Confused Piece on Atheism Appears in Newsweek

On the one hand, Jerry Adler of Newsweek would dismiss atheism as barely amounting to a “movement,” citing the budget and membership of a single organization (American Atheists). On the other, he notes that The End of Faith by Sam Harris has sold over 270,000 copies. He calls the new Dawkins and Harris books (see “MNA Fall Reading List” below) “highly inflammatory,” and writes that Richard Dawkins “seems not to have spent much time among ordinary Christians” (Dawkins, in his own words, had a “normal Anglican upbringing”). On a more foreboding note, he writes that when we “choose sides” between religion and science, “people get hurt.” There seems to be an agenda at work here, and it is not objective journalism. more