Look Who's Irrational Now

I read Richard Dawkins' (in)famous The God Delusion earlier this summer, and I have to say, I was tremendously disappointed. I had heard of scores of people who, after reading Dawkins or Hitchens or another one of the so-called "new atheists," were suddenly empowered in their unbelief. I had hoped for some intriguing arguments that would lead me to delve into the depths of my faith and really search more and more into why I believe what I believe. Instead I read the poorly-researched, bullying (though deeply amusing and eloquent) words of a bitter scientist who, apparently, had spent more time using his thesaurus to belittle the religious than he had understanding their beliefs or finding sources (e.x. Dawkins seems to have done no scholarly research on the writing of the gospels- misrepresenting those who wrote them and when- or the accumulation of the canon, failed to note that Paul did not, in fact, write Hebrews, and it goes on...). Poor choice, sir.

Though I haven't read the book just yet, Alister McGrath, a professor at Oxford that I admire, released a book in response entitled The Dawkins Delusion? and wrote an amusing, intelligent article (the first link is another article written by him) called "Do Stop Behaving As If You Are God, Professor Dawkins."

Any way, all of that was a prelude to an article I found in the Wall Street Journal called "Look Who's Irrational Now." Interesting indeed.

An excerpt: The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won't create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that's not a conclusion to take on faith -- it's what the empirical data tell us.

"What Americans Really Believe," a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

Recommended books in response: The Reason for God by Tim Keller & Letter from a Christian Citizen by Douglas Wilson