The New Atheist - movement

[Jack of Spades]

I've seen it this way a long time as well. The New Atheism is really rebranding the old anti-clericalism of Europe's left into a global context.

In 1700's Europe, the priests deserved every bit of what they got, though.

To be anti-priest in that time one only needed some remote sense of equality and justice to think that taking the priests down is a good idea. In the Christian European class society, priests were a privileged group, and in France particularly the alliance of priests and nobles (due to the political technicalities of the time) made sure that the peasants never had their voice heard in any issue, but were always outvoted thx to the two other classes playing together.

When one's an oppressor and a hypocrite, I won't shed a tear if they get themselves in trouble. They deserved it.

 

[archer75]

The excuse factor is one side of the story, but not the whole story.

Religions do have an impact on how people behave, sometimes in unintended ways. It's a complex topic of when a religion itself is to blame and when it's only something that could have happened in some other context too, and the religion just happened to be there.

A good example is belief in faith healing. It has a record of making some people stopping to go to a doctor, and possibly get crippled or die as a result. In such a case, the connection between the religious belief and the damage done is so obvious that one can't really blame it on anything else.



Noprob. I look forward to hearing your comments about the stuff!

For now, just this: I totally agree that faith healing is awful. I can only add that to me it seems to be part of a sphere of nuttiness that is centered on "real-world magic" -- a sphere that includes homeopathy, snake-oil cures, perpetual motion machines, and so on.

And as to @Jack of Spades 's very reasonable comment about religious people finding religious excuses to beat their kids and so on -- I have a different take on that, though you may well tell me I'm wrong and I may well be wrong. I think nutty people find spray-on religion to cover the guilt they feel over beating their helpless spouse or kids. I say this because I'm sure this was the case in my extended family. A crazy mom beat her kids with any convenient object, they grew up and led each other into a "beat your kids" church where they all beat their kids for years. Their mom hadn't been religious.

Yes, that's an anecdotal bit of evidence, it certainly is...

 

[cloudyday2]

I noticed a lot of unnecessary profanity and meanness in some of the atheist forums that I joined. Also there was an unwillingness to consider alternatives to metaphysical naturalism. Of course there were a few nice and open-minded people on those forums too.

 

[CodyFaith]

I noticed a lot of unnecessary profanity and meanness in some of the atheist forums that I joined. Also there was an unwillingness to consider alternatives to metaphysical naturalism. Of course there were a few nice and open-minded people on those forums too.

There's a reason for that.

Christians are the "salt of the earth" and "the light of the world". Matthew 5:13-14.
There are false Christians out there that give Christianity a bad name however, some perhaps on this forum spreading hate and causing division. But as a whole, light still shines bright on this forum.

Atheists, unbelievers, followers of different religions, etc. are all drawn to this forum for a reason. The love and grace of God is on this forum. They'll say to themselves it's for other reasons of course.

God loves everyone, he desires everyone to recognize the light in this life and believe and be saved.

 

[CodyFaith]

A more on topic post:

There's atheists who lack a belief in God, but are open to it. There's atheists who lack a belief in God, but doubt God's existence for whatever belief they have which tells them otherwise (they're open to it in a sense, but they lean towards him not existing due to their beliefs).
And then there's "the other type of atheist" (the atheist in topic in this thread).

The last type of atheist often hates Christianity, and spends a lot of time battling it out with Christians... go figure. Christians understand the reasons when this happens though. Jesus is hated. Not just by atheists. Darkness hates the light because then their sin is exposed. So they wrathfully fight against the light.

 

[Everybodyknows]

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 view the rise of new atheism as a counterpoint to the rise of Christian (and Muslim) fundamentalism. They spew out a lot if anti-religion rhetoric as they throw all religion into the same basket, but few of them realise that what they really oppose is a certain type of religion, that is fundamentalism. You'll never hear a peep about Zen Buddhism or the likes.

Atheism is nothing new but new-atheism is the organisation of atheism into a movement as a counter-force to the rise of the religious right and it's desire to infiltrate political and social systems in its quest for greater power. New Atheism is very much a reactionary movement against perceived threats to the freedoms we value in a secular society. Things that come to mind are;
- the push for teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in science classrooms,
- religion meddling in sex education and trying to shift to an abstinence only focus
- religion having too much influence in policy of abortion and women's reproductive rights
- Christianity's stance on homosexuality (and it's control over people's sexuality in general)

This is all about atheists saying to fundamentalist religion 'we are going to fight for the kind of society we value'. This is a battle of ideologies. Unfortunately most Christians get too caught up on the 'angry at God' thing and never really understand what this movement is about and what it hopes to achieve. They actually have some noble intentions, they aren't just trying to plunge society into a moral vacuum.

