Criticism of atheism

Edmund Burke, an 18th-century Irish philosopher and statesman praised by both his conservative and liberal peers for his "comprehensive intellect", saw religion as the basis of civil society and wrote that "man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long".

In the 1990s, Pope John Paul II criticised a spreading "practical atheism" as clouding the "religious and moral sense of the human heart" and leading to societies which struggle to maintain harmony.

[9] Deism is a form of theism in which God created the universe and established rationally comprehensible moral and natural laws but does not intervene in human affairs through special revelation.

[54] In A Letter Concerning Toleration, the influential English philosopher John Locke wrote: "Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist.

[56] According to Dinesh D'Souza, Locke, like Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky after him, argued that "when God is excluded, then it is not surprising when morality itself is sacrificed in the process and chaos and horror is unleashed on the world".

[69] The Times arts and entertainment writer Ian Johns described the 2006 British documentary The Trouble with Atheism as "reiterating the point that the dogmatic intensity of atheists is the secular equivalent of the blinkered zeal of fanatical mullahs and biblical fundamentalists".

[72] In his book First Principles (1862), the 19th-century English philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer wrote that as regards the origin of the universe, three hypotheses are possible: self-existence (atheism), self-creation (pantheism), or creation by an external agency (theism).

[81] In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke, an 18th-century Irish philosopher and statesman praised by both his conservative and liberal peers for his "comprehensive intellect",[82] wrote that "man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long".

But if, in the moment of riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of the alembic of hell, which in France is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness, by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great source of civilization amongst us, and among many other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the mind will not endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition might take place of it.The historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote that during the 20th century atheists in Western societies became more active and even militant, expressing their arguments with clarity and skill.

[84] Philosophers Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk have written: "By contrast to all of this, the Soviet Union was undeniably an atheist state, and the same applies to Maoist China and Pol Pot's fanatical Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in the 1970s.

He issued three papal encyclicals challenging the new creeds: against Italian Fascism, Non abbiamo bisogno (1931; 'We do not need to acquaint you); against Nazism, Mit brennender Sorge (1937; "With deep concern"); and against atheist Communism, Divini Redemptoris (1937; "Divine Redeemer").

[97] In Divini Redemptoris, Pius XI said that atheistic Communism being led by Moscow was aimed at "upsetting the social order and at undermining the very foundations of Christian civilization":[98] We too have frequently and with urgent insistence denounced the current trend to atheism which is alarmingly on the increase... We raised a solemn protest against the persecutions unleashed in Russia, in Mexico and now in Spain.

[103] In this climate, Pope Pius XI issued his anti-Nazi encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge in 1937, saying:[104] It is on faith in God, preserved pure and stainless, that man's morality is based.

[106] In 2010, his successor, the German Pope Benedict XVI said:[107] Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.

[108] In contrast, historian Alan Bullock wrote that Hitler was a rationalist and a materialist with no feeling for the spiritual or emotional side of human existence: a "man who believed neither in God nor in conscience".

In addition to direct state persecution, the League of the Militant Godless was founded in 1925, churches were closed and vandalized and "by 1938 eighty bishops had lost their lives, while thousands of clerics were sent to labour camps".

[95] Albania under Enver Hoxha became in 1967 the first (and to date only) formally declared atheist state,[133] going far beyond what most other countries had attempted—completely prohibiting religious observance and systematically repressing and persecuting adherents.

[138][139] Evangelical Christian writer Dinesh D'Souza writes: "The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values.

[147] Mark Chaves has said that the New Atheists, amongst others who comment on religions, have committed the religious congruence fallacy in their writings by assuming that beliefs and practices remain static and coherent through time.

[149][150] Prior to Charles Darwin, the findings of biology did not play a major part in the atheist's arguments since it was difficult to argue that life arose randomly as opposed to being designed.

[154] Massimo Pigliucci noted that the Soviet Union had adopted an atheist ideology called Lysenkoism, which rejected Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution as capitalist propaganda, which was in sync with Stalin's dialectic materialism and ultimately impeded biological and agricultural research for many years, including the exiling and deaths of many valuable scientists.

[155] According to historian Geoffrey Blainey, in recent centuries literalist biblical accounts were undermined by scientific discoveries in archaeology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, geoscience, and physics, leading various thinkers to question the idea that God created the universe at all.

[160] Primatologist Frans de Waal has criticized atheists for often presenting science and religion to audiences in a simplistic and false view of conflict, thereby propagating a myth that has been dispelled by history.

McGrath notes that Darwin never called himself an atheist nor did he and other early advocates of evolution see his ideas as propagating atheism and that numerous contributors to evolutionary biology were Christians.

It didn't come from atheism... modern science arose in the 16th and 17th centuries in Western Europe, and of course people ask why did it happen there and then, and the general consensus which is often called Merton's Thesis is, to quote CS Lewis who formulated it better than anybody I know... 'Men became scientific.

[61] In the early 21st century, a group of authors and media personalities in Britain and the United States—often referred to as the "New Atheists"—have argued that religion must be proactively countered, criticized so as to reduce its influence on society.

[170] Professor of anthropology and sociology Jack David Eller believes that the four principal New Atheist authors—Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett and Harris—were not offering anything new in terms of arguments to disprove the existence of gods.

[171] Professors of philosophy and religion Jeffrey Robbins and Christopher Rodkey take issue with "the evangelical nature of the new atheism, which assumes that it has a Good News to share, at all cost, for the ultimate future of humanity by the conversion of as many people as possible".

[174] American religious studies scholar David Bentley Hart criticized New Atheism in Atheist Delusions for being "as contemptible as any other form of dreary fundamentalism" because it "consists entirely in vacuous arguments afloat on oceans of historical ignorance, made turbulent by storms of strident self-righteousness.

Along the way, Hart covers many other specific topics including extended critiques of Daniel Dennett's philosophy of mind and an outline of logical failures in The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.