One trend that I have been continually struck by in my study of 'pop atheism' is what I have come to term the 'rhetoric of reason'. (I didn't coin the term, but I have co-opted it as it suits what I am talking about perfectly.) What I mean by the 'rhetoric of reason' is a rhetorical appeal to the authority of reason, as opposed to the practice of reasoning. Many people, and in particular many atheists in the 'pop atheist' or 'new atheist' tradition, appeal to Reason. Relatively few people have read widely enough in the philosophy of religion to engage seriously with the best arguments for and against the existence of God. Reason is not about making appeals to logic and science, pointing out the evils done in the name of God or Jesus or Mohamed or...whatever; and then knocking down a few straw-man arguments, just to show that you can. This, nevertheless, is essentially the approach taken by neo-atheist writers. The writings of Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens, in particular, rely on this method to carry their anti-theistic arguments. Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and A.C. Grayling's The God Argument are not much better.
Now, there is nothing wrong with rhetoric; it is part of the practice of persuasion that is inherent within all argument. The use of rhetoric is an important part of debate - particularly public debate. However, when one attempts to 'reason', but fails to do the necessary homework on the topic under debate, then their 'reasoning' ends up being (more or less) empty rhetoric. Just recently, while looking at a video of a talk by theologian Alister McGrath on Youtube, I noticed a comment in the combox below, by an (apparent) fan of Dawkins & Co.. The comment was as follows:
"McGrath is quite dishonest in describing [the] New Atheism. He knows very well
that the new Atheists demand evidence. They are kind people who just
challenge believer [sic] to give evidence for their beliefs. This comes [sic] may be
out of a concern that living according to a philosophy that is not
grounded on facts can cause tremendous harm..."
Actually, McGrath is not dishonest. (Although his critique of neo-atheism lacks teeth because he fails to present much of a defence of theism. His apologetic is more negative [a critique of neo-atheism] than positive [a defence of Christian theism].) 'Al Gebra', who made the comment above, is quite right when s/he says that the new atheists 'demand evidence', but demanding evidence is a purely rhetoric device when used by neo-atheists. As they have not studied the most intellectually-rigorous arguments for the existence of God in any real detail (as evidenced by the numerous mistakes they make) their challenge is empty - like a person who challenges historians to prove the existence of Alexander the Great, but refuses to study the best scholarship on the subject.
Intellectual honesty demands not only that a person 'demand evidence', but that they also be willing to engage with the best scholarship on the subject - both in favour of, and opposed to, their own views. The new atheist approach is a direct contrast to the intellectually honest approach. Sam Harris apparently doesn't even known the difference between design arguments and cosmological arguments (he confuses the two in his Letter to a Christian Nation). Richard Dawkins confuses Thomas Aquinas' 'Argument from Order' with William Paley's biological design argument. Daniel Dennet presents Hume's cosmological pseudo-argument as if it is the real thing - a mistake made by many atheist/agnostic philosophers before and after him, who uncritically follow David Hume and Bertrand Russell in their erroneous critique of the cosmological argument. Jerry Coyne wrote a lengthy critique of David Bentley Hart's The Experience of God before he had even read the book; and even after reading the book he still misrepresented Hart. Each of these mistakes could have been avoided had they bothered to study-up on the philosophy of religion prior to writing about it.
The problem here is that the new atheists already 'know' that all theistic arguments are wrong. Why? Because religion is 'obviously' irrational. Neo-atheists have grown up within an academic culture that tends to assume a priori the irrationality of theism. That's why you will constantly find atheists who insist that belief in God is like belief in Santa Claus, or that there is no substantive difference between polytheistic belief and monotheism. The result of this attitude is that many atheists (indeed, most atheists) don't think it's worth the effort to carefully study theistic arguments. This, in turn, leads to widespread misinformation about theistic arguments within the atheist 'community'. This leads to books like god is Not Great and The God Delusion - poorly-argued international best-sellers. Then the popularity of these books among atheists ensures that the next generation of atheists also don't bother to study-up on the philosophy of religion. The result will almost certainly be more pseudo-intellectual rubbish from the 'pop atheist' movement in the future.
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