Dinesh D'Souza

Profile

Dinesh D’Souza’s The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11 came out in early 2007 and put the blame for the September 11 attacks squarely on liberals. The book was widely criticized, and its publication earned the Rancho Santa Fe writer the nickname “Distort D’Newza,” but that ­didn’t silence him. In fact, D’Souza, one of the more controversial conservative thinkers in the country, has another book out. This time, though, his target is a different enemy: the godless.

In What’s So Great About Christianity (Regenery Publishing, $27.95), D’Souza takes on atheists — especially prominent atheistic thinkers like Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion; Christopher Hitchens, who penned God Is Not Great; and Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith. D’Souza says Christians have been “getting hammered” by atheists for the past few years, and he, for one, has had enough. What’s So Great About Christianity is his attempt to hammer back. “Atheists want to monopolize the public square and expel Christians from it,” he says. “I see my book as ‘The Theist Strikes Back.’”

It’s debatable, though, whether Christians need a champion right now. A recent Newsweek poll found 91 percent of American adults believe in God, and Christians far outnumber members of any other faith in this country — 82 percent of the poll’s respondents identify themselves as such. But with books by atheists crowding the nonfiction bestseller lists and the display cases at Barnes & Noble, D’Souza saw a need, he says, “for a book that discussed the role of Christianity in shaping America and the West. And the compatibility in general of theism with modern science, addressing the question: Is it rational to believe?”

He has never shied away from controversial positions, having argued against affirmative action, gay marriage, abortion and women in the workplace. A conservative whiz kid from Dartmouth College, D’Souza joined the Reagan White House in 1987 as a se­nior policy analyst while still in his 20s. He has penned several best-selling books and is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a think tank at Stanford University. D’Souza’s latest book confronts some very thorny issues, including the compatibility of science, evolution and God; the existence of miracles; and the biblical account of the universe’s beginnings. On the origin of the universe, D’Szoua says a simple explanation — presumably the Big Bang — doesn’t cut it.

“First there was nothing, and then there is something. That’s a huge thing. No natural explanation will suffice,” he says. “You can’t just say nature is everything that is, and that’s it. You cannot give a natural explanation for the origin of nature, so it must be supernatural. Something or someone brought it into being.” He argues that atheists (and physicists, for that matter) are “captive to the view that ma­terial reality is all there is, and any evidence to the contrary, they dismiss.” In his book, D’Souza also refutes historical accounts of Galileo’s persecution by the church, and he takes a critical look at the beliefs of respected scientists, including Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan. Is he worried about the vitriolic response likely to come from his often outspoken, faithless nemeses? “I’m used to spear-chuckers like Hitchens,” says D’Souza. “I hope the book generates some debate, but high-level debate. I want to engage the skeptic and give some intellectual ammunition to the religious believer.”

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