Prophets of the New Atheism
Posted by goodnessofgod2010 on February 28, 2010
Special to The Times
While the American cultural landscape includes many religions, it’s still fascinating to watch closely when we have the chance to observe a new faith being born. Consider, for example, a religious phenomenon that has been dubbed the “new atheism,” prominently represented by some bestselling books.
Can disbelief in God be considered “religious”? Sure. Just ask Zen Buddhists, who worship no deity. By religion, I mean any faith-based set of values that makes exclusive claims for its truth and explains the mysteries of the universe. Yes, atheism begins with a faith, namely that only material and physical (not spiritual) causes make the world run.
Two recent atheist gospels, by Richard Dawkins (“The God Delusion”) and Sam Harris (“Letter to a Christian Nation”), are the country’s top two bestsellers among “religion” books, according to Publishers Weekly. The books are outselling even a Christian megahit like Rick Warren’s “The Purpose-Driven Life.”
These leading lights contend that traditional religions are not only false, but dangerous and morally grotesque. The title of another hot atheist tract, by journalist Christopher Hitchens and forthcoming in May, says it all: “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”
Who are the new atheists? While only 5.2 percent of Americans identify themselves as atheists, according to 2006 Baylor University polling data, it’s a privileged demographic category, disproportionately college-educated and affluent. Atheists tend to live on the West Coast or East Coast. In its polling sample, the Baylor study found not one atheist African American. Meanwhile, those of us from Jewish backgrounds are represented well out of proportion to our national numbers, with 8.3 percent rejecting belief in God.
You can see how influential atheism has become by noting how the media and academia deal with traditional faith. A recent New York Times Magazine cover story detailed the big debate among academic psychologists: Did God-centered religion evolve in prehistoric man as a useful adaptation or as a surprising byproduct of other evolutionary processes? The possibility that it developed in response to a living God was not considered.
The new religion has a scientific appeal, with orthodox evolutionary theory recruited to provide a rationalistic “proof” for atheist teaching. For this reason, Oxford University biologist Dawkins devotes the “central argument of [his] book” to an attempted refutation of intelligent design (ID), the alternative to neo-Darwinian evolution that has been spearheaded by Seattle’s Discovery Institute (where I work).
Unfortunately, Dawkins does not grapple with the latest arguments for intelligent design as formulated by their chief proponents. Harris is similarly preoccupied by ID, which evidently provoked the new atheism’s present evangelistic push.
Darwinism, of course, is hardly new. The novelty here lies in the new faith’s missionary fervor. Dawkins writes explicitly about making “converts.”
Another novelty: In the 18th and 20th centuries, respectively, the atheist French and Russian revolutions sought political power above all else, with terrifyingly violent results. Luckily, far from being politicians, the new atheists seek religious influence for its own sake.
Despite these novel features, in other ways the new atheism will be familiar to historians who have studied the trajectory of upstart faiths. A favorite strategy of such groups has long been to attack cartoon versions of older rival religions.
Dawkins, for his part, mocks the God of the Hebrew Bible as “arguably the most unpleasant character in fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
Such a wild caricature will be unrecognizable to any believer (like me) in the God of Israel. But Dawkins and Harris seem unfamiliar with religious tradition as biblical monotheists know it from personal experience and deep study. Frankly, the success of the new atheist faith would be hard to imagine without today’s soaring levels of societal religious illiteracy.
Which might sound like the new religion has a promising future. I doubt it. For one thing, God gives objective definition to our ideas of right and wrong, crucial for civilization. Equally important, he provides meaning to life itself.
Certainly, you can have an ethical individual atheist, an instinctively caring, generous person who happens to disbelieve in God. But an atheist society could not survive. It would first live on the fumes of ancient moral traditions. In the end, racked by despair at life’s apparent meaninglessness, its members would return to more nourishing faiths.
That’s what we see happening now in formerly communist Russia, with its Christian and Jewish revivals. The evaporation of atheist communism is a lesson worth pondering, and a sobering one, for the new atheists.
Courtesy of nwsource.com at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003653502_klinghoffer06.html
Faith and the Law Note: The new atheists should tune into faith and the law for our weekly top five list. Here is a sample of some of the latest top five lists pertaining to atheists.
Top Five Reasons Atheist Billboards Don’t Work
1) Freethinkers? No comment. LOL. 
2) Hard time getting IRS to grant tax-exempt status as a charity organization.
3) Like trying to convince people that air does not exist. Arguments are so insane that they are comical.
4) Those all night “there is no God” telethons just aren’t raising the money.
5) In Sacramento alone $6400 a month for a billboard to convince people not to believe in God? Am I missing something?
asdarrotu said
The reason there are so few atheists is exactly because there are “such soaring levels of societal religious illiteracy”.
I could not assert that I was an atheist until I felt that I fully understood my position regarding belief. I suppose that university level study of religious philosophy could still be considered ‘illiterate’ though. Many people just don’t know enough about religion to know if they believe in God, or not. What is the percentage of people who say “no religion” or agnostic? Maybe the better educated are more able to clearly state their position. Why such a high proportion of atheist ethnic Jews – could it be that Jewish religious instruction involves more intelligent discussion rather than dogmatic acceptance?
“God gives objective definition to our ideas of right and wrong, crucial for civilization.”
Which God/ Which book? Can I follow any teaching about God? What about animal sacrifice? Wrong? When did it become wrong? Why did it change? Is the word of God immutable or not? Can I stone a blasphemer? Can I keep slaves,
“Receiving slavery as one of the conditions of society, the New Testament nowhere interferes with or contradicts the slave code of Moses..” Rabbi M.J. Raphall, circa 1861
Paul apparently saw no evil in the concept of one person owning another as a piece of property. , Paul met a runaway slave, Onesimus, he sent the slave back to his owner, appealing for his freedom in his Letter to Philemon, but not demanding it as a moral imperative, rather as a favour. He had every opportunity to discuss the immorality of slave-owning, but declined to do so.
Slavery – wrong or right?
Hey! Vilifying top 5 lists -slightly immature, somewhat insensitive and a barrier to informed discussion. Maybe not a moral imperative mentioned in the Bible – eh?