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

by John F. Haught

In God and the New Atheism , a world expert on science and theology gives clear, concise, and compelling answers to the charges against religion laid out in recent best-selling books by Richard Dawkins ( The God Delusion ), Sam Harris ( The End of Faith ), and Christopher Hitchens ( God Is Not Great ). For some, these "new atheists" appear to say extremely well what they believe to be wrong with religion. But, as John Haught shows, the treatment of religion in these books is riddled with logical inconsistencies, shallow misconceptions, and crude generalizations. Can God really be dismissed as a mere delusion? Is faith really the enemy of reason? And does religion really poison everything? God and the New Atheism offers a much-needed antidote to the extremist claims of scientific fundamentalism. This provocative and accessible little book will enable readers to see through the rhetorical fog of this recent phenomenon and come to a clearer understanding of the issues at stake in this crucial debate.

Genres: Religion, Theology, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Atheism, Science, Christianity

144 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2007

About the author

John F. Haught is a Roman Catholic theologian, specializing with systematic theology. He has special interests in science, cosmology, ecology, and reconciling evolution and religion.

Haught graduated from St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore,, and he received a PhD in Theology from The Catholic University of America in 1970.

Haught received the 2002 Owen Garrigan Award in Science and Religion, the 2004 Sophia Award for Theological Excellence, and, in 2009, the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Leuven.

He is Senior Research Fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. There, he established the Georgetown Center for the Study of Science and Religion and was the chair of Georgetown's theology department between 1990 and 1995.

Reviews

[William · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book because in The Case For God, Karen Armstrong mentions with a sigh that the atheist arguments raised in recent books by Richard Dawkins and others have already been dealt with by theologians such as John F Haught, but she does not say how.

Atheism consists of the rejection of a class of traditional supernatural claims about the universe, specifically that there is a real - not symbolic - invisible being capable of influencing events arbitrarily through will alone. It is not primarily an attack on religion in the wider sense of a framework for spiritual practice (Buddhism, say, or any form of Christianity, if there is one, that is not based on the supernatural). Armstrong's argument that God is symbolic and so Dawkins is wrong left me puzzled about why she was bothered at all, since she appeared to agree with him anyway (neither of them believes there is a sky wizard), so I was intrigued about whether Haught's theological dismissal of atheism was going to add anything new.

Haught gives us a glimpse of the strange world of theology, that orphan child of philosophy and bible study. Like a real philosopher he begins by nitpicking our trust in logic in an even-science-requires-faith-in-reason, how-do-any-of-us-really-know-anything? way, and then he drops in a paragraph about the inexhaustibly deep dimension of Being, Meaning, Truth and Goodness, which appears to be a supernatural one even though he avoids saying what he means by it or how he knows it's there.

In Haught's typographic system, capitalising an abstract noun appears to indicate some special yet undefined spiritual sense, while quotation marks are used for words he doesn't like.

Harris's and Dawkins's own scientism ... is a belief for which there can be no "sufficient" scientific or empirical "evidence" either. There is no way, without circular thinking, to set up a scientific experiment to demonstrate that every true proposition must be based in empirical evidence rather than faith. ... the claim that truth can be attained only by reason and science functioning independently of any faith is itself a faith claim.

Essentially we can be sure of nothing, prove nothing, know nothing, and the entire project of rational inquiry is greatly overrated. You can make any unprovable claim you like and if anyone says you are wrong they are using circular logic, so you can dismiss their criticisms as self-contradictory. If someone claims (as Scientologists do) that they are a reincarnated Thetan from another planet, all you can say is who knows, perhaps that's true, and that's nice for you. It's frustrating and rather insulting that Haught chooses to play this kind of weaselly bootstrapping game when challenged on a serious issue, and then spends the rest of the book acting as though he's made a sensible point about atheism.

If everything must be taken on faith and nothing can be proved either way, if the concepts of proof and logic themselves are just one relativist opinion among many, that doesn't only undermine atheistic criticisms of faith positions, it's the end of all rational thought, including arguments for the existence of God, claims about circular logic, and point-for-point critical responses to atheism (not to mention the legal system and vehicle safety testing). If you take that road you really forfeit the right to use words like if, because and contradictory, that belong to the world of non-faith-based logic. Evidence, causality and rationality may not be perfect concepts, but they are all we have.

