The New Atheists

The New Atheists: Two books for Christians to read.

1.       Hitchens, Peter. “The rage against faith: how atheism led me to faith.”

Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010.

2.       McGrath, Alister. “Why God Won’t Go away: Is the New Atheism Running on Empty?”                   Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010.

Who are the “New Atheists?”

In recent years a new form of atheism has hit various media. Traditionally, atheism occupied a quiet corner of public consciousness, representing a bowing out rather than an energetic  campaign of some sort. McGrath observes that those atheists tended to be agonistics, actually, who claimed that they did not let any awareness of God rule their lives. However, the New Atheists are not merely content to deny the existence of God when asked. They want everyone else to become an atheist as well. Four names figure specifically. Two scientists: Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. One journalist: Peter Hitchens. One professor of philosophy: Sam Harris. Formidable brains, all four. Clever communicators also, especially Peter Hitchens (he died in late 2011). They use two main arguments:

i.                     All religion is violent. Even religious pacifist (like Stanley Hauerwas, a Christian) who enable others to remain violent.

ii.                   In the face of science and other forms of rational thinking, religion is irrational, and its claims are easily refuted.

In these books two Christian writers examine these claims. Both of them want us to know: we should carefully listen to these (often vitriolic) critics. For one thing, Christians have often used violence to get their way. The Crusades, the Inquisition, and the European religious wars of the 16^th and 17^th centuries are but a few examples. A more recent example is the bombing of abortion clinics by US fundamentalist Christians and the murder of some physicians who perform abortions.  We should also keep in mind the language of violence used by such fundamentalist TV preachers like Austin’s John Hagee.  And for another, various fundamentalist and millenialist sects offer faith apologetics that are easily shown to be irrational. The recent end-of-the-world predictions are a case in point.     

Book 1 is written by Peter Hitchens, the brother of Christopher Hitchens. Christopher is a journalist  atheist on the warpath against every kind of believer in some kind of transcendental being, notably Christians and Muslims. He, and others like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, blame believers for every kind of social, political and historical ill.

Like his brother, Peter grew up in an England in which transcendental faith of any sort came to be despised as the delusion of the ignorant, and he himself bought that line. He and many others drifted into admiration for societies built on strict materialist principles, notably the USSR.  Blind to the evils of that society, they lauded the efforts of Lenin and Stalin to relegate faith to the deep recesses of one’s own soul, far removed from any public manifestation. But Peter spent a number of years as journalist in Moscow, and his experiences there led him to recant his atheism and embrace the Christian faith. (Malcolm Muggeridge did the same.)

This book is set up as a polemic with his brother (with whom he once engaged in a public debate). Although it is thin on the substance of his subtitle, it clearly lays bare the foundations on which his brother and others build their anti-faith stances. A useful book.

In book 2 famous British academic Alister McGrath, also a former atheist, takes on each of the four New Atheists in turn.  But he warns Christians: we should always pay careful attention to their critics, for these folks have a knack of finding our communal Achilles heels. While conceding that those four often score valid points, he also points out that invariably their critiques are aimed at a particular kind of Christian, those in the grip of an anti-intellectual fundamentalism so prevalent in the US.  All four are hopelessly ignorant of theology, especially of recent theological developments. In other words, they set up straw men and then knock them down with great shouts of hurrah. But in doing so they ignore evidence that would question their own stances.

For, as McGrath observes, “…God just won’t go away…Religion is back in public life and public debate (xiii).” And here is his summation after having carefully considered what the New Atheists have had to offer.

“It is not my intention to argue the case for the Christian faith in this short volume yet I can hardly fail to point out that the common Christian understanding of human nature over the last two thousand years is that we possess, and are meant to possess, a honing instinct for God… God can no more be eliminated from human life than our yearning for justice or our deep desire to make the world a better place. We having a homing instinct precisely because there’s a home for us to return to. That’s one of the great themes of the New Testament. We are created with an inbuilt yearning for God, famously expressed in the prayer of Augustine of Hippo (354-430): ‘you have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.’ One of the reasons Christianity makes such a powerful appeal to humanity is its ability to make sense of our experience (145).”

I must admit: as I occasionally meet the opinions of these “four horsemen” of atheism, in print and on radio (once on CBC on my way to church on a Sunday morning!) my own occasional doubts about the validity of the Christian faith are stoked. When I was young I was taught that for Christians doubt was a sin. My life’s experience (and some writers) have taught me that that claim is false. Doubt is part of faith, with this proviso that it should not be entertained other than in community. Feelings of doubt should be shared, and liturgy is especially important when a believer isn’t so sure anymore.

And I’m not sure that McGrath’s claim as cited above will stand the test of time. In a recent survey, almost half of Americans surveyed said that they have no interest in (what we call) the “deeper questions of life”: ultimate meaning, life after death, place of suffering, typical religious concerns. So do we all have “an inbuilt yearning for God” like an opposable thumb, or is this merely cultural, a remnant of an earlier age? I wonder.        

Yet I heartily recommend these books, especially book 2.