Yesterday we had a video of Richard Dawkins and Kathleen Stock talking about gender activism, and today we have Dawkins writing about the intellectual and moral courage of atheists. This essay is needed because attacks on “New Atheism” continue, with many misguided people saying that New Atheism is dead because either its proponents were muddled or because they were sexual harassers.
Both claims are wrong. Yes, some New Atheists did engage in sexual harassment, but it certainly wasn’t characteristic of the “movement”, and none of the Four Horsemen who inspired Richard’s essay have been accused of it. But to reject New Atheism because of accusations against some of its proponents is fallacious: what’s important is the content of the movement.
And that content was not only unassailable, but based on evidence—or, in religion, the lack thereof. If there was one thing that distinguished the “New” Atheism from the “old” atheism of people like Bertrand Russell, Robert Ingersoll, and H. L. Mencken, was its scientific character. The arguments in the books of the “Four Horsemen”—Dan Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins—were infused with science, with repeated assertions that there was no evidence for religious claims, be they for the existence of gods or the ancillary tenets of faith. For once, faith was seen as a vice rather than a virtue. Dennett was largely a philosopher of science, Dawkins and Harris were trained as scientists, and Hitchens was science-friendly, constantly keeping up with science.
I would argue that New Atheism was a resounding success, and is no longer touted actively simply because it did its job and is no longer needed. (It is needed, though, about once per generation, just to acquaint the young with its arguments.) Religion is disappearing throughout the West—largely, I think, because it’s been displaced by science and rationality (see Steve Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now for supporting evidence). And religion, as sociologists tell us, is largely embraced by those who are needy, poor, or sick, with nobody but a god to turn to. Yet as the well-being of the world increases, so its need for religion decreases accordingly.
The rise in America and Europe of the “nones”—those people who lack religious affiliation—attests to the decline of faith. Now comprising 28% of Americans, the percentage of “nones” has risen from 16% in 2007. Yes, some “nones” do believe in a god, a higher power, or are spiritual, but the rejection of organized religion tells us something about Americans’ decreasing need for both faith and for religion as a way to commune with others. Northern Europe, and particularly Scandinavia, are losing faith as well: one of my favorite figures is that exactly 0.0% of Icelandic people under 25 believe that God created the world, while 94% believe that the world came about via the Big Bang.
I attribute the rise in atheism not just to the increase of well-being of people in the West, but also to the efforts of the New Atheists, who broadcast the arguments against God widely (all their books were best sellers) and erased much of the shame for publicly admitting you were a nonbeliever. Back in the early days of New Atheism, when I’d lecture in places like the American South, people would often come up to me and thank me for publicly arguing against religion, saying that they experienced strong familial and vocational pressures to adhere to the local faith. That is disappearing.
On September 30, 2007, the Four Horsemen sat down for a two-hour discussion, filmed by Josh Timonen, that you can watch in two parts on YouTube (here and here). This discussion was then turned into a 2019 book: The Four Horsemen: The Conversation that Sparked an Atheist Revolution. By that time Hitchens had died, but the three surviving Horsemen were asked to write an additional introductory essay for the book. The one below is Richard’s essay, which he’s now rewritten to be a standalone piece, and which he’s just published on his website. I hadn’t read it because I didn’t read the Horsemen book (I listened to the whole conversation), and so missed the essays.
If you did, too, you can see Richard’s piece for free by clicking on the link below:
The three best parts of the essay are its no-pulled-punches denigration of theology (a discipline that has no content, though “religious studies” does), its suggestion of ideas that weren’t part of the original New Atheism, and its theme: that atheists possess a kind of courage that believers don’t have. I’ll give a few quotes (indented) for each area.
The vacuity of theology vs the substance of science:
. . . it is characteristic of theologians that they just make stuff up. Make it up with liberal abandon and force it, with a presumed limitless authority, upon others, sometimes – at least in former times and still today in Islamic theocracies – on pain of torture and death.
