The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Don't Hold Water
The new atheists are putting out new books and articles, bus adverts and TV programmes like there's no tomorrow. They've gained a large amount of public attention and media exposure - but do their arguments really hold water? Using the analogy put forward by the esteemed philosopher Anthony Flew, Michael Poole examines the new atheists' use of the 'ten leaky buckets' tactic of argumentation - presenting readers with a sum of arguments that are each individually defective, as though the cumulative effect should be persuasive. This closer look at the facts reveals that the buckets are, indeed, leaky.
The top ten arguments put forward by the new atheists teased out and torn down.
Contents
Acknowledgments 7
About this book 8
Chapter 1 Un-natural selection or ‘Down with sex!’ 11
Chapter 2 ‘Faith is believing what you know ain’t so’ 17
Chapter 3 People who live in glass houses…? 22
Chapter 4 ‘… and may be used in evidence’? 30
Chapter 5 Ancient.doc 40
Chapter 6 Explaining explaining 48
Chapter 7 Where do we draw the boundary? 57
Chapter 8 An endangered species? 64
Chapter 9 Back to the drawing board – but whose? 69
Chapter 10 Unpeeling the cosmic onion 78
Summary 87
Notes 90
Index 95
Product Details
- Title : The New Atheism: Ten Arguments that Don't Hold Water
- Author: Poole, Michael
- Publisher: Lion Books
- Publication Date: 2011
- ISBN: 9780745959436
Michael Poole is Visiting Research Fellow in Science and Religion at King's College, London. For Lion, he has also written The User's Guide to Science and Belief.