The New Atheism
Not, notice, the “Gnu Atheism.” I want to put in a plug for accepting that word ‘new’. This is not a response to R. Knop’s rather foolish blog post where he deprecates the use of ‘gnu’ in connexion with atheism. That was just a silly quibble, and someone who teaches science at a university should (i) have known better, or (ii), if he didn’t, should have found out.
I think, however, that there is something importantly new about the New Atheism, and I think those of us who share in this newness should not only be proud of it, and celebrate it, but make it work to our advantage. We are genuinely new atheists. Not strident or dogmatic — what would ’dogmatic’ mean in the absence of dogma, I wonder? — atheists, but New Atheists. Though of course some of us might be strident too: we have a lot to be strident about!
In his book, The God Debates, John Shook divides atheists into many kinds. First, the sceptical atheist, which he calls “the original and genuine atheist” (20) Then there are distinctions between positive and negative atheism, as well as between strong and weak atheism. The situation, of course, is further complicated by the use of Huxley’s term ‘agnostic’, meaning, basically, a suspension of belief, due to lack of evidence.
Strangely, the growth of fideism, thinks Shook, means that sceptical atheism and fideism are much the same. They simply disagree over whether, in the absence of evidence, it is or is not inappropriate to behave as though religious beliefs were true. But the ‘agnostic’ immediately suggests to Shook that there are, after all, those who take themselves to be gnostic. The 11th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica apparently included both sceptical and dogmatic atheists, the latest version of the latter being the new atheists. (18) In fact, he goes further:
This new meaning for atheism has achieved common parlance, dictionary affirmation, and philosophical usage. Instead of being an ignorant skeptic about the divine, an atheist is now supposed to be just another overreaching gnostic possessing confident knowledge about ultimate reality. [18]
Which is all just bluster, of course. By throwing in the word ‘gnostic’ Shook thinks he has put some new bugs into his collection, and that they won’t wiggle on their pins. But there is no reason for suggesting that the New Atheists — deserving of caps too! — are overreaching gnostics and claim confident knowledge of ultimate reality. No. What we think is there is no confident knowledge of ultimate reality to be had. It even wonders whether there is a decent use for that word ‘ultimate’ until someone has spotted it, and has given us some reason for thinking it ultimate (whatever Shook takes ‘ultimate’ to mean).
Indeed, this is just where I see the newness in the New Atheists. We no longer think it makes sense to speak in terms of ultimacy. What would ultimate reality look like if we found it? There’s no way of telling, because one person’s ultimate reality is another person’s mystery. And mystery, whatever else it is, does not even suggest reality. It just means that we don’t know. To borrow (with thanks) from Rieux again, people get to a stage where things go all swimmy and resonant, and they begin to utter nonsense. At that point they hit mystery. The fideist suggests that, because things did go all swimmy at that point, that that’s a good place to stop and worship. This is where Karen Armstrong puts the truths of religion, just out of reach. The New Atheist, on the other hand, unlike the sceptical atheist who, if he doesn’t go all swimmy, feels a bit woozy in the head, and needs to think about rocks and trees, butterflies and bees — anyway, any number of things just so as to get away from the boundary where sense passes into nonsense, no matter how resonant.
And this is also why the kind of thing that Jerry Coyne objects today about the American Association for the Advancement of Science getting involved in accommodation with religious beliefs is a particular concern of the New Atheism. As we know from so many attacks on New Atheism, this concern about accommodationism is taken as evidence of New Atheism’s intransigence and stridency; but it’s really about protecting the realm of the rational from contamination. Shook thinks, for example, that theology is rational, and perhaps philosophical theology and philosophical atheology are, but most theology is only distantly philosophical. Of course, like real disciplines of knowledge they engage in rational discussions, but at the basis of those discussions lie propositions which are not based on any evidence. So, for example, we can pick up any book of theology — say, Alister McGrath’s, Christian Theology: An Introduction (even published by Blackwell). And what do we read, almost at the very start?
From its outset, Christian theology recognized itself to be grounded in Scripture. There was, however, some uncertainty as to what the term “Scripture” actually designated. [14]
So, of course, a certain number of texts had to be selected and authorised, thus forming the canon of scripture. Gradually, texts acknowledged to be inspired were selected, and then the texts so gathered are accepted as authoritative within the church. Only, of course, there’s the problem that different groups of Christians accepted different collections of texts. In 367 Athanasius, the Patriarch of Alexandria, sent out a festal letter in which he named the 26 books that comprise the modern New Testament. Of course, it is known, now, that many of the reasons for including those books were mistaken. Hebrews, for example, is not by Paul, which is why it was included. Second Thessalonians is not by Paul either, but it lyingly claims that First Thessalonians, which is by Paul, was not reliable! And the authors of the so-called Pastoral Epistles, like the three Johns, the Peters, Jude, James, the Timothies etc., are certainly not by the apostles or associates of apostles who are identified as their authors. And yet, the New Testament, even after these things have been shown — rather like the false decretals continued to uphold papal power and authority – retains its standing as an inspired work, and texts which had as much claim to inclusion as these are still excluded and not considered inspired.
