The New Republic has an interesting article by Damon Linker titled Atheism's Wrong Turn.
There are a few minor matters with which one might quibble - for instance his imputation of atheism to Socrates is puzzling - but his overall point is a good one:
"[T]he new atheism" is not particularly new. It belongs to an intellectual genealogy stretching back hundreds of years, to a moment when atheist thought split into two traditions: one primarily concerned with the dispassionate pursuit of truth, the other driven by a visceral contempt for the personal faith of others.
Today's atheists, he writes, have followed the second of these traditions and as such stand in defiant opposition to the grand tradition of classical liberalism. Their implicit desire to expunge from public life every vestige of religious faith and practice fills the pages of their books with more than a whiff of the totalitarian impulse.
Read Linker's article to find out why.
RLC