DAVID HART'S BOOK: "ATHEIST DELUSIONS: THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION AND ITS FASHIONABLE ENEMIES"

R.R. Reno offers a review of David Hart's Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press).  Here's an excerpt from Reno's review:

“But,” as Hart writes in one of those sentences that makes the writer in me jealous, “atheism that consists in vacuous arguments afloat on oceans of historical ignorance, made turbulent by storms of strident self-righteousness, is as contemptible as any other form of dreary fundamentalism.”

So, yes, the modern era presents Christianity with deep and profound challenges, challenges we should engage, because they have the power to reform and deepen our faith. Hart points to David Hume and Edward Gibbon, and especially Friedrich Neitzsche. But it seems that our postmodern age has seen a definite drop in the quality of unbelief. “By comparison to these men,” writes Hart, referring to the serious atheists, “today’s gadflies seem far lazier, less insightful, less subtle, less refined, more emotional, more ethically complacent, and far more interested in facile simplifications of history than in sober and demanding investigations of what Christianity has been or is.”   [more . . .]    HT: Between Two Worlds

Me:  It looks like Hart's book reaches a new level of sophistication and depth and that he wields his verbal sword with notable dexterity.