Posted: Dec 06, 2021 8:32 pm
New Atheism appeared to offer moral clarity, it emphasized intellectual honesty and it embraced scientific truths about the nature and workings of reality. It gave me immense hope to know that in a world overflowing with irrationality, there were clear-thinking individuals with sizable public platforms willing to stand up for what's right and true — to stand up for sanity in the face of stupidity.
Fast-forward to the present: What a grift that was! Many of the most prominent New Atheists turned out to be nothing more than self-aggrandizing, dogmatic, irascible, censorious, morally compromised people who, at every opportunity, have propped up the powerful over the powerless, the privileged over the marginalized.
This is cheap, lazy, shite journalism. It falls into the trap that I see many (if not most) mainstream hacks fall into, which is to conflate ideas with personalities.
"New" Atheism, if there ever was such a thing, was identified with certain personalities by the type of idiot journalist that wrote the above tripe. Atheism was around a long time before the likes of Dawkins, Harris et al arrived on the scene, They may have contributed their thoughts and raised the profile of atheism generally, but they are not gurus, they are not prophets and they are not leaders. Atheism, "new" or old, is not a movement and it's not a religion. Atheism is a descriptive noun, not a living thing and certainly not an extension of the personalities of a few high profile book writers or lecture circuit speakers. So, whatever the failings or flaws of those mentioned in this excrescence of an article, atheism has not failed, or "merged" with anything. Torres is a fucking moron .