. . In 1950, Pope Pius XII (unkindly known as ‘Hitler’s Pope’) promulgated the dogma that Jesus’ mother Mary, on her death, was bodily – i.e. not merely spiritually – lifted up into heaven. ‘Bodily’ means that if you’d looked in her grave, you’d have found it empty. The Pope’s reasoning had absolutely nothing to do with evidence. He cited 1 Corinthians 15:54: ‘then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory’. The saying makes no mention of Mary. There is not the smallest reason to suppose the author of the epistle had Mary in mind. We see again the typical theological trick of taking a text and ‘interpreting’ it in a way that just might have some vague, symbolic, hand-waving connection with something else. Presumably, too, like so many religious beliefs, Pius XII’s dogma was at least partly based on a feeling of what would be fitting for one so holy as Mary. But the Pope’s main motivation, according to Dr Kenneth Howell, director of the John Henry Cardinal Newman Institute of Catholic Thought, University of Illinois, came from a different meaning of what was fitting. The world of 1950 was recovering from the devastation of the Second World War and desperately needed the balm of a healing message. Howell quotes the Pope’s words, then gives his own interpretation:
Pius XII clearly expresses his hope that meditation on Mary’s assumption will lead the faithful to a greater awareness of our common dignity as the human family. . . . What would impel human beings to keep their eyes fixed on their supernatural end and to desire the salvation of their fellow human beings? Mary’s assumption was a reminder of, and impetus toward, greater respect for humanity because the Assumption cannot be separated from the rest of Mary’s earthly life.
It’s fascinating to see how the theological mind works: in particular, the lack of interest in – indeed, the contempt for – factual evidence.
. . . The biblical evidence for the existence of purgatory is, shall we say, ‘creative’, again employing the common theological trick of vague, hand-waving analogy. For example, the Encyclopedia notes that ‘God forgave the incredulity of Moses and Aaron, but as punishment kept them from the “land of promise”’. That banishment is viewed as a kind of metaphor for purgatory. More gruesomely, when David had Uriah the Hittite killed so that he could marry Uriah’s beautiful wife, the Lord forgave him – but didn’t let him off scot-free: God killed the child of the marriage (2 Samuel 12:13–14). Hard on the innocent child, you might think. But apparently a useful metaphor for the partial punishment that is purgatory, and one not overlooked by the Encyclopedia’s authors.
The section of the purgatory entry called ‘Proofs’ is interesting because it purports to use a form of logic. Here’s how the argument goes. If the dead went straight to heaven, there’d be no point in our praying for their souls. And we do pray for their souls, don’t we? Therefore it must follow that they don’t go straight to heaven. Therefore there must be purgatory. QED. Are professors of theology really paid to do this kind of thing?
Richard gives a long list of things that science knows, pretty much with certainty even though all scientific truth is considered provisional. This is in contrast with theology, which of course has told us NOTHING about what’s true in the real universe. (This is why theology has no meaningful content.) I’ll just give a paragraph of our scientific truths; note that he even quotes Gould, not Dawkins’s BFF. But that quote by Gould is quite eloquent:
Let us by all means pay lip service to that incantation, while muttering, in homage to Galileo’s muttered eppur si muove,the sensible words of Stephen Jay Gould:
In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
Facts in this sense include the following, and not one of them owes anything whatsoever to the many millions of hours devoted to theological ratiocination. The universe began between 13 billion and 14 billion years ago. The sun, and the planets orbiting it, including ours, condensed out of a rotating disk of gas, dust and debris about 4.5 billion years ago. The map of the world changes as the tens of millions of years go by. We know the approximate shape of the continents and where they were at any named time in geological history. And we can project ahead and draw the map of the world as it will change in the future. We know how different the constellations in the sky would have appeared to our ancestors and how they will appear to our descendants.
Matter in the universe is non-randomly distributed in discrete bodies, many of them rotating, each on its own axis, and many of them in elliptical orbit around other such bodies according to mathematical laws which enable us to predict, to the exact second, when notable events such as eclipses and transits will occur. These bodies – stars, planets, planetesimals, knobbly chunks of rock, etc. – are themselves clustered in galaxies, many billions of them, separated by distances orders of magnitude larger than the (already very large) spacing of (again, many billions of) stars within galaxies.
. . . Who does not feel a swelling of human pride when they hear about the LIGO instruments which, synchronously in Louisiana and Washington State, detected gravitation waves whose amplitude would be dwarfed by a single proton? This feat of measurement, with its profound significance for cosmology, is equivalent to measuring the distance from Earth to the star Proxima Centauri to an accuracy of one human hair’s breadth.
