There are a few problems with Kay's argument besides the ones Wilson cited. First, atheists generally aren't claiming that there is no god, merely that they lack belief in them. Agnosticism is not a middle point between theism and atheism, by their terminology, but refers to a completely different matter, that is, the actual existence of deities. Therefore, you could be an agnostic theist or a gnostic atheist or vice versa, since whether you believe in something and whether or not something is technically provable are very different matters, e.g. I may not be able to prove that my brother is not Spiderman, but that doesn't mean that it is an unreasonable belief.

Second, it's not entirely clear just what kind of god or gods (or goddess or goddesses) are being referred to. For instance, we can be absolutely certain that "omni-gods"--that is, deities that are rational, all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good--do not exist due to various arguments such as the problem of evil or inherent contradictions within the concept (such as the old "Can God make a rock so heavy He can't lift it?" paradox), and even most Christian theologians these days no longer support such a definition of God. So, depending on the deity being referred to, we most certainly can know that they do not exist.

The last issue I take with his argument is that requiring someone to prove a claim false before it can be rejected instead of requiring those making a claim to prove it sets the bar much too high--if we can't disbelieve in an unproven deity, then we can't disbelieve in literally any other crazy idea someone comes up with and maintain our intellectual integrity. Merely from a practical perspective, we have to be able to disregard some ideas as simply ridiculous.

Now, it's true that atheism isn't necessarily going to make the world a better place, and someone can be an atheist for absolutely silly reasons just as one could for any other worldview or belief. The most important thing is the promotion of skeptical inquiry into as many areas of life as possible--but unfortunately, books dealing with critical thinking alone don't tend to sell as well as something controversial. Instead of attacking the "New Atheists" for being "negative" and "counter-productive" (unfortunately, he didn't say in exactly what way atheists are guilty of either of these), we ought to be glad that someone's bringing religious skepticism into the spotlight. It's not as good as an entire skeptical worldview, but it's certainly better than nothing, and as skeptics, we humanists should encourage public discussion of religious skepticism rather than attack it.

--Aaron Smith