Damon Linker – who attacked the Religious Right in his book Theocons – accuses the “new atheists” of promoting an illiberal version of atheism that seeks to stamp out religious belief, rather than a more generous-minded skepticism that Linker thinks goes better with liberal politics.

To the extent that atheism advocates using state power and other quasi-official channels of influence to eradicate religious belief it is being illiberal and would likely invite a similarly illiberal religious backlash. Fortunately, the prospects of, say, public schools announcing the “death” of God, as Linker claims Sam Harris wants, are nil. But to the extent that atheists simply want to convince people of the folly of their ways through appeals to reasoned argument they aren’t doing anything illiberal per se. Linker seems to think that being liberal means keeping ones deepest convictions as mere opinions in some ethereal private sphere. But this is a bad caricature of liberalism: a more robust version invites competing doctrines to duke it out in the public sphere, while creating a space where fragile individuals are protected from the excessive certainties of others.