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I am averse to swift and outright dismissals of opposing views. No well-populated point of view is without its reasons and cogent defenders. So, it is with some reluctance that I commend the attached article. Hart himself feels the need to clarify: "I am not — honestly, I am not — simply being dismissive here." Nevertheless, David Bentley Hart indicts New Atheist literature with merciless aplomb, hitting his marks in withering, Hitchens-like prose. Observe his grief at the insipidity of the New Atheists, an elegy for the atheists of old. "The utter inconsequentiality of contemporary atheism is a social and spiritual catastrophe. Something splendid and irreplaceable has taken leave of our culture — some great moral and intellectual capacity that once inspired the more heroic expressions of belief and unbelief alike. Skepticism and atheism are, at least in their highest manifestations, noble, precious, and even necessary traditions, and even the most fervent of believers should acknowledge that both are often inspired by a profound moral alarm at evil and suffering, at the corruption of religious institutions, at psychological terrorism, at injustices either prompted or abetted by religious doctrines, at arid dogmatisms and inane fideisms, and at worldly power wielded in the name of otherworldly goods. In the best kinds of unbelief, there is something of the moral grandeur of the prophets — a deep and admirable abhorrence of those vicious idolatries that enslave minds and justify our worst cruelties." Hart's words are strong medicine for strong tonic, but his aim is straight and true. Consider his devastating critique of Hitchens' "unstated major premise, trivial minor premise" logic (much more trenchant than my own, similar attempt). ~ Nathan

In the same vein as our Recipe for Conversation, Guy and Heidi Burgess of the University of Colorado's Conflict Information Consortium offer ten suggestions for constructive and civil engagement between opposing parties. They write: "Clearly, civility has to mean something more than mere politeness. The movement will have accomplished little if all it does is get people to say, 'excuse me please', while they (figuratively) stab you in the back. Civility also cannot mean 'roll over and play dead.' People need to be able to raise tough questions and present their cases when they feel their vital interests are being threatened." Their suggestions include obtaining available technical facts, separating people from the problem, and honoring the legitimate use of legal and political power. The consortium's website is a treasure trove of bibliographies and practical resources. The case for civility has its voices (1, 2, 3), but lamentably it mostly falls on deaf ears.

It is almost scandalous to question the status of "the Crusades" as the paradigmatic exemplar — along with the Inquisition — of the Christian religion gone bad. Nevertheless, recent years have seen a steady stream of publications offering just such a reappraisal. Paul F. Crawford summarizes some of this literature in "Four Myths about the Crusades". The myths? 1) "The crusades represented an unprovoked attack by Western Christians on the Muslim world." 2) "Western Christians went on crusade because their greed led them to plunder Muslims in order to get rich." 3) "Crusaders were a cynical lot who did not really believe their own religious propaganda; rather, they had ulterior, materialistic motives." 4) "The crusades taught Muslims to hate and attack Christians." Events dimly remembered in the fog of history are prone to being recast and appropriated to one narrative or another. Crawford's summary and citations provide a starting point for considering whether the Crusades have suffered such a fate.

In lieu of appearing at the American Atheists convention, in an open letter Christopher Hitchens shares how facing death has served to reinforce for him the "hollowness" of supposed religious consolations. His trust, instead, is in medical science and the camaraderie of friends and family. Hitchens reflects on his role in the religious and secular culture war, urging his compatriots to be resolute in their efforts to shore up the wall of separation between church and state. Best wishes, Christopher, and may these sources of comfort preserve your life and mitigate the pain.

Chris Mooney summarizes a host of studies underlining our human capacity for rationalization, for what is called, "motivated-reasoning". When confronted with new information that threatens to undermine our deeply held beliefs, we readily turn to an arsenal of defensive psychological tools to rebuff disconfirmation. Mooney covers several terms of art in psychology and neuroscience, such as "confirmation bias", and the "backfire effect". Remember Fox Mulder's wall-hanging: "I want to believe." Mooney writes: "The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience: Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call "affect"). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds..." Though epistemologists and rhetoricians have long been preoccupied with the role of presuppositions, desires, and pathos in persuasion and belief formation, these studies serve to bring many of our age-old epistemic worries into sharp focus. It is worth noting that the tradition of epistemic virtues is largely shaped by the evident need to ward off rationalization and self-deception. Consider circumspection, intellectual humility, teachability, and objectivity. The informal logical fallacies also have in mind our capacity for poor reasoning when we are so inclined. Though not mentioned in the piece, our ability to be stubborn or recalcitrant toward undesired evidence has relevance to yet another longstanding philosophical subject: direct and indirect doxastic voluntarism.

Still the most common criticism of Intelligent Design is perhaps the "god-of-the-gaps" rejoinder, that it is an argument from ignorance. Barry Arrington offers a twofold rebuttal. First, ID is an abductive form of argument, an inference to the best explanation based on three defensible premises. 1) Living things display irreducible complexity and functionally specified complex information. 2) Material forces have never been shown to produce either of these characteristics in a living system. 3) Intelligent agents routinely produce irreducible complexity and functionally specified complex information. Intelligent design, therefore, is, in his view, a justified abductive inference. Secondly, he argues that ID's critique of Darwinism rests not on an absence of evidence but rather the evidence of absence. When there is a justified expectation that evidence should be forthcoming for a claim, the absence of evidence is in fact telling. In the case of Darwinism, Arrington concludes that in spite of a legion of well-funded scientists searching tirelessly for 150 years, the effort to find evidence for undirected material forces producing irreducible complexity and functionally specified complex information has "failed utterly".

A centum of verbs for the sake of articulating our beliefs as more than mere feelings, for eschewing that ubiquitous expression, "I just feel...". It's worth calling a spade a spade when we are asserting some proposition, not just emoting truthiness. And yet, ironically, at bottom, even well-justified and well-reasoned beliefs do indeed rely upon intuitions, upon seemings. Yes, even the sum of two and two being four is grounded in our irresistibly strong intuition that it is so. And likewise, believing that there are four apples before me is grounded in it seeming that they are there. Nonetheless, though our basic beliefs are inescapably intuitional, Klement's distinction between believing versus feeling truth is well-taken and will save a trip to the thesaurus.

A stirring exhortation on behalf of words; words that are imaginative, clear, convicting, and well meditated upon; words capable of cutting through the din of tweets and talking heads. Foster's words are just that, and I must add, kudos to the art director for the accompanying image.