society, perceptionA lot of religious and fundamental websites seek to draw a distinction between, as they call them, “old atheists” and “new atheists” (or as PZ Myers calls it, “gnu atheists”), implying that there’s something … different about modern atheists, compared with those who declared a lack of faith in a god from prior generations.
It is with this question in mind that I ask, how, exactly, are we as atheists different from those who came before us? Notwithstanding additional scientific understanding that past generations didn’t enjoy, the fact that there’s more of us, and the ability of the internet to network and bring us together, I can’t really come up with anything.
I think there are a substantial number of arguments about atheism that are “new”:
The suggestion that God is a fairy tale character, on par with elves and leprechauns
The suggestion that the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis that is either true or false and must be substantiated with the same type of evidence as any other claim in science (basically what Richard Dawkins says about it)
The suggestion that religion is poisonous to human socities (basically what Christopher Hitchens says about it)
The modern defense against the idea that morality requires religion (basically what Sam Harris says about it)
The outrage over religion’s influence in education (attempts to replace evolution with creationism)
The outrage over religion’s influence in politics (stem cell research, abortion, gay rights, prayer in public schools, etc.)
The emphasis in atheist reasoning on logical fallacies employed by religious apologists
Of course I realise that, for most of these, you can find beginnings that go back centuries or even a millennium, but I think only within the last 20 years this has intensified to the point where it forms a single, coherent position that unites people and encourages them to engage in activism; those activists are then termed the “new atheists” to emphasise their character as an advocacy group.
Well, from the religious perspective I think it’s hardly different from the fact that we don’t STFU and hide in the closet. Having to defend their opinions is something religious people are simply not used to having to do. Not when it comes to claims of faith anyway.
This sort of “movement” to “come out” is, in fact, fairly new. It’s not something that atheists like Hume where really able to do in such a public, blatant manner. Seems to me more of a sign that we’ve gained more rights to be and say what we are rather than anything “new” though.
It’s not just the religious that are making this distinction though. Victor Stenger wrote a book called “The New Atheists” in which he more or less defines it as a religion, not that he’d admit that. In it he tells the world what “New Atheists” believe and what they don’t. The really funny thing about that book is that it tosses some of the more famous “New Atheists” out of the club by claiming they don’t believe what they in fact have publicly said they do. As an atheist I found the book incredibly disappointing and offensive.
The biggest difference I see in the current atheist culture compared to 'old' atheist culture is that social norms have changed. For the sake of argument, let's also make a distinction between 'old' atheism, circa 1947, and 'old' atheism, circa 1647. In the US, atheism is still viewed as a four-letter word, although it probably won't get you shunned by a community the way it did in 1947. In Europe, however, the events of WWII changed a whole generation's view of religion and the Judeo-Christian god--this is a well-known phenomenon within religious academians who are concerned with this sort of thing. One theory is that the first-hand events experienced in the UK and continental Europe jaded people's view of church, church leadership, and God's benevolence. This non-dependence on the church is also happening in the US, but it's happening at a slower rate and is several decades behind Europe. Other movements in the US, civil rights, anti-war, the back-lash of McCarthyism, etc., have created an atmosphere where it's easier and more acceptable to be a bit different from the post-WWII, White, Protestant, American ideals.
It's not so much that new, or young, atheists are different than those of previous generations, but that the culture in which the new and young atheists live is different than that of previous generations. If you are not already familiar with The Most Hated Woman in America, I suggest you do some reading to see what the social climate was like just four decades ago.
I am reading epigrams by this guy who lived in the 19th century. From what I gather, he was mostly against the church getting immensely rich and corrupt.
I do not think that the US struggle between atheists and the religious is about wealth. It is more of a struggle of beneficial reason against malign idiocy (as religion seems to be perceived). This makes it more intellectual, less materialistic than it used to be. Your goal is mindshare, a meme worth extinguishing, not money. Your target now are all the low-level believers themselves, while in the past, the target were the people with actual power. The poor people were on the same level, powerless against forces coming from either the church, or the state.
I guess you will have a hard time to find something new, which you can’t find in the writings of Marx or Freud. It’s just an attemp of the entertainment industry to make it look as something new from people, who never read Freud and never read Marx, adressing people who never read Marx and Freud too (and Feuerbach, Nitzsche, Russell, Stirner, …).
I wouldn’t use the term ‘new’ atheist for myself. It’s core atheism, naked and straight, but nothing new. :)
In the “old” atheism, the conversation was on the Christian apologist’s terms; that is, the god that the old atheist disbelieved in was the Christian God.
Personally, I think the biggest differences are on the religious side, at least in the US: American Christians seem to be more evangelical and fundamentalist than they were among previous generations of Americans, and they’re having an outsized influence on policy (TxSBOE), media (Beck, O’Reilly, Limbaugh), and law (Prop. 8).
The “new” atheism is largely a response to the “new” Christianity; Christianity in America has become louder and dumber, and as a result the tone of the debate has changed.
Parts of this are in other answers, but I couldn’t pick one to vote for.
“New” does seem to be derogatory, possibly trying to allude to “Neo” as in “Neo-Nazi”. It does not seem to be defining anything actually new. Going strictly by how it is used then, it seems to be pointing to Hitchens and Dawkins and anyone else who speaks of eliminating religion rather than accomodating it or modernizing it.
The “old” would then be those who just quietly went about their unbelief. Or, as many did in the early years of writing about questions of existence, they could say all they wanted, but when they were done, they would tack on, “of course this is just a logical exercise, God really exists, we all know that”, or something similar.
They probably consider the old ones more real. These days the average atheist is so much just the product of the godless public school system. The word brainwashed comes to mind. The old school atheists had a lot more at stake and had overcome far more resistance.
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