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God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens
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Average Rating:  out of 15 Reviews
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Price: $16.95
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Sale: $7.99
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Manufacturer: Westminster John Knox Press
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780664233044
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: John F. Haught
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Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
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Dewey Decimal Number: 211.80922
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Publication Date: 2007-12-31
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Reading Level: 156
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Description: In God and the New Atheism a world expert on science and theology gives clear, concise, and compelling answers to the charges against religion laid out in recent bestselling books by Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Sam Harris (The End of Faith), and Christopher Hitchens (God Is not Great). For some, these new atheists appear to say extremely well what they believe to be wrong with religion. But, as John Haught shows, the treatment of religion in these books is riddled with logical inconsistencies, shallow misconceptions, and crude generalizations. Can God really be dismissed as a mere delusion? Is faith really the enemy of reason? And does religion really poison everything? God and the New Atheism offers a much-needed antidote to the extremist claims of scientific fundamentalism. This provocative and accessible little book will enable readers to see through the rhetorical fog of this recent phenomenon and come to a clearer understanding of the issues at stake in this crucial debate.
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: Ollie's Take |
Date: 2008-12-16 |
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Details: The Author makes a reasoned argument which I dispute.
The product, itself, was just as described by the seller. |
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Review Summary: Disappointing |
Date: 2008-11-23 |
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Details: When Haught criticizes new atheists for arguing that faith is not supported by credible evidence, that implies that Haught has evidence that DOES support faith. So how come Haught never justifies his criticism by providing some of that evidence? This is the third book I've read on this topic. Haught's book was slightly better than McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion, and Marshall's The Truth Behind the New Atheism was awful, but they all suffered from the same lack of evidence. Maybe the new atheists are right! |
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Review Summary: Thoughtful analysis... |
Date: 2008-10-18 |
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Details: One legacy of 9/11 is a spate of books decrying religious extremism and heralding science and reason over faith. These books inevitably focus on the most disastrous effects of religion and then generalize that proper intellectual prioritizing will solve this problem. Is religion evil? No, but making religion too important is. As long as we value science and logic above religious literalism, the world will be more peaceful.
Can you spot the reductionist flaw yet? The problem with authors like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins is that they collapse literalism with terrorism and war, making the illogical connection that religious beliefs lead to violence. Of course some people use religion as an excuse to kill, but their numbers pale in comparison with the population overall. Oftentimes (this was true of the 9/11 attackers) it is political situations that are motivating the violence, with religion the mere vehicle of expression. So why not rid the world of capitalism, imperialism, socialism? If you focus on the extremes of any ideology, the conclusion would be do do away with it. There are millions of literalists in the world who are not violent people. I fail to see how reducing religion in the world will solve the problem.
All of these thoughts came to me while reading John Haught's thoughtful book "God and the New Atheism." He offers some insightful analysis of the new atheists, two of whom I had read prior to reading this book. (I have not read Christopher Hitchens, but I am familiar with him.)
Most useful to his critique is the fact that authors like Dawkins and Harris aren't well informed about their own topic, approaching Christianity as if it were only defined by its extremes. Not all Christians are literalists, and not all non-literalists are peaceful people. Dawkins and Harris seek to end religion as we know it, and yet their focus is very narrow.
Then there is the issue of imposing the scientific method onto spirituality. Haught points out that spirituality isn't a science, and is bound by different rules. Faith is not about evidence, but about trust in an order that lacks coherent origins. This argument is hardly new, but there is some weight to it. Not everything you believe in can be explained by science.
Haught's ultimate point is that religion addresses things (such as faith, trust, and love) which are too profound to be reduced to scientific theories. If the new atheists had truly wished to deconstruct religion, they might have looked deeply at these issues. Instead what they offer is a simplistic connection between religious theism and political violence, and seek to prioritize science over spirituality. |
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Review Summary: Merits Consideration as the Liberal Response to the New Atheists |
Date: 2008-10-16 |
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Details: In the Introduction Haught argues that a proper understanding of God, faith, and theology is something these critics are woefully lacking in, and as such their critique of Christian religion is "theological unchallenging." (p. xi). Haught argues that when it comes to the Christian notion of God the understanding of the New Atheists "has almost nothing to do with what Christian faith and theology today understand by that name." (p. xv). When it comes to understanding religious faith their views are "at the same unscholarly level as the unreflective, superstitious, and literalist religiosity of those they criticize." (p. xiii). Haught faults them for debating with "extremists" like creationists, fundamentalists, terrorists and intelligent design advocates "rather than any major theologians." (p. xv).
