New Atheism
Instead, they advocate the antitheist view that the various forms of theism should be criticised, countered, examined, and challenged by rational argument, especially when they exert strong influence on the broader society, such as in government, education, and politics.
[3][4] Major figures of New Atheism include Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett, collectively referred to as the "Four Horsemen" of the movement.
[9][12] The 2004 publication of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris, a bestseller in the United States, was joined over the next couple years by a series of popular best-sellers by atheist authors.
[16] Later Harris wrote several bestselling non-fiction books including The Moral Landscape, and Waking Up, along with two shorter works (initially published as e-books) Free Will and Lying.
[39][14] Somali-born Dutch-American writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a well-known critic of Islam[9] and was a central figure of New Atheism[6] until she announced her conversion to Christianity in November 2023.
[11] Hirsi Ali has been vocal in opposing Islamic ideology, especially concerning women, as exemplified by her books Infidel and The Caged Virgin.
For instance, they argue, as do deists and Progressive Christians, that the issue of Jesus' supposed parentage is a question of scientific inquiry, rather than "values" or "morals".
[61] Institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and Duke University have conducted empirical studies to try to identify whether there is evidence for the healing power of intercessory prayer.
[60] In a 1998 article published in Free Inquiry magazine,[60] and later in his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins expresses disagreement with the view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that science and religion are two non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA), each existing in a "domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution".
[70] That said, the demographic that supports New Atheism is a markedly homogeneous one; in America and the Anglo-sphere more generally, this cohort is "more likely to be younger, male and single, to have higher than average levels of income and education, to be less authoritarian, less dogmatic, less prejudiced, less conformist and more tolerant and open-minded on religious issues.
[71] For example, one of the primary aims is to further reduce the entanglement of church and state, which derives from the "belief that religion is antithetical to liberal values, such as freedom of expression and the separation of public from private life".
[72][75] Because New Atheism's proliferation is accredited partly to the 11 September attacks and the ubiquitous, visceral response, Richard Dawkins, among many in his cohort, believes that theism (in this case, Islam) jeopardizes political institutions and national security, and he warns of religion's potency in motivating "people to do terrible things" against international polities.
[a][78][79][80][81] Theologians Jeffrey Robbins and Christopher Rodkey take issue with what they regard as "the evangelical nature of the New Atheism, which assumes that it has a Good News to share, at all cost, for the ultimate future of humanity by the conversion of as many people as possible", and believe they have found similarities between New Atheism and evangelical Christianity and conclude that the all-consuming nature of both "encourages endless conflict without progress" between both extremities.
[83] Sociologist William Stahl said, "What is striking about the current debate is the frequency with which the New Atheists are portrayed as mirror images of religious fundamentalists.
He wrote:Atheism deserves better than the new atheists whose methodology consists of criticizing religion without understanding it, quoting texts without contexts, taking exceptions as the rule, confusing folk belief with reflective theology, abusing, mocking, ridiculing, caricaturing, and demonizing religious faith and holding it responsible for the great crimes against humanity.
I would actually go so far as to charge many of the leaders of the New Atheism movement (and, by implication, a good number of their followers) with anti-intellectualism, one mark of which is a lack of respect for the proper significance, value, and methods of another field of intellectual endeavor.
[92] Roger Scruton has extensively criticized New Atheism on various occasions, generally on the grounds that they do not consider the social effects and impacts of religion in enough detail.
[94] Edward Feser has critiqued the new atheists' responses to arguments for the existence of God:[95] It can safely be said that if you haven't both understood Aquinas and answered him – not to mention Anselm, Duns Scotus, Leibniz, Samuel Clarke, and so on, but let that pass – then you have hardly "made your case" against religion.
[98][99][100][101] Wade Jacoby and Hakan Yavuz assert that "a group of 'new atheists' such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens" have "invoked Samuel Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' theory to explain the current political contestation" and that this forms part of a trend toward "Islamophobia ... in the study of Muslim societies".
"[101] In 2019, Steven Poole of The Guardian claimed: "For some, New Atheism was never about God at all, but just a topical subgenre of the rightwing backlash against the supposedly suffocating atmosphere of 'political correctness'.
"[102] In an April 2021 interview, Natalie Wynn, a left-wing YouTuber who runs the channel ContraPoints, commented: "The alt-right, the manosphere, incels, even the so-called SJW Internet and LeftTube all have a genetic ancestor in New Atheism.
[104] Tom Flynn (1955–2021), editor of Free Inquiry, wrote that the only "new" thing about New Atheism was the wider publication of atheist material by big-name publishers, books that appeared on bestseller lists and were read by millions.
"[109] Following the conversion of writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali to Christianity in 2023, the columnist Sarah Jones wrote in New York magazine that the New Atheism movement was in "terminal decline".
