Agnosticism And Doubtful Catechesis
Editorial FAITH Magazine March-April 2001
The decline of belief in God
It has always been difficult to be young and a good Christian, but one factor which, perhaps, makes it harder than ever today is the almost universal assumption among the young (and indeed the not so young) that it is impossible to be rationally certain about the existence of God. To come across someone these days who is convinced that there is overwhelming evidence in favour of God's existence is almost less likely than meeting someone who is convinced that there is life on Mars! And to encounter someone making an articulate defence of the existence of God in the established European media is even more uncommon. Most people take nothing more than polite or casual interest in the theoretical possibility of a creator, and for many young people the reality of life after death seems only slightly more probable than winning the lottery! Beyond minority church communities, 'God' just does not come into routine rational discourse and faith is seen as a completely private affair.The overwhelming assumption is that it is simply not possible to move from observation and understanding of the material world to the affirmation of a spiritual creator who is distinct from his creation, or to the conclusion that there must be a spiritual, non-material, dimension to man's personality. Tragically many Christian thinkers and educators regard these as little more than academic points. But the fact is that if we cannot be certain about God and the soul, this in turn casts doubt on God's providence, on life after death, on human freedom, morality, the spiritual nature of love, etc. etc., in fact on the whole edifice of Christianity.
The loss of a grounded faith
A Year 2000 "Soul of Britain" survey published in the Daily Telegraph reported those responding affirmatively to the question "Do you believe in God?" at 62%, a drop of 14% in the last twenty years. One can not help thinking that the percentage would have been considerably less had the question been: "Are you rationally convinced that that there is an intelligent Creator of the Universe?" It is this fundamental agnosticism which is slowly but surely corroding the fabric of our society and undermining our young people. This basic loss of certainty precedes the dismantling of our particular civilization with its particular types of community and family life.It has severed us from the claims of Judaeo-Christianity, from our individual and communal relationship with God, from faithful prayer, living and loving at the centre of our culture. It has removed from Man his own pretension to have a unique dignity 'in the image of God'. Some (particularly new-age environmentalists) rejoice in this rejection of the Judaeo-Christian doctrinal framework and its exaltation of Man, but by 'cutting him down to size' in this way it has left countless men and women rudderless upon the ocean of existence, with broken lives, broken families, broken hearts and broken minds. Deep down this is all the result of our fractured belief system.Agnosticism undermines any sense of objective good and evil, not only because it denies the Author of the Moral Law, but ultimately because it removes the Christocentric and ecclesial context which is necessary for the authentic exercise of human freedom. It is no small loss, either, that our society is no longer open to, nor can public appeal be made to the power of prayer as a force for building a truly civilized society. For to pray we must be certain that God exists. And to resist the all too persuasive temptations of the modern, technological world we must have more than vague religious feelings.The Church has always known this and for this reason has always stressed the coherence of faith and reason, of science and religion. Grace builds on nature. Supernatural faith is built on and is complimentary to the natural affirmation of the existence of God. For Catholics faith in God is not a jump in the dark, it is a leap into the light. The nature of human intelligence is not annihilated by the life of grace but raised up into a new context.
Inadequate catechetics
In a scientific world which flaunts its rationality at every turn (even when at its most irrational!) and which despises what it regards as the ignorant superstition of previous ages, it is surely more necessary than ever for the Church in its formation programmes, in its catechesis and school religious education to stress the rationality of our belief in God. Supremely in this regard, then, the Church is called to be counter cultural. Yet at precisely this moment in history, when it is most necessary to emphasize the intellectual coherence of faith, we find this vital element of our tradition curiously lacking.Systematic presentation of evidence for the existence of the transcendent God is very often absent from Catholic youth formation. It is not in the school catechetical books, (though some teachers do incorporate it), it is not in the sacramental preparation schemes. Neither of the currently much discussed new Roman Catholic secondary school Religious Education programmes (for Years 7-9), Icons and The Way, the Truth and the Life, start with the Existence of God. Rather, like the modern evangelical Alpha course (from which we should gratefully borrow methodology rather than theology), the revelation of God the Father is the starting point.Now, the life, death and resurrection of our Lord and the foundation of the Church are of course key to the overall coherence of the call to faith, hope and love imparted in catechesis. But the history of salvation must necessarily be contextualized within the history and story of creation. Without this context we risk the loss of coherence. The presentation of any belief without context easily seems like myth to the minds of modern men. And this context can no longer be taken for granted today. Put another way, there is no point in endlessly talking to school children about the sacraments, or the evils of world poverty etc., if they do not believe in God or at best are agnostic about his existence.
