New Atheism

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New Atheism is a term coined in 2006 by the agnostic journalist Gary Wolf to describe the positions promoted by some atheists of the twenty-first century.[1][2] This modern-day atheism is advanced by a group of thinkers and writers who advocate the view that superstition, religion and irrationalism should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever their influence arises in government, education, and politics.[3][4] In his book Why I Am Not a Christian, published in 1927, the philosopher Bertrand Russell put forward similar positions as those espoused by the New Atheists, suggesting that there are no substantive differences [5] between traditional atheism and new atheism according to Richard Ostling

New Atheism lends itself to and often overlaps with secular humanism and antitheism, particularly in its criticism of what many New Atheists regard as the indoctrination of children and the perpetuation of ideologies founded on belief in the supernatural. Some critics of the movement characterise it pejoratively as "militant atheism" or "fundamentalist atheism".[a][6][7][8][9]

History

Early history

The Harvard botanist Asa Gray, a believing Christian and one of the first supporters of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, commented in 1868 that the more worldly Darwinists in England had "the English-materialistic-positivistic line of thought".[10] Darwin's supporter Thomas Huxley was openly skeptical, as the biographer Janet Browne describes:

Huxley was rampaging on miracles and the existence of the soul. A few months later, he was to coin the word "agnostic" to describe his own position as neither a believer nor a disbeliever, but one who considered himself free to inquire rationally into the basis of knowledge, a philosopher of pure reason [...] The term fitted him well [...] and it caught the attention of the other free thinking, rational doubters in Huxley's ambit, and came to signify a particularly active form of scientific rationalism during the final decades of the 19th century. [...] In his hands, agnosticism became as doctrinaire as anything else--a religion of skepticism. Huxley used it as a creed that would place him on a higher moral plane than even bishops and archbishops. All the evidence would nevertheless suggest that Huxley was sincere in his rejection of the charge of outright atheism against himself. He refused to be "a liar". To inquire rigorously into the spiritual domain, he asserted, was a more elevated undertaking than slavishly to believe or disbelieve. "A deep sense of religion is compatible with the entire absence of theology," he had told [Anglican clergyman] Charles Kingsley back in 1860. "Pope Huxley", the [magazine] Spectator dubbed him. The label stuck." —Janet Browne[11]

Recent history

The 2004 publication of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris, a bestseller in the United States, was joined over the next couple years by a series of popular best-sellers by atheist authors.[12] Harris was motivated by the events of September 11, 2001, which he laid directly at the feet of Islam, while also directly criticizing Christianity and Judaism.[13] Two years later Harris followed up with Letter to a Christian Nation, which was also a severe criticism of Christianity.[14] Also in 2006, following his television documentary The Root of All Evil?, Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion, which was on the New York Times best-seller list for 51 weeks.[15]

In a 2010 column entitled "Why I Don't Believe in the New Atheism", Tom Flynn contends that what has been called "New Atheism" is neither a movement nor new, and that what was new was the publication of atheist material by big-name publishers, read by millions, and appearing on bestseller lists.[16]

Prominent figures

The "Four Horsemen"

The 'Four Horsemen of Atheism': clockwise from top left: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris.
According to Dawkins, "We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."[17]

On September 30, 2007 four prominent atheists (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett) met at Hitchens' residence in Washington, D.C., for a private two-hour unmoderated discussion. The event was videotaped and titled "The Four Horsemen".[18] During "The God Debate" in 2010 featuring Christopher Hitchens vs Dinesh D'Souza, the men were collectively referred to as the "Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse",[19] an allusion to the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation.[20] The four have been described disparagingly as "evangelical atheists".[21]

Sam Harris is the author of the bestselling non-fiction books The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, and Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, as well as two shorter works, initially published as e-books, Free Will[22] and Lying.[23] Harris is a co-founder of the Reason Project.

