For over 25 years, Leon Wieseltier has been the literary editor of The New Republic. In that capacity, he has worked with some of the leading writers of our time.
He regularly pens TNR's Washington Diary column and has established himself as one of the most important and erudite critics at work today. He is also the author of the widely acclaimed Jewish theological rumination Kaddish.
Bio
Leon Wieseltier
Leon Wieseltier is literary editor of The New Republic, a post he's held since 1983. He is the author of Kaddish, among other books. His essays on political, literary, and religious subjects have appeared in many publications. He was educated at Columbia College, Balliol College, Oxford, and Harvard University, where he was a member of the Society of Fellows. His small acting career has included a part on "The Sopranos."
Richard Wolin
Richard Wolin is a highly regarded authority in the field of modern European intellectual history. He received a B.A. from Reed College, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from York University in Toronto and has held faculty positions at Reed College and Rice University where he was D.D. McMurtry Professor of History. He is the author of several books on subjects such as Martin Heidegger, Heidegger's influential Jewish students (Hannah Arendt, Karl Loewith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse), Walter Benjamin, the history of twentieth-century ideas, and modern cultural criticism. In addition to his scholarly writing, Professor Wolin is a regular contributor to such publications as the New Republic, Dissent, Tikkun, and The Los Angeles Times, which has earned him a reputation as a leading public intellectual. He is on several editorial review boards and has received grants and awards from the German Marshall Fund, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Critique and denial of metaphysical beliefs in God or divine beings. Unlike agnosticism, which leaves open the question of whether there is a God, atheism is a positive denial. It is rooted in an array of philosophical systems. Ancient Greek philosophers such as Democritus and Epicurus argued for it in the context of materialism. In the 18th century David Hume and Immanuel Kant, though not atheists, argued against traditional proofs for God's existence, making belief a matter of faith alone. Atheists such as Ludwig Feuerbach held that God was a projection of human ideals and that recognizing this fiction made self-realization possible. Marxism exemplified modern materialism. Beginning with Friedrich Nietzsche, existentialist atheism proclaimed the death of God and the human freedom to determine value and meaning. Logical positivism holds that propositions concerning the existence or nonexistence of God are nonsensical or meaningless.
Try "sahaja yoga" with a truly open mind. You wont need anything else. If you feel a mysterious cool breeze on your hands and at the top of your head you'll have to say
"what the hell is this?"
Then your mind will quiet down and understanding will come..
I am what I like to call a "dawkinsian" atheist, as opposed to the Hitchens/Harris school of nonbelief, and I find myself agreeing with Mr. Wieseltier in most of this comment on so-called "new atheism".
I do think Hitchens and Harris, and many of the more idealistic, young atheists and apatheists, are nonreligious because of cultural or emotional reactions to bad religion, and I think Hitchens and Harris have taken their dislike of religion to the point of tribalism, as evidenced by their practically neoconservative views on war. I find this to be extremely unfortunate, and a significant breach of rationalistic thinking.
I also agree that religion *can* be a much more refined, positive thing, a metaphorical prism to see the world through that gives some subset of such believers meaning, identity, and community.
I think it is wholly unnecessary, that it has a dark history, and that it is far too easily corrupted into "bad religion", the kind of belief system that brings actual harm upon its believers and their neighbours, but until then, sophisticated religion is a legitimate and not at all ignorant world view.
Mr. Wieseltier, however, makes the same mistake that the "new atheists", the very people he is criticising, make. He, and they, consider religion to have only one side; While the less philosophical atheists rebel against what they believe is the only version of religion, literalism, he is defending religion as though all religion is akin to his own, the metaphorical prism one views the world through.
I think sophisticated religious people and atheists of any brand will be much better off once they *all* realize that you can learn to understand other people without having to agree with them. Yes, atheist should understand that some people have a different understanding of religion, but it is equally true that those religious people should understand that theirs is not the only understanding of religion. They would also do well to realize that atheists are usually more sophisticated than they are given credit for - The stereotypical "new atheist", who religious people portray as being completely dogmatic in their highly irrational and overblown dislike of religion, is usually a very philosophically advanced person who's just tired of explaining himself to religious people who prefer to think he's ignorant.
I wouldn't be surprised if religious people feel the same way about the way they're stereotyped. Perhaps if Mr. Wieseltier and Mr. Hitchens both spent less time building stereotypes, we would all be better off.
I stopped listening to Mr. Wieseltier as soon as he trotted out the same tired canard repeated by so many “intellectuals” (many of whom sound like post-modernists) that the sort of religious believers (he called them “medieval”) that the “new” atheists are most concerned about are nothing but a mere strawman. He then went on to say that religion as practiced by “moderns” is nothing like the medieval variety so despised by the “new” atheists.
Mr. Wieseltier needs to get out of his ivory tower more often. Groups (and the people who join them) like the one shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxVPOO3p7nc do exist and they have mailing lists with tens of millions of names on them. They believe, as surely as the Earth is round, that Jesus really walked on water, raised the dead, and fed thousands with a few fish and a couple of loaves of bread. They believe that, immediately upon conception, a fertilized human embryo is endowed with an immortal, immaterial, supernatural, human soul. A small minority are even prepared to kill health-care providers who work in clinics that perform abortions and those that are not disturbed enough to perform the murderous deed themselves are quite prepared to make excuses for the ones that do. They accord to their religious stories the same sort of historical reality as historians have accorded to the historicity of the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Any “intellectual” that is so out of touch with reality as to think that the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people filling the pews of the tens of thousands of mega-churches throughout the United States every Sunday, do not exist, or that their beliefs, as outlined above, are not relevant to the criticisms leveled at religion by the “new” atheists, need to retreat to their ivory tower. Until academics like Mr. Wieseltier display the intellectual honesty to acknowledge the existence of the vast number of modern practitioners of a “medieval” Christianity in the United States, as evidenced by the results of every scientifically valid survey and poll (NSRI 1990, ARIS 2001, ARIS 2008, numerous Pew Forum surveys and Gallup polls…see the note below) throughout the last several decades, then they will continue to have nothing to contribute.
****Note: As I was writing the above, I took the time to fact-check myself and do a quick verification of when the latest American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) came out. The most recent ARIS came out in 2008, and my irony meter flew to pieces as it tried to register the fact that the first ARIS came out in 2001 and was sponsored/spearheaded by…(wait for it…)…the CUNY Graduate Center, the same CUNY Graduate Center that hosted Mr. Wieseltier’s talk!. Not only did he manage to make himself look like a buffoon, but Mr. Wieseltier made his host look silly too. Would Mr. Wieseltier please indicate which groups in any of the ARIS’s qualify as “modern” believers and read aloud, in class, what percentage of the United States voting, religious population they represent?
New to the site... but liked the quick overview of the distinctions between how medieval and current day people view atheism as well as the comment that those who are materialistic also inadvertently (or purposefully) follow a form of atheism. I contemplate often about my existence and my experiences and studied much philosophy in college so these types of discussions and others who contemplate and discuss this issues, thoughts, beliefs, etc. are of great interest to me. I am glad my friend recommended this site.
member. 
