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THE NEW ATHEISTS: THE TWILIGHT OF REASON AND THE WAR ON RELIGION PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Tina Beattie | 208 pages | 01 Mar 2008 | Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd | 9780232527124 | English | London, United Kingdom New Atheism - Wikipedia I would add that the new atheists fail to take seriously enough the challenge posed by the genocides of the 20th century to their own position, with its faith in science, progress, and reason. We should remember that, in the 20th century, a religious person was much more likely to be persecuted by an atheist than vice versa. Why do you think you have more in common with Richard Dawkins than George W. Well, for a start Dawkins has been fairly robust in his condemnation of the Iraq war, but I also agree with many of his criticisms about the dangers of religion -- not the least of those dangers is the alliance between recent American presidents and the Christian Right. I have a friend who has a bumper sticker that says 'The Christian Right is neither'. My problem with Dawkins is not that he criticizes religious extremism, but that he is so undiscriminating and ill-informed in his criticisms. He blunts the impact of his own critique by spreading it too thinly and too wide. But if I had to choose between spending an evening with Dawkins or with Dubya, I'd choose Dawkins if only because I think the jokes would be better the intentional ones, anyway. Skip to main content. By using sojo. Subscribe Magazine Preaching the Word Newsletters. Jim Wallis. Speakers Bureau. Jul 22, Why is this new atheism primarily a British and American phenomenon? Buy now. Delivery included to Germany. Tina Beattie author Paperback 22 Oct Check for new and used marketplace copies. Peter Stanford From its gradual decline during the latter part of the twentieth century, religion has been catapulted back into public consciousness, not least by acts of violence, extremism and various forms of fundamentalism. In this lively and provocative contribution to the debate the leading British feminist theologian, Tina Beattie, argues that the threat of religious fanaticism is mirrored by a no less virulent and ignorant secular fanaticism which has taken hold of the intellectual classes in Britain and America. Theologians such as Alister McGrath and Keith Ward have defended the rationality of Christian beliefs about God, but both sides neglect wider questions about faith, science, power and justice in a postmodern world, which impinge deeply on all our lives. The New Atheists calls for a more wide-ranging and creative dialogue across religious and cultural boundaries. It will intrigue every open-minded reader, believer or non-believer. Paperback Published 24 Feb Paperback Published 17 Sep Paperback Published 26 Mar Hardback Published 17 Sep Why Are Americans Still Uncomfortable with Atheism? | The New Yorker Peter Stanford. From its gradual decline during the latter part of the twentieth century, religion has been catapulted back into public consciousness, not least by acts of violence, extremism and various forms of fundamentalism. In this lively and provocative contribution to the debate the leading British feminist theologian, Tina Beattie, argues that the threat of religious fanaticism is mirrored by a no less virulent and ignorant secular fanaticism which has taken hold of the intellectual classes in Britain and America. Theologians such as Alister McGrath and Keith Ward have defended the rationality of Christian beliefs about God, but both sides neglect wider questions about faith, science, power and justice in a postmodern world, which impinge deeply on all our lives. The New Atheists calls for a more wide-ranging and creative dialogue across religious and cultural boundaries. It will intrigue every open-minded reader, believer or non-believer. Powered by. But, unlike more ponderous academic atheist philosophers, they seemingly cultivated combative and acerbic, media-savvy personae. Their success at writing bestselling books , giving engaging public talks and cultivating a global following through social media , has made them minor celebrities. All three of these New Atheists were sympathetic to the attack on Afghanistan in In his book, The End of Faith, Harris says p. While it would be comforting to believe that our dialogue with the Muslim world has, as one of its possible outcomes, a future of mutual tolerance, nothing guarantees this result — least of all tenets of Islam. Given the constraints of Muslim orthodoxy, given the penalties within Islam for radical and reasonable adaption to modernity, I think it is clear that Islam must find some way to revise itself, peacefully or otherwise. What this will mean is not all obvious. What is obvious, however, is that the West must win the argument or win the war. All else will be bondage. And in specific reference to the Afghan war, Harris adds p. There is in fact no talking to some people. If they cannot be captured, and they