I will agree with you there is plenty about Dennett worth admiring, I think of the four he was the most intellectually curious, his admiration of William James made his view of religion more open to pragmatism, and 'Breaking the Spell' is one of the most open minded of the New Atheist outputs of the time, in it he's less interested in dunking and more in trying to explain his view. Obviously I don't agree with plenty or likely most of his views, but both on religion and consciousness he can be maligned in a way that misses the mark.
Both were fundamentally books about explaining phenomena for his academic colleagues (with a secondary eye to the public only). Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens wrote their atheism books for the public.
Yes, an economist should have to debate with a fortune teller under certain conditions. I think a world where ~90% of all people who have ever lived, and 80% of current Americansm put more stock in fortune tellers than economists is such a world where the economist would have to debate the fortune teller. A world where, in addition to those prior facts, 70% of intellectually minded people who spend their life thinking about the dispute between economics and fortune telling come to the conclusion that fortune telling is superior to economics, would be a world that necessitates the economist debating the fortune teller.
If you didn't get the memo here, this is the world as it stands today on atheism vs theism. The 70% number comes from the 2020 Philpapers survey asking philosophers of religion whether they lean towards theism or atheism. Far more people are theists than not, and unless you want to be a totally dishonest person you should actually attempt to substantiate your position.
If only total crackpots believed in God, I probably would not say that atheists would be bound to debate their local Christian apologist. But despite all attempts to deny it, intellectually serious people have, do, and will continue to believe in God for reasons that are good enough to warrant debate.
And it is true, people believe in theism for a lot of stupid reasons. But this is a reflection of the fact that people are often really idiotic on a heck of a lot of topics, not just atheism vs theism. And if the perennial idiocy of man is your biggest issue, than devote your life to embryo selection, gene editing, opposing democracy, or some other cause that would, for better or worse, actually try to solve that problem, rather than just mocking people whose ideas you don't like.
And if you are not convinced by my various outlined arguments that you actually need to have good reasons for holding ideas (a shocking proposition, I know), then let me give you a taste of your own medicine.
If atheists all decide they should just mock people rather than engage in honest, high-level debates, why should all theists not just do the same thing? Why should theists not just mock, jeer, and scold atheists at every moment of friction? Why should theists not try to leverage government and the courts to make public life and education more theistic, as atheists have done to their position? Why should there not be an anti-intellectual cultural war between the two groups?
Because it does come down to just all out anti-intellectualism, I have a lot of credence that theism would win out over atheism. Let's ponder why:
Which side has never gotten a majority of the world's people to agree with them? It's not theism.
In ever virtually country in the world today, which side is having far less children? It's not theism.
Which side has been far, far more zealous throughout history, and still is even up to today in many regions? It's not atheism.
Despite all assertions to the contrary, you should have to substantiate your beliefs and engage in honest debate and dialogue if you are criticized by relatively reasonable people. This should not be a controversial statement.
> The 70% number comes from the 2020 Philpapers survey asking philosophers of religion whether they lean towards theism or atheism. Far more people are theists than not
This point is moot. Note: philosophers **of religion**.
According to the same survey, the total is 19% of all philosophers accept or lean towards theism. It doesn't even matter what percentage of philosophers are religious. The religious ones are more likely to study philosophy of religion.
I used the philosophers of religion point to say that, within the economist analogy, that they are the "intellectually minded people who spend their life thinking about the dispute between economics and fortune".
As I understand it, most academic philosophers outside of the philosophy of religion are not spending their entire professional lives analyzing questions related to theism and atheism. This is why I think the philosophers of religion are the more relevant authority on theism vs. atheism than philosophers as a whole.
There may be some unquantifiable amount of bias towards religious people going into the philosophy of religion. Despite this, the point is not moot because, to my knowledge, there is no better sample of scholars, or group of scholars as a whole, who analyze religion more rigorously and professionally than the philosophers or religion.
The general community of philosophers simply does not have the expertise that the philosophers of religion do, in my opinion.
It could be true that philosophers of religion are more informed on the topic than the average, but I don't think the correlation of the data % is statistically significant.
To frame this in a more philosophical language. I'm making a debunking argument here. The % of theists among philosophy of religion is always going to be high regardless of the total. The data just doesn't track truth (or quality of argument).
