Novelty
Eric is arguing that we should accept the label “new atheism” and run with it. He sets out three items that define a new atheist:
(i) a belief in the harmfulness of religion, both in a political and an intellectual sense; (ii) a conviction that there is no evidence for belief in a god; (iii) a general agreement that (i) and (ii) mean that we must actively oppose religion.
I would insert a new (iii): a conviction or a sense that the widespread (at least in the US) expectation that one should believe in god as if (ii) were of no relevance whatsoever, is an offensive imposition.
That’s what is New in my New Atheism, at any rate. I’ve been an atheist since adolescence at least, and as far as I can remember I was a very unconvinced nominal “theist” as a child, but I haven’t always been a gnu (to revert to the joke I am reluctant to abandon). I used to groan inwardly rather than argue. But the imposition offends my sense of justice – and I have a way of arguing without actually getting in people’s (literal) faces – so impassive atheism has made way for the vocal kind. There is no reason to believe there is anything properly called “god,” so stop telling me to think there is.
If that’s the New Atheism, I can’t sign on to it. My belief that religion is necessarily harmful is weak and conditional. My very strong belief is that compulsory religiosity in all its guises is harmful, that no privilege should accrue to anyone for having a religion, and that apostasy and blasphemy are human rights.
It’s not primarily about the religion for me — it’s about privilege and normativity.
It is interesting that we and our enemies are searching for what defines our newness or movement. I think it’s healthy to examine that. I remember what changed me from an interested atheist to a more passionate advocate of new atheism was watching this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2IHnWY-i6Y
And it was a general realisation that religion, especially Islam, is a kind of group insanity that threatens my liberation and the liberation and enlightenment of all. I see that realization is beginning to happen in politics and the media, little by little.
Thank you for the link Egbert. That is truly frightening stuff! Islam is a clear and present danger. It is an immediate threat to our freedoms, and we need to be aware of that. I do not think this has got anything to do with moderate vs. extreme Islam. This is Islam. Some Muslims obviously will want to live in peace, but this is an essential aspect of Islam, and it is, I believe ineradicable. There will always be a very violent dimension of Islam. It is built right into the religion, and it is truly frightening. Don’t forget, wherever Islam has gone there has been this kind of unpredictable violence directed at thos who do not believe, and wherever it has been in power — wherever it has been in power — it has subordinated non-Muslims to the power of Islam. Always. I think we should be far more worried about this than we are.
The difference in approach that I have is that religion is simply one example of accepting a premise without evaluation, of which there are countless others – alternative medicine, paranormal phenomena, psychic powers, alien visitation, conspiracy theories, Tom Cruise’s acting ability… you get the picture.
So I try to concentrate more on pushing critical thinking, which doesn’t (necessarily) target certain cherished belief systems, while providing plenty of positive uses for all facets of life. I’m fine with proudly calling myself a New/Gnu/Nouveau/Neo Atheist, but it always struck me this was something I was, not something to espouse to others. Maybe that’s just a mental thing against proselytizing.
I’m actually cool with personal belief systems, even though I think they’re stupid – someone may also like country and western music, and that’s there feeble-minded little choice ;-). But despite the arguments we hear, religion is rarely about personal belief, and I have some serious issues with using it as justification for prejudice, bigotry, suppression, influence, denying rights, and even just drawing this line between “us” and “them.” That’s the primary, perhaps the only, usage of religion in a public sphere. Part of the problem is, even when you’re only addressing such practices, the rhetoric of “taking away my right to believe!” prevents this message from getting across. Too many religious folk are simply whiny bitches.
So, hey, if showing religion as being mush-brained is the only way to stop it from overrunning its boundaries, since rational discussion gets ruled out so quickly, I can play that game too.
I suppose if I’m going to call someone feeble-minded, I could at least use “their” correctly..
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Wayne de Villiers. Wayne de Villiers said: Novelty – Eric is arguing that we should accept the label "new atheism" and run with it. He sets out three ite http://ow.ly/1bdXxu […]
I’d add to (ii) ”or the supernatural”. Does that make me another kind of atheist?
