisy is what led to Christianitys decline not a very few atheists being meaniepies about Baby Jesus and Mother Theresa.

Christians were never worthy of the power they held. When they had it, they hurt and abused people. This pain and abuse went on for centuriesand eventually touched almost every family under their thumb.

And that in a nutshell is why Christians are now losing dominance and will never get it back.

When Christian Smith points his finger at atheists, maybe he needs to notice the three fingers pointing back at himself.

NEXT UP: The actual product being sold inAtheist Overreach. (Its not what we usually see from Christians!) Ill show you what it is tomorrow. See you then!

Come join us onFacebook,Tumblr,Pinterest, andTwitter!(AlsoInstagram, where I mostly post cat pictures.)

Also please check out our Graceful Atheist podcast interview!

Ifyou like what you see, I gratefully welcome your support. Please consider becoming one of my monthly patrons viaPatreon with Roll to Disbelievefor as little as $1/month! MyPayPal is captain_cassidy@yahoo.com(thats an underscore in there) for one-time tips. You can also support this blog throughmy Amazon Affiliate linkand, of course, by liking and sharing my posts on social media! This blog exists because of readers support, and I appreciate every single bit of it.

Go here to see the original:

'Atheist Overreach' Blames the Wrong People | Roll to Disbelieve: 'Atheist Overreach' Blames the Wrong People - Patheos