Description
This book addresses the flaws and fallacies in the grounds for atheism and theism – flaws and fallacies that contaminate the arguments of non-believers and believers alike. Focusing on the highly visible debates between the New Atheists – such as Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris on the one hand – and their main theist opponents – including Frank Turek, John Lennox, and William Lane Craig on the other – it approaches these debates from the perspective of the sociology of religion and science.
With entire worldviews at stake, it explores various failings in the logic, language, and knowledge of the protagonists, revealing mistaken and oversimplified understandings of both science itself and the sociocultural and symbolic roles of religion on both sides. Advancing a secular and humanist worldview unburdened by the problems that beset both atheism and theism, the author argues for a sociological perspective on religion, God, and science as a practice, together with a critical realist approach to the nature of the real world as we experience it.
Beyond New Atheism and Theism will therefore appeal to scholars and students of sociology and cultural studies with interests in the conflicting worldviews of science and religion.
Table of Contents
Prologue 1. Genesis 2. In the Grasp of Secular Reason 3. The Science Turn and Sociology 4. The New Atheist Worldview 5. The Dawkins Delusion 6. Case Study: The Tangled Logic of Frank Turek 7. Case Study: John Lennox and the Unholy Alliance Between Mathematics, Logic, and God 8. William Lane Craig: Not Even the Illusion of Reason 9. Hans Küng: A Case Study in the Vicious Circles of Theist Logic 10. Case Study: Alvin Plantinga – The Unbearable Absurdity of Christian Philosophy 11. Religion and God in Sociological Perspective 12. Godless and Good 13. The Knowing Society: A Secular Moral Order Index
