“I do not, by nature, thrive on confrontation,” declares Richard
Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of
Science at Oxford University and one of the world’s leading skeptics
concerning Christianity and belief in God.

Dawkins is well known as an intellectual adversary to all forms of
religious belief–and of Christianity in particular. He is one of the
world’s most prolific scientists, writing books for a popular audience
and addressing his strident worldview of evolutionary theory to an
expanding audience. Put simply, Richard Dawkins aspires to be the
“devil’s chaplain” of Darwinian evolution.

All this is what makes Dawkins’ denial of a confrontational approach
so ludicrous. It is simply false at face value. This is a man who has
taken every conceivable opportunity to make transparently clear his
unquestioned belief that the dominant theory of evolution renders any
form of belief in God irrational, backward, and dangerous.

Dawkins set out the basic framework of his worldview in best-selling books including, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and, most famously, The Selfish Gene. Now, in The God Delusion,
Dawkins brings his attack on Christianity to a broader audience.
Interestingly, Dawkins’ new book is released close on the heels of two
similar works. Fellow skeptics Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett have
written similar books released since late summer. Taken together, these
three books represent something of a frontal attack upon the legitimacy
of belief in God.

There are few surprises in The God Delusion. Dawkins is a
gifted writer who is able to popularize scientific concepts, and he
writes with an acerbic style that fits his purpose in this volume. His
condescending and sarcastic tone set the stage for what he hopes will
be a devastating attack upon theism.

Dawkins admits his “presumptuous optimism” in hoping that his book
will cause persons to set aside their faith. “If this book works as I
intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it
down,” he asserts. Time will tell.

Though The God Delusion is intended more as an attack upon
theism than as a defense of evolutionary theory, the framework of
evolution is never far from Dawkins’ mind. In his opening chapter, he
argues that most legitimate scientists–indeed all who really
understand the issues at stake–are atheists of one sort or another. He
defines the alternatives as between a stark atheism (such as that
Dawkins himself represents) and a form of nonsupernatural religion, as
illustrated by the case of Albert Einstein. “Great scientists of our
time who sound religious usually turn out not to be so when you examine
their beliefs more deeply,” he explains. As examples, Dawkins offers
not only Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking but also Martin Rees,
currently Britain’s Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal
Society. According to Dawkins, Rees “goes to church as an ‘unbelieving
Anglican . . . out of loyalty to the tribe.’” As Dawkins explains, Rees
“has no theistic beliefs, but shares the poetic naturalism that the
cosmos provokes in the other scientists I have mentioned. He cites
Einstein to the effect that he was a “deeply religious
nonbeliever”–moved by the majesty of the cosmos but without any
reference whatsoever to a supernatural being.

As Dawkins explains, real scientists are naturalists. As
such, they eliminate entirely the question of a supernatural being’s
existence. “The metaphorical or pantheistic God of the physicists is
light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wreaking,
thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible, of
priests, mullahs and rabbis, and of ordinary language. Deliberately to
confuse the two is, in my opinion, an act of intellectual high treason.”

As Dawkins then makes clear, his attack upon belief is explicitly and exclusively directed toward belief in supernatural
gods. As he explains, “the most familiar” of these deities is Yahweh.
Put simply, Dawkins holds no respect for those who believe in the God
of the Bible, whom he describes as ruthless, cruel, selfish, and
vindictive.

Accordingly, Dawkins does not understand why social etiquette requires respect for those who believe in God.

In one of the central chapters of his book, Dawkins attempts to
accomplish two simultaneous purposes: to undermine the intellectual
movement known as Intelligent Design and, in a twist of its logic, to
suggest that belief in God is itself a refutation of the very notion of
an intelligent design. As Dawkins sees it, “the existence of God is a
scientific hypothesis like any other.” As he sets out his case, he
denies that there could be any legitimate basis for belief in
God. The very notion of a supernatural agent flies directly in the face
of his presuppositional naturalism. Therefore, by definition, such a
God cannot exist and those who believe in such a God prove their
intellectual inadequacy or gullibility.

In accordance with his own evolutionary theory, Dawkins acknowledges
that the universe displays appearances of design. Nevertheless, he
suggests that these appearances are false, and that any example of
apparent design is actually due to the Darwinian engine of natural
selection. He considers the traditional proof for God’s existence
offered by the philosophers and rejects each out of hand. Finally, he
considers the argument that the existence of God can be proved by
Scripture–but then launches a broadside attack upon Scripture itself.

