Reply #136: I rather dislike the term 'New Atheism'... [View All]

[LeftishBrit]

as indeed I tend to dislike the term New anything. Generally, it either means 'Not at all any more' as in 'New Labour'; or something very old that people are trying to present as a new feature of evil modern life as in 'The new antisemitism' (nothing new about antisemitism!)

New Atheism seems to mean 'ideological promotion of atheism'. This is not new. People have promoted atheism for a long time, as they have promoted any ideology for a long time. So long as it's confined to argument and debate it may be boring to those who are not interested, but it is part of living in a free society.

Some atheists are intolerant and bigoted about non-atheists, but this is also not new, nor is it different from any other ideology in this respect. I have seen as much bigotry and intolerance between those who support different methods of education, e.g. 'Synthetic phonics' vs 'Analytic phonics' vs 'Real books' as in any other context! And as regards intolerance toward religious people, far more comes from members of other religions, or even other sects of the same religion, than from atheists.


'as long as they don't try to make their beliefs the beliefs of a country, try to teach hare-brained ideas to children that cripple their fruitful brains, or harm anyone, I could give a rat's ass as to what someone believes.'

I fully agree! But I think that many so-called 'new Atheists' are reacting against those who *do* seek to make their beliefs the beliefs of a country, or who use their beliefs to impose right-wing ideas and values. I don't care what anyone believes, so long as they don't use it in the cause of harshness, violence, oppression, or to make my country/ other countries/ the world any more right-wing than they are already.

As I have said, people tend to use their religion in the cause of attitudes that they already have, good or bad, peace or war, left or right. A strongly Christian politician, for example, may be an Ian Paisley or a Bruce Kent; a Pat Robertson or a Martin Luther King; a Martin Ssempa or a Desmond Tutu. I have no problem with people of any religion at all, or none. I do have problems with the seemingly increasing number of people who are right-wing political anti-secularists; who hate atheists and secularists because they are seen as a threat to old-fashioned morality and established power and helping women and minority group members get too uppitty! I might have called these 'The New Religious Right', but then I re-read Canning's 'New Morality' published in 1798:

'Guard we but our own hearts; with constant view
To ancient morals, ancient manners true,
True to the manlier virtues, such as nerved
Our fathers' breasts and this proud Isle preserved
For many a rugged age: - and scorn the while,
Each philosophic atheist's specious guile -
The soft seductions, the refinements nice.
Of gay morality and easy vice...'


So, just as 'philosophic atheists' were around over 200 years ago, so were the not New, but very Old Religious Right. And it is the Right, in all its forms, to which I object!