More critically, it needs to be pointed out that the books on the subject of God and religion have been written by men (where are the women Gnus?) with credentials no more adequate for writing about God and religion than I would have writing about the phylogeny of nematodes (about which, however, I am endlessly curious.) Which is to say: the New Atheism by its amateurism and short-cutting undermines the work of description and analysis that might make unbelief a better understood phenomenon in the contemporary world….

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick (Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1900) "You can't fool me. There ain't no sanity clause." (Chico Marx, Night at the Opera, 1935) Once upon a time, believing in God was unfashionable. Now to come out an Unbeliever is almost as cool as–well, you know. Especially now that we know the Protestants were right in t … Read More

via The New Oxonian