I think I’m beginning to figure David B. Hart out. I’ve been totally mystified about why anyone would consider him a credible or interesting thinker since reading his essay belittling the New Atheists, which was dreary and wearying — I compared his prose style to that of Eeyore. But note: one of his central points in that essay was that these New Atheists aren’t as smart and brave as the Old Atheists, an idea that comes up again in a new essay.

Hart has now written a column praising Julian the Apostate, of all people. Julian was a very interesting person in history, a 4th century Roman emperor who resisted the Christianization of the empire begun by Constantine by openly rejecting Christianity and endorsing a revitalization of paganism. He’s something of a mixed bag for atheists: he’s a hero for opposing the dour old monotheism that was spreading through the culture, but also a bit of a flake for encouraging the old classical religions — he was not an atheist by any means. The novel by Gore Vidal, Julian^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)}, is an excellent introduction to the doomed rebellion against Christianity.

One thing Julian also was not is a friend to Catholicism, so it’s odd to see a Catholic writer heaping praise on him. But then you discover that Hart doesn’t admire him for his views or his intelligence or his cause (although he acknowledges them), it’s because Hart has the conservative disease of believing everything was better in the past, that there was a Golden Age, and that we’re living in an era of decline and defeat right now. To these cranky old farts of stodginess, we’re always living in perpetual decline. Julian is to be admired because he also thought the generations before him were better than the one he was living in.

We now also live in the twilight of an ancient civilization, and many of us occasionally deceive ourselves that the course of history can be reversed. Christendom is quite gone, and the Christian culture of the West seems irrevocably destined for slow dissolution. The arts it inspired, the moral grammar it shaped, the shared stories and convictions by which it bound peoples together seem surely to belong to a constantly receding past.

If nothing else, those restive souls who feel some sort of reverence for that civilization—even those prepared to grant all the evils and failures inextricable from its history, and even those who acknowledge the deep corruption of the gospel it entailed—should be able to understand Julian’s anxiety, indignation, and implacable hostility towards the “Galilaeans.” Perhaps now, then, having had to suffer the trauma of modernity, both for good and ill, reflective Christians might be prepared to recognize that strange, compelling, and rather deluded man—Christian history’s most notorious “Apostate”—as someone who, as best he could, strove to “keep the faith

Keeping the faith is the important matter — let’s just sweep aside the fact that he was supporting a very different faith. Substance is unimportant, just so long as he believed. It’s a strange world the modern defenders of religion live in, where they’ve given up hope in fighting for the specifics of their dogma, and are reduced to desperately hoping that someone somewhere will be nestled in a delusion of some kind.

It is symptomatic of the malaise of the faithful that they find common cause with anyone living in a gloomy period of change from the Old Ways. I see it a little differently.

The history of Western Civilization hasn’t been one of constant decline. It’s been a complicated series of ups and downs, and people seem to differ on when it was going up and when it was going down. I see the major lifts occurring during periods of secular thought: Greece in the 6th century BC, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution. These are the moments when great changes occurred that expanded humanity’s vision. On the other hand, the great troughs in human history were whenever religion was ascendant: the whole of the Middle Ages. Not that people weren’t aspiring to great things during the Middle Ages, but they were all weighted down with the burden of dragging an anti-scientific, reactionary church with them everywhere.

Hart seems like the sort of fellow who would invert everything, where the best moments in our history are those where we are most effectively shackled to the advancement of god belief. It’s very unfortunate for him. He’s living his life in a time where he believes we’re in decline, because he is attached to a Christianity in dissolution.

I’m feeling the opposite. Christianity in dissolution? Thank God, and it’s about time we got rid of those dismal superstitions. I see my children have been born in a time when civilization is on the upswing, and it feels good.

The Austrians are fleeing the church in droves:

A record 100,000 Austrians are expected to leave the Roman Catholic Church this year after abuse scandals which have badly damaged its image, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Some 57,000 quit the church in the first six months of the year, Austrian daily Der Standard reported, citing figures from local state authorities. This is already more than the full-year total for 2009 when 53,216 walked out.

While the British are a bit smug about their godlessness:

And now congregation, put your hands together and give thanks, for I come bearing Good News. Britain is now the most irreligious country on earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else. Some 63 percent of us are non-believers, according to an ICM study, while 82 percent say religion is a cause of harmful division. Now, let us stand and sing our new national hymn: Jerusalem was dismantled here/ in England’s green and pleasant land.