Flawed religious education
When raising these objections at educational or catechetical meetings, one is often told that religious education in schools is not meant to be catechesis. The nourishing and supporting of Catholic conviction is apparently no longer the aim of religious education in our modern Catholic schools. Apart from the very questionable educational anthropology that this assumes, it is of course very convenient for the forces of secular humanism which are all pervasive in our society and which have no such qualms about active proselytism. If not in our schools where, pray, is the convincing catechesis to be done - and how will it convince? Anyway, even if we do exclude catechsesis from the classroom, (although it is not the mind of the Church to do so), is it not precisely the job of religious education to explore the rational coherence of a belief system, whatever the personal faith of the students?The impression is that many older Catholics know that we had some "not-bad proofs" of God's existence in the past. But today the younger generation treat the idea that there are good reasons for believing in God, that our faith is anything more than blind or private, as fanciful or at least a surprise. One has often heard young and old rehearse the truism that faith (meaning the relationship with God) is beyond rational proof of His existence, the implication being that any attempt at rational proof is at best an interesting intellectual diversion from the real task of evangelization. Similarly the essential Catholic belief in the human soul - made in the image of God's transcendent nature, distinct from matter, the foundation of the justification of our immortality and of the nature of our knowing, loving and sinning - has not been grasped, for the most part, by many post-1960's Catholics.
Letting the kids down
Today's typical teenager is fairly sure that you can never really be sure about the eternal God and life after death, and is fairly open to the hedonistic alternatives so prominently and powerfully on offer through the media and the playground. These are not bad boys and girls, they're not uninterested in talking about God if you do, they'll even talk to him if you suggest, but to carry on doing this when you're not there and 'real' life impinges again seems too much to ask. Thus are set up the initial (if not sufficient) conditions for a young Catholic's slow and subtle slide into secular compromise and lapsation. The straightforward youngster's "we can never know for certain" can develop, through a lack of convincing catechesis, into the adult's not uncommon tortured battle between the harsh "realism" of modern relationships and the "primitive ideals" of "Vatican" teaching.
The need for convincing catechesis
In fact the Catholic Church has always believed and still believes today in spending time articulating reasons for believing in the transcendent Creator. Not only is this possible, but it is urgently necessary. The book of Wisdom tells us that "from the greatness and beauty of created things there comes a corresponding perception of their creator" (Wis. 13:5). St Paul told the Romans that "ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made" (Rom. 1:20). The letter to the Hebrews develops this admonition "whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him" (Heb. 11:6).St Augustine offered arguments from the beauty and order of the world, St Anselm from the nature of truth and St Thomas Aquinas from the intelligibility of the universe. The first and second Vatican Councils authoritatively confirmed this long standing tradition. (cf.Dei Filius 2 and Dei Verbum 1). As the new Catechism explains, given that we are "made in the image of God" (Gen 1: 27), starting from natural observation of the physical world or of the human person it is possible to adduce "convincing and converging arguments" which allow us to attain "certainty about the truth" of God (CCC 31).The most recent authoritative expression, and perhaps one of the fullest, of this whole tradition has been the Pope's encyclical Fides et Ratio (1998, cf. 19&22). He further emphasizes that, "just as grace builds on nature and brings it to fulfilment so faith builds upon and perfects reason" (43); and that, "deprived of reason, faith has stressed feeling and experience, … faith then runs the grave risk of withering into myth or superstition" (48).In fact, right up until modern times this Catholic approach has been a most influential tradition, imbuing our culture with a conviction about the one, transcendent creator and sustainer of all. It has been the well-spring of Christian culture and it has provided an important, if not always decisive, motivation for the man in the street to persevere in faith through thick and thin.