And yet theology is grounded in such things. McGrath tries to have the best of both worlds. He asks:
What criteria were used in drawing up the canon? [15]
And he answers his question in this remarkable way:
The basic principle appears to have been that of the recognition rather than the imposition of authority. In other words, the works in question were recognized as already possessing authority, rather than having an arbitrary authority imposed upon them. [15]
And then he goes on to quote Irenaeus to the effect that the church did not create the canon; it was instead acknowledged, conserved, and received — as though, in other words, from the very hand of God himself.
But this, quite evidently, simply will not do. We still go back and back, and when we get to the end of a chain of traditions, we find someone with a pen! A human being, just like you and me! So the church, just like the Muslim authorities, took some human writings, no matter how fenced round with sanctity, and then elevated these writings to a stature they simply do not and cannot possess.
Yet theology is founded upon them. Theologians are governed by them. So are whole societies! Not only that, but they can neither be added to nor subtracted from. These are the very words of God — whatever that is assumed to mean within the structure of various theologies. Obviously, some theologians will stick to the words much more closely than others. Some will take liberties with interpretations which others will deny them. And how is all this governed? What determines whether an interpretation is acceptable, and to whom? How would we even begin to have a reasonable discussion about this?
This is not to say that we cannot take the books of the various sacred texts with which the world is overabundantly gifted, and treat them like any other human texts. This can be done, and has been done. But, once we have done that, in what sense can they be said to be authoritative for us? It may be true, as Shook says, that “religions are hardly strangers to debate.” (8) In fact, these traditions of debate are designed to bring about the most acceptable interpretation of a religion for its time and place, and Shook remarks on how sophisticated religious explanations of beliefs have become. One wants to say, yes, yes, of course, we know all that, but with all the sophistication in the world, how do you turn human texts, written thousands of years ago, into ways of knowing about ultimate reality for any now and for whatever ultimate reality might turn out to be?
Shook thinks — in his innocence, I believe — that there should be a chair at the ecumenical table for unbelievers. Religions criticise each other, so they’re used to criticism; why should one more criticism make any difference? Surely, he jests. For the unbeliever does not only criticise. No. The unbeliever questions the very foundations of the religious project. She asks why any of these texts and their interpretations should be taken seriously? How could they form the foundation of a powerful and sophisticated truth claim about the nature of reality, or, if they prefer, about the ultimate nature of reality?
Shook remarks that there is very little respectful debate amongst religions. And of course there is not, though there is lots of dialogue, not all of it respectful, within religions. But how could there be respectful dialogue amongst religions? There is simply no foundation for the different religions, and each religion must question the validity of the foundations of the others. There have been attempts at comparative religion, showing that there are, in places, common beliefs, or at least analogous ones. Years ago Raymond Panikkar wrote a book called The Hidden Christ of Hinduism. Amazon, Abe Books and Alibris have not heard of it, perhaps for good reason. It would doubtless be about as popular amongst Hindus as a book entitled Kali, the Goddess Mary, and the Roman Catholic Tradition would be in the Vatican.
But the point is not, as the Archbishop of Canterbury suggests, according to a story The Telegraph, that new atheists are intolerant of Christians or Jews or Muslims themselves. (Thanks to Jerry Coyne for the reference!) That’s silly. Why would anyone be intolerant of individuals who have their own way of looking at the world? No. What the New Atheism is intolerant of are the repeated claims by the religious to be speaking sense about the world, and who believe that these claims should be taken into consideration when making public decisions which will impact others besides those who believe in these things.
In a report to be presented to the General Synod of the Church of England (downloadable pdf here), which is endorsed by the Archbishop, concern is expressed that
… Christians are facing hostility at work and says the Church could lose its place at the centre of public life unless it challenges attempts to marginalise religious belief.
But of course the Church should not have a place a the very centre of public life. Why should it? What insight into reality gives it a right to such a place? General Synod will be told that it must act forcefully if it is not to be pushed out of the public square, but it clearly doesn’t ask why it should be there. Just because that is its accustomed place is not a good reason for its continuing to be so, especially in a situation which is growing increasingly divided, religiously. Islam is growing in Britain, and Islam, I am afraid, has serious implications for British public life which are not raised by the Church of England. What the Church of England should do is to cool itself off a bit, instead of presuming that the continuing role of the church in society should be at the centre of things. In this way it can also suggest why Islam, Roman Catholicism, Mormonism and all the other religions do not have a claim at the centre of things either.