When it comes to the fundamentals of the Christian faith, Dawkins
displays absolute amazement that any intelligent person could even
entertain the notion that such teachings might be true. Pointing back
to the nineteenth century, Dawkins asserts that the Victorian era was
“the last time when it was possible for an educated person to admit to
believing in miracles like the virgin birth without embarrassment.” He
adds: “When pressed, many educated Christians today are too loyal to
deny the virgin birth and the resurrection. But it embarrasses them
because their rational minds know it is absurd, so they would much
rather not be asked.”

Since Dawkins considers the existence of God to be nothing more than
a scientific hypothesis–just like any other–he presents his case that
“the factual premise of religion–the God Hypothesis–is untenable.” In
other words, “God almost certainly does not exist.”

So why do so many persons believe in Him? Consistent with his
evolutionary worldview, Dawkins must offer a purely naturalistic
interpretation for the origin and function of religion. He argues that
religion must be, like all other human phenomena, a product of
Darwinian evolution. Nevertheless, he understands that the existence of
religious belief poses some interesting Darwinian questions. “Religion
is so wasteful, so extravagant; and Darwinian selection habitually
targets and eliminates waste,” Dawkins explains. Therefore, there must
be some fascinating Darwinian explanation for how religious belief
emerged and survives. Citing his colleague Daniel Dennett, Dawkins
suggests that religious belief is “time-consuming, energy-consuming”
and “often as extravagantly ornate as the plumage of a bird of
paradise.” He sees no good in it at all. “Thousands of people have been
tortured for their loyalty to a religion, persecuted by zealots for
what is in many cases a scarcely distinguishable alternative faith.
Religion devours resources, sometimes on a massive scale. A medieval
cathedral could consume a hundred man centuries in its construction,
yet it was never used as a dwelling, or for any recognizable useful
purpose.”

In his own twist, Dawkins argues that belief in God is simply a
by-product of some other evolutionary mechanism. He suggests that one
possible source of belief in God (understood in purely physicalist and
natural terms) is the need for the brains of children to accept on
faith the teachings of their elders. Thus, he argues that evolution may
have “psychologically primed” the human brain for some form of belief
in God. Nevertheless, whatever function this may have served the
process of evolution in the past, Dawkins now believes that it has
become a dangerous liability.

“I surmise that religions, like languages, evolved with sufficient
randomness, from beginnings that are sufficiently arbitrary, to
generate the bewildering–and sometimes dangerous–richness of
diversity that we observe. At the same time, it is possible that a form
of natural selection, coupled with the fundamental uniformity of human
psychology, sees to it that the diverse religions share significant
teachers in common.” In the end, Dawkins sees all these forms as
dangerous.

Along the way, Dawkins insists that morality is not based in
absolute truth but in a consequentialist form of reasoning that is
itself a monument of evolutionary development. He plays with categories
and concepts–no doubt intentionally–in order to confuse the question.
Christians do not argue that those who believe in God always act in a
way that is morally superior to those who do not. Atheists may behave
better than Christians. This is to our shame, but it does not pose an
intellectual challenge to the validity of the Christian faith. The more
urgent question has to do with how any form of moral
absolute–including even a prohibition on murder or incest–can survive
if all morality is merely a natural phenomenon of human evolution.
Dawkins simply embraces the relativity of morality, arguing that this
explains why Christians are so dangerous. Believing in moral absolutes,
Christians are led to defend the sanctity of human life at every level
and to believe that, of all things, the Creator actually has set forth
moral commandments and expectations concerning our sexuality. Dawkins
rejects these ideas altogether.

At the same time, he suggests that the morality revealed in the
Bible is actually immoral when judged against the enlightened standards
of our current moral Zeitgeist. Furthermore, Dawkins argues
that modern persons do not actually derive their morality from the
Bible, no matter how much they may claim to do so.

In a sweeping rejection of biblical Christianity, Dawkins expresses
outrage at the morality of both the Old and New Testaments. “I have
described atonement, the central doctrine of Christianity, as vicious,
sado-masochistic and repellant. We should also dismiss it as barking
mad, but for its ubiquitous familiarity which has dulled our
objectivity,” he asserts. Dawkins would dispense with the Ten
Commandments and replace these with a new set of commandments more
attuned to modern times. Among his proposed commandments are these:
“Enjoy your own sex life (so long as it damages nobody else) and leave
others to enjoy theirs in private whatever their inclinations, which
are none of your business;” “Do not discriminate or oppress on the
basis of sex, race or (as far as possible) species.” Another of
Dawkins’ commandments hits close to home: “Do not indoctrinate your
children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate
evidence, and how to disagree with you.”