Or are they? What about our feelings, our inner life? Another of Haught's lines of attack is to claim that science can only deal with the kind of things a condescending lab-coated authority figure can express in algebra on a whiteboard, and has nothing to say about personality.

The outcome is that the whole idea of "personality" becomes exiled from the realm of what scientific naturalists consider to be real. This banishment includes not only human persons, but also the subjectivity of other sentient beings, and if carried out consistently, the personality of God as well.

Really? Except for something called Psychology, which is a branch of science and has a lot to say about personality, and indeed about delusional states of mind. Haught quaintly refers to science as "scientism" when he wants to pretend that it is a faith-based belief system much like Catholicism or Scientology. I find it useful when reading this kind of thing to substitute the phrase "actually checking the facts" for "science". For example,

What's more, there are many other channels than actually checking the facts by which we can all experience, understand and know the world. In my interpersonal knowledge, for example, the evidence that someone loves me is hard to measure, but it can be very real nonetheless. The only way I can encounter the subjective depth of another person is to abandon the objectifying method of actually checking the facts.

Of course you don't learn that someone loves you by just sitting there and faithing it up. Maybe they are nice to you, maybe they look at you a certain way, maybe they stop saying your career in theology has been a pointless waste of time, your books are full of stupid circular logic accusations and you aren't even a proper philosopher. Maybe they say "I love you". So you are using "evidence", and not just knowing it by some unmeasurable dimension of Being. (As PZ Myers said, it's called "dating".) In fact, being convinced that someone loves you without actually checking the facts is how you become a stalker.

It goes on. At one laugh-out-loud moment Haught claims that Occam's Razor does not apply to theology (p86-87), because the divine guidance he is unable to describe clearly is complementary to actually checking the facts, operating at a different level of explanation, so although there are sound and seemingly adequate social and biological explanations for morality, for example, there is no harm in redundantly adding another one. Some people should really be banned from mentioning Occam's Razor altogether.

Another quixotic line of attack is to label Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and others "New Atheists" (not a term they use themselves) and then point out that atheism is not new at all. Ha! He then goes on to compare them with the Existentialists of the 1950s such as Sartre and Camus, who argued that without God life was a pointless slog to the grave, and whom Haught considers "hard-core atheists" and praises for at least thinking their atheism through to its revolutionary miserable nihilistic conclusions (unlike Haught himself with his circular circular logic argument). Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris are by contrast gutless soft-core lightweights because they aren't revolutionary or miserable. Haught doesn't really like either end of this scale of cheerfulness, and so they must all be wrong. It's a familiar line of theist reasoning to argue that things you don't like the sound of cannot therefore be true.

Haught's take on morality will be familiar to readers of religious polemics:

How ... if there is no eternal ground of values, can your own strict standards be anything other than arbitrary, conventional, historically limited human concoctions? But you take them as absolutely binding. And if you are a Darwinian, how can your moral values be anything more than blind contrivances of evolutionary selection?

Perhaps he means that our ability to recognise good and bad behaviour demonstrates the existence of God, which is an odd proof if ever I heard one. Because some people are nice to kittens and are not indiscriminate murderers, there must be a supernatural presence matching Haught's childlike expectations. Or a race of Thetans. But what if we are able to refrain from murdering each other most of the time without supernatural or alien help? This whole line of argument proves nothing and takes you nowhere, but is the kind of thing Christian writers like to go on about.

So what is Haught's position? He constantly dismisses the sky wizard view of God as naive creationism (although not from a sciencey lack of "evidence", presumably), but what does he actually think God is? Chapter 7, Is God Personal? promises to clear this question up:

Can the theological notion of a personal God still find an intellectually plausible place in contemporary educated discourse? I argue that it can, but only in conjunction with a critical discussion of scientific naturalism, the deeply self-contradictory worldview in which the new atheism is rooted.

