The Age newspaper published an article yesterday entitled “Beyond Belief”, an unassuming article about deconversion stories, and their links with the rise the so-called ‘new atheism’.

Apart from it being turgid, fairly rambling and unstructured, and more than twice as long as it could have been, it is a general ‘feel-good-fluff-piece’.

EXCEPT for this strange paragraph:

The new atheism is bigger, more organised, and much more assertive than ever before. It’s based on the belief that science explains everything we need to know about the world so there’s no need for religion.

(Emphasis mine)

That gets it SO VERY wrong that it is hard to know where to start!
Atheism is NOT based on ANY belief. In fact: the total and complete opposite!
Dawkins et alia have gone to excruciating lengths to repeatedly explain their view that science does NOT explain everything we need to know!
Hitchens has stated several times that he does not wish to see the end of religion.

And in any case, those are not the reasons that there is no need for religion.

What makes traditional religions surplus to requirements is that is they are patently untrue, and an overall burden on their parasitic hosts, and potentially lethal to bystanders.
Religions do no good that cannot be done without it.
(See Christopher Hitchens’ still outstanding challenge to theists to “Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.”)
But that they DO do much harm is beyond rational dispute.

The best I can say for the author, Michael Bachelard, is that he must have had a brain-fart when penning this egregious bit of lazy reporting.

Here is the article...

Post Scriptum:
Aussie philosopher** Russell Blackford wrote an extensive and well received review of the Age article here.

** Not in charge of the sheep dip as he is not called Bruce.