Crass atheism not New Atheism
You may have seen the above meme knocking about Facebook.
You get what it’s saying? That atheism has not been updated, but rather New Atheism is a stick to beat current atheists with, or, rather, is saying that atheism where it actively seeks to challenge religion is not new, or militant, or even evangelical, but just atheism as it always was.
But I disagree.
I understand that atheism, or rather its atheist proponents, have always sought to challenge the religious and their beliefs, but something does stick out about what had come to be described as “New Atheism” a while back, with Hitchens and Dawkins et al.
It wasn’t that in being atheist they were doing anything subtly different to other atheists older than them, but that their arguments were lazy, crass even.
With Dawkins and Daniel Dennett for example, there was the assertion that Darwinism itself could prove a challenge to religious belief. Forget for a moment that many religious people have been Darwinists – this argument doesn’t stand up either. But Darwinism if anything proved a challenge to the notion that a creator had made living species each from scratch. That’s it. Amazing, yes, but that’s all it did. It’s not a brain-buster to organise one’s own religiosity around this.
For the other “New atheists” Hitchens and Sam Harris, their critique laid focus on real-life problematic expressions of religion. In essence their’s was a look at how people act under certain circumstances and ideologies. As it was pointed out to them in many debates, critique of this sort is not the sole preserve of atheists, and as an atheist myself I accept this wholeheartedly.
That this critique could be purposefully conflated with a uniquely atheistic expression is a) to forget what atheism is (to be contrary to belief in God alone, not a positive expression of anything at all); b) to ignore the potential of this critique from others.
When going to the pains of critiquing the political and ideological expressions of the religious, we must remember all the time that these are specifically human expressions alone. That the religious may do them, FGM for example, does not tell you anything more about the religion, but expressly the individual.
But, any good humanist should accept that religiosity is a human characteristic as well.
Sigmund Freud, an atheist until his death, realised this in his old age.
The psychoanalyst held a particularly negative view of religion up until 1935 when an evident sea-change became apparent in his manner. In private correspondence Freud started to acknowledge the intellectual qualities of belief or acknowledgement in God on thought and enquiry (as, after all, the speculation of an absent property had immense benefits for abstract contemplation).
Freud’s understanding of the concept of God changed from illusion to promoting sapience. Rather than bogging one down with idle introspection, the concept permitted investigation. And there is nothing more human than investigation.
But, further, accepting the limits of our knowledge, of God and beyond, is the most crucial element of the human condition.
A characteristic of the so-called “New Atheists” was an inability to recognise this simple, but vital, point. That is why rather than New, I shall from now on call them the crass atheists.
…their arguments were lazy, crass even…
Indeed. The problem with “new atheists” has always been the content of their arguments more than the style in which they’re delivered. If I believed theistic and “paranormal” claims were as foolish and dangerous as they think I’d be loud and caustic too. But their confidence in the validity of naturalism, and the scientism that’s become such ideas’ companion, is at least somewhat misplaced, as recently evidenced by Dawkins’ insistence that Lawrence Krauss had solved the question “why is there something rather than nothing” by describing the formation of the universe from a quantum void – which was a bit like assuming that “because a builder came and put some bricks and mortar together” is a comprehensive answer to a child’s question of “why is there a house rather than no house”.
That the religious may do them, FGM for example, does not tell you anything more about the religion, but expressly the individual.
It needn’t tell you anything about the religion but the individual might have been inspired by the doctrine of the faith that they subscribe to. And if there’s a correlation between a pattern of behaviour by a group people and the religion they’re affiliated with it might not be unfair to put two and two together.
Agreed on both points.
Calling them militants or evangelicals never really answered the real question as to whether what they were saying was right or wrong. And whether the content was different. I say it is different to more considered approaches to atheism (which isn’t just a byword for accepting or liberally tolerating, it is good coherent critique and self-criticism),
On FGM, sure where that pattern is there how can we ignore it. And how can we ignore the desire to follow things that we read or hear from others. I wouldn’t want to say that we’re all making constantly rational decisions, but rather that it is a distinctly human characteristic to copy or follow order. This is social, probably more so than it is doctrinal.
The problem with religion is that its core principle – that of an infallible authority – can justify literally anything. It is this, rather than what’s in the specific texts, that can make good people do very bad things. The real problem is the unquestionable authority which says you must think or do something simply because it says somewhere that you must. I think that both Hitchens and Dawkins raise[d] this point regularly; and despite failings elsewhere in their arguments, this to me seems the key point.
This also allows for the obvious objection that atheists too can do bad things. If you examine the very worst historic crimes committed by atheists, you will almost always find they have their own other-worldly. unquestionable authority justifying things behind the scenes.
