A new report from the University of California News Center describes data on American religiosity from the “General Social Survey” (GSS), a project that has been following American social attitudes since 1972. The project is in turn run by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) here at the University of Chicago. You can download the […]
The New Statesman, like other British publications including the Guardian, has recently decided to solicit some pushback against New Atheism (NA). It includes the latest trope in critiques of NA: they decry it on the grounds that we don’t suggest ways to meet the human needs satisfied by religion. Most of the anti-NA pieces never […]
It seems to me that the only reason the Guardian still employs Andrew Brown is that his ridiculous columns elicit blog traffic by those who wish to refute him. I read him for the same reason I smell the milk when I know it’s gone bad, and I’m rarely disappointed. His latest piece, “Atheists need […]
A few weeks back, Peter Hitchens (brother of the late Christopher) argued in his Mail Online column that the notion of intelligent design (ID, aka creationism advocated by Ph.Ds) wasn’t religious because it didn’t specify the designer. I think I laid that one to rest, for the history of ID clearly shows that the designer […]
UPDATE: Reader “GJG” notes that Grayling’s review is available for free here. I’m not sure what has happened to primatologist Frans de Waal, a man whose work I’ve greatly admired, for he’s been on a bender against New Atheism, using all the familiar tropes about the movement being both militant and “religious” in nature. One […]
On the occasion of Susan Jacoby’s new book, The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought (nice discount at Amazon!), she’s interviewed by Five Books‘ Sophie Roell on the topic of “Atheism”. It’s a really nice interview and I’ll leave it to you to read it and see what five books on atheism Jacoby recommends […]
I have to confess that I’ve never read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I really want to, but I’m terribly pressed for time and the only copy in the University of Chicago Library is the last volume—and it’s far away in the law library, of all places. But I’ve watched Douglas Adams’s wonderful talks […]
Two of the common tropes used against New Atheists are that 1) we’re not dolorous enough given our realizations that we’re not going anywhere after we die and that our lives are supposedly meaningless; and 2) the world is rejecting New Atheism, and religion is here to stay anyway. Both of these can be seen […]
Peter Hitchens can’t leave well enough alone, and so has sent yet another reply to my critiques (here and here) of his views on evolution (he doesn’t accept it, and is sympathetic to intelligent-design creationism ["ID"]). This is the last time I’ll put his responses above the fold; from now on they’ll go in the […]
The Chief Rabbi of the UK, Lord Sacks, has a piece at at HuffPo: “Worship at the atheist altar,” whose title is just a wee bit misleading. Yes, he does urge atheists to worship at churches, and describes one of them in London, but his real point is that even “church”-going atheists are doing it […]
