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What is a "neo atheist"?
Posted on: July 6, 2009 - 3:09am
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What is a "neo atheist"?
I have seen this term thrown around lately by a christian I know in a fairly derogatory manner. What is it exactly, and how are they different from "old" atheists? Theism is why we can't have nice things.
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They are comparing this "new atheism" with anti-theism. The assumption is that if you were an atheist, that you were a theist hater and worked daily to bring down Christianity. For those of us with functioning minds, that is anti-theism (like the four horsemen of atheism). Those who say "I do not believe in god(s)" are now what they are calling new atheists. The goal, I presume, is to cast a light on atheists like it is a new hippie movement, and that REAL atheists are those who subscribe to anti-theism.
Again, it's just another attempt at confusing the issue and criminalizing atheism.
They will keep trying, for as long as there is a "they".
I made a blanket statement that the four horsemen of atheism were anti-theists. That is not necessarily true, but it is close enough that I thought it would be safe to lump them into that category (when talking among friends).
Into the water heathen!!!!11!one!!1
No true atheist would dare to deny that horsemen always come in prime numbers. Four is not a prime number.
I don't know who is actually in charge of hading out horsemen but I think that prime numbers are cool and therefore I assert that “he who hands out horsemen” always gives us a prime number of horsemen.
=
I've always thought New Atheism was just a way to use labels in a FOX-News style prejudice. It's a "fad" or just a bunch of young hipsters who are feeling rebellious. Since it's "new" it's just something we can laugh off or ignore.
Meh. I don't really even like calling myself an atheist. I just do it because people want to know where I go to church. I'm just a rationalist who happens to see that atheism is rational.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
really, its just a ploy to make us look like some radical new fringe movement.
In principle, I take it to mean "atheists who aren't afraid of us anymore" when used by the religious right.
It's generally accepted to mean "atheists who like to publish books"
nothing tickles me more than being told, by some theist 20 years younger than me, that i'm a naive kid who's jumping on the atheist bandwagon. never mind that i've been an atheist longer than they have been alive, or that when i first became an atheist i didn't even know it had a name or that anyone else on the planet shared my point of view.
www.derekneibarger.com http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=djneibarger "all postures of submission and surrender should be part of our prehistory." -christopher hitchens
I know this has already been posted a couple of times, but I still find it funny:
Ok Will, you busted my balls about hope, so I'm going to bust yours about atheism.
Atheism technically has changed. Before the discovery of evolution, atheism really was kind of a fringe theory, and most scientists threw their hands up and said, "Sure... it makes sense that a god might have created everything."
I take substantial issue with Hume, for instance, and for a long time, atheists pointed at him as a champion of their own philosophies, even though his was somewhat oblique. Until Huxley invented "agnosticism" there was a whole element of atheism that folks didn't even know they ought to be talking about.
Russell's teapot was revolutionary.
In short, today's atheist is considerably more sophisticated philosophically than those of the 19th century and before. It is true that they happened to be right, but we're a lot better at explaining why we're right.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Neo-Atheist : Any heathen that doesn't know their place in polite Christian society. See also uppity.
"Faith, Faith is an island in the setting sun,
but proof, proof is the bottom line for everyone."
Proof, Paul Simon
Nothing this hard should taste so beefy.
This sounds strange. Atheism might have been a fringe propagandist tactic because nutcase ideas were (and still are) more efficient, but atheism was assumed basis for most ideas. Even the heliocentric system goes back to an atheist. Later adoptation by the Church is not even an irony - any religion must necessarily originate from atheistic ideas. Unless you think they come from God.
You disagree with Hume, but I think he might have had an unintentional point with unproveable causality - it certainly can be invisible to the "sophisticated" atheist.
Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
Fair enough. You don't really need to warn me, I'm Canadian. Hockey might be our favourite sport, but ball-busting is our favourite passtime.
So there was a vacuum. Are you saying that neo-atheists are just more familiar with their subject matter?
Oh, I see you are saying that. Yeah, well that's true, I guess. Wait, I thought you were going to bust my balls.
The classical world is rife with people who don't believe in gods, and make their case pretty well. (Marcus Aurelius and Epicurus are probably the most obvious examples.)
But did the belief ever change? Was there ever an atheist who was iffy on the number of gods? The nature of godlessness? Comparatively speaking, we just don't argue amongst ourselves with the same vigour as the deluded. The world is exactly godless. The number of gods is zero. Just because we have more evidence for that doesn't mean our classical ancestors were any less right.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence