A Christian philosopher, James S. Spiegel, has a new book out, The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief.

It’s getting some press in Christian circles. I don’t imagine it’ll get much attention elsewhere; its thesis seems transparently ridiculous. Atheism, apparently, is a manifestation of moral rebellion, the psychology of having a weak father, and immorality-induced blindness to overwhelming evidence for the reality of God and the truth of the Bible. In other words, the book doesn’t look like research so much as a description of what the world should look like if conservative Christian doctrines were correct.

I’ll try to take a proper look at the book if I run into it in a used book store or something. Still, it’s too bad someone doesn’t write a real book on the subject. It would be interesting to find out more about psychological dispositions toward nonbelief. And much atheist literature does, in fact, overemphasize moral disgruntlement with religion or the notion of God. But a “Christian philosopher” is probably not the right person to say anything useful about such things.