There’s nothing wrong in actively opposing religion since believers actively oppose atheism.However since religion is part of ethnic and cultural identity the task is going to be very difficult for obvious reasons. The immediate task for atheists is to stop various religious loonies from imposing their delusions on the rest of society-we don’t have the luxury of wasting energy by internal bickering. I think that defines me as an ‘Old Atheist’
I’d say that a cultural expectation to pay lip service to religious belief is rather widespread, it’s possibly more ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ than ‘should’.
Russell W. No it doesn’t. (ii) should probably read “a conviction that there is no evidence for belief in
a godsupernatural beings or entities.”Cam – I take what you say to be similar to what I was saying in adding a (iii). I take my (iii) to be about privilege and normativity. I do focus on (iii) more than on (i). If nothing else, (i) is harder to defend.
Also similar to what Russell said. Something of a consensus perhaps.
Oh, hey! The words ‘a god’ were supposed to be struck through. They were in the preview.
(Shoot, that’s right, there’s a problem with strikethrough still. I’ll see if I can fix that.)
It’s so hard to avoid the temptation to make lists. Ah, well…
1.) There is no real conflict between science and religion.
2.) Religion should be granted public status, but treated with the special respect and deference we reserve for private matters.
3.) Religion and faith are virtuous or unproblematic in themselves: the problem is with extremism.
Haven’t the gnu atheists distinguished themselves from accomodationists and other non-gnus by specifically focusing on and disagreeing with the above? I like Eric’s list, too — partly because it’s positive rather than negative. But the gnu atheists get their passion I think from the fact that we are reacting to an entrenched position or positions which have managed to marginalize atheism-as-a-reasonable-option by aggrandizing belief in Belief, protecting it from just criticism. It’s not so much an attack as a counter-attack.
Or, as Ken Pidcock recently put it, it’s a challenge. It’s a fair challenge made to those who are unable to meet it on fair grounds.
Sastra – yes. That’s why royalism is so irritating. “Hey! Respect the status quo, dammit! It’s a lovely status quo, nothing wrong with it at all, quit saying it’s no good. It’s much more adult and reflective to respect the status quo.”
Y’know, I’m still sceptical that the New Atheists are saying anything much different from what the Old Atheists were saying. The way it looks to me, we’ve gone from a stage when I was young in the 1970s when books like Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian and others of the time (though Russell’s was probably best known) were widely available and discussed, and there was much public criticism of religion, to a time in the 1980s and 1990s when public criticism of religion came to be seen as politically incorrect, so it no longer emanated from the Left, which is where it would most naturally come from. We could probably think of reasons for this – partly a feeling that religion was on the way out, anyway, and all the heavy lifting was already done (Kai Nielsen said this in so many words in one of his books), partly a kind of post-colonial guilt that even the local religions benefitted from, partly other things, no doubt. And more recently a lot of us have come to see an urgency in engaging in public and popular criticism of religion – even in the face of opposition from people who should be our allies, but who still, in effect, accuse us of political incorrectness. The courage of Dawkins and others has helped open the door, but perhaps more importantly a market was created by various excesses of politicised religion.
I’m not sure that our message is all that different from Bertrand Russell’s, but it’s updated for the 21st century and there’s a hunger for it Out There. Many people who see the atrocities of political Islam and politicised American fundamentalism are ready for a message that religion is false and that it becomes dangerous when it obtains power and influence.
That’s not to deny that there’s now a kind of movement. There is, as we can see when atheist conventions attract large numbers of people and as we all network and organise. But I don’t think it’s a movement built around an especially new message, historically speaking. Still, the idea that religion is false, often dangerous, and should be subjected to a severe, hostile critique, had not had a lot of popularity in recent decades until the Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, etc., books. We’re certainly seeing a renewed emphasis on that idea and some concerted organisation around it.
I agree with a whole lot of this, but I think the diversity of the lists (and I predict that the longer this thread gets, the more varied the lists will become) is real trouble for Eric’s gallant effort to put a fine point on what’s New about us Gnus. I guess I’m (ahem) skeptical that a reasonably compact list of specific items can be formulated that still encapsulates our attitudes about religion.