As a theologian and philosopher of science, Dr. Haught effectively dismantles what I consider to be a few naïve understandings of the new atheists regarding faith and the scientific method. It's a common mistake that applied and theoretical scientists unaccustomed to understanding the philosophy of science make. Is faith a belief without evidence? No. Do scientists come to their conclusions based solely on the evidence? No.
Haught claims there is no way without circular reasoning to establish that every true proposition must be based in empirical evidence. His argument is that if this is the case it leaves room for faith, since science cannot be proved based upon a scientific experiment. So what? What method does he propose to investigate our experience in this world other than science and the evidence? Mysticism? Intuition? What kind of methods are those? And how would someone go about establishing them as methods without reasoning in a circle? What is the exact content to these methods since those who adhere to them come away with different and mutually contradictory understandings of their experiences?
I have argued at length in my book on behalf of methodological naturalism, which was first suggested by the ancient Greek philosopher/scientist Thales. This method is the one that has been the most fruitful in history, bar none. That method is all we have. So it's reasonable to think as Barbara Forrest has argued, that since this method has worked so well that philosophical (or ontological) naturalism is a reasonable conclusion to come to, even if we cannot prove such a conclusion by a scientific experiment itself!
Haught compares the so-called new atheists with some of the atheists of yesteryear. He maintains that the writings of the new atheists "would never have made the list of required readings." When compared to the "more muscular" atheist writings found in Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Camus, and Sartre, whom he calls the "hard core atheists," the "soft-core" new atheists offer a "pale brand of atheism." They offer a "relatively light fare" in comparison to "the gravity of an older and much more thoughtful generation of religious critics."
Haught is correct about these older atheists. Camus, for instance, wrestled seriously with the question "Why not commit suicide?" Sartre argued that if God doesn't exist then there is no human nature. We alone define ourselves and we alone must invent our own values. But why must Haught compare the new atheists to these particular older atheists? There is other atheist literature to compare their writings to, like Bertrand Russell, Antony Flew, J.L. Mackie, and Michael Martin, to name some of the most notable and prolific ones. The fact is that the particular older atheists Haught is comparing Dawkins, et. al. to, are mostly known as existentialists. They are men who argued from atheism to a particular conclusion about values and morals, which they believed had no other grounding than one's inner subjective choices. They were relativists and could see no reasonable explanation for morals apart from the "will to power," or choice itself. And they concluded, falsely I might add, that without a rational grounding for morals in God our world is potentially screwed.
By contrast, Bertrand Russell wrote plenty about morality, as did Antony Flew, J.L. Mackie, and Michael Martin. These atheists do not conclude what the existential writers did about morality and a society without God. There have been some other good atheist writers like Erik J. Wienberg and Michael Shermer, who have likewise offered good reasons for morality and a good society if there is no God. Unlike the existentialists of the past who were groping for moral answers in a godless society, subsequent atheist writers have found reasonable solutions to these questions. And these solutions allow me to say that the new atheists are indeed correct that there will be positive changes with only minimal kinds of other changes to society and moral values without God, despite what the existentialists claimed.
Haught faults the new atheists for not understanding theology, and he equates them with creationists who reject evolution "without ever taking a course in biology," (p. 29) because they place "the same literalist demands on the Bible as do Christians and other fundamentalists." (p. 33). And just like their chosen opponents, Haught tells us the new atheists "are in complete and inalterable possession of the truth." (p. 39). When they treat God as a hypothesis by ignoring Martin Buber's distinction between viewing God as an "It" versus a "Thou," and by ignoring the work of theologians like Karl Barth (who I did my master's thesis on), and Paul Tillich, the new atheists "have chosen to topple a deity whose existence most theologians and a very large number of other Christians, Muslims, and Jews would have no interest in defending anyway." (p. 44).