Religion necessitates infallible authority, that is the real problem – otherwise there is no reason to follow its diktats. Whether that authority is used to promote good or bad is almost besides the point.
Some of this type of critique will invariably be crude, I think, because the idea it opposes is crude and an outdated psychological comfort mechanism.
Well put, Two points I want to pick up on: atheists do bad things and the infallible authority.
Firstly, this is a major thing. Odiously, Dawkins goes to great lengths to show that Hitler and Stalin were religious. He has more luck with the former than the latter, but both are tricky.
Hitler had Catholic funders as he was preparing to war for Europe, so his rhetoric changed. But he at different times in his life expressed caution about religion. He might have been a pantheist at a push, during the late thirties, but around this time he definitely did exclaim a disbelief in God.
The only defense for the view of Stalin as a believer is that he believed in the religion of communism – and this is pretty much what Dawkins says.
I don’t see why we have to play these games – there’s good and bad in everyone, and I know how loose that sounds, but it’s true. It doesn’t take for religion to make someone bad, so perhaps we need to look elsewhere, i.e. some people can still be good people in spite of religion, or the attraction of a higher being can force people to be good. The same with bad qualities. In short, it might be how people behave generally which is at issue here.
As for an infallible authority, I can’t say for sure whether such a thing exists, and I don’t think anyone can say for sure. But I’m not sure I’d agree it necessitates its authority. To do so would mean that if there is a God then the fall was under his watch and he authorised it. This isn’t the same as the problem of evil where we say how could the holocaust have happened if God is good, rather it is the problem of whether God, if it exists, is self-defeating.
The same might be said of Jesus dying on the crucifix, or the forsaking of Job. If there is a God it’s more like a substitute teacher; it’s at the top, it could throw a punch if it wanted to, but it has little by way of authority, no matter how much some in the class fear it.
Just to pick up on your fifth paragraph (there’s good and bad in everyone), it’s not so much the good and bad that is the crux of the matter, but the idea of certainty. As Dawkins puts it, the proposition that you just *know* something to be true.
The problem with trying to pick and choose between the “good” and “bad” things the religious do is that very often the greatest cruelty is devised by those who are convinced that what they are doing is good.
As for Stalin, the point, I would argue, is that Stalinism calls, like devotional religion, for a person to jettison their scepticism. (As perhaps a relevant aside, it also calls for a war on human nature; as does religion in sexual matters).
If you abandon scepticism, doesn’t it become little more than a lottery as to which dogmatic ideology it is that will entrall you? And doesn’t religion offer an ideal, readymade scenery for that sort of mindset – i.e. an authority on whom you can project your political wish-list and render it unalterable (by the fact that nobody can question what your God thinks because he is in your mind, and yours only).
So Dawkins and Dennett “assert” that Darwinism challenges religion, yet Sigmund Freud “realised…a simple, vital point”? Darwinism does massively challenge young earth religiosity, its a terrible example!
The fact that you can pretty much believe anything you want and say its a religion doesn’t really enamour me to it, it sounds quite crass actually.
Also I think you’re individualism and reductionism with regard to female genital mutilation is terribly judeo-christian – read John Gray (again!) – you would be hard pressed to find many people engaged in those practices who would agree with you.
Again, with regard to New Athiests certainty about science and naturalism, its tribalism which is crass in itself, but it isn’t uniquely crass, certainly not enough to resort to name calling.
I don’t really recognise what in your first paragraph is my terrible example? Darwinism surely, at least, challenges young earth creationism, but that’s it. Like Stephen Jay Gould pointed out, science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria, i.e creationists are wrong to try and make a science out of their unprovable principle beliefs, and scientists are wrong to try and suggest, out of their given criteria – the natural world – that they can answer the widest and most unanswerable of all questions: what is the meaning of life and is there anything outside of what we can perceive and test?
To the individualism and reductionism, can we not tell a lot about someone by what they do? To say it’s all religion is far more reductionist than what I’ve said.
And as for it not being uniquely crass, this is true – but I’m saying that this is what marks Dawkins and Hitchens et al out from many other atheists. When discussing those big topics, do you ever actually whip out Darwin? I doubt it.
To me, the characteristics you attribute to “crass atheists” sound ironically close to the attitudes I see among the faithful:
‘But, further, accepting the limits of our knowledge, of God and beyond, is the most crucial element of the human condition.
A characteristic of the so-called “New Atheists” was an inability to recognise this simple, but vital, point. That is why rather than New, I shall from now on call them the crass atheists.’
