What does Veeky Forums think of New Atheism?

this They try too hard and don't bring anything new to the table, only appeals to fedoras with spooked soccer moms who made them go to sunday school when they were kids.

I think they have relatively little to offer. Their analysis are shallow, and reductive. There is far more rigorous works / schools of thought that have more to offer.

>ideology and religion are the same thing

The idea was to be as public and open about it as the religious were about their religion. The problem is that the movement has overstayed its original purpose. It is much easier to be a public atheist now than it was even a decade ago (in western Christian countries), but the tone of discourse hasn't caught up with the changing reality.

They sure do treat it like a religion.

Really? Do they kneel towards Sweden and pray five time a day?

Not every in-group out-group mentality is a religion you fucking lunatic.

Nietzsche BTFO them before they were born.

new atheism differs from previous forms of atheism in that it bases itself on a claim to truth, not just a philosophic outlook or a set of logical conclusions but a actual claim to truth

it then takes a specific stance against the 'opposition' as being those who are explicitly wrong, false, responsible for all sorts of evil because they do not accept this basic truth

with dawkins this goes on into a sort of evangelism, where his whole thing is to bring the light of science and reason where there is religious darkness causing wars and whatnot

with harris its even expanded into a notion of universal objective morality, suposedly derived scientificaly

cant see how any of this differs much from a religious standpoint, or religious attitude, how would harrises 'objective morality' differ from religious law, dawkins and hitchens especialy seem fervently christian characters, almost stereotipical protestant christians, moralizing, evangelizing, taking ethical highgrounds and aserting claims to universal truths and so on

their 'followers' are especialy annoying, having this weird anti-religious attitude that isnt anything other than another iteration of the basic human pattern of grouping and organizing against another group, with everithing from blaming that group for this and that, and tracing the historical instances when this group caused great evil, and proclaiming members of same group to be idiots, retards, literaly inferior, demonizing their leaders and organisation, ridiculing etc...

thats without going into how intelectualy naive the whole thing is

They're pseudo-logical positivists that suck at anything philisophical.
Hitchens is cool though because he was a sweaty, drunk bon-vivant.

K==e ideological subversion, continued to be pumped into the soft minds of the establishment since the communist Era.

I don't believe in God but I can tell you this is extreme cancer.

bro

government IS a religion

A poor version of what David Hume already did much better several centuries ago

I'll take the myth (if you want to call it that) of a peaceable, brainy chap like Harris over the myths of a bunch of ignorant, gullible, fearful, bloodthirsty, incestuous desert tribesmen.

Dress it up in fancy theological, half-arsed philosophical ramblings if you like, but that's really what the choice comes down to, if you insist on making it into a choice.

And the US government is limited in scope, meaning that there is plenty of room for religious institutions and government institutions to get along, and religious institutions have the added benefit of voluntary association and not being allowed to use violence to enforce their decisions.

>religious institutions have the added benefit of voluntary association and not being allowed to use violence to enforce their decisions
this isn't specific to religious organizations. this just describes any organization that isn't an armed militia or a government

One of my many cultural enemies. There's no doubt though, whatever it is, that they have been very influential and will from years to come.
But I'll admit that some work by Dawkins and the Bearded One is positive. In some countries being atheist is a hell, and it is good if they help out these people.

We'll see religion in the shape of ideology anyway, that means no rituals and the like, but does mean a kind of faith. For the West that is scientism and economism.

popsci anti religion movement for edgy teens

The best thing about the new atheists is how anally devastated godcucks get just thinking about them. The butthurt is particularly acute when the new atheists attack religious moderates for providing the screen behind with religious extremists hide.

godcucks will nitpick their arguments about specific things and call them edgy and pseudointellectual and so on (just see this thread for proof)...

But you will notice that godcucks NEVER touch the new atheist's main argument, which is that in an age of weapons of mass destruction, belief in god will destroy us all unless we destroy it first. Deep down godshits know they are right.

thank you for providing us an example of pseudointellectualism so typical for new atheism

see, this is what im talking about

le cuck

this post is why people hate new atheists

Frankly, I can't handle all these non sequiturs

I know this is bait, but this
>godcucks will nitpick their arguments about specific things and call them edgy and pseudointellectual and so on
is undeniably true. For some at least.

