Lindsay's Book Delivers the Goods With Both Knowledge and Passion

If I were to write a blurb for Dr. James A. Lindsay’s God Doesn't; We Do: Only Humans Can Solve Human Challenges,it would be,

This book offers a passionate and erudite set of important challenges to people of faith, complete with a nice touch of humor and a sense of urgency that we don’t see often in similar books by intellectuals. In it most readers will find some fresh arguments that provoke thought and deserve our attention. Unlike the four "New Atheists" Lindsay, who holds degrees in physics and a Ph.D. in mathematics, understands Christian theology much better than they do. In the end, Lindsay is correct; God doesn’t do anything because he doesn’t exist. Only we can solve our problems.

Lindsay has a blog where he sums up his wonderful book:

The title really says it all--God Doesn't; We Do: Only Humans Can Solve Human Challenges. Our world is one that is full of challenges, and many people still turn to God for solutions or credit Him with ones that they find. The time for that kind of superstition is long past. This book seeks to address the topic on philosophical grounds, making appeals to a scientific mindset and evidence-based decision making.

Material is covered in five parts.

• First, introductory material motivates the book, taking a keen look at the anti-intellectual thread proving itself dangerously apparent in the modern religious mindset in America while making clear that the world has changed from a time when it was relatively safe to engage in superstition-based worldviews.

• Second, an introduction to the author's experience as an infidel living in the Bible Belt is provided, indicating that the primary source of trouble with not believing is sourced from closed-minded believers.

• Third, the philosophical underpinnings of claims on God's existence are addressed, introducing a new and important topic to the conversation from the depths of modern probability theory that allows us to strongly question whether or not it is even reasonable to presume any belief in God whatsoever, one that may completely reshape the conversation about theism.

• Fourth, the central theme is heartily developed, discussing in detail why we have no reason to believe that God, through His agents and alleged agency, doesn't act in this world, including in the realms of moral sense and spirituality. A secular approach to "spirituality" is introduced at the close of this section for contrast.

• Fifth, a call to action is presented in a closing which invites moderate and liberal believers to carefully examine their own faiths while offering suggestions on how to restructure what they would like to keep from their religions so that they might prove valuable in a secular, modern world.

The text spans 316 pages, including endnotes, in eleven chapters with full bibliography.

I think Lindsay’s book delivers the goods. Get it. See for yourself. I highly recommend it. I especially liked his chapter 7, "The Problem of a Silent God." That this is a huge problem for people of faith cannot be overstated, and Lindsay is an expert guide through it.

I am especially thankful for Lindsay's passion, akin to mine. You will not see him or me having a discussion for discussion’s sake. We want to change the religious landscape. There is a sense of urgency we both share. So let me share a few of his statements showing you exactly where he stands. Between the lines you can see just how bad the case is for faith. Hint: it's abysmal.

First, the willful ignorance he so abhors:

Why are people made so afraid to condemn religiously held positions, no matter how ridiculous or backward? Why does religious belief get a free pass in the minds of many and a cultural shield from the minds of the rest? (p. 10)

The title to the book itself:

[T]here is an underlying belief that God is a being that does something. This belief is unfounded and unreasonable, even more so than a belief in any kind of deity. The remainder of this book seeks to show on intellectual, philosophical, moral, and spiritual fronts why we have no reason to believe that God, if there is even such a thing, is a being that does anything. This point, however, is so obvious to anyone willing to be honest about the matter that less time is spent dwelling on it in these pages than on the unreasonableness of subscribing to any of His many religions, the One True Faiths. (pp. 10-11)

His sense of urgency:

Weaponry today is not like the weaponry of previous ages. In fact, the tools of destruction available to us in the early twenty-first century are so unfathomably advanced compared with what was state­-of­-the-­art in World War II, that no army of the time could stand for long against what we now possess. That was only six decades ago. If we compare the military technology of the societies that wrote the majority of the holy books that still make absolute best­sellers in our society, the comparison is absolutely laughable. The difference hardly outstrips showing up in a fully armed modern tank to a schoolyard fistfight between children. (p. 16)

