Not sure about the astrology/alchemy analogy. All variations of astrology and alchemy make testable claims that, when tested, are continually found wanting. That’s why we can generalise about them and dismiss them. A lot of theology doesn’t do that. It rests on particular arguments. Arguments that are nuanced and require careful attention. I think people get frustrated at New Atheist’s because they prop up poorly defined folk conceptions of religion and take pot shots at it in toto, while ignoring, or caricaturing, the more sophisticated and nuanced theology to which those criticisms don’t necessarily apply. Even as an atheist I find it pretty disingenuous and distasteful. It seems to me they have a political mission, not an intellectual one.

If I was interested in writing a serious academic book aimed at criticizing astrology, then yes, I should do all those things. But that is exactly the point. Dawkins and Dennett don’t. So either Dawkins and Dennett aren’t serious to begin with, or they haven’t done their homework. Your example helps to make the point.

David, if that is true then things are little better. For it is irrational to attempt to engage people who you know are hopelessly irrational in a rational discourse. They know they aren’t going to convince enough creationists to make any sort of social change. It’s fairly obvious that they are writing for atheists, not theists. They are selling atheists a form of low brow self-congratulation, and are making a tidy profit off of it. I think we should call out intellectually shallow rabble-rousing for what it is. There’s no way that they deserve to be put in the same category of cultural critics as Nietzsche or Voltaire.

I’m more bothered by the New Atheists ignorance about philosophical atheism than their ignorance of religion. Where is there acknowledgement of the complex questions about religion raised by philosophers like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Marx, Feuerbach, or even Comte?

I’m especially bothered by their failure to answer Nietzsche’s specific charge that modern philosophical ethics (specifically utilitarianism and Kantianism) is not essentially that different from, much less opposed to, Christian morality.

And since their atheism tends to be of a rather naive, enlightenment variety, how can they ignore the long atheist tradition beginning with Schopenhauer and continues through Adorno and Horkheimer that calls into question the enlightnement’s overconfidence in the role and value of reason?

David, I’m not sure why you think they’ve had a large positive effect on society. That seems like a rather dubious causal claim to say the very least. First of all, atheism was dirt common in Europe long before Dawkins published anything. In America atheists are still reviled. Whatever lessening in negative attitudes toward atheism that there has been is far better attributed to the general social trend toward more liberal and tolerant attitudes than it is to anything Dawkins or Dennett have published. And if they were really interested in converting people on the fence then they would have all the more reason to deal with the more intelligent forms of theism. Those are precisely the forms of theism that people who are on the fence lean toward. Virtually no one is just trying to decide between biblical literalism and atheism. If anyone has had a sort of positive effect, it’s someone like Michael Ruse: an expert who can actually testify about evolutionary science at a court hearing.

As far as empowering atheists, I hardly see why the work of Dawkins and Dennett would do a better job than the work of, say, Nietzsche, Voltaire, Bertrand Russell, etc. Their work only seems to empower the people who are ignorant of people like Nietzsche, Voltaire, Russell, etc. That is, the same people who rant and rave about how the humanities are a waste of time, and that philosophy is dumb because Science. This may just be self-interest talking, but I’d really prefer it if those sorts of people were slightly less empowered than they currently are.

In fairness, I think a lot of the arguments of the ‘big guns’ in philosophy of religion could fairly be described as “embarrassingly reckless and thoroughly sophomoric”. (Is this a fair example? http://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosophy/virtual_library/articles/plantinga_alvin/two_dozen_or_so_theistic_arguments.pdf.) Maybe we’re all better off just letting Dawkins and his opponents fling as much poo at each other as they can get their hands on.

