If it does, then it is not even an useless term. It is just venom.
This is a little bizarre. How is the term 'venom'? New Atheism basically means 'the views of Sam Harris'. I'm genuinely confused as to why some people believe it is intrinsically pejorative or polemical.
Some people seem to have decided it is a terrible insult rather than just a name for a set of beliefs. Any word can be used as an insult if you want: wonderful, expert, intelligent can easily be used as insults if you so choose. I can only assume that you are confusing someone using it in this way with what the term actually means to reach your conclusion.
The term is generally considered to have gained popularity after this article from 2006:
It's a question you may prefer not to be asked. But I'm afraid I have no choice. We find ourselves, this very autumn, three and a half centuries after the intellectual martyrdom of Galileo, caught up in a struggle of ultimate importance, when each one of us must make a commitment. It is time to declare our position.
This is the challenge posed by the New Atheists. We are called upon, we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth; we are called out, we fence-sitters, and told to help exorcise this debilitating curse: the curse of faith.
The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.
Three writers have sounded this call to arms. They are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. A few months ago, I set out to talk with them. I wanted to find out what it would mean to enlist in the war against faith.
http://www.wired.com/2006/11/atheism/
As you can see, this is hardly 'venom' or some form of polemical screed, it is a sympathetic article that contains interviews with Harris, Dawkins and Dennett.
What level of oversensitivity is required to consider this 'venom' or 'some kind of conspiracy theory'?
It's just a journalistic shorthand.
But please, don't call him a "new atheist". He is so much more.
Of course anybody is more than the views they hold on one particular topic, but that doesn't stop you calling Mitt Romney a conservative.
Seeing as 'New Atheism' is pretty much synonymous with 'what Sam Harris thinks', it covers him just about as fully as possible as a single noun could.
the tl;dr:
1. New Atheist is not an insult, it is a purely neutral term.
2. Whilst the term might be imperfectly crafted and thus disliked, it conveys a meaning which is intelligible to many people.
