Was the New Atheism Movement a Failed Crisis Cult

[steeltoes]

I am not talking about atheism.

I am talking about this:

New Atheism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is a distinction.

Call it what you want, but like I said, there is nothing new about a few atheists touring the lecture circuit for money and fame. The distinction is in your mind.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

Please clarify then how Harris' stance on female genital mutilation comes from his atheism.

And here's a video where Harris most precisely outlines his views on ethics:
[youtube]Hj9oB4zpHww[/youtube]

You'll see that he references science, rather than atheism generally, for ethical stances and ethical views. For example he generally wouldn't say things like, "we shouldn't mutilate the clitoris of young girls because we're atheists", but will instead refer to actual reasons relating to harm, irrationality, etc.

Like I said, it doesn't... Why do you assume I think it does?

Why?

And what form of discrimination are you talking about here?

The discrimination of: "religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises." - New Atheism.

Harris believes that, for example in airport security lines, Arabic men and young and middle-aged men in general (which he explicitly included himself in), should be screened more often than various 5 year old girls and elderly Norwegian women. And his argument is that if we have a limited number of resources, that they should be mostly directed to high-risk groups, and that a combination of randomization and profiling is probably optimal for safety. Whether one disagrees or not, that's his view.

Yes. Although this is a whole different subject, I'm surprised that was his argument rather than statistics of which group of people have been related to past incidents.

Notice that Harris doesn't particularly believe that Jain women should be screened regularly. They're theists too. If here were merely making discriminatory statements based on his atheism, then he should be in favor of screening all theists, right? But that's not his position, because instead what he's basing his airport security views on (agreed with or not), are things like past actions and probabilities of attacks, rather than simply "theism" as a category.

Harris's case has nothing to do with being against theism, while New Atheism literally admits that religions should not be tolerated, and it is obvious that this belief is an intriguing factor for a majority of their ethics.

So for example if a Muslim says that homosexuals should be killed because they are immoral to Allah, and I suggest that there's no evidence that homosexuality is bad, that unless they can evidence Allah it's not relevant, quite a bit of evidence that homosexuality is a healthy variation in human sexuality and not a choice anyway, and that it would make a lot more sense to love and be kind to our homosexual neighbors instead, that would be an example of me making an argument specifically based on my atheism?

No. It would be making an argument specifically based on your atheism if you were to include the factor of opposition towards the whole Muslim religion as it'd be a religious-based response rather than a secularly based response.

Many theists would agree with me on those views of how to treat homosexuals, such as many Christians and some minority of Muslims including the two current Muslim US Congressmen. (One of them in particular is strongly in support of gay marriage and even sung about it on his guitar.) So clearly what me and them have in common is that we're using other references besides our views on various deities, on how to treat homosexuals, such as treating them equally and giving them respect, vs killing them, or something in between.


You're casting too broad of a net to suggest that because I or other atheists don't subscribe to highly specific worldviews of various theists, that we'd be basing our ethics on atheism, rather than on reason, evidence, practicality, etc which may include atheism simply because we don't factor gods highly into our account of how to behave. Many Christians, Muslims, and other religious people do specifically cite their scriptures and other religious things for their ethical views on things like how to treat homosexuals. Those are examples of actually blending ethics and religion. But until you see atheists saying basically, "because of atheism" we should treat homosexuals nicely or we should not cut female genitals or we should be vegetarians or whatever, then it's not a good comparison.

I'm not casting out any broad net. I'm not even casting out atheism, never had a problem with a simple, little theological point of view. If anything, I'm casting out New Atheism.

I'm not saying that atheists are saying they hold such and such political or ethical beliefs because of atheism; I'm saying New Atheists do, and that they openly admit that religions are not to be accepted. Their ethics are literally based on the belief that religions are not to be accepted, they are a response to religious beliefs, have something to do with religion, specifically the opposition of religion, and therefore have something to do with atheism (as religion cannot oppose itself). Thus concluding, taking atheism out, the New Atheist Movement's moral values would fall like Jenga.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I am not talking about atheism. I am talking about a movement. If I were to make a thread on the Nazi, would I be criticizing all Germans?

