The term ‘New Atheist’ is beginning to get a bit old already. It is still relatively new, chronologically, at least in relation to centuries of classical atheists. The movement seems to have arisen, or at least gained popularity, after the events of 9/11 (2001) in the USA. It was characterized by a shift towards the use of rhetoric, emotion, fear, and embodied very ‘religious’ type behaviors (some argue mirroring religious fundamentalists), despite the often claimed ‘reason’ branding.
However, in more scholarly circles (even among atheists, humanists, and skeptics), New Atheism has started to fade as it has become recognized that the tactic, while stirring up the core base, hasn’t been so effective beyond that. That said, there is little doubt it has had an impact on society in general.
A new strategy
A couple of recent movements have dropped much of the vitriol of atheists like Richard Dawkins, and have exchanged it for some new strategies. The reason I want to highlight these movements, is that I believe they present a real challenge, not so easily countered. They, in fact, utilize the strategies many in Christian apologetics employ, and often target the same audiences: the mushy middle and the unequipped Christian.
Peter Boghossian – The battle for mind
You might have heard of Peter Boghossian recently, as Christian apologist Tom Gilson has written a response to Peter’s book, A Manual for Creating Atheists. Tom has been on a number of popular apologetics programs, (1) discussing his own response, Peter Boghossian, Atheist Tactician: What He Gets Right, (Some of) What He Gets Wrong, and How Christians Must Respond. You can actually get this e-book for free at Tom’s website, or through Amazon.
I heard Peter speak back in October 2013 on a skeptic’s podcast I listen to, The Malcontent’s Gambit. While I feel Boghossian got a number of things wrong when he started talking about Christianity, such as his definition of faith, he gets a lot of things right as well. Despite our differences, I found myself really liking the guy and agreeing quite often. For example, he rightly critiques what he calls the ‘affinity ghettos’ of the contemporary academic left. He concludes (rightly) that this damages his efforts to promote truth, just as I feel it does my own. He says that the move in tolerance of people to tolerance of ideas, has been devastating. Amen! However, he also concludes that this allows ‘faith’ ideas to flourish, which he sees as false. This is called epistemic relativism, and we should join hands with Boghossian in defeating it. How often have we heard Christian apologists such as Greg Koukl speak on this topic?
He also laments the loss of civility in discourse, as well as the censorship happening all over the country (and world) on debate over various topics and ideas. He mentions a recent attempt to have a campus debate on a matter related to Islam, and notes that it was the leftists screaming about it, not the Muslims. He says this is so condescending to the Muslims, failing to fairly engage their ideas.
Notice how closely much of this matches what Christian apologists might say. I’d almost think he read Greg Koukl’s Tactics book, as he also employs the use of ’Columbo-style questions’ and the Socratic method. In other words, Boghossian is going after the mind, and in my opinion, doing so very effectively. At the same time, some of his critiques of Christianity are almost laughable, such as his picks of Christian evidence to examine being Transubstantiation and speaking in tongues. Have you ever heard a Christian apologist use either as evidences for Christianity?
Tom Gilson brings out the background that Boghossian is trained in philosophy, a teacher/professor, and a specialist in persuasion theory and behavior-change theory. He not only knows it and teaches it, but has effectively put it to use in the Oregon state prison system. He’s going to be someone important to contend with, as these techniques can apply to spread truth just as much as inaccuracy. And, while I said I like Boghossian, I don’t like his intent. He wants to remove bad ideas (ie: religion) from being a what he calls the ‘adult table.’ In other words, he doesn’t want to suppress things from being discussed, but only ‘true’ things should be considered important in the public square. All else is relegated to the ‘kids table,’ though certainly free to take place.
Sean Faircloth – The battle for heart
Someone you might not have heard of, is Sean Faircloth, a long-term state legislature member and politician. I also recently heard him being interviewed by Alan Litchfield. In 2009, he became executive director of Secular Coalition for America, and more recently, in 2011, because Director of Strategy and Policy for the Richard Dawkins Foundation. I’ve actually noticed a change in Dawkins’ public behavior over the last year or two and wonder if this might not be part of the reason.
Sean is in some ways opposite Peter Boghossian. Peter, while I feel misguided, seems to be on a noble venture. Faircloth, on the other hand, sets out to win. He has studied how the ‘Religious Right’ came to power, and seeks to emulate this for secularism in America. He is the author of, Attack of the Theocrats!: How the Religious Right Harms Us All-and What We Can Do About It. His focus is on organizing, lobbying, and politics. He understands the need for grass-roots efforts and having proper, focused, long and short-term goals.
His most recent effort is focused through SecularityUSA. They are using a tactic employed by former President Carter, who gained popularity in Iowa. The Iowa caucuses have become a major, long, media focus in the run-up to the USA presidential elections. He knows they can get major world-wide press coverage if they employ the right strategies. They see 2014 as a big organizing time; 2015 as a time to push into the public; all in preparation for 2016.
