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New Atheists?

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
As powerful and influential as the US is, it's still in the world's interest for there not to be dumdums behind its wheel.
It's weird to me that the conversation turned to the US specifically, considering that two of the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism" are/were British.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
That is an interesting thought. One of the really weird things that happens when a creationist attempts to gird me on evolution is that they start attacking the character of the people behind the idea. As though Darwin is my Jesus, or something.

Projecting their way of thinking
 
I see a lot of people, usually theists, Bring up the New Atheist. They often try to apply the label to me, and get me to defend random things that they claim New Atheism is about. I deconverted back in the early '80s, so I don't know. Are there actually New Atheists? Are you one?

We need words to point at stuff and in the early 2000s there was an increase in visibility of celebrity atheists promoting a belligerent anti-theistic and Rational Humanistic ideology (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, etc.). New Atheists are those and people who promote similar views.

It's a proper noun, not the adjective new applied to atheism suggesting it's genuinely a new form of atheism. Could have called them Dawkinsians or Mooncats or Brights (actually not the last one, no one could be that fatuous :grimacing:)

Some (irreligous) journalist coined the term because they needed a pithy term to use. This is the article: The Church of the Non-Believers

When people don't qualify the term atheism when talking about certain atheists with specific opinions, atheists complain. When they do qualify the term atheism when talking about certain atheists, atheists complain that they don't like the aesthetics of the qualification :D
 

Sheldon

Veteran Member
the view that superstition, religion and irrationalism should not simply be tolerated. Instead, they should be countered, criticized, and challenged by rational argument, especially when they exert undue influence, such as in government, education, and politics."

So it's not new then really, just some prominent atheists got fed up with the pernicious effect irrational superstition sometimes exert. Why shouldn't atheists be as vocal as theists?
 

Sheldon

Veteran Member
we call aggressive Atheism a kind of religion itself, the doctrines of doubt.
What doctrines, atheism has no doctrines, though atheists might.

religion
noun
  1. the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
That doesn't sound like atheism to me, and it is certainly not my atheism. I've never understood why some apologists want to label atheism a religion anyway, I mean to what end? They can hardly imagine it's an insult or a pejorative can they? That seems like a pretty obvious own goal to me.
 

Sheldon

Veteran Member
It's weird to me that the conversation turned to the US specifically, considering that two of the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism" are/were British.
Atheism isn't a big deal in the UK, it seems to be a massive deal for some people in the US. Maybe a result of hang-ups from the cold war, and the former Soviet Union being ostensible an atheist state.
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Exactly! Thats why we call aggressive Atheism a kind of religion itself, the doctrines of doubt.
I've come to see it more as just raw dismissiveness and animus. That's not actually skepticism or freethinking at all. I see it time and again. Rational arguments, serious points of view are just attacked as 'woo', or 'new age' etc. That's not actually rationality. It's emotionality.

Understanding it as anti-theism, as a radical offshoot of atheism, makes a lot of sense to me. I don't dismiss Christianity because of fundamentalists like Pat Robertson and company. Why should we disrespect atheism because of the anti-theists?

There are a lot of great insights and contributions that come from both theistic and atheistic perspectives. Radical fundamentalists should not define what either of those are. They frankly should just be put in their place.
 

ppp

Well-Known Member
Atheism isn't a big deal in the UK, it seems to be a massive deal for some people in the US. Maybe a result of hang-ups from the cold war, and the former Soviet Union being ostensible an atheist state.
I think this is where you sent all your God-Botherers. :)
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
So would Christian evangelists be "new theists"?
In a sense, yes. We call them fundamentalists. Fundamentalism is set apart from the mainstream. So New Atheism, which is really just Anti-theism, is different from 'mainstream' atheism. I suppose they are sort of 'cousins' to it.

They are the vocal, evangelicals which need to convert everyone to their ways of thinking, away from their religious beliefs and ideas, to the light of the truth they have found. They are missionaries, trying to 'save' the world. Whereas the mainstream, are just trying to figure out how to live in it.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
In a sense, yes. We call them fundamentalists. Fundamentalism is set apart from the mainstream. So New Atheism, which is really just Anti-theism, is different from 'mainstream' atheism. I suppose they are sort of 'cousins' to it.

They are the vocal, evangelicals which need to convert everyone to their ways of thinking, away from their religious beliefs and ideas, to the light of the truth they have found. They are missionaries, trying to 'save' the world. Whereas the mainstream, are just trying to figure out how to live in it.

