Why the New Atheism Shouldn't Be (Completely) Dismissed

Daniel Dennett begins his book Breaking the Spell (2006) by comparing religion to a lancet fluke, a small parasite that enters the brain of ants, causing them to climb to the top of stalks of grass so that they may be eaten by cows or sheep. While this does not end so well for the ant, it works out great for the lancet fluke, which is able to complete its reproductive cycle in the mammal’s gut and then spread its progeny with the expelled feces. Perhaps, Dennett suggests, the human mind is enslaved by ideas in a similar manner, and goes on to remind us (in case we didn’t get the connection) that islam in translation means submission. The “New Atheism,” as the movement behind the recent wave of books attacking religion has come to be called, is many things, but subtle is not one of them. To read the recent works on the evils of religion by Dennett, Sam Harris (The End of Faith, 2004), and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion, 2006) is to expose oneself to heavy doses of hyperbole, sarcasm, and outrage, sometimes all in the same paragraph. The books have sold well enough to be on best-seller lists, and the authors have achieved, at least briefly, intellectual celebrity status. These works are intentionally divisive, and the reviews have ranged from the laudatory to the scathing, depending in no small part on the reviewers’ sympathies with the take-noprisoners approach of these works. For most religion-and-science scholars, the likely action will be to read the reviews, perhaps listen to an interview or two on public radio, and then go on with one’s life and research, secure in the knowledge that much of what these books contain is not sophisticated enough to bother with. I would suggest, however, that to completely dismiss these works would be a mistake. It is a remarkable fact that books promoting atheism and attacking religion, typically in the name of science and reason, are now regularly