I agree there are many atheists out there who are not doing this. But it seems to me that the new atheists like Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens, are really going out of their way to negate the value, contribution, of religion -- positing a world without religion, in an almost militant and aggressive style.
They wear Scarlet A's on their jackets, and blame most of society's ills on religion.
My question is this: why do some atheists (mostly new atheists), feel a need to do this.
I believe it is in part a consequence of the need for certainty...and the new Atheists can be as 'certain' of the non existence of God as the theist/fundamentalist is certain of existence.
It was from/in response to these
apparent certainties that the term 'Agnostic' was born-
Agnosticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thomas Henry Huxley, an English biologist, coined the word
agnostic in 1869.
Agnostic views are as old as
philosophical skepticism, but the terms agnostic and agnosticism were created by Huxley to sum up his thoughts on contemporary developments of metaphysics about the "unconditioned" (Hamilton) and the "unknowable" (
Herbert Spencer). It is important, therefore, to discover Huxley's own views on the matter. Though Huxley began to use the term "agnostic" in 1869, his opinions had taken shape some time before that date. In a letter of September 23, 1860, to Charles Kingsley, Huxley discussed his views extensively:
(snip)
I have never had the least sympathy with the
a priori reasons against
orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and
infidel school. Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the
Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel. I cannot see one shadow or tittle of evidence that the great unknown underlying the phenomenon of the universe stands to us in the relation of a Father [who] loves us and cares for us as Christianity asserts. So with regard to the other great Christian dogmas, immortality of soul and future state of rewards and punishments, what possible objection can Iwho am compelled perforce to believe in the immortality of what we call Matter and Force, and in a very unmistakable present state of rewards and punishments for our deedshave to these doctrines? Give me a scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump at them.
Of the origin of the name agnostic to describe this attitude, Huxley gave the following account:
[22]
When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis,"had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took.
................................................
In this "agnostic" uncerainty I stand with Huxley opposed to the "gnostic" certainty of both new fundamentalist atheist and old fundamentalist theist.