While driving around town on Saturday, I happened to tune in to the This American Life radio show during a really interesting segment: Dave Dickerson, a former evangelical Christian, describes his confrontation with a “demon” in his college classroom (the segment is at the very end of the episode and begins at at the 46:20 mark). The incident contributed to Dickerson’s loss of faith, so it’s not a happy story from a religious point of view, but the way he exposes the “demon” is very clever and amusing. And the questions he raises are important ones that all Christians must grapple with at some point.

Dickerson has a blog, at which he notes that he’s currently working on a book that presents “a polite case for atheism that distinguishes good religion from bad and understands why atheism as we currently conceive of it might not be the most appealing life choice for many people.” If the tone of his This American Life segment is representative of the tone of his book, Dickerson’s book might lead to a more profitable dialogue with Christians than the much-discussed, more acerbic Hitchens/Dawkins/Harris tomes.