Faith-Filled Reasoning

Whatâ??s interesting about this duel of proclamations is how it trades on the notionâ??widespread in modern cultureâ??that religious faith and reason stand in opposition. That assumption pervades the work of popular antireligion polemicists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens (â??faith is the surrender of reason,â? writes Hitchens) and leads many people to think that religious belief is a matter of private opinion, irrelevant to debates among rational people. Some Christians are themselves unable to resist accepting those terms of argument. For example, a Christian Co­alition spokesman denounced the idea of a National Day of Reason as â??a blatant assault on Christianity.â?