BUY IT: Why God Won't Go Away by Alister McGrath

FANTASTIC book!!! I kept looking at this book and not feeling like reading it. I didn't think it would be that interesting. Boy was I wrong! This book should be read by everyone interested in religion, spirituality and athiesm. The book is deep and so I read it slowly, absorbing all the arguments, but it is written well and a lay person can understand the arguments and follow along. This book is not difficult to read.

Why God Won't Go Away is a response to four authors and their books: Sam Harris' End of Faith, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, and Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great. The author, Alister McGrath, starts with brief summaries of the main points of each of the four anti-religion books. He uses the term "New Athiest" to describe the four authors of these books, as opposed to normal athiest, because these 4 authors and their 85,000+ followers are not just people who believe God doesn't exist (like normal athiests), but are a group of angry and hostile people who want to to KILL all the religions and in some cases kill the religious too.

McGrath does a FANTASTIC job pointing out why these New Athiests' arguments don't hold up under scrutany and are not at all even the strongest athiest arguments. Normal athiests have a stronger case than these New Athiests. In fact, McGrath points how how normal athiests are embarrassed by these New Athiests because of their irrational hostility, their runaway egos, and their unwillingness to reasonably discuss or debate the issues. A normal athiest should be able to calmly and reasonably debate with any other religious believer. But New Athiests attack with emotional fuel, rather than with logical reason.

As McGrath outlines, it seems most of the New Athiests' success has come from the anger and hatred of the religious. New Athiests tend to be very angry people who are targeting the religious and don't recognize their hypocrasy. When Richard Dawkins' website forumn of 85,000 members was shutdown, many of his followers turned on Dawkins himself. Then Dawkins turned on his apprentice. McGrawth demonstrates how the New Athiests have created a type of sect very similar to the religions they hate. The same arguments and reasons they give for hating religions are easily applied to this new group they have created. The arguments against the New Athiests are very strong. The author does a FANTASTIC job of discrediting New Athiesm, while allowing reasonable, rational, logical athiesm to stand in a nonviolent manner. When religion becomes violent or New Athiest becomes violent, both should be squashed. Let peaceful religion and peaceful athiesm co-exist together.

Disclaimer: I received this book free of charge from the publisher but I am giving my honest review