Our western societies have to deal with many problems. Are overreaching atheists one of them? Sociologist of religion Prof. Christian Smith (in his book "Atheist overreach" ) seems to think so. I tend to disagree.

In chapters 1 and 2, the author asks whether atheists are rationally justified when they claim to be able to be "good without God", and whether "naturalism warrants belief in Universal benevolence and human rights.
His answers are No and No.

Our societies - so the author argues - are getting more and more secular, but the dominant ideology of secularism, i.e. liberal humanism, is based on metaphysical naturalism and for that reason is unable to provide a sound ethical foundation for universal benevolence and human rights. All humanist varieties of ethics (Kantian ethics, utilitarianism and social contract theory) are - according to Dr. Smith - suffering from a fundamental weakness : they are human inventions / conventions, and are therefore vulnerable to being subverted by "sensible knaves": people who know that all moral values and norms are of human origin and can therefore be disregarded for personal gain (I toe the moral line if it suits my interests, but I flout moral rules when it gives me some benefit).

On the contrary - argues Christian Smith - traditional morality is based not on nature or human agents, but on God or a superhuman transcendend natural order (e.g. karma). Moral norms and values as well as human rights are therefore "objective moral facts" independent of human preferences and whims. (I'd like to ask the author whether he really believes that human rights and other moral facts already existed at the age of the dinosaurs?)

I think that Smith's argumentation is flawed for two reasons: one theoretical and one practical.
From the vantage point of the enlightened sceptic, it does not make any difference whether somebody believes in God as the origin of morality and human rights, or if you believe in unconditional human dignity as the origin and foundation of human rights. Every kind of ethic is, and has to be, based on some sort of foundational assumption that serves as the origin of all norms and values 'below' : for theists this basic assumption is the existence of a Supreme moral entity called God (who created humans in his image); for humanists this is unconditional human dignity from which human rights are derived.

As Yuval Noah Harari has shown in his excellent book SAPIENS: just as the sphere of Nature consists of objective facts, the social sphere largely consists of social facts (the sentence "Jupiter is the biggest planet of our solar system" is as true as "Paris is the capital of France" ). To humanists, the dignity of human persons is a FACT, something that cannot be questioned and compromised on. And social facts do not depend on the preferences of (individual) persons; Paris is the capital of France whether I like it or not.

That this "fact" - viewed from some outsider position - is a fiction is irrelevant if enough people believe in this fiction and act accordingly. In the end, it does not matter if this basic fiction is called "God" or "human dignity": in the worldview of humanists, the latter is as real and objective as God is to theists. Again: all ethics are based on some BELIEF in something/someone, and this X serves as an unquestioned point of reference.

The practical flaw in Smith's argument is this: He is worried that the acceptance of human rights will wane and even disappear as societies become more and more secular, because some individuals can be "good without God", but not a whole society, which needs an unquestioned, absolute warrant and justification for its basic moral norms and values (in our case: "universal benevolence and human rights" ).

This is an empirical question, and Dr. Smith , as a sociologist of religion, should have hundreds of studies at his disposal to tackle and answer this question. But he never makes any attempt to do so. Why? My guess: Because there is no correlation nor causal link between acceptance and application of human rights on the one hand and ethics based on belief in God or an absolute superhuman order on the other hand. But if there is no such correlation, his concern about Western societies being on a slippery slope away from "universal benevolence and human rights" is unfounded, and there is no reason to be worried about "atheist overreach" in the first place.

(BTW: My personal observation indicates the opposite: deeply religious societies, like Occidental societies in the early modern period or India or Arab countries today show less (!) acceptance of basic human rights than advanced secular countries like Sweden or Switzerland. Societies dominated by Christian ideas have often enough tortured, killed and enslaved people. Why? Because that part about "created in God's image" applied to the human SOUL only, so that it was legitimate or even necessary to torture or kill a human BODY in order to save the immortal soul)

Even if Smith is right that modern Humanism grew out of Christianity (and I do think that this is the case), that does not entail that acceptance of human rights has to disappear if Christianity and its core ideas disappear: The child called "humanism" is an adult by now, and it has acquired an independent existence. Even if the parent (Christianity) will whither and die some day, the "child" can be strong and powerful. Humanism does no longer need the theological foundations of Christian tenets.

In Chapter 3 (in my opinion the weakest part of the book) the author claims that atheists who try to play "amateur atheology" must fail.