Richard Dawkins is the author of The God Delusion,[24] which was preceded by a Channel 4 television documentary titled The Root of all Evil?. He is the founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. He wrote: "I don't object to the horseman label, by the way. I'm less keen on 'new atheist': it isn't clear to me how we differ from old atheists."[25]

Christopher Hitchens was the author of God Is Not Great[26] and was named among the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazine. In addition, Hitchens served on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America. In 2010 Hitchens published his memoir Hitch-22 (a nickname provided by close personal friend Salman Rushdie, whom Hitchens always supported during and following The Satanic Verses controversy).[27] Shortly after its publication, Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, which led to his death in December 2011.[28] Before his death, Hitchens published a collection of essays and articles in his book Arguably;[29] a short edition Mortality[30] was published posthumously in 2012. These publications and numerous public appearances provided Hitchens with a platform to remain an astute atheist during his illness, even speaking specifically on the culture of deathbed conversions and condemning attempts to convert the terminally ill, which he opposed as "bad taste".[31][32]

Daniel Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea,[33] Breaking the Spell[34] and many others, has also been a vocal supporter of The Clergy Project,[35] an organization that provides support for clergy in the US who no longer believe in God and cannot fully participate in their communities any longer.[36]

The "Four Horsemen" video, convened by Dawkins' Foundation, can be viewed free online at his web site: Part 1, Part 2.

"Plus one horse-woman"

After the death of Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who attended the 2012 Global Atheist Convention, which Hitchens was scheduled to attend) was referred to as the "plus one horse-woman", since she was originally invited to the 2007 meeting of the "Horsemen" atheists but had to cancel at the last minute.[37] Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, fleeing in 1992 to the Netherlands in order to escape an arranged marriage.[38] She became involved in Dutch politics, rejected faith, and became vocal in opposing Islamic ideology, especially concerning women, as exemplified by her books Infidel and The Caged Virgin.[39] Hirsi Ali was later involved in the production of the film Submission, for which her friend Theo Van Gogh was murdered with a death threat to Hirsi Ali pinned to his chest.[40] This resulted in Hirsi Ali's hiding and later immigration to the United States, where she now resides and remains a prolific critic of Islam,[41] and the treatment of women in Islamic doctrine and society,[42] and a proponent of free speech and the freedom to offend.[43][44]

Others

Perspective

Many contemporary atheists write from a scientific perspective. Unlike previous writers, many of whom thought that science was indifferent, or even incapable of dealing with the "God" concept, Dawkins argues to the contrary, claiming the "God Hypothesis" is a valid scientific hypothesis,[57] having effects in the physical universe, and like any other hypothesis can be tested and falsified. Other contemporary atheists such as Victor Stenger propose that the personal Abrahamic God is a scientific hypothesis that can be tested by standard methods of science. Both Dawkins and Stenger conclude that the hypothesis fails any such tests,[58] and argue that naturalism is sufficient to explain everything we observe in the universe, from the most distant galaxies to the origin of life, species, and the inner workings of the brain and consciousness. Nowhere, they argue, is it necessary to introduce God or the supernatural to understand reality while upholding the possibility of one. New Atheists reject Jesus' divinity.[59]

Scientific testing of religion

Non-believers assert that many religious or supernatural claims (such as the virgin birth of Jesus and the afterlife) are scientific claims in nature. They argue, as do deists and Progressive Christians, for instance, that the issue of Jesus' supposed parentage is not a question of "values" or "morals", but a question of scientific inquiry.[60] Rational thinkers believe science is capable of investigating at least some, if not all, supernatural claims.[61] Institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and Duke University are attempting to find empirical support for the healing power of intercessory prayer.[62] According to Stenger, these experiments have found no evidence that intercessory prayer works.[63]

Logical arguments

Stenger also argues in his book, God: The Failed Hypothesis, that a God having omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipotent attributes, which he termed a 3O God, cannot logically exist.[64] A similar series of logical disproofs of the existence of a God with various attributes can be found in Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier's The Impossibility of God,[65] or Theodore M. Drange's article, "Incompatible-Properties Arguments".[66]

Views on non-overlapping magisteria

Richard Dawkins has been particularly critical of the conciliatory view that science and religion are not in conflict, noting, for example, that the Abrahamic religions constantly deal in scientific matters. In a 1998 article published in Free Inquiry magazine,[60] and later in his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins expresses disagreement with the view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that science and religion are two non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) each existing in a "domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution". In Gould's proposal, science and religion should be confined to distinct non-overlapping domains: science would be limited to the empirical realm, including theories developed to describe observations, while religion would deal with questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. Dawkins contends that NOMA does not describe empirical facts about the intersection of science and religion, "it is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims."