However anyone hoping for a coherent description of what he believes and why he thinks it is true (and Scientology is, presumably, not) will be disappointed, as he spends the rest of the chapter sniping irrelevantly at fact-checkers and waffling on about layers of explanation and dimensions of being, in the end concluding that theology rises above fact-checking and Einstein was wrong. Elsewhere he lists various capitalised abstract nouns (Being, Meaning and so on) as if they had some special significance, and he suggests that they have in some way guided the unfolding of the universe and the evolution of life on Earth, but - cleverly - without interfering in the laws of nature or leaving a forensic trail. How he knows this, or anything else, he doesn't explain. It is a favourite tactic of theists to become all metaphorical and relativist when a debate calls for it, elevating Christianity into some kind of second rate Zen Buddhism with God as a symbol of transcendence for meditation purposes, while back in the real world the Pope goes on announcing that Hell is a real place and vicars tell you your late aunt is attending a celestial tea party. Haught tries to have it both ways by hinting at the supernatural while covering his tracks with metaphysics. He ends the book with this (spoiler alert):

The God of evolution humbly invites creatures to participate in the ongoing creation of the universe. This gracious invitation to share in the creation of the universe is consistent with the fundamental Christian belief that the ultimate ground of the universe and our own lives is the loving, vulnerable, defenceless and self-emptying generosity of God.

Haught is all professorial condescension for anyone who disagrees with him, but he is unable to say exactly what he believes or how he knows it's true. (Whatever it is, however, it is not the same as what Karen Armstrong believes.) He claims that rational explanations are overrated, and that Occam's Razor conveniently does not apply to his side of any argument. He hasn't heard of psychology or dating. In terms of spiritual enlightenment, then, the book is a big waste of time. However it might be worth reading if you want to be prepared for the nonsense talked in this type of debate.

[Ben Moore · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a Christian I found this book rather disappointing. The author seemed much more concerned with embroiling himself in semantic nitpicking and out-snarking the ‘New Atheists’ than offering a decent defence.

He also appears to hold to a Christianity that few Christians I know would recognise. Several times he explains the ‘meaning’ of the bible without even mentioning the gospel. His technique seems to be to move the goalposts. His response to criticism is ‘well we don’t believe that anyway’ even when most, if not all traditional Christians do.

There were some interesting points raised at times but the writing was too full of bitterness and sarcasm for my liking. The author takes a long time to say very little of substance.

[Richard Behrens · Rating 5 out of 5]

For years I have felt about Hitchens/Harris/Dawkins/Dennett the same way I felt about Donald Trump. They are opportunists exploiting mass dissatisfaction with religion for their own ends. Note that each of these men have become millionaires off of best-selling books. It's not that I think they are wrong about everything they talk about, but none of them really has the experience, the knowledge, or the wisdom to sift through religion and sort out the wheat from the chaff. From their perspectives, they don't just want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but they want to burn down the entire building the bathroom is in.

Dawkins in particular has every right to defend biology and evolution against creationists. And all of them have the right to argue the validity of many religious claims, especially against the claims of fundamentalists who use pseudo-science and pseudo religion for the propagation of their whacko beliefs. But to attack Religion (with a capital R) and talk about it as if it's a cancer that needs to be sliced out of the human race? That's just as whacko as the fundamentalists they talk about.

Although I would probably not agree with everything John Haught has to say about religion, I share his distaste for these loud-mouthed hate mongers.

Faith and reasons needs to build bridges to each other, not put up walls of hate. Hmm...does that sound familiar?

[SiSApis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief glimpse of the perspective of a scholarly theologian, whose field is Science and Religion, on the writings and (frankly) rantings of the so-called "New Atheists."

For me, it was chiefly valuable as a peek inside the workings of a mind that has been trained and experienced in grappling with these issues. It is not extensive and point-by-point, affording specific refutations for popular apologetics (for that, Trent Horn's _Answering Atheism_ is more apt). But to see a trained scholar looking at the "New Atheist" writings is. . . illuminating. He almost doesn't know how to do so, they are so far, in both form and substance, from being anything like the substantive arguments he is accustomed to engage. Watching him grapple with how to even begin to address "arguments" that display such incredible ignorance of what they purport to be arguing against, and such lax logic with respect to the "arguments" themselves, is a real eye-opener to the irony of these men who want to call themselves "brights" (shamelessly implying that the vast majority of all human beings who have ever lived, or who live still today, must be the "dulls"), yet, rather than hold substantive discussions with those of mature understanding in the field in question, prefer rather to use mockery and misdirection--really, the techniques of the playground bully--to make their "case."