The nature of 'proof'
To guide the human mind towards conviction about the existence of the creator is really to employ a 'proof' and we must not be afraid to use the word. For we need to remember that this word has been somewhat hijacked by agnostic philosophical systems of our day to apply exclusively to the methodologies of experimental science and formal logic.The type of proof that we must offer our young people and that the Catholic tradition has always proposed is actually a more human proof than that offered by logical positivism. It involves the presentation of evidence in a way that will engage and focus man's intellectual powers, and thus his personality, upon the transcendent existence of the creator. It must indeed involve logical steps, but is concerned with something greater than a mere chain of logic.This is analogous to the process through which a child learns about Australia, for example, or to the procedings of a courtroom: various pieces of evidence are presented and certainty is arrived at through human reflection and human trust. It is not actually dissimilar to the way scientific experiments work, but is not as mathematically clear-cut because our subject matter is not just concerned with material things but with things of the mind itself, the very organ of certainty. We are dealing not just with physics but with metaphysics.
Convincing and converging arguments
We must present what the Catechism calls "convincing and converging arguments" aiding the mind into a state of certainty - that is a state of being prepared to act as if a particular proposition is true. This is the way we work in the rest of our lives. Reflection upon evidence gives us a basis for action. We engage with reality upon our understanding of it and we engage our wills subsequent to our intellects.This will therefore be a process. 'Proof' will not necessarily be the decisive event that will immediately force any sane listener of whatever background and persuasion to immediately agree that there is a God. As we've just noted, conviction about God is not as simple as finding experimental confirmation of a particular scientific prediction. It is too important for that.However, this does not mean that Science is irrelevant to arguments for God's existence. Far from it. Christian tradition has always used successful and accepted observation of and reflection upon the world around us. In this sense it has always invoked Science as a witness. In more recent times our vastly increased insight into the internal coherence of Science and its empirical success can be summoned as strong primary evidence for God in its own right. It will lead people to a recognition of meaning and purpose in the material order and to the consequent recognition of the personal mind of God behind it.
The reunion of Science and Religion
This is precisely the step that post-enlightenment philosophy denies that one can take. In using the word "Science", therefore, we do not refer to laboratory experiments as such, certainly not to agnostic interpretations or philosophies of science. Rather we mean that body of scientific wisdom that has made such fruitful advances in understanding the way in which matter inter-relates, revealing laws, patterns and relative functionality, all points away from an atheistic interpretation of the universe and inexorably towards God. (The actual methodology and content of such arguments have been rehearsed often in the pages of this journal).Those of us inspired by the catechesis of the FAITH movement are convinced from experience that fruitful versions of such proofs do exist and should be incorporated into modern catechetical and religious educational programmes. Modern science, we believe, contains the seeds of a renewed defence of the existence of God which lies within the Catholic apologetic and philosophical tradition.Through such a vision we can challenge empiricist and reductionist philosophies of science which have had such a strong impact upon modern thinking and the formation of western social institutions. Thus, in response to the Pope's "strong and insistent appeal" to help ground faith in reason (Fides et Ratio, 48) and in line with the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, we can renew the defence of the basic doctrines of Catholicism concerning the creation of the universe and the dignity of Man.
Conclusion
Passing on an effective Christian vision to the youth of today is crucial for the survival not only of their own spiritual lives but also of our whole civilization. Many are concerned about the evident moral confusion which is the daily diet of young people in the West, but in responding to this crisis it is incumbent upon the Church to dwell more, not less, in her catechetical and formation programmes on the existence of God and of the spiritual soul.
She must do this precisely in order to lead people back to spiritual stability and maturity - to daily relationship with the Father, encounter with Christ and openness to the Holy Spirit. In his book Orthodoxy G.K. Chesterton wrote about what he called the 'displacement of humility':
"A man was meant to be doubting about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert - himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason" (p.41).
Christianity in being sure about God is also sure about God's love for all men, but in being less sure about man himself is not afraid to apply the word 'sin' to all men. Our culture has indeed denied both the universality of God's love and the ubiquity of sin, and the result has been disastrous, most particularly for the unborn, the unfashionable, the seriously handicapped and the aged. The Good News of Christianity built a great civilization, where all had a fundamental dignity and the words 'right' and 'wrong' had clear, unequivocal meaning. Conviction about God's existence was always the necessary foundation of this vision. If we are to obey God's command to preach the Gospel to our culture, we must urgently pay attention to these issues lest we risk leading another generation of His little ones astray.
