Cheap atheists

Speaking of his friend Ulster Scot, Lewis writes:

Having said that he was an Atheist, I hasten to add that he was a “Rationalist” of the old, high and dry nineteenth-century type. For atheism has come down in the world since those days, and mixed itself with politics and learned to dabble in dirt. The anonymous donor who now sends me anti-God magazines hopes, no doubt, to hurt the Christian in me; he really hurts the ex-Atheist. I am ashamed that my old mates…should have sunk to what they are now.

-C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, p.139

Lewis respected careful reasoning. I doubt he would be impressed by the crop of today’s atheists who have never dealt robustly with philosophy, anthropology and such. They are cruising in the ships of bio-evolution (there is no creator) or pop-psychology (religion is a mental disease), whose fare is cheap and it’s crew more form than substance.