What's with "New" Atheism?

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As I clearly pointed out, religious people are insulted to have the failings of religion pointed out. Since religious people are so proud of their morality why aren't they the first to be disgusted by the historical facts of religious misbehavior. That they do not join fully in the outcry against this inhumanity is very significant indeed. As you have proven.

If you pay attention to his posts, he tends to try to paint people like us as being intellectually inferior. So if you look in a larger context, he kinda does deserve the comment I made.

You know, I really think that past atheists have been openly critical as well, even further, many past atheists faced more extreme criticism for their beliefs, which itself is a major factor outside of the movement altering how far it *could* go.

I'm sorry, but did you even read the list of "paleoatheists" I listed? Most of them were very anti-theistic. Not that faithatheists like you haven't been around, but pretending (in a reality denying, head in sand way) that Freud didn't consider religion an infatile delusion, Marx didn't consider it an opiate of the masses, Bertrand Russell didn't see it as harmful and untrue, pretty much makes you historically ignorant.

I think that "New Atheism" may be just a movement by the radical branch of atheism to motivate their weak brothers and sisters of "Old Atheism" to keep their faith in a world where their numbers are declining. Cheerleaders, as it were.

As far as I can tell, the ideas of both "Old Atheism" and "New Atheism" come from basically the same old recycled hype; the main difference being that the new atheists are conspicuously louder and more contentious than the old ones, with some exceptions of course.

What evidence, at all, do you have that the numbers of atheists worldwide are declining? From my understanding, the number of nonreligious is going up (although, to be fair, not all of them are atheists/agnostics/apatheists, as some non-organized religion but "spiritual" New Agers are also lumped in that category).

As for the relative soft-spokenness of "old atheism", I think that's largely a myth - many old atheists were just as loud as the "New" ones.

There are two factors which donate energy to the fall off of belief in religion.
One steady and inexorable one is the failure of religious belief to present perceptive evidence to substantiate what might be termed the magical element, the answer of prayers the believability of so-called miracles and the extraordinary contrasting success of science in producing all the technological successes which are the fountains of wealth, health, and well being and integration of the world through communication which have no roots whatsoever in religion. Religion has failed totally in producing this type of concrete benevolence.

The second factor is the alignment of formal religious structures with the power elite to control the general population to meekly accept deprivation and subjugation by the privileged few. It was this alignment which inspired the Russian communists and currently the Chinese government to actively persecute the religious. I doubt the Russian and Chinese leaders gave a damn about the silly superstitions religion endorses. It was all about power.

Another element is the direct sponsorship of cruelty and enforcement of ignorance which has been inherent in all religious movements. The unnecessary fear and suffering of adherents for spooky punishments by non-perceptive superbeings is of course quite psychotic. And the recent misbehavior of the Catholic Church in regard to its procedures towards pedophilic members must be taken into account. But the Muslims who regularly become violent over minor criticism of their religion has become also something that should be noted.

There is no doubt that much of this religious behavior deserves strong publication and criticism but it seems religions are quite able to dish it out and perversely unable to take it.

It really annoys me how people are socialized to "not offend the feelings of the religious". To quote Pat Condell (yes, I know he's a bit of a cranky, fear-mongering, demgagogic xenophobic imbecile when it comes to Muslim immigration, but he still has a valid point here) "What about my feelings of utter revulsion?!"

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjO4duhMRZk[/youtube]

^^^ And, for the record, while I disagree with Pat Condell on many, many policy issues (indeed, he seems to be getting more and more intellectually lazy and demagogic), I completely agree with this video's thesis.

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 02 Dec 2010, 12:40 am, edited 4 times in total.

I am proudly (conversationally) intolerant of religotry.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXg-yy-riEg[/youtube]

Inuyasha wrote:

Where did I claim to be tolerant? You don't seem to be particularly tolerant of atheism. And the gullibility, psychotic superstitions, and social malevolence that is apparent in religions certainly never appealed to my tendency for tolerance.

Some of my friends are atheist, just like I had a friend that was Muslim, none of them were up in my face about their religion or supposed lack of one and going out of their way to bash the religion I am in.

The static image for the video was a clip on Bad Religion. I love Bad Religion. Though, they're more agnostics than atheists. And their singer (Greg Graffin) holds a PhD*.



*So that's two bands I like where the singer holds a PhD. Descendents singer Milo Aukerman also holds a PhD.

When religious people openly acknowledge the misery and stupidity and violence that is open historical fact concerning religion and do something to stop it I might consider them worthy of some form of tolerance. But to merely state history and have it referred to as bashing is cowardly and disgusting and deserves to be despised. Perhaps your atheist friends are not particularly knowledgeable.

The reason you present it is to rub people's faces in it, to provoke a response. It is not about trying to learn from history with you, it is an attempt to smear people of a particular religion for your amusement. Has Christianity had its dark times sure, but so has Atheism (see: Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin, etc.) I didn't point those out until after people started their fantasy trip about Atheism being morally superior. Got news for you, it isn't.

It still does.

As does Atheism, see North Korea and mainland China.