atheist books
Dennis Prager asks “Why Are Atheist Books Best Sellers?” at TownHall, and posits a tripartite answer:
1. He observes that “Islamists […] have brought religious faith into terrible disrepute,” and there has been no “significant outcry in the Muslim world against the atrocities committed in the name of their religion.”
2. Prager pretends that a “secular indoctrination” has been taking place, where “[t]he typical individual in the Western world receives as secular an indoctrination as the typical European received a religious one in the middle ages.” Simultaneously, he claims that “religion in the Western world has, with some notable exceptions, provided few responses to the secular challenges.”
3. He notes the reliance of “many of the traditionally religious” on “irrational, mystical and emotional religiosity.” This is inarguable, whether one is deploring astrology, numerology, transubstantiation, or the trinity.
Prager’s insistence that “Only strong moral religion can defeat strong immoral religion” is wishful thinking. The liberals and secularists he decries consistently reject the authoritarian impulses of religion, whether spouted by an imam or a pope; believers in “strong moral religion” are only too happy to excuse anything (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) that is cloaked in the language of their faith.
Since the bulk of Prager’s column had nothing to do with any atheist best sellers, one wonders if Prager merely wanted to attract some attention by name-dropping those best-selling authors (Dennett, Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens). The question of his title is actually quite easy to answer: atheist books are best sellers because atheist (and curious theist) readers are buying them.