Science Versus Religion? The Insights and Oversights of the 'New Atheists' - Brad S. Gregory

The assertion of the ‘New Atheists’ that the natural sciences somehow oppose all religious truth claims about the natural world is false. These atheists mistakenly treat all religion as one. In fact, some teachings are far superior to other blatantly mistaken ones. Moreover, while claims that believers have sinned may be true, ‘any implication that specific religious truth claims are therefore undermined is fallacious’. ‘Christian truth claims…do not stand or fall depending on the actions of Christians’. The ‘New Atheists’ have – probably unconsciously – adopted a presupposition that if God exists, he must ‘belong conceptually at least in certain respects to the same ontological order as everything else’. This departs from the Christian tradition of a God ‘distinct from and noncompetitive with his creation [sic]’ and ‘incomprehensibly transcendent’. Consequently, God ‘cannot in principle be shown to be a “delusion” on the basis of any scientific finding’; rather, ‘the epistemological self-restraints of… natural sciences precludes saying anything… about whether something might transcend the natural order’. To claim that modern science leaves no room for God is quite false and the ‘New Atheists’ must look beyond the strict ‘naturalistic horizons of [their] ontological prison’, becoming more self-conscious and self-critical.

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