Is it really possible to explain New Atheism as a response to Christian and Islamic fundamentalism over the last decade or so? This seems to be the standard explanation out there, but I think it only tells a part of the story. While New Atheism certainly wouldn’t make sense without reference to religious fundamentalism, there are many good reasons to think that it has also been fed by a crisis within liberal, progressive and secular thought itself.
I will here suggest three reasons for thinking this; there are undoubtedly more. Firstly, New Atheists dedicate a significant portion of their energy to attacking not just religion, but also certain ‘liberals’ – i.e. people whose progressive values they share, but who have adopted a position of cultural relativism which makes them reluctant to condemn the actions of people who hold different values. In more abstract terms, New Atheism is a firm rejection of postmodernism, that form of thought seen by some as defining what it meant to be left wing. The scientific method, and the possibility of ascertaining objective Truth, is not simply offered as a riposte to the religious, but also to left-wing cultural relativists.
Secondly, New Atheism can be seen as merely one facet of a much wider cultural trend in which the virtues of science and rationalism have been valorised. This can be seen, for example, in what I’ll refer to here as the ‘bad science’ movement, whose figureheads are Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh; both of whom work to expose the false or exaggerated claims made by practitioners of alternative medicine, pharmaceutical companies, psychics and the media. This group and New Atheism come together in the annual variety show Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People.
Thirdly, there is a more clearly political facet of this cultural shift which also overlaps with New Atheism. Three books from recent years will serve as examples: Francis Wheen’s How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World (2004), Nick Cohen’s What’s Left (2007) and Kenan Malik’s From Fatwa to Jihad (2009) are all written from the perspective of left wing authors who reject cultural relativism and postmodernism in general. The attitude can also be seen in the Euston Manifesto, written by a group of academics, journalists and bloggers in 2006 and announcing a new political alignment of ‘progressives and democrats.’ While these authors and the signatories of the Euston Manifesto identify themselves as a new political alignment, they in fact look back in time, beyond the recent ‘new left’ of identity politics, and even further back beyond the ‘old left’ of class politics, and attempt to re-establish a connection with the progressive liberalism of the eighteenth century enlightenment.
To summarise: New Atheism cannot be seen simply as a direct response to religious fundamentalism and is, rather, part of a broader shift within secular Western thought itself. It should be seen as only one manifestation of an attempt on behalf of progressives to regroup and redefine themselves in the wake of the Cold War and postmodernism.
