I run a weekly secular discussion group at my local university and this quarter, the theme of the discussion is “critiquing atheism”. I’m looking for readings that seek to refute Dawkins/Harris/Hitchens and provide interesting, thought provoking and intelligent claims. So far, I’ve taken a brief look at the many books out there and there’s a lot of chaff to sift through. Many authors clearly have fundamental misconceptions about the actual claims being made by the Dawkins/Harris/Hitchens and provide absurd counterpoints or repeat the same tired apologetics arguments without any refinement.
However, there have been some interesting pieces like Amateur Atheists and The Reason for God which present at least a well thought out and engaging argument. While there are obviously numerous points at which I disagree with both of these works, at least there’s material to grapple with and engage in in a deep and meaningful manner.
I was wondering if there are other pieces (either books or websites) which might be suitable for our group.
I wish I could contribute here, but can’t - I’ve read the atheist books you’ve named, but recognize the need to better understand the other side, too. The Reason for God seems interesting as a representation of that other side. Any Dopers read it?
I did a little searching, and one of the first things to come up was Amazon’s page on God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens by John F. Haught. This, it seems, is a book-length version of the first article linked to in the OP. As they usually do, Amazon has included links to other, similar (?) books. Alas, I am not familiar with any of them and so cannot give an opinion of their quality. But I found this list which may be worth looking at (assuming you haven’t seen it already): The New Atheism: Champions and Critics.
In Martin Gardner’s The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, there’s a chapter called “Why I Am Not an Atheist.” It’s interesting reading, regardless of one’s spiritual beliefs or lack of same.
(If the name “Martin Gardner” rings a distant bell, but you’re not sure where you heard of him, he is probably best known for his long-running column “Mathematical Games” in Scientific American.)
This is a light hearted article, but it poses one question that I, as an atheist, found interesting. Perhaps you could ponder that question with your group.
The question is: “Consider atheism to be extreme rationalism. Yet atheists, in general, are every bit as moral as religious people. From where then, do atheist morals come from? Are such tenets as the Golden Rule sustainable under a extreme rationalist viewpoint?”
In fact, there is a book by Stephen Jay Gould, one of the last he wrote, that deals with this question, on how atheism and religion should relate to each other.
If you want really tight arguments entailing formal logic, search for almost any works by either Hartshorne or Plantinga. Together, they practically buried Nietzschen-style atheism (whom I would consider to be the most preeminent and recognizable of the modernists).
Andrew Rilstone has a series of posts called “A Sceptic’s Guide to Richard Dawkins” that you might find interesting. (Check the tags guide down the left had side of the page.)
As a result of this comment I ordered up a copy of The Reason for God and it just arrived this afternoon.
After reading the introduction, which was very promising, I found the first chapter to be a crushing disappointment. I’m not sure I can press on - Keller’s arguments and logic are so weak that my hopes for some sort of fresh insight into the religious - and specifically Christian - mind are once again reduced to the impression that although many very intelligent and thoughtful people subscribe to the faith, for the most part it’s just another version of the kids in my high school math classes begging me to just give them the fucking instructions.
Pity. He had me going here and there. Maybe I try again tomorrow.
Are you saying Dawkins/Harris/Hitchens style atheism is Nietzschean? Because otherwise I don’t see the relevance to the OP. And Plantinga’s own objections to Dawkins’ arguments weren’t very convincing - hell, he resorts to the fine-tuning ID argument, which is not very sophisticated at all. His evolutionary argument against naturalism (that naturalism is incompatible with the evolution of reliable senses) didn’t do much for me either, I must say.
The Annotated Ancient Mariner
The Annotated Night Before Christmas**.
(He did two revisions of The Annotated Alice, with the 2000 edition the most recent. Worth getting, because he adds a lot to the earlier editions)
Not to mention fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus****The Flight of Peter Fromm, and a current regular column in The Skeptical Inquirer.
But as a long time Scientific American reader, I know him first and best from his Mathematical Games columns (and their collections)
There’s quite a bit of stuff in there which paints an obviously misinformed view of Atheism, some of the arguments are laughably weak and the “interviews” he gives with “doubters” are groan inducing. However, we’re working with a Bible study group discussing The God Delusion and the interesting thing is that they present the exact same critiques of that book as I do about The Reason for God. We tend to overestimate how well people of other beliefs understand us and underestimate how mistaken we are of others.
Reading it in that vein, you develop a certain tolerance for the parts that are cringe inducing and simply move on to the ones which are more considered. The parts we plan to cover in our discussion group are Chapters 8 and 9 which I feel has a bit more insight and presents some fairly sophisticated arguments you can sink your teeth into.
Very much like most of the atheism that I’ve encountered here: that God arose in the perceptions of early man and has petered out at a rate consistent with the rate of increase of scientific discovery. The more science, the less God. And that a point was eventually reached in which God died — that is, was no longer necessary for man’s use. He also believed that rational proofs against God’s existence were unsound (owing to the historic fact of His death). And here, almost no one offers a rational proof, prefering instead to claim nonexistence as a null hypothesis and demanding proof from opponents.
Although your opinion is not entirely uninteresting, unless you are representative of humanity as a whole — or more specifically, the OP — I think it is fair to offer a point of view that someone besides yourself might find edifying.