The first chapter was a short description of Josh’s background. I can't fault him on that, since many people do that in books like these (I even have a brief background in the book that I wrote [2]). But his description revealed a shallow, unexamined life. He did say that he went to church looking for answers when he was in high school, but the way it was described didn’t sound like a very earnest search. When he didn’t find the answers or sense of meaning that he was looking for, he quit going. In college, he continued this insincere sounding search for answers by pestering his professors after classes and in their offices. He even said that professors would close their doors and shut the blinds to hide from him. I hope that was just exaggeration, because I know how open my professors were when I was a student. It would have taken a particularly obtuse or arrogant student to get them to actually hide. He also mentioned …show more content…
The Challenge of the New Atheism This chapter was written by the son, Sean. It started off bad, criticizing the 'New Atheists' for not really offering any new arguments, when in reality, so called New Atheists never claimed to have any new ground breaking arguments. They thought of themselves as merely carrying on in the tradition of previous atheists like Bertrand Russell or Mark Twain. The term 'New Atheism' was coined in an article in Wired magazine, not invented by the New Atheists themselves. As a small point, he also used an expression that I find especially irksome, describing the New Atheists as 'militant'. Now, I realize that modern atheists may not be as deferential as those from the past, now that religion is losing some of its influence over society. But when Christians actually attack abortion clinics [14] and plot to kill police officers [15], while Muslims fly planes into buildings [16] and riot over the burning of a book [17], it seems a bit hyperbolic to call atheists 'militant' who merely write books and speak