I wish I could say it’s all because those vocal Gnu Atheists have been so effective in making people realize that there is no shame in being unchurched, but I can’t…because the Catholic church has been running a simultaneous campaign to discredit religion at the same time, and to be honest, I suspect that when you compare the publication of a few books to the spectacle of the church hiding pedophiles, I know which strategy is more vivid.

Let’s say there was synergy, OK? Yeah, that’s the ticket, synergy.

You’ve got less than an hour from the time I’ve posted this to tune in to CNN.

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It was a very short interview, but Hitchens was clear: the only way there will be a deathbed conversion is if he’s rendered irrational and babbling with pain, and concedes that the person who dies could very well be someone very different from the living Hitch. But while he’s lucid, he’s adamant: he doesn’t believe in gods at all.

It is a relevant point, though, that the ghouls of Christianity do rely on catching their prey in the weakest, most desperate, most damaged point in people’s lives, when they’re at their least rational.

There is no pride or honor in a deathbed conversion. Christians revel in them because they are shameless and dishonorable.

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So I played this Battleground God game, which is supposed to ferret out philosophical contradictions in your views about religion. I didn’t implode into a mass of inconsistent pudding at the end, which is good, right?

Where are my fabulous prizes?

Apparently, you can also get a perfect score by playing from the theistic perspective, since the goal is just to avoid self-contradiction. I’d try, but I can’t. All I did was give the answers that weren’t stupid. It’s not as if I were thinking to play.

Christopher Hitchens is very sick with esophageal cancer, but he still writes like a fiery angel in describing his situation.

These are my first raw reactions to being stricken. I am quietly resolved to resist bodily as best I can, even if only passively, and to seek the most advanced advice. My heart and blood pressure and many other registers are now strong again: indeed, it occurs to me that if I didn’t have such a stout constitution I might have led a much healthier life thus far. Against me is the blind, emotionless alien, cheered on by some who have long wished me ill. But on the side of my continued life is a group of brilliant and selfless physicians plus an astonishing number of prayer groups. On both of these I hope to write next time if–as my father invariably said–I am spared.

I’m reminded of Stephen J. Gould, who was also afflicted with cancer, who wrote one of his best essays ever, The Median Isn’t the Message, on the subject. How do atheists face death? As we see from the examples of Hitchens and Gould, with courage and reason.

Gould, by the way, outlived his diagnosis by 20 years.

Also, if you’d like to see some examples of the people wishing Hitchens ill, simply browse this cache of conservative comments at Politico. The contrast is astonishing: there’s Hitchens, the wounded lion, writing beautifully and strongly, and there are the nattering mice, blathering about ‘atheists in foxholes’ and praying for a conversion in their thuggish and clumsy cliches and blind dogmas.

I look at the two sides and I know which one I want to be on when I grow up.

Not that he’s ever been soft on religion, but this recent column in SciAm makes him sound like one of those shrill, militant, rabid, dangerous Gnu Atheists.

I don’t know which is more dangerous, that religious beliefs force some people to choose between knowledge and myth or that pointing out how religion can purvey ignorance is taboo. To do so risks being branded as intolerant of religion. The kindly Dalai Lama, in a recent New York Times editorial, juxtaposed the statement that “radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold religious beliefs” with his censure of the extremist intolerance, murderous actions and religious hatred in the Middle East. Aside from the distinction between questioning beliefs and beheading or bombing people, the “radical atheists” in question rarely condemn individuals but rather actions and ideas that deserve to be challenged.

Surprisingly, the strongest reticence to speak out often comes from those who should be most worried about silence. Last May I attended a conference on science and public policy at which a representative of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences gave a keynote address. When I questioned how he reconciled his own reasonable views about science with the sometimes absurd and unjust activities of the Church—from false claims about condoms and AIDS in Africa to pedophilia among the clergy—I was denounced by one speaker after another for my intolerance.

Religious leaders need to be held accountable for their ideas. In my state of Arizona, Sister Margaret McBride, a senior administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, recently authorized a legal abortion to save the life of a 27-year-old mother of four who was 11 weeks pregnant and suffering from severe complications of pulmonary hypertension; she made that decision after consultation with the mother’s family, her doctors and the local ethics committee. Yet the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olm­sted, immediately excommunicated Sister Mary, saying, “The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s.” Ordinarily, a man who would callously let a woman die and orphan her children would be called a monster; this should not change just because he is a cleric.

Slapping around the Dalai Lama? Good on you, Dr Krauss.