Their primary focus is to get religion out of government via the separation clause. They realize they will be heavily attacked by the ‘Religious Right’ and intend on using this through a coordinated effort with clergy and religious leaders to make it backfire.
But, I’m calling this an appeal for the heart, as one of their primary tools is going to be the use of horrific cases where ‘faith healer’ Christians have refused medical attention for their children, often leading to their deaths. Faircloth says, “Sometimes atheists, and I commend them for it in a sense, will say, ‘well anecdotal evidence is not good evidence,’ – true, but it’s strategic evidence. It’s the door opening. You tell the story of the human harm.” (2) Strategically, I would agree, and this is a method William Wilberforce used to abolish slavery and the Pro-life movement has been using to fight the abortion industry. The difference being that Faircloth has taken a fringe extreme that most Christians would also find appalling, and is painting the whole with it. That said, we must not underestimate the effectiveness this will have.
I almost think Gilson’s book, ‘Atheist Tactician’ would have been better aimed at Faircloth. This guy is a true political tactician aimed at organizing on common ground, atheists, humanists, skeptics and free-thinkers in our society, which has arguably been one of their major weak-points. And, I don’t doubt their ability to partner with many, if not all, of the more liberal wing of Christianity and other religions.
I did agree with Faircloth on one major point besides the effectiveness of their strategy. He agrees with many Christians on morality being the only thing we can legislate (in opposition to the ‘you can’t legislate morality’ slogan). But, he advocates taking the term morality back from the ‘right.’ He has noticed through his political work that the ‘right’ often used the morality card to make their case, and the ‘left’ seem to avoid it, giving that point to the ‘right.’ But, he says, the ‘left’ shouldn’t be letting the ‘right’ be the only ones to play the morality game.
Conclusion
Tom Gilson said that Tim McGrew’s initial assessment of Boghossian’s work is that while he isn’t a heavy-hitter, as he makes a number of clear and crucial mistakes, that he will ‘rip through the average church-goer like a buzz-saw through balsa.’ (See update on this quote below.) I would agree, as while these ‘newer’ atheists largely setup a straw-man with regard to Christianity, they are quite right about the state of a large number of their target Christian audience and their ill-equipped state, not to mention the ‘mushy middle’ of the general populace.
These tactics will be effective. The question becomes who is better organized, with greater numbers, Christian apologists, or these new-er atheists? In the end, of course, God is in control. But, are we being faithful in our role as Christian case-makers?
Update: Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Regarding the above Tim McGrew quote:
I suppose I should be honored that Peter Boghossian or one of his agents actually took the time to read my article, but imagine my surprise when I learned they pulled a paraphrased quote from MY article to ‘endorse’ Peter’s book… yes, you read that right, an actual endorsement on the Amazon site. I guess I was under the mistaken impression that book endorsements were usually given by the actual person giving the endorsement. I can be so naive sometimes!
Well in that case, you might want to check out Dr. Tim McGrew’s ACTUAL opinion of Boghossian’s book. I’ll also include the full quote here for clarity: “My initial assessment: he’s not a heavy hitter, and he’s making a number of clear and crucial mistakes – BUT – he’ll rip through the average church-goer like a buzz-saw through balsa.”
That’s a bit of a stretch as an endorsement, IMO. As Dr. McGrew rightly notes, it’s more an accurate assessment of the sad state of Christian education and apologetics in our churches. Or, to put this another way, it doesn’t take all that much effort to ‘rip through the average church-goer like a buzz-saw through balsa’ these days (which, in fact, is actually included in the analogy… a point Boghossian or his agents seem to have missed!)
Photo: © Depositphotos.com/graphicsdunia4u
This article was first published at TilledSoil.org. Copyright © 2014 TilledSoil.org. All rights reserved.
Notes:
1. Reasonable Atheists and Reasonable Believers Are Targeting the Same Group, Tom Gilson – Answering Atheist Tactics (January 7, 2014), Couldn’t find a link via CrossExamined.org, but Tom writes about it here.
2. 18:18 min in
Excellent article. Now what do we do about this? It is time for Christians in the USA to stop playing church and become the church. This means that we all actively know and live out the gospel.
New Atheism isn’t about being new; it’s about criticizing religious privilege – loud and sustained criticism – in the public domain. To do this, we have to show why it deserves none. Boghossian’s book, for example, expands on the simple question fatal to religious confidence in all kinds of causal claims about reality, “How do you know that?” The conclusion? Faith-based belief has not, does not, and never shall produce knowledge. Without knowledge, no causal claim about reality can be justified as anything other than speculation, assertion, and assumption. Infusing these with confidence taken from faith-based belief necessarily must reject reality’s role to arbitrate them. And without respect for this independent verification, knowledge claimed from faith-based belief rather than evidence-based belief is empty of truth value. And that why any conversation between religion and science, for example, is always one way; religion offers nothing in return.