Amazingly, Dawkins denies that he is himself an absolutist.
Accordingly, he expresses incredulity at the fact that he is seen as a
particularly ardent opponent of Christianity.

“Despite my dislike of gladiatorial contests, I seem somehow to have
acquired a reputation for pugnacity towards religion. Colleagues who
agree that there is no God, who agree that we do not need religion to
be moral, and agree that we can explain the roots of religion and of
morality in non-religious terms, nevertheless come back to me in gentle
puzzlement. Why are you so hostile?”

Dawkins denies that he is a “fundamentalist atheist.” “Maybe
scientists are fundamentalists when it comes to defining in some
abstract way what is meant by ‘truth.’ But so is everybody else,” he
insists. “I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution is true than
when I say it is true that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere.”

In the end, Richard Dawkins will surely fail in his quest to turn
theists in to atheists. His book represents nothing fundamentally
new–just the same old arguments repeated over and over again. Dawkins
is quick to label his intellectual adversaries as fundamentalists, but
he conveniently redefines the term so that it does not apply to his own
position. He claims to live life solely on the basis of scientific
evidence, but is so fundamentally committed to the theory of evolution
that we cannot take his protestations to the contrary seriously.

The God Delusion is sure to garner significant attention
in the media and in popular culture. Dawkins, along with the other
fashionable skeptics and atheists of the day, makes for good television
and creates an instant media sensation. In one sense, we should be
thankful for the forthrightness with which he presents his arguments.
This is not a man who minces words, and he never hides behind his own
argument. Furthermore, at several points in the book he correctly
identifies weaknesses in many of the arguments put forth by theists. As
is so often the case, we learn from our intellectual enemies as well as
from our allies.

The tone of the book is strident, the content of the book is
bracing, and the attitude of the book is condescending. Nevertheless,
Dawkins insists that his strident attack upon the faith is limited to
words. “I am not going to bomb anybody, behead them, stone them, burn
them at the stake, crucify them, or fly planes into their skyscrapers,
just because of a theological disagreement,” he insists. He even allows
that “we can retain a sentimental loyalty to the cultural and literary
traditions” of organized religion, “and even participate in religious
rituals such as marriages and funerals,” he asserts. Nevertheless, all
this must be done without buying into the supernatural beliefs that
historically went along with those traditions.” Further: “We can give
up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.”All
this raises more questions than Dawkins answers. If belief in God is so
intellectually abhorrent, why would anyone want to retain the
traditions associated with these beliefs? Why does Dawkins acknowledge
that all this amounts to “a treasured heritage?” It must be because, in
the end, even Richard Dawkins is not as much of an atheist as he
believes himself to be. If Dawkins is so certain that theism is dead,
why would he devote so much of his time and energy to opposing it? A
man who is genuinely certain that Christianity is passing away would
feel no need to write a 400-page book in order to urge its passing.

Roger Kennedy of The New York Times wondered how some of the “New Atheists” now popular in the media and bookstores would be observing the “holiday” season. Presumably, these vigorous opponents of Christianity would treat the observance of Christmas like a disease and stay as far away as possible.

Not so, it seems. Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and the more recent Letter to a Christian Nation has a Christmas tree in his living room, complete with ornaments. As Kennedy explains, Mr. Harris and his wife are observing “a (relatively) holly, jolly atheistic Christmas.”

More:

“It seems to me to be obvious that everything we value in Christmas — giving gifts, celebrating the holiday with our families, enjoying all of the kitsch that comes along with it — all of that has been entirely appropriated by the secular world,” he said, “in the same way that Thanksgiving and Halloween have been.”

Well, the problem is evident in Mr. Harris’ judgment that gift giving, family gatherings, and “kitsch” represent “everything we value at Christmas.” He can speak for himself, of course, but that is not the sum total of what Christmas means for Christians. That statement reveals a great deal more about Sam Harris than about Christmas. Christians can do without the gifts and gatherings, but not without the remembrance and celebration of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, seriously-minded Christians should be far more offended by the kitsch than Mr. Harris is.