It's a good point imo. I'd trust the opinions of a biologist over a physicist when it comes matters concerning anatomy. Likewise, I'd trust a philosopher of religion over a philosopher of science or a philosopher of language when it comes to matters concerning the existence of God.
I greatly appreciated the writings of the New Atheists back in the day. I also much enjoyed when they did go out and publicly debate various theists of one flavor or another (Hitchens in particular really seemed to enjoy this).
That said, I wish they would've spent more time considering the "What fills the void?" problem. Most humans seem to have a religion-shaped hole in their brains - and when religion isn't there to fill it, these end up being filled with other sources of meaning, identity, and purpose. For some of us, this amounts to an enlightened reason and secular reverence for the reality of our existence, but for many others - what fills that void is far less noble... Many people end up filling that void with vapid nonsense, pseudoscientific mumbojumbo, or worse - they put "politics" into that void, which is the worst place for politics to sit in a brain.
I think there are two voids here: 1) meaning 2) community
I think the need for community can be easily satisfied without a religious community.
The need for meaning is harder to get around. Because many people crave the kind of certainty and steadiness that religion promises. Real life is chaotic and uncertain. But one can derive meaning from other life pursuits too, family, friends, work, hobbies, and the like.
"I think the need for community can be easily satisfied without a religious community." Perhaps it can, but that has yet to materialize. Religious people also tend to be more engaged in their communities. A 2016 Pew Research Center study found that highly religious Americans are more likely to volunteer and participate in community life, even after controlling for factors such as age, income, education, and marital status. Likewise, a 2011 Pew study found that people active in religious congregations are substantially more involved in secular civic organizations, including neighborhood groups, charities, and volunteer organizations. Together, these findings suggest that religious participation is associated with stronger civic engagement beyond the walls of religious institutions.
Pinker summarizes some results that counter the raw interpretation of these Pew studies and concludes "...it's not the faith, it's the fellowship" in his fairly recent debate with Ross Douthat.
Yeah, I mean it's hard to separate the two, in my opinion. Unlike monastic traditions, which have relatively few adherents, mainline religious traditions typically envision a God who calls people to seek him in community. There is no secular version of this. For one, I do not know my atheist and agnostic friends who meet every Friday to study, opine, and sing worship songs.
Agreed. Almost any civic engagement de-isolates, but the embedded expectations of religious organizations are not paralleled among the many secular options.
I've argued we are in Post New Atheism with public engagement with the historical scholarship, classicism, textual criticism, and New Testament studies (Dan McClellan, Paulogia, Esoterica, Bart E.) that undermine central beliefs as opposed to the NA focus on social interplay with religion, or philosophical matters that spill out into apologetics. PNA is much more interesting but New Atheism was a necessary step in cleansing the palate.
The following points are political and not genuinely philosophical (whatever that means): New atheism lost its appeal when its leaders pointed their spears against Islam at the same time the US policy was doing exactly the same (for different reasons) and when Dawkins declared himself a cultural Christian, feeling more comfortable among Christian folk. There is no such thing as atheism per se; if you ask me, there are different versions of materialism (physicalism, or realism). And I do not like their version of materialism for a handful of reasons. But I agree with Dennett that NA fulfilled its purpose, according to my observations with young people in Turkey, it did a great job.
I don’t mind polemical writing per se; some views are crazy and it’s fine to call them that. I’m also a moral anti-realist, physicalist, and atheist.
That said, I think the New Atheists were, for the most part, epistemically lazy and bad at arguing for their positions. Dawkins’s arguments for atheism in The God Delusion are often laughably dumb and unsound (as someone who agrees with the conclusion that theism is false). I think polemicism in particular treads a line of civility that, if it chooses to take that line, demands higher epistemic rigor — I think it’s bad to make shoddy and bad arguments with polemical rhetoric.
I also think there’s a line between calling views crazy (which is just a forceful expression of credences) and being unkind to other people for their views, and the New Atheists often crossed the latter line, which is bad. See Scott Alexander’s arguments here (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/).
I mean you advocate for basically bullying people out of their religious views, I don’t think it’s that they are taking any criticism of their view as a personal attack. Matter of fact, you don’t even offer any actual criticism of theism, you just compare it to homeopathy and repeatedly call it stupid
the New Atheists became boring because ‘we are all atheists now’—or at least ‘agnostic, atheist, of nothing inothing in particular’. That is the default for younger educated upper middle class people. So the New Atheists are now—'whatever. So what else is new'.