When religious belief based on faith is used to justify some kind of public policy or governance or funding, then we all have a significant and deleterious problem on our hands. And this is revealed in many of the anecdotal stories criticizing religious belief you mention… from the failure of faith healing to the failure of creationism. These are not outliers cherry picked to represent the norm but able to cause effect because the average person continues to offer respect to even the most outlandish claims under the guise of respecting faith-based beliefs that deserve none, a source of behaviour that inevitably and continuously causes real harm to real people in real life facilitated by privileging religious claims in the public domain.
The New Atheists are having real and significant effect on the younger generation… especially online where specific religious claims can be dissected and exposed for the empty claims – demonstrably empty of any special knowledge value – they really are. And the younger generation’s religious indoctrination is failing to withstand reality’s blunt and brutal arbitration of them. Reality’s a tough foe. Only the religious, used to being swayed by poor arguments wrapped in pious rhetorical salesmanship, are surprised by this result. In the same way that the younger generation knows that the LGBT moniker doesn’t describe the real people they know who also happen to be gay or lesbian, so too are they learning that non belief in unjustified truth claims is no big deal and if that means ejecting religious belief, no loss, no foul.
You speak of reality and that faith in Christ offers nothing in return. I have seen the result of non-belief in the lives of homeless and hopeless young people who have believe the lie of that self-arbitration was freedom and its returns has a slow path to self-destruction and death. I personally not a fan of religious politicization especially Christianity because Christ told his followers that his kingdom is not of this world. Sadly institutional Christianity as with Atheism has blinded millions to the reality of Christ’s power in a human life. I am one of those who was written off by society and an encounter with Christ has radically transformed my life twenty six years ago. I have seen God provided and intervene in my life that has astounded me and others.
Matthew Parris, another well known UK Atheist, author and journalist wrote in The Times a most remarkable piece
entitled …“As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God”and subtitled: “Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution
to Africa’s biggest problem—the crushing passivity of the people’s mindset.”
Parris’s article was from his own experience in traveling throughout Africa during his childhood and during an extensive tour across the continent when in his twenties. Of a more recent visit to see a village well development project, he wrote:
“It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But traveling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.”
“Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.”
I agree with what you’ve said, and I’ve heard about Parris as well. I think we need to dissect that and get to more of the ‘why’ aspects, as the atheist will just paint this as a pragmatic step that while maybe still necessary in Africa, we’ve grown beyond in the West.
The silver-lining, I suppose, is that as the West falls and places like China rise, it will become more and more clear that the secular-utopia is a failed concept, and add another piece of evidence that the Christian worldview is a key component to wellbeing… it’s just that this won’t make the history books for much longer than you and I have.
tildeb, I have to agree with much of what you’ve said. The problem is that you make a distinction between faith-based belief and evidence-based belief, and believe it is a real distinction between religion and science, rather than the distinction between (false-religion & poorly-understood-Christianity) and (proper-Christianity & science). So, apart from this misunderstanding on your part, we’re actually on the same page. I’m combating the same thing, in a sense, that you and Boghossian are… a concept of ‘faith’ which is not grounded in evidence and reality.
I’m happy Boghossian is asking, ‘how do you know that?’ The problem, it seems, is that he’s then attacking a strawman in going after the same deluded folks I’m after as a Christian apologist, rather than taking on ACTUAL Christianity and Christian scholarship. I could do the same thing, say, if I found non-religious folks who don’t know much about some area of science, and then tear them apart. Maybe that’s beneficial, to the point that I’ll get them thinking, but if I then replace their delusions with other delusions, what have I accomplished?
And, I agree, when you just have any old religious belief making public policy, that’s dangerous. However, it’s equally dangerous when you have unfettered science (or maybe better, scientists with social power and authority who don’t recognize their own biases, or see the big-picture properly) or non-theistic worldviews making public policy.
re: faith healing – yes, this one is an outlier. What percentage of the population don’t use modern medicine? You have to seek out some odd religious sects to find your stories here.
re: creationism – I wasn’t aware it has failed. Just be sure, again, you’re engaging the full breadth of Christianity on the topic, not generating a straw-man by picking out one particular view and applying it to all of Christianity.
And, I’d agree that religious indoctrination is failing. That’s why I’m a Christian apologist, for crying out loud! 🙂 But, again this emphasizes the straw-man nature of the new atheist movement. I’m ADMITTING a large percentage of Christians have simply been indoctrinated rather than properly educated and equipped. That doesn’t mean they are wrong. I bet 95% of the general public couldn’t defend a great number of scientific ‘facts’ against someone well educated in counter-views, especially if they used the tactics these two atheistic movements are utilizing.