Well, for some atheists the world would in an absurd sense be easier if we all but them were all religious theistic fundamentalists. Then they wouldn't have the problem with those for the mainstream, who go: Wait a minute? Aren't you overdoing your critique of religion? :D
 

viole

Ontological Naturalist
Premium Member
I see a lot of people, usually theists, Bring up the New Atheist. They often try to apply the label to me, and get me to defend random things that they claim New Atheism is about. I deconverted back in the early '80s, so I don't know. Are there actually New Atheists? Are you one?
New atheists are like the old atheists, with the difference that now they can talk freely.

Ciao

- viole
 
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mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
New atheists are like the atheists, with the difference that now they can talk freely.

Ciao

- viole

We can't have that. All those agnostics and weak atheists. They are a thread against all rationality and should be taking care off, like all other humans that don't understand how the world works. So go to work viole. ;)
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
The New Atheist wave, notable for its aggressive rhetoric, was in no small part a response to the shenanigans of the Creationists who had a long record in the US of trying to get Creationism taught in state schools, not least in science classes. The Dover trial 2005 which rejected another attempt to have "intelligent design" ─ essentially creationism in a new dress ─ taught in schools proved to be the crest of their wave, and they're more subdued these days even if they haven't gone away.
This is true. It was in a sense meeting force with force, violence with violence, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. In a lot of ways, to say something positive for it, that is empowering in a sense to call stupidity stupidity. I admit taking some pleasure in that myself.

But extremes are extremes, on either end of the spectrum. The positive side of this is that when you look at society as a bell curve, the center of it has the most people, whereas the edges has the fewest. The most vocal voices are in the minority, as they try to pull society one way or the other. So the positive thing they do is to get dialog happening in the middle. In a true sense, they have done their job.

The negative side of this is, that when the middle actually starts to look at these things and consider them with clearer minds and cooler heads, the radicals can't hear them. All they know is their enemies on the far extreme opposite edges they are doing battle with. So someone who is moderate, is lumped in with them, "Woo Woo!!", is hurled at anyone who tries to see what value there is in theism, for instance. I know this in spades by personal experience.

So while New Atheism/Anti-Theism is on the 'rationalist' side, its inability to engage in actual dialog betrays itself as just as emotional and reactionary, irrational, as the theistic funamentalists. Fundamentalism is not rationality. It's reactionary.

New Atheism, I think, has followed militant creationism out of fashion, though of course neither has completely disappeared.
Maybe this is a good sign? However, we certainly have a share of them here. :)
 

Colt

Well-Known Member
What doctrines, atheism has no doctrines, though atheists might.

religion
noun
  1. the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
That doesn't sound like atheism to me, and it is certainly not my atheism. I've never understood why some apologists want to label atheism a religion anyway, I mean to what end? They can hardly imagine it's an insult or a pejorative can they? That seems like a pretty obvious own goal to me.
I was responding to the OP. But I realize that you are still unaware that you have a doctrine that you promote.

"In seeking to replace religion with secularism and faith with science, the New Atheists have, perhaps inadvertently, launched a movement with far too many similarities to the ones they so radically oppose. Indeed, while we typically associate fundamentalism with religiously zealotry, in so far as the term connotes an attempt to “impose a single truth on the plural world” – to use the definition of noted philosopher Jonathan Sacks – then there is little doubt that a similar fundamentalist mind-set has overcome many adherents of this latest iteration of anti-theism."
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
I was responding to the OP. But I realize that you are still unaware that you have a doctrine that you promote.

"In seeking to replace religion with secularism and faith with science, the New Atheists have, perhaps inadvertently, launched a movement with far too many similarities to the ones they so radically oppose. Indeed, while we typically associate fundamentalism with religiously zealotry, in so far as the term connotes an attempt to “impose a single truth on the plural world” – to use the definition of noted philosopher Jonathan Sacks – then there is little doubt that a similar fundamentalist mind-set has overcome many adherents of this latest iteration of anti-theism."

Well, yes. Universal right and wrong is not limited to religion.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
Atheists do not have any problem with theists till the theists start bragging before them about their God/son/prophet/messenger/manifestation/mahdi/saint. We understand that many of the theists are not capable or trained to understand today's science. They are not courageous enough to leave their crutches.
 
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