It is, I think, significant that the Archbishop of Canterbury should speak about the New Atheism. He suggests that this is an intolerant form of atheism. It is certainly, at least, on his radar screen. But what he says is simply wrong, and the archbishop has misunderstood. What seems to him to be intolerance is a fairly new and fairly blunt claim, and that is that there is simply no basis at all for making the metaphysical or moral claims that religions make. We are not saying that there is insufficient evidence, but that we have seen no evidence on which to base religious claims. Religion has human fingerprints all over it, but so far no one has come close to showing that there might be more than this world and ourselves in it, with all the other animals, plants and inanimate objects of which is composed. We may always, with good reason, since this is the way reason works, keep an open mind about this. It may be that in time to come, evidence will be found which will indicate that the New Atheism was all a mistake, and, if there are any of us left, we will have, abjectly, to apologise; but none of us really thinks this is a remote possibility, and most would probably be willing to write a book with the title: Why Atheism is True. And that, gentle readers, is why it is new.
While the last sentence appeals to me, I don’t see how it constitutes anything particularly new. It really seems to agree with religious folks that the definition of “New Atheists” is essentially “strident atheists”, but the “Gnu Atheist” movement seems to be essentially saying that stridency isn’t new, so it seems ridiculous to call something which hasn’t really changed new.
Eric, you write “It may be that in time to come, evidence will be found which will indicate that the New Atheism was all a mistake, and, if there are any of us left, we will have, abjectly, to apologise; but none of us really thinks this is a remote possibility….”
It seems to me that if you say “it may be that X,” you must think it is at least “a remote possibility.” Indeed, in this case it would be a very, very remote possibility. A possibility so remote as to be meaningless, except to acknowledge human fallibility. You could certainly say “it may be” New Atheism’s a mistake and “none of us really thinks” it’s remotely plausible or thinks that it’s a probability worth recognizing, but if it’s not even an extremely “remote possibility,” then how could you say “it may be that” it’s the case?
Doesn’t “it may be that” mean “it’s a possibility, however remote”?
Ah, I won’t split hairs with you. I think it’s only an epistemological reservation, not a real one. ‘It may be’ means that in epistemology we may not claim absolute truths, but conceptually, there is no reason for thinking that it may be true. It’s just an escape clause.
Well, I think it is. I suggest, in response to Steve, that the reservation is only an epistemological requirement, but it is not demanded by the conceptual landscape. And I think that refusal to accept the real doubt whether we may or may not be right is fairly new. Does this make us dogmatic? Maybe. But if so, it’s a harmless dogmatism, because there are no dogmas.
On the one hand, I agree wholeheartedly. On the other hand, I’m still not sure there’s much “new” about the specific content and tenor of New Atheist criticism of religion. Bertrand Russell, for one, had an opinion about the complete lack of evidence for religious claims to truth identical to what you expressed above. What is new is the historical moment, the social context in which forthright, outspoken atheism now thrives and spreads. What’s new is that such atheism is no longer just the purview of professors, but a way of seeing and living in the world with which more and more people freely and openly identify. What’s new is that more and more atheists are coming out of the closet, are saying “God is just pretend” without apology or hedging or hiding it in the pages of obscure philosophy journals aimed at other academics.
This, of course, is what Rowan Williams correctly perceives as a threat to the unearned, undeserved power of his (and every other) religious institution. It is a threat to the status quo, and a threat to those who benefit from the status quo, and so there must be a backlash — as there has been and continues to be backlash against every bit of social progress which threatens to free people from any sort of control, oppression, or second-class citizenship. And since some people who are intellectually and emotionally capable of recognizing the correctness of atheist criticisms of faith are also emotionally conservative — the sort whose first instinctive response to social change is “Don’t rock the boat,” and whose overriding concern is not to be perceived as a threat by those with power — even some atheists join in the backlash. Frankly, the lies and distortions and cheap rhetorical attacks aimed at New Atheists by both believers and believer-ass-kissing faitheists is absolutely the most predictable phenomenon in the world to anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention to the development of any other struggle for equality. The only differences — and I won’t deny their significance — follow from the fact that atheism isn’t a readily visible or behaviorally obvious social status like being black or a woman or homosexual.
I’m teaching Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man in my interdisciplinary core humanities class this semester, and the parallels are more striking than the differences. Injustice both requires and encourages invisibility, and so the fight for visibility in and of itself is a fight for justice. To proclaim one’s existence is to proclaim a right to exist, to insist on taking one’s place as an equal participant in society. And when atheists take their place in society, they question the undeserved authority of faith and the institutions which depend on it.
No wonder Rowan Atkinson is nervous.
