Beyond New Atheism and Theism
This book addresses the flaws and fallacies in the grounds for atheism and theism – flaws and fallacies that contaminate the arguments of non-believers and believers alike. Focusing on the highly visible debates between the New Atheists – such as Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris on the one hand – and their main theist opponents – including Frank Turek, John Lennox, and William Lane Craig on the other – it approaches these debates from the perspective of the sociology of religion and science.
With entire worldviews at stake, it explores various failings in the logic, language, and knowledge of the protagonists, revealing mistaken and oversimplified understandings of both science itself and the sociocultural and symbolic roles of religion on both sides. Advancing a secular and humanist worldview unburdened by the problems that beset both atheism and theism, the author argues for a sociological perspective on religion, God, and science as a practice, together with a critical realist approach to the nature of the real world as we experience it.
Beyond New Atheism and Theism will therefore appeal to scholars and students of sociology and cultural studies with interests in the conflicting worldviews of science and religion.
Sal Restivo is a retired sociologist/anthropologist who has held professorships and endowed chairs at universities in the United States, Canada, Europe, and China. He is a founding member and former president of the Society for Social Studies of Science, and he specializes in the sociology of science and religion. He is the editor-in-chief of Oxford’s Science, Technology, and Society: An Encyclopedia (2005). His most recent books are Einstein’s Brain: Genius, Culture and Social Networks (2020), Society and the Death of God (2021), Inventions in Sociology: Studies in Science and Society (2022), and The Social Brain: Sociological Foundations (2023).