>implying intellectualism is required

>in an age of weapons of mass destruction, belief in god will destroy us all unless we destroy it first

Notice how none of the replies addressed this.

checked

In The God Delusion Dawkins attempted to refute the cosmological argument by asking "who created god?" I don't know how anyone can take him seriously when he is completely unwilling to understand the other side of the debate.

They are dropping the ball so hard, everyone is having a knee-jerk reaction and is rejecting it because they find it annoying, it isn't anything cohesive and doesn't really do anything, it has simply become a circlejerk that isn't self-aware that it is a circle-jerk, which is funny because they criticize religion for doing this, which makes them look like fools

I'm atheist btw

This. No wonder his fanbase is r/atheism types

I've seen him say stuff like that in debates too so this isn't just some one time lapse in judgement while writing his book. He honestly believes he's making a point with that.l

Why do you need to make baseless, half-baked personal attacks? Why can't you attack the teachings themselves?

I don't really oppose the 'Four Horsemen' but I fucking hate their followers. You can't legitimately attack something if you don't have a decent understanding of what you are attacking. This is the intrinsic problem of followers of 'new atheism'; they see themselves as being above religion when far more intelligent people than them have taken it seriously, to the point of dying or dedicating their life to studying it.

The true roots of religion and it's spiritual base are nothing to be taken lightly, it takes a lot of abstract philosophical thought to understand the metaphysics of the concept of god. What 'New Atheists' are arguing against is Americanized religion or the half truths about Islam popularised by the cancerous American MSM.

I guess the problem is new atheists are preaching to the wrong people. Refuting religious beliefs in the West does not give them any visibility, or credibility, in the areas of the World where religious extremists, mostly Muslims, live.

Yeah, it's true that in the event that Al Qaeda or Isis or anyone get hold of a WMD they'll be more than happy to launch it on the evil Western countries, but screaming about it in front moderate Christians or other non-believers achieves nothing.

>He honestly believes he's making a point with that
He's not?

Meant for

No he's not, and it demonstrates complete ignorance of the cosmological argument. Asking what created god is like asking "what caused the uncaused thing?" The argument itself states that everything that begins to exist must have a cause, Dawkins seems to misinterpret this as saying everything that exists must have a cause. Something that begins to exist must have an explanation for its existence while an eternal being doesn't begin to exist so it would explain itself.

Obviously. He misses the fundamental argument.

Most people on this board are atheists. Even the contrarian edgelords who claim to be religious, are really atheists, they are just shitposting and don't want to be associated with reddit-tier fedoras, even though they know the reddit-tier fedoras are intellectually correct.

It goes to show that even atheists themselves are a product of their environment, and will follow trends even if it goes against their rational faculties.

More like the "New Memeism"

Atheist are more preaching and getting in the face of other people then religiuos people, that alone doesn't let me take their pseudo intelectual bullshit seriuosly.

>Atheist are more preaching and getting in the face of other people then religiuos people

Cute b8, atheists are literally 10% of the world population, so there's no way that is remotely true.

If uncaused things exist, then there doesn't seem to be any reason to assume that the universe is not one of them. If God is the only member of the class of uncaused things that exists, then implicit in the premises is the assumption that God exists and is circular reasoning.
The cosmological argument, even the modified version, can be handily dismissed using its own logic without even getting into a post-quantum mechanics understanding of the universe.

38% of the board is atheist, there was a strawpoll with over 1000 responses

Everything you proceed to say is now irrelevant, and I will not be reading it.

>people constantly trying to turn not believing in gods in to some cult/movement/religion
How do we stop this, lads?
t. atheist

There's no doubt that the reddit-tier fedora assocation with New Atheism puts me off and pushes me to another direction.
But I think your claim that there are people who claim to be religious a bit doubtful.

You can go from theist to atheist but the other way around is much harder.

>then there doesn't seem to be any reason to assume that the universe is not one of them.

Yeah except this.

>He believes a strawpoll on a Mongolian tapestry-making forum

lmao, meanwhile only 6 years ago, Veeky Forums was all like: "The internet is where religions come to die."

