Discussion Group Report

The February discussion group read and discussed "The New Naysayers" by Jerry Adler, published in the September 11, 2006 issue of Newsweek. The author examined four books written by three atheists that have enjoyed a spot on the top selling books list during the past several months: "The End of Faith" and Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, Breaking the Spell by Daniel C. Dennett, and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Atheists are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public according to a study by Penny Edgell, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota. In a recent Newsweek Poll, Americans said they believed in God by a margin of 92 to 6 and only 37 percent said they would be willing to vote for an atheist for president.

Newsweek writer, Adler, says Dawkins and Harris are not writing polite demurrals to the time-honored beliefs of billions- they are not issuing pleas for tolerance or moderation, but bone rattling attacks on what they regard as pernicious and outdated superstition. They ask: "Where do people get their idea of God? From the Bible or the Qur'an? Tell them their book was written by an invisible deity who will punish them with fire for eternity and they require no evidence whatsoever. How can anyone believe in a benevolent and omnipotent God who permits a tsunami to swallow up 180,000 people in a few hours?"

Adler's article says Dawkins attempts to show how the highest of human impulses, such as empathy, charity and pity, could have evolved by the same mechanisms of natural selection that created the human thumb. The driving force in evolution is the survival and propagation of our genes. They may impel us to instinctive acts of goodness.

Responding to the question, "If there is no God why be good?" Dawkins writes, "Do you mean the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward? That's not morality, that's just sucking up."

Regarding the Bible, Sam Harris is quoted as saying, "Why would anyone take moral instruction from a book that calls for stoning your children to death for disrespect, or for heresy, or for violating the Sabbath?

The Newsweek article concludes with: "Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris treat belief in God as a superstition the modern world can no longer afford, if they are right the five-century long competition between science and religion is sharpening."