Editorial FAITH Magazine March-April 2001
The decline of belief in God
It has always been difficult to be young and a good Christian, but one factor which, perhaps, makes it harder than ever today is the almost universal assumption among the young (and indeed the not so young) that it is impossible to be rationally certain about the existence of God. To come across someone these days who is convinced that there is overwhelming evidence in favour of God's existence is almost less likely than meeting someone who is convinced that there is life on Mars! And to encounter someone making an articulate defence of the existence of God in the established European media is even more uncommon. Most people take nothing more than polite or casual interest in the theoretical possibility of a creator, and for many young people the reality of life after death seems only slightly more probable than winning the lottery! Beyond minority church communities, 'God' just does not come into routine rational discourse and faith is seen as a completely private affair.The overwhelming assumption is that it is simply not possible to move from observation and understanding of the material world to the affirmation of a spiritual creator who is distinct from his creation, or to the conclusion that there must be a spiritual, non-material, dimension to man's personality. Tragically many Christian thinkers and educators regard these as little more than academic points. But the fact is that if we cannot be certain about God and the soul, this in turn casts doubt on God's providence, on life after death, on human freedom, morality, the spiritual nature of love, etc. etc., in fact on the whole edifice of Christianity.
The loss of a grounded faith
A Year 2000 "Soul of Britain" survey published in the Daily Telegraph reported those responding affirmatively to the question "Do you believe in God?" at 62%, a drop of 14% in the last twenty years. One can not help thinking that the percentage would have been considerably less had the question been: "Are you rationally convinced that that there is an intelligent Creator of the Universe?" It is this fundamental agnosticism which is slowly but surely corroding the fabric of our society and undermining our young people. This basic loss of certainty precedes the dismantling of our particular civilization with its particular types of community and family life.It has severed us from the claims of Judaeo-Christianity, from our individual and communal relationship with God, from faithful prayer, living and loving at the centre of our culture. It has removed from Man his own pretension to have a unique dignity 'in the image of God'. Some (particularly new-age environmentalists) rejoice in this rejection of the Judaeo-Christian doctrinal framework and its exaltation of Man, but by 'cutting him down to size' in this way it has left countless men and women rudderless upon the ocean of existence, with broken lives, broken families, broken hearts and broken minds. Deep down this is all the result of our fractured belief system.Agnosticism undermines any sense of objective good and evil, not only because it denies the Author of the Moral Law, but ultimately because it removes the Christocentric and ecclesial context which is necessary for the authentic exercise of human freedom. It is no small loss, either, that our society is no longer open to, nor can public appeal be made to the power of prayer as a force for building a truly civilized society. For to pray we must be certain that God exists. And to resist the all too persuasive temptations of the modern, technological world we must have more than vague religious feelings.The Church has always known this and for this reason has always stressed the coherence of faith and reason, of science and religion. Grace builds on nature. Supernatural faith is built on and is complimentary to the natural affirmation of the existence of God. For Catholics faith in God is not a jump in the dark, it is a leap into the light. The nature of human intelligence is not annihilated by the life of grace but raised up into a new context.
Inadequate catechetics
In a scientific world which flaunts its rationality at every turn (even when at its most irrational!) and which despises what it regards as the ignorant superstition of previous ages, it is surely more necessary than ever for the Church in its formation programmes, in its catechesis and school religious education to stress the rationality of our belief in God. Supremely in this regard, then, the Church is called to be counter cultural. Yet at precisely this moment in history, when it is most necessary to emphasize the intellectual coherence of faith, we find this vital element of our tradition curiously lacking.Systematic presentation of evidence for the existence of the transcendent God is very often absent from Catholic youth formation. It is not in the school catechetical books, (though some teachers do incorporate it), it is not in the sacramental preparation schemes. Neither of the currently much discussed new Roman Catholic secondary school Religious Education programmes (for Years 7-9), Icons and The Way, the Truth and the Life, start with the Existence of God. Rather, like the modern evangelical Alpha course (from which we should gratefully borrow methodology rather than theology), the revelation of God the Father is the starting point.Now, the life, death and resurrection of our Lord and the foundation of the Church are of course key to the overall coherence of the call to faith, hope and love imparted in catechesis. But the history of salvation must necessarily be contextualized within the history and story of creation. Without this context we risk the loss of coherence. The presentation of any belief without context easily seems like myth to the minds of modern men. And this context can no longer be taken for granted today. Put another way, there is no point in endlessly talking to school children about the sacraments, or the evils of world poverty etc., if they do not believe in God or at best are agnostic about his existence.
