I don’t recall why I studied Hegel in university – my major was English, not philosophy – but it led me to Karl Marx’s posthumous Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and Marx’s oft-misquoted proverb that “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” As I understood it, Marx meant that when bad things happen to good people – say locusts and slavery back in the day, or more modern plagues, like the economic meltdown, endless wars and the mother of all troubles, 9/11 – people turn to religion for solace.

But today, when the going gets tough, it appears that the tough start trash talking God. At least that’s what the stalwarts of popular culture, a group called the New Atheists, are on about. The self-help tomes had barely been remaindered before the likes of God is Not Great (McClelland and Stewart) by Christopher Hitchens, The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by Richard Dawkins, and The End of Faith (Norton) by Sam Harris to name just a few, began invading bestseller lists.

There’s little doubt that the trend is partly a backlash to the many odious acts committed in God’s name by any of the Big Three (Christianity, Judaism and Islam). Dawkins and Hitchens heap scorn and derision on believers. (A fulminating pair if ever there was one, the two writers were gleefully dubbed “Ditchkins” by literary theorist Terry Eagleton in his 2009 book Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (Yale University Press)). They have garnered much ink and ire for their vitriol against the religious right. They claim faith inevitably leads to violence and fundamentalism, and that belief in God is as absurd as believing in the tooth fairy. Unsubtle stuff.

There are few Canadian writers who’ve taken up the anti-God gauntlet, further evidence perhaps of our less combative nature but also reflective of a growing secular mindset in Canada. An Ipsos-Reid poll taken earlier this year showed six in ten or 58% of Canadians don’t believe in God, down from 64% six years earlier. The Freethought Association of Canada (freethoughtassociation.ca , those whacky agnostics that brought us the Atheist Bus campaign) and Humanist Canada (humanistcanada.com) keep up a dynamic presence on-line but the God debate in Canada has been largely muted.

This may change with the release of David Adams Richards’ new book God Is: My Search for Faith in a Secular World (Doubleday Canada), reviewed on the following page. Adams Richards calls the doctrine peddled by atheistic writers elitist, a type of political correctness and, in the same vein as Eagleton, claims secularists can be as rigid and intolerant as any on the religious lunatic fringe.

While Adams Richards claims it’s fashionable for writers to reject God today, debunking the God “myth” goes way back. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, published in 1885, Nietzsche proclaimed that “God is Dead,” asserting that art, politics, and science were the arbiters of human nature, not God. Before the end of the 19th Century, Darwin had come along to flog evolution at the same time that traditional European Christian thought was being tested. Reason was supplanting faith and many intellectuals and writers deserted God for the nuts and bolts empiricism of the natural world.

But the current slide in the West’s adherence to organized religion is coupled with a yearning for an alternative kind of faith. People haven’t stopped searching for something to fill the void. But where they once turned to God, the time now seems ripe for a more secular sort of rapture. Nature abhors a vacuum, even when it’s spiritual.

As is often the case with extremes, the third way – the Canadian way – has presented itself as a thoughtful alternative to both the secular fundamentalists and the true believers. In her book With or without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe (HarperCollins Canada), Gretta Vosper offers a moderate prescription for living mindfully. Vosper, founder and chair of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity, believes in neither blind faith nor faithlessness. She understands that the Christian church needs to change to accommodate changing times if it hopes to remain relevant. Ultimately, she says, the only approach is a humanistic one: Love oneself, love others and live well. Amen to that, sister.

Books editor Elana Rabinovitch runs Propaganda Ink and is the administrator of the Scotiabank Giller Prize. For more of her work, please go here.