The New Atheist - movement

[cloudyday2]

The new atheism crew is not promoting just atheism, but rather more specific philoshophy. Scientific naturalism, or w/e the exact name for it is, I'm not sure.

There is bit of a contradiction in their rhetoric, when on one hand there is strong emphasis on atheism being nothing but lack of faith in gods, and on the other hand promoting the assumption that atheism is always formed by the philosophical system they have. Only some decades ago, standard atheists in Europe were not secularists, but Marxist communists.

I have bit of a problem with automatically mixing up atheism and scientific naturalism, but I guess atheism is the catchy part of it to sell the whole package.

I bet the philosophy you are thinking of is "metaphysical naturalism" ( Metaphysical naturalism - Wikipedia ). I always take a lot of flak on atheist forums, because I am too willing to consider things like magic, ghosts, UFOs, spirits, God. Most atheists scoff at those things, but they fascinate me.

 

[habibii zahra]

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.

if you want to deal with atheists ..ask them about the universe about the exact motion of this universe. who is controlling everything...who created them? did they create themselves? how do they die? are they able to control all this? do they doubt their existence? the simple existence of human kind is a proof of God's existence..your existence is a proof of his..
if they were in the middle of an ocean and they are about to sink will they ask god's help or not?
God theologically exists and God historically exists and god in the divine books exists

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I like Daniel Dennett. He is the only new atheist intellectual that I know, but he seems to be polite and bright.

Daniel Dennett (@danieldennett) | Twitter

 

[Cearbhall]

if you want to deal with atheists ..ask them about the universe about the exact motion of this universe. who is controlling everything...who created them?

I don't think that's what Jack is seeking to do...that's not the purpose or the topic of this thread.

if they were in the middle of an ocean and they are about to sink will they ask god's help or not?

Oh for pete's sake.

 

[CrystalDragon]

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.

I think I know why there's that factor—thanks to the spread of knowledge, people are not only more aware of what the Bible says, but of the history behind it and how doctrines took time to be established—and there have been a good number of people, outside the Bible and in it, who've done terrible, violent, hateful things in God's name.

 

[Jack of Spades]

if you want to deal with atheists ..ask them about the universe about the exact motion of this universe. who is controlling everything...who created them? did they create themselves? how do they die? are they able to control all this? do they doubt their existence? the simple existence of human kind is a proof of God's existence..your existence is a proof of his..
if they were in the middle of an ocean and they are about to sink will they ask god's help or not?

I couldn't convince an atheist to believe in gods even if I wanted to. I think atheism is actually a somewhat logical conclusion, if we reject personal experience as a source of faith and rely only in objectively observable evidence.

Atheism is so simple and makes so much sense (believe in what you can observe, reject what you can't) that there is no neat and simple way to disprove it. People who think there is, usually have not thought the topic through very well and are speaking on intellectually very shallow and biased assumptions.

God theologically exists and God historically exists and god in the divine books exists

Oh cmon, if you really mean "history" as in history of the human race, that's one ugly, bloody, messy, depressive story with little heavenly light shining in it. And we haven't even seen the end of it yet, all odds are that the end will be much uglier than the beginning of it.