As far as a rise in religion 'now that the pressure is off as you put it, statistically that’s false. Overall, church membership continues to decline—and that includes conservative evangelicals too now, e.g. the southern Baptists.
In Academia where I reside religion has always been a minority view. Certainly not expected, mostly dismissed, occasionally ridiculed or opposed. And I can report that, as a Christian, I got plenty of flak. One of my colleagues referred to me as a member of the ‘forces of reaction’ even though I’m a lefty-liberal social democrat.
Personally I really, really enjoy religion. So I’d like there to be lots of religion around because it’s a source of pleasure. I just want there to be church buildings, liturgy, religious symbols in public places, all that infrastructure, and the stories, the literature, myths, and folk stories, all this rich cultural heritage--but that is being lost. And that means fewer sources of pleasure and a poorer, duller world.
The problem with New Atheists is their arguments sucked and once you show the self defeating nature of scientism, there’s really nothing left of substance to their arguments. I will say I appreciate your consistency and also taking down atheist moral realists because it’s such a stupid position so I actually think you’re quite fair
Well because strong scientism is self defeating because it’s a philosophical position not science and weak scientism doesn’t have enough force and is vulnerable to the fact that someone can say science itself presupposes normativity, structure, and metaphysics
"New atheism" was a marketing gimmick, there was never anything very new about it.
I realized recently that it took at least three writers with interesting and original things to say (Dennett. Dawkins, Hitchens) and turned them into tedious cranks. Dennett in particular could have taken his own ideas in much more interesting directions.
"The term "New Atheism" is widely characterized by many atheists and scholars as a pejorative label or slander coined by religious apologists to marginalize and discredit prominent critics of religion who emerged in the mid-2000s.
Origin and Intent: The phrase was popularized by journalist Gary Wolf in 2006 and adopted heavily by religious defenders to frame a new wave of outspoken atheism as a distinct, often arrogant, and fundamentally unoriginal movement.
Lack of Self-Identification: Most figures associated with the movement, such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett (collectively known as the "Four Horsemen"), did not self-identify as "New Atheists," viewing the term as an external, politically motivated attempt to delegitimize their arguments. "
Nice AI response. However, when you compare it with the SEP entry on New Atheism, you'll notice the lack of overt religious criticism.
In fact, soon after Wolf (who counted himself among "lax agnostics" and "noncommittal nonbelievers") coined the term, more outspoken atheists like John E. Mitchell (Wired, 2006) embraced the fact that atheists had finally stopped pussy-footing around religion and started getting their hands dirty in "destroying" it.
An article in Nature by Steven Kettel noted a "politically motivated campaign to discredit and deligitimise the views of leading atheist advocates", but contrasted it against New Atheism's own "expansive political activities" whose "hybrid mix of Enlightenment-based rationality with postmodern themes of identity and culture, signal a clear departure from unbelievers of years gone by" ('What's really new about New Atheism', Dec 2016).
It's this political motivation that lent itself to mockery, especialy once it became clear their scientific rationality and caricature of religion functioned as rhetorical vehicles to bring Huntingtonian civilisational thinking and patriarchal superiority to bear on the culture wars.
The project began losing its edge after Hitchens' death. Its audience - "educated, affluent, male, white politically liberal" (Cragun, 2015) - moved on to Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson and other culture warriors fighting on behalf of "Western civilisation".
"Whatever strawmanning and shallow criticisms they may have offered of some specific theologian’s argument, there are millions of religious people who believe in God for precisely those ‘strawman arguments."
Suppose there are people who believe in evolution simply because they trust what the scientists are saying without understanding what the actual evidence for evolution is supposed to be. Education is needed for these people.
Similarly, better education of stronger arguments for God is needed. Such arguments can be found in atheistic philosopher William Rowe's book Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction.
Daniel Dennet: “I had no interest in canvassing arguments for the non-existence of God, or writing about the prospects for atheism – a term which will, I’m sure, eventually become as unnecessary as ‘round-earthism'".
