Lessons we can learn from the New Atheists

There was little that was new about the New Atheism – a post-9/11, anti-religious movement headed by Richard Dawkins and the like. Certainly the arguments had not progressed from those given by Bertrand Russell a century earlier.

In many ways, the arguments were worse. At least Russell was a philosopher. The New Atheism survived less on logic and more on vibes and vitriol. What was new was the sense of purpose, the moral crusade, the desire to save the world from the sorts of people who fly planes into buildings.

The God Delusion, Dawkins’ 2006 tirade, was the central text of the movement and it sold well over 3million copies. As with the New Atheism as a whole, its slogan was ‘reason’, but its style was ‘ranting’. ‘The God of the Old Testament’, wrote Dawkins early on, ‘is the most unpleasant character in all of fiction.’ Instantly you could see that this was not a rational argument about God’s existence. This was an emotional reaction to the Religious Studies O-Level which Dawkins just about remembered from his youth.