Alex O'Connor

Religion causes wars and that kind of stuff.

That's all very well and good.

But to me, I've always compared that to saying like, it's like saying politics is bad.

Yes.

Sure.

You know, politics causes wars and politics drives families.

It's like, that's true.

But that doesn't mean we should be an anarchist.

Maybe we should, but it doesn't guarantee it.

It doesn't mean there isn't a correct political position.

And critiquing that kind of stuff doesn't mean that you know anything about political philosophy.

You might not know anything about theories of justification of the state or whatever it is that political philosophers sit around talking about.

And I think the same thing is going on with New Atheism.

They couldn't recite Thomas Aquinas' causal arguments for God if you paid them to.

Richard Dawkins does so in The God Delusion.

He sort of responds to Thomas Aquinas directly.

Thomas Aquinas, the most celebrated Christian metaphysician ever,

like in history.

And he responds to Thomas Aquinas in about two pages.

It takes more than two pages even to explain the terminology that Thomas Aquinas is using, let alone to list, explain, and then debunk.