You are not getting it. Read the OP before you post please.

I am saying that opposition to religion and theism is not a new thing in the West.

 

[CynthiaCypher]

I am saying that opposition to religion and theism is not a new thing in the West.

And? Your point?

 

[Penumbra]

Do you agree or not with Harris's view that you outlined above? Just interested to know; not meaning to start a tangential debate.

I don't know. I don't have strong views on airport security.

There are those new scanners that basically show the person's whole naked body to the security personnel and so without a better option I have just shrugged and walked through them like basically like :danana:. But now they've tweaked them so that there is less visibility to the personnel.

There are also fully body pat downs. I've had that. I don't really like the hassle of putting all my stuff in a bin, taking my shoes off, and occasionally getting a pat down by a security person. But it doesn't really bother me. Out of all the things I think are ethically wrong with the world, airport security measures aren't at the top of my list. I don't really know the right balance of privacy and security to try to attain. I just try to be practical about it and when I fly I keep as few items on me as possible and wear footwear that can come on and off easily.

I guess I don't particularly think that 5 year old girls should be subject to a pat-down as often as men flying alone simply out of a sense of fairness or avoiding hurting people's feelings. I'm inclined to let security experts work out how they think it's best to choose who to pat down.

 

[IHaveTheGift]

I don't know. I don't have strong views on airport security.

There are those new scanners that basically show the person's whole naked body to the security personnel and so without a better option I have just shrugged and walked through them like basically like :danana:. But now they've tweaked them so that there is less visibility to the personnel.

There are also fully body pat downs. I've had that. I don't really like the hassle of putting all my stuff in a bin, taking my shoes off, and occasionally getting a pat down by a security person. But it doesn't really bother me. Out of all the things I think are ethically wrong with the world, airport security measures aren't at the top of my list. I don't really know the right balance of privacy and security to try to attain. I just try to be practical about it and when I fly I keep as few items on me as possible and wear footwear that can come on and off easily.

I guess I don't particularly think that 5 year old girls should be subject to a pat-down as often as men flying alone simply out of a sense of fairness or avoiding hurting people's feelings. I'm inclined to let security experts work out how they think it's best to choose who to pat down.

about pat downs, sadly, if another 9/11 happens in the future, security will still be blamed.

I bet though, if one would ask anyone that lost loved ones during that horrible day, they would gladly walk on the planes naked if only to have their loved ones back again.
I bet all those who burned alive as well as the one guy who was filmed trying to escape the tower by hanging out the window and eventually fell, if asked today, would give a rats *** about being patted down, if he had that choice to do over again and not fall to his death.

Off topic, there is a video on YT of a pageant model who claims she was violated because of a pat down, yet she has no problem walking around half naked for a plastic crown.
Goes to exclusive night clubs where she is also patted down before being allowed entry, yet has no issues with that either.

I rather walk on the plane buck naked and fully padded down, if it helps for a safer flight for everyone.
I also see no logic in playing victim to being subject to patdowns or have ones luggage searched, specially when flying in a plane isn't a right.
If a person wishes to not help out, then drive or walk.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

And? Your point?

You're acting like it's something new, when it isn't. "New Atheism" is a lot like how certain critics started calling some horror movies that came out in the 2000s "torture porn", as those were more extreme and graphic than earlier horror movies. But the fact remains that there's nothing new about it. Atheists and other irreligious people have been making those arguments for centuries. It's just that more people are paying attention now.

Get it?

 

[CynthiaCypher]

You're acting like it's something new, when it isn't. "New Atheism" is a lot like how certain critics started calling some horror movies that came out in the 2000s "torture porn", as those were more extreme and graphic than earlier horror movies. But the fact remains that there's nothing new about it. Atheists and other irreligious people have been making those arguments for centuries. It's just that more people are paying attention now.

