Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press, 2009) is a work by the theologian and philosopher David Bentley Hart which challenges the denunciation of religion by atheistic authors such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. In it, Hart argues that their polemics are based on "facile simplifications of history" and "outright historical ignorance", misrepresenting the Christian past.
Hart's thesis is that Christianity transformed the ancient world by:
- bringing liberation from fatalism
- conferring dignity on humans
- making charity the greatest of the virtues
The so-called Age of Reason was, he argues, "the beginning of the eclipse of reason’s authority as a cultural value". Hart concludes by warning of the effcts on our culture of a continued decline of Christian spiritual and moral values.
Atheist Delusions was published on 21 April 2009.