“What is new is the historical moment, the social context in which forthright, outspoken atheism now thrives and spreads.” Yes, I agree, and perhaps that’s all that makes it new. But I think that’s enough. That’s why I include the CofE report, because it makes clear how different the situation is now so far as religions are concerned in the West, anyway. It is so much more complex than when atheism was meeting Christianity on its own turf, and in some sense, was a modification of Christianity. It was Christian atheism in the same way that Advaita Vedanta was Hindu Atheism. But now atheism is no longer a Christian cultural expression — as it was, I think, in Huxley’s and even Russell’s day. Now, the situation is different, and atheism has changed too, so that it is no longer what you might call culturally sensitive. And this, I think, has changed its emphasis, even, perhaps, its sense. For example, AC Grayling, in To Set Prometheus Free, talks about Russell’s agnosticism, and shows how it is really an atheism. I think that’s what is new, is to take the idea that agnosticism is a possible position and to point out that, when push comes to shove, it’s really atheism, and that agnosticism is not really a plausible position to take any longer. And I think that’s new. I may be wrong, but even if I were wrong, I would want to hold onto the idea of the new atheism, because it’s such a bogeyman to the religious. But I do think that there was still always a reservation in atheism before the new atheism. The new atheism simply cannot make sense of religion. It no longer makes sense to talk in terms of ultimate reality, as though this were necessary to ratify our lives, in some sense. And people can come out of the closet because the emperor is now seen as wearing no clothes. There is no longer that residual fear that, well, perhaps, after all, religion may be right. I think Pascal’s wager was a real wager at one time. It’s not any longer. Regarding Rowan Atkinson. Mr. Bean may be shaking in his boots. I’m not sure. But I think you meant Williams at the end.
I enjoyed this post and the comments and I hope shan’t be judged as too frivolous if I admit that this was my favourite bit:
“No wonder Rowan Atkinson is nervous.”
Oh, well, Eric beat me to it, but he never has to wait in moderation over at his own place…
That’s enough uses of “may” inside an explanation of “may” that I don’t know what to do with it.
This is a particularly interesting subject to me, though, because before defining “New Atheism,” I want to secure the definition of simply “atheism.” I was in a local group of freethinkers and atheists, and one guy was particularly restrictive in his definition. He agreed that an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in any gods, but he insisted that if someone suggests that we can’t know absolutely for certain, with perfect, complete, infallible knowledge, that there is no god then that person can’t say “I don’t believe in any god.”
Whereas I maintain that if I allow for a ridiculously remote possibility that someone has driven from California to Texas and filled my car with tropical birds while I was inside the house, that doesn’t mean I believe my car’s really full of tropical birds; even while I acknowledge that it’s possible such a thing has happened, it’s perfectly correct for me to say “I don’t believe my car is full of any tropical birds ; that’s just ludicrous.” Likewise, to acknowledge an even more vanishingly remote possibility of some god doesn’t mean I believe there actually is one.
I’d like to argue against believing in a god and against the reasonableness of it, but it’s a real obstacle when someone asserts that I myself actually believe in one, despite my claims to the contrary. I’m pretty sure I’ve got Richard Dawkins, Dan Barker, and PZ Myers on my side in the dispute with this local acquaintance. It’d be lovely if you agree too, whether or not I qualify as a “New Atheist” or just some regular old atheist.
“New Atheism Rocks! (The Boat)”
Yeah, it almost defeats me too. That’s why, in general, I just say, “There is no god.” No qualifications. If someone comes along and tells me that I can’t know anything for sure, I enter the qualifications. But, like your car full of birds, I don’t believe the qualifications are really necessary. That’s basically what AC Grayling says when he’s discussing Russell’s agnosticism. He asks us to consider someone thinking about whether he should carry an umbrella or not when it threatens rain. The belief that rain will wet him is only inductively justified, therefore, it’s possible that this time when he goes out in the rain he won’t get wet. Grayling asks: “Is the belief that ‘rain might not wet me next time’ less irrational or absurd than the belief that rain does not wet at all?” And his answer is, of course, obviously not. And so he concludes: “For this reason Russell’s use of ‘agnostic’ is functionally equivalent to ‘atheist’ but with the reservation of a quibble about proof is seen to turn on an assimilation of proof concerning matters of fact to proof of a demonstrative kind — and it is a quibble that does not, pace our man with the umbrella, hold water.” (To Set Prometheus Free, 57-8) That’s what all the nested ‘mays’ are doing, playing the game of quibble. But they can’t be seriously meant. And that, it still seems to me, is what is new about the new atheism. It doesn’t play the game of quibbles, and the religious are used to playing this game. That’s why new atheism comes across as atrident, because it won’t hedge its bets. There is no god, even when someone thinks that, despite your disbelief, you still do. That’s silly.
Yeah, was my favourite too!
Heh. Amusing error. I subconsciously substituted the last name of the only public figure named Rowan whom I regularly think of with fondness and respect — as opposed to Rowan Williams, whom I hardly think of at all. Although, come to think of it, there might be more of a mental connection than that: Rowan Williams’ public posturing does have a certain whiff of Mr. Bean’s gift for awkwardness grotesque embarrassment about it…
Of course, Atkinson is not actually completely irrelevant here, as readers probably know, but just in case:
http://www.religionlaw.co.uk/zatkinson.htm
Thanks for this Stewart — and, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise your notes were tied up in moderation. I’m still getting the hang of this thing. But I did see the funny before your note came in.
