'''''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 [[virtue]]s
+
+
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.
+
== See also ==
+
*[[Resources for leaving atheism and becoming a Christian]]