Sure, just as long as you supply me “liberally from your flock, your threshing floor and your winepress” when my six years is up. (Deut 15:14)

I apologise if I’m showing that I haven’t read the entire thread by referring to a book already referred to.

But I don’t remember anyone mentioning Roger Steer’s Letter To An Influential Atheist which I have begun to read. It is 4 years old, and written before The God Delusion, but still pertinent and well-written.

Steer’s major point is that Darwin and others didn’t think that the theory of evolution was the answer to the meaning of life, but only to the origin of species.

He says that at times Dawkins tells us that knowing about evolution also tells us the reason for our existence, but often contradicts this in other things he says.

PS: David, with regard to last Sunday: You just didnt pray for Johnno hard enough!

Rob, yeah, I think I was otherwise occupied. I like the Kangas ‘cause they’re gritty.

You’ve got to admit though, victory over the Hawks was sweet.

Enjoyed the trip to Sydney, time with Mum and Dad, visited a great church-in-the-making Chatswood Presbyterian well on the way recovering from liberal past, and saw some of the great ones - Stuart Piggin who I was at Uni with and Greg Clarke (CPX - more power to them).

I got guys in banging away at some renovations, plus I’ve got work to do on a couple of other issues, though I have gone and bought an iPod to listen to 200+ clips downloaded from some crowd called The Intelligent Community and used in conjunction with their book “the iPod tutor: the argument against richard dawkins’ the God delusion” The only problem is I’ve got to slog through “The God Delusion” again - what a bummer! However, I think its all about logigical fallacies and other rhetorical tricks, so I might learn something.

Hi David McK,

Why don’t you post a review./assessment of Roger Steer’s arguments.

Cheers

David

Hi Dad -

good to read here that you’re back from Sin City, and that the renovations have started - but I’m disappointed to see you triumphing over Hawthorn in our misfortune…

I have a couple of questions though -

1.  What is an “Ipod” - something to do with gardening?

and

2.  Where on earth did you learn to say “bummer”?

see you sometime soon I hope (we’re at Venus Bay for the Long Weekend),

Ben

Ben Palmer - 04 June 2008 12:38 AM

Hi Dad -

I should have worked that out!

Sorry about bummer - I normally get Ben to check out anything I write before offering it for publication - maybe I should get him to check out my forum posts.

Hi, I’m back.

I have just finished reading Keith Ward’s “Is religion dangerous” and hope to post my assessment over the next couple of days. This is well worth reading, despite a few reservations which have more to do with the bristles of my conservative evangelicalism although, also, in my opinion, Ward has an overly sanguine view of Islam – though I suppose a man can be forgiven for generosity.

Keith Ward is an Anglican clergyman, philosopher and theologian, being Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University before his retirement in 2004.

In “Is religion dangerous”, Ward sets out to answer, even refute a central thesis of the new atheists to the effect that religion is dangerous both to society and to individuals. His conclusion is that while religion is sometimes dangerous, it is also one of the most powerful forces in the world for good. However he says a lot of more useful stuff before arriving at that point.

I think this is a very good little book (200 pages), well written by an intelligent, well balanced, incredibly fair individual (well, he is a Christian) who puts the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens to shame, without that intention, for their intolerant, unreflective, tawdry and indeed ignorant stridency (my words).

I am a little distracted at present as I’m debating my euthanasia article at OnLine Opinion and my abortion article goes up tomorrow and that will most definitely draw the crabs.

Hi David
Good to see you back on this thread - I enjoy reading your observations

regards

A Review of is religion dangerous? by Keith Ward, published by Lion Hudson 2006, reprinted by Eerdmans 2007

There is no difficulty in finding quite obsessive antipathy toward religion whether you scan articles posted on On Line opinion, read the new atheists or recall Richard Dawkins’ television series, the root of all evil. There is no end to this kind of thing: Christopher Hitchens’ subtitle to God is not Great, is Religion poisons everything.

Ward says that he has written his book because he thinks this characterisation of religion is ridiculous for it ignores the evidence from history, psychology, sociology and philosophy.

They refuse to investigate the question in a properly rigorous way, and substitute rhetoric for analysis.

The modest proposition Ward will work with is religion does both harm and good but most people when faced with the evidence will be inclined to say to say that it does a great deal more good than harm, and further the world would be much worse off without religion. To this he adds the important qualifier (that none of the new atheists with the possible exception of Sam Harris will acknowledge) that not all religions are the same and it is best to choose the religion with the highest intellectual and moral standards.