You're expecting me to believe that in 6 years, everyone on this board suddenly turned into a believer?

Bullshit.

If we assume uncaused things exist, then it is very easy to put the singularity into there without the need for a God. The image you just posted even directly mentions quantum fluctuations.

New Atheists are to Atheism what independent fundamentalist Baptists are to Christianity.

That doesn't explain the change or why the universe began to exist.

Hart is good. I prefer Feser.

Your picture is bullshit reasoning.
It also has nothing to do with the cosmological argument since rather than the subject matter being a first cause, the subject matter is a continuous "actual" force as is posited in the second picture.

Atheists are still the majority faction on the board based on Veeky Forums polls.
Saying they're not and comprise only 38% means lumping every other option in those polls into one faction, probably also including agnosticism.

Maybe the singularity wasn't stable to begin with. There's no reason to assume it was, given that the Universe exists.

thing is, this, while being technicaly true, is just completely missing the point

that is, any extremist, radical, terrorist and so on, group of humans fighting and killing other humans would love to get their hands on the most destructive means possible and use it against whichsoever other humans they are fighting against

in a important way this ilustrates how new atheism approaches things

there are two basic components to this

firstly people like dawkins percieve that humans often group and organise for violence around a focal point provided by religion, and this is true, however, they then go on to conclude that its religious belief as such that gets people to organize and do mass armed violence, which is absurd

secondly there is a veird humanist aproach to the concept of human, humanity, somehow this concept excludes all malignant negatives, it basicaly just leaves a neutral optimistic version of what humans as organisms, populations of organisms, systems and cultures, are, all things being equal and excluding sporadig excesses like mental health issues or crisis events, and it only takes religion, or other irrational beliefs in something, to get these creatures to go full retard and start doing things which are oh so very moraly reproachable from a enlightened ethical standpoint based more or less on protestantism

they seem to miss the simple point that these behaviors and tendencies are characteristicaly human, that thats what humans do, thats what humans are, that no belief in any specific is necesary, any set of concepts can be put together to facilitate humans grouping together to fight and kill, this is characteristic, typical, a kind of anthropic universality, in a sense its like noticing humans use flags when going to war and so deducing flags are the problem

and all trough this they constantly call upon things like biology and neurology other scientific standpoints. yet it seems they just dont get it, they dont get anyting about humans

Sure it does. We know from radioactive decay that at that scale change can occur unpredictably, with no external cause. The pre-big bang universe, if it is coherent to speak of such a thing, would operate at these scales and could very easily also change independent of an external trigger.

But even ignoring that, if you first posit that uncaused things exist, you also have to prove that only God can be an uncaused thing, and not the universe itself.

>Your picture is bullshit reasoning.
>It also has nothing to do with the cosmological argument since rather than the subject matter being a first cause, the subject matter is a continuous "actual" force as is posited in the second picture.

Pure actual is the same thing as the first cause.

>they seem to miss the simple point that these behaviors and tendencies are characteristicaly human
>they dont get anyting about humans
I agree with you, but this line of thought is hardly exclusive to new atheists.

>But even ignoring that, if you first posit that uncaused things exist, you also have to prove that only God can be an uncaused thing, and not the universe itself.

Something pure actual wouldn't lack anything. It would by definition have to be perfect so there could only be one. Have you honestly read that picture in my original post?

>It would by definition have to be perfect so there could only be one.
Why?

Arbitrarily defining "perfection" as only one is a cute trick that doesn't actually work, since you can just as easily go the opposite route and say that "only" one causes a lack, or imperfection. And the end point of "pure actual" is only valid in the first place if we have the unbroken potential-actual chain is actually unbroken, which we know for a fact is not the moment any radioactive decay occured at all.

If it's not perfect then it's not pure actual because it still has potential.

That is a board based Veeky Forums poll you fucking numpty. The thread was like 3 days ago

Veeky Forums is the hub of contrarianism.
Also:
>The majority of people being here for anywhere near 6 years

It is not and the picture repeatedly makes that clear.

First cause only requires the first cause to have existed at the beginning of the causal chain. Pure actual according to the image requires the first cause to continue to exist unchangingly actual at the beginning of the causal chain.

