What Atheism Can Learn from Religion

Notice: This is an alert, not a review. Repeat: This is an alert, not a review. In our sights this week – they would be hard to miss – are notices of Alain de Botton’s “Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion.” The...

Why You May Be Sitting with an Atheist in Church

Atheism shows up in my columns on occasion, partly as a refreshing alternative to the overcovered examples of “religion-in-American-public-life” which crowd the cable television channels and headlines: you know, like stories of the piety of quarterback Tim...

Dioceses Turn to Evangelism to Boost Numbers

Atheism now gets more attention than usual when people measure religious trends in North America. More people put the name “atheism” on their a-religiousness than did so decades ago. For the record, my Ph.D. thesis in 1956 was on “unbelief,”...

Atheism 2.0: Taking Cues from Religion

The popular philosopher Alain de Botton gave a lecture at a recent TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, on what atheists need to learn from religion. In the blog of the science journal Nature, Philip Campbell reports on what...

A Critical Examination of the New Old Atheism

“Same Old New Atheism” is a 6,800-word review that places the trendy “New Atheism” in the context of previous efforts to establish scientific positivism in the place of religion. Religion, in turn, is to be done away with, as it’s been...