Richard Dawkins has lost: meet the new new atheists

[rug]

Secular humanism is recovering from its Dawkinsite phase – and beginning a more interesting conversation

Theo Hobson
13 April 2013

The atheist spring that began just over a decade ago is over, thank God. Richard Dawkins is now seen by many, even many non-believers, as a joke figure, shaking his fist at sky fairies. He’s the Mary Whitehouse of our day.

So what was all that about, then? We can see it a bit more clearly now. It was an outpouring of frustration at the fact that religion is maddeningly complicated and stubbornly irritating, even in largely secular Britain. This frustration had been building for decades: the secular intellectual is likely to feel somewhat bothered by religion, even if it is culturally weak. Oh, she finds it charming and interesting to a large extent, and loves a cosy carol service, but religion really ought to know its place. Instead it dares to accuse the secular world of being somehow -deficient.

The events of 9/11 were the main trigger for the explosion of this latent irritation. There was a desire to see Islamic terrorism as the symbolic synecdoche of all of religion. On one level this makes some sense: does not all religion place faith above reason? Isn’t this intrinsically dangerous? Don’t all religions jeopardise secular freedom, whether through holy wars or faith schools? On another level it is absurd: is the local vicar, struggling to build community and help smelly drunks stay alive, really a force for evil — even if she has some illiberal opinions? When such questions arise, a big bright ‘Complicated’ sign ought to flash in one’s brain. Instead, in the wake of 9/11, many otherwise thoughtful people opted for simplicity over complexity. They managed to convince themselves that religion is basically bad, and that the brave intellectual should talk against it. (This preference for seeming tough and clear over admitting difficult complexity is really cowardice, and believers are prone to it too.)

The success of five or six atheist authors, on both sides of the Atlantic, seemed to herald a strong new movement. It seemed that non-believers were tired of all the nuance surrounding religion, hungry for a tidy narrative that put them neatly in the right.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8885481/after-the-new-atheism/

[jollyreaper2112]

1. ha

Saying something is so is not the same thing as it being so.

[rug]

2. That's always the case, including posting on a website.

[Phillip McCleod]

3. yeh it doesn't work that way..

..sorry, 'Theo'.

[dimbear]

4. US readers aren't likely to know Mary Whitehouse, suffice it to say she is what we would call

a bluenose, and is perhaps the model on which Phyllis Schlafly was later constructed. Ought to be enough to judge the fairness of the author.

[rug]

8. Substutute religion for pornography and similarities emerge.

[Goblinmonger]

5. Two things stuck out to me

This seemed more like "New Age Atheism" the author is discussing, and

I call serious bullshit on this:

In previous generations, the atheist was keen to insist that non-believers can be just as moral as believers. These days, this is more or less taken for granted.

We fight that thought here on a progressive liberal website. You think it is gone from the general population? That author needs to get out from under the rock, or the ivory tower, or that high horse, or where ever it is they reside.

[skepticscott]

7. Sheesh, you could close your eyes

and stick your finger anywhere on that article and hit something to call bullshit on.

[rug]

9. You're read on DU that nonbelievers are less moral than believers?

[gcomeau]

12. Yes and so have you.

For example, what did you think the point of that "what is the source of morality" thread was where the OP tried to claim that morality that didn't come from some supreme source didn't exist?

[rug]

13. I didn't read that as stating that nonbelievers are less moral.

I think he was arguing that morality has an objective, independent basis and is not subjective.

He probably was intimating that source is divine but he was not saying believers act less moral.

And even at that, I don't think I've read anything here worse than that.

[gcomeau]

14. Just that they don't *have any basis* for morals?

Not so much better.

[rug]

15. Well, since he abandoned the thread, it's hard to know exactly what he was saying.

As it is, it looks like he was saying there is no subjective basis for morals. I'll go out on a limb and speculate he would have said the basis for morality (recognized or not) is something transcendent. I'll go further out on a limb and say that an objective basis for morality need not be divinity.

[Phillip McCleod]

18. i agree, to a point.

i think morality is a psychological phenomenon with an objective world.. hard reality.. as a resource. a field wide open for further research, and have read some of the complexity science lit on the topic. the santa fe institute is doing some ground breaking studies in what might be called social chaos theory..

[rug]

19. I never heard of the Santa Fe Institute.

Thanks, I think I'll poke around there.

[Phillip McCleod]

20. i'd love to get a fellowship there..

..been reading papers authored by their fellows for a decade now. cutting edge stuff, a lot of 'big data' enterprises in santa fe, oddly enough, and these folks are right in the middle of it.

you found the website i hope? should've included a link..

http://santafe.edu/

[rug]

21. Yes I did. I'm looking through their videos.

Look at this one:

"Information-Based Physics: An Intelligent Embedded Agent's Guide to the Universe"

http://www.santafe.edu/research/videos/play/?id=4c68902c-17e0-4e16-a1a5-78e12205fa8b

This may be over my head but it looks like it has some relevance to the belief/choice thread. "Information constrains belief". Fascinating stuff.

[Phillip McCleod]

22. i suspected there might be something relevant from SFI..

..i'm glad you're looking for it! i think i'll join you in the lit search.. but should we move this subthread back to 'source of morality'? it might be of interest to others and is unlikely to be found under a 'dawkins' post.

[rug]

23. I've bookmarked the video, it's over an hour long.

You or I can start a thread on it later. It looks like there's a lot more in it than simply belief as a choice. There's alway room for a new thread.

[patrice]

28. A more generally true truth is just as true no matter how anyone arrives at it, but the differences

between whatever leads anyone there may be the differences between more consistency and more coherence vs. less and yet even those traits wouldn't necessarily be the result of one route or the other (faith vs reason), because in either mode there is still the question of how one believes and/or how one reasons.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. Well, it is written from a British point of view

and the "only religious people have proper morals" canard hasn't had much traction here for some time. It's possible for major party leaders like Ed Miliband to say he doesn't believe in God without people thinking it will ruin his chances of election, for instance.

However, I don't think the article is worth reading. It seems to be the personal feelings of Hobson, rather than anything so vulgar as evidence. He makes a living writing articles and books about 'whither religion?', and seems to think that the monthly variations he reads in the comment pages of The Guardian and Spectator are a good barometer of long term trends in the country.

[dimbear]

17. This is shocking to me. Religion is his ricebowl and somehow he's against those who would do away

with it?

Can such things be?

[skepticscott]

6. Another imbecile who doesn't even know the difference

between atheism and anti-theism, and who has to lie every other sentence just to keep an argument going.

[rug]

10. Substitute antitheist then.

[skepticscott]

11. That won't make the author

any less of an imbecile. Either he understands what he's talking about or he doesn't.

Bet on the latter.

[edhopper]

24. My brother lives in the deep South

he went to see Dawkins talk a few months ago. Unfortunately he got to the hall only a half hour early and there were already over twice as many people in line as the hall could accommodate.
Not in the progressive Northeast, but in the Carolinas.
Dawkins irrelevant? A joke? I think not.

OTOH, I could name a dozen major religious figures, in America, in England and in Rome who are jokes.

[MellowDem]

25. Dawkins scares believers...

makes them uncomfortable and doubtful about their beliefs. Hence the hate.

[patrice]

29. Some think all belief should be doubtful, otherwise it isn't belief. nt

[djean111]

26. Bwah! What a load of broad-brushed, self-serving generalizations.

Twit. Watch out for all those straw men.

I am not the deficient one here.

[Buzz Clik]

27. The new Messiahs of atheism?

How odd.