Get it?

And you just made my argument. Yes there been arguments against theism since ancient Greece like there have been horror films since Edison but just like horror films became more graphic due to our technological advances and the need for novelty so with atheism, New Atheism is a cultural movement that grew out of the social phenomena of atheism in reaction to 9/11.

Capiche?

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

And you just made my argument. Yes there been arguments against theism since ancient Greece like there have been horror films since Edison but just like horror films became more graphic due to our technological advances and the need for novelty so with atheism, New Atheism is a cultural movement that grew out of the social phenomena of atheism in reaction to 9/11.

Capiche?

Wow, you just completely took my post to the opposite of what I was saying.

Here, let me spell it out for you:

"New Atheism" is a misnomer. There is nothing "new" about it. The only difference because then and now is that more people are listening due to our wide-reaching media. I was comparing it with what critics call "torture porn" because the misconception is that both of those things are new. Neither one of them is! Just like graphic exploitation horror films with extreme torture have been around for many decades, people have been making the same arguments that Harris, Dawkins and the like make for centuries.

If you misunderstand that, then you're hopeless.

 

[CynthiaCypher]

Wow, you just completely took my post to the opposite of what I was saying.

Here, let me spell it out for you:

"New Atheism" is a misnomer. There is nothing "new" about it. The only difference because then and now is that more people are listening due to our wide-reaching media. I was comparing it with what critics call "torture porn" because the misconception is that both of those things are new. Neither one of them is! Just like graphic exploitation horror films with extreme torture have been around for many decades, people have been making the same arguments that Harris, Dawkins and the like make for centuries.

If you misunderstand that, then you're hopeless.

So did any atheist react to 9/11 before 9/11?

 

[Penumbra]

Like I said, it doesn't... Why do you assume I think it does?

You're talking about atheism blending with morality and said that the lack of god is seen in their common ethics.

The discrimination of: "religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises." - New Atheism.

First of all, "New Atheism" is not an entity that can be quoted. That's apparently a quote by reporter Simon Hooper for CNN about "New Atheism".

Second of all, is that discrimination? Can an idea be discriminated against? And especially as actual public atheists have described their views of how they handle each religious idea differently, like Islam vs Jainism in Harris' case?

If I say, "[racism] should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises." does that mean I am discriminating?

At it's most basic, to "discriminate" means to observe a difference, like, "her sense of taste is so precise that she can discriminate between the tastes of different brands of ice cream". More specifically in a negative sense, it's common usage is to negatively mean to discriminate based on a category rather than individual merit. But if individual religious ideas are examined and critiqued, or if the methodology of believing and promoting things without decent evidence is examined and critiqued, what does that have to do with categorical discrimination?

Yes. Although this is a whole different subject, I'm surprised that was his argument rather than statistics of which group of people have been related to past incidents.

Harris's case has nothing to do with being against theism, while New Atheism literally admits that religions should not be tolerated, and it is obvious that this belief is an intriguing factor for a majority of their ethics.

What do you mean when you say that "New Atheism literally admits"? New Atheism is not some entity, so how can it admit to things?

Individual atheists can talk about things. New Atheism is not some Borg Collective that speaks for itself. If you want to talk about a quote from a popular atheist, please quote it and provide context on where that quote came from.

No. It would be making an argument specifically based on your atheism if you were to include the factor of opposition towards the whole Muslim religion as it'd be a religious-based response rather than a secularly based response.

What if I believe Islam is a harmful set of beliefs? I've read the Qur'an, I've discussed Islam with Muslims, and I believe that the set of beliefs that comprises Islam, are generally harmful and not true.

It would be irrational for someone to say something odd like, "Muslims shouldn't put homosexuals to death, because Islam is bad". That would be a bad argument, and there aren't any public atheists saying such things. Claims are generally separate. If they say Islam is generally harmful, it's because of various things attributed to Islam in text or in practice.

It's more like, "From my view the Qur'an tends to be a rather violent, tribalistic, and untrue book, the claims of Islam generally aren't supported by evidence or reason, most Islamic countries have institutionalized intolerance against homosexuals and sometimes against non-Muslims, based on reports of gender equality Islamic countries almost without exception rank terribly as a group, Islam does have a history of violence all the way back to it's founder and up to the modern day with death threats, terrorist attacks, polled support for terrorism by the Muslim public in many countries, and polled support for instituting Sharia law in places like Britain by British Muslims, and therefore I believe Islam as a whole is a rather harmful set of beliefs from its core text all the way up to its actual practice."

I'm not casting out any broad net. I'm not even casting out atheism, never had a problem with a simple, little theological point of view. If anything, I'm casting out New Atheism.

I think you're making statements about a distorted view of New Atheism and quoting it like it's the Borg Collective.

I'm not saying that atheists are saying they hold such and such political or ethical beliefs because of atheism; I'm saying New Atheists do, and that they openly admit that religions are not to be accepted. Their ethics are literally based on the belief that religions are not to be accepted, they are a response to religious beliefs, have something to do with religion, specifically the opposition of religion, and therefore have something to do with atheism (as religion cannot oppose itself). Thus concluding, taking atheism out, the New Atheist Movement's moral values would fall like Jenga.

Actually no.

You're setting up a straw man and attacking that, rather than saying anything about detailed positions of actual "New Atheists". That's a semantics game. They don't merely oppose all religion simply because it's religion, and therefore their moral values would fall apart like Jenga. All of Harris' statements on ethics link to science or reason or other things. And it's not like Dawkins or Harris spend time criticizing Jainism (quite the opposite, actually.)

I quoted this earlier in this thread but here it is again. Prominent "New Atheist" Sam Harris doesn't even like the word atheist, doesn't think it's relevant, and it didn't even show up in his End of Faith book.

While it is an honor to find myself continually assailed with Dan [Dennett], Richard [Dawkins], and Christopher [Hitchens] as though we were a single person with four heads, this whole notion of the “new atheists” or “militant atheists” has been used to keep our criticism of religion at arm’s length, and has allowed people to dismiss our arguments without meeting the burden of actually answering them. And while our books have gotten a fair amount of notice, I think this whole conversation about the conflict between faith and reason, and religion and science, has been, and will continue to be, successfully marginalized under the banner of atheism.

So, let me make my somewhat seditious proposal explicit: We should not call ourselves “atheists.” We should not call ourselves “secularists.” We should not call ourselves “humanists,” or “secular humanists,” or “naturalists,” or “skeptics,” or “anti-theists,” or “rationalists,” or “freethinkers,” or “brights.” We should not call ourselves anything. We should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.

Source.

Those people classified as New Atheists generally hold a position that bad ideas, unevidenced ideas, harmful ideas, and things like that, should be criticized. That can include some sorts of religious ideas and can include some other things like, say, astrology. The general field of religion has often been a fairly unique area that it's not socially acceptable to criticize, which they disagree with.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

So did any atheist react to 9/11 before 9/11?

Why are you asking stupid questions?

 

[IHaveTheGift]

It's pretty common knowledge of the "new" atheism that's been growing lately...
Specially the last few years...
Odd that this is even a debate.

About 653,000 results

About 68,200,000 results

Hard to believe there is 68 million results on the web and 653,000 results on youtube of something that is not happening, ehhh?

A little experiment

YT with "new atheism" in quotes:
About 16,800 results
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22new+atheism%22

Google with "new atheism" in quotes:
About 285,000 results
"new atheism"

Google with "new atheist" in quotes:
About 128,000 results
"new atheist"

 

[CynthiaCypher]

Why are you asking stupid questions?

