The New Atheism movement

[Sethomas]

I've seen a shit ton of coverage of this lately, so much that I'm more inclined to think it's a sign from God not to be an atheist than to take them as being right. Most recently I watched the video Metal linked in the ATI board, but I figured I'd respond more in focus here.

I don't really care to talk about what proofs there are and how well they work or how badly they fail. For one thing, from a theological perspective it wouldn't make sense for a god to leave abounding evidence of his existence around for the fact that it would defeat the purpose of life as a test of virtue. At this point, we have reasonable explanations for every facet of why existence is the way it is, except for why we have existence in the first place. To say that the existential buck stops at God or at the big bang, neither one is more intrinsically rational in and of themselves.

Obviously, personal conviction is and should be the biggest factor in one's faith in God or lack thereof. I think the biggest problem that the New Atheists movement fails to consider is that some people are perfectly justified in believing in God just from statistics. Like, if someone wins the lottery right when they need it, to them personally they are likely to find divine order that the millions who didn't won't find. It's a given that one person in a million or whatever will win, but for that person it's a one in a million to be him. Does this provide objective proof? No, absolutely not. But it falls to the realm of rational personal conviction.

Another thing that really annoys me is that the new atheist movement has a total condescending attitude toward inter-religious dialog. There's no credit they can possibly give to rational theists who hold rational views and use them in a rational manner, because to do so would threaten their paradigm. As such, the only language they are capable of using is hyperbole. Religion is de facto synonymous with racism, fanaticism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, anything else that's bad. In his most recent book, it was famously pointed out that Richard Dawkins consults no scholastic authority whatsoever from the theological camp. No academic journals from theological sources. At all. He has publicly stated that theology is a non-subject. Seriously, how can he talk about something when he has no idea what it really is? Isn't that a little, umm, propaganda-ish?

The main strategy they seem to use is to caricature a Christian as being all things bad, then suggesting that "If Jesus was homophobic then he obviously didn't exist". Seriously, how much sense does that make? Ironically, it's been quite the meme (a term Dawkins invented) to associate Jesus as the symbol of naivete, and thus an automatic L-O-L symbol. Really, is it a good idea to promote the idea that atheists love their neighbors, when they deny the existence of the person to whom we have ascribe the Beatitudes?

To take a totally naturalistic perspective on Christ, you would have to say that he was born of a non-virgin, he died and rotted in the ground somewhere, and nowhere in between did he raise the dead or walk on water. But, it's totally asinine to suppose that he didn't exist and that he held no lasting influence on the culture around him. In particular, The God Who Wasn't There uses patently wrong history (mostly in the introductory segment) to achieve its ends. Anyone who's surprised that Christ was ascribed an amalgamation of different mythological attributes is a moron--atheist, Christian, or otherwise.

The most annoying form of condescension I see employed is counterfactualism. It's very popular to suggest that if the Crusades or the Inquisition never happened, a perfectly secular world would have turned out better and the present would be prettier. Even on the faulty grounds that both the Crusades and the Inquisition were both mostly secular in operation, any supposition that to remove religion from the picture would give a prettier portrait is totally speculative and vacuous. I personally believe that were there a drastic paradigm shift, society could operate to some extent lacking consensus in religious ideology. That is, the world wouldn't fall apart if we were suddenly atheist. But, it's totally moronic to suppose that an atheistic society would be in any way immune or even less susceptible to bigotry and warfare. I would have to take a long ordeal to explain why, but an atheistic society would by nature exacerbate social relations between classes. Maybe wars would happen less frequently, I doubt it, but when they did break out then in the absence of total long-standing plurality of nations there would be total chaos. Humanitarian concerns would be forgotten.

Plus, what exactly does the New Atheist movement wish to achieve? They could be as right as right can be in regards verisimilitude, but to think that they're going to make a lasting mark in their own lifetimes regarding the religious status quo is more far-fetched than saying that a divine figure once turned water into wine. Be they right or be they wrong, they're not going to do anything productive besides marginalize themselves. There are what I would consider to be worthwhile atheist activities, but these tend to run the line of Atheists for Jesus or Secular Humanism. Statistics show that Americans trust Muslims on average more than they do atheists, and they have only themselves to blame. If they want to make a difference, then they should work for a positive change rather than bitch. Really, the New Atheism movement is founded on bitching about how stupid they think the rest of the world is. They can hold their opinions all they want, and talk about them til their tongues fall off. But really, what besides bitching are they really accomplishing? In the end, all they're saying is "I'm going to oblivion when I die, and boy does that feel good." What moral or message or enticement is that, really? Even to put aside Pascal's Wager, why should cognizance of life's supposed futility be anything of which one should brag and prosylitize? If they really think that the fact that Jerry Falwall is an asshole affects an underlying metaphysical truth of theistic ontology, then they really have no claim to the term "bright".