Giving Atheism a Bad Name

The New Atheism’s vigorous and uncompromising assertion of the rationality of its own beliefs and the irrationality of everyone else’s has caused many within the wider atheist community to cringe with embarrassment.

As the atheist philosopher Julian Baggini pointed out, the New Atheism seemed to believe that “only through stupidity or crass disregard for reason could anyone be anything other than an atheist.” This sort of dogmatic intellectual arrogance, he suggested, just gave atheism a bad name.

–Alister McGrath,
Faith and the prison of mere rationality,
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/03/01/3151356.htm