often cannot, otherwise tolerant people may be justified killing them in self defence. This is what the United States attempted in Afghanistan, and it is what we and other Western powers are bound to attempt, at an even greater cost to ourselves and to innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas. We argue that the three supported this war because they read global politics through the lens of their atheism. They appear to see the West as locked in an existential war with religion, particularly Islam. There are four striking aspects of this atheist vision of global geopolitics. First, they see religion as essentially violent. This analysis obscures the murky role of foreign powers and corrupt rulers in the Middle East and the ability of charismatic leaders to co-opt religion and fuse it with legitimate grievances. The New Atheists are convinced that their version of Western civilisation is superior to what they understand to be the religious-based cultures of the Middle East. He reasons they are immune to the usual logic of Mutually Assured Destruction. The irony in this argument, which began with the declaration that religion is uniquely violent, is apparently missed by Harris, who has since qualified his position on torture as this :. Our research demonstrates the paradox that although New Atheists claim that their ideology is more enlightened and peaceful than religion, they often end up advocating violence. thenewatheists - Tina Beattie's Personal Website Lack of belief in God is still too often taken to mean the absence of any other meaningful moral beliefs, and that has made atheists an easy minority to revile. As that remark suggests, the one wall the current Administration does not want to build is the one between church and state. The most evident manifestation of this resurgence of Christian nationalism has been animosity toward Muslims and Jews, but the group most literally excluded from any godly vision of America is, of course, atheists. Yet the national prejudice against them long predates Daniel Seeger and his draft board. It has its roots both in the intellectual history of the country and in a persistent anti-intellectual impulse: the widespread failure to consider what it is that unbelievers actually believe. American antipathy for atheism is as old as America. Although many colonists came to this country seeking to practice their own faith freely, they brought with them a notion of religious liberty that extended only to other religions—often only to other denominations of Christianity. True religious liberty was rare in the colonies: dissenters were fined, flogged, jailed, and sometimes hanged. Yet, surprisingly, no atheist was ever executed. According to the Cornell professors R. Nonbelievers were either few and far between in Colonial America or understandably cautious about making themselves known; clergy and magistrates rarely bothered to mention them, even derisively. Still, his argument was audacious for an era when most colonies had established churches and collected ecclesiastical taxes to support them. It was striking, then, after the Revolutionary War, when the men who gathered for the Constitutional Convention banned religious tests for office holders, in Article VI. But, while neither was a creedal Christian, both men were monotheists, and, like John Locke, their ideas about tolerance generally extended only to those who believed in a higher power. It was another one of the revolutionaries who became a hero for the nonreligious. Both atheists and their critics often make a hopeless muddle of the category, sometimes because it is genuinely complicated to assess belief, but often for other reasons. Some believers, meanwhile, use atheism to discredit anyone with whom they do not agree. For atheists, at least, this definitional elasticity provided a kind of safety in numbers, however inflated: as their ranks grew, so did their willingness to make their controversial beliefs public. William Lane Craig and Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham do today. With nonbelievers starting to assert themselves, believers began more aggressively protecting their faith from offense or scrutiny. All but three states passed Sabbatarian laws, which were imposed on everyone, including religious observers whose Sabbath did not fall on Sunday. Such prohibitions linger in blue laws, which now mostly restrict the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Indeed, the charge of atheism became a convenient means of discrediting nontheological beliefs, including anarchism, radicalism, socialism, and feminism. That presumption became both more popular and more potent during the Cold War. The Founders had already chosen a motto, of course, but E pluribus unum proved too secular for the times. Even as courts were striking down blasphemy laws and recognizing the rights of nontheists to conscientious-objector status, legislators around the country were trying to promote Christianity in a way that did not violate the establishment clause.