Flawed religious education
When raising these objections at educational or catechetical meetings, one is often told that religious education in schools is not meant to be catechesis. The nourishing and supporting of Catholic conviction is apparently no longer the aim of religious education in our modern Catholic schools. Apart from the very questionable educational anthropology that this assumes, it is of course very convenient for the forces of secular humanism which are all pervasive in our society and which have no such qualms about active proselytism. If not in our schools where, pray, is the convincing catechesis to be done - and how will it convince? Anyway, even if we do exclude catechsesis from the classroom, (although it is not the mind of the Church to do so), is it not precisely the job of religious education to explore the rational coherence of a belief system, whatever the personal faith of the students?The impression is that many older Catholics know that we had some "not-bad proofs" of God's existence in the past. But today the younger generation treat the idea that there are good reasons for believing in God, that our faith is anything more than blind or private, as fanciful or at least a surprise. One has often heard young and old rehearse the truism that faith (meaning the relationship with God) is beyond rational proof of His existence, the implication being that any attempt at rational proof is at best an interesting intellectual diversion from the real task of evangelization. Similarly the essential Catholic belief in the human soul - made in the image of God's transcendent nature, distinct from matter, the foundation of the justification of our immortality and of the nature of our knowing, loving and sinning - has not been grasped, for the most part, by many post-1960's Catholics.
Letting the kids down
Today's typical teenager is fairly sure that you can never really be sure about the eternal God and life after death, and is fairly open to the hedonistic alternatives so prominently and powerfully on offer through the media and the playground. These are not bad boys and girls, they're not uninterested in talking about God if you do, they'll even talk to him if you suggest, but to carry on doing this when you're not there and 'real' life impinges again seems too much to ask. Thus are set up the initial (if not sufficient) conditions for a young Catholic's slow and subtle slide into secular compromise and lapsation. The straightforward youngster's "we can never know for certain" can develop, through a lack of convincing catechesis, into the adult's not uncommon tortured battle between the harsh "realism" of modern relationships and the "primitive ideals" of "Vatican" teaching.
The need for convincing catechesis
In fact the Catholic Church has always believed and still believes today in spending time articulating reasons for believing in the transcendent Creator. Not only is this possible, but it is urgently necessary. The book of Wisdom tells us that "from the greatness and beauty of created things there comes a corresponding perception of their creator" (Wis. 13:5). St Paul told the Romans that "ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made" (Rom. 1:20). The letter to the Hebrews develops this admonition "whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him" (Heb. 11:6).St Augustine offered arguments from the beauty and order of the world, St Anselm from the nature of truth and St Thomas Aquinas from the intelligibility of the universe. The first and second Vatican Councils authoritatively confirmed this long standing tradition. (cf.Dei Filius 2 and Dei Verbum 1). As the new Catechism explains, given that we are "made in the image of God" (Gen 1: 27), starting from natural observation of the physical world or of the human person it is possible to adduce "convincing and converging arguments" which allow us to attain "certainty about the truth" of God (CCC 31).The most recent authoritative expression, and perhaps one of the fullest, of this whole tradition has been the Pope's encyclical Fides et Ratio (1998, cf. 19&22). He further emphasizes that, "just as grace builds on nature and brings it to fulfilment so faith builds upon and perfects reason" (43); and that, "deprived of reason, faith has stressed feeling and experience, … faith then runs the grave risk of withering into myth or superstition" (48).In fact, right up until modern times this Catholic approach has been a most influential tradition, imbuing our culture with a conviction about the one, transcendent creator and sustainer of all. It has been the well-spring of Christian culture and it has provided an important, if not always decisive, motivation for the man in the street to persevere in faith through thick and thin.
