The Unlikely Conversion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Former New Atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali has converted to Christianity, which is the cause for much rejoicing.
Did the New Atheists Win?
The rise of the New Atheists in the early 2000’s led to a steep decline in religious affiliation in America. How will the Church respond?
The Day Stephen Hawking Unsettled His Atheist Peers
Just over a century ago, Albert Einstein rolled out his theory of General Relativity, a paradigm-shifting take on the nature of gravity and its relation to space and matter. Of the implications of his theory, one that has captivated the imagination of filmmakers and the scientistic hopes of researchers and laypersons alike, is the black … Read more
How Now Shall We Live?
From days of old, mankind has wrestled with the question of ethics. In ancient Israel, after fifty years of Babylonian captivity had all but erased God’s providence and law from memory, the Jewish community wondered aloud: “How now shall we live?” The very question presupposes a standard and a purpose. Even the early Greeks, influenced … Read more
Science and Christian Theology Mutually Inform One Another
Popular consciousness in the West has affirmed over and over again, like the beating of a drum, that natural science and theology are in bitter conflict. Recently, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne made this claim in a predictable piece, claiming that the two are incompatible and are at war with one another. In recent years, scientific … Read more
Why Christians are Blamed for Islamic Terrorism
Syndicated columnist Derek Hunter made an observation in the aftermath of the Orlando shootings that parallels my own impression at the time: If you only watch network news and read the New York Times you easily could come away with the impression that last Sunday morning a conservative Christian man, draped in crosses and screaming … Read more
Benedict’s quiet response to the New Atheists
William Oddie at the UK’s Catholic Herald took issue with George Weigel’s call for British bishops to get more confrontational with the New Atheism movement: [T]here are two reasons why they won’t and probably shouldn’t try. The first is that they are probably too frightened of them, even now, to do anything of the sort. … Read more
Stealing from Supernaturalism
Christopher Hitchens, in a fairly typical misreading of the Judeo-Christian tradition, is fond of pointing out that “the Jewish people did not get all the way to Mount Sinai under the impression that murder and theft and perjury were okay.” Oblivious to the Church’s entire tradition of the natural law, he fancies he’s scored a … Read more
Post-Atheism
Item: The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. For the utterly confused atheist in your life, here’s another testament to the fact that atheism can’t stand to be in the same room with itself for too long. Here, the author tries to crib a little bit of consolation from the theistic tradition while hoping nobody … Read more
Not So Bright
As we know, Chesterton famously observed that the mark of madness is not the loss of reason, but the loss of everything except reason. Periodically, something in our culture will show me the brilliance of that insight with great force. Long ago, I remember watching some film about human evolution narrated by Richard Leakey Jr. … Read more
Padding the Case for the New Atheism
Recently there has been a flurry of books from the “New Atheists.” Such figures as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have been holding forth to state . . . well, not anything new. The reason there is nothing new to say is that there cannot, by the nature of the … Read more