Is the New Atheism the New Fundamentalism?

I thought the following article from the Washington Post was an interesting critique of the new atheism. Chiefly because it comes at the issue form a humanist perspective. It points out how humanists find the new atheism aggressive and destructive without offering any real alternative. It identifies the old issues that it easier to say what we are against that what we are for. Whist the new atheism suggests that it operates in the spirit of free inquiry in reality all it does in shackle us with doctrinaire atheism.Read the article at-

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/25/

He doth Protest too much

I confess I have not read too much Dawkins. There is little real engagement with ideas. Despite the scientific facade his approach to the idea of God has really too much of the ‘yah boo’ about it. In an article in the the Times newspaper he seeks to defend himself against certain key criticisms. In the course of the article he makes the rather strange comment “If subtle, nuanced religion predominated, the world would be a better place, and I would have written a different book.” What an unusual comment for a man arguing that God is a delusion. Suddenly his argument has swung from being about God to being about religious fundamentalism. It becomes ever clearer, as the article reveals in several places, that Dawkins real problem is not a theological one but a cultural one. Where his rant- for that is mostly what it is- is against the ranters.
Dawkins does not like to deal with detailed theological ideas- much harder work than ranting I suppose. if he did he would realise that at the heart of the Christian faith is the belief that since God is the centre of the universe- not man- and that since man finds his happiness in God, those who believe in God are right to be passionate. Furthermore that that passion arises not from a state of the jury always being out but from real convictions about the living God
Read Dawkins article at

More Twaddle from an Atheist

I’ve just read Shirley Dent’s article in the Guardian The Bible:Unbelievably Good In it Dent an atheist states ‘The fact that they are all untrue should not deter us from remembering the benefits of reading the religious texts at the heart of our cultures.’ Is she trying to tell us that there is not one iota of truth in the Bible- factually, historically, culturally? So what is the value of the Bible according to Dent? It is so that we can understand a cultural heritage that is rooted in the book. If Dent is correct then surely we need to understand what it was that inspired men like Bunyan to root their work in the Bible. It was a deep conviction not simply that the Bible was a cultural source but that it is true.

A Premature Forecast?

Like many I enjoy Alister McGrath’s books with their lucid prose. He has it seems a simple way of putting across otherwise complex ideas. His book The Twilight of Atheism is no different as he skilfully exposes the soft underbelly of atheism. However I have 3 reservations about the book.

1. I wonder does his simplicty sometimes descend into over-simplification. Is atheism really the spent force he suggests? Whilst I agree with much of his analysis I am not convinced that atheism is just as outmoded at this point in time as he suggests. Perhaps more late afternoon than twilight?

2.A few of his views descend into caricature e.g. on puritanism and the French revolution, which leaves me wary of how he dismisses in cavalier fashion some of the ideas I am not as familiar with.

3. As he does in his book Bridge-Building I think he once again rather too glibly dismisses the Reformed response to these questions. And once again in doing so I think he somewhat misrepresents the Reformed postion.

On the whole a good read but the nagging doubts are there.

God is not Great?

A confession. I have not read it, nor do I intend to read it. First of all I am choosy about what I spend my time reading. Secondly, this, like Dawkins smacks of the meretricious. I’m talking about Christopher Hitchens’ new book, ‘God is not Great.’ According to Hitchens religion is “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.” But Hitchens is not a serious voice. Like Dawkins he is an entertainer. There is not serious argument here. Witness his comments on Calvin who according to Hitchens was “a sadist and torturer and killer.’ Hitchens does nothing more here that purport a much travelled myth. If Hitchens cannot be bothered to check his facts why should his argument be taken seriously?

Nor does he take religion seriously as an entity. He does not define religion, a notoriously tricky subject to define. Indeed he bends definitions to suit himself. When confronted with the evils of Hitler and Stalin he redefines the state they created as theocracy to further his arugument.

For a book rooted in modernism it really is singularly unaware of any kind of reasonable argument or evidence.

Don’t waste your time or money on Hitchens’ ravings. The only thing that it really has value for is recycling.