I must say that Ward writes beautifully – careful, restrained penetrating but never dull or pedestrian. Rather, he writes with verve and panache, but unlike Hitchens and Dawkins who also write with these qualities, he avoids the bombastic unsubstantiated overstatements. The new atheists write as crude populist pamphleteers who aren’t too choosy about getting their facts straight when discussing and ridiculing their (often straw man) opponents.  Ward is scrupulously fair and as a consequence his dismantling of the new atheists more telling for the discerning reader. 

The remainder of the lengthy Introduction covers the subjects, What is religion anyway?, The study of early religion (the early anthropologists who undertook a “purely natural study that viewed religion as an outmoded superstition), Taking things literally, The development of religious ideas, and Religions as diverse and developing.

I must say that in these sections I discovered a mind that has thought more deeply than my rather poor affair but also a mind that goes along a somewhat different trajectory - whilst Ward wishes to be understood as an orthodox born again Christian, there is more than a touch of the disinterested academic about him, an embracing of a comparative religion approach, and a willingness to understand the Bible as evidencing a move from primitive beginnings to its final fully developed form.

In these concluding sections of the Introduction, the following points stood out:

• religious expression is more metaphorical than literal (suggesting that the obsession with ‘literal truth’ has more to do with the scientific outlook than anything else),

• that in religion there may be an appropriate form of intellectual imagination that gives access to a reality that cannot be known by the senses – and he says confining human knowledge to what the senses tell us knocks out a whole lot of other things additional to God, things like mathematics, quantum physics, objective moral truths, and that’s just for starters

• spiritual experiences may be illusory, but the possibility that they are not must be taken seriously - suppose that there is a transcendent suprasensory reality, such as God. Only the mind could give access to it, and imagination, carefully controlled by reason, might be an important element of mental creativity. If you also suppose that the supreme spiritual reality is personal in character, you might expect that it would take an active role in helping to shape and guide the imagination. It might not simply override imagination, but interact with it to develop greater insight into its nature.

Personally, while I find this latter point interesting, I’m less interested in supposing anything and more interested in acknowledging God at work in the world, including in my own life through the work of the Spirit of God – but then Ward might also say this as well.

There are four parts to the book.

Part 1: Religion and Violence has three chapters: the causes of violence, the corruptibility of all things human, religion and war.

Part 2: Are religious beliefs irrational? has two chapters: faith and reason, life after death

Part 3: Are religious beliefs immoral? has three chapters: morality and the Bible, morality and faith and the Enlightenment, liberal thought and religion

Part 4: Does religion do more harm than good? has two chapters: does religion do more harm than good in personal life? and what good has religion done?

Clearly from the chapters headings we know Ward is going to meet some of the key new atheist arguments head on.

To be continued

In Chap 1 The causes of violence, Ward begins with the soft example of the Quakers - “however strongly we disagree with them, at least we know they are not going to kill us – before moving on to al Qaida.

Ward advances the argument that it is the lack of faith in the value of existence and in the possibility of goodness that is likely to lead to pure evil. He says this is not the case with al Qaida and puts forward the argument,

we might argue that members of Al Qaida must really know that God does not hate non-Muslims, that it is wrong to kill the innocent, and that hatred is always forbidden by a God of mercy and compassion. I would argue that, and so would the vast majority of Muslims. But the power of self-deception is strong. It is very easy for people to convince themselves that evil is good.  (p 31)

There follows lengthy discussion of Hitler and National Socialism which is then applied to al Qaida.

Concerning al Qaida he has this to say:

If we now look at Al Qaida and its activities, it is perfectly clear that its ideology is founded on hatred and on a stereotypical idolisation of Muslims and demonisation of ‘Kaffirs’ (unbelievers). It manifests the will to power, in the drive to dominate the world. And it is indifferent to the well-being of most of the world’s population, who are to be eliminated or converted. The beliefs of Al Qaida are unequivocally evil.

But are they not religious beliefs? Yes, they are. There are some unequivocally evil religious beliefs. In the discussion of National Socialism, it is obvious that there are also some unequivocally evil non-religious beliefs. What makes beliefs evil is not religion, but hatred, ignorance, the will to power, and indifference to others. (p 34)

As to how al Qaida came to its views, Ward puts it down to conspiracy theories that provide an

identifiable enemy against whom the rage, envy, bitterness and vindictiveness of people who feel unjustly attacked and oppressed can be directed. (p35)

Ward recognises that many of his readers will wish to draw attention to texts of violence in the Quran. His response is twofold: yes they exist and they exist in the Bible too, as well as the history of Christianity, but there are other texts to over-ride the fierce texts.