No offense taken, Eric. That’s exactly what I thought had happened.
For me, I’d class myself as a dictionary atheist. And so if we’re talking about meaning, then it is a-theism, and not athe[os]-ism.
Basically, it’s a rejection of theism for whatever reason or no reason at all. It means we’re not theists.
But ‘gnu atheists’, for lack of a better terminology are a movement of diverse views, united in a general condemnation of religion both rationally and morally. The movement also seems to promote reason, science and basic liberalism.
I think the reason why people struggle to pin down any doctrine, beliefs or manifesto is that we’re so intellectually individualistic, that we are almost a culture or social group rather than a philosophy or political movement.
And perhaps that’s what is so new and different, that we’re developing a kind of new culture.
I agree Egbert, we are developing a new kind of culture. But I think that we have more in common than you suggest. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think three things 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 don’t think we’re very far apart on those three points. (ii) is crucially important, because atheism is often taken to hold that the evidence for the existence of a god is weak. I think that New Atheists hold that there is no more reason to believe in a god than there is to believe in Santa Claus. Am I very far wrong?
I don’t disagree with those three points. You can see how an outsider could look at them and see only negativity. But if we’re right even on only the first one, then we ought to be fighting it out of existence, not happily joining hands with its most moderate practitioners. But those who see only negativity would also agree with the whole platform if you were to substitute something they think is politically and intellectually harmful (atheism, most likely), without seeing that as negativity. The world is still largely conditioned to see faith and/or religion as good on a knee-jerk basis and as long as that is the case, or until it has been seriously eroded, we are the easiest people to portray as villains, without even having to do anything other than be what we are.
Not that I want to tell you how to run your blog, but this particular discussion is nearly worthy of a blog post.
I’ve seen the “quibble game” you’re describing used almost as a trap. You add in all your qualifiers, and the theist argument seems to then go “Aha! got you! You have “faith” too! You don’t “know” either.” etc etc, when, really, describing my “faith” that there is, for instance, an objective reality as in the same league as religious faith is completely unfair.
On a slightly related note, I just bought Ophelia Benson’s Why Truth Matters (along with Does God hate women? and some other good sutff) and I’d just like to say that I feel the need to cudgel half the world over the head with it.
I forgot to add, when discussing “god/s” that the “quibble game” should probably cut both ways. I think I can say with some confidence that the Abrahamic God definitely doesn’t exist. The more attributes a God gets endowed with, it seems, the less likely it’s existence. And if a theist is going to (re)define God to nothingness or a feeling, I’m sorely tempted to say “Aha, got you, you have as little faith as I do!”
I think I’m with PZ on this one: Unless you are completely unreflective (and I don’t think you are, Egbert), then you have reasons WHY you are an atheist — and those reasons are the substance that belies your (and most people’s) claim to mere “dictionary atheism.”
And while I’ll agree with you that atheists are tough to categorize, I think you over-state the case. For one, I think the overwhelming majority of atheists think that the supernatural claims made by religious believers and institutions simply aren’t supported by evidence and reason — Eric’s point (ii) above. However, I think it’s important to realize that this isn’t simply an agreement on a particular conclusion; it indicates a set of common underlying values — epistemological values rather than moral values (not that I think the two are wholly separable), but common values nonetheless. Atheists, for the most part, care a great deal about attempting to discover the truth rather than assuming that one already knows it (i.e. fallibilism), and we reject anyone’s insistence that some claims can be or should be off-limits to rigorously applied critical thinking. Atheists care about evidence and reasoning, and think that claims ought to be accepted as true only to the extent that they can be justified. These are all value claims, not facts — and if they can in turn be “justified” in some sense, they can only be justified pragmatically, insofar as they consistently prove effective in helping us accomplish our aims in the world, whatever those may be. (“Science: It works, bitches.”)
And, as my parenthetical reference hints, the common values embraced by most atheists are the same values that characterize the practice of science, and are the same value commitments reflective scientists regularly articulate and embrace. Religious authorities may be more committed to their own power and presuppositions far more than they are committed to truth, but they aren’t completely stupid: They know a direct challenge to their authority when they see one. That’s why they are constantly either fighting against science (creationists, etc.) or trying to co-opt it (e.g. the Templeton Foundation) with all the tools at their disposal, and with whatever allies (accommodationists) they can muster. But I digress.
You point out intellectual individualism as a characteristic that makes atheists hard to describe in any collective sense, but I would say that intellectual individualism is simply a natural consequence of the shared epistemological values characterized above. Those who embrace atheism as an identity — and especially those who do so in a cultural milieu that valorizes faith — are people who insist on thinking for themselves rather than accepting unearned authority or conforming to popular opinion. Of course, while intellectual independence may follow from the epistemological values noted above, it does not have to be paired with them. It’s fairly evident that many people are intellectually independent without having any particular commitment to critical thinking — hence the constant appeal of New Age thought and all forms of woo. Not everyone who rejects authority or popular opinion embraces an alternative supported by evidence and reason.
