Listening to the Anxious Atheists

Abstract

In the past five years, several important books promoting atheism have been published. In this chapter, I examine four of these in detail. The purpose here is neither to refute the authors nor to critique their arguments, but to enter into a dialogue. The four books I discuss include:

• The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Religion by Sam Harris (2004),

• Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett (2006),

• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006), and

• God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens (2007).

When we allow ourselves to be fear-ridden and permit it to dictate how we act, it is because we have lost faith in our fellow men—and that is the unforgivable sin against the spirit of democracy.

—John Dewey, as quoted by Steven C. Rockefeller

I believe, despite all, that the peoples in this hour can enter into dialogue, each of the partners. In a genuine dialogue each of the partners, even when he stands in opposition to the other, heeds, affirms, and confirms his opponent as an existing other. Only so can conflict certainly not be eliminated from the world, but be humanly arbitrated and led towards its overcoming.

—Martin Buber, “Genuine Dialogue and the Possibilities of Peace”

The democratic procedure has the power to generate legitimacy precisely because it both includes all participants and has a deliberative character; for the justified presumption of rational outcomes in the long run can solely be based on this.

—Jurgen Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere”