The attention to reality and existence in their enigmatic appearance, is a trait that runs through the history of human research. A story, it is worth pointing out, marked by a constant fluctuation in the dynamics of knowledge, especially in relation to fundamental questions such as the appearance of life, the origin and duration of the universe, the problem of evil, of death...

Fact or illusion ?

These questions fueling expectations of clear and indubitable answers, in the belief that there are knowledge and cognitive models can capture the complexity of reality. Instead, the daily experience leaves out the effort of knowledge, the triteness of cheap answers, the illusion of being able to unravel the mystery of things with a single approach. In other words, you are not used to living with a conflict of interpretations that shows the complexity in which we live and which characterizes us as human beings in research.

Now , one of the most important conflict is between faith, religion and science. Indeed, it is a clear indicator of how the horizon of knowledge appears to be meant by particular boundaries that do not allow a know different. The belief, widely held, is that science has somehow proven the falsity of religion, for the simple reason that it is the only perspective to offer on the problems of existence. "According to a popular image - the scientist and theologian John Polkinghorne writes- the scientific enterprise would have a foolproof method and, accordingly, its results would be merely the inexorable conquest of truth. The  experimental control verify or forge of the proposals put forward by the theory. The problems are solved that way forever, and with unanimous satisfaction; laws that will never be broken under the eyes of all. But soon we will discover that, in fact, things are so much more subtle”[i]. It is no wonder, therefore, that faith and religion are not able to compete with a way of knowing things so safe and reliable. Rather, they are dangerous because they tend to mask the reality, not to offer evidence, repeating arguments that have the flavor of old-fashioned superstition. Ultimately, religion is not able to provide any more explanation that has some importance.

The virus of religion

It is on the basis of these assumptions, which moves the new atheism that, while making an appearance in the cultural landscape between 2006 and 2007, reopens a number of critical issues already present in the first half of the twentieth century about the historical and cultural opportunity an atheistic humanism. If at first level, emerges the need for a dialogue between the natural sciences and religion, to a more radical size repeats the question to which God the neoatheism opposes his criticism and what is the place of faith. The assumption that joins/joines different new atheist thinkers  is that "God’s hypothesis", if he had a sense, it should be checked in accordance with the same criteria that govern any scientific claim. It follows that under these criteria, the existence of God is a fairy tale and religion is an emotion to overcome. Moreover, it prevents the advancement  knowledge and social progress. The background of these arguments is made by Darwinism understood as a universal theory, capable of explaining the developments of fact within the knowledge of biology.

Therefore, even if one were to admit the presence of the religious element in the evolution of the human species, it should be considered as an accidental product, useful, in some ways, but not functional to the growth and maturity of man. In this sense,  appears emblematic the position of Richard Dawkins. In his work Il gene egoista[ii] argues that as in the biological evolution acts as a replicator the gene, in that cultural the "meme". This term, which comes from a combination of "gene" and "Memory," tends to explain how ideas, products, phrases, fashions are effects of the selection that the “memes” operate on the culture memes. Within this cultural development, some memes have a high survival value. Among these is the "God’s meme" that, like a virus, it can contaminate people and to resist any therapy.

Now, beyond the fact that it is difficult to show that ideas and cultural artifacts are reasonably content in a genetic code that is claimed by itself, what is striking is the reduction of God to a mere effect of cultural evolution, the object of a terrible illusion, that however, persists in spite of everything. If so, then, or cultural evolution is unable to expel religion and faith, or the matter is otherwise. Namely, it requires an approach to reality unless ruling and measured only on scientific knowledge.

The logic of faith

Criticism of neoatheism presents us with a crucial question: is it really necessary to believe in the man? The experience does not seem to escape: as far as you want to classify as a remnant of a worn-out past or looked upon it as an accessory of man in the world, faith in its various types, belongs to every man and woman. The reasons can be many. In fact, the strength of belief performs its credentials as irreplaceable (or almost) when you are in a position to explain things, or, rather, in “organize many observations in a consistent manner".[iii] In other words, what goes interpreted and understood is because man is made to believe, because in his search for meaning can not do without beliefs. This fact, however, triggers the skeptical irony that it considers to believe a knowledge and a cultural and irrational behavior, as immature and fictitious.

Now, if to the trust is an usual tenant of daily life, there must be some reason, strange as it may seem. Also because the human world seems to be resistant to a limited approach to the only scientific construction of reality. For a more careful observation, the size of believing in things, in others, in yourself, in a Transcendence, is an essential ingredient that hardly confirms a double paradox. The first is that without believing it would be difficult to move forward in daily life; the second is that the belief often replaces uncertainty. Indeed, if this triggered, it can become stronger than knowledge. Thus, as noted by the cognitive psychologist P. Legrenzi, "Believing is something less than knowledge: it indicates that we do not know for sure. But it is also something more: it provides a form of knowledge "rather than certain", which may even go beyond the facts and trespassing in the faith"[iv].

A similar appearance of the need to believe identifies in the act of faith a bold witness of the impossibility of evading the questions of the excellence of the existence: the dignity of each of us and the purpose of our life. That is to say, the fundamental questions that press on the cultural journey of humanity. That, of course, does not depend in a deterministic way by the biological fact of life and his need for self-production and survival.

Recovering the sense of mystery

Without doubt, the new atheism offers a caricature of science, which is well aware of its relativity. His move within the fact and the event, it doesn’t deprive of that value of transcendence, which refers to the recovery of the sense of mystery. The science is called by the encounter with the religious experience, to cease to be regarded as condoning and ideology of the existing reality, to become an instrument of research and creation of new models. At the same time, the religious experience must learn to grasp its relevance in the knowledge of reality, in a humility that does not pretend to have all the answers. Faith is not the expression of a "minor age" of man, unable to indicate a meaning to reality. It is also not the certainty free from doubt that navigates safely in the tackle and failures of history. It would just be a stunt double for ambiguity irresponsible, even if smart in knowing how to profit from those events that require cheap answers. Often, thinking of owning a response, you are likely to head to the drift of the faith, whose face is fundamentalism and totalitarianism of the single thought. Rather, faith is not deductible beginning of a new life, whereby believers, believers of other faiths and atheists, share the same possibility: they are the one for the other sign of an encounter with the never final mystery, that widens the angle of why. "Science and faith are the two wings that allow you to fly to more distant horizons [...] The thinking man welcomes an ever-changing horizon. He does not live by only certainties, without asking questions, but amazed and marveled, puts into play every time, making the question and doubt the vital spring  to an honest search for animated by incessant questions, hoping for a response that opens the door to new questions".[v]