New Atheists Not Deep Enough

[Doug]

DOUG
My mother brought this article to my attention. It's a stereotype-ridden hit piece on atheism, but it is interesting to note the way the false images of atheists are manipulated for maximum effect.

The author claims that contemporary spokesmen for atheism are not giving deep answers--especially when compared to more notable atheists of the past such as Marx, Freud, and Feuerbach.

Opinions?

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Amateur atheists
Why the new atheism isn't serious

by John F. Haught

For many years I taught an introductory theology course for undergraduates titled "The Problem of God." My fellow instructors and I were convinced that our students should be exposed to the most erudite of the unbelievers. Our rationale was that any mature commitment that intelligent young people might make to a religious faith should be critically tested by the very best opponents.

The recent books by Richard Dawkins, Samuel Harris and Christopher Hitchens would never have made the required-reading list. Their tirades would simply reinforce students' ignorance not only of religion but also of atheism. The new atheists do little more than provide a fresh catalogue of the evils wrought by members of the theistic faiths.

Meanwhile, truly inquisitive young minds remain restless for deeper insight. Even Freud's theory of religion's origin, no matter how flawed it may have seemed to my students, at least held their attention and got them to thinking about whether the whole business of religion might be an illusory human creation. My students would have found Hitchens's book rather tame stuff compared to the works of old masters of the projection theory of religion. For while Feuerbach, Marx and Freud provided interesting theoretical frameworks for their theories, Hitchens provides nothing of the sort.

Students might have been titillated by the recent writings of Dawkins and others who profess to give a biological, evolutionary explanation of why people believe in God. But they would have learned in our course that there is no good theological reason to object to any scientific attempts to understand religion, even in evolutionary terms. The course would have made it clear that religion can and indeed should be studied as a natural phenomenon. After all, this is the only way science can study anything, and its insights are completely compatible with any good theology. And my students would have rightly wondered whether evolutionary theory, or any natural or social science, can give a complete and adequate understanding of religion. During our one-semester course students would already have encountered in Freud's thought the claim that science alone is a reliable road to true understanding of anything. And they would have learned from other readings that this claim is a profession of faith known as scientism, a modern belief system that is self-contradictory.

Why self-contradictory? Because scientism tells us to take nothing on faith, and yet faith is required to accept scientism.

Read the rest here.

[Dardedar]

DAR
What a load.

[Tony]

Well, it is largely a load....its a hit piece. But I do agree that much of the current atheist pop-lit is WAY to weak. Not enough genuine philsophical reasoning, and too much knee jerk arguments. Just keep pounding on the inherent flaws in justifications for belief in God, and harp on and on about the Problem of Evil.
Of course, do we really expect serious philosophy to be a best seller in this lame culture? I bet I can't get job with my Philosophy degree...there's part of the answer to that question.

[Doug]

I bet I can't get job with my Philosophy degree...

DOUG
Heck, you can flip burgers or play cashier in the bookstore.

For a while, I sold insurance and securities.

Full-time philosophy jobs are not plentiful, it's true.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

For that matter, neither are full-time English Degree jobs - and do the current crop from our schools (private as well as public) reflect that!