The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists

Ravi Zacharias’s brilliant perspective on life is the stuff of which great philosophy is made. "The End of Reason", his latest work, is compelling, engaging, thought-provoking and entertaining. In it, Zacharias takes on the current generation of influential atheists such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and especially Sam Harris through lines of reasoning that one moment had me laughing out loud and the next pausing to reflect on their grand profundity.

Zacharias unabashedly sets out “to unpack the systematic contradictions between the atheistic worldview Sam Harris espouses and the assumptions he makes.” Indeed, Harris’s popular best-seller, "Letter to a Christian Nation", is full of sophomoric claims and mockeries. show more Zacharias begins by attacking Harris’s foundational assumptions with quotes from other powerful scientists and philosophers from around the globe. He shows that even the some of the most learned scholars, ironically from the opposite side of the debate, find Sam Harris to be an embarrassment to their atheistic cause.

The author then proceeds to answer many of Christianity’s critics’ most appealing arguments. His godly confidence, sprinkled with a refreshing dose of levity, is the perfect antidote for some of life’s most troubling quandaries. Zacharias doesn’t shy away from even the most controversial subjects as he addresses questions about the existence of pain and suffering, human cloning, the pursuit of pleasure, abortion, morality, Jesus’ deity, Evil, and even other religions.

Ultimately however, regardless of empirical evidence, science, mathematics, and philosophy, the crux of atheisms’ bankruptcy is its hopelessness. Ravi Zacharias, in stark contrast, shows the beauty of Jesus’ love for us and its inherent hope for the security of our future. My favorite quote from "The End of Reason" succinctly expresses this idea: “Given a starting point of primordial slime, one is forced to live apart from a moral law, with no meaning, no real understanding of love, and no hope.”

This little hardback will be the ideal addition to the library of any Christian who wants to better defend and understand his faith in the world’s constant onslaught of opposing “facts”. "The End of Reason" is chock full of food for thought for those, too, who have found themselves dazzled and tempted by the rationale of the new atheism as touted by the likes of Dawkins and Harris. show less

Sorry to be a wet blanket

This is the ninth of the responses to the New Atheists that I've read, with six more waiting on my bookshelf. I'm glad that several people seem to love Zacharias's book, but from my perspective a 3-star "It's OK" rating was the appropriate one. He makes some good points, but I just can't work up the enthusiasm for him that others can. I certainly don't see the resemblance in him to C. S. Lewis that others do.

While the book is fairly cheap, it's very short, so you're paying about ten bucks an hour for whatever enlightenment you're achieving. The book felt disorganized to me, with no real chapters but just one big section carved up into little 2- or 3- page thoughts. I felt it needed fewer expressions of show more indignation and fewer Indian folktales, and more historical, philosophical, and scriptural insights. What there were of the latter were generally good, but I felt they suffered from being presented sporadically rather than systematically.

I mean no offense to those who feel blessed by Zacharias's ministry, and, as they say, your mileage may vary. show less

A short work aiming to make a logical case against Sam Harris and his thinking about God. Harris had written a book entitled, "The End of Faith" meaning rational faith. This book aims to refute Harris and his "new atheism" as well as Richard Dawkins, Aldous Huxley, and Peter Singer also well known atheists. Zacharias offers a basic moral and ethical argument against atheism. Zacharias is a Christian and author. He basically says Harris wants to place himself as a God and cannot be convinced it should be otherwise. This might be true. However, that does not prove Zacharias' argument that Harris is wrong to say there is no God, if Harris merely makes himself out to be his own self-created idol.

Excellent response to the atheist position. Ravi clearly addresses the misquotes of scripture, erroneous "statistics", and blatant falsehoods, that Sam Harris uses to try to get his point across in his writings on atheism.

I can't say his arguments registered with me most of the time. I also have not read Sam Harris, so perhaps I don't have the background?

A brief but compelling book on Christian faith and its response to the New Atheists, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins et al.

I had a lot of trouble following this book. I don't know whether the author did a good job in presenting his points or not.