The "New Atheism" as "Good News"
While the new atheism has generated worry among Christians, perhaps it isn't warranted. One gets a sense of growing worry among atheists as well, and for good reason.
The last few years have seen the rise of the so-called “New Atheism”. a loose coalition of vociferous atheists who have denounced Christianity and religion generally in a number of high profile, bestselling books including Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion
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While the new atheism offers little new by way of argument, it conveys the erroneous impression that orthodox Christianity is on the ropes intellectually speaking. On the contrary, Christianity has experienced renewed vitality through recent work in New Testament scholarship and philosophy of religion.
With regard to New Testament studies, just a few short decades ago it was widely assumed that the historical Jesus was all but inaccessible to critical scholarship. However, today works like N.T. Wright’s monumental The Resurrection of the Son of God (Augsburg Fortress, 2003) defend an orthodox picture of Jesus Christ on solid historical and evidential grounds. (Indeed, such is the evidence that even Pinchas Lapide, a Jewish scholar, has concluded on wholly historical grounds that Jesus was resurrected!)
..., the new atheists, to their credit, acknowledge that Christianity makes factual claims about the world, and thus that it is disingenuous to consign it to the realm of private feelings. Not only have they returned the question of factuality to discussion of Christian faith, but they have thereby placed discussion about God at the center of national consciousness and serious public debate. As such, they have unwittingly provided a golden opportunity for Christians to enter the public discussion and set the record straight. And that, it seems to me, is good news indeed.http://www.christianity.ca/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=5307