If it is argued that religious texts breed intolerance, the question that must be asked is: what causes people to choose those texts, which according to the general scholarly consensus of religious scholars were for situations long in the past, and which have since been overridden both by other specific texts and by the general sense of scripture? The answer to that question can only be given by detailed examination of the social contexts in which such choices are made, usually contexts of social and economic injustice and deprivation. In short, it is hatred and intolerance that cause religious texts to be chosen to give a sham moral support to perverted natural inclinations. It is not religion that causes intolerance. It is intolerance that uses religion to give alleged ‘moral’ support to the real cause of intolerance — hatred of those perceived or imagined to be oppressors or threats to one’s own welfare. (p 38)

Ward chooses the read the Quran and Muslims generally in a benign way. In fact, according to Ward,

Al Qaida is condemned by the words of its own alleged religion.

Militant Islam is a corruption of Islam, which is the worship of and obedience to a supreme reality of perfect goodness. Militant Islam is dangerously wrong about its idea of perfect goodness. But Islam contains the materials to correct that corruption. (p39)

Ward’s conclusion, remembering his lengthy (and in this review, unreported) discussion of Nazi Germany as well as al Qaida, is that

all human beings, religious or not, are prone to evil. Human beings are dangerous, and anything they believe or do will probably go terribly wrong at some point. (p39)

Religion does not lead to corruption. Human nature leads to corruption. If we let human beings into our religion, it is going to get corrupted. (p40)

Chapter 2 address a glaring omission in the new atheism: The corruptibility of all things human. I don’t think there is need to dwell on this chapter for it deals with a self evident fact for Christians.

Ward’s way of proceeding is to draw a parallel between religion and liberal democracy. It should be perfectly obvious, he says,

It should be perfectly obvious, however, that we can admit that liberal democracy can be dangerous, and that in some cases it has become corrupt, without conceding that liberal democracy is a bad thing, or that we would be better off without it. The same is true of religion. The reasonable thing to say is that liberal democracy is a good thing, as long as it is complemented by a strong moral impulse to consider the welfare of all people. In human life that can never be absolutely guaranteed. But it would be wise for any society to seek the most effective means possible for encouraging and motivating a moral sensibility in its members. This means some form of systematic moral education — of inculcating a sense of the value of personhood, the pursuit of individual virtue and the common good.

There can be little doubt that one major source of such moral education is religion. (p45)

The rest of the chapter spells out in more detail the role of religion for moral values, including the existence of blind spots, and limitations of moral vision (think the slavery issue).

The chapter concludes with the worthwhile point about the way evil masquerades as the good, which brings to mind one of the key points in Cornelius Plantinga’s Not the way it’s supposed to be, that what makes evil so seductive is the good in evil (if you don’t get that, than I recommend the book – it is a gem).

Machiavelli saw this very clearly: if you wish to be evil and to get away with it, you must take great care that you appear to be committed to morality and religion, to core values of great, even cosmic importance. The distortion of evil to make it appear good is one of the first tricks of the successfully evil. So religion is one of the main weapons in the armoury of evil.

In the longest chapter in the book, Religion and war, Ward takes up the issue of militant Islam and then extends the discussion to militant Christianity. I will review this material in the next post.

Chapter 3, Religion and war, opens with the observation that

it is undoubtedly true that at the present time Islam presents a particular problem for Western secular democracies, and this case requires special consideration. The problem is that there exist Muslim groups that are committed to annihilating Western secular democracies by force or terror, and replacing them with a worldwide Islamic society under the rule of Shari‘a or Islamic law. (p56)

This is followed by a lengthy discussion of Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood and the link to Communism. Thus,

The clue to understanding Jihadist Islam is to see that it is a form of Islamicised Marxism, a Muslim theology of liberation that has capitulated to a secular agenda. 

It is thus not religion that causes Islamic terrorism. It is a version of Islam that has been corrupted by the most successful anti-religious movement in the twentieth century, Marxist-Leninism. (p 59)

If this is not wishful thinking, I don’t know what is.

It is no surprise then to read that Qutb’s views are not representative of Islam.

How to eliminate such views?