And, I’d somewhat agree with you about the LGBT situation being partly out of uninformed prejudice. Certainly, many in the past (and even present) have used fear and villainization, rather than reason to make their points. But, this also doesn’t necessarily mean that your experience becomes a replacement for reason either. I have close LGBT friends, and even family members… and of course they are lovely people. But, I have to engage reason to properly assess the situation and inform the development of public policy. One can, too easily, fall in either ditch.
The problem is that you make a distinction between faith-based belief
and evidence-based belief, and believe it is a real distinction between
religion and science…
… because it is a real distinction when it comes to causal claims about reality.
The reason why I spoke about having justified confidence in these causal claims is because faith in the religious sense of the term – the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen – does not share in having any need for compelling empirical evidence adduced from reality to justify the causal claim! It’s not a ‘problem’ I own that I understand this vital distinction between faith-based belief and confidence in these types of claims (a founding human couple, a global flood, inherited sin, the need for redemption, the need for a blood sacrifice, resurrection, and so on) and evidence-based beliefs (population genetics that demonstrates no founding couple, geological evidence that demonstrates no global flood, biology that demonstrates no heritable sin, and so on) and confidence adduced from compelling evidence in reality in these types of claims.
There is a real, profound, and contrary distinction between them. And the important clue as to which method we use to instil confidence in causal claims is revealed by the knowledge that is accrued from each. It is here where we find a startling difference: faith-based belief produces zero knowledge. In contrast, evidence-based claims really does produce applications, therapies, and technologies that work for everyone everywhere all the time. I think this matters in any fair comparison. The remarkable distinction between these two methods to produce confidence in causal claims about reality isn’t my ‘problem’; the problem falls squarely on the shoulders of those who instil confidence in faith-based beliefs and then dare to act on them! The result causes real harm to real people in real life. And the owners of this problem — faith-based beliefs in action in the public domain – belongs wholly and solely to those who use it to justify these actions.
You falsely paint evidence-based claims to be ‘unfettered science’ when the opposite is in fact true: evidence-based causal claims require adjudication from reality for all the evidence (and not just cherry-picked bits and pieces that appear to be supportive, claims of authority based on third hand reports, self-revelation, dogmatic scripture, ignorance masquerading as the home of the divine, and so on). This is ultimate fettering… by an independent and unflinching reality! Causal claims in science are ranked for confidence by this very strict arbitration and only few advance from hypothesis to theory… theories, by the way, that all of us grant the highest form of confidence: we are willing to risk our lives daily so great is our confidence.
And reality has arbitrated that faith healing doesn’t work, intercessory prayer doesn’t work, creationism doesn’t work, and so on. All the clues are there that the method that produces these kinds of causal claims doesn’t work. Ever.
The very definition of crazy is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. We know that faith-based claims don’t produce knowledge, yet every generation produces sizable populations that continue to infuse this method with unearned confidence hoping that it will. That’s faith in action and is quite distinct from the method that does produce knowledge and earns our confidence in its causal claims.
You’re the one claiming a distinction between the two, not I. If you re-define terms to your liking, you can win any argument. Maybe I can now make the distinction between rational theists and irrational non-theists? Since you’re irrational, nothing you’ve just said has any relevance on reality. I win.
I’m talking about what Christians have historically, and Biblically meant by faith, which only adds a component to evidence-based belief of personal trust in God’s fulfillment of His promises to us, ‘the things hoped for but yet unseen.’
re: “… and evidence-based beliefs (population genetics that demonstrates no founding couple, geological evidence that demonstrates no global flood, biology that demonstrates no heritable sin, and so on)”
Genetic evidence DOES NOT demonstrate no founding couple. cf. Dr. Fazele Rana’s articles on the subject, among others.
Not all Christians (in fact, probably most) are not claiming a global flood, nor does the Bible account require us to do so.
Biology can’t demonstrate no heritable sin, as sin isn’t a biological component.
… and so on?
It seems you might have fallen prey to gross misunderstanding of Christianity, and poor interpretations of the evidence. That we all *should* be working from the evidence, however, is I think something we both share.
Thanks. I’d say our next moves need to be twofold: 1) We apologists need to take these movements seriously – if not intellectually – at least in their power to have a great influence… which means understanding them and preparing to counter them. and 2) We need to equip our churches, which includes making them aware of the danger (so they recognize they need apologetics, historical, Biblical knowledge, etc education to become a critical effort), and then equip as many apologists as possible so we have the numbers needed to get the job done.
And, as you mentioned, it should be able to go without saying that we need to live it out… but since we’re fallen, it needs to always be repeated along with the intellectual endeavors.