Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-hqlzj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-03T20:11:10.687Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Politics of New Atheism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2013

Marcus Schulzke
Marcus Schulzke*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Albany
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Marcus Schulzke, State University of New York, Albany, NY 12222. E-mail: mschulzke@albany.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article discusses the political implications of the new atheism movement that has been popularized by writers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. New atheism is largely defined by its political goals, yet it has received relatively little attention from political theorists. To the extent that scholars have commented on new atheists' political thought, they have generally misinterpreted it and presented it as being intolerant. This article will argue that new atheists' attack on religion is largely motivated by their desire to defend a liberal view of politics and liberal values.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 778 - 799
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Arcaro, Tom. 2010. “The Stigma of Being an Atheist: An Empirical Study of the New Atheist Movement and Its Consequences.” Skeptic Magazine 15:50–55.Google Scholar
Bakunin, Mikhail Alexandrovich. 2008. God and the State. New York, NY: Cosimo Books.Google Scholar
Burack, Cynthia. 2008. Sin, Sex, and Democracy: Antigay Rhetoric and the Christian Right. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Cimino, Richard, and Smith, Christopher. 2007. “Secular Humanism and Atheism Beyond Progressive Secularism.” Sociology of Religion 68:407–424.Google Scholar
Cimino, Richard, and Smith, Christopher. 2011. “The New Atheism and the Formation of the Imagined Secularist Community.” Journal of Media and Religion 10:24–48.Google Scholar
Dawkins, Richard. 1996a. The Blind Watchmaker. New York, NY: WW Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Dawkins, Richard. 1996b. Climbing Mount Improbable. New York, NY: Norton.Google Scholar
Dawkins, Richard. 2006. The God Delusion. New York, NY: Bantam Press.Google Scholar
Dennett, Daniel. 2007. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New York, NY: Penguin.Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. 2006. “Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching.” London Review of Books 28:32–34.Google Scholar
Gaus, Gerald F. 2003. Contemporary Theories of Liberalism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Gould, Stephen Jay.1999. Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.Google Scholar
Grayling, A.C. 2011. The Good Book: A Secular Bible. New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Harris, Sam. 2005. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Harris, Sam. 2010. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. New York, NY: Free Press.Google Scholar
Hitchens, Christopher. 2007a. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group.Google Scholar
Hitchens, Cristopher. 2007b. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press.Google Scholar
Hitchens, Cristopher. 2009. Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.Google Scholar
Hitchens, Cristopher. 2011. “Unspoken Truths.” Vanity Fair http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/06/christopher-hitchens-unspoken-truths-201106 (Accessed on March 10, 2012).Google Scholar
Jones, Robert P., and Daniel, Cox. 2011. The 2011 American Values Survey: The Mormon Question, Economic Inequality, and the 2012 Presidential Campaign. Washington, DC: Public Religion Research Institute.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas. 1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1967. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. New York, NY: International Publishers.Google Scholar
McGrath, Alister, and McGrath, Joanna Collicutt. 2007. The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine. Downders Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.Google Scholar
McGrath, Alister. 2004. Dawkins' GOD: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life. New York, NY: Wiley.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1999. On Liberty. Orchard Park, NY: Broadview.Google Scholar
Mouffe, Chantal. 1993. The Return of the Political. New York, NY: Verso.Google Scholar
Nelson, Jones. 2012. “Atheism + : the new New Atheists.” http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/religion/2012/08/atheism-plus-new-new-atheists(Accessed on March 10, 2012).Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1989. Genealogy of Morals. New York, NY: Vintage.Google Scholar
“‘No God’ Slogans for City's Buses.” BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7681914.stm (Accessed on October 21 2008).Google Scholar
Peterson, Gregory R. 2010. “Ethics, out-Group Altruism, and the New Atheism.” In Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal, ed. Amarasingam, Amarnath. Danvers, MA: Brill.Google Scholar
Plantiga, Alvin. 2011. Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, & Naturalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl. 1966. The Open Society and Its Enemies.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl. 1968. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York, NY: Harper Torchbook.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1999. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, John. 2001. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schulzke, Marcus. 2013. “New Atheism and Moral Theory.” Journal of Global Ethics.Google Scholar
Smith, Jesse M. 2011. “Becoming an Atheist in America: Constructing Identity and Meaning from the Rejection of Theism.” Sociology of Religion 72:215–237.Google Scholar
Stenger, Victor. 2007. God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
Stenger, Victor. 2009. The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
Stenger, Victor. 2010. “What's New About the New Atheism?” Philosophy Now April/May:12–15.Google Scholar
Wilde, Lawrence. 2010. “The Antinomies of Aggressive Atheism.” Contemporary Political Theory 9:266–283.Google Scholar