@David Jones Wallace:
Do the astrologers you’re caricaturing actually exist? As far as I’m aware one of the central tenets of any astrologer is that they claim to actually be able to provide concrete predictions or accurate assessment of personality. Or what’s the point of it as a field of endeavour? Both of which have been found wanting when tested against mere probability by the way. The kind of abstract claim of, “But our lives are a playing out of the planets’ wills”, without a claim to predictive prowess, may be a shared underpinning of all astrologers, but it is not the practice of astrology. If this were the simple claim of many astrologers, without the claim to prediction, then I would be forced to say the same thing. Untestable. As far as beliefs go, you’re free to it, don’t over-extend it. It would be just as unfair, in that situation (which is one that I suspect doesn’t exist outside of your sarcasm), to take potshots at the predictive failures of the other kind of astrologer, and imply that this was a knockdown argument against the more simple and abstract astrologer.

It was a poor analogy.

Though to be perfectly clear, I don’t really want to lump Dennett together with Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris. He is typically a lot more careful in his claims. At worst, he seems to be guilty of the same sort of mild rhetorical misdirections that are common throughout academic philosophy. (I’m looking at you, “Consciousness Explained”.) Though I’m not familiar with Breaking the Spell, from what I can tell via non-biased reviews it is a step in the right direction. It may be that his particular theory about how religion evolves is incorrect, but at least Dennett is attempting to put forth a theory that he openly acknowledges might be imperfect and in need of correction, and he at least attempts to deal with the sociological and psychological literature on the topic.

Compare that with Harris’ declaration that the words “metaethics” and “deontology” cause him to be bored before he assumes the truth of hedonistic utilitarianism in “The Moral Landscape”. This is Harris’ response to the objection that he violates the is-ought distinction: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/clarifying-the-landscape
It is one of the most astoundingly confused things I’ve ever read. His response is basically that he rejects the notion of obligation altogether and doesn’t see how it is relevant to the existence of objective moral truths… An excerpt:

“There need be no imperative to be good—just as there’s no imperative to be smart or even sane. A person may be wrong about what’s good for him (and for everyone else), but he’s under no obligation to correct his error—any more than he is required to understand that π is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. A person may be mistaken about how to get what he wants out of life, and he may want the wrong things (i.e., things that will reliably make him miserable), just as he may fail to form true/useful beliefs in any other area. I am simply arguing that we live in a universe in which certain conscious states are possible, some better than others, and that movement in this space will depend on the laws of nature. Ryan, Russell, and many of my other critics think that I must add an extra term of obligation—a person shouldbe committed to maximizing the well-being of all conscious creatures. But I see no need for this.”

He appears to be some sort of unwitting non-cognitivist whose primary concern is to establish the rather trivial claim that we can use scientific methods to identify what will maximize pleasurable mental states, though we can do whatever we want with that information. And this is putting aside myriad specific confusions. For instance, he fails to understand what consequentialism is on the most rudimentary level. Specifically, he fails to recognize that consequentialism is the claim that it is the consequences of an ACT that determines the moral properties of that ACT. Instead, he suggests that the moral properties of an act can be determined not only by the consequences of the act itself but also indirectly by the (merely?!) possible further consequences of the psychological faculties that caused the agent to form the intention to act:

“Traditional moral philosophy also tends to set arbitrary limits on what counts as a consequence. Imagine, for instance, that a reckless driver is about to run over a puppy, and I, at great risk to myself, kick the puppy out of the car’s path, thereby saving its life. The consequences of my actions seem unambiguously good, and I will be a hero to animal lovers everywhere. However, let’s say that I didn’t actually see the car approaching and simply kicked the puppy because I wanted to cause it pain. Are my actions still good? Students of philosophy have been led to imagine that scenarios of this kind pose serious challenges to consequentialism.

But why should we ignore the consequences of a person’s mental states? If I am the kind of man who prefers kicking puppies to petting them, I have a mind that will reliably produce negative experiences—for both myself and others. Whatever is bad about being an abuser of puppies can be explained in terms of the consequences of living as such a person in the world. Yes, being deranged, I might get a momentary thrill from being cruel to a defenseless animal, but at what price? Do my kids love me? Am I even capable of loving them? What rewarding experiences in life am I missing? Intentions matter because they color our minds in every moment. They also determine much of our behavior, and thereby affect the lives of other people. As our minds are, so our lives (largely) become.”