Novel additions to New Atheism (things that weren’t in the “Old” Atheism). I’ll give just one. Theologians and others argue about the claim below (some making the ridiculous argument that “God is simple”), but I think it’s a decisive blow against theistic and deistic religions:
But more important, even if we never understand all the steps, nothing can change the principle that, however improbable the entity you are trying to explain, postulating a creator god doesn’t help you, because the god would itself need exactly the same kind of explanation.’ However difficult it may be to explain the origin of simplicity, the spontaneous arising of complexity is, by definition, more improbable. And a creative intelligence capable of designing a universe would have to be supremely improbable and supremely in need of explanation in its own right. However improbable the naturalistic answer to the riddle of existence, the theistic alternative is even more so. But it needs a courageous leap of reason to accept the conclusion.
The courage of atheism
Why did I speak of intellectual courage? Because the human mind, including my own, rebels emotionally against the idea that something as complex as life, and the rest of the expanding universe, could have ‘just happened’. It takes intellectual courage to kick yourself out of your emotional incredulity and persuade yourself that there is no other rational choice. Emotion screams: ‘No, it’s too much to believe! You are trying to tell me the entire universe, including me and the trees and the Great Barrier Reef and the Andromeda Galaxy and a tardigrade’s finger, all came about by mindless atomic collisions, no supervisor, no architect? You cannot be serious. All this complexity and glory stemmed from Nothing and a random quantum fluctuation? Give me a break.’ Reason quietly and soberly replies: ‘Yes. Most of the steps in the chain are well understood, although until recently they weren’t. In the case of the biological steps, they’ve been understood since 1859.
And the moral courage:
[Atheism] requires moral courage, too. As an atheist, you abandon your imaginary friend, you forgo the comforting props of a celestial father figure to bail you out of trouble. You are going to die, and you’ll never see your dead loved ones again. There’s no holy book to tell you what to do, tell you what’s right or wrong. You are an intellectual adult. You must face up to life, to moral decisions. But there is dignity in that grown-up courage. You stand tall and face into the keen wind of reality. You have company: warm, human arms around you, and a legacy of culture which has built up not only scientific knowledge and the material comforts that applied science brings but also art, music, the rule of law, and civilized discourse on morals. Morality and standards for life can be built up by intelligent design – design by real, intelligent humans who actually exist. Atheists have the intellectual courage to accept reality for what it is: wonderfully and shockingly explicable. As an atheist, you have the moral courage to live to the full the only life you’re ever going to get: to fully inhabit reality, rejoice in it, and do your best finally to leave it better than you found it.
These are short excerpts from a longer essay, but it’s not all that long, and, for me at least, the essay bucked me up, reminding me of the personal and societal benefits of atheism. Yes, you can argue for “belief in belief”: Dan Dennett’s phrase denoting people who don’t need God but think that religion is necessary to hold society together as a kind of community Velcro. But as we can see from the well-run, moral, but atheistic countries of Europe, that claim is false. And as for the riposte that, well, Western humanism is a product of Christianity over the ages (viz. Ayaan Hirsi Ali), I find that Hail Mary argument insupportable.
Isn’t the simplest argument the most powerful?
All humans are born atheist.
Newborns cannot reason.
The only way a human child can come to believe in God is through indoctrination by a controlling parent or authority.
Forcing belief is child abuse.
Yes, that’s another one of the “new” New Atheist arguments that wasn’t really made by earlier atheists.
I don’t find this argument convincing. Humans seem to have a natural tendency to personify nature and to invent “nature gods”, such as when a young child draws a smiley face in the sun. Maybe they get this from stories told to them by adults, but I suspect that, in a thought experiment with no influence from adults, cohorts of kids would still develop primitive religion. Indeed, the ubiquity of religion in most societies supports this. The scientific and naturalistic way of thinking may well be less intuitive.
Edit to add: This may, of course, be different for different personalities; some of us may be intuitively atheistic, others intuitively religious.
@Coel
” … I suspect that, in a thought experiment with no influence from adults, cohorts of kids would still develop primitive religion”
They might become in awe of objective reality. That is wonderful. And I mean “wonder.”
