"The God Delusion" & "The Language of God"

Today was interesting. I am working with a client who is an avid reader--very articulate. This morning I noticed a new book in her hand titled, "The God Delusion." When I inquired about the book, her reply caught me off guard: "Well, I am an atheist," she said. "The book is related to current issues of how supporting promising scientific research falls to religious opposition, such as, how the forces of creationism press school districts to teach doctrine on a par with evolution and how the Big Bang is denounced as out-of-compliance with Bible-based calculations for the age of the earth."

There are two new books taking sides on the stormy argument over whether faith in God can coexist with faith in the scientific method. With no apology and hardly any arm-waving, the opposing authors describe their beliefs and how they reconcile them with their work in science. In "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins argues his side of the debate explaining how it is impossible and irrational for God to exist. In “The Language of God,” Francis Collins, the geneticist who led the American government’s effort to decipher the human genome, describes his own journey from atheism to committed Christianity, a faith he embraced as a young physician.

My client bought both books. She let me borrow "The Language of God." She is reading the other. When we finish reading, we are going to switch.

Talking to my atheist client, who once was a devout Catholic, reminded me of other material I have been reading on the subject of the post Christian culture. A once Christian America is now a post Christian America. We as followers of Christ have a mission field in our front yard; however, it will be more difficult to share Christ to someone who lives in today's post Christian world--those who know and understand the gospel but have rejected and turned away--than to bring the gospel to people who have never heard of Jesus.