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Disarming the Secular Gods: How to Talk So Skeptics Will Listen

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I may be biased since Peter Moore was rector of my church several years ago. Nonetheless, as I try to be objective, this book does an excellent job indicating the many "gods" that are worshipped today in our culture. While idolatry may not now include bowing down to hand wrought images, we still look to ourselves, New Age ideas, Narcisissm or other ideas that pervade out culture. Moore especiallly is good at indicating the "realtivist dilemma" that is such a strong aspect of culture today.

I think that one of the best chapters that has struck me througout the years since I have read this book isa the one on pragmatism. People are likely generally unaware that we all too often think in short-term, "practical" terms without considering that such approaches may yet be wrong.

This book is a challenge to Christians and non-Christians alike. It is particulary good for Christians to understand where Western thinking has come to and how we can speak to it.

Peter C. Moore in "Disarming the Secular Gods: How to Talk So Skeptics Will Listen," reveals the rational weakness and epistemic frailty in numerous modern worldviews: worldviews that become as gods to the devotee. Moore employs mostly everyday language with precision and potency in refuting and in helping the reader refute a wide range of secular mindsets.

The author helps the reader disarm:

- Humanism

- New Age Movement

- Relativism

- Agnosticism

- Hedonism

- And many other fashionable worldviews.

Jeremiah 11:3-4 And say to them, `Thus says the LORD God of Israel: "Cursed is the man who does not obey the words of this covenant 4 which I commanded your fathers in the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, `Obey My voice, and do according to all that I command you; so shall you be My people, and I will be your God.'"

Moore quotes David Berlinski, RC Sproul, John Stott, Paul Vitz, John Gerstner, Alan Bloom, Harry Blamires and various other scholars. This very readable volume has over 220 pages with the Forward written by J.I. Packer.

Also see a book that demonstrates the existence of God by employing moral absolutes:

There Are Moral Absolutes: How to Be Absolutely Sure That Christianity Alone Supplies

or

"One Way to God: Christian Philosophy and Presuppositional Apologetics Examine World Religions" type in ASIN#: 1432722956

Instead of simply giving an answer (or alternative) to each of the modern philosophies, Moore instead considers the validity of each one and weighs the evidence accordingly.

The book is more rightly titled "An Exposition of Modern Philosophy." His intention is to discredit popular philosophies, but not to discard them altogether. Instead he highlights to contributions of each, even if he finds them seriously lacking.

His final chapter "The Christian's Answer" gives thinking Christians a decent mounting point from which to formulate a cohesive theology and philosophy that will guide their lives.

Peter C. Moore was rector of Little Trinity Church in Toronto, Canada when he wrote this book, as well as being the founding chairman of the board for Trinity Epicopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania.

Here are some excerpts from the book:

"Hesse tried to make of moral relativism something beautiful and poetic. He wasn't as concerned about 'right and wrong' as he was about 'good and evil'---in other words, the merging of cosmic forces into a unified whole. But the question still stands, given a monistic philosophical foundation, why should anybody try to change anything for the better?"

"Some Christians have been so absorbed in the past that they have been unable to face or influence the future. Critics of missionary practices often justifiably point to the harmful effects on primitive cultures of naive, though well-meaning, missionaries, who have been as zealous at covering natives' bare breasts as they have been about converting their lost souls!"

"Nature itself has sent our culture a resounding no to the endless pursuit of sexual pleasure; but whom among the humanists is willing to admit the original advice might have been faulty?"

As J.I. Packer said in his foreward to the book, "Peter Moore is ... passionate and skillful in his life purpose of leading the thoughtless to reflection and through reflection to full Christian faith."