How Not To Be An Atheist: A Neoclassical Response to the New Atheism

Abstract

The New Atheism is representative of a series of best selling post-9/11 books written by philosopher Sam Harris, biologist Richard Dawkins, philosopher Daniel Dennett, journalist Christopher Hitchens, and physicist Victor Stenger. These writings underscore the intellectual and moral shortcomings of religion, especially religion centered on worship of God. More aggressive than their predecessors, most of the “New Atheists” are not satisfied with disbelief in God. They claim that a commitment to science, reason, and morality is inconsistent with theism. Using as my point of departure the neoclassical philosophy of the logician-philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, the priest-palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and the philosopher-ornithologist Charles Hartshorne, I argue that the New Atheism is intellectually anaemic, interesting though it is as political activism. The New Atheists criticize a caricature of faith, offer inferior versions of old arguments, commit the creationists’ mistake of construing theism as a scientific hypothesis, and ignore sophisticated forms of belief in God.