Scientism and atheism then and now: the role of science in the Monist and New Atheist writings

Kaden, Tom; Schmidt-Lux, Thomas

doi:10.1080/14755610.2016.1160944

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…To focus on lived non-religion rather than abstract formal doctrine -on atheists rather than on atheism (Chalfant 2020, 6; see also Copeman and Hagström, this volume) -is to be more likely to avoid the unilluminating stereotypes we pointed out above. Leigh Eric Schmidt's (2016) emphasis, in his work on nineteenth-century atheists and freethinkers in the US, on the earthiness or 'mundane materiality ' (p. 18) that marked these atheists' alienation from religion, is exemplary here. Other key works -such as those by , , , and -that have sought to take forward Lee's agenda or propose adjacent ones often cite in passing the work of Birgit Meyer, who is well known for her substantial body of work on religious media, aesthetics and materiality.…”

Section: New Atheism New Publics?mentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Yet, in contrast with the view put forward in the newspaper article quoted above, digital media is only the latest means of expressing non-religiosity. Sceptical publicity has, of course, a very long history and utilised a wide range of different media, such as discussion circles, print media such as books, pamphlets and other textual forms (see Minois 2012; Whitmarsh 2016), atheist archives and cartoon strips Schmidt 2016), advertisements on buses (Tomlins and Bullivant 2016), billboards (Blankholm 2018), and films and TV shows, to name just a few. Even in Bangladesh the violent campaign targeting 'atheist bloggers' can be understood as being in continuity with similar, earlier campaigns against writers such as Taslima Nasrin, Shamsur Rahman and Humayun Azad (a point we will return to below), and the blogging we have discussed is contemporary with other forms of non-religious expression less prone to provoking controversies or violent attacks by Islamists (see for example Bradbury and Schulz in this volume).…”

Section: Joseph Blankholmmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Atheist identity can in such cases be understood to be deployed in order to signal a set of antagonistic presuppositions about religion -as inherently fundamentalist and a threat to science -which in turn is thought to empower atheists in their disbelief Lüchau 2010). Other characteristics include scientism, epistemic dogmatism, a reduction of religion to the status of a primitive science and a general disdain for both fundamentalist and moderate religious practitioners (Asad 1993Gorski 1990;Kaden and Schmidt-Lux 2016;Kidd 2017;Lundmark and LeDrew 2018;Olson 2008;Stenmark 1997;Zenk 2014).…”

Section: Intimate Digital Counterpublicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Global Sceptical Publics

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Performing the secular: street theatre and songs as 'secular media' in Bangladesh and West Bengal 71 James Bradbury and Mascha Schulz 3 'There is no god, Summer': a critical evaluation of Rick and Morty's approach to atheism and nihilism 97 Frank Bosman 4 Aesthetics of the secular 127 Stefan Binder 5 Gender, affect and atheism in Arabic media 144 Natalie Khazaal Part II Mediated scepticism: historical and contemporary trajectories 6 'Apostates': a new secularising public in the United Kingdom John Hagström 7 Satan, sex and an Islamist zombie apocalypse: religion-sceptical publicity and blasphemy in Turkish cartoons and comic books Pierre Hecker 8 From campaign and dispute to 'public service broad/ narrowcasting': secularist and atheist media strategies in Britain and America -a contextual history

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Section: New Atheism New Publics?mentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Joseph Blankholmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Intimate Digital Counterpublicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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2022

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“…Approaching religious beliefs as factual propositions, which Robin Le Poidevin (1996) calls theological realism, is characteristic of new-atheist discourse about religion (Haught 2008;Falcioni 2010;Kaden and Schmidt-Lux 2016), for ex ample in Sam Harris's (2004, 63) claim that all beliefs are "attempts to represent states of the world" or the chapter titled "The God Hypothesis" from Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion (2006).…”

Section: Religions: Sets Of Truth Claims About the Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Think like an Atheist

Isomaa

2024

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Atheism has had a strong presence on YouTube since its founding in the mid-2000s, which coincided with the rise of the new atheism movement, and lay atheists were quick to use the platform to spread new atheist ideas. Drawing from a sample of sixty-five atheist YouTube channels located and observed through online ethnographic methods, this article views YouTube videos as educational resources for atheists. It investigates different types of educational videos and ways of thinking about science, philosophy, and religion that atheist content creators utilize and promote. The analysis reveals that they consistently frame these domains of knowledge through the truth claims they make and generally construct them within a hierarchical framework, with scientific knowledge at the top and religious knowledge at the bottom. Overall, their educational content reproduces new atheist discourses around these subjects, revealing the continuing influence of new atheism, two decades after its emergence. Furthermore, the popularity of videos that debunk arguments from religious apologists suggests that the intended audience of these videos includes both atheists, who are expected to need to learn to defend their atheism in debate with religious others, and “potential atheists”, religious believers who can be deconverted using rational arguments.

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“…The concept that is most essential to understanding the New Atheism is scientism (Kaden and Schmidt-Lux, 2016). Scientism can be defined as the view that ‘the only reality that we can know anything about is the one science has access to,’ and further, that ‘what lies beyond the reach of scientists cannot count as knowledge.…”

Section: New Atheism and The Secular Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unorganized atheism and the secular movement: reddit as a site for studying ‘lived atheism’

Lundmark

LeDrew

2019

Social Compass

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This article examines discussions on the reddit.com forum r/atheism in comparison with rhetoric found in contemporary atheist organizations and among leading figures within the atheist movement. We demonstrate how the culture of r/atheism converges with that of formal atheist cultures, most importantly regarding understandings of rationality and how religious people deviate from it, while highlighting areas of tension regarding how to relate to religion and religious people. We conclude that the social experience of community and belonging appears to be as important as other more instrumental goals commonly adopted by secular activists, and that tensions regarding the practice of atheism and the purpose of the forum correspond to tensions found in formal institutional contexts. We thus argue that while r/atheism is not directly or explicitly affiliated with atheist activism, overlap in the nature of discussion and debates is sufficient to consider the forum another window into the development of a general atheist culture practiced in institutional contexts and at the everyday level of 'lived' atheism.

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Scientism and atheism then and now: the role of science in the Monist and New Atheist writings

Cited by 4 publications

References 17 publications

Global Sceptical Publics

Global Sceptical Publics

How to Think like an Atheist

Unorganized atheism and the secular movement: reddit as a site for studying ‘lived atheism’

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