Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies

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(5 stars) - Brilliant!
Bravo! Hart writes a much needed answer to the modernist self-congratulatory narrative being sold by the new atheists. Hart corrects the historical record of the late Roman Empire and Medieval periods.

If the new atheists want to write polemics against Christianity they are entitled to. But they are not entitled to their own historical facts. Hart's main message it that despite its many short comings, the Christian church has made the world a much better place for all of humanity; and its waning influence is to the world's detriment.

(4 stars) - Defend the faith
This book is essential reading for serious Christians who believe that their faith is worth defending and non Christians who value what liberal democracy has given us.

This book is an antidote to the trivialisations and revisionist fabrications that have been presented as truth.

(5 stars) - Fantastic.
I'm not going to write much down because many of the other reviews adequately cover why this book is so good. Unfortunatly, something like this will probably not get the public attention it deserves. Nonetheless, David Hart is one of America's most gifted thinkers (not to mention one of the most biting and hilarious writers seen in contemporary philosophy).

There isn't much to say about Atheist Delusions hasn't already been said. Buy this book now.

(5 stars) - difficult to read, but worth it
I first encountered David Bentley Hart a few months ago and recommend his essay "Christ and Nothing" (easily found online by plugging the title and his name into a search engine). In 241 pages, Atheist Delusions expands upon that essay's theme: "Christianity took the gods away, subdued them so utterly that, try though we might, we can never really believe in them again." Hart also explores this modern age's understanding of freedom as unfettered will, and compares it to the traditional understanding of freedom as the ability to act in accordance with one's nature: to be or become one's true self.

Despite the title, this book is not merely a refutation of Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and the rest of the New Atheists; Hart soundly swats them early on, and takes a few more swings along the way, but for most of the book he concentrates on the true history of Christianity, the pagan world it supplanted (and at times, regrettably, imitated), and the revolutionary implications of its teachings (in this, resembling the main theme of Cahill's The Gifts of the Jews). He ends on a pessimistic note -- with regards to the world only, not to the ongoing and ultimately victorious Christian revolution, which may presently be on the verge of another season of "purification in the desert" -- comparing modern efforts to roll back the prevailing post-Christian culture to Julian the Apostate's heartfelt but unsuccessful attempt to re-paganize the Roman Empire over which he ruled.

If some of these sentences strike you as wordy and difficult to follow, be warned that Professor Hart routinely writes like that, only with greater depth and clarity than I can manage off the top of my head. One paragraph I chose at random (from pp. 14-15) had a Flesch Reading Ease score of 27.5 and a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 17.0: grad-school stuff. But please don't let that intimidate you. Hart is a wise and patient teacher, and once you become attuned to his voice, you will learn many good and encouraging things.

(5 stars) - The Dismantling of New Atheism
In Atheist Delusions, Hart raises a powerful polemic against contemporary unbelief popularized by the so-called "New Atheists". It is also, perhaps, the most formidable defense of Christian faith I have ever read.

I am a Christian skeptic. I tend not to believe things because someone told me it is so. I prefer to test everything, weigh everything in the balance of reason and evidence. I believe that God gave us minds to use! The result of all this is that I sometimes call much of what passes for Christianity into question. When I read what atheist skeptics are saying (as I often do), I find them to be correct in many of their assessments of belief.

Within this context, I found in Hart's book a powerful force drawing me into a much deeper appreciation for the place of Christianity in history, and the uniqueness of the Christian message. It also opened my mind (frighteningly!) to what a truly post-Christian era will look like. It is this flow of history, both in retrospect and in prospect, as seen through Hart's analysis, that greatly strengthens my assurance in the truth and viability of the essential message of Jesus.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once remarked that "history has to be rewritten because history is the selection of those threads of causes or antecedents that we are interested in." And so the rewriting of history will always reflect prevailing current thought. This phenomenon is nowhere more blatant than in the selective retelling of history presently in vogue among the New Atheists. Hart's book offers a scholarly retort to the history of Christianity in the West being offered up by Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennet, and Harris. I suppose that the Holmes observation might apply equally to Hart's work. I will leave that case for others to make. But having read from the New Atheists, and having read Hart, I found Hart's retelling of Christianity's story to be the far more compelling.

Much of this book draws a contrast between the paganism predominate in the pre-Christian era, and the Christian "revolution" which supplanted it. It is popular in some quarters today to cast a nostalgic eye upon the "virtues" of paganism, and to lament its overthrow. Hart demonstrates conclusively how preposterous these notions are. He does not gloss over, nor deny the sad reality of injustices and crimes which have been committed in the name of Christianity, a litany of offenses which seems to completely engross the enemies of belief. Notwithstanding these blemishes, and with great skill and scholarship, Hart takes us on an enlightening stroll though history; he reveals how Christianity has advanced the sciences, social morality, and in particular, humanitarianism, far beyond the highest prospects of paganism. It is the Christian understanding of humanity, the elevation of what it means to be human, that is, in Hart's view, Christianity's most significant contribution. Against this backdrop, Hart paints the horrific prospects of inhumanity which lay before us in a post-Christian era. Here he finds an ally in Nietzsche's more thoughtful atheism. Hart deeply respects the intellectually honest unbelief of Nietzsche who clearly saw the frightening nihilistic consequences of the "death of God."

In contrast to his respect for Nietzsche, Hart laments the shallowness of today's trendy unbelief. " ... the tribe of the New Atheists is something of a disappointment. It probably says more than it is comfortable to know about the relative vapidity of our culture that we have lost the capacity to produce profound unbelief" (page 220). This "tribe of New Atheists" has published a spate of atheistic titles over the last decade. Hart has offered a persuasive rebuttal. The gauntlet has been dropped. I anxiously await a scholarly response from the halls of unbelief. I doubt that one will be written.

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