[Alex Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

اندک نکات خوبی در کتاب گفته میشه، اما مشکل اصلی من با کتاب این مسئله‌ست که نویسنده دقیقا به همون روشی پاسخ داکینز، هریس، هیچنز و دنت رو میده که داره ازش انتقاد می‌کنه؛ توی این کتاب آقای جان هات بارها از زبان تمسخرآمیزِ عزیزانِ ملحد انتقاد میکنه، اما خودش هم در این کتاب دقیقا همین کار رو میکنه و خیلی جاها به زبان تمسخر متوسل میشه. و این چیزیه که شخصا اصلا نمیتونم باهاش کنار بیام!
انتقادها شاید درست باشه اما به نظرم خود نویسنده نباید همون شیوه رو در پیش می‌گرفت.
مورد بعدی که از ضعف‌های کتاب بود، به نظرم قدرت تحلیل و اثبات ضعیف نویسنده بود. جالبه که در این مورد هم نویسنده از ملحدان جدید انتقاد می‌کنه که در کتاب‌هاشون برهان‌ها و دلایل ضعیفی رو ارائه میدن، که به نظرم این سطحی بودن مطالب در کتاب خود آقای جان اف. هات هم تکرار میشه.
در کل انتظار مباحث عمیق‌تر و بهتری رو داشتم.

[Ryan Hawkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

His critiques of the new atheists were spot on, but unfortunately there was one huge, glaring problem throughout the book: Haught himself is so caught up in liberal, Tillich-like Christianity (if it may be called that), that his answers were so weak. Instead of giving a Francis Schaeffer-like response about the solid answers the Christian worldview gives, Haught gives a mainline, liberal theological answer, which is weak and has little to no substance in answering these atheists. Again, he’s right in showing that these soft-core atheists are themselves non-substantial and don’t follow their logic fully (unlike the hard core nihilistic atheists), but then Haught’s response is itself based on an upper story spirituality separated from a lower story rationality and naturalism—namely, liberal theology.

So overall, I can’t recommend this. If you’re a Christian and want to see how the new atheists (Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins) are inconsistent and not good philosophers, then read this; Haught does an excellent job showing this (although Haught’s writing is at times very hard to follow and read). But if you’re looking for the Christian response, this is a terrible work. Instead, read Schaeffer’s *The God Who Is There*.

[Dody Eid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haught brings up some excellent points in response to the new atheists. He doesn't cover as much as I had hoped, but he does get through the fundamental claims, i.e., "faith is unreasonable," "science has overtaken faith," and others. A must-read!

[Natasha · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you are looking for a decisive, critical, and convincing response to atheism (particularly the atheism advocated by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens), then this is NOT the book to read. I was looking forward to what Haught would have to say in response to these three main proponents of atheism. I had recently finished Dawkins' The God Delusion and Hitchens' God is Not Great:How Religion Poisons Everything and came across this book in my library. I was excited to see what kind of response this theologian had. Needless to say I was disappointed.

Here is one of my favorite passages of God and the New Atheism

“Faith, as theology uses this term, is neither an irrational leap nor “belief without evidence.” It is an adventurous movement of trust that opens reason up to its appropriate living space, namely, the inexhaustibly deep dimension of Being, Meaning, Truth, and Goodness.”

This type of flowery, metaphorical, nebulous, unclear language is used throughout the book. He capitalizes nouns for no stated reason, failing to address what he means by the deep dimension. He also makes an annoying habit of placing words you could trust a theologian to dislike such as "evidence" and "sufficient" in quotation marks. One of the most frustrating parts of Haught's response is that he fails to address what he means when he makes one of his (many) sentimental tangents as the one I included above.

