The separation of church and state is a uniquely Christian innovation. That is not to say that all Christians have respected it; obviously they haven't. But Christ's injunction to "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's" is unique in religious thought. Virtually all other metaphysical traditions, including atheism, meld religious belief with secular power. In fact, atheism is the worldview that least respects the separation of religious belief and state power. Communism and the Cult of Reason in the French Revolution's Reign of Terror are the only atheist ideologies ever to have grasped state power. Atheism in power invokes the brutal suppression of all liberty, most notably freedom of religion and of personal conscience. Militant atheism craves political power, and when it ascends to power, human rights are extinguished.

Fredrick Nietzsche-an atheist with a deep hatred for Christianity- recognized that Christianity provides the basis for liberal democracy in modern society. Christianity emphasizes the equality of men before God, and the sanctity of each man's individual conscience. Nietzsche detested the democratic and Liberal (capital 'L') implications of Christian philosophy, as do so many atheists today who use un-democratic judicial force to censor non-atheist religious expression in the public square and to impose unexamined atheist metaphysics in public schools. Atheist approaches to freedom of expression in the Soviet Union and in Western democracies differ in degree, not in proclivity. Where atheism grows in influence, public discourse unfavorable to atheist ideology is inexorably curtailed.

Christianity has always asserted that state power is not absolute; even kings must answer to God. This separation of power in Christendom - the insistence that secular rulers are subordinate to a transcendent moral authority- tempered the natural tendency of kings and emperors to assert total control over the lives of their subjects. The Magna Carta ("...We [King John of England] have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed...that the Church of England shall be free") and the Declaration of Independence ("...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...") are two particularly clear expressions of this Christian respect for God-given rights that are prior to state power. Atheism is the explicit denial of these transcendent rights; atheism is an explicit denial of any sort of transcendence. Under atheist governance, state power grows inexorably, unchecked by appeal to rights 'endowed by our Creator'.

Atheists are understandably reluctant to acknowledge the deep atheist roots of 20th century totalitarianism. Without 'unalienable Rights', politics stripped of transcendence devolves to raw power. The salient principle of actual atheist governance is '...Because We Can'.

The ethical revolution wrought by Christianity is perhaps even more important to our civilization than the political revolution. Christian ethics, built on a long Jewish tradition of care for the poor and the helpless and on adherence to a clear moral code, transformed the ancient world. Much of the rapid growth of Christianity in the Roman Empire was the result of the Christian insistence on the fundamental worth of each human being. Christians insisted that every person, even the lowliest and the outcaste, is created in God's image. Christians are commanded to love enemies as well as friends, as difficult as that has been in practice. Christianity is the origin of our modern respect for the rights of women; in the Roman world, and in much of the non-Christian world today, women are little more than chattel. Even the pagans who hated Christianity realized the enormous attraction of Christian ethics. The Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate lamented that paganism paled beside Christianity in ethical conduct and care for the poor. Nietzsche, as much as he despised Christian "slave morality", acknowledged that Christian concern for the weak and for the victimized had changed the world- much for the worse, he insisted.

Christian morality was a sea-change in human affairs. Pagan morality was proto-Nietzschean; strength and power were the virtues most coveted. Judaism had of course denied this; the prophets taught that God has a particular concern for the vulnerable and the helpless. The unique Christian contribution to ethics- a contribution that quite literally changed the world- was the astonishing insistence that God Himself was incarnate in the vulnerable and the helpless. Christ made this explicit in Matthew 25: "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for Me." Chesterton points out that God's identification with the least among us was more than verbiage; God became man, not as an emperor or as a victorious general, but as a destitute infant in a trough in a barn. He literally became 'the least of us'. Chesterton observed that from that moment slavery and every other form of oppression of the weak by the strong became morally untenable. The institutions of power and brutality would persist, of course, although where Christianity gained ascendance they would decline, but the moral basis for the oppression of the weak by the strong ended in that feed-trough. Christianity insisted that care for the poor and the vulnerable was a transcendent imperative. The Nativity was an enacted parable.

Christianity is the indispensible basis for the best of humanism and ethics, and this ethical imperative is based on God's identification with all of humanity and particularly with that portion of humanity most in need of protection. Atheism necessarily entails the denial of any morality founded on transcendence; without transcendence, atheist morality inevitably devolves into assertion of power.

No less obvious than the dependence of political liberty and humane ethics on Christianity is the dependence of modern science on Christian theology. As historian and sociologist of religion Rodney Stark points out, to understand the historical and philosophical relationship between religion and science it is first necessary to distinguish between two different kinds of science: technological science and theoretical science. Technology is applied science- the manipulation of nature. Theoretical science is the understanding of nature.

