New Atheism

New Atheism is the name given to the ideas promoted by a collection of modern atheist writers who have advocated the view that "religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."

The term is commonly associated with individuals such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens (together called "the Four Horsemen of New Atheism" in a 2007 debate they held on their criticisms of religion, a name that has stuck), along with Victor J. Stenger, A.C. Grayling, and P.Z. Myers. Several best-selling books by these authors, published between 2004 and 2007, form the basis for much of the discussion of New Atheism.

History

The 2004 publication of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris, a bestseller in the USA, marked the first of a series of popular bestsellers. Harris was motivated by the events of September 11, 2001, which he laid directly at the feet of Islam, while also directly criticizing Christianity and Judaism. Two years later Harris followed up with Letter to a Christian Nation, which was also a severe criticism of Christianity. Also in 2006, following his television documentary The Root of All Evil?, Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for 51 weeks. Other milestone publications include Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett (2006); God: The Failed Hypothesis – How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist by Victor J. Stenger (2007); God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens (2007); Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam by Michel Onfray (2007); and Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists by Dan Barker (2008).

Referring to a 2007 debate, Dawkins' website refers to himself, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens, as "The Four Horsemen", alluding to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Perspective

The New Atheists write mainly from a scientific perspective. Unlike previous writers, many of whom thought that science was indifferent, or even incapable of dealing with the "God" concept, Dawkins argues to the contrary, claiming the "God Hypothesis" is a valid scientific hypothesis, having effects in the physical universe, and like any other hypothesis can be tested and falsified. Other New Atheists such as Victor Stenger propose that the personal Abrahamic God is a scientific hypothesis that can be tested by standard methods of science. Both Dawkins and Stenger conclude that the hypothesis fails any such tests, and argue that naturalism is sufficient to explain everything we observe in the universe, from the most distant galaxies to the origin of life, species, and even the inner workings of the brain and consciousness. Nowhere, they argue, is it necessary to introduce God or the supernatural to understand reality. New Atheists have been associated with the argument from divine hiddenness and the idea that "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" when evidence can be expected.

Scientific testing of religion

The New Atheists assert that many religious or supernatural claims (such as the virgin birth of Jesus and the afterlife) are scientific claims in nature. They argue, for instance, that the issue of Jesus' supposed parentage is not a question of "values" or "morals", but a question of scientific inquiry. The New Atheists believe science is now capable of investigating at least some, if not all, supernatural claims. Institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and Duke University are attempting to find empirical support for the healing power of intercessory prayer. So far, these experiments have found no evidence that intercessory prayer works.

Logical arguments

Victor Stenger also argues in his book, God: The Failed Hypothesis, that a God having omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipotent attributes, which he termed a 3O God, cannot logically exist. A similar series of logical disproofs of the existence of a God with various attributes can be found in Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier's The Impossibility of God, or Theodore M. Drange's article, "Incompatible-Properties Arguments".

Views on NOMA

The New Atheists are particularly critical of the two non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould regarding the existence of a "domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution." In Gould's proposal, science and religion should be confined to distinct non-overlapping domains: science would be limited to the empirical realm, including theories developed to describe observations, while religion would deal with questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. The New Atheism leaders contend that NOMA does not describe empirical facts about the intersection of science and religion. In an article published in Free Inquiry magazine, and later in his 2006 book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins writes that the Abrahamic religions constantly deal in scientific matters. Massimo Pigliucci, in his book Nonsense on Stilts, wrote that Gould attempted to redefine religion as moral philosophy. Matt Ridley notes that religion does more than talk about ultimate meanings and morals, and science is not proscribed from doing the same. After all, morals involve human behavior, an observable phenomenon, and science is the study of observable phenomena. Ridley notes that there is substantial scientific research on evolutionary origins of ethics and morality.

Criticisms

James Carse's 2008 book, The Religious Case Against Belief is a response to New Atheism. It presents a criticism of both firm believers and firm disbelievers by positing the essential metaphysical unknowability of the universe, and advocating for the wonder inherent in agnosticism and doubt.

In a 2010 column entitled Why I Don't Believe in the New Atheism, Tom Flynn contends that what has been called "New Atheism" is neither a movement nor new, and that what was new was the publication of atheist material by big-name publishers, read by millions, and appearing on best-seller lists.

The "Four Horsemen" have been criticized by Objectivists for failing to provide a rational morality in place of religious ethics. In a 2008 article, Alan Germani argues that the morality they seek to defend, altruism, cannot be grounded in reason or reality and thus that "their ethics remains essentially the same as that of the religions they condemn: a mystical call to self-sacrifice."

Professors of philosophy and religion, Jeffrey Robbins and Christopher Rodkey, take issue with "the evangelical nature of the new atheism, which assumes that it has a Good News to share, at all cost, for the ultimate future of humanity by the conversion of as many people as possible." They find similarities between the new atheism and evangelical Christianity and conclude that the all-consuming nature of both "encourages endless conflict without progress" between both extremities. Sociologist William Stahl notes "What is striking about the current debate is the frequency with which the New Atheists are portrayed as mirror images of religious fundamentalists." He discusses where both have "structural and epistemological parallels" and argues that "both the New Atheism and fundamentalism are attempts to recreate authority in the face of crises of meaning in late modernity."

See also

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