The nature of 'proof'
To guide the human mind towards conviction about the existence of the creator is really to employ a 'proof' and we must not be afraid to use the word. For we need to remember that this word has been somewhat hijacked by agnostic philosophical systems of our day to apply exclusively to the methodologies of experimental science and formal logic.The type of proof that we must offer our young people and that the Catholic tradition has always proposed is actually a more human proof than that offered by logical positivism. It involves the presentation of evidence in a way that will engage and focus man's intellectual powers, and thus his personality, upon the transcendent existence of the creator. It must indeed involve logical steps, but is concerned with something greater than a mere chain of logic.This is analogous to the process through which a child learns about Australia, for example, or to the procedings of a courtroom: various pieces of evidence are presented and certainty is arrived at through human reflection and human trust. It is not actually dissimilar to the way scientific experiments work, but is not as mathematically clear-cut because our subject matter is not just concerned with material things but with things of the mind itself, the very organ of certainty. We are dealing not just with physics but with metaphysics.
Convincing and converging arguments
We must present what the Catechism calls "convincing and converging arguments" aiding the mind into a state of certainty - that is a state of being prepared to act as if a particular proposition is true. This is the way we work in the rest of our lives. Reflection upon evidence gives us a basis for action. We engage with reality upon our understanding of it and we engage our wills subsequent to our intellects.This will therefore be a process. 'Proof' will not necessarily be the decisive event that will immediately force any sane listener of whatever background and persuasion to immediately agree that there is a God. As we've just noted, conviction about God is not as simple as finding experimental confirmation of a particular scientific prediction. It is too important for that.However, this does not mean that Science is irrelevant to arguments for God's existence. Far from it. Christian tradition has always used successful and accepted observation of and reflection upon the world around us. In this sense it has always invoked Science as a witness. In more recent times our vastly increased insight into the internal coherence of Science and its empirical success can be summoned as strong primary evidence for God in its own right. It will lead people to a recognition of meaning and purpose in the material order and to the consequent recognition of the personal mind of God behind it.
The reunion of Science and Religion
This is precisely the step that post-enlightenment philosophy denies that one can take. In using the word "Science", therefore, we do not refer to laboratory experiments as such, certainly not to agnostic interpretations or philosophies of science. Rather we mean that body of scientific wisdom that has made such fruitful advances in understanding the way in which matter inter-relates, revealing laws, patterns and relative functionality, all points away from an atheistic interpretation of the universe and inexorably towards God. (The actual methodology and content of such arguments have been rehearsed often in the pages of this journal).Those of us inspired by the catechesis of the FAITH movement are convinced from experience that fruitful versions of such proofs do exist and should be incorporated into modern catechetical and religious educational programmes. Modern science, we believe, contains the seeds of a renewed defence of the existence of God which lies within the Catholic apologetic and philosophical tradition.Through such a vision we can challenge empiricist and reductionist philosophies of science which have had such a strong impact upon modern thinking and the formation of western social institutions. Thus, in response to the Pope's "strong and insistent appeal" to help ground faith in reason (Fides et Ratio, 48) and in line with the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, we can renew the defence of the basic doctrines of Catholicism concerning the creation of the universe and the dignity of Man.
Conclusion
Passing on an effective Christian vision to the youth of today is crucial for the survival not only of their own spiritual lives but also of our whole civilization. Many are concerned about the evident moral confusion which is the daily diet of young people in the West, but in responding to this crisis it is incumbent upon the Church to dwell more, not less, in her catechetical and formation programmes on the existence of God and of the spiritual soul.
She must do this precisely in order to lead people back to spiritual stability and maturity - to daily relationship with the Father, encounter with Christ and openness to the Holy Spirit. In his book Orthodoxy G.K. Chesterton wrote about what he called the 'displacement of humility':
"A man was meant to be doubting about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert - himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason" (p.41).
Christianity in being sure about God is also sure about God's love for all men, but in being less sure about man himself is not afraid to apply the word 'sin' to all men. Our culture has indeed denied both the universality of God's love and the ubiquity of sin, and the result has been disastrous, most particularly for the unborn, the unfashionable, the seriously handicapped and the aged. The Good News of Christianity built a great civilization, where all had a fundamental dignity and the words 'right' and 'wrong' had clear, unequivocal meaning. Conviction about God's existence was always the necessary foundation of this vision. If we are to obey God's command to preach the Gospel to our culture, we must urgently pay attention to these issues lest we risk leading another generation of His little ones astray.