Haught does not offer any particularly insightful arguments for religion. His regrettably feeble arguments include: What is the meaning of life if there isn't a God? Atheism is a sad way (in Haught's opinion) to look at the world so it must be false...etc.

This book started off considerably better than it ended. In the beginning, I had the false hope that Haught would perhaps offer an argument for the existence of God without deferring to Christianity or any other organized religion. However, in the latter half of the book Haught makes considerably more references to a "Christian" God and a "Christian" faith. Haught fails to address what makes the Christian faith the appropriate one when it is indeed a derivative of Judaism along with Islam.

To be fair, Haught might not have had the room to address the justification for the(innumerable) assumptions and arguments he makes in this critique. However, with Haught's reasoning (or lack thereof) and incoherently metaphorical rhetoric, I'm not sure whether I could stand to read it.

[Blair Hodges · Rating 3 out of 5]

Haught tackles the "new atheist" question from the approach of theological studies. He feels writers like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris have slighted a great deal of theology by focusing their attack solely on fundamentalist or strawman descriptions of religion. He does a fine job outlining new atheist assumptions and discussing why theology should be brought to bear on them. The book is brief (barely over a hundred pages) and doesn't delve into many specifics from the books it critiques. Instead, Haught explores the presuppositions of theology versus new atheism broadly speaking. People looking for a point-for-point analysis of new atheists will not be satisfied, however. Haught repeatedly concedes, for example, that religious people have committed atrocious acts throughout history, but does not get into the specific charges leveled by new atheists. Not all such charges are fair or accurate, so conceding ground seemed more a tactical acknowledgement that problems have occurred while avoiding the grimy details as well as the inaccurate accusations. Nevertheless, it is an engaging account which refers interested readers to more academic treatments if desired (specifically several books Haught wrote before this one, which seems to be more of a way to tie his previous work to the claims of new atheists as opposed to better-informed atheists). The lighter tone and minimal footnotes should be less intimidating to the average reader, but may make the book seem like more of a "pop" response (especially to those interested in a more academic analysis). This view comes through the lens of a theologian, which must be taken into account when considering the power and relevance of its arguments. Overall I enjoyed the book but still wanted something a bit better. IE, not definitive enough for me.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was disappointing.

I found that the author nibbled around the edges without actually addressing why the "new atheism" is wrong. He addresses the "new" atheism, and at the same time claims that it is not really "new" at all (which, of course, it is not). Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens have repackaged, in a form more apt to be consumed by the modern reader, arguments that have been made since the Epicureans.

He never addresses whether there actually is a god, which is the crux of atheism (new or otherwise). He claims that Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris are wrong on some premises. One involves where theists think morality comes from. He claims that the new atheists allege that theists claim to get their morality from god and that this is somehow a fault assumption and "it is more complicated than that." Even if it is, there certainly are a lot of theists who claim to get morality from god. And, even if some theists are more nuanced, what does that say about the existence of god at all?

The idea is that disproving, logically, that morality can only come from god will disprove a certain god concept (but not all gods). Some gods did not act morally, according to their followers. So, of course, if a theist says "I don't necessarily think that all morality comes from a god", that doesn't mean that the new atheists are wrong.

Anyway, the book was thin on substance. If this is the best that theist scholars can do against the "new atheism" then I feel comfortable about my atheism.

[Sven · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book. The author, a theologian, analyzes the "new atheists" and their writings from the point of view of an unabashed theists. He is not anti-science, or even anti-evolution, but views the world and reality in a larger perspective than the Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett, the main intellectuals of the new atheism.

Dr. Haught argues that the "new atheism" is not new, not really atheistic, and rather shallow, avoiding any interaction with or analysis of theology, a topic that the atheists clearly think is either irrelevant or not worth their time. The author compares their writings with those of Nietzche and other "hard core" atheists and finds the modern writers lacking in depth and knowledges.

For anyone questioning faith and the value of theism, this is a useful and persuasive book. It's not hard reading, and has some powerful arguments that should be considered seriously.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better in concept than execution I think. Well laid out, if a bit repetitive. Does a good job of pointing out some logical fallacies of the "new atheist" stance, but doesn't go far enough in replacing them with his own reason. Indeed, at times he seems to make the same errors of incomplete logic he just finished critiquing.

