The new atheists:
They're angrier and more shallow

		The Catholic  Difference  George Weigel

About nine months ago, a reporter from the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire called and asked whether the rash of "atheist books" being published in the U.S. suggested a new trend in American culture.

I replied that I didn't think so. Publishing was a bit like hemlines and tie widths, I suggested: there are fashions, and the fashions are often defined (and slavishly followed) by bears of little brain, of which the publishing industry is, alas, replete. (An observation, I note, that was made long before the latest O.J. fiasco!)

In any event, I wish I'd given a more thoughtful answer. For, on further reflection, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, and Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation do embody an interesting trend: not about American culture as a whole, but about its atheist mini-minority.

Reading these books, one gets the distinct impression that contemporary atheism is getting angrier and dumber, even as it becomes more profitable for publishers and authors alike.

Political, snobbish

One root of the new atheist campaign is, of course, political: Bush Derangement Syndrome has persuaded at least some atheists that the cowboy-evangelical apocalypse is just around the corner.

The usual snobberies are also involved: the new atheism reflects the disdain of the academic guilds and chattering classes for those they imagine to be their social inferiors. In the 19th century, it was thought that an atheist couldn't be a gentleman; today, the atheists argue that religious conviction is for slobs and morons.

But as Sam Schulman recently pointed out in a perceptive Wall Street Journal essay, what's really striking about the new atheism is its tone. In a word, it's angry; or, as Schulman writes, "Belief, in their eyes, is not just misguided but contemptible . . . Today's atheists are particularly disgusted by the religious training of young people - which Dr. Dawkins calls 'a form of child abuse.'"

This is, in part, the aforementioned snobbery; as Schulman nicely puts it, the new atheists imagine that "believing in God is a form of stupidity, which sets off their own intelligence."

But the anger is such that it warps whatever cleverness might be at work in the likes of Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris. The agnostic H.L. Mencken (a vociferous critic of what he regarded as the absurdities of popular religiosity during the Roaring Twenties) was one of the few commentators who could do brilliant social satire while writing "at the top of his voice," as one biographer put it. The angers of Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris render their writing merely shrill.

Shallowness

And dumb. Read the atheist trinity, and you'll be amazed at their self-regard - which is based, in part, on a Captain Reynaud-like wonder ("I'm shocked, shocked . . .") at discovering the obvious: that the Bible is neither geology text nor critical biography; that, over the centuries, Christian hagiographers have embellished the stories they tell about saintly people; that some uncritically examined beliefs are, in fact, superstitious. Oh, really?

Moreover, as Schulman writes, "The faith that the new atheists describe is a simple-minded parody. It is impossible to see within it what might have preoccupied great artists and thinkers like Homer, Milton, Michelangelo, Newton, and Spinoza - let alone Aquinas, Dr. Johnson, Kierkegaard, Goya, Cardinal Newman, Reinhold Niebuhr or, for that matter, Albert Einstein.

"But to pass over this deeper faith - the kind that engaged the great minds of Western history - is to diminish the loss of faith, too. The new atheists are separated from the old by their shallowness."

Which is to say, again, they're dumber as well as angrier. Indeed, were I back teaching and a graduate student handed me an ill-informed screed like Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation, I'd gently inform the aspiring scholar that there were two options available: an "F," or a return to the drawing board for some serious thought - the kind of thought that begins with empathetic curiosity and an open mind, not with contempt and intellectual rigidity.

Contemporary believers deserve a better class of critics than this. As Sam Schulman laments, where are Matthew Arnold and George Eliot when you need them?

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Do we believe:
In the power of God's infinite love?

		A Culture  of Life  Christopher West

Each of us needs to ask him or herself: Do I believe in God's gift? Do I believe in his infinite love for me?

Living the truth about our sexuality is really a question of faith. Do we believe the Gospel or not? We confess that Christ came to save us from sin and reconcile us to the Father. Yet this may simply rattle off our tongues without much thought.

Resisting the sinful distortions of sexual desire and living in accordance with the truth is a very difficult struggle, even for someone with a solid moral formation. In a sense, this struggle brings us to the heart of the spiritual battle (see Eph 6:12) that we must fight as Christians if we are to resist evil both in the world and in ourselves - and love others as Christ has loved us.

Winning this battle takes faith in Christ, dedication, commitment, honesty with ourselves and others, and a willingness to make sacrifices and deny our own selfish desires. But love is not afraid of those things; love is those things.

Yes, the Church's teaching about sex is challenging. It's the challenge of the Gospel itself, the challenge to believe in Christ and pick up our crosses to follow him. Yes, we are weak. On our own we have no hope of meeting the challenge.

'Set free to love'

But to whom is this challenge given? To men and women who remain slaves to their weaknesses? No! To men and women who have been set free to love by the power of the cross.

Let's not empty the cross of its power, but let's believe in the good news. Let's believe that in Christ, true love - that love that is the very meaning of our being and existence - is possible. This is what the Church never ceases to proclaim to every man and woman.

When questioned about divorce, Christ pointed his followers back to God's original plan. "For your hardness of heart [i.e., sin] Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning [before sin] it was not so" (Mt 19:8). Because Christ takes away our sin, he is able to restore God's original plan of love as the norm for marriage and all sexual expression.

This means marriage is only marriage, and sex is only sex, to the extent that they participate in God's free, total, faithful, and fruitful love. This norm - God's original plan of love prior to sin - is the proper basis for addressing all the many questions and objections that people are posing today about the Church's teaching on sexual morality and marriage.

True freedom

People hate being told what to do and what not to do, especially when it comes to sex. Part of this attitude bears witness to our dignity as free human beings. When we're forced to do something, we often sense that it violates our dignity.

Yet, another aspect of this attitude bears witness to the reality of original sin. We don't want anyone, not even God, telling us that something we want to do is wrong. We want to determine what is good and evil for ourselves. It's the problem of pride.

Obedience at its best doesn't stem from force or fear but from love for the good, the true, and the beautiful - love for God. Freedom is not liberation from the external "constraint" that calls me to what's good. True freedom is liberation from the internal constraint that keeps me from choosing what's good. The truly free person doesn't look upon God's commands as a burden. The truly free person longs to do God's will.

Christopher West is a research fellow and faculty member of the Theology of the Body Institute in West Chester, Pa. His column is syndicated by www.OneMoreSoul.com and reprinted from his book Good News About Sex and Marriage: Honest Questions and Answers About Catholic Teaching (St. Anthony Messenger Press).