And, like several of Jerry’s commenters, I’m skeptical that any of this at all is really new in a historical sense. These are <i>important</i> things about us, but I’m not convinced that Epicurus, Hume, Ingersoll, Russell, O’Hair, et al., didn’t share some or all of these perspectives.
There is a view that says Islam must experience an Enlightenment stage like Christianity has. But it’s possible that this misinterprets history. What we call the Enlightenment occurred in parts of the world where the pagan scientific and philosophical tradition that had been suppressed was reintroduced. Not all of Christianity is enlightened and the unusual circumstances that made progress possible in the West (schism, contending emperors, kings, Popes) may never arise. There may also be features unique to Islamic thought that make liberalization harder, and the loss of the Ottoman Sultanate has left Islam without a central authority. The crisis of authority can be seen in the fatwas. Who can issue one? Who says it’s legitimate or not? There are answers to these questions but no one enforces them, or what we would call civilized norms. We may have to come to the realization that the kind of change we would like to see can’t happen without a decision by Western leaders to offer more support and encouragement than we have up to now.
The Egypt crisis may make all of this worse, or much better if a genuinely democratic state finally emerges. Egypt is a center of political and religious thought in the Muslim world. If an Enlightenment-like phenomenon is ever to start Egypt would be a possible source for that change. Iraq or post-revolutionary Iran could accomplish this for the Shias. Is this likely to happen? It looks like a long shot right now. One of the reasons why I think New Atheists have a firmer grip on reality is that we see support for secularism in Muslim countries as critical, while the accommodationists will continue to make excuses for Islamists by explaining all conflict through the false prism of Islamophobia. In this larger context we have the better understanding. Accommodation isn’t just wrong epistemically, it actually makes things worse.
More horrific crimes going on in the name of religion, this time in Indonesia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3b4b0eiYvU
Russell, I think there really is a profound difference. At least I feel it, very strongly. It may not seem like a big difference, but it is nevertheless profound. I don’t think Bertrand Russell (to keep our Russells distinct here!) ever had a sense of the disturbing harmfulness of religion. For example, in “A Free Man’s Worship”, he writes that “the creed of religion, by providing a reason for proving that it is never false, has been the means of purifying our hopes by the discovery of many austere truths.” Of course, Russell goes all purple from time to time, so it’s hard to know exactly what he means, but there is a strain of the mystical in him, I think, the kind of thing that made him conclude, at one point, that the ontological argument must be valid. Of course, if you associated with the Bloomsbury group, you were bound to be just a bit woolly. What is new — and despite Harris’ flirtation with Buddhism I think it is new — is an appreciation that religion is dangerous or poisonous. It poisons the mind. It is mind virus. This, I think, is new, and it is this, I believe, that religious believers find most challenging and disturbing about it. It is not only saying, ‘I don’t believe,’ it’s saying, ‘Belief is not only wrong, it’s destructive.’ And that’s new and important, because religion is destructive. It’s unhealthy, and we need to defeat it. But because it’s been such a prevalent part of the culture (for any culture) the loss of it burns with lamentation and nostalgia, and that’s something that needs to be defeated along with religion. You can feel that nostalgia in “A Free Man’s Worship”, for example, very strongly, the sense of loss and the courage needed to endure the loss. I don’t get that sense from the New Atheism. Charles Taylor’s idea of fullness doesn’t have much weight any more.
I blame Ottoline Morrell. Terrible influence.
I suppose if I’m going to call someone feeble-minded, I could at least use “their” correctly..
Particularly if you’re espousing prejudice against an entire, diverse genre of music.
“I would insert a new (iii): a conviction or a sense that the widespread (at least in the US) expectation that oneshould believe in god as if (ii) were of no relevance whatsoever, is an offensive imposition.”
Absolutely. I know far too many (relatively) secular people who, for example, plan to “raise their children in religion” because they’ve bought into this absurdity. Many people I know speak about it the way they would about a balanced diet or brushing one’s teeth.
