In retrospective, is it fair to say that this guy destroyed the New Atheist movement?

Isn't Islam becoming kind of a major conversation in Europe and the West part of this? Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Maajid Nawaz...people were freaked out about ISIS in France and Germany and maybe atheism didn't seem quite as awesome anymore?

A lot of people pretend to be religious out of custom.

Actually observant religious people are very, very rare in the first world now.

The "bights" never actually brought anything to the table. They were either recycling old arguments or selectively choosing the worst arguments for theism which is fine or they were completely misrepresenting or misunderstanding theist arguments. In both cases they're laughable.

The New Atheists destroyed it by never really having an argument.
I remember Hitchens straight faced arguing that because the andromeda galaxy and the milkyway galaxy were going to collide and that means there can't be a god.
I mean fucking seriously?

wow, i guess im a religious now

>New Atheist movement

This sounds like something you just made up on the spot.

Atheism is not - and to my knowledge, never was - a movement. It's simply the absence of definitive belief in anything of a supernatural nature. Humans by nature are arguably atheists. Religion is entirely socially contrived and has to be impressed upon an individual. So religion is the movement; atheism is the mere rejection of that movement.

That's why I say the significance of religion has changed. A lot of people pretend that something is customary, when they actually take it into account as if it was something religious. Money, science, some certainty, obsession or mission that they believe are calling for them, it's just not in the name of a god, but in their own name, nevertheless a name.. While I can totally see that people are apparently not that paying attention to it as much as people from before, consider that it is perhaps not a sentiment that has been taken away from mankind, but something that was reallocated somewhere else.

>An omnibenevolent god who designed the entire universe by hand decides to wipe out his most prized creation in a manner over which they have no control or recourse

Seems like a pretty solid argument against the existence of YHWH.

How is that in any way evidence against the existence of god? The argument only demonstrates that life will end at some point.

you're pushing the implication that atheism precedes theism but that is historically inaccurate, not to mention the idea that atheism logically precedes theism.

New Atheism was a reaction to two phenomena: the War on Terror after 9/11 (Islamic terrorism) and the rise of the Religious Right under George W. Bush (difficult to remember now, but Dubya won the 2004 election on the back of a pledge to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage). After Obama came into office the religious right was rolled back/lost power to the libertarian right and the total discrediting of the Iraq war/neocon project lessened the salience of overt opposition to Islam in the public discourse. New Atheism wasn't destroyed by a religious debater, it simply lost its relevance.

>you're pushing the implication that atheism precedes theism

Atheism predates theism. Humans and their evolutionary ancestors didn't always have systems of communication or civilized societies. Since religion is socially contrived, humans would need a way to communicate it before they could indoctrinate their offspring with those beliefs.

We know scientifically that critical thinking cannot occur without communication, otherwise the brain has no internal narrative. A person's thoughts would consist of too many abstractions without any cohesion. This is why people born deaf or mute are likely to end up retarded unless someone works with them at an early age to help them develop some communicative skills, like sign language.

theism and religion are not mutually exclusive.

interchangeable, not mutually exclusive
my bad

>the rise of the Religious Right under George W. Bush (difficult to remember now
No, I distinctly remember meeting some of those nutters. If you didn't like Bush well it turned out that through democracy he'd actually been chosen by God to more or less lead to whole world so you had to become pretty much an unthinking slave to him. Crazy.

I really wish I could have bumped into them again to see their thoughts on Obama. I suspect a lot of them spent time unironically following up the Kenya conspiracy and laughing at monkey cartoons.

>We know scientifically that critical thinking cannot occur without communication, otherwise the brain has no internal narrative. A person's thoughts would consist of too many abstractions without any cohesion.

You've clearly never read Hegel.

>you're pushing the implication that atheism precedes theism

Well it kind of does if you're following strict definitions of the terms.

Especially monotheism is perhaps 5000 years old.

For most of human history we were tribal animists, not theists at all.

>Since religion is socially contrived

Why do you believe this? There are a lot of studies that show that a belief in god is completely natural, that we're born believers and that it is actually social conditioning that makes us atheist. Here's some examples if you're interested:

nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7216/full/4551038a.html

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.125.9479&rep=rep1&type=pdf

anthro.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/images/staff/justin_barrett/Barrett & Richert 2003.pdf

New Atheism died with Christopher Hitchens - and it wasn't killed by any religious fuck.

