Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies [Paperback]

David Bentley Hart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 23, 2010

In this provocative book one of the most brilliant scholars of religion today dismantles distorted religious “histories” offered up by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and other contemporary critics of religion and advocates of atheism. David Bentley Hart provides a bold correction of the New Atheists’s misrepresentations of the Christian past, countering their polemics with a brilliant account of Christianity and its message of human charity as the most revolutionary movement in all of Western history.

Hart outlines how Christianity transformed the ancient world in ways we may have forgotten: bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the “Age of Reason” was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason’s authority as a cultural value. Hart closes the book in the present, delineating the ominous consequences of the decline of Christendom in a culture that is built upon its moral and spiritual values.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"'Few things are so delightful as watching someone who has taken the time to acquire a lot of learning casually, even effortlessly, dismantle the claims of lazy grandstanders - Hart isn't making a bid for wealth, fame, or cocktail-party acceptance: he knows whereof he speaks.' Stefan Beck, New Criterion 'Anyone interested in taking the debate about God to the next level should read and reflect on Hart's spirited brief on behalf of Christian truth.' Damon Linker, New Republic"

About the Author

David Bentley Hart is the author of several books, including In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments and The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. He lives in Providence, RI.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (February 23, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300164297
• ISBN-13: 978-0300164299
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #49,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #52 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Atheism
  • #67 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Sociology

More About the Author

David Bentley Hart is the author of several books, including In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments and The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. He lives in Providence, RI.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

120 of 132 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating correction of "the narrative" March 12, 2010

By Geoff Puterbaugh

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

To begin with, the book should probably be titled "Atheist Delusions About Ancient History." This book is not so much a debate with our Fashionable New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens -- "The Gang of Four?? :-) ) It is more a long, and endlessly fascinating, revisit of Ancient History.

It may not be surprising to learn that there are at least two main narratives commonly provided for "The History of Western Civilization." Here they are (very compressed):

Narrative #1: The Christian Version. "The world was lost in pagan immorality and darkness; man enslaved man and man dominated woman. Then, with the Birth of Christ, came the Divine Light, and the world was forever transformed. The barbarian, knuckle-dragging rapists of Europe were baptised and brought to Jesus, and the world got much, much better. Even today, there is no other known source of European civilization and we reject it at our peril." One of the most popular novels of all time, "Quo Vadis," is in this narrative tradition.

Narrative #2: The Modernist Version. "We had the Glory of Greece and the Splendor of Rome, but alas a bunch of superstitious people completely replaced the glories of Paganism with the knuckle-dragging ignorance of Blind Faith. The result was the Dark Ages, which only ended when Heroic Forces restored the classics of Greece to a benighted Europe. Then came the Enlightenment, and Democracy, and all manner of good things, once the Europeans cast off the shackles of Faith." Arthur C. Clarke and many other modern thinkers followed this narrative.

Whether you approve of my "summaries" or not, the point is that they are both tremendous oversimplifications and they are both therefore silly. If you want to be a propagandist, OK, take one of those simple-minded narratives. But if you really want to understand the history of Western Civilization, you need much more information.

One myth which has been repeated endlessly is that "Christian mobs destroyed the Library of Alexandria." This is completely false. In the first place, there were two libraries, and there have been a number of "suspects" beginning with Caesar, but nobody really knows what happened. (A man named Parsons wrote a whole book on the subject.) Another myth is that Christianity somehow destroyed the original Greek manuscripts of Aristotle, and that we had to get them back from the Arabs, in Arabic. If this myth were true, how could we possibly have all of Aristotle in the original Greek today? (The original Greek manuscripts were preserved in Byzantium.)

Things like this make the book under review invaluable, and there is one larger discussion I would like to share with you. It concerns Galileo, and the Myth of Galileo -- apparently launched by the great hypocrite Brecht. Basically, all you need to know is that "everything you think you know about Galileo is false," most particularly the idea that Galileo and other modern astronomers were engaged in some sort of running war with the dogmatic Catholic Church. Not at all. In the end, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton were engaged in a much larger and more difficult battle: they were overturning the dead hand of Aristotle, which had stifled European science for thousands of years. Newton's final victory was the collapse of Hellenistic "science" --- such as it was.

Well, I've either stirred up your interest, or I haven't! Back to Beethoven Op. 127. :-)

130 of 155 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A much needed history lesson May 24, 2009

By Jordan M. Poss VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

The only thing I dislike about Atheist Delusions is its title. A few other reviewers have pointed out that it seems to indicate the book will be a rebuttal of atheist writers like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and the rest. It is not. Indeed, David Bentley Hart asserts that men like them are hardly worth attention because of the infantile level on which they argue. What Hart does, instead, is provide a history lesson for the "fashionable enemies" of Christianity.

