new atheism

According to Lord Wiki, New Atheism is the name given (by whom?) to the ideas of a collection of 21st-century writers—Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens, yoked together as "the Four Horsemen of New Atheism"—who have advocated that religion should be opposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises.

As an atheist since I gave up trying to believe in a god at age nine, I ask myself how New Atheism  differs from the old atheism I’ve practised all this time? Have I been non-believing in the wrong things, or in the wrong way?

Anyway, the faithless horsemen, minus Hitchens who is, no doubt with them in spirit, have ridden into our midst in Melbourne this weekend for the World Atheist Convention.

Yesterday’s big paper runs an editorial about the convention, saying it’s not about to decree whether or not God exists, but averring that it’s a good thing for atheists to gather and get people thinking. To get us in debating mood, a right-wing intellectual (oxymoron?) has a crack at the New Atheists in an opinion piece on the page opposite the editorial.

He says he doesn’t believe in God himself, but thinks atheists churlish to deny that religion is a wonderful thing. According to our right-thinking man, theologians gave us all the good stuff we have today: progress (undefined), the concept of human rights, and the separation of church and state in politics.

My reading of the last is that the church thought politics too grubby to touch; better to stay out of it altogether. Would that this were so. The church, of course, wields enormous political influence: try getting legislation through parliament about euthanasia or abortion and watch the church sit back and wait to see what happens.

As for New Atheism, I’m disappointed that ‘they’ (the media?) have branded atheism this way, or any other way. I’ll go on being an unreconstructed atheist, not born-again, not new, and certainly without denomination.

Rock on.