Are the "New Atheists" As Bad as Christian Fundamentalists?

By Frank Schaeffer, AlterNet. Posted November 3, 2009.

 My problem with the so-called New Atheist movement is that several of the most successful of the New Atheist leaders -- as judged by book sales and speaking fees -- say Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins -- remind me of the worst of my own fundamentalist evangelical background. They are as close minded as they seem to be almost pathologically certain of their beliefs. 

I know a deranged faith-based personality cult when I see one, given that my late father Francis Schaeffer was a fundamentalist guru to millions in the 1970s and 80s and a leading founder of the Religious Right, something Max Blumenthal discusses in his important book Republican Gomorrah and that I go into (in depth) in my book Patience With God--Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion Or Atheism. (In that book I explain what is wrong with evangelicalism -- besides paranoia and hate! -- and why I got out.)

The New Atheist movement is being led by several egomaniac intolerant fundamentalists. It’s relevant to ask about who they are, not just what they say or write, because the New Atheism isn’t just about non-belief in God. The leaders of this movement make loud, repeated, and bold claims about atheism being better and more moral, more ethical, and a vastly improved alternative to religion. They also name names when blasting religious leaders. 

If we are to dismiss Christianity and other religions partly because of the likes of Oral Roberts, Ted Haggard, and their shenanigans (not to mention child-molesting Roman Catholic priests, Islamic suicide bombers et al) it's just as legitimate to ask about the characters of the people pointing out religious people’s moral faults ad naming names.

I admire many people who are atheists from David Hume to Daniel Denett. I often agree with their critique of religion. And Lord knows after the near take over of America by the Religious Right and following religion's attempt to murder us 9/11-style religion deserves a good kicking! But Dawkins and Hitchens are to atheism what Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell have been to religion: men who discredit whatever they're selling by their tawdry proselytizing and commercial opportunism combined with absurdly big egos and a deadly certainty that they and only they are right. With friends like these atheists need no enemies

But first some good news: the New Atheists also have several gems speaking for the movement. One is Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett

In the first page of Breaking the Spell—Religion As A Natural Phenomenon, Dennett writes, “I may have missed my target.” Dennett strikes me as somebody actually looking for answers. He is an atheist, but no fundamentalist. One reason I find Dennett so appealing is his decency. His humility, wit, and empathy speak volumes to me and lends a solid gravity to his wisdom. It certainly proves you don’t need to believe in God to be a moral person let alone to come across as just the sort of person anyone would like to have for a friend.

Dennett is a philosopher whose science research is related to evolutionary biology. He is also director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. Dennett deserves better friends than his fellow contributors to the emerging New Atheist canon. Maybe he knows this, because he puts a little distance between Dawkins and himself. In Breaking the Spell Dennett levels a subtle rebuke at Dawkins, even though he doesn’t name him: “Biologists are often accused of gene-centrism—thinking that everything in biology is explained by the action of genes. And some biologists do indeed go overboard in their infatuation with genes. They should be reminded that Mother Nature is not a gene centrist!”

Dennett also wrote a review of Dawkins’s The God Delusion for Free Inquiry, saying that he and Dawkins agree about many ideas, “but on one central issue we are not (yet) of one mind: Dawkins is quite sure that the world would be a better place if religion were hastened to extinction and I am still agnostic about that.”

We’ve never met but I’ve watched Dennett debate, have read him, and have heard him interviewed. He seems fair and knowledgeable about religion, acknowledging that all religions have a toxic component and yet that they also have a good side. Dennett has even proposed that a course on religions should be taught — worldwide — as a compulsory part of education both private and public, secular and religious. He wants this done because, as he correctly says, “All toxic parts of religion depend on the enforced ignorance of the young.”

Dennett also looks forward to the day that the Vatican becomes “a museum of Roman Catholic religion” and “Mecca becomes Disney’s Magic Kingdom of Allah.” He said that in a debate (held at Tufts University in 2008) with the right-wing author Dinesh D’Souza. It’s also a somewhat tongue-in-cheek point Dennett makes in his book.

The essential idea put forward in Breaking the Spell is that humans are like ants whose brains have been infected by a parasite. We’re like an ant who climbs again and again to the top of a stalk of grass, driven to do that by a parasite lodged in its brain.

Dennett asks, “Does anything like this ever happen with human beings? Yes indeed. We often find human beings setting aside their personal interests, their health, their chances to have children, and devoting their entire lives to furthering the interests of an idea that has lodged in their brains.”

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Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of Patience With God-Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism).

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