The New Atheist - movement

I'm not sure where to post this, but this is for all sorts of discussion about the movement. As we all (should) know, the atheism of the 'new' atheism is nothing new, but rather it's the strong stance and the intense anti-religiousness that makes them "new".

As I am not an atheist, and I live in a very secular country and have encountered pretty hostile new atheists in real life personally, I've had fairly negative view of the new atheism - movement, but anyways I went for an exploration mission to get a closer look. I read new atheist blogs, watched their debates and some interviews with Dawkins & co.

Couple of random comments and observations from my journey to the wonderful world of militant non-belief:

- The debates were very entertaining. I can see the appeal.

- I found myself agreeing with more than 90% of what Dawkins & co. said in the debates, and more often sympathizing with them than with their opponents, which sort of surprised me. He is great at articulating philosophical concepts in common sense - way.

- What was new to me is that the new atheism - movement seems to have been sparked at least partly by 9/11, and this crew is much more critical of Islam than of Christianity. It's the Christian- dominated culture in the west that has created the wrong impression of them being somehow fundamentally anti-Christian.

- Dawkins occasionally got pretty rude with religious audience members, but when thinking objectively, he calling someone "hallucinating" or "ignorant" is not even as bad as Christian pastors calling someone being "of satan" or "going to hell". We're just more used to the Christian insults.

- I became enlightened of what I had exactly so much disliked in the wannabe-Dawkinses I've met in the past. They had copied the hostile anti-religious rhetoric, without having his articulate and intellectual skills to make a point. It was an enlightening discovery. While Dawkins spices his arguments with an attitude, he does have the skills to make good points which was pretty different impression than the one I used to have.

inquiring mind said:

Apparently, Satan was pretty convincing too; other angels were cast out of Heaven with him... use caution.

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Use caution? Who do you mean?

You can't have an open mind without risking of being influenced in the process. To be against risking of being influenced by what you read and explore, is in fact to be against reading and exploring. Can't have it both ways.

If living the way I want to live, by exploring different beliefs and ideas, would end up making me an atheist, then I would welcome that change, if it brings me closer to the truth and having a healthy relationship with the reality. So far, though, it has not done so.

hedrick said:

I think what's new about the new atheism is to a large extent its assessment of religion. It's not really new. In France there was for a period a similar anti-religion. But in the US until recently, atheists tended to see religion as OK, but false. That is, they couldn't believe it, but it wasn't seen as a evil force.

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Yep, they're not just secular, but anti-religious.

What makes new atheists different from French revolutionaries, or communist atheism for that matter, is that new atheists tend to not support legal measures against religion. They're more for simply ideological influencing and promotion. French revolutionaries and communists were both for active violence and legal measures against religion. So far, I have seen nothing to suggest that the new atheists are even interested to go that far. They can be fine with bullying and ridiculing religious people, as a byproduct of a perceived good cause, though.

hedrick said:

Today, as in France around the French Revolution, religion as seen as actively evil, because it's making people worse. It's seen as justifying hatred of various groups, and as preventing stem cell research and other useful developments. (In my opinion the new atheism got a serious boost during arguments over stem cells, because it was the first time that many scientists saw religion as directly preventing them from doing something.) While it's not 100% true, religious people also tend to be associated with denying climate change, and holding other false beliefs that can damage us in the long run.

It's pretty easy to go from there to see religion as a truly damaging force. From these points of view, Islam is clearly more of a threat in principle.

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While the new atheist view of religion corrupting science and thinking is exarrogated, there is truth to it. In Eurobarameter (European equivalent for Pew) there is a correlation of having less positive view on science and having religious beliefs, for example.

It's actually a logical phenomenon, if teachings of a religion conflict the findings of science, there will always be a number of people who will choose to reject science and develop anti-scientific attitudes to solve the conflict.

hedrick said:

But in the US it doesn't have as much political clout as Christianity, so at the moment it may not be as much of a practical threat. In Europe it's not so clear.

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It's worth to note that Dawkins is British, and in Europe there still exists lots of legal remnants of the old entanglement of state and church from the Christian millennium in the continent. Those entanglements are of course but a shadow of what they used to be, and are in decline.

For example, in Finland the two state churches still have a right to tax their members, via the government taxation system to collect the money, while other religions don't have that right. The church tax is collected alongside all the other taxes and because it's so invisible, it's entirely possible to pay the ~1% church tax and not even be aware of doing so. Atheist organizations here have campaigned to make it public knowledge and as a result, increasingly people have signed off their membership of the state church to avoid that tax.

Issues like that serve as rallying issues for anti-religious people in Europe, to not just push a political agenda, but also to promote their ideology in the process of addressing those issues.

hengesthorsa said:

I'd bet at least a dollar that most atheist biologists (not that they all are atheists) know better than to make fools out of themselves talking about stuff they have never studied and aren't oriented in at all. He's just the noisiest of the ones who don't know better.

People that act like that just look like fools. I'm generally familiar with cars and their function, but if I started preaching to a professional mechanic -- or even strong amateurs -- about this and that, I'd be considered a fool.

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This is partly true, but there is other side to it. The New atheist argument is that they don't address religion as it exists in the minds of philosophers and theologians but as it is actually practiced by the average members of the religion. Because the version of how it's actually practiced, is the actual cultural force that impacts people's lives, even if it's different from the version that is presented by the religious 'experts'.

Which imo is a valid point.

hengesthorsa said:

It's just unfortunate that there's so much weaksauce political junk masquerading as Christianity or "religion" that there are all these people who have seen through the junk and want something to believe in. Then they see Dawkins and some of them become rabid followers. Even if we took religion out of the whole thing, it would just be sad. Dawkins is a self-promoter and I guess he's good at that. As a "thinker" he's nothing.

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While Dawkins is the big hero of New Atheism, it's not just about him, the most prominent new atheist leading figures are labeled "The four horsemen" Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. There are also plenty of bloggers and thinkers etc. who are just less well known.

And yeah, the "four horsemen" is kind of a lovely label...

hengesthorsa said:

That may be valid in principle, I agree, but that means they can kind of make up their own target. They "decide" how "average" people practice their religion, although that's extremely varied.

In other words, dealing with an "expert" or a body of thought centuries old would be very difficult, but first you'd have to understand it, which would require years of study, at least.

But saying "Hey, look at these people imagining a bearded man in the sky, isn't that ridiculous" is very easy.

Although you'd think they'd be into clearly defining what they're arguing against, since they're scientists and all.

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I get the sentiment. I used to have the exact same feelings about the new atheists before my journey to actually study it. I recommend watching some of the interviews or debates to find out what these people are actually promoting. You'll find plenty of those in youtube.

Don't blame the new atheism as it's practiced by the average member you know, but find out about the original ideas

hengesthorsa said:

But, at least to my mind, they're not about arguments or reason at all. Just money.

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I would imagine that money is a factor in the play, but again, I recommend taking a look to have a bit more nuanced view on it.

hengesthorsa said:

I was going to note this about my own post and didn't. So you got me there.

I'll try to check out the videos and see how ill-informed I was.

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If you do watch some, let me know here what you thought about what you watched. It'd be interesting to see if your observations are the same as mine, or different. I used the time around Christmas to read and watch stuff about this so the impression is still kind of fresh in my mind.