Amateur Atheists
[Phil Stout]
3 Comments
In the February 26, 2008 issue of Christian Century Magazine, John F. Haught writes about "new-school" atheists Samuel Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. He calls them amateurs because he says they can't hold a candle to the likes of Marx, Nietzche and Freud. "Rather tame," he says.
If you've read these new voices for atheism or heard them on television, "tame" is probably not a word that would come to mind (Hitchens' book is subtitled, "How Religion Poisons Everything"). I read Harris and though it wasn't convincing to me, it certainly didn't seem tame.
But what Haught is saying is that their philosophical underpinnings are inadequate and in this article he begins to explain why. The new athiests are selling a ton of books (Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation, Dawkins' The God Delusion and Hitchens' God is Not Great), so voices like Haught's are important for our culture.
This article is adapted from Haught's new book, God and the New Atheism. I haven't read the book yet, but I recommend the article to you.
You can read it at christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=4497.
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Reader Comments (3)
My whole thought about atheism has been, if they don't believe in God then why do they waste so much time trying to prove he doesn't exist.
In response to the above post I think that many atheist try so hard to prove God doesn't exist, out of fear that he really does exist.
Jeff Arnett wrote if they don't believe in God then why do they waste so much time trying to prove he doesn't exist
Because there's a long and continuing history of people justifying the actions they take against other people 'by reference to a "transcendent" source of authority supposedly beyond renegotiation' - aka God.