This does seem to be the major argument against the New Atheism by other nonbelievers – “that is philosophical naturalism, not science.” It is this splitting of hairs so fine that you can’t view them with an electron microscope that annoys the hell out of me. Do they really think a nonmaterial world with nonmaterial entities which can influence our lives actually has any likelihood of being true? I guess you can never be too careful when it comes to hedging your bets. All I can think to say to them is put your spine back in and stand for something.
So, you have no reason at all to reject atheism? How can that be so?
Eric, didn’t Lucretius (for example) believe your three things? Surely Robert Ingersoll did? And I think you and I share a liking for Richard Robinson’s An Atheist’s Values (OUP, 1964):
What is possibly new(ish), and welcome, about today’s atheists is that they don’t shut up when the stock rubbishy defences are paraded for an arbitrarily selected one of the big religions, or Armstrongian nothingness, or utterly incompatible ‘faiths’ as a Good Thing in principle.
Although I have an aversion to the word ‘belief’ I do think it’s a kind of ‘muscular secularism’ where we push religion out of public life, and tolerate it as a private matter.
Just a note… This was in the spam folder for some reason, and I just noticed it. Whatever could have made the filter think this was spam?!
The reason why I respectfully disagree with PZ Myers and yourself on this one is that no single atheist or organisation gets to define my atheism, because there are always exceptions such as those pesky spiritual atheists.
Hence, atheism is not a word I take very seriously, it only explains in an etymological sense what I am not, and does not create my identity.
That’s the great thing about atheism, we can all agree and disagree about many things, but we are not those strange people who believe in a monotheistic God.
And atheism is now an inadequate a term to define my general opposition to all religion and all harmful irrationality in the public sphere, and so until a better term is found, we have to make do with ‘new atheism’.
And that is why our movement should be better understood as a new culture, or social movement than attempting a philosophical approach, because that orthodox kind of project is doomed to failure.
At the end of each of these traditios s someone with a pen. Yes! Exactly right. Not an obviously god-like means of communication. Why can’t more people see this and say ”It’s just a book”? Surely any god worthy of the appellation (let alone worthy of worship) come up with a more secure, robust and convincingly divine way of transmitting its will to its creatures. Surely such a god would have the power to ensure that everyone got the same message at the same time. Instead we have a wide variety of conflicting messages written in ink on processed fibres, all traveling at the speed of meat. Quite apart from issues of content, this slow, insecure, crude, ”low-tech” means of transmission alone casts doubt on any divine origin of these messages. Surely an all-powerful being could have done better than this in delivering what is supposed to have been the most important message(s!) of all time. All these holy books are just so much spam. Those who believe in them have fallen for the oldest, perhaps the original, version of the “Nigerian Letter”.
I think I get your point. But of course my intention is not to create anyone’s identity. All I wanted to point out is that there is something new here. In fact, it becomes clearer to me as we go along. I listed three features of what I consider the New Atheism (I don’t think we’re going to find a word for it), and though the first adverts to the fact that there is no evidence for the existence of a god, perhaps a better way of saying it would be that we have no idea what could be meant by the word ‘god’ (and its cognates). This I think is very new, and this is what makes us sound so uncompromising and strident. It is not only a negative. It is a positive cultural achievement as you point out. Perhaps I need to do another post on this.
Yes. As to the communication method and content: surely it’s not too much to ask a god to emulate Michael Rennie’s emergence from his space vehicle to inform and exhort the entire world at one go to get with it, in matters of such divine importance. The ‘Nigerian Letter’ allusion is very good.
Yes, very well put.
If I may quibble with one thing without implying serious disagreement with a very nice comment:
I understand the need to overtly state the significance of the differences, and I’ve done so myself—but I think it’s sometimes worth noting that the parallels might be even more extensive than that.
As to “readily visible or behaviorally obvious,” I’d point out that in certain contexts atheism can be behaviorally obvious, when it leads to a conscience-driven refusal to participate in religious ceremonies of one kind or another. Refuse to say prayers, take Communion, get married in a church, baptize your children, etc., and you might find yourself out of the closet—and, based on particular notions of intellectual honesty, many of us feel duty-bound to abstain from religious observances like those. That stuff may not have quite the deep-seated fundamental-identity nature of holding hands (or engaging in comparably ordinary PDA) with one’s same-sex partner, but the difference seems to me more of degree than of kind.
And—as I’m sure you recognize, TPP—hiding one’s atheism from one’s heavily religious community or family merely raises all of the same issues that GLBTs encounter with The Closet. Perhaps closeted life is a little less debilitating when it’s only a religious outlook and not a fundamental orientation of one’s affection (or conception of one’s gender) that one is denying—but I’m not convinced that the difference is all that stark.