Made me approach Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens' (et al) writing with a slightly more critical eye, but did not win me over to the other side in the least.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arguments for God against the atheists, Harris, Dennett, Dawkins, and the issues that they have with theology. A short book, easy read.

[Katja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not being familiar with (modern) theology, I am very glad I read this book. The depiction of (Christian) religion that has become immensely widespread in the recent decades, thanks not least to the many entertaining and well-written popular science books, is so grotesque that I personally found it harder and harder to believe that it has much to do with what it really means. For example, I loved Dawkins's books like "The Selfish Gene" and "The Extended Phenotype". For me they are excellent examples of scientific writing and were my first true acquaintance with the amazing topic of evolution. However, whenever I read Dawkins on religion I felt like I was reading a propaganda piece, much in the spirit of, say, Soviet era newspaper articles reporting on the horrible life in the capitalistic countries: it is so bad, one cannot believe such a world can exist at all! I have not read Harris or Hitchens (the other two authors whom Haught explicitly addresses) but I am fairly certain that I've seen very similar arguments as theirs expressed by other popular atheists like Daniel Dennett or Jerry Coyne, and I so far have never been impressed by the level of discussion and the quality of arguments they would like to maintain for this topic. So if you have wondered if (Christian) theologists are really as stupid as Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and the like have tried to depict them, then read this book and find out that, as you have long suspected, they are not. Similarly, if you have wondered if theologists indeed insist on things as hopeless and impossible as taking the Bible as a scientific source, Haught's book will reassure you that this is not the case. From reading other reviews here and on amazon I am amazed how difficult it is for many intelligent and educated people to understand even such a clear writing as Haught's. So it looks like, unfortunately, this book is very unlikely to help such readers get a more complex picture of religion than the one they got installed in their brains.

[Tony61 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I understood Haught's arguments for God's existence, but they just aren't that convincing. Equating the "New" (not their word) Atheists as treating atheism like a religion is just rhetoric. How can the unbelief in an entity lead to religious fervor?

Haught is passionate and his book is well-written and jargon-free, which earn him kudos. He makes some good points, such as the apparent selection advantage of god-belief, otherwise why else are there so many theists in our biosphere? But is this really a compelling argument for the existence of god, or just the human need or propensity to believe in god? Even Dawkins says that perhaps humans have a god-shaped hole in their brains that must be filled. We have many desires that perhaps once rendered a selection advantage but now are deleterious.

Will Robertson (below) actually has an excellent review of Haught's book. I'll just add a few nuggets.

Haught's argument that the new atheists lack the rigor of Nietzsche, Satre and Camus is just plain false. They are coming at the question from a different perspective, but the reasoning-- especially that of Dawkins-- is well-constructed. I disagree with Haught that one must remain in an existential abyss in order to be an atheist.

Hitchens and Harris seem more motivated by the evils that theism-- especially fundamentalist Islam-- brings to society and less able to argue the philosophical rationale for and against god-belief.

Yes, there are a lot of things we don't know, and may never know, but that is hardly an argument for belief in a supernatural being that has revealed himself through scripture.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books presents a fairly competent response to the recent works by Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. Haught argues that while each of these authors makes valid points and has some reasonable criticisms of religion, ancient and modern, nonetheless the principal target of these authors is a fairly fundamentalist Christian belief, one that most "thinking" Christians have generally shed. This excerpt (from page xv-xvi) sums up his message:

"However, even though the new atheists reject the God of creationists, fundamentalists, terrorists, and intelligent design (ID) advocates, it is not without interest that they have decided to debate with these extremists rather than with any major theologians. This choice of antagonists betrays their unconscious privileging of literalist and conservative versions of religious thought over the more traditionally mainstream types -- which they completely ignore and implicitly reject for their unorthodoxy. The new atheists are saying in effect that if God exists at all, we should allow this God's identity to be determined once and for all by the fundamentalists of the Abrahamic religious traditions. I believe they have chosen this strategy not only to make their job of demolition easier, but also because they have a barely disguised admiration for the simplicity of their opponents' view of reality."

