ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we examine the most astute and energetic contemporary antagonist of Islam. Unlike people living in ages when major religions were founded, we cannot dismiss atheism as an exemplary expression of the perverse and anarchic human will resisting surrender to God. Perhaps we are indeed alone in the universe although we can understand the wish to populate this barren immensity with supernatural beings. That puerile deception is, counsels the atheist, no longer for us: the three faiths of the Near East were a trio of oriental despotisms which delayed the birth of an empirical science and a rational political order. Theology is therapeutic mythology.