Richard Dawkins, the Oxford professor who aggressively opposes all belief in God as dangerous, seems to agree with Sam Harris. As Kennedy explains:

Mr. Dawkins, reached by e-mail somewhere on a book tour, was asked about his own Christmas philosophy. The response sounded almost as if he and Mr. Harris — and maybe other members of a soon-to-be-chartered Atheists Who Kind of Don’t Object to Christmas Club — had hashed out a statement of principles. Strangely, these principles find much common ground with Christians who complain about the holiday’s over-commercialization and secularization, though the atheists bemoan the former and appreciate the latter.

“Presumably your reason for asking me is that ‘The God Delusion’ is an atheistic book, and you still think of Christmas as a religious festival,” Mr. Dawkins wrote, in a reply printed here in its entirety. “But of course it has long since ceased to be a religious festival. I participate for family reasons, with a reluctance that owes more to aesthetics than atheistics. I detest Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and the obscene spending bonanza that nowadays seems to occupy not just December, but November and much of October, too.”

He added: “So divorced has Christmas become from religion that I find no necessity to bother with euphemisms such as happy holiday season. In the same way as many of my friends call themselves Jewish atheists, I acknowledge that I come from Christian cultural roots. I am a post-Christian atheist. So, understanding full well that the phrase retains zero religious significance, I unhesitatingly wish everyone a Merry Christmas.”

The self-identified “post-Christian atheist” argues that Christmas long ago ceased to be a “religious festival.” He dislikes silly Christmas songs on the basis of aesthetic judgment (a judgment shared, by the way, by many Christians) and is happy to “wish everyone a Merry Christmas.”

How charitably secular of him. Nevertheless, Professor Dawkins should be more careful. He obviously misses a fascinating irony here. The title “Christ” is a transliteration of the Greek word for “the anointed one” — the Messiah. He mocks the holiday but declares the fact that Jesus is the Messiah every time he wishes anyone “Merry Christmas” — whether that is his intention or not.

The book of Ecclesiastes declares that “the voice of a fool [comes] through many words” [Eccl. 5:3]. For Richard Dawkins, it just takes two words. Merry Christmas.

“Today’s Christians know that they do not, as their ancestors did, live in a society where God’s presence was unavoidable. No longer does Christianity form the moral basis of society. Many of us now reside in secular communities, where arguments drawn from the Bible or Christian revelation carry no weight, and where we hear a different language from that spoken in church.”  That is the opening salvo from author Dinesh D’Souza in his new book,What’s So Great About Christianity.

D’Souza’s book is written, at least in part, as a response to the frontal attacks on Christianity launched by figures such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris.  He writes with a clear and uncluttered style and his arguments should attract considerable attention.

D’Souza chides believers for taking “the easy way out,” sheltering themselves in Christian intellectual enclaves rather than engaging the issues.  They live separate secular and sacred lives without recognizing that this is incompatible with the Gospel.

Here is how he sees the challenge:

This is not a time for Christians to turn the other cheek. Rather, it is a time to drive the moneychangers out of the temple. The atheists no longer want to be tolerated. They want to monopolize the public square and to expel Christians from it. They want political questions like abortion to be divorced from religious and moral claims. They want to control school curricula so they can promote a secular ideology and undermine Christianity. They want to discredit the factual claims of religion, and they want to convince the rest of society that Christianity is not only mistaken but also evil. They blame religion for the crimes of history and for the ongoing conflicts in the world today. In short, they want to make religion – and especially the Christian religion – disappear from the face of the earth.

In fact, the new atheists are frustrated that belief in God has not passed away.  They had great confidence that the theory of secularization would promise a new secular age, with belief in God relegated to humanity’s past.  Nevertheless, this isn’t happening.  Europe may be overwhelmingly secular, but Americans are still a deeply religious people — even if this does not represent an embrace of authentic Christianity.

Meanwhile, traditional religion is growing all over the world.  The world is not becoming more secular, but more religious in a myriad of forms.