His story of losing faith:

Then something very important happened. I woke up at about nine in the morning, central time, on September 11, 2001, and was told that someone had flown airplanes into the World Trade Center. I did not believe it and claimed that it must be a movie on television or something. Soon thereafter, I came and saw for myself it was real and that a certain faction of the Muslim community had declared an unequivocal message to the world: the time for religion to be a major influence in this world, a world of jets and skyscrapers, is long passed. An hour later, I was completely done with religion. In fact, I had become openly anti­religion, and I still am a decade later. There is an undeniable fact here: religion did that, and it did it in the modern world using modern tools. (p. 32)

Where he stands ten years after studying religion since 9/11:

As for where I stand now, I have spent well over a decade seriously considering and studying religion, and as a result I reject theism entirely. I have examined the arguments in favor of the One True Faiths, and I find them lacking while their counterarguments are substantial. I have examined the reasons for belief, those intellectual, emotional, and historical, and I find them without foundation. The further away from religious thinking I get, the more obviously it appears to be dangerous at its worst, delusional in the main, and sadly and falsely hopeful at its best. In studying the doctrines and deeds of the world's religions, I find not reasons for hope but for fear, not justifications for joy but for sadness, not statements of truth but of deceit, not expressions of love but of hate, and not affirmations of life but of death. I see much the opposite when away from faith I turn my gaze.

His passion:

At this point in my life, I would love to be silent about the matter and to just live and let live. I did this for a long time, in fact. It seems, though, that in the present cultural climate in the United States, particularly in the South, it is not possible for me to simply live as an infidel. To do so requires a level of patience, tolerance, and personal dishonesty, that is well beyond my capacity, while accepting a wholly unpalatable double­standard. People in much of the Bible Belt operate on the statistically reasonable assumption that everyone is Christian, and to find out otherwise is unreasonably damaging both socially and professionally, judgment being central to their modus operandi. Christians also repeatedly prove themselves unable to keep their faiths to themselves, instead shoving it and its malformed fruits into many corners of public and political discourse, often standing in the way of education, science, and social development.

Worst, to call foul on these kinds of issues often results in ridiculously angry and emotional outbursts that end friendships and professional relationships, occasionally including personal threats and harassment. It has become unacceptable to me to live silently in this situation. How can I live and let live when those I am letting live see to it that I must live in censorship and often behind a mask of dishonesty? I do not believe, but I have a voice! For what I esteem is good, I now feel that I have to use it. (pp. 34-35)

The infidel fight:

The fight infidels bring against institutions of faith is, in fact, primarily waged because of religion's effects, not its existence. Many of the effects of religion are those that none of us should be able to tolerate in our societies: human beings detonating themselves to kill others in the name of God, rampant proselytizing and evangelism, mass murders of innocent people including children presumed to be witches or warlocks, endless tribal warfare over various interpretations or historical claims about the faiths, childhood indoctrination that often includes unintentionally mentally and emotionally abusing the children involved, overt physical and sexual abuse of children as a result of perverted repressed sexual energies bursting forth, a history of being the foremost agency of torture, the driving force behind much of the technology used in perpetrating that torture, bigotry and associated violence, anti­scientific campaigns that reach into public policy and education, immoral protests of military funerals because of a faith-­based prejudice, the invention and perpetuation of the most horrible and damaging concept to have come out of human friction (hell) and its use as a marketing campaign. The list drags ever on and on, sadder and more macabre than most of the horror stories of our most twisted imaginations, many of which derive their most frightening materials from deeply seated, religiously taught fears. That infidels are expected not to say something while constantly hearing about these sorts of problems—that they are expected to accept, tolerate, or even respect these things and the ideas behind them because they are a part of someone's religious faith—is flatly ridiculous. God doesn't give people any justification to expect that infidels will take positions of faith seriously or respect immoral positions simply because they are religious. (pp. 46-47)

He writes well. He argues well. And he has a passion born out of an urgency to debunk religion like few other intellectuals. This is a book that every atheist should get and read. It will arm them and hopefully motivate them to help change the religious landscape like we aim to do.