Scottish Christian.com

Home > News > Scottish Christian News Monitor

Man and God: How should faith respond to the onslaught of atheism?

It has been a good year for atheists, says a Times leader article. Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion has sold more than a million copies, and between April and June was Britain’s fourth best-selling title, beaten only by two Harry Potter books and Gordon Ramsay. Christopher Hitchens, whose God is Not Great also excoriates religion as poison, has been given free rein on television and in debating halls. The success of the filmThe Golden Compass has provoked anguish among Christians over what is perceived as the atheist message at the heart of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Authors such as Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett have found that atheism sells on both sides of the Atlantic. Among both Christians and Muslims, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s impassioned denunciation of the restrictions of Islam in Somalia have stirred sympathy as well as anger. And the new leader of the Liberal Democratic Party has admitted something unsayable only a decade or two ago: that he does not believe in God.

Not since Victorian times has there been such an intense and sustained debate about religious belief. It has been a curiously bad-tempered argument: the books that have spearheaded the militant new atheism have not sought to persuade, reach out or reason. Instead, in the name of reason, they have heaped scorn and ridicule on those stupid enough to believe the myths and the obscurantist cosmology of religion.

Full story at The Times.