12/15/2009

Atheism and shallowness

A common response to an atheist's criticism of religion (or a particular religion, or some specific religious belief) is that the criticism is shallow. The suggestion is, presumably, that the criticism does not touch on the important aspects of religion and focus on something that is not essential to it. Usually there is no elaboration of what these important aspects are, and when there is, it turns out to be irrelevant to the criticism. So, please, stop calling atheism shallow; what matters is whether atheism is true (I am sure some would consider this very last claim shallow!).

Mark Johnston in his new book Saving God: Religion after Idolatry refers to Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, et al. as "undergraduate atheists". That is, he thinks they are shallow (or sophomoric, if you will). I hope Johnston, being a well-known philosopher, has substantiated this claim in his book. But I doubt it.

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