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"New Atheism"
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Hitman Anders and the meaning of it all : a novel
\"A brilliant satirical novel set in modern Sweden, a story of idealism and fanaticism, gangsters and entrepreneurs, sensationalism and spirituality, that explores the values that matter in contemporary life.\" -- Provided by publisher.
Book
What the New Atheists (and, for That Matter, Creationists Too) Got Right
The reception of the so-called New Atheism in the 2000s in the intellectual community was harsh. Its main figures were accused of elaborating on a subject of which they were mostly ignorant. Criticism focused on the narrow way they described religion as a set of factual beliefs that compete with—and pale in the face of—modern science, instead of a life experience, an ethical orientation, an existential commitment, or a set of communal practices. In the spirit of S.J. Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria thesis, these critics contended that religion has little to do with factual assertions. This paper challenges this strict separation, arguing that many theistic traditions, such as Christianity, inherently make factual claims about the universe and history, intertwining their beliefs with cosmic realities. Following Ronald Dworkin’s posthumous distinction between the “science part” and the “value part” of religion, the paper underscores the philosophical legitimacy of religious factual claims, thus acknowledging the potential overlap between science and religion. In this sense, it argues that the New Atheists may have got wrong the meaning of religion in many people’s lives, but they got the “science part” right enough. In the same vein, it concludes that while creationists are most likely wrong in their account of the origin of life and biodiversity, their contestation in the factual domain cannot be discarded as a disfigurement of religion.
Journal Article
The “Spirit” of New Atheism and Religious Activism in the Post-9/11 God Debate
In this article I examine the contemporary discourses and debates that surround the sociology of spirituality, with especial attention to the term “spirituality”. To counter the widespread belief that this term lacks clarity and utility, I suggest reconsidering Max Weber’s use of the term “spirit,” as it refers to a recognisable ethic that results in specific behaviour, while still retaining its religious and spiritual connotations. Through focusing on two influential English figures in the post 9/11 God debate in the West, Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong, I provide a brief case study of how Weber’s understanding of “spirit” serves great utility in illuminating what drives the ideas, identity-making and behaviour of contemporary atheists and those defending religion. By utilising Weber’s “spirit,” rather than the term spirituality, I demonstrate that this enables us to dig deep into the social context and backgrounds of these two individuals, and to avoid taking their statements at face value – a common criticism of sociology of spirituality studies. I argue that the use of “spirit,” in terms of a recognisable ethic that results in specific behaviour, would benefit the sociology of spirituality. This is because it grounds the God debaters’ ideas and beliefs in a recognisable human experience that eludes reductive distinctions and disembodied abstractions.
Journal Article
Vyprávění mezi empatií a vraždou Ian McEwan a jeho román Pokání
While the human capacity of storytelling constitutes an important meta-textual motif in several of McEwan’s novels, Atonement (2001) is his prominent story about storytelling and its moral value. McEwan has at times suggested that narrative imagination can help us enter other people’s lives and thus forms a pre-condition for any contemporary morality. The article reads Atonement as an attempt to put this belief in narrativity to the test. Moreover, it addresses the role played by non-literary narratives in the self-understanding of individuals and groups. When asking how deeply narrative we are according to McEwan, the present article suggests that the key distinction the novel Atonement enables us to draw is not the one between the “narrativist” and “anti-narrativist” approach, but between two complementary experiences of time whose interplay makes our life unstable and prone to failures.
Journal Article
INTRODUCTION TO ESSAYS IN HONOR OF ALISTER McGRATH
This introduction gives a short biography of Alister McGrath, introduces the articles that are part of this special issue, and concludes with a few personal reflections on working with McGrath by the author.