As for Dawkins, I agree he is entertaining, articulate, funny and even likable some of the time. As a scientist he's great but as a philosopher I find him lacking, but that doesn't seem to matter to most of his audience.

 

[archer75]

Try some collection, for example there seems to be one called "Best of Richard Dawkins Arguments And Comebacks". There you get the highlights of what people who like Dawkins enough to make such a video, like in his ideas and style.

Dawkins is a populist so you don't get the full picture by watching only some very theoretical debates. Part of his charisma is the way how he engages in arguments with audience members, students etc. so I believe some highlights - collections are the best to get the picture. He's not just an academic, but a man on a mission who is interested in making converts of ordinary people, not unlike an evangelist. That side of the story you see when he argues with audience members.

Okay, thanks, I've checked out some of these videos.

Well, I don't really remember what it was I was imagining I was going to contribute to this thread. Taking him as a speaker, I can see that I don't like Dawkins and wouldn't no matter what position he took. As self-satisfied as the worst of the...non-atheist crowd. So, that's just me.

As far as the New Atheism that he represents being anti-fundamentalist rather than anti-religious...well, I'm sure I could get behind a lot of that. Unfortunate though that it tars all religion with the same brush and seems to assume that only fact-denying maniacal and violent fundamentalists are really religious and everyone else is just sort of joking.

However, I know that Dawkins's attitude, claims, and manner do not necessarily represent all the New Atheists. I guess he fills a need for those who want someone like this.

Although, as has been suggested on this thread, certain of his more visible followers do exhibit a rather fundamentalist zeal.

 

[MehGuy]

I noticed a lot of unnecessary profanity and meanness in some of the atheist forums that I joined. Also there was an unwillingness to consider alternatives to metaphysical naturalism. Of course there were a few nice and open-minded people on those forums too.

A lot of those people might be teenagers too. Or rece tly de-converted. For most it's just a phase. Might even be a way to express the anger they might have endured under religion.

I went through such a brief period.

 

[ViaCrucis]

A lot of those people might be teenagers too. Or rece tly de-converted. For most it's just a phase. Might even be a way to express the anger they might have endured under religion.

I went through such a brief period.

I don't know if there's a better term for it, but I've usually called it Neophyte or New Convert Syndrome. When a person abandons an old world view and adopts a new one it can often result in a profound zeal for the newly embraced set of beliefs and, simultaneously, a profound disdain for the previously held ones.

I've seen it in just about every context I can think of, Christians-turned-atheists, atheists-turned-Christians, Fundamentalists-turned-Catholics, Catholics-turned-Fundamentalists, Conservatives-turned-Liberals, Liberals-turned-Convervatives, Yankee fans-turned-... you get the idea.

I think calling it a phase is probably accurate. I think for most growing out of it will come with time; but there are those who never do seem to grow out of it.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Jack of Spades]

I view the rise of new atheism as a counterpoint to the rise of Christian (and Muslim) fundamentalism. They spew out a lot if anti-religion rhetoric as they throw all religion into the same basket, but few of them realise that what they really oppose is a certain type of religion, that is fundamentalism. You'll never hear a peep about Zen Buddhism or the likes.

Atheism is nothing new but new-atheism is the organisation of atheism into a movement as a counter-force to the rise of the religious right and it's desire to infiltrate political and social systems in its quest for greater power. New Atheism is very much a reactionary movement against perceived threats to the freedoms we value in a secular society. Things that come to mind are;
- the push for teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in science classrooms,
- religion meddling in sex education and trying to shift to an abstinence only focus
- religion having too much influence in policy of abortion and women's reproductive rights
- Christianity's stance on homosexuality (and it's control over people's sexuality in general)

This is all about atheists saying to fundamentalist religion 'we are going to fight for the kind of society we value'. This is a battle of ideologies.

Unfortunately most Christians get to caught up on the 'angry at God' thing and never really understand what this movement is about and what it hopes to achieve. They actually have some noble intentions, they aren't just trying to plunge society into a moral vacuum.

The point plenty of religious people miss is one doesn't need to start out with evil plots or malevolent intentions to become anti-religious. To simplify a complex topic a bit, all that is needed is to see the dark side of religion and anti-religiousness is a very understandable and natural consequence. Imho, if one has never in their life felt anti-religious on any level, they've either managed to miss all the bad stuff or they have no sense of justice.

My personal problem with the New atheist philosophy is that they see all moderate religion as enabler for harmful fundamentalism. Even if there were some truth to that, it would still be a disproportionate accusation.

