A Five Part Series from TTBOOK!

Public Radio International

Wisconsin Public Radio

ATHEISM AND ITS CRITICS

Program 08-06-22-A

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Atheists have been called the most hated minority in America. And yet recent atheist manifestos by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris have all made the best-seller list. So have these atheists changed our thinking about religion? We'll talk about he New Atheism with Richard Dawkins and two of his critics in the time hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge.

SEGMENT 1:

John Haught is a Catholic theologian at Georgetown University who's written a polemical response to the so-called "new atheists." He tells Steve Paulson that they simply don't measure up to the old atheists like Nietzsche and Camus. Haught's books include "God after Darwin" and "God and the New Atheism." The world's most famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion," visits with Steve Paulson and demonstrates why he's been called "Darwin's rottweiler. And, Alister McGrath, a historical theologian at Oxford, shares Dawkins' interest in science, but little else. He and Steve talk about the role of religious zealotry. McGrath's book's include "The Dawkins Delusion" and "Christianity's Dangerous Idea."

SEGMENT 2:

Jenny Phillips is the director of the documentary film "The Dhamma Brothers." The film tells the story of a program which brought several Buddhist teachers to maximum security Donaldson Correctional Facility in Alabama to train a group of inmates in Vapassana meditation. Phillips tells Anne Strainchamps that the course was an intense, grueling ten day experience that changed some of the inmates' lives forever.

SEGMENT 3:

Brad Hirschfield was once a religious fanatic. He was one of a small number of Jewish settlers living in Hebron, in the middle of thousands of Palestinians. Now he's a rabbi and the author of a book called "You Don'‘t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right." He tells Jim Fleming how he tries to preach a message of faith without fanaticism.

CD copies are available at 1-800-747-7444. Ask for program number 08-06-22-A.

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Books:

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin)
Alister McGrath & Joanna Collicutt McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion? (InterVarsity Press)
John Haught, God and the New Atheism (Westminster John Knox Press)
Brad Hirschfield, You Don't Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right (Harmony Books)

Films:

• The Dhamma Brothers
  http://www.dhammabrothers.com/
  

Music:

• After Return:
  Haran w/ “Yona”
  On “Pharaoh’s Daughter”
  Oy!hoo Records
  
• After Dawkins:
  Todd Haygood w/ “Focus”
  On “Reaching In”
  Intuitive Sound
• After McGrath:
  Todd Haygood w/ “Open Space”
  On “Reaching In”
• After Phillips:
  Musafir w/ “Moria Badnawa”
  On “Dhola Maru”
  Sounds True

• After Hirschfield:
  El-Funoun w/ “Miriam”
  On “Zaghareed”
  Sounds True

Distribution dates: week of 05/31/2009 - hour 2 week of 06/22/2008 - hour 1 click here for timings and cues

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Questions and comments can be addressed to: flemingj@wpr.org

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