Interesting discussion here. I wonder if I might add by making a distinction between rejection of religion and criticism of religion. It goes something like this: I reject religious belief because it is false; I criticize religious belief because it is both false and harmful (by its nature plus the fact that it is widely believed). The point is that I do not reject religious belief because it is harmful. I might actually accept ideas as inherently true or worthy, despite potential harmful outcomes. Or I might not criticize false beliefs because they aren’t entirely harmful (Elvis believers). Religious belief is a different matter in that it is both false and harmful.
Regardless, for my own part I tend to care more about the validity of religious belief than its goodness or usefulness. The latter conversation seems less concrete than the former. Religious belief is false. Don’t believe it. End of story.
Yep; good point, Michael. Mind you I think the two get mixed together at some points – I think part of the harm of religion is in the social pressure to believe its claims despite their falsity. The falsity itself is part of the harm (because people train themselves not to notice it, and that’s not good for critical thinking skills).
Religion and faith are virtuous or unproblematic in themselves: the problem is with extremism.
Sastra, I think beneath the exterior of the virtuosity of religion and faith lies gargantuan problematic insidiousness; that can be as dangerous as full-blown extremism. There is unbelievable dissension lurking in the underbelly of the church that is akin to an incendiary bomb waiting to go off. Implosion! I am not talking about clerical and religious abuse here. Religion and faith of the virtuous kind, such as saying the stations of the cross, to mention but one example, has stifled and disturbed generations of vulnerable children who didn’t have loving parent’s to protect and allow them to escape the frightening effects of the crucifixion and the memories of the bloodied crowned head of thorns of Christ their Saviour. What about children being told by the ever so virtuous religious that they would go to hell if they did not behave, or that they would be excluded from the gates of heaven. All very negative and not conducive with love and peace. Richard Dawkins associates this kind of thing with child abuse. Extremism is in front of ones face, one sees that it is so – but it’s not the same with the smoldering heat beneath the dark recesses of the church. It took generations of survivors of institutional abuse to tell the sad stories of what so called virtuous religion did to them. Religion is insipidly creepy -crawly. The realisation of its damage, like personality disorders, or some such, can take years upon years to reveal its murkiness. it steals innocent lives. Creates problematic adults.
@Ophelia, absolutely agree. Also, I suppose some ideas are, by their very nature, more potentially harmful than others.
I think the problem with the “New” part of New Atheism, to most of us who identify with it, is the hubris of it. We’re familiar with Russell and Ingersoll and D’Holbach, and we can see bits and pieces of the modern attitude in their work, so it seems a bit much to claim novelty for ourselves. The differences seem to be more quantitative.
Are we really that different, though? It may be more that the culture has changed around us. If Bertrand Russell’s life had been shifted forward about 50-60 years, maybe he would have found resonance with a more hard-line scientific culture, and the purplish mysticism would have been damped out.
I think it’s very important that these vocal New Atheists have been saying the same sorts of things as the old atheists, but that the audience now is more receptive to the godless message. There’s some wonderful positive feedback going on right now!
PZ, I certainly won’t disagree that the difference might lie in the different social contexts, and the vast increase of scientific understanding, but it’s still very new, and the lines are sharper. Just as Christianity became a very different religion in some respects as culture evolved, and the differences were noticeable and important. Same with the New Atheism, and you, surely can scarcely hold that the NA hubris is altogether a bad thinf. We tend to qualify too much. Not that we don’t have to be sensitive to the nuances of what we say, but there is no reason not to be somewhat hubristical in the face of some of the really weird things that the religious say. Otherwise, we’d have to comment on the fine cut of the emperor’s new clothes, after all.
Marie-Therese O’Loughlin #24 wrote:
Agree. Another aspect of gnu atheism may be its willingness to look closely at what passes for “moderate” — though I think Russell’s right that this isn’t really new either. It just seems new in contrast to the current general agreement to wave on a person’s religion as long as it doesn’t interfere too obviously with other people’s lives.