There comes a point when religions are civilized or good enough to make something else become the priority, if one is actually interested in fixing the world, instead of just having a dogmatic anti-religious agenda.

I think new atheism is a "right direction, but going too far" - phenomenon.

As for Dawkins, I agree he is entertaining, articulate, funny and even likable some of the time. As a scientist he's great but as a philosopher I find him lacking, but that doesn't seem to matter to most of his audience.

In my opinion, Dawkins is not as much of a thinker as he is a promoter and in that role he is great. He's provocative, gets attention easily and has the talents to use the attention he gets to promote his agenda well.

 

[Cearbhall]

Atheists, unbelievers, followers of different religions, etc. are all drawn to this forum for a reason. The love and grace of God is on this forum. They'll say to themselves it's for other reasons of course.

And Christians are drawn to talk to non-Christians on the street because...? Your argument makes no sense.

Also, I think it's really sad that you deny the existence of love and grace outside of your religion. You're turning a blind eye to so much beauty and kindness in the world.

The last type of atheist often hates Christianity, and spends a lot of time battling it out with Christians... go figure.

I agree that hatred and aggression should always be avoided. Interfaith dialogue is too important to be ruined by such negative feelings and intentions.

 

[Jack of Spades]

Atheists, unbelievers, followers of different religions, etc. are all drawn to this forum for a reason. The love and grace of God is on this forum. They'll say to themselves it's for other reasons of course.

That's some pretty off the chart - sense of superiority there. As far as I'm concerned, it's also factually wrong. I go to plenty of religious online places.

Having been a member in two different Neopagan and one New Age / general spirituality - online communities, I'm not surprised to witness that those are flooded by new young ex-Christian converts. The key words are tolerance, open-mindedness and authenticity.

It's a quite culture shock if one is used to the sin-and-doctrine-police of Christian communities to experience the mixture of spiritual devoutness and the absence of judgmentalism at the same time in those places. For some, it's a new thing that being devoutedly spiritual or religious doesn't have to mean being narrow-minded, sex-moral obsessed and judgmental.

 

[SnowyMacie]

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.

There is hostile rhetoric and people in every group. Personally, I take what Dawkins says with a grain of salt, and think he's the Westboro Baptist Church of atheism, they are the extremists.

 

[SnowyMacie]

I view the rise of new atheism as a counterpoint to the rise of Christian (and Muslim) fundamentalism. They spew out a lot if anti-religion rhetoric as they throw all religion into the same basket, but few of them realise that what they really oppose is a certain type of religion, that is fundamentalism. You'll never hear a peep about Zen Buddhism or the likes.

Atheism is nothing new but new-atheism is the organisation of atheism into a movement as a counter-force to the rise of the religious right and it's desire to infiltrate political and social systems in its quest for greater power. New Atheism is very much a reactionary movement against perceived threats to the freedoms we value in a secular society. Things that come to mind are;
- the push for teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in science classrooms,
- religion meddling in sex education and trying to shift to an abstinence only focus
- religion having too much influence in policy of abortion and women's reproductive rights
- Christianity's stance on homosexuality (and it's control over people's sexuality in general)

This is all about atheists saying to fundamentalist religion 'we are going to fight for the kind of society we value'. This is a battle of ideologies. Unfortunately most Christians get to caught up on the 'angry at God' thing and never really understand what this movement is about and what it hopes to achieve. They actually have some noble intentions, they aren't just trying to plunge society into a moral vacuum.

As for Dawkins, I agree he is entertaining, articulate, funny and even likable some of the time. As a scientist he's great but as a philosopher I find him lacking, but that doesn't seem to matter to most of his audience.

I think this is an excellent post, and it's one that I've never thought about before. You are right though, a lot of them seem to do what a lot of Christian fundementalists do, throw everyone of the same religion or whatever into the same basket.

 

[SnowyMacie]

I noticed a lot of unnecessary profanity and meanness in some of the atheist forums that I joined. Also there was an unwillingness to consider alternatives to metaphysical naturalism. Of course there were a few nice and open-minded people on those forums too.

As a more progressive and liberal Christian, I have experienced a lot of meanness and unwillingness to consider alternatives on this site as well.

There are false Christians out there that give Christianity a bad name however, some perhaps on this forum spreading hate and causing division. But as a whole, light still shines bright on this forum.

I'm not trying to give Christianity a bad name or spread hate or anything in my above statement, I'm speaking the truth about my experience. This site, as a whole, is not very welcoming to Christians who are not conservative. I've seen actual hate speech directed at liberals on this site, but if I'm not mistaken, I think that's who you are talking about are the people who spread that kind of talk.

