12.07.09
Spontaneous opposition to New Atheism
Atheists need a different voice
One of the strangest aspects of the New Atheism was the opposition to their movement from, among other sources, other atheists. Just what it is/was that energizes this is not always clear, but one aspect is the dogmatic claim that atheism is in some fashion made metaphysically secure by scientism, and darwinism. Immediate nosedive, as a new set of fallacies, as pernicious as anything in religion, become the targets of a new secularization beyond atheism.
It might help to get past the atheist obsession with god, and recognize true atheists, who are closer to agnostics, but have no choice but to take an ‘atheist’ attitude toward the religious absurdities created from the god concept.
It is also true that the sudden metaphysical switch to atheism is often a phase of thought best left to take its own course.
Meanwhile the great irony seems to be that Nietzsche, by creating an atheism in so extreme a form, undermined the foundation for any future atheism, by making it fake, an obsession, and a worldview that is false.
Real atheists should move on, even as they realize that certainty of god’s existence and certainty of his non-existence arise in the same kind of religious mind.
In the meantime it is important not to lie about the record: Nietzschean atheism (matched with Darwinism) gave birth to some real monstrosities of ethical nihilism. That danger always lurks near the naive atheist.