Ordinarily, this quadrumvirate of betes noires . . . an American-British ex-patriot (Christopher Hitchens), an evolutionary biologist (Richard Dawkins), a cyber-philosopher (Daniel C Dennett) and a philosophically minded demagogue (Sam Harris) . . . wouldn't ascend to pole position in the bestseller lists but, in a post-9/11 world, people are questioning the old institutions.

God Is Not Great, The God Delusion, Breaking The Spell and The End Of Faith unmistakably approach the burning 'belief ' question and have persuaded an enraptured anglophile public . . .

looking at deity and faith systems with an analytical eye . . . that religion and Creationism should be treated to the rigours of science and of Enlightenment reasoning, if not destroyed through investigation, logic and scientific methodology.

Why is this trend in publishing so successful now? Well, each of these books offers a determinedly reasoned weltschaung of erudition, fact and wisdom as to how one might approach 'the unknowable' rationally. And as long as the reader is of a mind to employ reason in relation to human constructs rather than simply accept received conjecture, each of these titles represents a challenge that is deeply engaging.

Within a few pages of the start of his The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins quotes the American atheist (and founding father) Thomas Jefferson. That most secular mind for what was, in its post-European phase, a truly secular nation, once stated, "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man had a distinct idea of the Trinity." The quotation is a typical Dawkins device to provoke those of an Abrahamic disposition. So when he proceeds into an extempore, his book reads like speech. Yet as a literarily satisfying analysis of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the man's passion for reason is admirable. You find yourself agreeing at least tentatively with the logic of Dawkins' conviction.

Such a point would be lost on nobody who saw the foppishly coiffeured 66-year-old defend his reasoning on The Late, Late Show earlier this year. But though he is an effervescently bubbly promoter of reason and has as his mantra the importance of raising consciousness of Darwin's theory of natural selection, there is an unmistakeable zeal . . . an almost vocational insistence on his part . . .

that nothing less than that which is scientifically testable, quantifiable and cognisant of probability is worth recognition, acknowledgment, or the regard of obeisance.

Christianity has, of course, historically been hugely successful in promoting unquestioning obedience. But as these authors show, its moral authority has dwindled. As the economically flourishing First World became more affluent and individualistic, there was less need of and greater cynicism about the belonging and hierarchical traditions associated with massed faith and unquestioning religious observation.

Sam Harris's almost preemptively titled The End of Faith . . .

Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason deigns to reveal the margins, the bellicose edge, of the old belief systems. Written in direct response to 9/11, he argues that in America the quasi-theocratic lobby is the secular society's worst nightmare.

The fact that secular states treat religions as if they were fact rather than subjective belief systems and offer their followers positions of power within society . . .

for example, running schools and hospitals . . . is reckless, says Harris.

He argues religion is the only area of human knowledge where it is acceptable in modern society to hold beliefs based on ancient views of the world and which, when subjected to the rigours of scientific inquiry, simply do not stand up. The consequences are all the more frightening when you realise the most powerful man in the world believes passionately and almost word-for-word in the messages contained in a book called the Bible, written by an allpowerful deity whose word can't be questioned.

Harris blames religious moderates for allowing extremists to flourish and argues secularists should take a stronger stand against all religions because they are so divisive. His irate venting is quoted many times by the other three members of the secular Gang of Four and he, too, bolsters his fellows so it seems to be his role in what may be perceived as 'the group' to lay waste to the ramparts of the 'murderous ideologies' of Christianity and Islam.

Harris's aggressively secular approach couldn't be more evident; he doesn't ridicule so much as seek to dismantle. His most receptive audience may in fact be adolescents from the educated US middle classes, but any reservations about his syntax and its thrust can be cast aside. Gleaning what information one may from his book . . . as well as his follow-up Letters To A Christian Nation . . . is recommended as informative and inventively dramatic.