"Standing on a stage with a theist to ‘seriously’ debate the existence of God, or writing a book that offers a ‘serious’ scholarly criticism of religion, is tantamount to wasting one’s time writing a scholarly treatise on why we should not believe in fairy tales, Santa Claus, unicorns, wild conspiracy theories, and other ridiculous notions."
Unlike nonbelievers of Santa Claus and unicorns, nonbelievers of God do not have a convergence of reasons to reject God's existence. For example, William Rowe disagrees with David Hume's and Bertrand Russell's criticisms of Samuel Clarke's cosmological argument for theism. Atheistic philosopher Paul Draper disagrees with atheistic J. L. Schellenberg's hiddenness argument for atheism.
why not mention that hitchens as well as dawkins (and pinker and the 'skeptics') effectively functioned as civilizational warfarists whose main reason for being platformed was to provide legitimation for the invasion-genocides by the western powers in the middle east / west-asia?
This is not very reasonable. Sone of the deepest thinkers and entire societies have taken theism, Supernatural phenomena and similar as reasonable, and made arguments for it, and discussed it. I don't think almost anyone actually believed in Santa Claus except children. Are you seriously going to say that Plato, much of Indian philosophy, Aristotle, basically dozens of philosophers who believe in theism, an afterlife or whatever are just obviously wrong and not even worth debating? Is this reasonable?
I dunno, Walter. Maybe stick to only writing specialized articles and books for other academics? I read Matt W.’s response to your defense of nihilism and, since you’ve welcomed mockery, I’ve gotta say there’s a stark contrast between the reasoned erudition of his essay and the ahistorical, adolescent mode of expression on evidence here.
I will agree with you there is plenty about Dennett worth admiring, I think of the four he was the most intellectually curious, his admiration of William James made his view of religion more open to pragmatism, and 'Breaking the Spell' is one of the most open minded of the New Atheist outputs of the time, in it he's less interested in dunking and more in trying to explain his view. Obviously I don't agree with plenty or likely most of his views, but both on religion and consciousness he can be maligned in a way that misses the mark.
Both were fundamentally books about explaining phenomena for his academic colleagues (with a secondary eye to the public only). Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens wrote their atheism books for the public.
Such a hilarious post . And you have the courage to call yourself an intellectual..🤣🤣
I’m about to put him on my cave wall.
Come learn how to spot these magicians.
Yes, an economist should have to debate with a fortune teller under certain conditions. I think a world where ~90% of all people who have ever lived, and 80% of current Americansm put more stock in fortune tellers than economists is such a world where the economist would have to debate the fortune teller. A world where, in addition to those prior facts, 70% of intellectually minded people who spend their life thinking about the dispute between economics and fortune telling come to the conclusion that fortune telling is superior to economics, would be a world that necessitates the economist debating the fortune teller.
If you didn't get the memo here, this is the world as it stands today on atheism vs theism. The 70% number comes from the 2020 Philpapers survey asking philosophers of religion whether they lean towards theism or atheism. Far more people are theists than not, and unless you want to be a totally dishonest person you should actually attempt to substantiate your position.
If only total crackpots believed in God, I probably would not say that atheists would be bound to debate their local Christian apologist. But despite all attempts to deny it, intellectually serious people have, do, and will continue to believe in God for reasons that are good enough to warrant debate.
And it is true, people believe in theism for a lot of stupid reasons. But this is a reflection of the fact that people are often really idiotic on a heck of a lot of topics, not just atheism vs theism. And if the perennial idiocy of man is your biggest issue, than devote your life to embryo selection, gene editing, opposing democracy, or some other cause that would, for better or worse, actually try to solve that problem, rather than just mocking people whose ideas you don't like.
And if you are not convinced by my various outlined arguments that you actually need to have good reasons for holding ideas (a shocking proposition, I know), then let me give you a taste of your own medicine.
If atheists all decide they should just mock people rather than engage in honest, high-level debates, why should all theists not just do the same thing? Why should theists not just mock, jeer, and scold atheists at every moment of friction? Why should theists not try to leverage government and the courts to make public life and education more theistic, as atheists have done to their position? Why should there not be an anti-intellectual cultural war between the two groups?
Because it does come down to just all out anti-intellectualism, I have a lot of credence that theism would win out over atheism. Let's ponder why:
Which side has never gotten a majority of the world's people to agree with them? It's not theism.
In ever virtually country in the world today, which side is having far less children? It's not theism.