Because that is the New Atheism, a reaction to crisis. The New Atheism wasn't just about criticizing religion, it was a reaction and social movement that developed out of response to a crisis.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Because that is the New Atheism, a reaction to crisis. The New Atheism wasn't just about criticizing religion, it was a reaction and social movement that developed out of response to a crisis.

So all the books about atheism and challenging religion that have come out since 2001 only exist because of 9/11?

Try harder.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

Because that is the New Atheism, a reaction to crisis. The New Atheism wasn't just about criticizing religion, it was a reaction and social movement that developed out of response to a crisis.

I think you are mistaking "new atheism" with "Anti-theism". There was a massive anti-Islamic problem in America after 9/11 but overall anti-theism seems to have grown far more in other countries in Europe than it has here in America. Those obviously were not caused by 9/11.

 

[CynthiaCypher]

So all the books about atheism and challenging religion that have come out since 2001 only exist because of 9/11?

Try harder.

The End of Faith and God is Not Great are both direct responses to the crisis. The authors said so. Even Dawkin's saved most of his ire for Islam but not like Hitchens and Harris, who are nothing but Neo-Con hatemongers. I am not talking about all atheistic criticisms of religion but those that were in response to the perceived crisis that was the result of 9/11.

 

[CynthiaCypher]

I think you are mistaking "new atheism" with "Anti-theism". There was a massive anti-Islamic problem in America after 9/11 but overall anti-theism seems to have grown far more in other countries in Europe than it has here in America. Those obviously were not caused by 9/11.

I am talking about specific works and the authors of those books and the social phenomena that is attributed to those works.

 

[Penumbra]

It's pretty common knowledge of the "new" atheism that's been growing lately...
Specially the last few years...
Odd that this is even a debate.

About 653,000 results

About 68,200,000 results

Hard to believe there is 68 million results on the web and 653,000 results on youtube of something that is not happening, ehhh?

I'm not sure what you mean by "not happening"? Who said that?

Are you aware that when you do a search for "new atheism" without quotes, it is not just looking for that exact phrase in articles, but is also looking for related phrases and partial phrases. So basically anything online that says "atheism" or "atheist" or "Sam Harris" or "The God Delusion" or "disbelief in gods" will come up in the search results. It's not a search engine from the mid-90's; it can predict what you actually want to find even if they don't use those words. And there will also be tons of spam and totally off topic things in any search result, though.

In fact, if you drop the "new" and simply search for "atheism", those result numbers drop from 653,000 and 68.2 million to 420,000 and 8.9 million, respectively. Obviously the word "atheism" can't appear less frequently on the internet than "new atheism", so the search results for "new atheism" without quotes are probably also picking up a lot of results associated with the word "new" in some way that don't have much to do with atheism.

So you say it's odd that this is even a debate with a facepalm, but your post here had more to do with an issue with the correct use of search engines rather than anything about so-called new atheism itself.

A little experiment

YT with "new atheism" in quotes:
About 16,800 results
https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...new+atheism%22

Google with "new atheism" in quotes:
About 285,000 results
"new atheism"

Google with "new atheist" in quotes:
About 128,000 results
"new atheist"

For any term, there are a ton of spam sites. So you have thousands of actual articles and then thousands of copies.

I get 1,930,000 results for "rudolph the red nosed reindeer" in quotes. So Rudolph is apparently several times more popular on the internet than the entirety of so-called new atheism. :rudolph:

Yes, the term "New Atheism" has been coined and widely used by some in the last decade or so, post 9/11, after The End of Faith came out. But that's a term applied mostly from the outside rather than something they self-identify with. Atheism is not new. Even outspoken atheism is not new. New Atheism is an externally applied label for this new public generation of people that have criticized religion rather directly and have for the first time received quite a bit of public attention.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

I am talking about specific works and the authors of those books and the social phenomena that is attributed to those works.

So you mean the rise of Anti-theism or militant atheism rather than atheism in general. This bit is very misleading.