They would not invent the Leviathan of the Theological Cultural Complex {TCC}, since no adults would confirm the construction of it, nor would a child invent the oppressive cultural control mechanism, complete with terror of burning in hellfire forever and unrelenting wars over God{s}.
The claim that millions of children would invent “religion” in the absence of indoctrination, threats, and the TCC is nihilistic.
Why then, over all history and cultures, has religion been a major social influence in just about every human society (the only counter-examples being very recent and being products of a modern process of scientific enlightenment)?
[Your argument seems akin to arguing that, left alone and without outside influence, a group of kids would naturally develop democracy; when all the precedents are that they would develop an alpha-male, tribal-leader system; with democracy being the “unnatural” system.]
Per the rules, I will not counter. You are evading the essence of my claim anyway. I’ll just restate it.
All children are born atheist and indoctrination is required to establish and sustain religion.
I agree. Religion rests on Supernaturalism, and supernaturalism draws its plausibility from multiple intuitions and sloppy shortcuts in the way we think, from a natural-born mind/body dualism to our self-reflective tendency to anthropomorphize anything more complicated than a rock. In his essay, Dawkins argues that atheism has the courage to go against the grain of human nature with its “emotional incredulity,” easy answers, and conceits.
The complex specifics of religion are taught. But the young child’s unprompted, simple question “Who made the moon?” indicates not a deep-seated knowledge of God, but a deep-seated comfort with the familiar. We think our way out of childhood.
It’s called brain washing.
I have been atheist since my teens when it seemed right as well as being scientific. In the last few years without any belief in miracles, virgin birth or resurrection or experience of the supernatural I find myself infused with doubt – my faith in atheism wavering but for the fine arguments of the new atheists. My Dutch friend who has no time for this silliness said recently “Simon, you are interested in these things because you are very old and soon you will be dead”. It sounds cruel but we both laughed uproariously and I felt restored in my unbelief. But the trouble is I keep lapsing. I think expecting another life is a bit much considering that I’ve lived so happily into my 80s. Death does not scare me – tested after a cancer diagnosis – for the moment remitted. I’m confident I’m not in denial on that score. Nonetheless the constant preaching of atheism is stirring the rebel in me. Why keep flogging a horse that’s so comprehensively dead? I’m moved by the struggles over the centuries of humans wavering between faith and doubt. I was accosted on an Easter Parade in our village in Greece two years ago by a communist friend who asked me, as Lin and I with many others carried candles lit from the church altar supposedly flown from Jerusalem to burn the little black candle flame crosses on our lintels. “Why are you getting mixed up in all this nonsense, Simon?” “Good question, Sevastion. If you look at what we’re celebrating – Passion week – it’s fecund with every known vice and virtue known to man. Betrayal by a closest of friends and frenzied denial by another, terror, loyalty, cruelty, vacillation, cowardice, agony, hope. Look at Pilate’s ‘washing his hands’ while ordering the execution of an innocent man. Look at an eager crowd clamouring with joy and praise at a man on a donkey baying for his crucificion a few days later. Imagine a mother having to watch her son die nailed above her. Consider a man being able to say, as nails are hammered into his hands and legs, “Forgive them they know not what they do” “OK OK I’ve got it.” Thanks for your defence of your belief and thanks to Dawkins et al who can look at the stupendous and mysterious beauty of the universe (micro-macro) at it reveals itself to our ever enquiring minds and wonder why on earth we still need God. But but …. isn’t science advanced as much by faith – we can’t see or touch the strings in string theory and quantum physics is as seriously weird as turning water into wine to improve a wedding celebration. I’m not making an argument, just sharing with some humour the wavering atheism of an old and fortunate man.
Why do you associate atheism with “doubt”? It seems to me “doubt” is just garbage strewn by believers. Believers say they believe in the supernatural. They don’t. They believe in the anti-natural, that is, they believe nature is unable to provide answers to the questions that vex us, and (even should we find those answers) we are unable to provide for ourselves without support from the invisible. The reality is that believers are the doubters.
