The Victory of Reason

Charles Colson's writes today, "At the heart of the furor over Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad are the different values and ideals of two civilizations: one shaped by Christianity, the other by Islam. Of course, it's seldom put that way, especially in the elite media. Instead, the values being defended are called "Western," as if a compass point produced the freedoms we today enjoy in the Western world. Fortunately, there's a new book that sets the record straight. The book is called The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark, who is not a Christian believer. In fact, Stark set out to refute German sociologist Max Weber's famous thesis that attributed the rise of capitalism to the Reformation. Instead of refuting it, however, he wound up doing just the opposite, writing about how Christianity's emphasis on reason led to the rise of Europe. Click here to read the rest.