Many cultures have contributed to technological science, although Judeo-Christian culture clearly is at the forefront. Yet Chinese culture gave rise to some technological innovations, as did Islamic culture and Roman and Greek culture. But Stark points out that only one culture has given rise to theoretical science. Theoretical science- the understanding of nature- has arisen only in the milieu of Judeo-Christian culture. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Priestly, Harvey, Linnaeus, Pasteur, Mendel, Faraday, Maxwell, Einstein, Planck, Bohr, Schrodinger, Dirac, Feynman, Watson, Crick and all of the scientists who have advanced our understanding of nature have lived and worked in a culture saturated with Judeo-Christian philosophy, theology, and ethics.

Where are the Einsteins and the Newtons from animist cultures? Where are the Galileos and the Plancks from Hindu, Moslem, or Buddhist cultures? Where are the Faradays and the Maxwells from atheist cultures? There are no doubt as many men and women with supreme intellectual gifts from these cultures as there are from Judeo-Christian culture. And many of these cultures (e.g China, Islam) have had great wealth and organized institutions of learning. Yet there has arisen little or no theoretical science from any of these cultures. These cultures have contributed virtually nothing to the scientific understanding of the natural world. Stark observes something that is so obvious that we overlook it: nearly all theoretical science has arisen from Judeo-Christian culture.

Why? Stark points out that Judeo-Christian metaphysics provides the necessary precondition for theoretical science. Judeo-Christian theology alone provides a basis for understanding nature. It asserts that 1) the universe is created by a Mind- by God. 2) God is rational; in fact, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity is the Logos- the organizing principle of the world. 3) The world works in accordance with natural laws ordained by God. 4) Man is created in the image of God, and thus can use his own mortal mind to understand natural laws. 5) Man is loved by God, and is encouraged to understand natural laws.

The Judeo-Christian answer to Einstein's famous quip "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible" is that there is an obvious reason why nature is comprehensible to man: man is made in the image of the rational Mind that created nature. This inference is the implicit or explicit basis for all theoretical science. In cultures in which this inference is not made, theoretical science does not originate.

The entire enterprise of theoretical science depends on a quite specific metaphysics. Only Judeo-Christian theology provides that metaphysics. The Islamic belief that Allah is so transcendent that he need not act rationally, or the animist belief that all of nature is alive and capricious, or the atheist belief that 'sh*t happens' form no basis for theoretical science.

One could even offer this argument: the astonishing effectiveness of Judeo-Christian metaphysics in the study of nature lends credence to the inference that Judeo-Christian metaphysics has a solid core of truth. Why would a myth without basis in reality provide the only effective cultural milieu for understanding nature? Why is there such an astonishing real-world congruence between Judeo-Christian theology and modern science? Why does Judeo-Christian theology alone tell the truth about nature?

But what of scientists in Western culture who are personally atheist? Stark notes that Western atheist scientists are immersed in Judeo-Christian culture and implicitly work within the mindset of that culture. Their scientific accomplishments are in spite of their atheism, not because of it. Stripped of Judeo-Christian milieu, atheists produce no science. There are brilliant atheists in animist and Buddhist and Islamic culture, but they do no science. If atheism, rather than Judeo-Christian culture, is a spur to science, where are the atheists producing theoretical science in non-Judeo-Christian cultures?

So what has atheist culture contributed to modern science? Before New Atheists object that atheists are an oppressed minority and therefore have no culture, I reiterate that there have been explicit atheist cultures: in the Soviet Union, in China, in Bulgaria, in East Germany, in North Korea, in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. A third of the world has lived under the boot of atheism. The advance of technological science in societies under the sway of atheism in power has been small; the advance of theoretical science has been nil. Even in cultures historically Christian, atheism-in-power rapidly extinguishes theoretical science. Scientific atheism (the old Bolshevik self-designation) inevitably reduces to the exercise of power, not the study of nature. Ideological hegemony is the atheist 'scientific method'. Witness the feverish efforts of modern atheists to suppress discussion of design in biology. Lysenkoism- ideological hegemony- emerges wherever atheism rules science.

Our civilization is a Christian civilization. Contra Myers, rejecting our Christian heritage won't make us "free". Christianity is the reason for so much in our civilization that is good and that is unique and that is worth preserving. We have been bequeathed an extraordinary heritage- a Christian heritage that many in our society are struggling feverishly to extinguish. Militant atheists have lost the light of Christianity, but they live in the shadow of Christendom and its blessings. Militant atheism and other manifestations of ignorance and hatred won't prevail against Christianity because they are parasitic on it. Scientific atheism is just another form of idolatry, and it will wither.

Christendom is extraordinarily fertile. It is the source of universities and of hospitals. Even in atheist gulags, it thrives. It flourishes in catacombs and in public squares. So have a merry and blessed Christmas season. Give thanks for God's astonishing gift of Himself in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, and give thanks that we live in a part of the world in which His Gift is welcomed. As even P.Z. Myers admits, His Gift is the reason for this wonderful season. What Myers won't admit is that God's gift of Christmas is also the foundation of our civilization, of our ethics, and of modern science.