In Atheism’s New Clothes, David Glass explores the primary works of so-called “New Atheism” including Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great, Sam Harris’ The End of Faith, and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.
‘With consummate analytical skill and scrupulous fairness, David Glass demonstrates that the emperors of the New Atheism have no clothes … a must read addition to the growing literature on the science–religion debate and the intellectual defence of Christianity.’ John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford.
After reading David Bentley Hart’s Atheist Delusions, I didn’t think anyone could offer a more penetrating exposure of the superficiality of New Atheism. Hart laments a lack of “reflective and brilliant atheists” as one of the “innumerable evidences of late modern culture’s lack of spiritual depth.”
Whenever I’ve written about this militant brand of atheism much of the response (as with the writings of these men) can be characterized (as Hart noted) by “historical illiteracy, theatrical indignation, and subfusc moralizing.”
“The entire tribe of the new atheists is a disappointment. A reflective and brilliant atheist is a man much to be admired, if he truly demonstrated an understanding of what it is he is rejecting; and an atheist genuinely willing to accept the full implications of his convictions (Nietzche being a nonpareil example) should not be reviled for those convictions. But it seems obvious that among the innumerable evidences of late modern culture’s lack of spiritual depths one must include its manifest impotence to produce profound atheists. Instead the best it seems we can hope for today are dreary purveyors of historical illiteracy, theatrical indignation, subfusc moralizing, and the sort of illogical confusions that Richard Dawkins has brought to a level of almost transcendent perfection” (xii, In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments, David Bentley Hart).
I’ve written a bit on the subject (see below) and I haven’t read much since Hart’s work. I look forward to reading the contribution from Glass.
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Example? “historical illiteracy, theatrical indignation, and subfusc moralizing”?
How dare we not believe the claims of the religious that aren’t backed up by evidence! How dare we! (Because that’s all that atheism is. If he’s arguing about anything else, then he is just complaining about some writers and their books.)
atheism is a alternative for some people who see the injustices and suffering in the world and feel a God would intervene by now to stop it. so it is easier to just not believe in a soverign creator just so they can avoid the issue. kind of like creating one’s own fantasy world, but they have to reconcile what they see in the world, the science that supports that things have design and that the universe operates on a precise mathmatical equation, as they put it, only design by a creator could manage it, chance is just so forboding, steps too many and complicated to have worked out as the earth and life on it and the universe just by a quadzillion steps that were just so so to lead to what we have now. some like atheism too because it means no accountablity to a soverign ruler so they can just do what they want without fear of accountability. after all if you just die and that is it, why worry about morality? or right or wrong? truth or lie?
an entire work, clutching at straws.