What's the deal with New Atheism?
By Wilson Huang
Atheism, as it is commonly understood, is a denial of the existence of God. However, atheism like theism is caught up in many different forms, including those which are intellectually tolerant and those which are fundamentalist. Modern-day atheism, for example, includes New Atheism. New Atheism is a form of atheism proposed by authors such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. However, while it may be the most prominent voice of atheism today, it doesn't make it the most intellectual or rational form of it.
New Atheism has been criticised for its lack of engagement with diverse theologies. An argument put towards Dawkins's God Delusion is the fact that he fails to consider theologies other than "orthodox Christian theism". In Dawkins' Godless Delusion, J. Angelo Corlett mentions that Dawkins assumes that atheism is justified from the end of orthodox Christian theism. He argues Dawkins tirade "shows no significant appreciation for the several rather respectable attempts to deal with various problems of God's existence."
New Atheism has also been criticised for being largely intolerant to any form of religion at all. Indeed, Sam Harris, in Letter to a Christian Nation, and Dawkins strongly condemn religious people on their claim that religion has had and continues to have primarily negative consequences such as homophobia and witch hunts. While this is, without doubt, true in many cases, they fail to realise how religion has been important in social justice movements, for example, by Unitarian (Universalists) and liberal Quakers.
Harris, in particular, is explicit in his condemnation of religion to the point of saying that he hopes religious liberals and moderates, "will also begin to see that the respect they demand for their own religious beliefs gives shelter to extremists of all faiths" in Letter to a Christian Nation. He arguably does not see any good with religion even though he acknowledges that liberal and moderates would not do the things extremists would do.
However, not all forms of atheism illustrate intolerance and a lack of intellectual charity. In the 1960s, Death of God theology was a form of atheism proposed by Christian theologians, which sought to combine Christianity with atheism.
Unlike New Atheists, Death of God theologians acknowledged the input of Christianity even though they believed that the traditional notion of God was untenable. Thomas Altizer and William Hamilton in Radical Theology and the Death of God engage with a variety of theologies in their discussions and development of 'radical theology', unlike Dawkins and Harris. As it seems, rather than forsake Christianity entirely, Altizer and Hamilton see an evolution of Christianity stating that "[the Christian story] may manage to stay on as merely illuminating or instructing or guiding, but it no longer performs its classical functions of salvation or redemption." To them, radical theology was started by Barth and neo-orthodoxy evolving into a theology that exists in light of secular atheism and Christendom's collapse.
Overall, the Death of God theologians saw value in understanding Jesus even though they thought he was human. Their diverse movement tried to engage in an honest way of what they thought of the current state of the world. They were theologians who no longer saw the need for a transcendent God in order to understand human history and the world around them. Yet, unlike the New Atheists, they acknowledged the input of religion and religious thinkers and sought a redefinition of Christianity rather than its absolute destruction. This is the dialogue we should aspire to, not the intolerant and self-justifying voices of the New Atheists.