The delusions in question, Hart says, are mostly historical ones. One will not discuss religion with an atheist long before history comes up. What of the injustice of the Inquisition? The Crusades? The long-running war of religion against science? The Reformation and the subsequent wars of religion? We hear constantly that religion (read: Christianity) is the most destructive force in human history. It is Hart's purpose to debunk the delusions and historical fabrications that characterize historical arguments against Christianity.

The primary focus of Hart's book, hinted at in the subtitle, is the "Christian Revolution," those first, tense centuries AD when Christianity replaced ancient paganism. The pagan era has been eulogized since in the Enlightenment as an era of peace and progress, of scientific advance that was stymied by the bigoted, book-burning Christians of the "Dark Ages." Hart shows that, while we owe much to the ancient world, it was also an irredeemably ugly place of slavery, infanticide, of callousness and hopeless reconciliation to the whims of cruel fate. Christianity, which he calls the only true revolution in history, changed everything from the bottom up--and since Christianity was first accepted among the lower classes and slaves, it changed everything quite literally from the bottom up.

Christians did not, Hart shows, burn the Library of Alexandria, or torture millions during the Inquisition, persecute Galileo, or wreak havoc across Europe during the Reformation in the name of religion. Christianity gave the world hospitals, modern science, and the moral framework to regard all life as worthy of life. In this coup de grace, Hart even points out that it would not even be possible for men like Dawkins and Hitchens to make their arguments of justice and fairness were it not for the "Christian Revolution," that their concepts of justice and fairness are rooted not just in Western Civilization but in Christianity itself.

The only way in which Atheist Delusions left me wanting was in a discussion of the Crusades. I am a military and medieval historian and so this topic is near and dear to my heart, but Hart only gives the Crusades a paragraph or two at the beginning of one chapter. He claims that the Crusades were not rooted in any Christian doctrine of just war--but they were, and were he to investigate further he would see the reasons the Crusades were considered just. (To take up the slack on this topic, I recommend Thomas F. Madden's New Concise History of the Crusades.)

But that one niggling issue aside, Atheist Delusions is one of the best books I have ever read--and I do not say so lightly. I read through it as quickly as I could and have thought about it daily ever since. I've found more food for thought, more intellectual challenge and stimulation here than in any book I've read in years.

Highly recommended.

35 of 41 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars turning to history and dismissing the modern myths January 17, 2010

By matt

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Obviously there are tons of reviews here that you can read to make up your mind over the purchase of this book, but as someone who has been on both sides of this debate, and as a trained historian and teacher of history, I can say that what I found most useful was the author's critique of so many mythical versions of history that pit religion (Christianity in particular) against reason, charity, science and history itself. At university I was indoctrinated with almost every alternate, pop-historical theory that supported a discounting of Christianity's usefulness, along with any possibility that the historical documents could have any usefulness in knowing what actually took place. The historical and exegetical gymnastics and twists that were employed by both myself and the faculty were, in retrospect, rather dishonest. But that is the post-modern milieu; distrust all ideologies (except the current one that got you your PhD thesis accepted).

So I would say check the book out at the library at least. It reads very well and Hart can turn a phrase. You may even laugh out loud a few times, either because you see his point or think he is so off the mark that you cannot believe it made it into print. But let's be honest, too much of the debate ignores history and is built upon straw men- barns full of straw. Hart helps clean the floor so we can be a little more honest with our sources. As he notes, "The past is always to some extent a fiction of the present."

And philosophically, he shows what seems obvious to many: the fundamental presupposition of a logical argument is not provable, but assumed. Questions about the existence or non-existence of God(s), and all epistemology, begin with begged premises that are then built upon based upon experience, history, reason, etc. It isn't virgin ground. It's been plowed a thousand times before we get to it. He writes, "All reasoning presumes premises of intuitions of ultimate convictions that cannot be proved by any foundations or facts more basic than themselves, and hence there are irreducible convictions present wherever one attempts to apply logic to experience. One always operates within the established boundaries of one's first principles, and asks only the questions that those principles permit." Faith is another way of saying "accepted first principle" whether one does or does not believe in God(s). It is assumed, not proven and the sword cuts both ways. But of course Hart uses the sword to cut against the pseudo-scientific (scientistic) myth. "Materialism is not a fact of experience or a deduction of logic; it is a metaphysical prejudice, nothing more, and one that is arguably more irrational than most any other."

Although Hart could have interacted more directly with the "New Atheist" foursome (he does, but not systematically), there are plenty of books that do so directly. For example, I would recommend at least looking into: Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins' Case Against God, Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism), Contending with Christianity's Critics: Answering New Atheists and Other Objectors, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages:Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts, Science and Religion, 400 B.C. to A.D. 1550: From Aristotle to Copernicus, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, Convictions: Defusing Religious Relativism, God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, The Restitution of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism and of course I would always suggest Miracles for a good overview of the materialist worldview.