Which side has been far, far more zealous throughout history, and still is even up to today in many regions? It's not atheism.
Despite all assertions to the contrary, you should have to substantiate your beliefs and engage in honest debate and dialogue if you are criticized by relatively reasonable people. This should not be a controversial statement.
> The 70% number comes from the 2020 Philpapers survey asking philosophers of religion whether they lean towards theism or atheism. Far more people are theists than not
This point is moot. Note: philosophers **of religion**.
According to the same survey, the total is 19% of all philosophers accept or lean towards theism. It doesn't even matter what percentage of philosophers are religious. The religious ones are more likely to study philosophy of religion.
I used the philosophers of religion point to say that, within the economist analogy, that they are the "intellectually minded people who spend their life thinking about the dispute between economics and fortune".
As I understand it, most academic philosophers outside of the philosophy of religion are not spending their entire professional lives analyzing questions related to theism and atheism. This is why I think the philosophers of religion are the more relevant authority on theism vs. atheism than philosophers as a whole.
There may be some unquantifiable amount of bias towards religious people going into the philosophy of religion. Despite this, the point is not moot because, to my knowledge, there is no better sample of scholars, or group of scholars as a whole, who analyze religion more rigorously and professionally than the philosophers or religion.
The general community of philosophers simply does not have the expertise that the philosophers of religion do, in my opinion.
It could be true that philosophers of religion are more informed on the topic than the average, but I don't think the correlation of the data % is statistically significant.
To frame this in a more philosophical language. I'm making a debunking argument here. The % of theists among philosophy of religion is always going to be high regardless of the total. The data just doesn't track truth (or quality of argument).
It's a good point imo. I'd trust the opinions of a biologist over a physicist when it comes matters concerning anatomy. Likewise, I'd trust a philosopher of religion over a philosopher of science or a philosopher of language when it comes to matters concerning the existence of God.
I greatly appreciated the writings of the New Atheists back in the day. I also much enjoyed when they did go out and publicly debate various theists of one flavor or another (Hitchens in particular really seemed to enjoy this).
That said, I wish they would've spent more time considering the "What fills the void?" problem. Most humans seem to have a religion-shaped hole in their brains - and when religion isn't there to fill it, these end up being filled with other sources of meaning, identity, and purpose. For some of us, this amounts to an enlightened reason and secular reverence for the reality of our existence, but for many others - what fills that void is far less noble... Many people end up filling that void with vapid nonsense, pseudoscientific mumbojumbo, or worse - they put "politics" into that void, which is the worst place for politics to sit in a brain.
I think there are two voids here: 1) meaning 2) community
I think the need for community can be easily satisfied without a religious community.
The need for meaning is harder to get around. Because many people crave the kind of certainty and steadiness that religion promises. Real life is chaotic and uncertain. But one can derive meaning from other life pursuits too, family, friends, work, hobbies, and the like.
"I think the need for community can be easily satisfied without a religious community." Perhaps it can, but that has yet to materialize. Religious people also tend to be more engaged in their communities. A 2016 Pew Research Center study found that highly religious Americans are more likely to volunteer and participate in community life, even after controlling for factors such as age, income, education, and marital status. Likewise, a 2011 Pew study found that people active in religious congregations are substantially more involved in secular civic organizations, including neighborhood groups, charities, and volunteer organizations. Together, these findings suggest that religious participation is associated with stronger civic engagement beyond the walls of religious institutions.
Pinker summarizes some results that counter the raw interpretation of these Pew studies and concludes "...it's not the faith, it's the fellowship" in his fairly recent debate with Ross Douthat.
https://youtu.be/3jWCLONu7DM?si=68GvQQ9ysf_mx3HH
Yeah, I mean it's hard to separate the two, in my opinion. Unlike monastic traditions, which have relatively few adherents, mainline religious traditions typically envision a God who calls people to seek him in community. There is no secular version of this. For one, I do not know my atheist and agnostic friends who meet every Friday to study, opine, and sing worship songs.
Agreed. Almost any civic engagement de-isolates, but the embedded expectations of religious organizations are not paralleled among the many secular options.
You're a clown
I've argued we are in Post New Atheism with public engagement with the historical scholarship, classicism, textual criticism, and New Testament studies (Dan McClellan, Paulogia, Esoterica, Bart E.) that undermine central beliefs as opposed to the NA focus on social interplay with religion, or philosophical matters that spill out into apologetics. PNA is much more interesting but New Atheism was a necessary step in cleansing the palate.
