Challenging the New Atheists

(Probe - Written by Patrick Zukeran) Nearly thirty years ago John Lennon sang the song, “Imagine.” The words went like this:


“Imagine there’s no heaven  It’s easy if you try  No hell below us   Above us only sky   Imagine all the people Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do  Nothing to kill or die for  And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace

Imagine there’s no heaven. . .You may say that I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one  I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will be as one

In other words, the source of much evil in the world is religion: belief in God, life after death, and a universal moral code. Would the world be a better place if faith in God was eliminated? Many atheists now think so. Richard Dawkins states, “Imagine with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine, no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as ‘Christ killers’, no Northern Ireland ‘troubles’, no honour killings’, no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money (‘God wants you to give till it hurts’). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing one inch of it.”{1} The goal of the new atheists is to rid the world of belief in God or religion and replace it with reason and science. The new atheists believe that religions that embrace a belief in God, particularly Christianity, are not just irrational but dangerous and therefore must be extinguished.
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