To the Best of Our Knowledge: Atheism and Its Critics

In this hour, John Haught is a Catholic theologian at Georgetown University who's written a polemical response to the so-called "new atheists". He tells Steve Paulson that they simply don't measure up to the old atheists, like Nietzsche and Camus. Haught's books include God after Darwin and God and the New Atheism. Then, the world's most famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, visits with Steve Paulson and demonstrates why he's been called "Darwin's Rottweiler".


Next, Alister McGrath, a historical theologian at Oxford, shares Dawkins' interest in science, but little else. He and Steve talk about the role of religious zealotry. McGrath's book's include The Dawkins Delusion and Christianity's Dangerous Idea.



After that, Jenny Phillips is the director of the documentary film The Dhamma Brothers. The film tells the story of a program that brought several Buddhist teachers to the maximum security Donaldson Correctional Facility in Alabama to train a group of inmates in Vapassana meditation. Phillips tells Anne Strainchamps that the course was an intense, grueling, 10-day experience that changed some of the inmates' lives forever.



And finally, Brad Hirschfield was once a religious fanatic. He was one of a small number of Jewish settlers living in Hebron, in the middle of thousands of Palestinians. Now he's a rabbi and the author of a book: You Don't Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right. He tells Jim Fleming how he tries to preach a message of faith without fanaticism. [Broadcast Date: June 5, 2009]