http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/26/james-wood-the-new-atheism?CMP=twt_fd Trapped in the childhood literalism of my background, I had not entertained the possibility of Christian belief separated from the great lure and threat of heaven and hell.

The New Atheism is locked into a similar kind of literalism. It parasitically lives off its enemy. Just as evangelical Christianity is characterised by scriptural literalism and an uncomplicated belief in a "personal God", so the New Atheism often seems engaged only in doing battle with scriptural literalism; but the only way to combat such literalism is with rival literalism. The God of the New Atheism and the God… ]]> Tue, 30 Aug 2011 08:21:05 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/26/james-wood-the-new-atheism?CMP=twt_fd http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/05/hitchens-201105 Four hundred years ago, just as William Shakespeare was reaching the height of his powers and showing the new scope and variety of the English language, and just as “England” itself was becoming more of a nation-state and less an offshore dependency of Europe, an extraordinary committee of clergymen and scholars completed the task of rendering the Old and New Testaments into English, and claimed that the result was the “Authorized” or “King James” version. This was a fairly conservative attempt to stabilize the Crown and the kingdom, heal the breach between competing English and Scottish Christian sects, and bind… ]]> Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:57:36 -0700 http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/05/hitchens-201105 http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-Athe-ists-Nar-row/126027/ With tongues in cheeks, Rich­ard Daw­kins, Chris­to­pher Hitch­ens, Sam Har­ris, and Dan­iel Dennett are embracing their reputation as the "Four Horsemen." Lampoon­ing the anx­i­eties of evan­geli­cals, these best-sell­ing athe­ists are em­brac­ing their "dan­gerous" sta­tus and dar­ing be­liev­ers to match their for­mi­da­ble philo­soph­i­cal acu­men.

Ac­cord­ing to these sol­diers of rea­son, the time for re­li­gion is over. It clings like a bad gene rep­li­cat­ing in the pop­u­la­tion, but its use­ful­ness is played out. Sam Har­ris's most re­cent book, The Moral Land­scape (Free Press, 2010), is the lat­est in the continuing bat­tle. As an ag­nos­tic, I find much of the… ]]> Mon, 24 Jan 2011 03:58:29 -0700 http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-Athe-ists-Nar-row/126027/ http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/04/believe-it-or-not I think I am very close to concluding that this whole “New Atheism” movement is only a passing fad—not the cultural watershed its purveyors imagine it to be, but simply one of those occasional and inexplicable marketing vogues that inevitably go the way of pet rocks, disco, prime-time soaps, and The Bridges of Madison County. This is not because I necessarily think the current “marketplace of ideas” particularly good at sorting out wise arguments from foolish. But the latest trend in à la mode godlessness, it seems to me, has by now proved itself to be so intellectually and morally… ]]> Sun, 16 May 2010 16:19:00 -0700 http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/04/believe-it-or-not http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/17/christopher-hitchens-re-reads-animal-farm Animal Farm, as its author later wrote, "was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole". And indeed, its pages contain a synthesis of many of the themes that we have come to think of as "Orwellian". Among these are a hatred of tyranny, a love for animals and the English countryside, and a deep admiration for the satirical fables of Jonathan Swift. To this one might add Orwell's keen desire to see things from the viewpoint of childhood and innocence: he had… ]]> Mon, 26 Apr 2010 04:49:00 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/17/christopher-hitchens-re-reads-animal-farm http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2010/04/religion-religious-lewis Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens confront the faithful head-on, but there may be another way to dispel religious beliefs.

I am not so sure about this. In my experience, waverers and Sunday-only observers can find forthright challenges to religious pretensions
a relief and a liberation. They give them the reason, sometimes the courage, to abandon those shreds of early-acquired religious habit that cling around their ankles and trip them up.

Still, Darwin and David Lewis-Williams have a point in thinking, as the former put it, that "direct arguments against [religion] produce… ]]> Sun, 04 Apr 2010 06:56:00 -0700 http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2010/04/religion-religious-lewis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn0sDwqsrrI&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:06:00 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn0sDwqsrrI&feature=youtube_gdata http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/04/religion-atheism Theology lets us talk about deep and irrational urges. This is seen by some atheists as weakness. But maybe it's a strength as well James Wood, a writer who himself has lived between the tugs of belief and unbelief, made an eloquent call in the New Yorker last August for "a theologically engaged atheism". Concluding a review of Terry Eagleton's recent attack on Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, he imagines something "only a semitone from faith [which] could give a brother's account of belief, rather than treat it as some unwanted impoverished relative." At the American Academy of Religion meeting… ]]> Fri, 08 Jan 2010 03:29:00 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/04/religion-atheism http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/oct/08/atheism-religion-class-science For some reasons it seems to be anathema to say that there might be an intrinsic reason for the correlation between educational level and the rejection of religion: atheism takes training, and is more difficult. We accept that in medicine, physics and mathematics, but, for reasons of political correctness, it is very much considered a faux pas to say the old 19th-century thing: it takes education to develop a worldview based on science. It would be even more outrageous to say that the reasons for choosing atheism over religion might actually be valid, as the so-called new atheists have dared… ]]> Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:14:00 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/oct/08/atheism-religion-class-science