There are two reasons why people start shouting at their opponents: one is that they think the opponent is so strong that every weapon must be used against him; the other is that they think their own case so weak that it has to be fortified by noise. Both these motives can be observed in the evangelical atheists. They seriously believe that religion is a danger, leading people into excesses of enthusiasm which, precisely because they are inspired by irrational beliefs, cannot be countered by rational argument. We have had plenty of proof of this from the Islamists; but that proof, the atheists tell us, is only the latest in a long history of massacres and torments, which—in the scientific perspective—might reasonably be called the pre-history of mankind. The Enlightenment promised to inaugurate another era, in which reason would be sovereign, providing an instrument of peace that all could employ. In the eyes of the evangelical atheists, however, this promise was not fulfilled. In their view of things, neither Judaism nor Christianity absorbed the Enlightenment even if, in a certain measure, they inspired it. All faiths, to the atheists, have remained in the condition of Islam today: rooted in dogmas that cannot be safely questioned. Believing this, they work themselves into a lather of vituperation against ordinary believers, including those believers who have come to religion in search of an instrument of peace, and who regard their faith as an exhortation to love their neighbour, even their belligerent atheist neighbour, as themselves.
At the same time, the atheists are reacting to the weakness of their case. Dawkins and Hitchens are adamant that the scientific worldview has entirely undermined the premises of religion and that only ignorance can explain the persistence of faith. But what exactly does modern science tell us, and just where does it conflict with the premises of religious belief? According to Dawkins (and Hitchens follows him in this), human beings are ‘survival machines’ in the service of their genes. We are, so to speak, by-products of a process that is entirely indifferent to our well-being, machines developed by our genetic material in order to further its reproductive goal. Genes themselves are complex molecules, put together in accordance with the laws of chemistry, from material made available in the primordial soup that once boiled on the surface of our planet. How it happened is not yet known: perhaps electrical discharges caused nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms to link together in appropriate chains, until finally one of them achieved that remarkable feature, of encoding the instructions for its own reproduction. Science may one day be able to answer the question how this occurred. But it is science, not religion, that will answer it.
(Roger Scruton, "The Return of Religion," Axess Magazine [2008] [italics in original])
Note from KBJ: What effect does Darwinism have on religion? All Darwinism does is provide an alternative explanation (besides design) for the appearance of design in nature. But the design (i.e., teleological) argument is only one argument for the existence of God. There are many others, such as the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, and the moral argument, that are untouched by Darwinism. How do you get from (1) one of the classical arguments for the existence of God is defective to (2) there is no god? It's breathtaking that intelligent people such as Richard Dawkins could commit such a gross fallacy, but they do. Note, too, that giving a naturalistic explanation of religion or religious belief goes no way toward showing that it is false. Everything, including science itself, has a naturalistic explanation, even if we don't currently know what it is. Is science therefore false? Is mathematics false? Is atheism false?
Maybe you don't think truth is the issue. Okay. Suppose that religion is discredited (whatever that might mean) because it has a naturalistic explanation. Then morality, law, art, and science are discredited, for they, too, have naturalistic explanations. The point to take away from this discussion is that explanation and justification are different activities. They both involve the giving of reasons, but the reasons in question differ. When one explains, one gives reasons why something is the case. (Why do dogs bark, for example?) When one justifies, one gives reasons that something is the case. (Theists attempt to justify belief in God, atheists to justify disbelief in God.) And even if explanation were the only activity, there are alternative explanations (besides the naturalistic one) for how religion arose, just as there are alternative explanations for how science arose. I'm not the least bit surprised that the main "evangelical atheists" (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens) lack philosophical expertise. They make simple, obvious mistakes that anyone with any philosophical training could identify. Daniel Dennett is a different case, since he has philosophical training.
Note 2 from KBJ: Richard Dawkins posted Roger Scruton's essay on his website. Read the comments from Dawkins's readers (if you can stand it). They unwittingly illustrate Scruton's term "fortified by noise." Note that almost all the comments are anonymous. Brave people, these!