The trouble we skeptics have when attempting to debunk Christianity is that we have a moving and nebulous target. So how can any of us be faulted for not knowing which Christianity to take aim at, including the new atheists? Here's what he needs to do (with no intention of ridicule). Get all of the Christian theologians together. Lock the most important ones in a very large room (that'll be the first decision) and then have them stay there until they come to a consensus on what theology represents true Christianity. If they can come to a consensus let them emerge and I'll write a book debunking that. But it'll never happen, will it? Because not even Christians all agree who speaks for them, unless it's them!
Haught charges that Dawkins discussion of morality and the Bible, for instance, "is a remarkable display of ignorance and foolish sarcasm." (p. 68). If you've read Dawkins, he speaks, as I do, of the morality we find in the Bible, like dashing babies against the rocks, genocide, slavery, and so forth. It's in the Bible, so we mention it. It won't do any good to mention the good portions of the Bible, because if there is a perfectly good God these things should never have received divine sanction in the first place, period.
Haught wants to stress that "the main point of biblical religion...is to have faith, trust, and hope in God. Morality is secondary." (p. 67) Dr. Haught claims that the "moral core of Judaism and Christianity" is "justice...what has come to be known as God's preferential option for the poor and disadvantaged." (p. 68). Who is he trying to kid here? Yes, there is an emphasis on the poor and disadvantaged in several major sections of the Bible, notably the prophets, but do the "disadvantaged" include slaves, witches, women caught in adultery, or the many offenses that require capital punishment, like a son cursing his patriarchal kingly father? Does it include the women God told the Israelite soldiers to take as sex slaves (Numbers 31:17-18)? Does it include Jepthah's daughter who was sacrificed to God by her father? Does it include the wives that Ezra told his people to divorce simply because they were not Jewish? Does it include the surrounding nations that God "commanded" the Israelites to butcher? Does it include the virgins that were stolen as wives from the cities of Jabesh Gilead and Shiloh (Judges 21)? If God cares so much for the poor and disadvantaged, then why not advocate justice for them?
When it comes to the injustices found in the Bible, Haught admits they are found there. But with sarcasm Haught charges: "Either the God of the Bible must be a perfect moral role model and a perfect engineer, or else this God is not permitted by Dawkins to exist at all." (p. 105) He thinks there is a third way. He claims that it is not biblical religion but "idolatry" that makes religion go bad." "The antidote to idolatry, however, is not atheism but faith." (p. 76)
Haught's God is one of mystery that requires faith. But in the end Haught's God is unwittingly the "god of the gaps" where the gaps left unexplained by science, such as the problem of consciousness and the problem of a basis for morality, leave room for his faith in the mysterious God of Tillich's "ultimate concern." I'm sure he'll deny this. He'll argue instead that his God is the sustainer of creation and can be seen in all of creation, not just in the gaps. But modern science has closed all of the other gaps, so his God is the only one left after the demolition is done. Prior to modern science Christians believed the Genesis creation accounts literally, but with the advent of modern science Haught's Church was forced to give that up. Prior to the awareness that every human being should be entitled to human rights, Haught's Church defended witch hunts and slavery. Prior to the women's rights movement Haught's Church defended sexism. Because things have changed in defiance of the Church, Haught now wants to maintain this is the result of progressive revelation stemming from the prophets of old which takes place by God's direction.
I'm sure he is aware of the parable of the invisible gardener. I think he believes in one. His faith needs no positive evidence. The only evidence his faith needs are the gaps in our knowledge. But since there are likely always to be gaps, his faith has no positive evidence for it at all.
Does his faith survive the attacks of the New Atheists? Maybe, but his God is not worth worshipping. He believes in a distant God, and a distant God is no different than none at all. Judge for yourselves.
John W. Loftus, author of Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity |
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Review Summary: New Atheism is based on faith |
Date: 2008-09-23 |
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Details: Professor Haught exposes the shallowness of the"New Atheism"in a cogent and readable style. He shows that Scientific Materialism is the foundation for their position which ridicules religion as "Belief without Evidence." However, they have not and indeed cannot produce evidence for the claims of Scientific Materialism because it truly is belief without evidence. |
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