What may be new or new-ish is the emphasis on science: we’re going to apply the scientific method to God. In fact, let’s all put God under critical scrutiny and see if it’s consistent with the model we built up from surprising discoveries. And hey, the believers ought to do that too, as a matter of intellectual honesty. Curiosity, clarity, and consistency. Don’t virtually all the critics of gnu atheism howl furiously and specifically about its “scientism?” That’s often the first thing they sneer at.
I spend way too much time reading the work of Gnubashers. Most of our critics seem to agree that the new atheists are characterized by at least these two traits:
1) We’re jerks. We unnecessarily sneer at religion. We insult religious folks, again, unnecessarily. We poke fun, as if we’re so damn superior. Pompous asses, we are.
2) We’re ignorant and reductive. The Courtier’s Reply, basically: We know not of what we speak. We criticize theology, but we know nothing of theology. We say Islam is bad, but we know nothing of Islam. And worst of all, we lump all religion together. We have an unsophisticated view of religion.
They also like to say that Richard Dawkins is a doo-doo head.
I propose the New New Atheists. (two news).
I think if we are putting together a Gnu-scene Creed it is instructive to look at whether there are differences between the Gnus and historical figures like Bertrand Russell. For instance in this famous interview about God and death
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aPOMUTr1qw
Russells views come across as exactly what the Gnus advocate – with, perhaps, one small exception; that being when he is asked “There is no afterlife?” and answers “None whatever, no.” To me that sounds rather MORE strident than the modern Gnu approach. The reason being, I think, is that a significant element of the Gnu movement comes out of the skepticism movement. The Gnu answer would be something along the line that there is no evidence for an afterlife and since science shows human consciousness is a function of brain activity that once this ceases then so does conscious life.
I think it may be a mistake to explicitly state opposition to something so nebulous as the word ‘religion’ as a common factor in gnu atheism. Remember that “religion” encompasses everything from fundamentalist Islam to Pantheism. You cannot say that all of it is dangerous (I mean, for instance, what is particularly dangerous about a vague deism or a hippyish pantheism?).
Theism, on the other hand IS dangerous since it is based on the notion that the natural laws of the universe are frequently suspended for either miracles or for some supernatural being/s to communicate information to humans. Once you admit this in your philosophy you have no way to verify whether your Gods instructions are more correct than another Gods instructions.
Just to expand on my last post I think its useful to define the difference between the Gnu atheists and the Gnice atheists. While both groups seem to agree upon the question of religious truth claims (i.e. there is no evidence to support them), the key difference is on the question of ‘respect’.
The historically ‘polite’ approach is to ‘respect the religious belief’ of a person.
What this means, in effect, is that you treat a religious claim very differently to almost any other claim (political view, opinion of food, music or art etc).
How you are meant to treat religious claims is as if they are almost familial descriptions – in other words treat them like they are descriptions of someones family relationships. Just as you would find it naturally impolite to insult or mock someones wife, husband or child, you don’t mock a persons religious beliefs.
The Gnice atheists accept this status quo. The Gnus reject it. The Gnu position is that ALL beliefs should be open to criticism.
What’s more, the Gnus believe that criticizing a belief is NOT the same as calling somebody stupid.
Very intelligent people can, for complicated reasons, hold very illogical beliefs and the fact that they may feel personally insulted by criticism of the beliefs themselves is not sufficient reason to withhold criticism – even mocking criticism.
If you think belief in a God has as much evidential base as belief in Leprechauns then it should not be beyond the pale to say it out loud.
It is a valid argument and is NOT impolite or disrespectful.
Reading the article by Aitkin and Talisse currently on the front page I notice they have the necessary strawman definition of new atheism
“the view that religious believers should be treated with contempt. The view has it that those who are contemptible are not worthy of respect. ”
This is wrong.
Criticizing a belief is not the same as insulting a person. Criticizing beliefs and opinions that lack evidence is a hallmark of skepticism.
Well there were the Prussian/German philosophers the left (young) Hegelians: David Strauss, Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, Max Stirner, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. And also the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche. They all had a big influence and were sometimes overly idealistic, moralistic or anarchistic.
Talking of utopian idealists, there is of course the infamous Ayn Rand. And the far more realistic Madalyn O’Hair.
