In response to the "New Atheism" publishing phenomenon many books written by theists have shown up in print. I have not read them all, not even most of them, but among those I have read there are some I found to be quite good, including Keith Ward's "Why There Almost Certainly Is a God", a brainy book with some deep ideas, and Edward Feser's "The Last Superstition", an informative as well as a hard-hitting book, which a theist may read with an almost guilty pleasure. In my judgment though Eric Reitan's book stands out as the best in the bunch. And, as is the case with many good books, Reitan's works on more levels than one.
On one level it is just what its title suggests: a direct response to New Atheism's argumentation. Eric Reitan, a philosophy professor at Oklahoma State university, knows his stuff, and so clearly, albeit gently, shows where such arguments go wrong, or how they are based on a deep misunderstanding of theistic thought. And he shows how the value judgments of New Atheism are unfair at best and quite misguided at worse. What most impressed me at this level though is this: Most of us, when we present some thought, instinctively claim more ground or merit than it really deserves. Reitan, consistently and I think self-consciously, does the opposite and is respectful of the contrarian view almost to a fault. I found this way of writing quite becoming.
On a deeper level, one feels that Reitan is not so much interested in the arguments per se, as in describing and understanding the human condition. It is easy for a knowledgeable theist to regard atheists as just people who cannot see beyond their noses, but not in this case. Reitan does not so much set out to show where atheism's arguments are wrong, but to investigate why people would come to think the way they think. The implicit concentration of Reitan's attention to the existential rather than to the intellectual aspects of our life, help point the book to the really important issues one should be considering. For while it is true that one builds an airplane based entirely on one's intellect, this is not how we build our lives. Our life's choices and our life's value depend on much more than reasoning: they depend mostly on our value judgments and on our courage. I think that's the deeper and more useful insight one gets from reading this book, than just finding out how intellectually superficial New Atheism is.
On a third level, which was the one that most made me think, Reitan discusses what religious faith is. Indeed it seems to me that writing about faith was really the purpose of the book, and that responding to New Atheism was just the pretext. Now, I used to think that when atheists define religious faith as "belief without sufficient reason" it was just a red herring, for I find that there is more than sufficient readon for believing in God, and surely far more reason than for believing in naturalism, or for believing that the world is just a big mechanism blindingly churning away, as virtually all New Atheists do. The big surprise I got from reading Reitan's book is that I saw that atheists are actually right: A defining characteristic of religious faith is indeed that people of faith do not have good reason for their beliefs. As Reitan explains, our life is religiously ambiguous, or at least is so for most people. Most people find that they can understand the world in which they live both as an impersonal mechanism, and well as a place rooted in goodness. So, Reitan explains, faith, rather than being a belief based on reasons, is a choice based on just the *hope* that the world is intrinsically good and will in the end come down to the side of goodness. Thus, the greatness of faith is based on the fact that people of faith commit their lives to a worldview of goodness *without* actually having sufficient reason to do so. What atheists judge to be a negative quality of faith, namely to believe without reason, is now shown to be precisely what is so great about faith, and indeed where faith's value rests. Rather than religion being based on fear or wishful thinking (a view which does not comport well with reality anyway), the religious response to life is now shown to be one of optimism and courage. Faith is a response which asserts the fundamental goodness of reality, and not a response which merely follows ontological reasoning [1]. This is a surprising and extremely powerful idea, which fits well with what we know about how faithful people are, and which indeed may be part of the explanation of why God created our life in a way that His/Her presence would not be obvious.
This is a great book. I highly recommend it to people of all viewpoints, for it offers not just knowledge but also what is most valuable in a book, namely food for thought. After reading it, rather than feeling satisfied, one feels hungry to think more about these matters and to take a deeper look into one's own life.
[1] Perhaps that's the meaning of Jesus's much misunderstood words in the Gospels: "You, Thomas, have believed because you have seen me; blessed are those who have not seen me and yet believe".
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