God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens

By John F. Haught

For those interested in the relationship between science and religion, John Haught is no stranger. He is one of the leading thinkers in the field and is known for his thorough understanding of all sides of the discussion, combined with a sincere humility before the subject. This book illustrates once again why he is very much worth having as a partner in dialogue. Though coming in at only 107 pages of text, God and the New Atheism packs a punch, showing that the “new atheism” is new only in the sense that it is a pale version of the stronger and more honest atheists of the Nietzschian variety.

Among a great deal of others, topics include:

Why the new atheists misdefine “faith” as belief without evidence, thus creating a straw man that they can knock over. But as it typical of the new atheists’ philosophical inability to be self-reflexive, Haught points out that under such a definition the atheists own epistemology breaks down and becomes a very small circular argument. All systems of thought must presuppose something, which the new atheists never admit or come to terms with. This is a fatal flaw in their critique of religious knowledge, or even their definition of faith, since they make the same “leap of faith” with their own premises. In fact, if we were to follow Harris and Hitchens’ claim to rid the world of faith we would also have to discredit their own world view, since it is also a faith based system. The irony is thick, and one discovers it on page after page of Haught’s work
Why the critiques of religion as found in the new atheists are actually watered down versions of older arguments. For example, Hitchens claims to have some great insight when he states that religion is all projection. Oddly, this is a very old theory indeed, often called ‘idolatry’ by the religious.

The misuse of the concept of evidence. Harris is all about evidence, but he defines it narrowly as what can be known through scientific discovery, thus limiting the type of knowing available to humans (and again his approach is self-sabotaging and just a circular as any other). And again, this empiricist naturalism is not new, just rehashed Russell and Freud.

Why the new buddies don’t really follow their atheism to its logical conclusion, as their predecessors (Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, Stalin) had done. Thiers is bland and promises a utopia just like the religions they seek to replace, yet this is absurd in the real sense. Rather, the logical application of such systems of thought would be what was seen in Soviet Russia. History shows the dots connected very clearly. Harris et al seek to lead their readers to believe that an atheistic world would be one moving toward justice and happiness and equality, even claiming that Martin Luther King Jr. would have been better off had he not been a Pastor, and that his activism was somehow unrelated, or even in spite of, his Christian beliefs, because religion poisons everything! Yet this Pollyannic leap of faith has no evidence of support. On the contrary, the body count of the 20th century shows the brutality of régimes that have no moral compass. As Dostoevsky prophesied, “If God does not exist, everything is permissible.” The only logical outcome of atheism, and the most predictable based upon the evidence, is nihilism. At least when theists did what was considered ‘wrong’ (a concept without meaning in atheism, just as ‘right’ means nothing), there was a standard by which to judge them. Such is not the case with atheism, since the standard of the conscience is the only rule, and that is proven to be only a socially conditioned instinct. Reread Dostoevsky. It almost becomes comical, were the stakes not so high, when I read the new buddies, with their moral imperatives to reject absolute morality. For those of us who know that their approach is fundamentally flawed and full of gas, it is hard not to laugh out loud on occasion. The only thing stopping too much jocularity on my part is the fact that so many folks buy into their account of the universe without really knowing what it is that they are rejecting.

The misuse of Occam’s Razor by Hitchens. Because he functions out of a dualism between scientific and religious ‘knowing’, at any point when an explanation for anything is required, he takes the scientific. But his mistake lies in his materialist leap of faith, showing that he is unable to understand the multiple layers of meaning found in reality. Haught demonstrates how this makes no sense by using the analogy of a reader. If the reader only understands the images on the paper from the scientific point of view (ink, paper, dye, etc) and not the intent of the author (symbolic meaning, ideas, etc), the reader would miss the point. Although the scientific explanation is true, it isn’t true to the exclusion of the author’s intent. Likewise, Occam’s Razor is used to distinguish explanations of the same kind, not to create a false dichotomy between levels of meaning.

Why the new buddies offer only a partial attack on fundamentalist Christians from the run of the century and nothing more, and certainly not a viable critique of historical, muscular Christianity. Again, the straw is flying as they paint Christianity as somehow debunked by Darwinism. Silly. It is intellectually dishonest to do so, but intellectual honesty, or at least consistency, is not a hallmark of the new buddies.

Why it is illogical to believe as the new buddies do that God could be tested for, as in a tube or laboratory. Besides, “If science itself is the only way to provide such independent assessment, then the quest for proper validation only moves the justification process in the direction of an infinite regress” (45).

Why atheists can indeed be moral and do great things for humanity, but not because of any absolute standard of atheism. No one denies this, but the new buddies try to be martyrs for the cause at every turn, so they pretend to suffer for their beliefs under the accusation that they are immoral. Pretentious.

Why their explanatory monism, as a leap of faith, creates a flat world and leaves no room for the possibility of a personal God who actually cares about anything or has any sort of will.

My only complaint is that the suggested reading is so sparse. Perhaps Haught didn’t want to overwhelm the read of an introductory book, but it seems to me that more could have been added. Lewis’ Miracles and Abolition of Man, Hahn’s Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins' Case Against God, Discerning the Mystery by Andrew Louth, The Restitution of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism by Mr. Michael D. Aeschliman, Does God Exist?: A Dialogue by Todd C. Moody, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies by David Bentley Hart or Science and the Myth of Progress (Perennial Philosophy) by Merhdad M. Zarandi.