If it lacks potential, it lacks something, and is therefore not perfect.

>which we know for a fact is not the moment any radioactive decay occured at all
Not him, but isn't it possible that there actually is something that causes radiactive decay, but we haven't discovered it yet?

I've been here since 2008. Kill me.

We would be able to see it in statistical fluctuations of the decay patterns. We might not be able to know exactly what it was, but we would be able to see a spike or a dip somewhere and say "here is where some trigger changed." There was some hubbub in pro-cosmological argument circles when a lab appeared to show a seasonal variance in detections, "proving" the sun was somehow a trigger and therefore saving the argument, until it was shown that it was the lab failing to correct properly for variations in temperature/humidity etc.

What if the trigger is inside the particles but we can't detect with our technology? (and maybe we never will be able to)
Sorry if these questions sound trivial, but I only have a high school level of understanding of nuclear physics

>I agree with you, but this line of thought is hardly exclusive to new atheists.

sure, but its typical for new atheists, its their whole entire meta-point in a way, namely that religion is evil because it gets people to be ignorant and violent whereas othervise theid just be happy peacefull benign creatures developing all the most positive aspects along the lines of ''better angels of our nature'' and whatever, the rest is all just playing with logic and pseudo-intellectual piss contests against people like ken fucking ham

this also makes new atheism a specific brand of atheism as opposed to say existential atheism that has a much bleaker outlook onthings or state atheism where the antitheism was part of the broader ideology

one way or another its one of the basic fails that most new atheists pretend not to notice

another thing that differs new atheism from other forms of atheism in the past is this emphasis on objective, positivist proofs as a basis for a claim to truth
that is, a model new atheist does not simply -not believe in god/s-, he positively 'knows why' he does not believe in god/s, it isnt merely that the notion is absurd, that life experience teaches us reality isnt realy like that, that somehow we get to the realisation religious stories do not correlate literaly with what is, no, its that evolution is scientific fact and therefore we know there is no need for a creator god

its sort of like being certain that the little red riding hood story is false because you took a course in canine physiology and know for certain a whole human cannot fit into the digestive tract of a wolf and that wolves have no vocal cords either

one almost gets a sense that othervise these people would be the most fervent theists, if only they lived in a time or place when evolution wasnt a scientific fact

>religion is required for being asshole
>nonreligious assholes wouldn't use WMS for nothing
It's just matter of time u fag.

biological evolution
psychological evolution
deterministic evolution
political evolution

Autist of the ages

body
mind
spirit
collective

It's a bunch of fagget hypocrites are contrarian. I'm fucking glad that Richard Dawkins and others like him are being ostracized and tossed aside by the Social Justice movement and 3rd feminism. They brought it all upon themselves.

Dawkins really got the ball rolling and I would consider him the central figure in this "new atheism" movement. He may indeed hold deep intellectual reservations about religion but there is no denying that he has discovered a cash cow and is milking it incessantly what with the endless speaking tours and the infamous "dinner with Dawkins" where you can pay $1000 to dine with the man himself: richarddawkins.net/dinnerwithrichard/

I don't really have much to say about Harris or Dennet aside from how Dennet has a comfy Granfatherly persona to him.

I have mixed feelings about Hitchens, he was incredibly witty and had an encyclopedic knowledge of history but I believe he was completely off the mark about Iraq.

> I'm fucking glad that Richard Dawkins and others like him are being ostracized and tossed aside by the Social Justice movement and 3rd feminism. They brought it all upon themselves.

thats sounds like retards oatracizing autists

What's new about this?

2006 for me fug.

>Completely ignoring the place of government, social order and law.
OH, SNAP! It's almost like we don't live in caves anymore.

From what I know, early atheism wasn't that concerned with religion. New Atheism is, and makes books complaining about religion.
They make some good points, I think, but at the same time I think their efforts are counterproductive. Persuasion works better when you refrain from being all too hostile.

>communism fails
>left-wing intellectuals embarassed by their support of an obvious failure, while those hated conservative hillbillies were right all along
>"gee, better return to our Enlightenment origins in order to distract common people from how wrong we were about communism"
>"that way we can still keep prestige of being the smart people, but this time we are right!"