D’Souza sees this in his own personal story:

I have found this to be true in my own life. I am a native of India, and my ancestors were converted to Christianity by Portuguese missionaries. As this was the era of the Portuguese Inquisition, some force and bludgeoning may also have been involved. When I came to America as a student in 1978, my Christianity was largely a matter of birth and habit. But even as I plunged myself into modern life in the United States, my faith slowly deepened. G.K Chesterton calls this the “revolt into orthodoxy.” Like Chesterton, I find myself rebelling against extreme secularism and finding in Christianity some remarkable answers to both intellectual and practical concerns. So I am grateful to those stern inquisitors for bringing me into the orbit of Christianity, even though I am sure my ancestors would not have shared my enthusiasm. Mine is a Christianity that is countercultural in the sense that it opposes powerful trends in modern Western culture. Yet it is thoroughly modern in that it addresses questions and needs raised by life in that culture. I don’t know how I could live well without it.

The continent of Europe is now the great exception — the secular continent.  D’Souza explains:

Then there is Europe. The most secular continent on the globe is decadent in the quite literal sense that its population is rapidly shrinking. Birth rates are abysmally low in France, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, and Sweden. The nations of Western Europe today show some of the lowest birth rates ever recorded, and Eastern European birth rates are comparably low. Historians have noted that Europe is suffering the most sustained reduction in its population since the Black Death in the fourteenth century, when one in three Europeans succumbed to the plague. Lacking the strong religious identity that once characterized Christendom, atheist Europe seems to be a civilization on its way out. Nietzsche predicted that European decadence would produce a miserable “last man” devoid of any purpose beyond making life comfortable and making provision for regular fornication. Well, Nietzsche’s “last man” is finally here, and his name is Sven.

D’Souza’s strongest analysis comes when he considers the true character of the new atheism.  It is, he suggests, a “pelvic revolt against God.”   In other words, it is a revolt against Christian morality — especially sexual morality.  This is not a new observation or argument, but D’Souza makes it exceptionally well:

My conclusion is that contrary to popular belief, atheism is not primarily an intellectual revolt, it is a moral revolt. Atheists don’t find God invisible so much as objectionable. They aren’t adjusting their desires to the truth, but rather the truth to fit their desires. This is something we can all identify with. It is a temptation even for believers. We want to be saved as long as we are not saved from our sins. We are quite willing to be saved from a whole host of social evils, from poverty to disease to war. But we want to leave untouched the personal evils, such as selfishness and lechery and pride. We need spiritual healing, but we do not want it. Like a supervisory parent, God gets in our way. This is the perennial appeal of atheism: it gets rid of the stern fellow with the long beard and liberates us for the pleasures of sin and depravity. The atheist seeks to get rid of moral judgment by getting rid of the judge.

D’Souza’s argument here is very insightful.  These atheists are not so much struggling with intellectual doubts but feel limited by moral constraints.  They are repulsed by the very idea of divine judgment, so they get rid of the Judge.

Christians will find Dinesh D’Souza’s latest book to be both interesting and helpful.  His apologetic model is G. K. Chesterton, and he writes with a similar style and verve.  I found his argument that Christians should embrace evolution while rejecting Darwinism to be unconvincing and unhelpful.  The dominant model of evolutionary theory is just as atheistic and incompatible with Christianity as classical Darwinism.

Nevertheless, the book is filled with interesting and helpful arguments offered by a Christian intellectual who is heavily engaged in the great battle of ideas.  What’s So Great About Christianity is a helpful addition to our public debate.

2006 has been a big year for atheism. The release of several major books–all widely touted in the media–has put atheism on the front lines of current cultural conversation. Books such as Richard Dawkins’The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, and Sam Harris’Letter to a Christian Nation are selling by the thousands and prompting hours of conversation on college campuses and in the media.

Now, WIRED magazine comes out with a cover story on atheism for its November 2006 issue. In “The New Atheism,” WIRED contributing editor Gary Wolf explains that this newly assertive form of atheism declares a very simple message: “No heaven. No hell. Just science.”

WIRED is itself a cultural symbol for the growing centrality of technology in our lives. On the other hand, the magazine is not simply a celebration of emerging technologies nor a catalogue of soon-to-be-released marvels. Instead, the magazine consistently offers significant intellectual content and it takes on many of the most controversial issues of the times. Considering the relatively young readership of the magazine, the decision to put atheism on the front cover indicates something of where they think the society is headed–at least in interest.

Wolf accomplishes a great deal in his article, thoughtfully introducing the work of militant atheists such as Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett. At the same time, he probes more deeply into the actual meaning of the New Atheism as a movement and a message.

At the beginning of his article, he gets right to the point: “The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respectfor belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it’s evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there’s no excuse for shirking.”