Journal Article
THE TERRITORIES OF THINKING AND FEELING: RETHINKING RELIGION, SCIENCE, AND REASON WITH ALISTER McGRATH
As Alister McGrath has argued across a lifetime of work, we need to approach the binaries that have been handed down to us—personal/academic, emotional/intellectual, secular/religious—with a healthy skepticism toward the integrity of their boundaries, attending instead to the contact zones between them. This article connects McGrath's body of work to what I call “cogency theory,” an approach that rejects the thinking/feeling binary itself. It begins with a survey of how McGrath understands rationality—not only as multiple, but as defined, in meaningful ways, by feeling. This is illustrated by reexamining McGrath's controversy with Richard Dawkins, analyzing their debate in terms of how the argument itself comes to feel. This new paradigm allows us to supersede petty antagonisms built into contemporary culture—like the presumed science–religion conflict—and refocus on overarching concerns like the climate crisis. The article concludes with a question about the extent to which beliefs and “worldviews” define how we—either as groups or individuals—can make or unmake ecological disaster.
Journal Article
Positivism and Reasonableness: Authoritarian Leanings in New Atheism’s Thinking
Various contemporary phenomena of social regression and authoritarianism are related to religious actors, movements, and beliefs. This text, however, seeks to follow this up with the political–theoretical argumentation that New Atheism has to be understood as a way of thinking which carries illiberal and authoritarian tendencies with it as well. In defence of this position, this article will first reconstruct, with reference to Habermas’s and Rawls’s theory of democracy, elements that must include personal beliefs in order to be considered congruent with democratic values. Subsequently, New Atheism’s conception of rational politics will be presented in order to show in which aspects it contradicts the demands of reasonable convictions. This concerns, in particular, the rejection of reasonable pluralism on the one hand and a non-positivistic view of human beings on the other. As a conclusion, this text supports the proposition that, when speaking of the connection between certain worldviews and today’s illiberalism, New Atheism must also be considered as an unreasonable comprehensive doctrine.
Journal Article
SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING BORROWED: THE ALT-RIGHT ON BUILDING CHRISTENDOM WITHOUT CHRIST
The rise of the Alt-Right has changed the face of the American and international far-right. Although an online movement, it has shown a growing influence on political discourse. One puzzling and understudied aspect of this movement is its relationship to religion. Stanchly anti-Muslim and heavily reliant on Christian identity and iconography, it is nevertheless made-up of a significant number of avowed atheists. A desire to protect Christendom from outside influences is combined with a focus on rationalism and anti-Christianity drawn from the writings of the new atheists. This paper will combine preliminary content analysis of online comments with an examination of prominent alt-right YouTube videos in order to understand the role of these competing ideological strands within the movement. YouTube has become a particularly fertile group for the Alt-Right, with many prominent commentators achieving popularity on the site. Crucially, these mediums allow for the candid observation of deliberation on religious and ideological issues between members of the Alt-Right. This methodology will allow for an understanding of how this group perceives and constructs its own relationship to religion, rather than simply how it presents itself. This paper will therefore seek to make a contribution which is both theoretical and methodological.
Journal Article
Religion and Its Public Critics
To have the right and possibility to criticize religions in public life is crucial for developing a healthy liberal democratic society. However, this criticism could take many different forms with respect to who offers the criticism, on what grounds it is based, its aim, what the target of the criticism is, and whom the critics try to convince. In this article, I develop a theoretical framework we can use to distinguish and assess different forms of criticism, focusing primarily on secular criticism of religion. Furthermore, I argue that in performing such a meta-study of criticism, it is vital that we reflect more carefully on how to develop plausible ethics of criticism. Finally, by comparing public criticism and academic criticism, I show that such ethics must be developed in a way that is sensitive to discourse.
Journal Article
Michel Onfray’s concept of new ethics
A new form of ethics suggested by the Francophone philosopher M. Onfray concerns, first of all, the resignation from faith in a transcendent God, which is substituted with an undefined sacrum (which is holy, highest) in immanence. This new form of ethics is, today, becoming a popular alternative to religious ethics. However, traditional, and new ethics should not be treated as separate sets, as they do not necessarily compete with each other. Systems of spiritual development related to specific denominations will always provide inspiration even for atheists’ ethics. The latter can indicate that, apart from religion, there is also a spirituality that can develop in a person. Nihilism is not the only alternative to religion, as sometimes the defenders of the old religious order try to show.
Journal Article