The following points are political and not genuinely philosophical (whatever that means): New atheism lost its appeal when its leaders pointed their spears against Islam at the same time the US policy was doing exactly the same (for different reasons) and when Dawkins declared himself a cultural Christian, feeling more comfortable among Christian folk. There is no such thing as atheism per se; if you ask me, there are different versions of materialism (physicalism, or realism). And I do not like their version of materialism for a handful of reasons. But I agree with Dennett that NA fulfilled its purpose, according to my observations with young people in Turkey, it did a great job.
I don’t mind polemical writing per se; some views are crazy and it’s fine to call them that. I’m also a moral anti-realist, physicalist, and atheist.
That said, I think the New Atheists were, for the most part, epistemically lazy and bad at arguing for their positions. Dawkins’s arguments for atheism in The God Delusion are often laughably dumb and unsound (as someone who agrees with the conclusion that theism is false). I think polemicism in particular treads a line of civility that, if it chooses to take that line, demands higher epistemic rigor — I think it’s bad to make shoddy and bad arguments with polemical rhetoric.
I also think there’s a line between calling views crazy (which is just a forceful expression of credences) and being unkind to other people for their views, and the New Atheists often crossed the latter line, which is bad. See Scott Alexander’s arguments here (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/).
No need to be unkind to people I agree, but the boundary is blurry and some people take any criticism of their view to be a personal attack
I mean you advocate for basically bullying people out of their religious views, I don’t think it’s that they are taking any criticism of their view as a personal attack. Matter of fact, you don’t even offer any actual criticism of theism, you just compare it to homeopathy and repeatedly call it stupid
This doesn’t respond to any of my issues with New Atheism.
Genuinely wondering, is Benthams Bulldog a Christian? I thought he was sympathetic to Christianity but hadnt made the jump yet.
Happy to correct! I thought he was.
He’s not a Christian
I believe he’s a theist but not a classical theist nor a Christian.
the New Atheists became boring because ‘we are all atheists now’—or at least ‘agnostic, atheist, of nothing inothing in particular’. That is the default for younger educated upper middle class people. So the New Atheists are now—'whatever. So what else is new'.
As far as a rise in religion 'now that the pressure is off as you put it, statistically that’s false. Overall, church membership continues to decline—and that includes conservative evangelicals too now, e.g. the southern Baptists.
In Academia where I reside religion has always been a minority view. Certainly not expected, mostly dismissed, occasionally ridiculed or opposed. And I can report that, as a Christian, I got plenty of flak. One of my colleagues referred to me as a member of the ‘forces of reaction’ even though I’m a lefty-liberal social democrat.
Personally I really, really enjoy religion. So I’d like there to be lots of religion around because it’s a source of pleasure. I just want there to be church buildings, liturgy, religious symbols in public places, all that infrastructure, and the stories, the literature, myths, and folk stories, all this rich cultural heritage--but that is being lost. And that means fewer sources of pleasure and a poorer, duller world.
The problem with New Atheists is their arguments sucked and once you show the self defeating nature of scientism, there’s really nothing left of substance to their arguments. I will say I appreciate your consistency and also taking down atheist moral realists because it’s such a stupid position so I actually think you’re quite fair
How is "scientism" self-defeating?
1. Scientism claims that every true statement must be verifiable through the scientific method.
2. The claim that “every true statement must be verifiable through the scientific method” cannot itself be verified through the scientific method.
3. Therefore, by its own standard, scientism cannot be accepted as true.
4. Thus, scientism is self-defeating.
Well because strong scientism is self defeating because it’s a philosophical position not science and weak scientism doesn’t have enough force and is vulnerable to the fact that someone can say science itself presupposes normativity, structure, and metaphysics
"New atheism" was a marketing gimmick, there was never anything very new about it.
I realized recently that it took at least three writers with interesting and original things to say (Dennett. Dawkins, Hitchens) and turned them into tedious cranks. Dennett in particular could have taken his own ideas in much more interesting directions.
New atheism.was a slander created by the religious to undermine their arguments.
And your source for this is...?
