Praise for
ANSWERING THE NEW ATHEISM
In a better world than ours there would have been no need for Answering the New Atheism. But under the circumstances, I'm grateful to Dr. Scott Hahn and Dr. Benjamin Wiker for their essential service in coolly, rationally taking apart Richard Dawkins' inflamed rhetoric and exposing the absurdities, and the dangers, at its heart. Their final chapter is a particularly chilling, important reminder of what Dawkins' secular faith would lead to if it were more widely embraced.
David Klinghoffer
Author of Shattered Tablets: Why We Ignore the Ten Commandments at Our Peril and Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History
Answering the New Atheism is a superb expos of Dawkins' The God Delusion. Systematically and lucidly, Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker dissect and dispose of the fundamental errors that riddle Dawkins' attempt to demonize the divine.? Dawkins has declared a jihad against religion and his main weapons are diatribe and caricature.? But the authors refuse to respond in kind and instead turn to reason, the one tool that Dawkins seems to disdain.? As readable and humorous as it is rigorously reasoned, Answering the New Atheism is the best antidote in the marketplace for Dawkinitis.
Roy Abraham Varghese
Co-author with Antony Flew of There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, a book denounced by Dawkins.
Editor of Cosmos, Bios, Theos, a work with 24 Nobel Prize winners that was described by Time Magazine as the year's most intriguing book on God.
Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker patiently, thoroughly pick apart the reasoning of Richard Dawkins until very little is left standing. I highly recommend Answering the New Atheism to anyone who wants to watch scientific atheist bullies get their comeuppance.
Michael J. Behe
Lehigh University, Author of The Edge of Evolution
When two Catholic intellectual heavyweights collaborate on a project, expectations are high. Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker, scholars and best-selling authors, do not disappoint us in Answering the New Atheism. As co-authors they have produced a gema book that provides a clear response to the atheistic secularism of Richard Dawkins. In a logical, measured, and accessible manner they provide the reader with what is needed to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have... [doing so] with gentleness and respect (1 Pet. 3:1516).
Regis J. Flaherty
Author of Last Things First
Emmaus Road Publishing
827 North Fourth Street
Steubenville, Ohio 43952
www.emmausroad.org
2008 by Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker
All rights reserved. Published 2008
Printed in the United States of America
12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008922170
ISBN: 978-1-931018-48-7
English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for the United States of America copyright 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.Libreria Editrice Vaticana. English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica copyright 1997, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Cited in text as CCC
Cover illustration by R. Genn
Cover design and interior layout by Julie Davis
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful first of all for the loving support of our wives and families.
We'd also like to express our gratitude for the benefactors of the St. Paul Center.
Finally, our work has benefited immensely from the friendly advice of a non-theist, Phil Goetz who, even though he may not agree with us, has cheerfully caught many errors and pushed us to greater clarity.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Why argue with an Atheist?
We live at a point in history where atheism is shoving its way into the public square, and noisily declaring the need to remove religion. A cadre of militant unbelievers calling themselves The Four HorsemenRichard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennetthave assumed the leadership of a growing Anglo-American movement, releasing volley after volley of bestsellers and DVDs into the Christian culture.
Gone are the days of polite atheism. Christianity is under attack.
What to make of it? In one sense, not much at all. We are reminded of the demon Screwtape's words in C. S. Lewis' brilliant and biting Screwtape Proposes a Toast. Apologizing to his fellow demons for the meagerness of the fare of souls at the annual dinner of the Tempters' Training College, he remarks it would be vain to deny that the human souls on whose anguish we have been feasting tonight were of pretty poor quality.Oh, to get one's teeth again into a Farinata, a Henry VIII or even a Hitler!Instead of this, what do we have tonight? Mere little sinners but lots of them. The quality may be wretched, remarks Screwtape to cheer his fellow demons up, but we never had souls (of a sort) in more abundance. Well, the general quality of the atheists' arguments now on the market is decidedly low, but we never had souls (of a sort) in more abundance. Gone are the days of such atheist giants as Friedrich Nietzsche; here are the days of mass-produced unbelief.
Yet there is cause for worry precisely because we live in an age that judges things more by quantity rather than quality. Judging solely in terms of bulk, some might think atheists had won a decisive intellectual victory as if there was a direct correlation between the number of atheist books being hawked in the public square and the number of atheists actually among the public. Even more disturbing, the lack of quality in the atheist fare may all too regrettably be a sign of a corresponding lack of quality in arguments offered by theists, or at least a lack of sufficient intellectual preparation on the part of the audience.