I wouldn’t disagree with parts of what you say. Accepting the limits of our knowledge is indeed one of most the most crucial elements of the human condition. In the words of crass atheist geek Dara O’Brien ‘but science knows it doesn’t know everything – that’s why they still do science. That doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with any fairy story that takes your fancy’ (that’s more or less what he said, quoted from memory).
Compare and contrast with religion, which already claims to “know” what happened in all the gaps. Theistic religions claim to know that the universe was created by a being (who they also just know is eternal and uncreated), who has a special interest in, and detailed plan for, humanity, which they have taken it upon themselves to preach to the rest of the world, despite the practically non-existent evidence for this particular set of beliefs.
From where I’m standing they look like the ones without the humility to accept the limits of our knowledge. Then they’ve got the cheek to go around describing themselves as humble and their critics as arrogant, which sounds, to me at least, as crass as it is ironic.
It was your use of “assert” for something you disagree with and “realised” for something you agree with despite the assertion having greater empirical backing (screwing young earth creationism) than Freud becoming less irreligious in his old age. That is a cheap rhetorical trick.
I find the idea of confusing the acceptance that there are limits to knowledge with God ludicrous. I can’t think of anything more batshit insane than there being a God, I’m aware that puts me in something of a minority, but I don’t see why accepting limits to knowledge imply anything about God.
How do limits of knowledge impact on the question “what is the meaning of life and is there anything outside of what we can perceive and test?” I don’t know, but I find it odd the credence people give to things of such dodgy provenance.
You have put it well. I find the question of the meaning of life in itself is without meaning. What is the meaning of non-life, then? As a skeptic, one can observe that the purpose of life is to continue life because it cannot do other. Since the beginning, life occurs because some combination of matter constantly replicates the combination to an additional copy of itself. That is what it does, that is what it is and that is the consequence of the natural laws of the universe. No hidden meaning there.
I think it is my utter incredulity that makes me sound like a New Atheist. “People really believe that?!”
“As for an infallible authority, I can’t say for sure whether such a thing exists, and I don’t think anyone can say for sure.”
Ah, an example!
If I can’t be sure whether an infallible authority exists, I also can’t be sure vgneigv vnor neod.
Now those three last words are just random collections of letters which I don’t think mean anything, but I can’t be sure they aren’t significant because I can’t know everything.
The metaphysical precepts of pretty much all religions are so bonkers to me, so at odds with anything that makes sense to me I feel very comfortable dismissing them, just as I dismiss gnirg nvro vrn.
I didn’t consciously use that rhetorical trick, but I do have a bias in favour of Freud – for Freud is dead and can’t answer back.
On not knowing and vgneigv vnor neod (a Nordic God of course – not) that’s pretty much where I am – if we accept the limits of our knowledge then how can we believe in God. We can only so much as believe we are believing in God (which is quite close to one of the so-called “New Atheists’” positions).
But then my atheism, which is predicated on a knowledge lack and then a questioning of the knowledge of God proposition, is completely and utterly unscientific. I don’t need to appeal to any given scientific discourse to show that I don’t know – mine is a position of not-knowing, and of course the root of the word science is the Latin scientia for “knowledge”.
As in female ontology and Freud, my system is constituted by a lack!
I would stick to the philosophising, this is much better than you politics!
I second what Andrew King said but….
Religion has never been able to justify anything and probably has never wanted to. The majority of human beings the vast majority of the time do not want to go around being cruel to each other. It would take more than religious doctrine to change this circumstance. This brings me onto my main problem with the Hitchen’s brand of ‘militant’ atheism.
In my opinion they form ideas that fit into their overarching ideological view, so it is not objective or even scientific. The war on terror is justified because religion is something dangerous that needs to be controlled by the less religious section of the world community. Other factors, economic, geo-political etc are played down because these raise uncomfortable questions. There is a basic dishonesty at the heart of this atheism. Hitchens has no right of the claim to a scientific outlook, even he hung out with those that can.
I speak as an atheist, everything about my existence tells me that there is no supreme being. However, can I explain how anything exists at all? No and I firmly believe that question will always be beyond mankind. So atheism in the end comes down to some sort of faith. Because who is to say that all this was not some elaborate hoax created a few hundred years ago by some spotty nerds in another universe?
@Edgar
Does it matter how anything exists at all? I & everything exists and that’s that. We can rule out the Christian God as we know that the Biblical stories are just funny, made up things for 2,000 years ago (i.e. talking snakes, Noah’s ark, Adam & Eve, Zombie man God that I must eat flesh and drink blood from, only 10 things to do to get into heaven, all knowing God that allows freewill [contradiction]). I wouldn’t say that Athiesm has to be a “faith” initiative, just because science does not (and may never) have the answers you are looking for. Isn’t it enough to know that there is a scientific answer, but we may not be intelligent enough to ever find it.