Include bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: History and the New Atheism --S︣uperstition and the Stake: Witch-hunting and the Terrible Consequences of Believing in the Supernatural --F︣aith and the Stake: Heresy and Religious Totalitarianism --C︣halking up Six Million Deaths to Religion: Appropriating the Holocaust --T︣he Rational Tradition and Atomism --H︣eroes and Martyrs: Witch-Hunting and the Dangers of Scepticism --T︣he Hostile Utopia: Atheist Oppression and the Assault on Religion in the USSR --F︣rom the Spanish Toca to the American Waterboard: the Strange Yardstick of Ethical Progress --A︣theism, Religion and the Myth of Cultural Distance --T︣he Moderation of the Unfinished Thought: Militancy, Polemical Cavalierism and Atheisms.

"This book examines the misuse of history in New Atheism and militant anti-religion. It looks at how episodes such as the Witch-hunt, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust are mythologized to present religion as inescapably prone to violence and discrimination, whilst the darker side of atheist history, such as its involvement in Stalinism, is denied. At the same time, another constructed history--that of a perpetual and one-sided conflict between religion and science/rationalism--is commonly used by militant atheists to suggest the innate superiority of the non-religious mind. In a number of detailed case studies, the book traces how these myths have long been overturned by historians, and argues that the New Atheism's cavalier use of history is indicative of a troubling approach to the humanities in general. Nathan Johnstone engages directly with the God debate at an academic level and contributes to the emerging study of non-religion as a culture and an identity."-.