In order to understand the New Atheism, Wolf traveled to visit with Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett. His interviews with the three are illuminating and analytical.

He met Dawkins in Oxford, which Wolf describes as the “Jerusalem” of human reason. Accordingly, he labels Dawkins “the leading light of the New Atheism movement.”

In one sense, this is hardly news. Richards Dawkins, Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, has been the most ardent and well-publicized intellectual opponent of Christianity for decades now. He was first famous for the evolutionary argument he presented in his best-selling book, The Selfish Gene, now decades old. In his more recent work, Dawkins appears to have left his scientific career something in the background as he attempts to write as something of a philosopher and (a)theologian.

Dawkins’ new book, The God Delusion, reached the best-seller list in recent weeks, and he has made media appearances on everything from the mainstream media to Comedy Central. Unlike many journalists, Wolf understands what makes Dawkins unique. It is not so much that Dawkins is attempting to convince believers that they should no longer believe in God. To the contrary, Dawkins is attempting a very different cultural and political move. He wants to make respect forbelief in God socially unacceptable.

“Dawkins is perfectly aware that atheism is an ancient doctrine and that little of what he has to say is likely to change the terms of this stereotyped debate,” Wolf writes. “But he continues to go at it. His true interlocutors are not the Christians he confronts directly but the wavering nonbelievers or quasi believers among his listeners–people like me, potential New Atheists who might be inspired by his example.”

As Dawkins explains himself, “I’m quite keen on the politics of persuading people of the virtues of atheism.” The Oxford professor also understands that atheism is a political issue as well as a theological question. “The number of nonreligious people in the US is something nearer to 30 million than 20 million. That’s more than all the Jews in the world put together. I think we’re in the same position the gay movement was in a few decades ago. There was a need for people to come out. The more people who came out, the more people who had the courage to come out. I think that’s the case with atheists. They’re more numerous than anybody realizes.”

For a man who is supposedly an exemplar of the humble discipline of science, Dawkins is capable of breathtaking condescension. Consider these words: “Highly intelligent people are mostly atheists . . . . Not a single member of either house of Congress admits to being an atheist. It just doesn’t add up. Either they’re stupid, or they’re lying. And have they got a motive for lying? Of course they’ve got a motive! Everyone knows that an atheist can’t get elected.”

Note his argument carefully–highly intelligent people are most likely to be atheists.

The political dimensions of Dawkins’ thought become immediately apparent when he speaks of how children should be protected from parents who believe in God. “How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents?,” Dawkins asks. “It’s one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society to be stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods?”

Wolf has successfully captured the essence of what animates Richard Dawkins. He is an evangelist for atheism.

“Evangelism is a moral imperative,” Wolf explains. “Dawkins does not merely disagree with religious myths. He disagrees with tolerating them, with cooperating in their colonization of the brains of innocent tykes.” As Dawkins sees it, belief in God is a dangerous “meme.” Dawkins is famous for arguing that memes serve as a major driving force in evolution. Memes, cultural replicators like ideas, can spread like a virus through society. Wolf understands that Dawkins claims to believe in democracy and freedom and thus accepts “that there are practical constraints on controlling the spread of bad memes.” Nevertheless, “Bad ideas foisted on children are moral wrongs. We should think harder about how to stop them.”

In a very real sense, Richard Dawkins grabs the headlines precisely because he is willing to say what many other atheists think. Indeed, he is willing to say what other atheists must think, but are unwilling to say for one political reason or another. Dawkins is spectacularly unconcerned about public relations.

On the link between evolution and atheism, for example, Dawkins is unrepentant and direct–evolutionary theory must logically lead to atheism. While other evolutionists argue before courts and in the media that this is not so, Dawkins states that he cannot worry about the public relations consequences.

As he told Wolf: “My answer is that the big war is not between evolution and creationism, but between naturalism and supernaturalism. The ‘sensible’ religious people are really on the side of the fundamentalists, because they believe in supernaturalism. That puts me on the other side.” As Wolf explains, Dawkins himself insisted that the word “sensible” should be in quotes. In other words, Dawkins seems to have less respect for theological liberalism than for those who are theologically orthodox. At least the true believers know what they truly believe.

