Moved from General Questions to Great Debate.
samclem, Moderator
New Atheists come standard with Catholitic converters.
Um… have you read The Antichrist? Or like, anything Nietzsche wrote?
Sorry if that sounded snarky. You poked one of my soft spots.
[QUOTE=Nietzsche]
..to the priestly class – decadence is no more than a means to an end. Men of this sort have a vital interest in making mankind sick, and in confusing the values of “good” and “bad,” “true” and “false” in a manner that is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Nietzsche]
What follows, then? That one had better put on gloves before reading the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it very advisable.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Nietzsche]
I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty — I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.
[/QUOTE]
Sure, he had a hard on for Christianity in particular, but his remarks on other religions weren’t exactly flattering either. And since we’re basically talking about atheism in the context of a Christian society, I’d say my point’s pretty well made. People have been hatin’ on believers since time immemorial. There’s nothing ‘‘new’’ about New Atheism.
Awesome takedown olivesmarch4th. I retract that point. (To answer your question, I occasionally skim Nietzsche for laughs.)
Does this make Nietzsche the patron saint of new atheists? ( 
)
I dunno, I think Deism is alive and kicking, if not necessarily in name. It’s easy to imagine a God who manages the afterlife, but is not much of an interventionist in this world. So a post-Deist might pray for strength and wisdom -which are internal spiritual traits- rather than worldly benefits. Plenty of Christians have no problem with science and don’t pay too much attention to supernatural miracles, as opposed to the daily kind.
That’s because religion in the US has been turned into a product for consumption and has been extensively used and abused by conservative politics to convert people into drones that hate and support exploitation of minorities.
I disagree. It’s because scientific knowledge and scientific habits of thought are fundamentally hostile to religion, so they are discouraged among the populace since for most believers, being a believer is the one and only principle they consider to be of value.
>>New atheists seem to make a religion of it.<<
While avoiding the semantic quibble, it certainly appears that the “gnus” are evangelical in their atheism. Or anti-theism. Or anti-faith/belief, or whatever we want to call the “movement.”
I’m curious about the potential effect, if any, that a successful, increasingly aggressive campaign by the gnus might have on our (American) Establishment Clause jurisprudence.
With the “old atheists” (“absence of belief in a god, no more no less;” apatheists, more accurately) it was easy for courts to drive towards secularism, or godlessness, as a goal in deciding religious issues. “Strict neutrality” left godlessness as a logical, safe refuge, sometimes achieveable.
Will this change with evangelical atheism? Are they going to become players in the religious battles? In the past the courts have identified atheism as a religion, for some limited purposes; but they sorta had their fingers crossed. Would a successful gnu recruitment campagin become a consideration in the judgements of our courts, and change the legal landscape? And given the utter chaos and incoherence that best describes the state of our “religion” jurisprudence, what might possible changes look like?
“Gnu”?
“Recruitment campaign”?
And when did the courts identify atheism as a religion? Cite?
“Gnu” was introduced in earlier posts in this discussion. It is a (mostly perjorative, I think) term increasingly used to identify these “new atheists:” The gurus, Dawkins, Hitchens, Stenger, et al., and their followers. Though a lot of those self-identifying as “new atheists” are adopting the term, on the internet, from what I can tell.
“Recruitment campaign” is my observation of some of what they’re saying. That is, by the very nature of their message, they’re engaged in persuading those beyond their circles of: 1) the illogic and pernicious nature of belief, faith, and sectarian religion, and, 2) of the virtues and superiority of the scientific rationalism and logic as a means of navigating the world. I might add that, again from what I read, there’s some activism directed towards other atheists and agnostics, again in some circles. PZ Myers is a prime example, of trying to get other nonbelievers away from their (cowardly in his view) accomodationism, and to recruit them into the fight.
Finally, some courts have actually likened “atheism” to “religion” in some sense (see, e.g., Kaufman v. McGaughtry , 419 F.3d 678: "We have already indicated that atheism may be considered, in this specialized sense, a religion. See Reed v. Great Lakes Cos., 330 F.3d 931, 934: “If we think of religion as taking a position on divinity, then atheism is indeed a form of religion.” ) The SCOTUS has recognized atheism as the functional equivalent of religion, again for First Amendment purposes, on several occasions. See, as one example, Wallace v. Jaffrey, 472 US 38.
This is legalistic hairsplitting of the worst form, and it only happened because the courts were too unimaginative (or too cowardly) to do the right thing any other way.
Needless to say, it only makes sense in the context of those court cases, and claiming it is generally the case is intellectually dishonest.
"This is legalistic hairsplitting of the worst form, …<<
Yes, courts have been known to do that.
>>…and it only happened because the courts were too unimaginative (or too cowardly) to do the right thing any other way.<<
Hmm. You’re perhaps right about lack of imagination, or even cowardice, but I’m afraid it’s not so self-evident what “doing the right thing” looks like. In fact, that’s sorta the issue that’s of interest: What is “the right thing,” and how best to get there.
