There was a time when atheist literature was generally confined to cumbersome college textbooks and dusty classics by David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell.

How times have changed! Visit your local bookstore and you'll encounter a raft of new books from atheist authors. And unlike the skeptics of the past who couched their denials of the divine in tangled academic prose, these new skeptics are popularizers–writers with a gift for communicating with a wide audience.

The authors at the center of this publishing storm have been dubbed the "new atheists." Their books bear provocative titles such as God is not Great, The God Delusion, and The End of Faith. During the past few years these books have rocketed to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list and gained widespread media attention.

But there's nothing new about what the new atheists are writing. They specialize in dredging up old arguments against God's existence and pedaling them to a credulous public. What's new ...