Philippine E-Journals

A CRITIQUE OF THE NEW ATHEISM IN LIGHT OF JOHN PAUL II’S FIDES ET RATIO

Edmon D. Marquez

 

Abstract:

The present paper seeks to demonstrate John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio as a possible discourse in the polemics of the New Atheism. The New Atheism is a term given to the anti-religion movement of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. I argue that far from being critical in their reflections of religion, the New Atheists prefer to settle for a version of religious faith categorized as “fideism” or commonly known as “faith alone” theology. What is outstanding is the regularity with which the New Atheists seem to show themselves as mirror images of fideism in that they express the reverse side of it known as rationalism, that is, that any rational enterprise such as the sciences has self-sufficiency of thought without any room for faith or divine revelation. If one examines the argument of the New Atheists closely in the context of Fides et Ratio, one can sense a “literalistic” concept of God, which is hardly the way classical theologians conceived of God. This, in turn, leads to misconceptions of God that are argued away with the same arguments used by followers of fideism to support the existence of God. Hence, both betray structural parallelism in which they feed off one another to fan their arguments. In this paper, I argue that the encyclical Fides et Ratio breaks away from these closed and mitigated conceptions of God and the world and offers a balance between science and religion and between faith and reason. As the encyclical states, “faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” Finally, this paper shows that the search for truth, which is ultimately the search for God, is only made possible if both reason and faith work hand in hand.