You may be wondering why I would bother to thank the New Atheists. Why would people such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens deserve my gratitude? After all, haven’t they wrecked havoc on the lives of many believers and emboldened many skeptics, agnostics, and atheists? There is probably some truth behind this last question. In fact, I’ve personally had to clean up some of the mess from young believers unable to respond to their attacks. So, why thank them?

The reason is simple: they have helped put the discussion of God back in the forefront of public dialogue. When William Dembski was in grad school, he was amazed at how his professors simply wrote of Christianity as false. There was no debate. Christianity was ignored as false superstition. This is part of what motivated him to begin his research into ID. This certainly isn’t the case anymore. God cannot be ignored. There is public debate about the existence of God, and the New Atheists have helped bring it down from the academy to the common folk. I much prefer ferocious attacks than benign apathy.