I became an atheist in 1960 when I learned that Roman Catholics were forbidden to see the condemned Gregory Peck movie “On The Beach.” Of course I had to see the movie to find out why it was condemned. To my surprise it was a simple science fiction “after the bomb” movie with an anti-war message. But for daring to show people committing suicide, government passing out black pills of death (to instantly ward off an excruciating two-week long death by radiation poisoning), and the human race dying off with no return of Jesus, the movie earned the condemnation of the church. It was then that I realized that religion was about nothing but power. And in my seventy-five years of life I have yet to find anything about religion, or any deed by any believer, that would make me alter my view that religion is bunk. Funny how we all have different responses to similar events.
Hi Ed. Your forceful reflection brought a remark by Paul Tillich to mind “The opposite of faith is not doubt, the opposite of faith is certainty.” I’m struck by the certainty that you and so many outspoken atheists express – a confidence in atheism I once shared. Please don’t assume I’m a believer. I’m just not as sure as I once was. Far from being indoctrinated into faith I was by parenting, school and university and most of my peers, one who, from early youth, took atheism for granted, treated it as as a given and indeed a liberation. But some atheists can sound almost evangelical. What a turn up for the books.
At the risk of over-commenting, I’m reminded again of the difference between cisatheists (like Simon) and transatheists (like Ed).
This reply is in thanks for the post itself, Prof.s Dawkins and Coyne, as well as mss Bourdon and Baddeley: what the four of you have written heartens me greatly.
I think back to the ending of a television program called “Knowledge or Certainty,” a chapter in Jacob Bronowski’s ‘Ascent of Man’ series. Bronowski is standing somewhere in Auschwitz, mud and muck up to his knees. He has come there, he says to the camera, as a duty to the memory of friends and family who had been murdered in the Nazi genocide. Bronowski then quotes–of all people–Oliver Cromwell: ‘I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, please consider that you may be mistaken.’ And with these words he reaches into the mire and draws a dripping handful of it toward him.
Your use of “mss” is quite humorous, as was Mike’s use of “cisatheists” and “transatheists.”
Jacob Bronowski’s quotation from Oliver Cromwell prompts this reply.
Mention “religion” and most people think “God.” But religion is a human activity. It is what churchgoers do. Religions are in essence political parties interested in their own promotion. “God” is a red herring, a word pulled out of the hat by churchgoers to avoid discussion of their misdeeds. Court records are full of cases won by atheists against religious overreach. Overreach is the problem.
Many atheists who doubt their own atheism to do so over the red herring. But as soon as one says “God exists” every statement that follows is human politics. Why must God be the creator of the universe? Couldn’t He himself have been created ten thousand years after the Big Bang? And what if He’s a CEO? CEOs don’t work. They say “This is what I want. Make it happen.” Underlings then do the work. Couldn’t the universe have been created by Boffo the Bungling Angel? And why must God be all-knowing? Couldn’t He be an idiot-god like H. P. Lovecraft’s Azathoth? There are countless weird possibilities raised by the idea of God that never get mentioned. Is it mere coincidence that the few possibilities bandied about promote the power of local churches? Seen from this point of view, are accusations of “certainty” made against atheists, and self-doubt by atheists themselves, really appropriate?
By the way, Nazi Germany was overwhelmingly religious. The forced shutdown of freethinker groups in essence made atheism illegal.
I’ll bet you’d be a joy to share a bottle of wine with. I love your doubt and honesty. Glad the crud is in remission!
What a sweet and generous remark. Thank you, Debi. You’re right about the wine. I’m sure the joy would be shared.
Very good synopsis.
A simple idea but not trivial to build a case for it. I think atheism has brought so many other forgotten ideas and figures up into thought.
IMHO The Oxford Very Short Introduction series is a valuable resource for modern review of that history – for instance, Hume had interesting atheist writing, I was unaware. I actually just got their Atheism entry, and its a great time to pick it from the pile.
I thought Hume threw up his hands and gave himself (and his buddy Kant) a free pass to simply assert God.
No?
I think you’re right, as I recall he might of came down at least as a deist, but all I am suggesting is readers here will find Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion particularly interesting – at least because it’s Hume…. actually, I just checked, and he wrote “atheism” twice in that book.
Still, I think good to know.
