Ravi Zacharias is not the sort of person to shrink back when someone is propounding anti-Christian views in a public forum, and his short book The End of Reason: a Response to the New Atheists is a fine example of his argumentative style. The book is written as a letter to America in response to Sam Harris’s atheistic diatribe Letter to a Christian Nation.
As a defender of the Christian faith, Zacharias has an interesting background. He was born in India, with ancestors who were priests from the highest caste of Hinduism. He found religion to be a bore, and lived as a practical atheist, but came to believe that a world birthed by accident, a life without purpose, and morality without a point of reference, lead to a heartless, pointless and hollow existence. After a failed suicide attempt he read the Bible and trusted the Christ of the Scriptures.
The book discusses and responds to numerous different arguments made by Sam Harris and his fellow atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens against religious belief and Christianity in particular. One thing which stands out is the emotional manner in which the “new atheists” make their arguments. If their atheistic beliefs really are based solely on reason, why is there so much anger and emotional antagonism behind the way in which those beliefs are expressed? And why do people who claim to be scientists assert as scientific facts propositions which cannot be established by scientific evidence?