1. address the political issues of injustice and gross equality, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, etc
2. provide balanced Islamic education
3. develop more liberal interpretations of the Quran among Muslims

To me, Ward is whistling in the wind, engaging in special pleading for Islam. In regard to 2 and 3 who will do what he proposes, and how well would such measures be accepted?

Ward moves on to the dangers of violence in Christianity. Christianity too has potentially dangerous doctrines, and Christians have done terrible things. He wants the pacifism in Jesus’ teaching and life given full weight but fails to indicate whether such pacifism is present in Mohammed’s teaching and life. He comes back to the earlier point about religion “may have played some part” in the history of warfare and violence,

but it is the desire for power and wealth that is the constant factor. (p65)

The vast imperial struggles of the ancient world were not wars of religion. They were wars of conquest, to impose imperial order and rule on areas that could provide the ruling elite with stupendous power, wealth and security. (p66)

Sections follow on Christianity and the Roman world (Christians were slaves and labourers, poor and oppressed), the Crusades (which started in 1054, because of the massacre of thousands of Christians by Seljuk Turks –The Oxford History of the Crusades edited by Jonathan Riley-Smith is a good source of reliable material on the Crusades), Religion and types of social order, and makes the following assessment of the more unsavoury aspect of the Church’s actions (whilst drawing attention to all the good things that the new atheists consistently ignore, without exception)

There are certainly some major historical blots on the record of the Christian churches. I have suggested that they were due to three main factors: the church’s involvement with the violent political powers of the dying Roman empire, faced with invading barbarians and Muslims who placed that empire under a clear and pressing threat; an ideology of illiberal paternalism; and that factor which is never completely absent from any human affairs and institutions: sin, or hatred, greed and envy. (p72)

Regarding so called religious wars.

However, no one who has studied history could deny that most wars in human history have not been religious. And in the case of those that have been religious, the religious component has usually been associated with some non¬-religious, social, ethnic or political component that has exerted a powerful influence on the conflicts.

To find examples of non-religious wars we need look no further than the first half of the twentieth century….. (p73)

... detailed surveys show that genuinely religious wars are few, that much of the violence in the modern world has nothing to do with religion, and that where religion is a factor, It is called on in support of other grievances that seem in most cases to be the precipitating causes of conflict.

... religious wars are a tiny minority of human conflicts. War and violence seem to be part of the human condition. (p76)

... religion has often been a voice of moderation and reconciliation, and that is its true role, as the scriptural documents of all the great world religions clearly show. (p81)

At the risk of repeating myself I think a very large question mark hangs over Islam as a religion and political identity and we need go no further than comparing the life and teachings of Jesus and Mohammed to know that this is so. This is not to say that Ward is out of touch with Muslims andf their religion. In fact he has had considerable contact, but I would suggest this has been within an inter-faith context.

Part 2 of is religion dangerous? seeks to answer the question is religion irrational? under 2 chapter headings, Faith and reason and Life after death.

The point that is being addressed here is the new atheist assertion that religion does intellectual harm for it is

a danger to truth and to rationality, and it replaces thoughtful concern for facts with blind acceptance on authority of absurd beliefs. (p85)

The atheists’ argument is that any belief in order to be reasonable must be confirmed by observation and/or experiment, including measurement Leaving aside the fact that such a statement is not itself open to observation and experiment, it is an undeniable fact there are many things that we believe that are not scientifically verifiable, whether my wife loves me, or such and such an action is morally good, this piece of art is worthy or that political party is to be preferred over that one.

Ward raises the issue of worldviews, nominating three

commonsense world view, i.e. things are as they appear to us, a rather naïve view for the reality of something is not necessarily its face value –seeing and touching only go so far.

materialist worldview of the new atheists, i.e. the view that reality is whatever science tells us. Materialism goes beyond common sense for it proceeds by way of sophisticated abstract theories. The appeal of materialism is in its reduction of reality

to just one sort of stuff – matter, energy or superstrings, perhaps (p88)

Ward notes various problems with materialism, such as quantum physics dissolving the idea of matter, the conflict between quantum and relativity theory (I’m out of my depth), how to account for consciousness logic, mathematics, feelings, intentions. goals and evaluations. And what of spirituality?

The simplicity that materialism offers may be bought at the cost of overlooking the real complexity that is part of reality. (p88)

idealist worldview i.e. the view that sees the fundamental character of reality as of consciousness or mind. Thus contrary to the materialist, consciousness is not the by-product of a physical mind but rather the brain and the body are the material forms of an underlying mental reality. Idealism is able therefore to take full account of the existence and importance of human awareness, feelings and uniquely personal experiences.