Thanks so much for posting this. The argument for moral courage is inspiring. It’s related to Camus’ argument in “The Myth of Sisyphus” that life (and our inevitable death) is profoundly absurd. “[M]an stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” We can’t overcome this absurdity, but there’s comfort and fellowship in acknowledging and embracing the absurdity together.
The New Atheists had much less respect for philosophy. In one atheist organisation I’m familiar with, this caused some of the more old-fashioned atheists to leave. No more debates about arguments by Plato, Aquinas, Kant etc.
They were also more radical, and not afraid to mock religion or to say that religion is inherently problematic, not just when it leads to atrocities.
The science part seems basically correct, despite justified criticisms of the Conflict Thesis, Galileo’s mistakes and other bits of historiography. The main reason people today are less superstitious is just that they know better.
I never thought of atheism as being courageous. I’ve always thought of it as simply true. Well, not exactly always. When my uncle Maynard died of brain cancer at age 30 in 1967 when I was 10, I asked “Why did Uncle Maynard have to die?” My parents told me that God wanted him. They did not seem convinced in their statement, and I wasn’t convinced either. There was simply no reason to think that God needed a pharmacist in Heaven!
Anyway, for this and numerous other reasons—all converging on the lack of evidence—I was always an atheist. Why did I not think that I was being courageous? Simply because no one tried to break me of my atheism and shove religious myth down my throat. Deep down, my parents, my grandparents, and all the others close to me knew that I was right.
Nor had I. But I too did not grow up in a community in which one got into trouble for rejecting religion. A US friend of mine did however, and I understand that it must be difficult. It took a lot for him to break from his evangelical family. I have a far more conciliatory attitude towards religion than he has.
Even though religion is propagated these days by authority, it need not be the only way that people become religious. If it were, we would not have religion; it seems that people, a long time ago, conceived of religion and worship. But authority plays a prominent part in propagating religious (and similar) beliefs these days. I know that many Catholic parents are afraid that their children would leave Catholicism in university, especially in elite schools.
We also impose political beliefs and antipathy towards groups of people upon the younger generation. This makes sociopolitical issues much more difficult to solve.
You mean there is hope for me yet (pharmacists in heaven, I mean)?
I recall going to see my GP a few weeks ago, and given the usual practice of being behind time I took Ridley’s “Greatest Show on Earth” book, which is an assemblage of the evidence behind evolution (and therefore a counterpoint to the blind watchmaker/creationist concept). My GP apologised for the wait to which I replied “It was only a 34 page wait” and he commented on my controversial reading matter. (There is a reason appointments don’t run to time – but it’s a fairly pleasant experience). We had a brief chat – I’m atheist, but have a sense of wonder and awe at the universe, nature and the constructs of man raised for worship. It’s spiritual to me to have this sense of awe and wonder, but I don’t immediately raise supernatural phenomena to explain it.
Pretty good, aside from ascribing unnecessary and unsubstantiated morality to atheism: “As an atheist, you have the moral courage to live to the full the only life you’re ever going to get: to fully inhabit reality, rejoice in it, and do your best finally to leave it better than you found it.”
One can not believe in a god and also not satisfy such a moral code.
I see what you mean. I think Dawkins is just saying in the phrase before the colon that atheists have taken the first step toward doing everything after the colon. Moral courage is necessary but not sufficient for fully inhabiting reality etc.
Excellent essay by Richard Dawkins. His use of the phrase “intelligent design” was wry. I’ve long felt that atheism is the conscience of mankind because atheists refuse to be cowed into silence when the churches do wrong.
I’ll take this opportunity to post again my version of what many other, more famous, atheists have said.
https://x.com/Jon_Alexandr/status/1812890474950091046
I composed it when the Freedom From Religion Foundation offered people a way to create an online “virtual billboard” to express their atheism or “freethinker” perspective.
(The phrase “out of the closet” came included in one of the several online formats that the organization offered.)
The photo shows me when I was still under the sway of religious indoctrination, during a photo shoot for my upcoming “Holy Communion” in the Roman Catholic Church.
My “Confirmation” ceremony a few years later actually marks the time when I discarded any allegiance to organized religion.
I hope you don’t mind, Jon, I hit your link to your “out of the closet” thing (what a precocious 14 year old you were) and saw the ducks!!! So precious. You saved them! (I wonder if the mama would have been able to eventually get them out? What would have happened to them if not? I hate to imagine) You added to your good karma building that ramp.
