1 / 11 “The New Atheism”

With religion the reason (or the excuse) for everything from 9/11 to the Tea Party, God has seen better decades. So, just as it was cool in the nineties to come out as gay, it was cool in the 2000s (especially for really smart people) to adopt another once-scandalous lifestyle choice: atheism. The non-believers were inspired by such prophets as Christopher Hitchens (who devised the term “the new atheism”) and Richard Dawkins. Hitchens’ book God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything was (as you might guess) an attack on religion, justifying the author’s own passionate atheism. This is like complaining against the management of the Elvis Presley Fan Club, and hence concluding that Elvis didn’t really exist. Dawkins’ book The God Delusion at least spends some time arguing why God doesn’t exist, based mainly on Charles Darwin’s theories. Darwin would probably be surprised that atheists talk about him so much, because he himself was not an atheist. Sure, there’s good reason to criticize religion and promote science… but exactly how does that prove that God doesn’t exist? The new atheism might be cool, but it makes about as much sense as… as… well, religion. <strong>Disclaimer:</strong> <em>Born a Catholic, I still lean towards believing in God (no, I can’t be bothered justifying that), and was not convinced by the arguments in The God Delusion. I’m not gay either, so I haven’t been even remotely “cool” since 1989.</em>