 

[Everybodyknows]

My personal problem with the New atheist philosophy is that they see all moderate religion as enabler for harmful fundamentalism. Even if there were some truth to that, it would still be a disproportionate accusation.

Exactly this. But we have to understand that their distaste for moderate religion is due to the perceived failure of moderates to stand up against and stamp out the rise of extremism among their ranks. In fact moderate religion is viewed as only disagreeing with the methods of extremism rather than its principles (and there probably is some truth to this). A good example is the way moderate Islam is commonly viewed in the west, moderates and extremists are identified as being part of the same system and thus all Islam is viewed with suspicion. What you will usually find is that if pressed these anti-religious atheists actually value tolerance and religious freedom which are enshrined principles of modern secularism. You put it best yourself when you said:

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.

The real problem they have is religion holding any power in society. They are happy for religion/spirituality to exist as a personal expression but will fight to the death to remove religion from holding any power or influence in the public sphere. And thus we have this gut-feeling backlash against all religion, because they view it all in overly simplistic terms of either being extremist or enabling.

In my opinion, Dawkins is not as much of a thinker as he is a promoter and in that role he is great. He's provocative, gets attention easily and has the talents to use the attention he gets to promote his agenda well.

Agree. I view him as more of a political leader of the movement. He is very gifted at taping in to the anger and frustration of his constituency and giving them a vocabulary and voice to express these frustrations. People who do this well can find themselves in positions of great power and influence. Trump does this extraordinarily well, and unfortunately so did Hitler in 1930's Germany.

 

[Jack of Spades]

There is hostile rhetoric and people in every group. Personally, I take what Dawkins says with a grain of salt, and think he's the Westboro Baptist Church of atheism, they are the extremists.

WBC is too far of a comparison, and demonstrates pretty well what I said about the difference between atheism and extreme religion. Outside of religious topics, people like Dawkins can be pretty normal, whereas the entire lifestyle of the WBC crew is pretty messed up.

 

[SnowyMacie]

WBC is too far of a comparison, and demonstrates pretty well what I said about the difference between atheism and extreme religion. Outside of religious topics, people like Dawkins can be pretty normal, whereas the entire lifestyle of the WBC crew is pretty messed up.

True I guess, and I did think it was a bit of a stretch when I was posting it. I just couldn't think of a better metaphor.

 

[MehGuy]

There is hostile rhetoric and people in every group. Personally, I take what Dawkins says with a grain of salt, and think he's the Westboro Baptist Church of atheism, they are the extremists.

Isn't that comparison a little extreme? Lol.

 

[Jack of Spades]

Exactly this. But we have to understand that their distaste for moderate religion is due to the perceived failure of moderates to stand up against and stamp out the rise of extremism among their ranks.

I actually share that feeling. A perfect example could be the state church of my country. The church itself is officially progressive by any standards of Christian churches, but they simply fail to take a stance against the elements in their own ranks who participate in some pretty ugly spiritual abuse.

I get it that it's not that easy to go to fight against ones own kind, as there are plenty of ways how it can be counterproductive for the community or the cause, but that exact dynamic is one of the reasons why I reject organized religion as a concept and prefer more individualistic approach to spirituality. I have too much self-respect for accepting of being pressured to speak nicely of harmful religious elements, in the name of unity and common cause.

In fact moderate religion is viewed as only disagreeing with the methods of extremism rather than its principles (and there probably is some truth to this). A good example is the way moderate Islam is commonly viewed in the west, moderates and extremists are identified as being part of the same system and thus all Islam is viewed with suspicion. What you will usually find is that if pressed these anti-religious atheists actually value tolerance and religious freedom which are enshrined principles of modern secularism. You put it best yourself when you said:

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.

The real problem they have is religion holding any power in society. They are happy for religion/spirituality to exist as a personal expression but will fight to the death to remove religion from holding any power or influence in the public sphere. And thus we have this gut-feeling backlash against all religion, because they view it all in overly simplistic terms of either being extremist or enabling.

I realize this is a nuance, but I would say that plenty of new atheists see nothing positive in religion, but as long as religion doesn't hold any power, that's not enough to trigger them to take a very strong stance.

Agree. I view him as more of a political leader of the movement. He is very gifted at taping in to the anger and frustration of his constituency and giving them a vocabulary and voice to express these frustrations. People who do this well can find themselves in positions of great power and influence. Trump does this extraordinarily well, and unfortunately so did Hitler in 1930's Germany.

Yup. I think populism and charismatic leaders have a bit too much of a bad name though, because historically it's usually the horribly remarkable ones that get well known. There have been, and still are, loads of charismatic religious, ideological and political leaders who might have decent intentions. For example, president Obama is/was a rather charismatic person and good at rallying people.