>>Needless to say, it only makes sense in the context of those court cases, …<<
Yes, that’s why my attribution was to “courts,” and “the limited sense” qualifier referred to that court-stuff that courts do. As my shorthand apparently was ineffective, I subsequently further qualified my question, which asked about the Establishment Clause, to “First Amendment purposes.”
>>and claiming it is generally the case is intellectually dishonest.<<
If not dishonest, it certainly would be dumb. Were someone to make such a claim, that is. I don’t think we’ve seen it here, yet.
Given the growing prominence of this so-called “new atheist” activism (reading about the controversy, you can find a variety of labels pinned, from “ideology” to “world view” to “belief system”), questions are being raised as to how, if at all, this is going to affect what to some seems a “revisitation” of Establishment Clause principles and doctrines. The SCOTUS is pretty clearly struggling with it, as they have since 1947 when they “incorporated” the Establishment Clause. I don’t pretend to know, but I find the various arguments being made interesting.
In this case, the right thing is to use the Establishment Clause against not only all specific religions equally (what you get when the courts don’t know about atheism), but against religion itself to the extent that the government isn’t allowed to be religious in any form, even the vaguest, least-specific forms. It means that the government has to show atheists the same consideration it shows Baptists and Hindus and the Satanists in the Temple of Set. If the courts inventing the fiction that atheism is a ‘religion’ is the only way to accomplish that, it’s a little disappointing. It’s like the government desegregating the military by declaring that all members of the Armed Forces are Caucasian in the eyes of the law.
I think the goal you state is reasonable, and it’s more or less the goal that this legal doctrine has been shooting for. There are factual and historical problems, however, which make it not a straight shot. (But that’s another issue for another day, I suppose.)
I don’t think it’s as much as the courts “don’t know about atheism,” it’s that they are forced to pigeonhole it in such a way as to make it fit into their “neutrality” scheme. Thus the questions that some are asking: If this sub-set of “new atheists” are promoting something more than the “absence of belief,” or “non-belief,” and are actively attacking even competing with religion, does this change the jurisprudential paradigm?
If you put yourself in a court’s shoes, given the legal framework you work within, the alternative to making non-belief the functional equivalent of relgion is to take it outside the Religion Clauses altogether. And that’s the concern of many, because that might be the direction today’s majority on the SCOTUS is heading.
They are not competing with religion. Where is the church and where do you send money?
The new atheists are just tired of having to suppress their opinions in public and at work. We have not been able to express ourselves with out risk to our jobs. The new atheists are book writers, blog writers and panel talkers, not church leaders. They just think an atheist should be able to express stance on religion without involving risk to his livelihood.
I agree. But just a couple of trips to Google, searching for variants of “criticism of new atheists” reveals that there are those who don’t. Your logic might be sound, but as we all know public perception is not a slave to, nor even wedded to logic in many instances. If nothing else, the “new atheists” seem to be successful in raising the ire of at least the spokesmen for the religious communities.
And it should be said that really what’s being proposed is more a “scientific naturalsim” epistemology, rather than an “atheist” one, if there is such a notion. But the media packaging of the debate, as “new atheism,” is what’s being perceived by the interested public.
As any poly sci or first year law student has drummed into them, the SCOTUS does not operate in a (political) vacuum. Public perceptions do matter. The SCOTUS is, in my opinion, trying to avoid this fray. Their recent standing opinions show that, I think. But given the huge majoritarian pressure the “religious” is capable of in this country, the question is for how long can they avoid it?
I don’t want to appear to be trying to hijack this thread and take it off-track, so I’ll shut up. But one of the “new and different” aspects of this “new atheism” is the increasing speculation amongst some First Amendment experts that the direction of the law in this regard was changing, and these new voices will hurry that change along. It is interesting to think about, at least for court watchers and predictors, and those interested in the role of religion and belief in our society.
Saying all this, the flurry of interest revealed on the internet might not in the least reflect what’s going on outside it, in real everyday America. My question might well be a mere squeak, drowned out in the noise of real life. Dunno, but it gives the legal eagles something to talk and worry about, I suppose.
This last bit of discussion mainly concerns legal issues in the US. Of course, to educated people outside the US, Scotus mean Duns Scotus…
But I digress.
I have tried in my earlier posts to focus on the actual issue - why atheism dare not speak its name. Why do atheists feel the need to defer to belief, when believers do not defer to atheism?
If there is such a real thing as New Atheism (and I am not sure it is a reality), it seems to imply the willingness to come out of the closet and say “There are no gods”. This openness is particularly important in the USA, where people feel they must pretend to be true believers. And this seems to apply heavily to most of their leaders and politicians.
In western Europe, there seems to be a greater acceptance of atheism. It is normal to ignore a politician’s private life, including his religiousness, unless he foolishly makes an issue of it. (Of course, there are serious exceptions, and there are sectarian politicians in areas like Northern Ireland.) However, most politicians would lose votes if they explicitly boasted about church-going.