A NUMBER of books laboring to disprove the existence of God have sprung up recently and Christopher Hitchens’ "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," is his contribution to the effort to rid the world of chalices and ciboriums. Of course, Hitchens expresses disbelief not only with the Christian God. He denies the existence of any deity. The focus of this column is Christianity because that is the faith with which I am most familiar.

No doubt atheists felt their pulses quicken when so mighty a scribe as Hitchens aimed his intellectual skills towards advancing their cause. But he stumbles on the first page. He writes that should his detractors wish to go beyond simple disagreement with the author "and try to identify the sins and deformities that animate him … then he or she will not just be quarreling with the unknowable and effable creator who – presumably – opted to make me this way…"

Later in his book, Hitchens points, rightly, to a time when religious leaders behaved "barbarically" and made people offers they "could not refuse" and he cites religiously inspired cruelty he has witnessed in cities around the world.

These are standard tactics used by those who engage in the Sisyphean task of trying to disprove God’s existence. Nonbelievers point to the hypocrisy displayed by many believers, thereby focusing attention on those who engage in terrible actions in the name of God. Ignored is the reality that adopting a religious creed does not mean the believer will faithfully follow the doctrine. Hitchens’ examples confirm the failures of mankind. The sins of man do not disprove the Almighty’s existence.

Hitchens makes the case that his disbelief is not his fault because God "opted to make me this way." God did not compel Hitchens to reject religion. God gave Hitchens free will which enabled him to examine the evidence for God and reach his own conclusion. Hitchens used his free will to make him "this way."

In an interview with New York Books, Hitchens was asked what makes his work different from similar writers like Richard Dawkins. The author said Dawkins "looks at religious people with this sort of incredulity, as if, ‘How possibly can you be so stupid?’ And though we all have moods like that, I think perhaps I don’t quite."

Throughout the book Hitchens does seem to consider the religiously oriented to be one, perhaps two, rungs below the gibbon. He refers to Aquinas as "a self-centered fatalist and an earth-centered ignoramus." He also castigates Aquinas for being "convinced that god cared about his trivial theft from some unimportant pear trees…"

Hitchens is referring to an incident when Aquinas and some friends stole fruit. Aquinas wrote, "I did not desire to enjoy what I stole, but only the theft and the sin itself." Aquinas and his friends gave the pears to hogs.

While Hitchens makes light of this lesson it is a profound example of the lure of sin. Aquinas admitted he and his friends committed the senseless act "because it was forbidden." In Romans, Paul writes about man’s struggle with sin: "For I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out."

Hitchens may find the quandary amusing but in the real world people are frequently drawn towards activities that should be avoided. Aquinas was being honest and while Hitchens labeled him an "ignoramus" the ridicule and name-calling does not disprove God’s existence.

Boldly marching forward, Hitchens proclaims the Gospels are not historical records and their "multiple authors – none of whom published anything until many decades after the crucifixion - cannot agree on anything of importance."

For a Christian, Hitchens’ allegation that the Gospels are unreliable is the most troubling charge. If the New Testament is a novel then Christians have a high mountain to scale in order to embrace their faith. Fortunately the evidence is overwhelming that the Gospels can be trusted.

In Lee Strobel’s "The Case for Christ," Wheaton College professor John McRay offers a scientific defense of the Gospels. McRay has been a professor of the New Testament and archaeology for more than 15 years and has supervised expeditions to Ceasarea and throughout Israel. McRay pointed out that although archaeology cannot prove a spiritual truth it enhances the credibility of the New Testament from a historical perspective. For example, for many years it was thought that first century historian Josephus was wrong when he wrote that the harbor at Ceasarea was as large as the one at Piraeus, a major harbor in Athens. McRay’s underwater excavation determined that during the era when Josephus was alive the harbor was that large. This enhances the credibility of Josephus when he wrote about the life of Jesus in "The Antiquities." He wrote that after Pilate ordered Jesus crucified "those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him."

Dr. Craig Blomberg, former senior research fellow at Cambridge University and professor of the New Testament at Denver Seminary, agrees that the Gospels have historical validity. Blomberg said, particularly in the case of Matthew, Mark and Luke, there would have been no reason to attribute the writing to them if they had not been the actual authors. There were more exemplary individuals who could have been named as the writers if the purpose was to enhance the work’s spiritual integrity.

Blomberg said, "These were unlikely characters. Mark and Luke weren’t even among the twelve disciples. Matthew was, but as a former tax collector, he would have been the most infamous character next to Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus."

If the goal was to aggrandize the divinity of Jesus, the names of more well-known individuals would have been cited as the authors.

It is reasonable to ask that if no original copies of the New Testament are known to exist, how can we have confidence in the authenticity of copies? Dr. Bruce Metzger, who taught the New Testament for more than four decades, is professor emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary. In "The Case for Christ" he observes this concern is not unique to The Bible but is asked of other ancient documents.

Metzger said, "…what the New Testament has in its favor, especially when compared with other ancient writings, is the unprecedented multiplicity of copies that have survived. …the more often you have copies that agree with each other, especially if they emerge from different geographical areas, the more you can cross-check them to figure out what the original document was like. The only way they’d agree would be where they went back genealogically in a family tree that represents the descent of the manuscripts."

Metzger pointed out there are copies of the New Testament that were written within a couple of generations of the original "whereas in the case of other ancient texts, maybe five, eight or ten centuries elapsed between the original and the earliest surviving copies. In addition to Greek manuscripts, we also have translations of the gospels into other languages at a relatively early time – into Latin, Syriac and Coptic."

How do the multiple copies of the New Testament compare to other ancient texts? Metzger said only one manuscript of the first six books of the "Annals of Imperial Rome," written by Tacitus in A.D. 116, exist and "it was copied about A.D. 850."

How many New Testament Greek manuscripts exist today? According to Metzger, more than 5,000 have been cataloged.

Metzger said, "Next to the New Testament, the greatest amount of manuscript testimony is of Homer’s ‘Iliad,’ which was the bible of the ancient Greeks. There are fewer that 650 Greek manuscripts of it today."

Hitchens does his best to disprove God’s existence, yet his tome is merely a bloated index of atheistic dyspepsia. All individuals are free to accept a religious doctrine of their choosing or reject God’s existence altogether. But for Christians with even a modicum of knowledge of their religion Hitchens’ musings are easily dismissed.

Joseph Bell has hosted a radio talk show and is a former editorial writer/columnist for several Connecticut newspapers. A former liberal Democrat, Bell has not been on the conservative side of the aisle for very long. He voted for Clinton/Gore in 1992. Abandoning the convictions that he had held and defended through adolescence and into adulthood was not easy. Sincere soul-searching and a commitment to distinguish fact from fiction compelled him to accept that liberal ideology was bankrupt.