Anyway, it’s true that other disempowered minorities we resemble in some ways (ethnic minorities, GLBTs, women, etc.) “have it worse” than we do. To the extent that haters want to dismiss our grievances via the Oppression Olympics—we’ve never been enslaved, been made to drink from separate water fountains, denied the right to marry the people we love—they’ll always be able to do so. We do have it easier than several despised minorities in history have.
Nonetheless, there is oppression of atheists, both at home (the U.S., for me) and abroad. For example, law professor Eugene Volokh demonstrated in 2005 that atheist and irreligious parents are routinely denied custody of their children in divorce disputes; a shockingly large number of American courts have overtly stated that an irreligious parent cannot be trusted to give children a proper religious upbringing, and therefore the best interest of the children is to be in the custody of the religious parent. That trend, of course, is all but identical to injustices inflicted on GLBT parents.
Then there are the several state constitutions that declare that atheists are not allowed to hold public office; Arkansas’ constitution won’t let us testify in court, either. (These provisions are dead-letter thanks to U.S. Supreme Court precedent, but it seems to me that that does not remove their viciousness or injustice. Anti-miscegenation provisions remained in most of those same states’ constitutions long after Loving v. Virginia invalidated them in 1967, but by 2000 all such provisions had been repealed, because they represented disgusting bigotry even post-Loving. How come the anti-atheist garbage remains?)
And then the numerous other political indignities: “In God We Trust” on money and countless government buildings; “Under God” added to the Pledge of Allegiance; George H.W. Bush declaring that atheists can’t be patriots or citizens; and so on, through just about every violation of the Separation Clause that Christians have perpetrated on the country. Broadest of all are the data (a lot of them, spanning a large period of time) showing that atheists are more despised by Americans than any other minority.
But, again, this can’t possibly compare to slavery or Jim Crow. And it’s not nearly as ugly as the kind of “reparative therapy” abuse that has long been, and continues to be, inflicted on young gay and lesbian people. But it’s not nothing (not that TPP implied otherwise), and most importantly it’s a hell of a lot worse than whatever Rowan Freaking Williams, or any other Christian (Rob Knop?) worried about a loss of hegemony and privilege, is actually threatened with.
Atheists—in the United States as well as a handful of places that are measurably less enlightened than even us—don’t actually have an easy time of it, especially compared to the people who deride us. I think that’s worth noting.
Notice how the stone tablets Moses brings down from Mt Sinai and the gold plates given to Joseph Smith are conveniently lost. It reminds me of that Monty Python sketch about a suspect witch where one villager claims she turned him into a newt. When it is apparent he is not a newt, he responds that he got better. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, indeed.
In fairness to Russell, he only made a point of his agnosticism in front of audiences that were philosophically highly literate, knowing that otherwise they might quibble if he describe himself as an atheist.
Eric – the spam question – could be (probably is) just the link. I get that often.
Excellent analogy!
I’ve said for years that what theists demonstrate is not “faith” but “credulity”.
You hit it exactly on the head.
Fair warning: I’m sooooo going to steal that.
I don’t think we will have to apologise, really. Even if such evidence is found, that wouldn’t show that we have done anything wrong. We haven’t seen such evidence. It’s not our fault that we haven’t seen it. We’ve asked people to show it to us or tell us where it is. We’ve asked a thousand times, each of us. We’ve given theism plenty of opportunities to show us some evidence. All we ever get is mumbling about experience or an inner voice or communion with god…or, worse, a book, with no evidence that it’s anything other than a book like other books, written by a person or several people.
We are strongly convinced that in a matter of this importance, if there were good evidence, it would not be elusive. If anyone had such evidence, everybody on earth would know all about it. It wouldn’t be the sole possession of 16 people in an obscure village somewhere.
We can’t help but be aware that we have been given no good reason to think theists are right about their god. Apology seems…supererogatory.
Yes, that’s a good point. It’s like Russell’s, “You didn’t provide enough evidence!” And that’s true. On the other hand, the qualification is something of a guard against dogmatism. However, as you can see from my later responses, it only amounts to a small quibble, so carefully explore in the quote from Grayling. The nested ‘mays’ in the last sentence gives that away. And you’re absolutely right: In a matter of this importance, the evidence can’t be that elusive that we simply didn’t notice until later.
It’s been interesting to follow this thread in parallel with this one over at The New Oxonian:
http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/being-and-atheism/
I know, about the guard against dogmatism, and I’m keen on that. At the same time I’m always interrogating my conscience (as one does, you know) (as a guard against dogmatism, for one thing) (and then there’s all this pressure from the royalists) – and I can always strip away everything except the fact that I know I haven’t seen anything that convinces me, because if I had, it would have convinced me. On that score my conscience is clear.
