I suppose it does.
Now all you need do is show it is actually a "neutral" term.
Clearly it is not.
Interestingly enough, the term has been used on this very forum by numerous theists as a slur.
Lots of things can be used as an insult, that doesn't mean they are intrinsically insulting or can only be used as an insult.
I posted the article generally considered to have popularised the term, which was written by an atheist and is not insulting.
Seeing as you could very easily use google to find countless examples of New Atheism being used in a neutral context, I'll just stick to peer reviewed journals that you might not have access to (if you do search them yourself).
Is this sufficient?
In recent years, a series of bestselling atheist manifestos by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens has thrust the topic of the rationality of religion into the public discourse. Christian moderates of an intellectual bent and even some agnostics and atheists have taken umbrage and lashed back. In this paper I defend the New Atheists against three common charges: that their critiques of religion commit basic logical fallacies (such as straw man, false dichotomy, or hasty generalization), that their own atheism is just as 'faith-based' as the religious beliefs they criticize, and that their expressed disrespect for religious belief is immoral.
An apology for the 'New Atheism'. Johnson, Andrew
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Feb2013, Vol. 73 Issue 1, p5-28. 24p.
In recent years, the so-called New Atheists have mounted a series of aggressive attacks upon religious belief.Though many who are sympathetic to atheism have seen the work of the ‘four-horseman’ as a much-needed curative, others have expressed worries.1 Among those in the latter category is Philip Kitcher.2 Though Kitcher thinks that the New Atheists (particularly Dawkins and Dennett) are eloquent champions of their cause, he fears that their message is undermined by its excessively broad target. By mounting an attack against religion tout court, they risk alienating a large swath of ‘religious’ people whose way of life is, to Kitcher’s mind, innocuous. Though Kitcher, too, thinks that the decline of religious belief is to be welcomed, he understands that human beings, at least in their current historical form, have deep-seated psychological and social needs that religion meets. Thus, if one wants to articulate a viable secular humanism, they must (for now, at least) patiently entertain certain non-threatening modes of religious existence, what Kitcher calls religious orientations.
Desiderata for a Viable Secular Humanism RYAN KEMP
Journal of Applied Philosophy,Vol. 30, No. 2, 2013 doi: 10.1111/japp.12015
This article has been written to engage with the phenomenon of New Atheism, here treated as a discourse (Foucault 1981). We assume that New Atheism constitutes a series of discrete strategies and styles of argument and refuta- tion that have proliferated across a range of media for talking about religion.1 Initially associated with a certain limited corpus of semi-academic and polemi- cal writings by Richard Dawkins (2006), Daniel Dennett (2007), Christopher Hitchens (2007), and Sam Harris (2005), there is already talk of a ‘New New Atheism’ (Beha 2012). In this article, when we use the term ‘New Atheist dis- course’, we will be referring exclusively to the initial texts by Dawkins, Den- nett, Hitchens, and Harris.
Forget Dawkins: Notes toward an Ethnography of Religious Belief and Doubt,
Authors: Tremlett, Paul-François; Shih, Fang-Long
Source: Social Analysis, Volume 59, Number 2, Summer 2015, pp. 81-96(16)
His position is further compared with contemporary expressions of ‘new atheism’. Despite some obvious similarities, Hume’s position is judged more nuanced both in terms of content and rhetorical strategy.
The Absence of God and Its Contextual Significance for Hume.
By: Fergusson, David. Journal of Scottish Philosophy. Mar2013, Vol. 11 Issue 1, p69-85.
The term “New Atheism” was coined in 2006 to refer to a clutch of works by writers such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris, characterized as much by the aggressiveness of their rhetoric as the substance of their ideas.1 Although given an enthusiastic welcome on its appearance, particularly in the United States, the passing of time has seen the emergence of more critical and negative attitudes toward the movement, particularly in relation to its philosophi- cal underpinnings.
Midwest Studies In Philosophy, XXXVII (2013)
Evidence, Theory, and Interpretation: The “New Atheism” and the Philosophy of Science
Alister E McGrath
