Recently, a spate of books has been published that extol the virtues of atheism and excoriate the vices of religion: Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, Sam Harris’s Letters to a Christian Nation, and now Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great.  Having perused a couple of these books myself, my conclusion is that these men are clever writers but far from clear thinkers. If the village atheist had a Ph.D. in biology, a witty pen, anger management issues, and an unfamiliarity with contemporary work in the philosophy of religion, he would write these books. If not, he would leave well enough alone.

Unfortunately, the men who review these books are often as ignorant about religion as the men who write them, and praise books that deserve to be roundly mocked. Robert T. Miller picks up the problem of ignorant reviewers reviewing ignorant writers on the First Things blog:

Here’s the latest example of a fascinating, though depressing, cultural phenomenon. A fellow who clearly knows nothing about a deep and difficult intellectual problem produces a manuscript purporting to resolve the problem definitively. Such a fellow is a crank, you might think, and will quite properly be ignored. But, no, he actually finds a publisher for his book, and a respected one at that. Even more surprisingly, the New York Times commissions a review of the book from a famous columnist, and, instead of exposing the book for the ignorant twaddle that it is, the columnist writes a glowing review. How does this happen?

Read the whole thing to find out how Michael Kinsley ended up reviewing Christopher Hitchens and making a fool of himself in the process.