What is ”New Atheism”?

G’day everyone, Dave Deane here, and our question for the week is: What is ‘New Atheism’?

Well, these days you might change the question to ‘what was New Atheism’ because it is very much behind us today.

To answer this, let’s first back up and clarify what we mean by Atheism.

In a 2016 publication, The Oxford Dictionary of Atheism, atheism is defined as “A belief in the non-existence of a God or gods, or (more broadly) an absence of belief in their existence.” And that makes sense given the structure of the word: the English atheism comes from two Greek words – ‘a’ ‘theos’: in the Greek, ‘a’ is a negating preposition, it is negating or denying prefix for ‘theos’, which is Greek for God. So ‘a-theos’ means no God. Like a-typical which means non-typical; or a-byss (without bottom); a-narchy (without authority); a-na-esthetic (without sensation), and so on.  

Now, it’s important to distinguish atheism from other terms like ‘agnositicism’ and ‘skepticism.’

Agnosticism is the view that a person doesn’t know if God exists or doesn’t think it is possible to know if God exists.

Skepticism is the view that doubts there is a God.

But Atheism, in contrast to these, is much stronger in that it is an affirmation denying the existence of God.

So that’s atheism. But what, then, is ‘New Atheism’?

New Atheism isn’t a new way of negating God, at least in terms of reasons for denying His existence; New Atheism refers to more of a cultural movement spearheaded by certain outspoken atheists – such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, and others – who gained a lot of public attention not long after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

What made it ‘new’, again, wasn’t the substance of the arguments but the attitude, the tone, the scorn that the movement had for all things religious. This was in every sense new; I mean, in modern history there have bene very influential atheists, like Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Frederick Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and others; while they were very strong in their views, they didn’t take a low blow street brawling attitude to their atheism like the proponents of New Atheism.

We might contrast New with Old Atheism in the following way:

Now, when we keep in mind that New Atheism arose not long after 9/11, it is not difficult to see why it came out swinging like it did. When we have acts of terror done in the name of god, it is natural to be angry at the power and danger the idea of God can pull in society.

That’s why just five days after the Twin Towers fell – before the dust had even settled – Richard Dawkins published an article titled, “Religion’s Misguided Missiles” and a few days later he penned another article titled, “Time to Stand Up”, where he wrote: “It is time to stop pussyfooting around. Time to get angry. And not only with Islam… [atheists have] moderated our language for reasons of politeness… [but now we must] stand up and break this absurd taboo. My respect for the Abrahamic religions went up in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th.” And several years after that, Dawkins went on to write what some have dubbed ‘the bible of new atheism’ – his best seller, The God Delusion.

But there was more to New Atheism than just inflammatory rhetoric. On the one hand New Atheism tore down all things religious, but on the other it was replacing the void with all things scientific. God or the bible doesn’t have the answers – science does. Science is our saviour. This is summed in a famous statement by New Atheist Victor Stenger, who famously said: “science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings…”

But where is New Atheism now?

Well, as I mentioned from the outset: New Atheism as a cultural movement is pretty much dead. While it got a lot of public attention and cultural momentum for its brash tone and attitude, it lacked on pretty much every level in academic substance, and the science-only agenda that it was trying to pedal had been repudiated by philosophers in the middle of the 20^th century. So ironically, New Atheism’s pitfall was trying to promote reason in a most unreasonable way. That’s part of the problem, and there’s another whole side to consider in that society has just moved away from this rude, brash bully-like style of public debates. In fact, we’ve gone so far to the other extreme that we don’t even have debates anymore – we just cancel people. But that’s a question for another day! 

So in short: New Atheism was a one hit cultural wonder which dried up without answers to the questions it raised. Perhaps one reason for this is because it kicked off on the wrong foot when it ‘stood up’, to reference Dawkin’s original essay. Perhaps the significance of the suffering and loss of human life in the tragedy of 9/11 is best understood, not without God, but with God who has made life meaningful. Perhaps the human proclivity for life is a consequence of the way we have been made by God in the beginning.

As CS Lewis wrote: “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world…”