Rite and Reason:These are apparently tough times for Christianity in Ireland. A survey of media stories over this year's Easter week, for instance, reinforced a sense of decline, irrelevance and unbelievability, writes Patrick Mitchel.
A recent Iona Institute/Evangelical Alliance Ireland poll highlighted the rapid pace of secularisation, particularly among the 18-24 age group, where not only do fewer people believe, but a smaller and smaller number are even aware of the basics of Christian belief.
Popular perceptions of the untrustworthiness of the gospels, raised for example in The Da Vinci Code, surface frequently in the media. Throw into this mix another popular perception - that modern science has disproved Christianity - and it is little wonder that most young people don't take it seriously.
No one has been more active in making this case than the author and scientist Richard Dawkins, the modern-day "apostle of atheism". Listening to and reading Dawkins, I am reminded of Thomas in the gospel of John, who refused to believe in the resurrection until he saw the evidence for himself.
Thomas's disbelief was transformed when he was confronted with the risen Jesus. His cry, "my Lord and my God", is one of the high points of the New Testament.
Like Thomas, Dawkins also refuses to believe until he sees incontrovertible evidence.
John explicitly states that he writes his gospel so that his readers would "believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name". The reality for all generations of Christians after Thomas is that they are called to believe that events they have not witnessed for themselves actually happened, and to have faith in someone they cannot see.
God is invisible spirit. This is why believing in him requires faith. If we could see him, faith would be redundant - something the New Testament itself says (1 Corinthians 13:12-13).
But Christian faith is not blind faith. It is a faith that rests on the historical accuracy of the gospels and the events they record. This is where the contribution of world-renowned Jesus scholar Bishop N.T. Wright is important.
Wright, in his hugely significant works Jesus and the Victory of God and The Resurrection of the Son of God, has rearticulated the historical case for the believability of the gospels and the resurrection, and has painted a strikingly authentic historical portrait of Jesus himself.
No serious discussion of the reliability of the gospels can avoid engaging with Wright's arguments that there are good historical reasons to believe that Jesus lived, died and, yes, was even resurrected from the dead.
Dawkins's atheistic campaign is a peculiar one, far beyond the realm of science (and one which is apparently embarrassing some of his scientific colleagues who are also atheists). He has lapsed into what some have called "scientism" - the idea that science can explain everything.
In The Blind Watchmaker Dawkins argues that the Darwinian theory of natural selection does away with the need for a creator God because it explains the mystery of existence purely in physical terms. Yet this is not a scientific statement, it is a "faith statement" - the prevailing secular faith of our western culture. Science does not demand Dawkins's conclusion. Describing a theoretical physical process does not and cannot somehow "disprove" God.
Ultimately, science is a fairly narrow (and fantastically useful and successful) enterprise concerned with understanding how the material world in which we live actually works.
Despite popular perceptions there is no necessary conflict between science and religion. Science itself grew out of a Christian framework of thought.
Many scientists who are Christians look at the same evidence that Dawkins does and conclude that there are strong reasons to believe that a divine mind lies behind the wondrously complex and yet understandable world in which we live.
I don't expect that, however brilliant, people can somehow "prove God". But what they can do, and have done, is make a case for taking the claims of the Christian faith seriously in an age that seems all too eager to dismiss them as spin, hype, intellectually invalid or, in Dawkins's language, "delusional".
Choosing then to believe these claims and to act on their implications is what informed Christian faith is all about.
Dr Patrick Mitchel is director of studies and lecturer in theology at the Irish Bible Institute in Dublin