I followed this movement closely in my teenage years, with EXTREME zealotry. I was a retarded fedora, but I still learned a thing or two despite having outgrown it. Above all, however, I made the following observation: New Atheism was killed by political correctness (or call it what you will, I don't give a fuck).

The idea of Islam being a uniquely terrible religion somehow got itself seen as a heresy by the equality squad. Rather than investigate the claim, they (Americans in particular) turned to concepts such as Freedom of Religion to paint New Atheists/Anti-Theists as the new anti-Semites: that is to say, Islamophobes.

Who would disagree with such a fundamental concept in Western Liberal Democracy? Sam Harris got himself into a lot of shit for suggesting that Muslims should be subject to stricter security checks (in airports/etc) than non-Muslims. Hell, the other day my lecturer listed Pim Fortuyn (among others) as an example of islamophobes - pointing out that he was gay, but then somehow (intentionally or not) failing to mention that he was killed for daring to insist upon the fact that Islam is uniquely homophobic. The fact that he was an islamophobe was tacitly deemed to be the cardinal sin that justified any reaction.

I realize I'm rambling, but simply put: New Atheism was smothered by those who believe that when it comes to religion, whether in regards to tolerating them or clamping down on them, they must be treated equally at any cost.

thank you for posting this, it's hard to watch

I think it goes to show that WLC is not a very good philosopher, but that even a not very good philosopher is a far better philosopher than a biologist or a neuroscience PhD

lol? this guy did nothing but spewing an insane amount of arguments thus rendering them uncounterable, and the huge amount of fallacies aren't exactly neglible either.
i don't even like the new atheist movement considering they're zealous idiots, but christ

Never heard of him desu.

>Why do you believe this?

Pretty sure my post already explained why. Humans need communication to contrive ideals. Religion is an ideal. Humans were by definition atheists before they contrived and communicated religious beliefs.

>There are a lot of studies that show that a belief in god is completely natural

First link requires a subscription, second and third links are essays with religious slants.

>a lot

Now you're weasel wording.

What I'm asking for is evidence for this belief that religion or belief in god requires communication between humans.

If a belief in god ultimately requires people communicating with each other then where did the original concept of god come from? If a single person had to originally come up with the idea of god wouldn't this disprove your theory?

What a joke lol, it died because it became mainstream/no longer socially unacceptable or weird. Writing a book saying "religion sucks" or "christianity sucks" won't really spark as much criticism as it used to when New Atheism was a thing. Islam possibly.

It literally had nothing to do with WLC, some random apologist and master in sophistry who rehashes some old theistic arguments and then tries to shoehorn in Christianity. AS IF he had anything to do with it, what a joke.

>If a single person had to originally come up with the idea of god wouldn't this disprove your theory?

No, because that person would have to communicate the concept with others before humans could collectively share that belief.

Do you think primates believe in an afterlife? Do you think they even possess any comprehension of death? One of them might, but they'd have no way to communicate it to other primates, so that individual would be an exception. A primate's day to day behaviors are probably dictated by their instincts, and their attention is probably invested solely in matters of immediate survival.

I don't doubt humans lived a similar lifestyle before we started organizing tribes and devising ways to communicate with each other. At that point, we probably traded superstitions in some effort to understand and explain natural phenomena, which would have lead to a more collective system of organized beliefs. It's doubtful any human possessed enough intelligence or critical thought before that point to be able to craft something as elaborate as a meta-narrative. And if they did, they had no way to communicate it; thus humans were probably predominantly irreligious.

youtube.com/watch?v=DPBVUT1NlKA

anyone who watches this and seriously thinks Hitchens won is delusional

If you were merely discussing the spread of religion I might agree with you but you say that the belief in god has its source in human communication. This doesn't follow if a single isolated man at any point in history thought of and started believing in god.

Well first of all, WLC is doing a clever trick by trying to move the burden of proof on to Hitch, which is a red herring in itself.

Everyone knows that atheism means being unconvinced by the claims of theism. It's not a epistemological stance of claiming God does not exist.

