I think I am very close to concluding that this whole “New Atheism” movement is only a passing fad””not the cultural watershed its purveyors imagine it to be, but simply one of those occasional and inexplicable marketing vogues that inevitably go the way of pet rocks, disco, prime-time soaps, and The Bridges of Madison County. This is not because I necessarily think the current “marketplace of ideas” particularly good at sorting out wise arguments from foolish. But the latest trend in à la mode godlessness, it seems to me, has by now proved itself to be so intellectually and morally trivial that it has to be classified as just a form of light entertainment, and popular culture always tires of its diversions sooner or later and moves on to other, equally ephemeral toys.
Take, for instance, the recently published 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists. Simple probability, surely, would seem to dictate that a collection of essays by fifty fairly intelligent and zealous atheists would contain at least one logically compelling, deeply informed, morally profound, or conceptually arresting argument for not believing in God. Certainly that was my hope in picking it up. Instead, I came away from the whole drab assemblage of preachments and preenings feeling rather as if I had just left a large banquet at which I had been made to dine entirely on crushed ice and water vapor.
To be fair, the shallowness is not evenly distributed….
I am reading Hart’s “Atheist Delusions” at this very moment, and I highly recommend it. Hart is an excellent writer, and his intellect is incredible. In the opening chapter he skewers the pop atheists such as Dawkins and Dennett. My favorite line, referring to Brown’s “The Divinci Code:” “…already a major film and surely the most lucrative novel ever written by a borderline illiterate. I could go on.” And he does.
Hmm. I am not so sure. I sometimes find myself asking if we have lost a whole generation. The picture in the US may look different to the picture here in Europe, but it definitely is cool in Western Europe to be anti-Christian and especially anti-Catholic. Recently on EuroNews I glimpsed a demonstration in Turin against the Pope’s visit, and it was a carnival occasion with lots of jeering figures dressed up as popes, nuns etc, banging of drums etc. Yes, in part it was the same rentamob that you get wherever there is a G8 summit, but what struck me was the sheer energy of it. I thought that possibly this was the tip of a huge youth iceberg. Of course, as Nicholas Kristoff movingly points out in the column that was posted above from the NYT, the Catholic Church has many examples of humble service (and also for that matter the Anglican Communion). But much of the youth zeitgeist has moved on. This does not make what we believe any less real, nor does it mean that God is not at work among us every moment of the day. But it does make the task of proclaiming Jesus that much harder if you are pushing against a generational cultural tide.
Fr. Michel,
I’m reading it as well and the line you quote had the same effect on me. I grinned from ear to ear when I read it.
There’s a striking similarity of tone between the New Atheists and our avant garde theologians. One suspects that they get a thrill out of proposing theories are intended to shock, in order to gain someform of fame or notoriety. The wonderful thing is that one doesn’t need to have studied in any depth that which one denies.