Faith Beyond Belief by Margaret Placentra Johnston

These three New Atheist authors wrote to convince their readers that religion is nothing but hogwash, that human reason is the last word, that science will one day present us with the ultimate truth of our existence, and that the visible reality we enjoy on earth is all there is. After establishing that Adam and Eve surely never existed in the literal sense, and that the bite of forbidden fruit was symbolic of the sins of mankind in general, Dawkins offers this acerbic comment: “So, in order to impress himself, Jesus had himself tortured and executed, in vicarious punishment for a symbolic sin committed by a non-existent individual?” Despite the fact that few modern theologians take such stories literally, Dawkins laments that many regular people…do…“What makes my jaw drop,” he writes, “is that people today should base their lives on such appalling role models as Yahweh.” Īnd from the New Testament, Dawkins finds the principle of atonement “morally obnoxious.” refers to the “sin” of Adam eating a forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, and the supposed need for Jesus to live and die thousands of years later in atonement on behalf of all humanity for this seemingly minor infraction on the part of one man. …Dawkins gives his readers many examples of why we would not want to derive our morals from Old Testament scripture…He finds appalling the story of Noah, wherein God was so displeased with mankind that He drowned all of them except for one family (and animals as well, except for one pair from each species). In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins claims that…eligion…is a by-product of memes…It keeps getting passed down from generation to generation because of its own ability to fulfill the wishes and drives of normal human psychology. In The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris posits what all professed nonbelievers and most believers must feel is self-evident: that whatever we believe, it must correspond to an actual literal reality…e elevates the faculty of human reason to the level of religion itself, saying it is reason that inspires deeper ethics and brings order into the world while religious faith detracts from it… would lead us to a world where reason, spirituality, and ethics come together to form a strictly rational approach to our deepest concerns…e claims such a world would mean “the end of faith.”

This will do away with unneeded violence, unwise health practices, and the blind submission advocated by some religions, thus improving civilization, he argued.

…Hitchens felt religion has outlived its usefulness and it is time for science and reason to take its place as dominant forces in society.

Faith Beyond Belief by Margaret Placentra Johnston