My X-Twitter account is public, of course, so feel free to peruse it, Debi. (I’m not very active on it.) As for my age, I was 7 in the FFRF virtual billboard photo, and 12 for my last association with organized religion. Regarding the ducklings — long story short — they didn’t make it, sad to say, due to local predators and drowning (despite the ramp). As a result, my wife and I now actively chase away any mallards that land in our pool, and we’ve removed our Airbnb listing. There are plenty of natural resorts in our wider area that have better amenities for Anatidae families.🌿
Ah, crap! That had to have been heartbreaking. But, you tried! (Love your clever humor at the end there)
One could argue that some the earliest intellectual figures to argue for open atheism—Meslier, D’Holbach, Diderot, La Mettrie—drew on scientific arguments and openly denigrated faith. But the science was that of the pre-Darwin 18th century, and the New Atheists were vital in bringing modern science to the argument. And their arguments, thanks to various translators, will continue to resonate in the more religious parts of the world. Decades from now it will be interesting to see the effect of Dawkins’ work in the middle east.
I feel as though the term ‘new’ as in atheism, whilst initially used to describe Dawkins et al, was somewhat commandeered by apologists as a form of disparagement. Slowly, using the label ‘new atheist’ was seen as an insult, intended to create a perception in the minds of everyday believers. Then a false narrative was created that ‘new atheism is dead’, giving the impression that the super intellectual arguments of the apologists had won the day. So successful was this fiction that even many atheists started buying into it, agreeing often that, yes, new atheism is dead but….and the damage is done.
In reality, the simple point is that atheism, however you label it, has obliterated every apologist argument. The last new argument for apologetics was probably Fine Tuning, and that was years ago and is easily debunked.
I might say that Jerry’s book Faith versus Fact is the best and most accessible of the ‘atheist’ books.
Old atheism, new atheism? late atheism? plain atheism?.
There was most definitely a time when in yea old atheism times there was not the evidence to lay belief systems out to pasture. Now days there is more than enough to explain our existence, new data atheism! I don’t see the need for new or old and, we can now bury silly belief systems in said pasture for de toxicity and historical manure.
This is a great post. Lots of links I can’t wait to read/listen to when I have time. I wish I could feel as hopeful as you do about the lack of religiosity in the west being displaced by science and rationality. I just don’t see it. We (you and I) live in different worlds. I was fortunate enough to avail myself to a decent education but not so fortunate in my ability to parlay that education into a financially rewarding career. Where I sit, I see a tragic breakdown in community and in-tact family systems and a simultaneous decline in all manner of even everyday common decency and/or common sense, let alone an increase in exposure to science and rationality. Although I do not believe in any formal “God” and have always been turned off by formal religions, I would prefer to be surrounded by people who DO believe in such things. Rather, as I interact with our population in stores, on our roads, etc, I see anything BUT “moral courage” . I see vacuous people everywhere. They seem completely dispossessed. Again, I’m not interacting with the same caliber of people as you. Sadly, I think there are many more people carrying handguns who cannot even make change for a dollar than there are anyone who has any idea what New Atheism is about. I also don’t observe an improvement in well-being. Life expectancy is decreasing, our health care system has been destroyed by insurance companies, and every one of my close friends (educated and otherwise) feel stressed, isolated, and increasingly cut off from the activities that used to bring them joy. Sounds pretty desolate, but if you’re not living in a pretty darn insulated section of most of our modern American cities, what I describe is reality.
I failed to make the connection I see between the lack in religiosity and the decline in our society. We can call it cultural Judaism or Christianity but even *that* appears to be lacking in most of our communities. More people reject religion, in my opinion, because they haven’t been exposed to even the better (cultural) aspects of it. Respect and compassion for fellow human beings (especially human beings who don’t toe the social justice line), a sense of responsibility, an understanding of right and wrong (in terms of behavior). Parents (for those lucky enough to have two — as, increasingly kids are growing up in single parent households) don’t have the time or energy to inculcate their children with much in the way of values. They simply cart the kids off to school snd leave all that up to our teachers. And look at what the majority of our modern breed of teachers believe in. That’s where all these upside down DEI beliefs are coming from. That’s where your Hamas lovers got *their* values from. I’m ranting a bit. There ARE good people out there. I don’t mean to sound so entirely doomsday- like. I just see some gaping holes in our modern society.