It’s this point, which you (Ophelia) also bring up when you talk about a god who’s hiding, that seems to be one of the simplest to resolve. If god is all the omni-s his believers claim, then he clearly doesn’t want us all to believe in him, for if he did, then what could be simpler for him to achieve? If he does exist and can do whatever he wants then we must assume that the existing situation is the one he wants: mass disbelief in his existence and a lot of violence by believers who disagree with each other.
This is where the ‘ineffability’ of Armstrong shines. It doesn’t matter how opaque the evidence is, it remains just beyond the examining mind regardless the vigor of the examination. It’s ineffable, after all. One would think that for an originally utterly convinced theist such as myself, with all the access I had to the finest in theologic rationale, I should have been able to repair the occasional tears in the fabric of my faith from nearby sources. But, as time went by and the rents became longer and more frequent, appeal to ineffability lost out to hard reality. Finally I recognized that rather than being ‘surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses’, I was escaping from a miasma in the fens of deceit. I am secure from re-conversion, of that I am certain.
I think you were searching for the wrong title. I found “The Unknown Christ of Hinduism”.
Not too cheap either
Thank you, Evan. From my dim dark past!
I am SO stealing “at the speed of meat”.
Eric,
A truly wonderful essay that you’ve written. One of my pet atheist peeves is that there is “nothing new” in the New Atheism. How untrue that really is. For me what is new to atheism is what is new to the scientific account of natural history and boy have we had some upgrades since Bertrand Russell!
Even since his death in 1970, we now know extraordinary amounts about cosmology (how our galaxy, star, and planet formed, dark matter, special relativity, the Hubble, nearby Earth-like planets), Earth science (plate tectonics, radiometric dating, climate change), and how, when and where humans (and their cousins) came thanks to genetics, paleontology, and evolutionary biology. Further, the sequencing of the human genome and many other primates (including neanderthal) seals the deal. Human neuroscience is even now dismantling belief itself.
What’s new about the New Atheists is that we now KNOW the basic facts of human history on this planet (Russell only had a few pieces of the story). The fact that there were no human beings here 250,000 years ago and now there are 6+ billion means one thing: all religion was manmade. One need not even crack the ancient books in search of an author and bibliography. It really is a QED moment.
“we must assume that the existing situation is the one he wants” -
that has so long been my quiet argument, I am not good at out-spokenness but perhaps that’s what is new about a-theism … I feel I won’t be derided for thinking that so much any more
a very good point Jimbo … perhaps one day we will even understand why so much of our brain isn’t used – or can anyone already tell me?
Not only do we know the basic facts about human history; we know much more about pre- and proto-human history. We have studied other primate communities and have a good behavioral understanding of how hierarchies, altruism, and reciprocity are expressed in these species. At this point the next step is still something of a “Just-so” story, but we can hypothesize about the ways in which early humans might have modeled these instincts in terms of folk psychology, language, and culture.
For example, I sometimes wonder if what Dennett terms “belief in belief” isn’t primarily a cultural imperative to justify authority, both personal and transcendent, by curtailing the chain of “why” questions. (This might explain why skepticism and atheism are so threatening to so many.)
Douglas Adams nailed the ineffability thing!
Priceless!
Eric et al.,
This blog is making my brain work better,
Thank you
That one’s easy. It’s false. Google ’10 per cent of brain’ for some reading.
Bingo Geoff. We are learning so much about early human/hominid history and enticing elements of early language and culture. I’ve always wanted to show a religious believer a beautiful painting of an auruchs from a cave in Lascaux, France. It’s 17,000 years old and WAY better than anything I could hope to paint in my lifetime.
17,000 years is 5-6 TIMES the span of history that today’s religious leaders contend was so religiously important. And I want to ask them–”What do you think humans were doing 10,000 years ago eons before your religion’s founding?” Evidently making beautiful art. They love to claim what I’ll call ‘authority by longevity’–the notion that since an idea or custom has lasted thousands of years, it must be true, relevant, or important. It’s a fallacy and it’s also not so very long ago.
Take the Venus statue, carved over 35,000 years ago from a wooly mammoth tusk (a creature no longer in existence). These peoples have been with us for a very long time. In fact, they ARE us in every respect. Religious history even back to the Sumerians and Egyptians is so recent.
Excuse my strident militant atheism (and possible redundancy), but I’d say the beginning of the development of an atheist politics is a big part of what’s “new” – the gradual influence of atheism in the formulation of public policy. The CoE have hit it on the head; religion is about politics and control, and they are starting to lose their foothold. And ANY faith will do them if it helps maintain religious control – that’s why almost exactly two years ago the archbishop was praising the idea of embracing sharia law in the UK as a tool to maintain “state loyalty”.
There’s a very long road ahead in the chiseling away of superstition in the formulation of our laws, but in a week which has seen this naked admission from a major church, and the UK prime minister proposing the end of public support for organisations that do not conform to what are effectively secular values – I feel optimistic.
Correction after looking-up the event – three years ago, not two.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7232661.stm
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