I haven’t paid attention to the blogging world for the past week unfortunately, as I’ve just been really busy with other things – but the other night I watched the movie Religulous, which features American political humourist Bill Maher – and it has inspired me to get back into things!
What struck me as I watched was that the “New Atheists” are somewhat like the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood”: The pre-Raphaelites, as I recall, were a group of painters who were not actually prior to Raphael – they were long after Raphael, but they wanted to push a return in style to the time before Raphael, and that’s how they got their name. Similarly, I think, the resurgence in a particular form of atheism in our own time smacks of a previous era – a time of black and white “rationalism”.
In the movie, there were recurring phrases like “the progress of humankind”, “rational people can’t believe…”, “science has proved…” etc etc etc… and the whole thing felt like stepping back in time to a quaint bygone Cartesian era. Maher gushes:
- “faith means making a virtue out of not thinking”
- “Rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves”
- “The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge having in key decisions made by religious people - by irrationalists…”
Anyway, if you’re interested in a movie that critically but light-heartedly explores Christianity from the perspective of an atheist, I recommend Andrew Denton’s God on my Side – it’s far more insightful and poignant than Religulous.
RSS - Posts
I know I spend too long pimping this guy, but check out Roland Boer’s article on the New Atheists. Essentially he points out, unlike, say Marxism, which recognises religious faith as something real (at once expression of suffering and a revolt against it and all that) and something that cannot be reduced socio-politically, new atheism takes a rather backwards step in the analysis. This is demonstrated most strongly when they begin to pontificate about religious conflict – as if they lack of religion would wave away Israel and Palestine, sort out Northern island etc. Rather than look at the reasons why religion in these areas tends towards violence, where as in others it tends towards peace-making, they just put it under a blanket term and can’t actually think of why this might be the case. Not very scientific eh?
Hey thanks for that Alex – where is that article?
http://www.cpa.org.au/amr/50/amr50-03-new-old-atheists.html
Enjoy.