This would not be lamentable were it not for the profound influence that the New Atheists wield among intelligent and open minded students and intellectuals, the very students and intellectuals that progressives require to form a broad and effective coalition that can challenge the unprecedented power of corporations. In other words, the New Atheists have retained the outdated substance of the enlightenment but have left its vital spirit behind, have, as it were, mistakenly dragged a 200 year old corpse into the modern world. The most potent mythology is neoliberal nationalism 9, 10 and the most powerful institution is the corporation.
In the contemporary United States, however, the church is no longer an inordinately powerful institution and religion, even among believers, is not the most potent mythology. During the enlightenment, thinkers like Jefferson, Diderot, and Voltaire assailed religion and the churches that propagated it precisely because it was a dense and powerful curtain that was drawn over the eyes of humans. This is a noble desideratum the problem is that the real shackles of the mind–at least in the Western world–are not chained to religion but rather to mainstream political narratives. 8 ), of freeing minds from the shackles of religious fundamentalism and superstition so that they can perceive the unadulterated “scientific” truth about the nature of reality. The New Atheists believe that they are carrying out the once stalled project of the enlightenment (See Richard Dawkins Foundation For Reason and Science Mission. At bottom, however, the most egregious problem with such attacks is that they ignore the real veil that distorts most people’s perceptions of reality, diverting attention from real political issues that affect millions of lives and convincing many intelligent college students that the chief problem in the world today is irrational religious conviction. At times, this criticism can be healthy and productive at others, it can be destructive and can devolve into ugly and uninformed attacks against Islamic civilization. Although their arguments have not gone without criticism (see Atran 5, 6 also, see Hedges 7 ), a healthy number of self-designated “free thinkers” have praised their work and continue to impugn the supposed benefits of belief. Although these thinkers differ in their analyses, their main theme is similar: religious faith is irrational and should eventually be discarded like a child’s toy by mature citizens in a modern, secular era.
Since 2001, a group of scholars and intellectuals (for simplicity, and in line with current labels, we will call them the “New Atheists”) have become college campus celebrities for assailing the “irrationalism” of religious belief some, like Daniel Dennett, 1 Christopher Hitchens, 2 and Richard Dawkins, 3 already possessed laudable resumes, and some, like Sam Harris, 4 rose in fame primarily because of their passionate pleas against faith in the immediate post 9-11 milieu. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance Rashid Khalidiįear and Loathing in the Lone Star State E.R.
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