New Atheism - A Passing Fad?

Mark Baddeley has written a great little article on New Atheism (think Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens et al.). Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite:

A few years ago at an event hosted by Oxford University’s resident atheist, secularist, and humanist societies, one speaker lectured on the question “Can the natural sciences answer all questions?” To my surprise, it turns out his answer was “Yes, the natural sciences can answer all real questions”. He apparently argued strongly that questions like “What is the meaning of life?” or “What is good and evil?” or even “What does it mean to be a human?” are not real questions. Real questions involve the chemical composition and molecular make-up of bits of the human body, questions about the rate of fusion in stars, and the like. Only questions that can be answered by scientifically analysing nature are real. All other questions are merely errors in thinking.

There’s three problems here, and it seems to me that they are endemic whenever New Atheism raises its head.

First, this isn’t primarily an assault upon God. It’s primarily an assault on everything other than the natural sciences. Yes, obviously the speaker above was attacking the validity of theology as a discipline and whether there is a God to be known. But he’s also throwing philosophy under the bus, along with history, literature, psychology, education, sociology, and anthropology. It is a rejection of the validity of any discipline other than natural science, because apparently only natural scientists ask real questions. Everyone else is wasting their time.

This kind of radical empiricism is only ever going to appeal to a very small group of people—natural scientists, and people who wish they were natural scientists. The vast majority of the human race have to deal with questions that cannot be answered by the natural sciences, and value those disciplines that help them to come to grips with them. This extraordinary shrinking of what human beings are allowed to ask questions about just doesn’t ring true for most people. Life is more than the lab.

[T]he kind of people who are attracted to the arguments of New Atheism will invariably be people who have an aptitude for science and some kind of respect for scientists and the capacities of the scientific method. People who don’t care, or who are orientated to other aspects of life, like art, are rarely going to be swayed much by New Atheism (although they may be attracted to forms of atheism grounded in other approaches). Thinking highly about science is hardly a bad thing—science is a good gift from God—but it is something to keep in mind. One of the things that might be useful to check and address when you think someone might be susceptible to New Atheist arguments is the level of the person’s respect for science and scientists. Do they think science can answer almost any question, for example? Do they see it as having any limits, and if so, what?

I can also recommend my friend David Glass's book Atheism's New Clothes.