Comments on “New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed”
Excellent article that I recommend reading in its entirety. Of particular importance is this take-a-away:
“I think it [New Atheism] seamlessly merged into the modern social justice movement.
This probably comes as a surprise, seeing as how everyone else talks about how atheists are heavily affiliated with the modern anti-social justice movement. I think that’s the wrong takeaway. Sure, a lot of people who identify as atheists now are pretty critical of social justice. That’s because the only people remaining in the atheist movement are the people who didn’t participate in the mass transformation into social justice. It is no contradiction to say both “Most of the pagans you see around these days are really opposed to Christianity” and “What ever happened to all the pagans there used to be? They all became Christian.””
One thing the author is missing here is that after atheists have been deconverted from Christianity they ask “what now?” What they need is a new moral system. It wasn’t just a hapstance coincidence that atheists either became SJW’s or anti-SJW traditionalists; after ontology come ethics.
Furthermore, New Atheism is punching way above its weight because their ethics have travelled into religious circles. This is what they care about since on their worldview the world is pointless and hence ontology does not matter. Thus, if they can convince a religious person of gay rights, they hardly need to discuss Bible contradictions or arguments against God. They’d rather cast their net wide and gain allies.
Lastly, the current split in atheism has a long history. I wrote about this long ago in a personal conversation with a friend whom I’ve named Connor (see here: http://themuslimtheist.com/a-conversation-with-connor-part…/ )
“The Muslim Theist: also a new development that I’ve noticed is that new atheism has split into two factions; one faction are the leftist blue-haired cis-gendered post-modern feminists and one faction are the Richard Dawkins “For Science!” guys who are increasingly getting drawn into the manosphere. This represents a current split in philosophy in the West where certain philosophy departments lean towards realism and analytic philosophy and certain departments hold postmodern and continental views. So the war that’s been raging on in philosophy departments for generations in the West has come to the popular level”
