The stronger a hold religion has on society, the cleverer atheists have to be. David Hume questioned the precepts of Christianity at a time where much of the West was still taken up by what were effectively theocracies. He'd be more accurately described as an agnostic or deist, but scandalous enough for his time. Friedrich Nietzsche, of course, was much bolder. "And now you upbraid me for teaching that there is no reward-giver, nor paymaster?" Agree with him or not, he was a genuine vanguard.
Subsequently in the West religion has lost both power and representation in the greater populace. You can believe what you want to believe, or not.
Which is why I never found the New Atheism movement of the turn of the millennium particularly compelling. It's no secret that a lot of believers―call them fundies, cultists, or what have you―are reactive and simply shut out other viewpoints, facts, etc. But by that point a lot of nonbelievers were making just making a lot of lazy half-arguments and exhibiting a similar closed-mindedness. They'd let too many people into the club.
It's difficult to place Richard Dawkins on this continuum. On the one hand his attitude toward the question of God and things not seen in general might best be characterized as dismissive. On the other hand he has a genuinely curious mind and provocative way with words. These very qualities appear to have gotten him into trouble with his onetime confederates.
In a way this is not too surprising. Much of the atheist movement was made up of urbanites eager to prove their superiority to the great exurban unwashed―red states and flyover country here in the States. Now a number of social attitudes fulfill the same purpose, and it's only natural for Brights to latch onto those as well. Now Dawkins can't even play devil's advocate on those without facing exile. New Atheism always carried the seeds of its own destruction.
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I find it interesting that a number of people nowadays believe Richard Dawkins was one of the original atheists. I do know he's a New Atheist but I've yet to figure out what that means. Do the new atheists despise the idea of God even more than the originals did? Before Nietzsche wrote his famous epitaph I'm pretty sure Hobbes, Voltaire, and Rousseau and others had given up on the Christian Deity.
Anyhow, it wasn't long before Marxism and nationalism took over the general mindset and look where that got us in the 20th century. Progress as the major religion of our age drives the popular insistence that the high priests of science and technology will provide miracles to solve any problems that emerge. But a tokamak is not a cathedral - and intellectual conceit doesn't provide any spiritual benefit. Science is fine so long as it doesn't try to include everything in itself.
I read Dawkins' book 'The God Delusion' many years ago and wasn't impressed with his hypothesis that we crawled out of supernatural pond scum from nowhere by chance. There's no doubt he writes well and he's funny in his ascerbic fashion but his case against the existence of God in general and against Christianity in particular is unconvincing. Insofar as the 'Brights' disowning him now is concerned, well, I bet he doesn't much care, or if he does he's never going to admit it.
Here's a quote by a scientist who also wasn't an atheist:
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”
~ Isaac Newton
Most of the major intellectual trends of the twentieth century seemed to take the absence of God as at the very least probable. A few Christian and Jewish thinkers and other faiths further east aside. And as you point out there was that whole Enlightenment thing. New Atheism did seem to boil down to being more obnoxious about it. Which I guess was inevitable with the main leading lights being Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in that perpetual hair-of-the-dog cycle.
Thank you for introducing me to the word "tokamak." If I'd ever heard or read about them before it must have bounced off my brain. I can't offer proof of what lies beyond this plane of existence. If someone wants to say "nothing" then I respect their right to that. But having the justice of human government and the judgment of (all too) human science be the final word on everything be the final word on everything isn't something I can get excited about. The last year plus certainly hasn't changed that for me.
Dawkins wanted to carry on from Darwin, and I suppose his position was that the faith vs. science debates of Darwin's time should be settled once and for all by now. Darwin's discoveries and theories, along with some of his contemporaries, revolutionized our view of the history of life. At the same time I think it's arrogant to say that a one-size-fits-all philosophy has to follow from that.
Fascinating man, Isaac Newton. That was when science was more a matter of individual effort.
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