The key difference between the old and new atheism is in their views of mankind. For atheists like Marx (pdf), religion expressed, in a backward and limited form, human aspirations to greatness: "Man ... looked for a superhuman being in the fantastic reality of heaven and found nothing there but the reflection of himself." He continued: "The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being ... " Today, Hitchens says of religion's destructive impact: "What else was to be expected of something that was produced by the close cousins ...

The key difference between the old and new atheism is in their views of mankind. For atheists like Marx (pdf), religion expressed, in a backward and limited form, human aspirations to greatness: "Man ... looked for a superhuman being in the fantastic reality of heaven and found nothing there but the reflection of himself." He continued: "The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being ... " Today, Hitchens says of religion's destructive impact: "What else was to be expected of something that was produced by the close cousins of chimpanzees?" For Marx, religion had to be abolished because it made man despicable; for new atheists religion exists precisely because man is despicable, little more than a monkey.

New atheists will continue to ridicule the religious in 2008. But there is more humanity in the "superhuman" delusions of the devout - in their yearning for a sense of purpose and greatness - than there is in the monkeyman realism of the hectoring atheists.