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The New Atheism

Two Priests Respond (I)

Rev. Dr. John R. Mabry opposes the New Atheist caricature of religion.

I’m not sure how it got started, but soon after the spate of offerings by the New Atheist authors, someone started calling their books ‘atheist porn’. It made me laugh when I first heard it, probably because it’s not far from the truth. Pornography can be titillating and fun – but it’s also objectifying, sapping the people portrayed of their humanity and falsely representing them for the profit and gratification of others. Similarly, the New Atheist literature is fun, even titillating – who doesn’t like to see the New Atheists take potshots at goofballs like Pat Robertson and the Ayatollah Khomeini? But it also objectifies religion, intentionally misrepresenting it as a one-dimensional, universally fanatical phenomenon.

I do understand the impulse: it’s far easier to set up a straw man and knock it over with a clever rhetorical one-two punch than it is to grapple with the reality of religion in all its complexity, variety and nuance.

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