What's with "New" Atheism?

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I know, this is an old horse to beat especially since the "New atheism" media blitz seems to have died down every since nonfiction writers have failed to proceduce another best selling anti-theistic book in league with those of Richard Dawkins, Danniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Victor Stenger.

But I'm still curious why people have idenitifed these authors as "New Atheists" simply due to the fact that they take a vocal stance against religion. After all, many "classical" atheists like Baron d'Holbach, Charles Bradlaugh, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Madalyn Murray O'Hair weren't actually soft-spoken faithatheists.

Fr. Robert Barron discusses the difference between old and new atheism.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe5kVw9JsYI[/youtube]

Dr. Craig talks about new atheism and the renaissance of Christian Philosophy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkum3MrgYyw&feature=related[/youtube]

Father Baron is a very dishonest hack who speaks in glittering generalities that sound deep until one inspects more closely – discovering them to be less than a micrometre deep. Interestingly enough, your video doesn’t address my point at all – I didn’t ask for a contrast between atheistic existentialists and the “new atheists" – none of my referenced old atheists were existentialists. But to the problems with Father Baron’s speech:

“fulfillment, truth, justice = God”

That’s a disingenuous redefinition of God. God is a personal super-powerful entity that created the Universe and transcended it, not those various ideals.

“Existentialist absurdity is the necessary result of atheism and atheism is a sufficient condition for it.” (My interpretation of his general rambling)

Existentialism isn’t necessarily a result of atheism as there were Christian existentialists during the late 19th century. And atheism isn’t a sufficient condition for existentialism, as one can hold to a reality of reification for the various ideals listed by being a Platonic Realist – which doesn’t require theism.

“New atheism is shallow as it doesn’t understand that there is no cosmic meaning without God.”

BS, pure and simple. Much New Atheist literature talks about humanity choosing its own purpose or inventing its own purpose and the importance of “personal meaning” even if there is no cosmic meaning.

“There’s only a choice between egocentrism and committing yourself to Jesus.”

Nonsense – one can find as deep a meaning in altruistic behaviour – such as working in a Homeless Shelter – as others find in believing in your imaginary friend.

“We should be like dogs, not looking for any higher purpose, if we’re just animals with big brains.”

What a ludicrous assertion. Natural selection would probably favour individuals who “need something bigger than themselves” (i.e. a group or moral cause) as it would make them likeable to their peers.

“The fact that people have a tendency to desire the existence of God proves he exists.”

This is nonsense, as there is much work in psychology showing that there can be beneficial “positive illusions” and the belief in God could be one of many instances of wishful thinking.

Many people desire a wallet that is automatically replenished with money. Does that prove it exists? Baron’s statement has to be one of the stupidest arguments I’ve seen since the Ontological argument.

I stopped watching under two minutes before the end as the video stopped working on my computer. Nevertheless, if the first few minutes is any indicator, I am thoroughly underwhelmed.

I find it interesting the degree to which the existential atheists are praised, even though those have never really been the most common atheists in philosophy. I also find it amusing how those atheists are considered the "honest ones". I mean, by the same token, I'd argue much further that *really* it is the more existential THEISTS who are the more honest ones, as after all, not only do they accept some earthly values, but rather often their religions are centered around the idea of the SUPREMELY good being, where goodness is centered around servitude of this being in a world that often rejects it. It seems to me that this kind of forsaking of the worldly values for the divine being would have more of a proclivity to existentialism, than any garden variety atheism. Particularly the Christian tradition, which basically grew up as a cult, rejected by the world, and which throughout the text proclaims its alienation to the world as well as the extreme nature of its duty, perpetually symbolized by a painful of execution.

I think I've seen the Father Baron video, at least parts of it before.

As for WLC's claim that atheism is not intellectually sophisticated because of the books by the "New Atheists", um.... he picked a stupid metric, period. I mean, anybody with a brain should recognize that if Christianity were judged by its pop books, then there is a good chance it wouldn't do a lot better, possibly even worse. As for the Christian Renaissance, in many ways this is not as big as Craig wants it to be, as basically what has occurred is that theism escaped its banishment from the academy, which happened with the fall of Logical Positivism, which denied that the word "God" had meaning to even be discussed. (which is all discussed in this blog post: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=6448 ) As it stands, Craig's Christians are going to be less than 15% of the field, probably even very significantly so, as a lot of philosophers are liberal Christians, a good number are going to be Jewish, some of these theists might even be Deists or some other philosophically constructed God. http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl So.... what Craig is saying is not that impressive. Craig likely is actually blinded because of the fact that these are his colleagues in a real sense, so he sees them as a larger influence than they are in many ways. As it stands, there are a good number of intellectually sophisticated atheistic writings, including newer ones. A good book that you can find online is Nicholas Everitt's The Nonexistence of God, like a large number of atheist books, it is mostly comprised of rebuttals against the notion that God exists.(the big exception being Michael Martin's "Atheism: A Philosophical Justification", which is a high level book), however, it is still a good read on the matter. http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=6448

The closet thing resembling an answer that 91 gives, through is Craig video, is that "New atheism" is simply popular atheism, whereas "old atheism" were the tombs of unread books people like Taner Edis penned.

I'd like to see Craig contrast the "appauling, laymen philosophy" of New Atheists books with anything coming from a popular Christian book. My bet is that'd be hard to do, as popular Christian books are filled with sentimentality and non-arguments.

i prefer the spelling: gnu atheist.

That atheists point out that there are obnoxious and frightful and obviously stupid things about religion is, of course, disturbing to religious people but it is, unfortunately, historically true and it is very worthwhile that it be recognized.