Science and morality

Main article: Science of morality

Popularized by Sam Harris is the view that science and thereby currently unknown objective facts may instruct human morality in a globally comparable way. Harris' book The Moral Landscape[67] and accompanying TED Talk How Science can Determine Moral Values[68] proposes that human well-being and conversely suffering may be thought of as a landscape with peaks and valleys representing numerous ways to achieve extremes in human experience, and that there are objective states of well-being.

The politics of new atheism

New atheism is politically engaged in a variety of ways. These include campaigns to draw attention to the biased privileged position religion has and to reduce the influence of religion in the public sphere (which for example in the US, is mandated in the US constitution, under the term Separation of church and state in the United States), attempts to promote cultural change (centering, in the United States, on the mainstream acceptance of atheism), and efforts to promote the idea of an "atheist identity". Internal strategic divisions over these issues have also been notable, as are questions about the diversity of the movement in terms of its gender and racial balance.[69]

Criticisms

The theologians Jeffrey Robbins and Christopher Rodkey take issue with what they regard as "the evangelical nature of the new atheism, which assumes that it has a Good News to share, at all cost, for the ultimate future of humanity by the conversion of as many people as possible." They believe they have found similarities between new atheism and evangelical Christianity and conclude that the all-consuming nature of both "encourages endless conflict without progress" between both extremities.[70]

Sociologist William Stahl said "What is striking about the current debate is the frequency with which the New Atheists are portrayed as mirror images of religious fundamentalists."[71]

The atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse has made the claim that Richard Dawkins would fail "introductory" courses on the study of "philosophy or religion" (such as courses on the philosophy of religion), courses which are offered, for example, at many educational institutions such as colleges and universities around the world.[72][73] Ruse also claims that the movement of New Atheism—which is perceived, by him, to be a "bloody disaster"—makes him ashamed, as a professional philosopher of science, to be among those holding to an atheist position, particularly as New Atheism does science a "grave disservice" and does a "disservice to scholarship" at more general level.[72][73]

Paul Kurtz, editor in chief of Free Inquiry, founder of Prometheus Books, was critical of many of the new atheists.[8] He said, "I consider them atheist fundamentalists... They're anti-religious, and they're mean-spirited, unfortunately. Now, they're very good atheists and very dedicated people who do not believe in God. But you have this aggressive and militant phase of atheism, and that does more damage than good".[9]

Jonathan Sacks, author of The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning, feels the new atheists miss the target by believing the "cure for bad religion is no religion, as opposed to good religion". He wrote:

Atheism deserves better than the new atheists whose methodology consists of criticizing religion without understanding it, quoting texts without contexts, taking exceptions as the rule, confusing folk belief with reflective theology, abusing, mocking, ridiculing, caricaturing, and demonizing religious faith and holding it responsible for the great crimes against humanity. Religion has done harm; I acknowledge that. But the cure for bad religion is good religion, not no religion, just as the cure for bad science is good science, not the abandonment of science.[74]

The philosopher Massimo Pigliucci feels that the new atheist movement overlaps with scientism, which he feels is philosophically unsound. He writes: "What I do object to is the tendency, found among many New Atheists, to expand the definition of science to pretty much encompassing anything that deals with “facts,” loosely conceived..., it seems clear to me that most of the New Atheists (except for the professional philosophers among them) pontificate about philosophy very likely without having read a single professional paper in that field.... I would actually go so far as to charge many of the leaders of the New Atheism movement (and, by implication, a good number of their followers) with anti-intellectualism, one mark of which is a lack of respect for the proper significance, value, and methods of another field of intellectual endeavor."[75]

Atheist professor Jacques Berlinerblau has criticised the New Atheists' mocking of religion as being inimical to their goals and claims that they haven't achieved anything politically. [76]