If Harris is the proselytiser for the group's belief, then Christopher Hitchens must be its warrior poet. His God Is Not Great . . . The Case Against Religion is a brazen assault taking a variety of religious texts and attacking each of them as manmade, distorted and inhuman. In deference to his ribald hectoring eloquence, it is unnecessary to dismiss Hitchens;

an author/commentator once considered an inveterate 17Curmudgeonly, truculent and iconoclastic, Hitchens has supporters and detractors in equal measure. His joy at leaping upon an inconvenient truth or blind alley renders him either wrong and infuriating, or brilliant and provocative. But God Is Not Great is probably his magnum opus. This sumptuous, provocative and ultimately cynical book amounts to nothing less than an assault on that which Hitchens considers anathema to reasoned existence. Mother Teresa is assaulted a la mode as a selfseeking matriarchal Catholic for her efforts to subvert Ireland's 'Yes' to divorce in 1994 and for ideologically describing contraception as "the moral equivalent of abortion".

Nonetheless, when Hitchens theoretically grasps the nettle he excels. His childhood affection for the "story" revealing the human suffering of Jesus Christ in the garden at Gethsemane, for example, produces a sublime and reductive piece of reasoning that alludes damningly to the foolheaded and hierarchically sanctioned "ignorance" foisted upon ordinary Christians.

When finally you pick up Daniel C Dennett's slight Penguin volume Breaking The Spell . . . Religion As A Natural Phenomenon, the most eloquent thinking among the enfants terrible comes to the fore.

By a country mile the best of the writers under discussion, Dennett . . . who evokes and writes with the witty verve and 'horse sense' of a latter day Mark Twain . . . shows an intuitively scientific and thoughtful insight borne of kindly, sensitised, yet unrepentant conviction, an interest in psychology and gentle bemusement about the way organised religion gets things . . .

from his philosopher's perspective . . . so erroneously wrong.

His is a remarkably structured, cogent, as well as life-affirming text that works simply because Dennett's softly, softly approach is at once respectful of individual spiritual conviction and so wellstructured as to address, exhaustively and informatively, the value of science approaching 'God'.

Such wise clarity is not unusual . . . Dennett is the author of an older treatise entitled Consciousness Explained, which achieves a memorably detailed result. Here, his calm, deliberate and incisive approach takes the reader into a well-expressed analysis of human thought concerning the systems of belief at the heart of much that's bad, but without dismissing or dumping what's good. And his conclusions, whether for the casual reader interested in ideas, the thinking theologian or the academic, make for an accessibly intelligent reading of the antitheism/creationism debate.

So where does this leave the reader interested in acquiring through these books something useful or informative? Well, there's abundant evidence here to show that the monotheistic religions, the bugbear of these authors, are as capable as ever of inflicting wilfully cruel, misanthropic, racist, gender-based and unnecessary pain and death on those who do not support their spiritual convictions . . . as well as those who do.

Alternately there's evidence here, too, of something benign in the humanity of religious clerics.

Mention is made of those who fought alongside people they ministered to and, for example, helped to force the end of apartheid. Then there are those who took part in the civil-rights marches in the US in the 1960s or prisoners facilitating muslim dignity in US prisons.

Dennett begins and ends his Breaking The Spell by asking if it's possible to quantify religion according to scientific methodology while also informing us religion is considered "off limits" to such inquiry by its guiding patrons. To a greater degree than his fellows in promoting a revised view of religion . . . you can see that's what's being promoted here . . . his voice is the most determinedly reasoned and it falls to him to appeal to organised religion to open itself up to science and to reason. His 'What Shall We Tell The Children?' chapter is as reasoned an appeal for dialogue and meaningful discourse as may be found anywhere.

There's no doubt each of these books addresses a growing constituency of people who perceive religion to be often cynically administrated and promoted by appointed members of a hierarchy. Hierarchies, of course, exist to promote an agreed aim and with populist faith systems the message to outsiders is: 'Don't ask about and don't interfere with these mystical beliefs.'

The insurmountable problem for Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens is that religion often fulfils a deeply held, sometimes practical, human need to feel part of something more hopeful than simply dying. And also while we dwell on such matters might we not ask if this intellectually and academically secular tendency is not simply another hierarchy in the making?

The authors mentioned, with the exception of Dawkins, are not just slightly corroborative of American neo-conservative thinking, a post-liberal political construct and viewpoint which, though highly individualistic, systematically fosters close philosophical and intellectual ties to academic and intellectual elites in its American incarnation.

Hitchens particularly is supportive of his friend Paul Wolfowitz, an architect of the War on Terror and the theoretician behind the report produced for George W Bush on 12 September 2001, advocating regime change in Iraq. Perhaps the newly reasoned beliefs should be more analytically approached with a critically attuned eye.