So we’re nothing new, only perhaps a new wave with greater momentum and public interest/exposure.
I think I mentioned over at your blog, Eric, that I’d been reading People Like Us by Waleed Aly. He gives what I would be tempted to say are a lot of weak responses to statements like the ones above. The book frustrated me on a number of levels, but I did feel my ignorance of the finer points of Islam was hindering my ability to sort the wheat from the chaff. Which leads me to. . .
And surely lumping them all together can highlight a big problem for their truth claims and special pleading. The argument from symmetry, isn’t it? Reading Aly frustrated me, as I said. One aspect that really annoyed was his insistance on somehow trying to segregate “Islamic thought” from other ways of thinking, and dare I say, knowing. Whatever I don’t know about Islam (which is possibly a lot) I find it hard to believe that I’m not going to discover the usual sordid and messy and HUMAN history that every other religion seems to have.
However, in the interests of avoiding the courtier’s reply, I am keen to read up more on Islam. I have read quite a bit of Ibn Warraq’s stuff over at the NER (and plan to buy Why I am not a Muslim), I have read Waleed Aly, I have read The Islamist by Ed Hussian, I have a mostly unread Koran somewhere in the house. I suspect Ophelia’s Does God hate Women? will touch on Islam, and that’s on the to do pile, but I’d seriously like some suggestions, if anyone has them. Some apologetics, some scholarly stuff, if it’s in english, would be much appreciated.
Pretty sure I draw the line at Karen Armstrong though.
An obvious point, but few believers know much about their theology either. I understand that people like Dawkins have indeed made great efforts to understand it, and have come to the conclusions we all know about.
So why should higher standards of understanding be demanded of outsiders than for untold millions of followers?
It’s perfectly possible to argue [or it should be] that anyone can believe what they want between their own two ears, but that ‘religion’, in the everyday sense of the word in practice, is and has always been about social control, and the imposition by varying kinds of coercion of normative beliefs lacking empirical foundation [except insofar as one takes a Voltairian view that it is empirically valuable to frighten people into obeying the status quo by lying to them].
The inherent absurdity of the notion that one is impinging on another’s ‘freedom’ or ‘rights’ by seeking – through the medium of rational debate – to prevent them imposing their unfounded and empirically unjustifiable personal choices on others demonstrates the distance that the advocates of ‘religious’ standpoints have to travel to merit consideration as worthy members of a secular civil society.
Of course, if they do not wish to be members of a secular civil society, then they are admitting in advance that they seek to impose their views by force or fraud.
Dave is indeed correct in identifying what religion has in common: the forcing of its beliefs on others. The finer points of those beliefs are irrelevant. It’s all about the sacredness of those beliefs and any criticism of them is blasphemy, and heretics must burn.
Sigmund #31 wrote:
Well, there are different ways of being “dangerous,” I guess: deism and pantheism might be considered dangerous on the level of method. They are self-confirming unfalsifiable beliefs adopted within a system which places a high value on faith and intuition. The fact that they end up being harmless or even beneficial is perhaps a case of what Sam Harris called “doing the right thing for the wrong reason.”
Religion is like gambling. Once you abandon a cautious rational method of checks and balances when deciding what’s likely, you’re more or less working in a crap shoot. A supernatural belief doesn’t have to mesh with what makes sense anyway in naturalism: when it does, that means we secularists got lucky with that believer. Whew.
Is gambling dangerous? If you insist on examining each incident on a case-by-case basis, you’re going to come up with an ambiguous answer. Well, often it is, but other times it worked out really well. Hard to say. But step back, look at the method, assess the risks and odds, and compare it with spending and investing money more prudently. The answer would probably be “yes” — even if Bob would never have been able to afford that operation without his trip to Vegas. Look at the larger picture. A culture built on the idea that gambling is a sign of virtue, humility, and wisdom would be in trouble.
I think the gnus assess the danger of religion in general not so much by adding up the outcomes, but by considering the way its supposed to work.
