Stale Mail - No, I Didn't Know PZ Had Declared The New Atheism Over

Way down in the pile of unmoderated comments someone tells me that P. Z. Myers has declared that the new atheism fad is over.  No surprise, to me.  I've been telling people for ages that Old White Men are the last people to get when something has gotten old and, as Myers lays it out, the new atheism was always mostly an Old White Man thing. 

Myers' goodbye to all that nothing,  The train wreck that was the New Atheism, starts, 

The title of the article is What Was New Atheism?. The use of the past tense is noted. The label was coined in 2006 by Gary Wolf in Wired, and we spent the next decade sort of agreeing that there is a kind of unified movement here (while trying to explain it wasn’t “new”), while what unity we had splintered beneath us. I guess it’s over now. The “New Atheism” had a 12 year shelf life. We should have used more preservatives, I suppose.

Yes, I was a New Atheist (past tense again). I promoted it, I happily wore the label, I was initially optimistic that we were going to change the culture, I was naive and stupid. I swallowed some of my early reservations — is this just a reaction against Bush fueled by xenophobia inspired by the September 11th bombings? — but figured that would pass, that people would step in the door and then find enduring meaning in science and evidence-based reasoning.

his valediction to what he, himself, admits was a "train wreck" ends:

Dennett has basically retired from the fray. Maybe he was the smartest of the four. [Good Lord, if that's the case then it was predestined to end in a wreck.  I loathe him but I actually think the sleazy, slimy, slithery, vilely dishonest Christopher Hitches was probably the smartest of them.]  Although I would argue with him fiercely on his misunderstandings of evolution, at least he kept his discussions on a philosophical plane. [See my discussion of his eliminative materialism if you want to see what a bad idea that was.]

Harris, the worst of the bunch,[I'd put him in the same category as Hitchens in terms of amorality.] is also the most successful. He has successfully pandered to the most regressive members of his audience, and continues as an alt-right, “Intellectual Dark Web” figurehead, and is continuing to profit. If anyone is a symbol of the moral and intellectual corruption of the New Atheism, though, he’s it.

Dawkins had the most well-earned prestige, and has ended up squandering his reputation with repeated foot-shootings. [I have to assume that Myers carries the typical post-war college-credentialed, history deficient view of Darwinist determinism, which always, inevitably, even among the post-war heroes of Darwinism always ends up in the same place as Dawkins (the genetic racism, racism, class inequality of the likes of Watson, Crick, evo-psy, etc.) either explicitly or just not mentioning the logical ends of that position.]

And me. I was never on a par with those big names, but I was a madly typing proponent of the New Atheism. Now, though…that period is the deepest regret of my life (not that that means much, I’ve been lucky to live a life with few regrets). I’m still a strong atheist, and will be on my deathbed, and I do not regret promoting godlessness and a reason-based life, but I was unfortunate to be part of that traveling shit-show before I realized it’s destination was where it is now: a shambles of alt-right memes and dishonest hucksters mangling science to promote racism, sexism, and bloody regressive politics.

I don't know how anyone knows what they're going to be in the future, I couldn't tell you what I'll be on my deathbed, except I hope, not there long.  The idea that "godlessness" is "a reason-based life" is one of the most laughably absurd ideas I could possibly think would come from someone with 12 years of looking at the thinking of thousands and thousands of atheists from the perch of P. Z. Myers, looking at his comment threads, his blogging and scribbling colleagues, the barely coherent, often teetering over the edge Jerry Coyne, some of his colleagues at the "Free Thought Blogs" especially those who share in Dennett's style of demotion of the idea of consciousness and the more widespread atheist debunking of the idea of free thought. 

I'll give Myers this, he didn't go in the direction of Thunderf00t but I can't think of any of the theologians I respect who would have gone anywhere like in that direction.  In my program of reading Hans Kung's work I can say that I have never read any atheist who is as devoted to following evidence, that of his opponents perhaps even more than those closer to his view point, none who has as deep a devotion to rigorous logical analysis and honesty about the limits of his case.  And I could say the same about most of the theologians I read.  I have read very few philosophers as devoted to logical rigor as the best of the theologians - certainly none of those I read who are still alive would ever come up with something as incredibly stupid as eliminative materialism. 

I think, in the end. Myers' atheism was based on that of all of the rest of them, a very superficial view of religion and its place in history and society, today.  That, in English language scribblage goes back at least to the 17th century, perhaps even farther back.  It is a facile, easily held belief not based in a deep reading and knowledge of history and the primary documentation of it, it is more likely informed by the bigotry of English writers of the 18th century than it is the primary documentation, and that's at its best.  Like Dawkins' God Delusion, it's most likely to be informed by a pretty vulgar level of pop-lit instead. 

I'll give my own take on the new atheism, it was the thing that opened my eyes fully to the folly of the old atheists and the fact that atheist materialism will always, always eventually dissolve the necessary beliefs that are the only thing that supports egalitarian democracy.  The new atheism was the thing that led me to believe atheism is and has been one of the most destructive forces working against the traditional American liberal tradition that is founded in the holdings of egalitarian democracy.

Myers and I probably agree on a lot in politics, the law and society.  He is obviously untroubled at the consequences of neo-Darwinist genetic determinism, the denial of the possibility of free will from a belief in minds being determined by physical causation acting on molecules in human brains, the constant recurrence of assertions of inherent, irremediable and consequential gender, racial, ethnic and class inequality that is the most fundamental holding of natural selection.  I read the 1976 statement of the Sociobiology Study Group and took it to heart, many of those who signed it were far more eminent biologists than Richard Dawkins or P. Z. Myers, including the teacher of Jerry Coyne, Richard Lewontin, and read their warnings that what was about to make Richard Dawkins famous was just such a recapitulation of scientific racism and neo-eugenics.  I also looked into the primary documentary evidence and history of that and see in it the same kind of "universal acid" that Daniel Dennett asserted Darwinism is for everything.  That wasn't exactly news, Friedrich Nietzsche had far more impressively predicted that consequence of the scientism of the late 19th century, even predicting it would, in the fullness of time, even eat away science as anything but a tool of power by the powerful.  I could go on but anyone who cares to can look up the citations on many of my blog posts to read that for themselves.

I think my belief is far more evidence based, far more an expression of applying logical analysis than Myers' atheism.  I would recommend anyone who wants to can read my posts dealing with previous issues concerning P. Z. Myers to see if they agree.