In sum­maris­ing the main argu­ments for and against the New Athe­ist argu­ment, Anthony Got­tlieb pro­vides a fairly even (yet far from com­pre­hen­sive) account of the evo­lu­tion of 21st cen­tury atheism.

Through John Wis­dom’s 1944 Para­ble of the Invis­i­ble Gar­dener, Got­tlieb looks at how the argu­ments of “reli­gious apol­o­gists” such as Karen Arm­strong are falling back on argu­ments grounded in unfal­si­fi­able beliefs.

The para­ble of the gar­dener [raises] an unset­tlingly pow­er­ful point about the nature of faith. If you believe some­thing, shouldn’t it be pos­si­ble to say what would make that belief true or false? What is the con­tent of your so-called belief in the exis­tence of a God, or of a gar­dener, if you can­not say what dif­fer­ence his pres­ence or absence would make to the world?