They're both putting forward claims. I have no reason to take either side.
Hitchens is explicitly saying god isn't real. There is burden of proof in that statement.

>Hitchens is explicitly saying god isn't real.

Where?

Not him, but its the topic of the debate. "Does God exist". Craig took the side of yes and Hitchens took the side of no. So they both made claims of knowledge and both have the burden of proof

That's a fair assessment. Rare to see him squirm, considering how comfortable he was debating the hacks

disclosure: not an Atheist

Craig has never publicly qualified his view the nature of god on anything except through his life reading texts as a theologian and through debates, point by point of exactly God /cannot/ be rather than what he is. Craig is almost entirely a defensive theist like most apologists; the fact that he and others like him began as Christians and are debating some former religious individuals who changed their viewpoint after working in fields like physics, psychology, biology, neuroscience, and other fields that actually face the challenges of the world is telling of the emotional grounds of his position.

Craig's use of the Kalam cosmological argument is telling of his misunderstanding of physics; the big bang theory does not imply finite time but rather infinite time approaching a limit; time itself starts at an empty point, if you don't understand this idea please look up "limits in calculus"

furthermore Craig cites other proposed cosmological models without understand the math or physics behind them, whether or not they are correct is of no matter to him, as long as they fit his argument for a Creator God

but what kind of Creator God? Craig does not believe in intelligent design, but in contradiction believes God intelligently interfered in historical events (on the grounds that the Bible said so) such as the wars of the Hebrews, to justify their victories, as well as predestination...I'd seriously love to hear more how this is at all logically coherent.

his more metaphysical work on stuff like Molinism, Plato, are far more interesting and sound, but publicly he fails utterly at qualifying what the hell he is talking about when when he defends the existence of "God" to atheists

>Craig has never publicly qualified his view the nature of god on anything except through his life reading texts as a theologian and through debates, point by point of exactly God /cannot/ be rather than what he is
first sentence, wrong
youtube.com/watch?v=77HeEmzVgzc

I see this a lot with atheists in debates. They'll take a negative position on the existence of god but when they're asked to actually provide reasons to believe that they'll deny their own atheism and endlessly repeat the tired old "there's no proof of god!" despite the fact that they've been given multiple reasons to believe.

dude I need text quotes I'm not going to waste 30 minutes so far skimming through this I don't see anything but a discourse on metaphysical naturalism, something he claims to to believe in

* to not believe in

This

the point is that hes literally taught full courses on the exact thing you said hes never publicly qualified
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIpO3BUiq2IFdX50i-DIb6-posLJL7NEz

if the premise of your post is incorrect then the rest comes into question

you've literally just provided youtube clips, thus far skimming through them I'm seeing my point proven every time

>never publicly qualified

read my post

>...except through his life reading texts as a theologian and through debates, point by point of exactly God /cannot/ be rather than what he is

REAL men argue through youtube videos and infographics

so I've been listening to these, thus far they still seem to remain defensive theology as I stated

so descriptions of his belief system, I guess relating to his qualities of the Christian God are as follows

>there is an external world (external is never qualified here, he simply points incompatibility of Aristotelian logic with Buddhist/Hindu views with a complete misunderstanding of their language)
>there are "wills" interacting with a greater will (God?) (I thought he didn't believe in intelligent design? Is God's willingly unintelligent? Does Craig believe in some sort of Jungian collective conscious God?) Not trying to be fickle here, but when you're talking about something so important you need to be precise and assume we know what you're talking about.

Craig brings up extremely metaphysical, unqualified phrases like "wills and greater wills" or "external and internal worlds", probably the two most important factors of his beliefs, and never qualifies them

it is true tho, for younger generations anyway
in most european countries you would struggle to find a single person under 25 who really truly believed in a god. of course there are those fucknuts who say they are "spiritual" or who "believe in a power greater than themselves" or "believe in a personal god" but those are just me-ists who don't want to take personal responsibility for their own lives

well apart from muslims but fuck them

New atheism fell when obama got elected, the christian right in america lost their ascendance, and islam became the new prime target. Suddenly, new atheism went from being a liberal movement to being a libertarian movement, with all the requisite stigma.

It hardly matters because nobody actually gives a shit about faith anymore. Religiosity is just ideological seasoning.