This attack on religious moderates is what made The End of Faith, Sam Harris’ 2004 book, so interesting. Harris, whose second book,Letter to a Christian Nation, was released just weeks ago, argues that religious moderates and theological liberals function as something like “enablers” of orthodoxy and fundamentalism. As Wolf keenly observes, the New Atheists oppose agnostics and liberal believers as those who help orthodox believers build and retain a cultural powerbase. Agnostics and theological liberals may be fellow travelers with the atheists, these figures admit, but they actually serve to confuse rather than to clarify the issues at stake. On this, the New Atheists and orthodox believers are in agreement.

Sam Harris is even more apocalyptic than Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett. He argues that, unless belief in God is eradicated, civilization is likely to end in a murderous sea of religious warfare. As an alternative, Harris proposes a “religion of reason.” As he explains, “We would have realized the rational means to maximize human happiness. We may all agree that we want to have a Sabbath that we take really seriously–a lot more seriously than most religious people take it. But it would be a rational decision, and it would not be just because it’s in the Bible. We would be able to invoke the power of poetry and ritual and silent contemplation and all the variables of happiness so that we could exploit them. Call it prayer, but we would have prayer without [expletive deleted].”

Wolf helpfully offers his version of such a prayer: “that our reason will subjugate our superstition, that our intelligence will check our illusions, that we will be able to hold at bay the evil temptation of faith.”

Harris’ self-proclaimed religion of reason bears uncanny resemblances to the features of New Age thought–something that offends many of his fellow New Atheists. Still, Harris’ books have sold by the thousands and he has transformed himself into a poster child for militant atheism. Like Dawkins, Harris sees time on his side. “At some point, there’s going to be enough pressure that it is just going to be tooembarrassing to believe in God.”

The third major figure in Wolf’s article, Daniel Dennett, teaches at Tufts University. As Wolf explains, “Among the New Atheists, Dennett holds an exalted but ambiguous place. Like Dawkins and Harris, he is an evangelizing nonbeliever.” Wolf describes Dennett as offering more humorous examples and thought experiments than Dawkins and Harris. “But like the other New Atheists, Dennett gives no quarter to believers who resist subjecting their faith to scientific evaluation. In fact, he argues that neutral, scientifically informed education about every religion in the world should be mandatory in school. After all, he argues, ‘if you have to hoodwink–or blindfold–your children to ensure that they confirm their faith when they are adults, your faith ought to go extinct.’” Like Harris, Dennett believes that something like a religion of reason might be possible. But, in some contrast to Dawkins and Harris, Dennett does not see faith as something that can be intellectualized away. To the contrary, he sees belief in God to have served an evolutionary purpose. Even as he now believes that evolutionary purpose is no longer helpful, he argues that such an evolutionary feature is not likely to be eradicated quickly. Therefore, Dennett suggests replacing belief in God with something of a secular substitute.

In his wide-ranging article, Wolf considers the emergence of the New Atheism from multiple perspectives. He deals not only with Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett, but with a host of others, including some who believe in God. He understands that the New Atheists stand in contrast with the older atheism more in terms of mood and mode of public engagement. He also understands that those who attempt to rebut the New Atheism on scientific grounds can find themselves facing considerable complexity. As Wolf explains, when defenders of faith accept science as the arbiter of reality, atheists are left “with the upper hand.”

Throughout the article, Wolf also admits his own doubts. He seems to identify himself more with agnosticism than atheism, and he reveals some discomfort with the stridency of the New Atheism.

In his words: “The New Atheists have castigated fundamentalism and branded even the mildest religious liberals as enablers of a vengeful mob. Everybody who does not join them is an ally of the Taliban. But, so far, their provocation has failed to take hold. Given all the religious trauma in the world, I take this as good news. Even those of us who sympathize intellectually have good reasons to wish that the New Atheists continue to seem absurd. If we reject their polemics, if we continue to have respectful conversations even about things we find ridiculous, this doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve lost our convictions or our sanity. It simply reflects our deepest, democratic values. Or, you might say, our bedrock faith: the faith that no matter how confident we are in our beliefs, there’s always a chance that we could turn out to be wrong.”

The very fact that Wolf remains unconvinced by the arguments promoted by the New Atheists is itself significant. What Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett–along with the other New Atheists–really demand is that society must place itself in the hands of a new and militant atheistic priesthood. Science as defined by these new priests, would serve as the new sacrament and as the means of salvation.

What this article reveals is that those arguing that human beings need to be saved from belief in God are facing a tough sell–even in WIREDmagazine.