The Atheist Onslaught

David Aikman

David Aikman considers the “new atheists” and new prospects for civility from unexpected sources.

An interesting publishing and cultural phenomenon has been afoot in the U.S. since the fall of 2006. To a degree unprecedented in recent publishing history, to my knowledge, at least four books by self-described atheists, all of them militantly attacking religious belief, have made it to The New York Times best-seller list and sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

The swallow that presaged this atheist upsurge was a volume by Sam Harris, The End of Faith, which sold at least 175,000 copies and was a best-seller in 2004. Not surprisingly, Harris’s book attracted a lot of criticism and opposition, the vast majority of it from Christians quoting chapter and verse from the Bible to show how wrong Harris was. Indeed, so vituperative was much of the criticism, according to Harris, that he wrote a brief second book, Letter to a Christian Nation, published in October 2006, that sought to build on the atheist momentum of his first volume. In Letter, Harris asserted, he had “set out to demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most committed forms.”

But in his assault on religious faith in general and Christianity in particular, Harris was far from alone. Roaring across the Atlantic from Great Britain was the Oxford champion of Darwinian evolution, Richard Dawkins, Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, already a best-seller in Britain, quickly rose to The New York Times best-seller list in the U.S. So did a book by an American, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett, a Santa Claus look-alike professor of philosophy at Tufts University. Dennett and Dawkins, mutual admirers, formed the intellectual spearhead of the atheist assault on religion. But in May another book became an instant a best-seller, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by British-born journalist and talking-head Christopher Hitchens. 

It is easy enough to guess why this atheist assault—I call it the Four Horsemen, after the Four Horsemen in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament—got its initial momentum. After more than six years of a Republican administration that has been identified more closely with Christian conservatives than any other in American history, there was bound to be a backlash against evangelical Christianity in the U.S. Add to that the unpopularity of the current administration’s policy in Iraq and you have a combustible mix of political and cultural hostility, and even resentment.

But the upsurge of the “new atheists,” as some observers have dubbed the phenomenon, has had some interesting responses in the public domain. Though many newspapers have written warmly complimentary reviews of the books by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens (they sound like the partners of a Dickensian law firm), there has been sharp criticism in unexpected quarters. Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, for example, opined in an article, “The New Atheists loathe religion far too much to plausibly challenge it.” Other newspapers described the “new atheists” (also referred to as “the new godless,” etc.) as ”fundamentalist atheists” where the word “fundamentalist” is not a compliment and has instead implied unreasonable dogmatism and intolerance.

Not surprisingly, many evangelical (and Catholic) Christians have risen up to debate the Four Horsemen and their aspiring acolytes, with varying results. But some of the more interesting debates have been between the Four Horsemen and unanticipated—or at least forgotten—allies of religion. In the New York Public Library in May, for example, Christopher Hitchens debated the Rev. Al Sharpton in a civil and intelligent manner. Sharpton, who is a left-leaning critic of conservative Christians in general and of the Bush administration in particular, took strong issue with Hitchens’ unwillingness to recognize the role that Christian faith played in the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement.

In Los Angeles, Sam Harris debated New York Times reporter Chris Hedges on the issue of “the end of the world.” Chris Hedges? Wasn’t he the author of a book called American Fascists: the Christian Right and the War on America? At the time of this writing, we don’t know what Hedges and Harris said, or why it was a debate. After all, the very title of the Hedges book says a lot about his worldview. If Hedges indeed took the position in debate with Harris, that in spite of what he termed “Christian fascism,” in the U.S., some form of religious belief was warranted, then the belief v. unbelief debate in America is taking on new dimensions.

In the best of circumstances, this could have positive consequences for Christianity in the U.S. Most promisingly of all, there could be a depoliticization of Christian belief, its untangling from the sometimes provocative political baggage with which it has been connected since the Democratic Party, in effect, abandoned the community of pious Protestants to the Republicans.

Another development that would be positive would be a willingness of American Christians to spend more time studying their own faith and indeed its most articulate critics. “Know your enemy,” said the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, in a dictum that America’s conservative Christians have not been conspicuous in following.

Unfortunately, the level of public discourse on important philosophical and political issues in the U.S. is not high. Reasoned, sustained, civil public debate is extremely rare today, in comparison with a century and a half ago, where the Lincoln-Douglas debates on slavery attained exceptional levels of eloquence, wit, and erudition. Talk radio and TV is almost invariably a monologue, with the host dominating, sometimes monopolizing, the talk time allotted any guest who has been invited on with ever so slightly dissenting a view.

In the atheism v. theism debate, the bar of civility is apparently set exceptionally low. Harris was surely right to complain about the vituperation of his Christian letter-writers who claimed to have been transformed by their Christian walk (not transformed enough, apparently, to be polite). But the atheists are often worse. The magician duo of Penn & Teller are ranting atheists whose attacks on cable TV on Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, and just about anybody espousing a faith conviction are spattered with obscenities and insult. Don’t hold your breath if you are waiting for this pair to enter the world of civility.

Yes, civility. At bottom, the ability to exchange views over deep differences without drawing a sword or hurling epithets is the mark of a civilized society. There are many indications in the public arena that the U.S. has ceased altogether being civil, especially on cable TV. But if the onslaught of the Four Horsemen leads to more intelligent exchanges of thought between people of such diverse political and philosophical viewpoint as Al Sharpton and Christopher Hitchens have shown, then we should welcome the enlargement of the debate. Politeness is a virtue whose power to transform is often neglected. But it has allies in strange places. 

Dr. Aikman, a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum, was for many years senior correspondent for Time.

1 Responses (comments are closed) • Columns, David Aikman, Faiths and Worldviews, Public Square, Fri 25 May 2007