Critic of US 'religious right' takes on a new worry: Atheists

Having addressed the issues of humanity's love of war and the dangers he believes are posed by the "religious right" in the United States, author and former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges has now taken on a new generation of atheists who are questioning the need for religious faith.

"They're as deeply anti-intellectual as the Christian right," Hedges said at a 30 April public forum at New York's Union Theological Seminary on his recently published, I Don't Believe in Atheists. In the book he takes aim at those who, in criticising the various faults, even absurdities, of organized religion, are denying humanity's capacity for sin.

Atheism, Hedges noted at the forum, has an "honoured place" in the Western ... More