Refuting the New Atheists: A Christian Response to Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins

by Douglas Wilson

Publisher:

Canon Press

, 2021

Overview

The so-called New Atheists have a great deal of moral indignation at all the evil in the world, but, as apologist and theologian Douglas Wilson cheerfully points out, they have no moral basis for it whatsoever.

If we are merely the result of billions of years of matter in motion, then why do we feel that concentration camps, genocide, apartheid, and the like are so obviously wicked and despicable, if in fact such events are just time and chance acting on matter?

Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins have made careers out of cataloguing the ways “religion” has messed up the world, from Old Testament genocide to the Spanish Inquisition to the Salem witch trials to Muslim extremism and beyond. However, Douglas Wilson shows that atheists stand on millennia of Christian culture and morality when they emphasize the problem of evil, and that atheistic materialism cannot give any account of truth, beauty, or goodness.

A Christianity Today award-winning author and renowned debater, Wilson has many spicy and entertaining refutations to the specific claims of Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins, but at the center of it all is the Gospel.

The real foundation for morality is the fact that God has made us in His image and made us so that our consciences bear witness to His laws, even when we break them. As Wilson shows, man’s only hope is the good news that Jesus has taken on the deserved penalty for all the evils of the world in His death on the cross.

This book contains all three of Douglas Wilson’s book-length responses to the New Atheists, published for the first time in one volume. It includes Letter from a Christian Citizen, written to Sam Harris; God Is, in reply to Christopher Hitchens; and The Deluded Atheist, a response to Richard Dawkins.

Key Features

• Challenges the moral basis of New Atheism by highlighting its inconsistency with a materialistic worldview
• Demonstrates how atheists rely on Christian culture and morality when addressing the problem of evil
• Presents a collection of Douglas Wilson’s responses to prominent New Atheists in one volume

Contents

• Part 1: Letter From a Christian Citizen
• Chapter 1 Dear Mr. Harris
• Chapter 2 A Trout in the Punchbowl
• Chapter 3 Playing to the Cheap Seats
• Chapter 4 So What’s Wrong With Tin Foil Ice Cream?
• Chapter 5 The Great Jacuzzi of Consumerism
• Chapter 6 Any Reason He Should?
• Chapter 7 God’s Fast Ball High and Inside
• Chapter 8 Kerosene the Whole Ant Hill
• Chapter 9 All Over Tarnation
• Chapter 10 What Color Are Your Arguments?
• Chapter 11 You Tell Me That It’s Evolution; Well, You Know
• Chapter 12 Let the Dialogue Begin!
• Chapter 13 the Ultimate Story
• For Further Reading
• Part 2: God Is
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Lo, the Bombasticator Cometh
• Chapter 2 Wet Streets Cause Rain
• Chapter 3 Foolishness to the Greeks
• Chapter 4 Would There Be a Vice Squad in Hitchensville?
• Chapter 5 Because My Brain Burbles
• Chapter 6 Mucho Macaronic Mirabile Dictu
• Chapter 7 The Need for Human Sacrifice
• Chapter 8 Some Praise for Hitchens
• Chapter 9 On Mulberry Street
• Chapter 10 You Have to Leave Wichita Too
• Chapter 11 In the Name of Reason
• Chapter 12 Stalin Has No God, Including Hitchens
• Chapter 13 Only Wrong When the Buddhists Do It
• Chapter 14 the Temple Fires Are Extinguished
• Chapter 15 Hitchens Gives Orwell the Raspberry
• Chapter 16 Floating Indignation
• Chapter 17 The Top Hat and the Sea Otters
• Chapter 18 Description and Explanation
• Part 3: The Deluded Atheist
• Chapter 1 Let’s Fritz Our Brains at Them
• Chapter 2 Psalter, Claymore, and Bagpipes
• Chapter 3 A Couple of Junior High Girls in a Slap Fight
• Chapter 4 The Guy in the Teapot
• Chapter 5 The Crawl Space Under the Neutral Zone
• Chapter 6 Cereal or Eggs?
• Chapter 7 A Colorless, Odorless Gas With Lots of Potential
• Chapter 8 Who? Me?
• Chapter 9 Scratching the Itch of Morality
• Chapter 10 Piña Coladas and Getting Caught in the Rain
• Chapter 11 Rabbitless Rocks
• Chapter 12 In the Zone
• Chapter 13 A Bowl of Sawdust Paste

Product Details

• Title: Refuting the New Atheists: A Christian Response to Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins
• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Print Publication Date: 2021
• Logos Release Date: 2025
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Apologetics; Christianity and atheism; Religion › Controversial literature
• ISBNs: 9781952410857, 1952410851
• Resource ID: LLS:RFTNGNWTHSTS
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-09-04T20:51:54Z

About Douglas Wilson

Douglas Wilson (1953– ), a prolific author and speaker, has been the pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho for over 30 years. He is a senior fellow of theology, a permanent member of the Board of Trustees, and a professional in residence at New Saint Andrews College. Wilson graduated from the University of Idaho with a BA in classical studies and a BA and an MA in philosophy.

He is the editor of Credenda/Agenda magazine and has authored numerous books, including The Paideia of God: And Other Essays on Education, Standing On the Promises: A Handbook of Biblical Childrearing, Reforming Marriage, and Reformed Is Not Enough: Recovering the Objectivity of the Covenant, which can all be found in the Douglas Wilson Collection (17 vols.).