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New atheism is a form of atheism that takes a positive position on the non-existence of God. It is characterized by not just seeing religion as factually false, but destructive. This is contrasted with Victorian atheism, which mourned that belief was no longer possible; new atheism, like Nietzsche, celebrates freedom from God [1] It appears the term was coined by Wired magazine in their article The Church of the Non-Believers [2][3].

Doctrines

Andrew Brown

Andrew Brown of the Guardian[2] attempted to define New Atheism in terms of 6 doctrines:

  1. There is something called "Faith" which can be defined as unjustified belief held in the teeth of the evidence. Faith is primarily a matter of false propositional belief.
  2. The cure for faith is science: The existence of God is a scientific question: either he exists or he doesn't.
  3. Science is the opposite of religion, and will lead people into the clear sunlit uplands of reason.
  4. In this great struggle, religion is doomed. Enlightened common sense is gradually triumphing and at the end of the process, humanity will assume a new and better character, free from the shackles of religion. Without faith, we would be better as well as wiser. Conflict is primarily a result of misunderstanding, of which Faith is the paradigm.
  5. Religion exists. It is essentially something like American fundamentalist protestantism, or Islam. More moderate forms are false and treacherous: if anything even more dangerous, because they conceal the raging, homicidal lunacy that is religion's true nature.
  6. Faith, as defined above, is the most dangerous and wicked force on earth today and the struggle against it and especially against Islam will define the future of humanity.

Al Mohler

Al Mohler in his lecture at Dallas[1] also provides a theory of development of what led to the distinctiveness from the victorian atheism or its later cousin logical positivism. In his view this came from the evolution, older atheism was focused on theodicy most powerfully from the wars of the early twentieth century and the holocaust. That is it arose in cultural Christian states. New atheism comes from attitudes first developed out of the world's first atheist state, the soviet union. These attitudes became part of Western European and American society came via. the secularization of the state and society where the ownership of land, social services (legal, medical...) were being provided by not explicitly religious institutions. Additional cultural changes occurred with the rise of social dislocation, loss of extended family, secularization of elites, personal autonomy and therapeutic culture. [4] Older atheism saw belief in God as functional (comfort, social cohesion...) and that as they are no longer necessary history would inevitably drive towards the forms without the need for the cause as "humanity came of age". For the new atheists, the triumphs of science lead to a belief that God is not necessary, moreover the very foundation of theism are denied by postmodernism as God because one socially constructed reality among others. Mohler believes that for the western elite was a progress from belief in God being absolutely unquestioning during the middle ages, to disbelief being plausible from the enlightenment and modernity to in the modern era belief no longer being plausible.

At the same Dallas lecture Mohler indicated a list of distinctive features:[1]

  1. New Atheism is a celebration of atheism. God's funeral is something to be celebrated, not mourned.
  2. Not a rejection of a theism but an unambiguous rejection of the God of Christianity.
  3. Explicitly based in scientific arguments. Motivation and structure is considered to be an inevitable result of scientific revolution and method.
  4. Accommodation of theism to modern forms of thought is no longer seen as progress so new atheist literature attacks are focused on moderate and liberal forms of theism, at least as strongly as orthodox and conservative forms of theism.
  5. Belief in God is not to be tolerated. This contrasts with the older atheism's focus on plurality and freedom of religion.
  6. A view that inculcating a belief in God in children is harmful to them.
  7. Religion is the greatest threat to world peace.

The New Atheist Movement

Atheists say that they are not new, but they are "coming out of the closet" lately and speaking up on the Internet, publishing books and holding conferences and representing themselves in debates. This was very rare in the USA until Richard Dawkins' book, "The God Delusion" (2006) and other bestseller books from Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and others. The loudlyness as the event that was new for the religious people who knew that there are atheists "somewhere" and they labeled the source of the new voices as "new atheists". The atheists grabbed this phrase and are using it for their movement. At the same time they are opposed to the term "new atheist" when applied for people because they are not new, they just started to appear in the USA's public knowledge. It is still a social risk to admit one's atheism in many areas of the USA.

Richard Dawkins used to be labeled as the leader / main voice of "New Atheists".

See also

Books by New Atheists on New Atheism

References

  1. ^ a b c Lecture at Dallas Theological Seminary, The New Atheism And The Endgame Of Secularism ~ minute 20
  2. ^ a b Brown, Andrew. "The New Atheism, a definition and a quiz", The Guardian, December 29, 2008.
  3. ^ Wolf, Gary. "The Church of Non-Believers", Wired, issue 14.11, November 2006
  4. ^ Therapeutic culture edited by Jonathan B. Imber

Further reading

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