I would however like to see an even more detailed response. There are some other works along this line.

[Jesse Rine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent response to three of the four horsemen of the New Atheism, especially considering it's only about 100 pages long! Haught critiques several central claims of the New Atheists, and effectively demolishes their point of view as a livable philosophy. Anyone who wants to carry the tenets of scientific naturalism (a fundamentally religious atheism) to their natural conclusion will find it difficult to live them out. This likely explains why the New Atheists never try to follow their own arguments that far, and prefer instead to stop halfway and lob rhetorical bombs at religious people, without bothering to try to understand the religious beliefs they are attacking. Having read Dawkins and Hitchens, I never felt as though they were attacking my beliefs and my faith; my beliefs and theology don't look like their strawmen.

Haught is devastating in his critique of the New Atheists ignorance of theology and issues of faith. Having set up a weak strawman to attack, their arguments look quite weak when faced with the real thing. Excellent book, highly recommended!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stumbled across this book at Borders. Haught is Senior Fellow in Science and Religion at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. One of the helpful parts of this book is Haught’s historical awareness of the tradition of atheism. He argues – persuasively, in my opinion – that Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens lack both the intellect and the “guts” of former atheists like Nietzsche, Camus, and Satre: they aren’t willing to follow their epistemological skepticism to its logical conclusion (nihilism) like their forefathers. Haught is a committed evolutionist. Unfortunately his description of God leaves you wondering at times whether he believes God too is “emerging” or “evolving” or just gradually revealing Himself.

[Matt Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

a good simple reminder of how atheism is a faith just as much as any other . . he leaned on some examples i recognized from another of his books, but they're good illustrations, so i guess i don't fault that . . another similarity to his other book, however, is more of an issue to me: haught does a nice job of defending christianity/theism/evolutionary creationism/whatever--despite this book's last chapter's well put admonition to *not* defend the faith--but i'm not sure that he ever argues for it . . i get that it's possible to see things his way, but maybe some harder pressing on the issue of *why i'd choose to adopt his view myself* would help . .

[Conrad · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author is a theology professor, so there is some academic aspects to the writing that I tended to skip over. I also skipped over brief parts where he makes a case for his own theology. His criticism of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris is much stronger than his positive expository about his own theology. Perhaps that is inevitable because from what I have read of the three "new atheists" their atheism is very smug and intellectually dishonest. I found his critiques to be accurate and written in an entertaining style, albeit a bit snarky in places.

[Leroy Seat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recently I finished reading and posting a brief critique of John Haught's newest book, "Science and Faith" (2012). I gave it five stars, saying that I rarely give the maximum number of stars. But now I have done it again.

It is hard to imagine how a better book could be written on the subject of this work. As a Christian believer trained in Christian theology and philosophy, I found this book excellent in every way.

[Eric]

Having not read any of the new atheists, I didn't get as much out of this as I could have. To me the wildest thing about the discussion is that the new atheists have a large enough readership to warrant multiple rebuttals by Christian authors.

[Allyne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haught, a theologian at Georgetown who specializes in the relationship between theology and science, has provided a brief, clearly argued case against the New Atheism.

[Danny · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully reasoned and methodic response to the 'new atheism' which leaves behind the culture war, cliche's, and "straw men". I couldn't recommend it more highly.

[Cappy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a little too much "inside baseball" to be an accessible response to "the new atheists," but for those who have the patience it is a devastating critique.

[Joel Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

The problem with trying to marry evolutionary theory with Christianity is glaring but he does a great job breaking down the moral ambiguity of new atheism.

[Miriam Foltz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written to be an accessible text for armchair theologians, Haught critiques the 'experiential monalism' of new atheism and creationism through mystical prose on faith.
It provides an entry point for further discussion on many areas - from the relationship of science and religion to how Christians approach faith and Scripture.
In this age of partisan dialogue - from politics to academics, this book romanticizes the past relationships of theology as philosophy (Tillich and Nietzsche! Barth and Feuerbach!), but in doing so, Haught reminds us that critical conversation - which includes being critical of our own views - begins by seeking deeper, more nuanced understanding of "the other's" arguments.