Major publications

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The term is sometimes used benignly, for example by atheists such as Frans de Waal.[6]

References

  1. ^ Lois Lee & Stephen Bullivant, A Dictionary of Atheism (Oxford University Press, 2016).
  2. ^ Wolff, Gary, in The New Atheism, The Church of the Non-Believers reprinted in Wired Magazine, November 2006
  3. ^ "New Atheists". The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved April 14, 2016. The New Atheists are authors of early twenty-first century books promoting atheism. These authors include Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. The 'New Atheist' label for these critics of religion and religious belief emerged out of journalistic commentary on the contents and impacts of their books.
  4. ^ Hooper, Simon. "The rise of the New Atheists". CNN. Retrieved 16 March 2010.
  5. ^ Ostling., Richard. "Is the "New Atheism" any different from old atheism?". Retrieved 12 October 2013.
  6. ^ a b De Waal, Frans (25 March 2013). "Has militant atheism become a religion?". Salon.com. Retrieved 9 March 2017. Why are the 'neo-atheists' of today so obsessed with God's nonexistence that they go on media rampages, wear T-shirts proclaiming their absence of belief, or call for a militant atheism? What does atheism have to offer that's worth fighting for? As one philosopher put it, being a militant atheist is like 'sleeping furiously.'
  7. ^ Bullivant, Stephen; Lee, Lois. "Militant atheism". Oxford Reference. Oxford Reference. doi:10.1093/acref/9780191816819.001.0001/acref-9780191816819-e-76 (inactive 2017-10-16). Retrieved 14 March 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of October 2017 (link)
  8. ^ a b Kurtz, Paul. "Religion in Conflict: Are 'Evangelical Atheists' Too Outspoken?". Retrieved 2007-03-28.
  9. ^ a b Hagerty, Barbara Bradley (October 19, 2009). "A Bitter Rift Divides Atheists". NPR. Retrieved 2017-02-12.
  10. ^ Browne, Janet The Power of Place, Volume 2 of the Biography of Charles Darwin (Alfred Knopf, 2002), page 310
  11. ^ Browne, Janet The Power of Place, Volume 2 of the Biography of Charles Darwin (Alfred Knopf, 2002), pages 309-310
  12. ^ Hitchens, Christopher. "God Bless Me, It's a Best-Seller!". Vanity Fair. Retrieved April 14, 2016. ...in the last two years there have been five atheist best-sellers, one each from Professors Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett and two from the neuroscientist Sam Harris.
  13. ^ Harris, Sam (August 11, 2004). The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-7432-6809-1.
  14. ^ Steinfels, Peter (March 3, 2007). "Books on Atheism Are Raising Hackles in Unlikely Places". The New York Times. Retrieved July 17, 2016.
  15. ^ "The God Delusion One-Year Countdown". RichardDawkins.net. Archived from the original on 28 August 2008. Retrieved 5 October 2007.
  16. ^ Flynn, Tom (2010). "Why I Don't Believe in the New Atheism". Retrieved 28 July 2011. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  17. ^ Richard Dawkins, documentary film The Root of All Evil?, January 2006. See the quotation (Wikiquote).
  18. ^ "The Four Horsemen DVD". Richard Dawkins Foundation. Retrieved April 13, 2016. On the 30th of September 2007, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sat down for a first-of-its-kind, unmoderated 2-hour discussion, convened by RDFRS and filmed by Josh Timonen.
  19. ^ Hoffman, Claire (September 2, 2014). "Sam Harris is Still Railing Against Religion—Los Angeles Magazine". Los Angeles Magazine. Retrieved April 13, 2016. As Western society grappled with radical Islam, Harris distinguished himself with his argument that modern religious tolerance had placated us into allowing delusion rather than reason to prevail. Harris upended a discussion that had long been dominated by cultural relativism and a hands-off academic intellectualism; his seething contempt for the world's faiths helped launch the "New Atheist" movement, and together with Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett, he became known as one of the "Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse."
