05.31.07
What was the Enlightenment?
Evangelical Theologian Counters ‘Militant Atheists’
Does anybody ever study the Enlightenment? Most of the philosophes were not atheists. This rant is almost as bad as that of the New Atheists
As the German theologian told the evangelical news agency ³idea² these ³militant atheists² are resuscitating the ideas of the 18th century enlightenment with its accompanying intolerance. With ³fanatical bias² the authors are trying to turn the errors of the world religions into the essence of religion itself.
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That attempt, however, is doomed to return like a boomerang, says Hille. After all, the 20th century had shown with brutal clarity how the atheistic ideologies of the Nazism and Communism had spurned mass destruction and misery.
According to Hille atheists must realize that mere human reason is not sufficient to answer questions of ethics and the ultimate purpose of life.
The German news magazine Der Spiegel has published a title story about the new atheists. Under the heading ³The Crusade of the Godless² the magazine quotes writers like the British evolutionist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), the Anglo-American critic Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great), the American author Sam Harris (The End of Faith), the French philosopher Michel Onfray (We Don¹t Need a God) and the Italian mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi (Why We Cannot Be Christians).
These intellectuals claim in their best selling books that religion is the root of all evil. They promote their atheistic ideas with a ³fundamentalist missionary zeal², writes Der Spiegel.