What We Talk About When We Talk About God
BY RYAN SPEAR
The God Delusion. By Richard Dawkins. Boston, Mass.: Houghton
Mifflin. 2006. Pp. 405. $27.00. Letter to a Christian Nation. By
Sam Harris. New York: Knopf. 2006. Pp. 96. $16.95. The Creation: An
Appeal to Save Life on Earth. By E. O. Wilson. New York: Norton.
Pp. 175. $21.95.
The moment may be fleeting, but at this writing the power of the religious Right is on the wane. Its moral pretensions have been shaken by high-profile scandals involving sex, drugs, and influence-peddling, and its political allies suffered embarrassing defeats in the recent midterm elections. At the same time, atheism seems to be enjoying a minor renaissance just now (or at least an unusual amount of media attention). Maybe this is because the secularists sense the Right’s momentary vulnerability; maybe it is because they can no longer tolerate its power and prestige. Most likely it is a combination of both.
