In 1798, the German cleric Friedrich Schleiermacher gave in to the urgings of a circle of prominent friends—every one contemptuous of religion—and began to write. Eight months later, he completed the manuscript of On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, his compelling attempt to reconcile the human religious intuition with the rationality so prized by the philosophers of the Enlightenment (and by his skeptical friends).

On its opening page, Schleiermacher—a pivotal figure in the study of religion—begged the indulgence of the cynics to whom the book was addressed:

Might I ask one question? On every subject, however small and unimportant, you would most willingly be taught bey those who have devoted to it their lives and their powers. In your desire for knowledge, you do not avoid the cottages of the peasant or the workshops of humble artisans. How then does it come about that, in matters of religion alone, you hold every thing the more dubious when it comes from those who are experts...?

In the manner of Schleiermacher’s fashionable friends, a new wave of intellectual despisers has taken the stage in our own time with an acerbic critique of religion, its adherents and the ‘charlatans’ who
shape it. In the view of thinkers like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Victor Stenger and Christopher Hitchens, religion is counter-evolutionary, neither adaptive nor morally purposive. They argue that as human culture becomes more scientifically enlightened and as the need for metaphysical answers to life’s great mysteries fades, religion will likewise vanish from the scene. 

This article can be found in the Fall | Winter 2011 issue of Kosmos Journal or can be downloaded as a PDF here.