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New Atheists
An Eastern Orthodox Critique
Critique of Western Assumptions
The new atheists criticize Christianity according to assumptions that are native to the Western understanding of religion. Those assumptions—theological, ecclesiological, and even anthropological and cosmological—originate in the occidental Middle Ages. The new atheists (and all atheists) are unwilling to confess that their worldview is indebted to Western Christian thought; indeed, their atheism is a product of this religion. There would be no science without it.
Ignorance of Eastern Christianity
Moreover, the new atheists are ignorant of what we call Eastern Christianity (Eastern Orthodoxy). If they knew that truth was not the product of reason, they would have encountered God, the one true God, not the abstract deity (supreme being) of Western thought. Unfortunately, the argument of theists delineated in public debates only strengthens the position of the new atheists. In himself, God is unknown and unknowable. We know him because he reveals himself to those who seek him, that is, the Holy Trinity. Of course, the knowledge of God is not cognitive but gnostic, spiritual knowledge—something impossible for materialists.
Misunderstanding of the Church and the Supernatural
Also, the new atheists examine the nature and history of the church with false assumptions derived from the history of the West. They a priori deny the existence of the supernatural and, therefore, the validity of the gospel, spoken and written. Into all this is thrown a false theology and, therefore, a false understanding of the Incarnate Lord and his place in history. And, of course, the new atheists have no knowledge of the Eastern Church for no other reason than that they deny the supernatural, holding that all forms of Christianity are fundamentally the same and that access to God and his will comes to the holy.