  20. ^ The Oxford Handbook of Atheism; Stephen Bullivant, Michael Ruse; Oxford University Press; Pg. 254
  21. ^ Stedman, Chris (18 October 2010). "'Evangelical Atheists:' Pushing For What?". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2 March 2017. something peculiarly evangelistic about what has been termed the new atheist movement ... It is no exaggeration to describe the movement popularized by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens as a new and particularly zealous form of fundamentalism — an atheist fundamentalism.
  22. ^ Harris, Sam (2012). Free Will. The Free Press. p. 96. ISBN 1451683405. ASIN 1451683405.
  23. ^ Harris, Sam (2013). Lying. Four Elephants Press. p. 108. ISBN 1940051002. ASIN 1940051002.
  24. ^ Dawkins, Richard (2007). The God Delusion. Black Swan. ISBN 978-0-552-77429-1.
  25. ^ Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 10th anniversary edition, Black Swan, 2016, page I15 (new introduction for the 10th anniversary edition).
  26. ^ Hitchens, Christopher (2007). God is Not Great: how religion poisons everything. Atlantic Books; First Trade Edition. p. 320. ISBN 1-843-54574-8.
  27. ^ Hitchens, Christopher (2010). Hitch22. Atlantic Books. p. 448. ISBN 1-843-54922-0. ASIN 1843549220.
  28. ^ "Christopher Hitchens dies at 62 after suffering cancer". BBC News. December 16, 2011.
  29. ^ Hitchens, Christopher (2011). Arguably. Atlantic Books. ISBN 0857892584. ASIN 0857892584.
  30. ^ Hitchens, Christopher (2012). Mortality. Atlantic Books. ISBN 1848879210. ASIN 1848879210.
  31. ^ Hitchens, Christopher. "Is there an afterlife?".
  32. ^ Hitchens, Christopher. "Hitchens and Paxman interview".
  33. ^ Dennett, Daniel (1996). Darwin's Dangerous Idea. p. 592. ISBN 014016734X. ASIN 014016734X.
  34. ^ Dennett, Daniel (2007). Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. Penguin. p. 464. ISBN 0141017775.
  35. ^ Dennett, Daniel. "Clergy Project".
  36. ^ "Clergy Project Home Page".
  37. ^ "Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris & Ayaan Hirsi Ali" on YouTube
  38. ^ "Ayaan Hirsi Ali".
  39. ^ Hirsi Ali, Ayaan (2008). The Caged Virgin. ISBN 0743288343. ASIN 0743288343.
  40. ^ "Controversial film maker killed". The Independent. London.
  41. ^ Hirsi Ali, Ayaan. "Christians in the Muslim world".
  42. ^ Hirsi Ali, Ayaan. "Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Protecting Women From Militant Islam".
  43. ^ Hirsi Ali, Ayaan. "The Right to Offend".
  44. ^ Hirsi Ali, Ayaan. "Muslim Rage and the Last Gasp of Islamic Hate".
  45. ^ Krauss, Lawrence (2012). A Universe from Nothing. Simon & Schuster; First Thus edition. p. 224. ISBN 1471112683.
  46. ^ Coyne, Jerry (2010). Why Evolution is True. OUP Oxford. p. 336. ISBN 0199230854.
  47. ^ Coyne, Jerry. "WEIT".
  48. ^ Paulson, Steve. "Proud atheists". Retrieved 2015-09-29.
  49. ^ Barker, Dan Evangelistic Atheism: Leading Believers Astray in Freethought Today, 1993
  50. ^ Christina, Greta (2012). Why Are you Atheists so Angry. p. 184. ISBN 0985281529.
  51. ^ "James Randi—Celebrity Atheist List". www.celebatheists.com. Retrieved 2016-05-05.
  52. ^ Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Weird Things. Souvenir Press (14 Sep 2007). p. 384. ISBN 0285638033.
  53. ^ Warraq, Ibn (2003). Why I am not a Muslim. Prometheus Books. p. 428. ISBN 1591020115. ASIN 1591020115.
  54. ^ Robertson, David (11 March 2014), "Should Christians be nice in dealing with nasty atheists?", Christian Today
  55. ^ "Bill Maher—Celebrity Atheist List". www.celebatheists.com. Retrieved 2015-09-29.
  56. ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZKGEHPDZrk%7Ctitle=Gad Saad on Religion, New Atheism, and the Regressive Left
  57. ^ Dawkins, Richard (2008). The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
