It's Friday, January 30, 2026.

I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

Well, one of the most important things for us to understand about human beings made in the image of God

is that one way or another, we will

come up with some set of religious beliefs. And you know, I'm going to argue on biblical terms

that that's even true of atheists and agnostics who claim that they have nothing to do with

any religious structure of thought. I'm just going to say that if you look closely at what

they believe and you put together

the thoughts that they put out there, and then you watch their behavior, well, it comes back to the

fact that Richard Dawkins, you know, the famous evolutionary biologists in England at Oxford,

who, of course, was one of the most vociferous of the so-called new atheists.

He also admits that he goes to church from time to time, including Christmas Eve services, because he likes the music.

Now, I'm not going to make that into some kind of Christian declaration.

Not doing that at all, I'm simply saying that they turn out to be more religious than they led on to be. And not only that,

sometimes the religion is particularly irreligious. Sometimes they make a religion out of irreligion.

You can make a religion out of paganism, sexuality, just about anything. But I want to tell you

about a recent obituary that has brought all of this crashing on my personal shore.

The obituary is Eric von Donakin, who died a matter of weeks ago at age 90.

Now, if you are a male of a certain age, you might immediately know the name Eric von Donakin.

I was a teenage boy at the time when he became one of the best-selling authors in the English-speaking world.

And in my world, he became a very popular author.

He became the stuff of conversation among high school students

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