1st Edition
Beyond New Atheism and Theism A Sociology of Science, Secularism, and Religiosity
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.
Prologue 1. Genesis 2. In the Grasp of Secular Reason 3. The Science Turn and Sociology 4. The New Atheist Worldview 5. The Dawkins Delusion 6. Case Study: The Tangled Logic of Frank Turek 7. Case Study: John Lennox and the Unholy Alliance Between Mathematics, Logic, and God 8. William Lane Craig: Not Even the Illusion of Reason 9. Hans Küng: A Case Study in the Vicious Circles of Theist Logic 10. Case Study: Alvin Plantinga – The Unbearable Absurdity of Christian Philosophy 11. Religion and God in Sociological Perspective 12. Godless and Good 13. The Knowing Society: A Secular Moral Order Index
Biography
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).
'Restivo uses sociology to analyze and transcend both the dogmatism of theology and the naïve science-worship of today’s New Atheists. Lively, sharp-edged, widely knowledgeable, and impossible to misunderstand. God is a collective representation, and cultural evolution accounts for the morals that ground everyday life. The individual is the intersection of social networks (as is science), and what both individuals and sciences do is socially real, path-dependent, and open-ended. We could call this network secularism, and it provides its own trajectory of emotional energy (call it secular faith, if you like) into the optimistic possibilities of the future.'
Randall Collins, Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania, USA, and author of 'Charisma: Micro-sociology of Power and Influence'.'From an eclectic, erudite mind – this latest work from Sal Restivo is intellectually rich, admirably interdisciplinary, and sure to be engaging for anyone interested in a rigorous journey through contemporary atheism, theism, secularism, and religion.'
Phil Zuckerman, Professor of Sociology & Secular Studies, Pitzer College, USA, and author of 'What It Means to be Moral and Society Without God''Restivo uses sociology to analyze and transcend both the dogmatism of theology and the naïve science-worship of today’s New Atheists. Lively, sharp-edged, widely knowledgeable, and impossible to misunderstand. God is a collective representation, and cultural evolution accounts for the morals that ground everyday life. The individual is the intersection of social networks (as is science), and what both individuals and sciences do is socially real, path-dependent, and open-ended. We could call this network secularism, and it provides its own trajectory of emotional energy (call it secular faith, if you like) into the optimistic possibilities of the future.'
Randall Collins, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, and author of 'Charisma: Micro-sociology of Power and Influence''This book presents a sociological analysis of the Old Theism – New Atheism debate. It is an invitation to philosophers, logicians, mathematicians, physicists and theologians to reconsider the whole debate and accept the social as a - if not the - fundamental ingredient.'
Jean Paul Van Bendegem, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium'At an age when mortality might give others pause, sociologist and STS scholar Restivo argues brilliantly against the existence of God – of any gods. He demonstrates why atheist and theist ideas and logics are incommensurable and their explanations fruitless. Religion, finally, is the moral order "glue" of society and is real; God is real only in a symbolic sense.'
Peter Denton, Royal Military College of Canada, and author of The End of Technology