IMO there are wide-spread modern faith-based religions/ideologies, including:
* wokery
* neoliberal economics
* sentimentality (if it feels so right it can’t be wrong, and inversely)
Debi. I read your two posts and immediately connected with much of what you say. I am of the age and hopefully I believe of considerable experience that allows me to reflect at length on the huge changes in societies particularly in western “ enlightened “ society and I can readily admit to many improvements but there are as you have admirably described many failings in these societies and I do not make this agreement with you just as an older man searching for lost youth. Like you I see and experience this every day and I do not live in a high pressure urban environment but in fact quite remotely in an area with a very small population but even here although less in quantity for obvious reasons the problems still exist and I find it really hard to understand this totally even just to myself. I thank you as a common voice in this “widerness” This is not doomsday thinking, just the reality.
Thanks for acknowledging that. I’m always waiting to be banished from this website with my lowbrow, bread and butter opinions.
Debi. I believe that all opinions are valuable and acceptance or disagreement will remain in the “eye of the beholder” your presentations to me are polite and interesting and whilst not my decision I see no reason for banishment and who says they are “ low brow and bread and butter”? Keep posting, I enjoy reading them.
An inspiring post, thanks Jerry.
I read Simon’s moving reply, above, but, luckily, I’m completely content in my atheism despite my devout Roman Catholic upbringing.
The fact that evolution happened radically challenges some fundamental assumptions society makes. Perhaps most shockingly is the idea that we are animals, demanding that we abandon the human/animal distinction, which, incidentally, does not imply that humankind will, in some way, be reduced or diminished. My “Awareness Horizon” vision of the universe (another post would be required to explain this) implies that the opposite is true, because it is only through sentient beings, like us, that the universe acquires its meaning. However, it does mean that when we ask: “What it is to be human?” we are asking the wrong question; the right one is: “What is it to be this kind of animal?”: a subtle but important distinction.
Astute, intelligent people will take the fact that evolution happened to its logical conclusion, and will recognise that if we are animals, we will have animal instincts/intuitions, and that this might have profound implications for understanding some people’s need to believe in a God or gods.
With his typical eloquence Richard got his, intellectual hammer head exactly on the centre of the nail when he said this:
“Because the human mind, including my own, rebels emotionally against the idea that something as complex as life, and the rest of the expanding universe, could have ‘just happened’.”
Because we are a particular kind of animal, we think like the kind of animal we are. Sometimes entirely appropriately, but sometimes it is a mistake to do so.
I sometimes imagine how rational aliens – of, I suppose, the Mr. Spock variety – might address the God question, and it leads me to conclude that any such agent would be bound to think that the God hypothesis: “We need God to explain existence, but we don’t need God to explain God’s existence”, is at best absurd, and at worst bizarre. (By the way, I don’t argue that the fact that evolution happened directly implies that God doesn’t exist when speaking individually to YOC creationists, perhaps because I know, from my upbringing how important faith can be to some people: I don’t know them and can’t assess their psychological disposition, so I don’t know what effects seeking to destroy their belief might have on them. However, I would make it against ID creationists, because, in my opinion it utterly destroys their case. If I were ever lucky enough to become a public figure and get to speak to audiences, instead of to individuals, that approach would change.)
It seems to be implicit that being a complex sentient organism, like a human, means that we must be biologically programmed with competing emotive/intuitive drives. For example, risk taking/risk avoidance. Taking too much of a risk could have a negative effect on the survival of someone’s genes, just as the failure to take sensible risks might mean missing the chance of exploiting important opportunities.
If this is the right way of interpreting things, it suggests that faith and reason might fit the category of competing drives in humans. (At this point it would be remiss not to point out that natural variation in populations means that the extent to which these competing instincts are expressed will necessarily vary between individual people, perhaps considerably.)
There’s no space here to explain why I think the “faith instinct” evolved, but a better understanding where we came from, implies the need for a deeper and more widespread understanding of the case for evolutionary thinking in the general population