Because the closest we've gotten to nuclear Armageddon was in a religious conflict, right? Oh wait, it isn't. And the biggest religious conflicts we've had recently, have somehow managed to keep their fingers away from the buttons on WMD's. I must have missed the nuclear bombings in the Yom Kippur war.

If you want to claim that the theological underpinnings of religion in general is wrong, go ahead. But it's not those theological underpinnings that make people kill and die for a belief. Breaking the world into us and them goes far, far outside religion, and won't stop even if you purge it forever.

Except he does. He's more well read in religion than the vast majority of people that are actually religious. He has been in debate with the religious more than most, asking them to prove their side and they do so in a fair arena. You can't attack a subject matter with his level of success without understanding it and before you go "blah, blah >success", nobody can argue that he is relevant in today's culture and that people care what he thinks on both sides of the debate.
.

Then I remember I'm on Veeky Forums, where lines of ideological bias rests with what other websites you browse, what political ideology you have and what video game platform you prefer. Whether you're white or not. That the most popular method of trivializing things by telling others to fuck off back to X/Y website like it's a valid argument. That you can dismiss something just because it doesn't coincide with your own opinion. We block all attempts by atheists to speak by posting a picture of someone tipping a fedora. That we can call something bait because it doesn't serve the popular opinion.

We can't have an exchange of ideas here without bias, it's no surprise that you would say something like that. This is why I'm not surprised this entire thread is full of jargon and misinformation about what atheism is and it's figureheads.

Not him, but at the moment radioactive decay is thought to be a resulting property of matter. It's not so much that there is a trigger within the matter (I mean there COULD be, but we haven't any evidence or theories to support that conclusion) but rather is a consequence of matter, well, existing.

...

You're misunderstanding the point.

Religious extremists didn't have access to the bomb in the Yom Kippur war. It was a secular conflict that used religion as a backing.

Reread again. He's not talking about religious people fighting, he's talking about the """"""Moderate""""" Muslims who say they stand with ISIS and that they won't apologize for ISIS doing what the Quran commands and how the girls in the grooming gangs deserved it. He's talking about how """""moderates""""" act as a source of manpower and resources for extremist groups to commit violence in the name of their religion. Because these """""moderates""""" identify with their religion and deep down WANT it to be put into practice by force (So long as they don't have to do the actual forcing of course) they will defend to the death violent groups such as ISIS that WILL use nuclear weapons if given the chance.

>make baseless assertion which can't technically be proven wrong although there's not evidence behind it

you're starting to sound like a christfag

belief in nothing will destroy us all unless we adopt a belief
Prove me wrong

>Religious extremists didn't have access to the bomb in the Yom Kippur war.

Oh right, because Israel doesn't have nuclear weapons.

>It was a secular conflict that used religion as a backing.

I'm pretty sure the motivations in the Arab-Israeli war are religious, not secular.

>violent groups such as ISIS that WILL use nuclear weapons if given the chance.

Yeah, and I don't really buy that either. Look at the difference between Iran's rhetoric and it's actions. Sure, they talk about holy fire and purging the unclean and how they will take any risk because they have Allah with them, yada yada yada. Except they've never started a conventional war, they prefer to fund proxies to do their fighting for them. They've not been building up their military to any great extent out of the norm for a country with their population and their wealth. They haven't declared war on Israel, or forged a set of alliances or at least agreements to march their troops over there. Would they shed any tears if Israel got wiped off the map? Fuck no, but they retain enough of a calculative sense to realize the risk that they undertake if they're too overtly aggressive, and act accordingly.

A group like ISIS or Al-Queda's fundamental difference between theological Iran isn't their religious motivation; it's that they're not nation states and they think they're not subject to nuclear retaliation in kind.

ISIS with a nuke is no more or less likely to go apeshit with it than the LTTE was, or the Chechan resistance groups. Do you really think they'd have shrunk from a nuclear attack if they could get their hands on a bomb?

Matter of fact, this is a strictly anti-fedora site. If you identify with any sort of atheist group expect to be called out, and rightfully so. Your kind is not welcome here.