Religion tends towards idealism but with modification.

Many attacks on religion proceed on the basis that idealism is false. Thus Dawkins contrasts materialism based on painstaking research with religious views based on ‘blind faith’. In Ward’s opinion Dawkins is ignorant of philosophy, ignorant of the weaknesses of materialism.

I believe that any reasonable person, faced with all the wide array of philosophical arguments throughout history and today, would be forced to admit that no worldview (no system of metaphysics) has gained universal consent among the informed peer group of professional philosophers.

Looking around at my philosopher colleagues in Britain, virtually all of whom I know at least from their published work, I would say that very few of them are materialists. Some — a minority probably — are idealists. A good number are theists. And most seem to be generally sceptical or agnostic about all worldviews, preferring to deal with specific tricky problems case by case, and to eschew general theories, materialism and idealism alike. (p90,91)

There follows a refutation of the view of new atheists that the enlightenment philosophers disproved all the proofs for God. Thus for Kant all ultimate worldviews are unverifiable, yet it is supremely important that to have one, otherwise on what practical life-commitments can we base our lives?

That best, for Kant, was the postulate of a supremely good and wise God, on whom the rationality of the world and of human thought, and the reasonableness and obligatoriness of morality, could be founded. We have to go beyond the evidence, for reason itself compels us to do so.

So the history of European philosophy is not really a story of moving from proofs of God to irrational faith. It is rather a story of a clarification of the methods and limits of science, and of the basis of our most general worldviews in the sorts of practical commitment, the ways of life and moral orientation, that make possible distinctive human activities like science, morality and religion (p94)

Regarding revelation, Ward comments,

It is very reasonable to suppose that a being of supreme goodness, would not leave humans completely in the dark about what they are meant to be and do, and about the nature of the Supreme Good itself. In a word, it is very reasonable to expect some sort of revelation of the character and purposes of God.

For most religious believers, God is not just a postulate of reason, as God was for Kant. God is one who makes the divine reality known in history and experience. (p95)

The chapter concludes with two observations:

Religious worldviews are not rational because they produce overwhelming arguments that ‘prove’ the truth of the worldview to all competent people. They are rational because they are structured and elaborated in a critical and reflective way, using rational criteria for judgment that are always open to diverse interpretations.

Secular thinking can be as filled with prejudice, partiality and neglect of relevant data, and as intolerant of and impatient with opposition as the most narrow religious view. There is just no reasonable case for arguing that religious belief is as such irrational or unthinking. Any such view is plainly false. It is, in fact, a prime instance of irrational thinking. (p97,98)

In chapter 5, Ward begins by addressing the new atheist view that belief in an after life is a harmful thing., because they will care less about what happens in this life.

Why should this be so, if the God worshipped is a God of compassion and love. Why alienate such a God if your life on earth is marked by hatred, greed and lust for power? Indeed.

(Ward has an aside that the view of a reward in the after-life for killing someone in disagreement with me, and by implication my religion, is clearly wrong)

There follows some unsatisfactory discussion of the Biblical doctrine of hell, but also the entirely satisfactory conclusion

… the primary intention of religion is deliverance from evil (and therefore hell in the after-life) and devotion to goodness for its own sake. To call that dangerous requires an inversion of vision that is breathtaking. (p102)

Ward next turns the argument around

I certainly do not want to say that atheists are bound to be immoral, but I see no reason why atheists should care more about human life than theists do. Free from fear of hell, and having no hope of heaven, people are at liberty to act as they please, without consideration for consequences after death. If they want to kill, they can. If they want to end their own lives, why should they not? It just seems totally implausible to suggest that if you think there is an afterlife, you will be more likely to kill or commit suicide. If anything, people should be less likely to do so, because of what might happen to them after death. (p103)

His conclusion:

It is precisely because human life on earth is felt to be of moral significance that the hope for life after death is a natural hope for the fulfilment of personal life in a reality that has been created by a personal God. (p106)

Part 3 asks the question, are religious beliefs immoral? and begins with Morality and the Bible (Chapter 6).

The point being addressed in this chapter is:

… that there is something dangerous about religious morality. That is because (some people) think religious morality is based on unthinking acceptance of the rules of some holy book like the Bible. It might be bad enough to accept moral rules unthinkingly. But it is even worse if many of the moral rules in the Bible now seem to be cruel and reactionary. (p109)

‘Some people’ of course most definitely are the new atheists who write some very excitable chapters based on a very literal reading of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and can even find fault with our Lord.

