Briar’s Reviews > Is Atheism Dead? > Status Update

Every religion has scientists and apologists. What makes yours special?

This chapter made me double check when this book was written. It lacks much understanding of the atheist perspective and the focus and Dawkins and Hitch is frustrating. While they were towering figures, there are plenty of others. Change for the good and bad as happened since Hitch died. As for the blind faith, why is it suddenly a bad thing or are you admitting it can be a problem? I like to say I don't know

Chiristianity in the west has funded science because it had the money. Similar things can be said of Islam or Buddhism. It has also help back particular areas of science when it clashed with church practices. I don't care about Dawkins. Sagan and Tyson are both careful not to poke at religion much when they talked. So, where did you get that bit about Tyson and Newton? Also, I don't think you'd like Newton's faith

No tension between faith and science... For centuries, you weren't allowed to be anything but the state religion. A lack of faith still holds a stigma. Of course Galileo was religious but why was he put on house arrest. Wasn't it within my lifetime that the Catholic Church forgave him?

Insults aren't arguments. Dawkins is a materialist. That does not mean he cannnot take pride in the accomplishments of humans. I also like how you slipped in the moral argument in this chapter. I do not think you have a good foundation of that. Dawkins is not much better but I digress...

I do not think anything is clearly spoken from your or any other deity. This chapter could be beter called what science doesn't know yet. This chapter seems to just be appealing to a simple anwer and attaching the gaps in our knowledge.

What's amusing about this chapter is I don't think he answered his own question well if at all. Metaxas switches between definitions of faith. He does define it like the Bible does. However, after that does not get back around to how he thinks it reltates to science.

This chapter is just three arguments from authority. I do not trust that you've represented them properly. Even if you did, you did not even lay out what you think these men would say in response to the new atheists. You just made snide comments. Make some claims and back them up.

There is only one thing that all atheists agree on. Whether or not there is a god or gods. I do think it was poor phraming from Hitch when it came to some regimes. He issue was with authritarianism, which the church can and has acted in authoritarian ways. To lay so many of the deaths of the 20th century at the feet of atheists demonstrates a poor understanding of history, politics, and religion.