He starts by making the following distinction : between (1) "a scientist publicly offering a personal confession of his best evaluation of all of the available evidence and concluding that he cannot as an individual believe certain religious claims, and (2) a scientist publicly suggesting or claiming with scientific authority that what science has learned itself shows that religious claims are false or almost certainly false."

According to Christian Smith, (1) is fine whereas (2) is not, because scientists do not have "the right, the competence, the legitimate authority" to make metaphysical or theological assertions. he writes: "What entitles [the scientist] to move from science to metaphysics so effortlessly? It’s unclear. And my simple point here is that it is illegitimate. The metaphysics does not rationally follow from the science, and never could."

What is really funny is that the author does not even mention - let alone discuss - all those Christians who have been, and still are, moving effortlessly between science and theology, using science to bolster their arguments in favor of God's existence. Why is it legimitate when Christians like John Lennox, John Polkinghorne and others use the structure of the Universe ("fine-tuning" ) as evidence for the existence of God as Creator and loving father? But why is it illegitimate when atheist physicists explain why this argument does not hold water, and that the fine-tuning does NOT justify the conclusion that the Universe was created by some divine Being? That on the contrary the Universe looks exactly as we would expect it to look like if there were no Creator whatsoever?

Why is it legitimate when Francis Collins calls DNA the "language of God" or Simon Conway Morris likenes evolution to "God's search engine"? But atheist biologists are not allowed to point out that evolution does provide zero evidence for a creator God, because there is no design to be found, that organisms are rather kludges, riddles with imperfections?

The only "overreach" would be if an atheist scientist made a bold and sweeping claim like "Science has proven that God does not exist". It is correct that science cannot do such a thing. But as long as Christians are still using elements and findings from science to make theological and metaphysical claims, atheists are perfectly allowed to negate and refute those claims by using facts established by science.

The nice idea of Stephen Jay Gould about the two 'non-overlapping magisteria' (science only deals with facts; religion/theology only with meaning and morality) has never worked because the religious side has always left its turf by using facts to bolster metaphysical claims.

Dr. Smith's argument is partly based on a serious error, when he writes: "the God of the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is by nature radically transcendent, of an absolutely different order of being from creation, and so of course is not subjectable to human empirical observation and experimentation." -. That's plain wrong. What he describes is the Supreme Being of the Gnostics (which resides in the Pleroma and has nothing to do with our messy world, which was created by an incompetent demiurg!).

No - the Judeo-Christian God is not of an absolutely different order of being from creation, He not only created this world (therefore His fingerprints should be all over the scene; as has been claimed by theologians for centuries - see the so-called teleological argument, also known as the argument from design), this God has revealed Himself to us (Tora, Bible, Qur'an), He interferes with His creation, He meddles with history (as Holy Spirit) ; He even became a human being (!) , and for millions of Christians He is their best buddy, helping them, giving them signs of His love every day ...

All this divine action is supposed to leave some sort of traces in our world, right? That's what Christians assert, and that's what atheists - whether they are scientists or not - deny. And atheist scientists are not only entitled but obliged to verify those purported 'traces' of God the Creator, the Helper, the Maintainer. And if they come to the conclusion that there are solid naturalistic explanations for these 'traces', they should say so.

The fourth chapter does not really fit into the book, as it consists of a separate essay entitled "Are humans naturally religious?" - Dr. Smith's answer is a qualified Yes. Here his arguments are not flawed, they are based on good evidence.
He writes:
"First, humans are not by nature religious, if by that we mean that all human persons are driven by some natural and irrepressible need or instinct or desire to be religious. (...)
Second, humans are not by nature religious, if by that we mean that every human culture has a functional need or intractable impulse to make religion a centrally defining feature of society. (...)
All human persons are naturally religious if by that we mean that they possess a complex set of innate features, capacities, powers, limitations, and tendencies that capacitate them to be religious (i.e., to think, perceive, feel, imagine, desire, and act religiously)"

Therefore, "Enlightenment, secular humanist, and New Atheist visions for a totally secular human world are simply not realistic—they are cutting against a very strong “grain” in the structure of reality and so will fail to achieve their purpose. (...) Secularization as a process will likely be limited, contingent, and susceptible to reversal. The New Atheist dream of a fundamentally secular world will prove illusory." -
I totally agree with that.

To sum up: Apart from the last chapter, this book is marred by serious argumentational flaws, lack of empirical evidence, sloppy philosophy and non sequiturs.
There is no atheist overreach we should be worried about.