"The term "New Atheism" is widely characterized by many atheists and scholars as a pejorative label or slander coined by religious apologists to marginalize and discredit prominent critics of religion who emerged in the mid-2000s.
Origin and Intent: The phrase was popularized by journalist Gary Wolf in 2006 and adopted heavily by religious defenders to frame a new wave of outspoken atheism as a distinct, often arrogant, and fundamentally unoriginal movement.
Lack of Self-Identification: Most figures associated with the movement, such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett (collectively known as the "Four Horsemen"), did not self-identify as "New Atheists," viewing the term as an external, politically motivated attempt to delegitimize their arguments. "
Nice AI response. However, when you compare it with the SEP entry on New Atheism, you'll notice the lack of overt religious criticism.
In fact, soon after Wolf (who counted himself among "lax agnostics" and "noncommittal nonbelievers") coined the term, more outspoken atheists like John E. Mitchell (Wired, 2006) embraced the fact that atheists had finally stopped pussy-footing around religion and started getting their hands dirty in "destroying" it.
An article in Nature by Steven Kettel noted a "politically motivated campaign to discredit and deligitimise the views of leading atheist advocates", but contrasted it against New Atheism's own "expansive political activities" whose "hybrid mix of Enlightenment-based rationality with postmodern themes of identity and culture, signal a clear departure from unbelievers of years gone by" ('What's really new about New Atheism', Dec 2016).
It's this political motivation that lent itself to mockery, especialy once it became clear their scientific rationality and caricature of religion functioned as rhetorical vehicles to bring Huntingtonian civilisational thinking and patriarchal superiority to bear on the culture wars.
The project began losing its edge after Hitchens' death. Its audience - "educated, affluent, male, white politically liberal" (Cragun, 2015) - moved on to Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson and other culture warriors fighting on behalf of "Western civilisation".
Atheism was its means, not its end.
"Whatever strawmanning and shallow criticisms they may have offered of some specific theologian’s argument, there are millions of religious people who believe in God for precisely those ‘strawman arguments."
Suppose there are people who believe in evolution simply because they trust what the scientists are saying without understanding what the actual evidence for evolution is supposed to be. Education is needed for these people.
Similarly, better education of stronger arguments for God is needed. Such arguments can be found in atheistic philosopher William Rowe's book Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction.
Daniel Dennet: “I had no interest in canvassing arguments for the non-existence of God, or writing about the prospects for atheism – a term which will, I’m sure, eventually become as unnecessary as ‘round-earthism'".
Good thing atheistic philosopher Felipe Leon does have an interest of collecting many arguments for atheism. 250 arguments or so: https://exapologist.blogspot.com/2023/03/200-or-so-arguments-for-atheism.html
"Standing on a stage with a theist to ‘seriously’ debate the existence of God, or writing a book that offers a ‘serious’ scholarly criticism of religion, is tantamount to wasting one’s time writing a scholarly treatise on why we should not believe in fairy tales, Santa Claus, unicorns, wild conspiracy theories, and other ridiculous notions."
Unlike nonbelievers of Santa Claus and unicorns, nonbelievers of God do not have a convergence of reasons to reject God's existence. For example, William Rowe disagrees with David Hume's and Bertrand Russell's criticisms of Samuel Clarke's cosmological argument for theism. Atheistic philosopher Paul Draper disagrees with atheistic J. L. Schellenberg's hiddenness argument for atheism.
why not mention that hitchens as well as dawkins (and pinker and the 'skeptics') effectively functioned as civilizational warfarists whose main reason for being platformed was to provide legitimation for the invasion-genocides by the western powers in the middle east / west-asia?
This is not very reasonable. Sone of the deepest thinkers and entire societies have taken theism, Supernatural phenomena and similar as reasonable, and made arguments for it, and discussed it. I don't think almost anyone actually believed in Santa Claus except children. Are you seriously going to say that Plato, much of Indian philosophy, Aristotle, basically dozens of philosophers who believe in theism, an afterlife or whatever are just obviously wrong and not even worth debating? Is this reasonable?
I dunno, Walter. Maybe stick to only writing specialized articles and books for other academics? I read Matt W.’s response to your defense of nihilism and, since you’ve welcomed mockery, I’ve gotta say there’s a stark contrast between the reasoned erudition of his essay and the ahistorical, adolescent mode of expression on evidence here.