  58. ^ Stenger, 2008
  59. ^ R. Albert Mohler Jr. (25 July 2008). Atheism Remix: A Christian Confronts the New Atheists. Crossway. pp. 56–. ISBN 978-1-4335-2262-8.
  60. ^ a b Dawkins, Richard. "When Religion Steps on Science's Turf : The Alleged Separation Between the Two Is Not So Tidy". Free Inquiry magazine. 18 (2).
  61. ^ Fishman, Yonatan. "Can Science Test Supernatural Worldviews?" (PDF).
  62. ^ Stenger, Victor J. "Supernatural Science". mukto-mona.
  63. ^ Stenger, Victor J. (2009). The new atheism : taking a stand for science and reason. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books. p. 70. ISBN 1-59102-751-9.
  64. ^ Stenger, Victor J. (2007). "1". God : the failed hypothesis : how science shows that God does not exist ([Nachdr.] ed.). Amherst (New York): Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-59102-481-1.
  65. ^ Martin, Michael; Monnier, Ricki (2003). The Impossibility of God. Prometheus Books.
  66. ^ "Incompatible-Properties Arguments". Philo (2): 49–60. 1998.
  67. ^ Harris, Sam (2012). The Moral Landscape. Black Swan. ISBN 0552776386. ASIN 0552776386.
  68. ^ Harris, Sam. "How Science can Determine Moral Values".
  69. ^ Kettell, Steven (2013). "Faithless: The Politics of New Atheism". Secularism and Non Religion. 2: 61–78. doi:10.5334/snr.al.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  70. ^ Jeffrey Robbins and Christopher Rodkey (2010). "Beating 'God' to Death: Radical Theology and the New Atheism". In Amarnath Amarasingam (ed.). Religion and the New Atheism A Critical Appraisal. Haymarket Books. p. 35. ISBN 9781608462032.
  71. ^ William Stahl (2010). "One-Dimensional Rage: The Social Epistemology of the New Atheism and Fundamentalism". In Amarnath Amarasingam (ed.). Religion and the New Atheism A Critical Appraisal. Haymarket Books. pp. 97–108. ISBN 9781608462032.
  72. ^ a b Dougherty, T; Gage, LP (2015). "4/ New Atheist Approaches to Religion, pp. 51-62". In Oppy, Graham (ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion. Oxon and New York: Routledge. pp. 52–53. ISBN 9781844658312. Michael Ruse (2009) claimed that Dawkins would fail 'any philosophy or religion course'; and for this reason Ruse says The God Delusion made him 'ashamed to be an atheist'
  73. ^ a b Ruse, Michael (August 2009). "Why I Think the New Atheists are a Bloody Disaster". Beliefnet. The BioLogos Foundation as a columnist of Beliefnet. Retrieved 19 August 2015. … the new atheists do the side of science a grave disservice … these people do a disservice to scholarship ... Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing … the poor quality of the argumentation in Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and all of the others in that group … the new atheists are doing terrible political damage to the cause of Creationism fighting. Americans are religious people ... They want to be science-friendly, although it is certainly true that many have been seduced by the Creationists. We evolutionists have got to speak to these people. We have got to show them that Darwinism is their friend not their enemy We have got to get them onside when it comes to science in the classroom. And criticizing good men like Francis Collins, accusing them of fanaticism, is just not going to do the job. Nor is criticizing everyone, like me, who wants to build a bridge to believers – not accepting the beliefs, but willing to respect someone who does have them … The God Delusion makes me ashamed to be an atheist … They are a bloody disaster …
  74. ^ Sacks, Jonathan (2011). The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning. New York: Schocken. p. 11. ISBN 0-805-24301-1.
  75. ^ Pigliucci, Massimo (2013). New Atheism and the Scientistic Turn in the Atheism Movement. Midwest Studies in Philosophy. pp. 151–152.
  76. ^ Professor Jacques Berlinerblau tells atheists: Stop whining! Washington Post, 17th September 2012

External links

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