Ward’s way into this issue is to argue the early texts as primitive with primitive moral ideas which have changed for the better during the course of the Biblical record, and indeed continue to do so. He illustrates this by considering the subject of war. Revelation for Ward did not stop at the end of the 1st century.

He summarises Christian moral theology thus

Indeed the whole tradition of Christian moral theology is based on rational reflection on the basic doctrines of creation and of rather general moral guidelines discerned in the life and often extremely cryptic teachings of Jesus. (p111)

Ward describes 3 ways of reading the dire texts of the Bible dealing with warfare and severe punishments:

1. they are just examples of primitive moral attitudes read back into the past – were rarely if ever practiced and are today totally obsolete.
2. God really did give the command but only to morally primitive people and in the unique circumstance of the conquest of Canaan – the commands as demonstrated in subsequent rabbinic commentary and reflection are now obsolete
3. seeing them as rules devised by the ancients in accord with their perception of the divine will, and again, now obsolete.

Ward’s preference is for the 3rd view whilst he thinks conservative Christians would subscribe to the 2nd view.  Whilst I think the 2nd view is closest to that of a conservative evangelical, I wouldn’t want to be labeled with it on Biblical theology grounds.

Ward correctly concludes (and this most definitely needs to be said)

Whichever of these interpretations you take, nobody holds that commands such as that recorded in the Ban are to be applied at the present time. (p114)

In the next section Ward advances the notion that we need to get rid of the Bible’s anthropomorphisms concerning God, seeing them as ways of saying what humans should do and how they should see their lives in the context of the supreme reality of ultimate goodness.  Whilst there is undoubted truth in this, it remains a grossly reductionist statement concerning the attributes of God.

His section on the sermon on the mount I found quite unsatisfactory drawing far too sharp a distinction between Jesus’ teaching and the teaching of what he calls the Torah. His conclusion

In view of the clear teaching of Jesus, it is a gross misunderstanding understanding of Christian morality to say that Christians have to obey a lot of primitive moral rules just because they are to be found in the pages of the Bible. For Christians, the key ethical teaching is to be found in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and all other moral rules in the Bible have to be judged by how fiir they meet the standards of that sermon. (p121)

whilst it makes some good points is excessively reductionist, ignoring the ethical teaching of the epistles, the foundational nature of the 10 commandments as a necessary building block for the 10 commandments, the OT antecedents to Jesus’ summary of the 10 commandments, and a myriad of OT texts of which Micah 6:8 is but one example.

There is a useful section responding to Dawkins and Hitchen’s castigation of some of Jesus’ sayings and actions.

The chapter concludes with a reiteration of his point that Christian moral standards are based on an understanding of the life and teaching of Jesus, having replaced the earlier set of OT laws, and further that

a dispassionate assessment of religion requires that we pay more attention to the sane, intelligent and morally committed members of major religious communities. (p125)

Whilst I appreciate Ward tackling this important issue and indeed much of what he has written , I think my own response (when I get around to doing it!) will hopefully pay greater respect to the internal consistency of the Bible as the fully authoritative Word of God.

In a way, Ward’s response to the question whether religious beliefs are immoral is a bit of a cop out.

I also note that whereas he normally takes an interfaith approach, in this chapter he has restricted himself solely to the Bible. However, perhaps he can be excused because the thrust of the new atheist arguments from memory, deals exclusively with the first 5 books of the Bible.

I will endeavour to complete my review of the remaining 4 chapters tomorrow afternoon.

There is a nice essay discussing scientific naturalism here on bethinking.org (lots of other good resources as well).

For example in this extract the author, Dr Denis Alexander,connects post-modernism with scientific naturalism :

There are compelling grounds for thinking that the development of modern science in medieval Europe was facilitated by a justification of human knowledge based on Christian theism. God the creator and law-giver acted as guarantor of the consistency of the properties of his creation. Since scientific knowledge was rooted in God’s faithfulness in creation, and human observers were gifted by God with reason and curiosity, it was viewed as reliable knowledge. But scientific naturalism contains no such foundation for the validity of science.  Ironically it is the philosophy which enthrones science which simultaneously subverts it, for science provides no resources for justifying itself16. Lacking solid foundation, it is a small step from naturalism to the post-modern trivialisation of scientific knowledge.

rgds