I think part of the harm of religion is in the social pressure to believe its claims despite their falsity. The falsity itself is part of the harm (because people train themselves not to notice it, and that’s not good for critical
OB: – One afternoon I was standing at a bus-stop across the road from a church. I happened upon two lines of approximately 20 children entering the church with their teacher. My instinctive reaction was to think, why are these children being taken to the church during school hours? I also wondered did anyone ever personally ask the children their opinions as to whether they believed in the religious claims of the church.
In my opinion, schools should not be used by religious to foist their beliefs on children. Irish schools have a field day in this respect. There will be children all over the country entering churches at crucial times school-hours when they should be wrapped up in their education. Religion is education. Period. Christ’s potential fisher(men) are placed before their very eyes for them to mould and shape. The church has been getting away with this kind of clever proselytisation since time immemorial.
Communion and Confirmation specifically are two religious celebratory occasions that excite children to no end. They are lured like bees to the pollen. They get to wear, pure, exquisite, bride-like clothing and very modern expensive brand new-clothes respectively, that unfortunately some parent’s can really ill afford, but have to be seen to keep up with traditional religious culture Joneses. Some parent’s get into terrible debt with financial credit unions as they borrow extraordinary amounts of money to pay for the communion and confirmation days. Mind you, I’m not saying that the church condones this kind of thing. But the social pressures are there and parents are obliged to conform in order to save face in their communities.
Some children even get to arrive in their respective churches on communion day in horse and carriages. So ludicrous.. There are even expensive hotels booked out for the day. Children are praised to the heights by priests on the altar and are treated like wedding brides and grooms. They get piles of money and attention from relatives and friends. They are in seventh heaven. The social pressures to conform and the pomp and circumstance surrounding the religious beliefs and occasions is so utterly false – but it keeps the church in business despite its falsity. The church knows that children will keep it alive and kicking as aging congregations are too problematic and a real burden. People are not trained to notice the falsity. it’s too imbedded in the culture. The church has them well-trained in its falsity.
@Andy Dufresne:
“2) We’re ignorant and reductive. The Courtier’s Reply, basically: We know not of what we speak. We criticize theology, but we know nothing of theology. We say Islam is bad, but we know nothing of Islam. And worst of all, we lump all religion together. We have an unsophisticated view of religion”
This utterly ignores two things:
1. most of us were brought up in religious families so we know at least as much as most religious people
2. most of us have done a lot of studying of religion in order to determine that we don’t believe it any longer. This is borne out by studies that show that atheists, in fact, know more about religion than do most of the religious. And for that matter I’ve read the koran; none of my religious family and friends have done so – in fact most of them haven’t even read much of the bible.
It takes a familiarity with religious thought and claims, and a disbelief in magic, to see that they are bogus. As such, it’s perfectly legitimate to lump all religions together because it’s all bogus. The religious themselves lump all religions but their own together as wrong. We just go that one step further…..
I believe old atheism was more of a halls of academia thing and was tolerated as such as long as it wasn’t allowed on the streets to frighten the horses. New atheism doesn’t seem to have any boundaries as in it can be found both on the streets and in academia. I adopted the term right away, so much better than ‘militant atheist’ as I had no weapons to speak of.
I would add that New Atheism rests on a deeper understanding of the implications of evolution, physics, history, antropology, cognitive neuroscience, and psychology. These disciplines empirically undermine supernatural claims and at same time offer persausive basis for explaining the invention of deities and religions.
PZ is right about the hubris problem. If we cease to reject the “new” label there will soon be 17, 592 new titles in the bookstores all devoted to explaining that new atheists think they invented oxygen.
I’d start with a far broader scope. Rather than focus specifically and exclusively on religion, I like to make it clear that I believe in the harmfulness of — and oppose the blind acceptance of — any elevation of imaginings and/or wishful thinking as “The Truth.” Too often, this can then be used as a convenient pre-packeged excuse for nearly any form of enslavement or atrocity.
Religion is of course a textbook example of this, but I would also include Stalinism on the one hand as an extremely harmful example, and astrology on the other as a fairly harmless but equally representative example.
@40
Indeed. And nothing annoys a Gnubasher more than an atheist who knows her stuff.
Here’s an interesting example of labeling from another culture: