the problem with the new atheists

Since 9/11, several atheists — most prominently Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett — have stepped up their criticism of religious beliefs. To these "New Atheists", religious moderates are as bad as religious extremists:

Here's Dawkins:

However, the moderate, sensible religious people you've cited make the world safe for the extremists by bringing up children -- sometimes even indoctrinating children -- to believe that faith trumps everything and by influencing society to respect faith.

And Harris:

However, religious moderates are themselves the bearers of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others.

They are completely wrong, of course. Dawkins and Harris have absolutely no idea what religious moderates teach our kids. Questioning is an important part of learning, and faith-learning is no exception. If we have a healthy faith, we can question our own beliefs; and we'll be very skeptical of the crazy views of extremists.

Ironically, Robert Wright suggests in Foreign Policy magazine that the New Atheists are the ones inadvertently lending support to the extremists:

If you're a Midwestern American, fighting to keep Darwin in the public schools and intelligent design out, the case you make to conservative Christians is that teaching evolution won't turn their children into atheists. So the last thing you need is for the world's most famous teacher of evolution, Richard Dawkins, to be among the world's most zealously proselytizing atheists. These atmospherics only empower your enemies.

So too with foreign policy: Making "Western" synonymous with "aggressively atheist" isn't a recipe for quelling anti-Western Islamist radicalism.

Now Wright may be wrong. It may not be the case that extremists are benefitting from the campaigns of the New Atheists. But Wright does bring an important perspective to the table.

The New Atheists tend to speak in the world of abstracts, where all problems can be solved by simply not teaching kids about religion. Unfortunately, the real world has very concrete problems that require much greater cooperation among people who may not share the same viewpoints about things that cannot be objectively understood.

Living in Kansas, I have watched creationism rear its ugly head more than once in statewide politics. If religious moderates and non-religious people can't band together to put this monster down, Kansas students will be doomed to substandard education. That's a much more serious problem than trying to figure out exactly who is friendlier toward extremists.