Culver 1
Hannah Culver
English Composition 1101
Professor Kimbell
Fall Semester 2016
New Atheism: The Unorthodox religion
Atheism is defined most commonly as a lack of belief. However, in more recent decades, there has been an “atheist movement” that instead focuses on an “ideological system aimed at legitimating the authority of science in all fields of inquiry”, also called “New Atheism”, as defined by LeDrew in Sociology of Religion (1). The New Atheism movement lacks the passiveness that a lack of religion held previously and instead focuses upon “political, cultural, and epistemological issues” (1), much like religion does today, minus the “supernatural agents” (2) as described in Talmont-Kaminski’s Skeptic. Its members can be defined as “active atheists” (1), or people who willingly attend atheist organizations. Is New Atheism a religion, based upon the definition of a religion being a form of beliefs? While observing the Secular Club during two of their meetings and talking to one of the coordinators of the club, I concluded that New Atheism contains aspects of a religion.
The small conference room that I walk into is lined with five rows of sagging metal chairs that face a grey plastic foldable table. The itchy blue fabric bolted into the seats of the chairs(by my approximation, made from the 90’s) are stained and darkened, their rough to the touch strands of frizzy escapee fibers twisted and flattenedback down into their concave seats. The metal legs of the chairs have long since lost their luster and are cloudy with barely veiled grime, mostly from a lack of never seeing the touch of a decent lemon-scented cleaner. However, they face forward with diligent sense of uniformity, all evenly spaced, and all empty.
It is 6:24 PM on a Wednesday night at Georgia State University’s Student Center East. In six minutes, the weekly meeting of the University’s Secular Club will begin. When I walk into the room, I feel the noticeable shift in temperature from the coolness of the hallway to the stagnant warmth of the conference room. Three people, the only others present in the room besides me, are at the front by the foldable plastic table, all leaning over a laptop that by their conversation must display a religious article of some sort. They discuss news blurbs and debates between figureheads of the atheist and religious communities, often pointing out the logical fallacies of the religious speaker’s standpoint and refuting them with scientific theories. Wires are scattered around their feet and hooked up to various portable equipment, including a stereo and a projector, which displays the coordinator’s computer screen onto the back wall.
I had doubts finding the correct room, despite the multiple banners the club had pasted around campus of the meeting’s location; for instance, the room itself is tucked in the far back of a side hallway blocked behind an enormous banner for one of the numerous Christian-affiliated clubs, which must have had a meeting on the same day at the same time at the conference room next door. When I passed the doorway to this other club, still for the most part unsure if I was going the correct way, a girl stepped out and allowed me the briefest of glances inside. The lights were turned off, but I could still easily discern the many moving bodies within the extraordinarily large room and could hear the nonsensical static of many people speaking at once, with the distinct sound of a guitar and singing. With the heavy metal door closing behind the girl, who had already disappeared down the corridor, gone was my briefest glimpse of the liveliness that filled the conference room with noise. Sitting down in the Secular Club’s noticeably smaller designated room, the door propped open for anyone curious enough to venture inside, I could still hear the Christian organization next door thrumming in the background.
The brief glimpse into the other room provided a juxtaposition to the demeanor of the room I now sat in. There, the attendees could be heard singing in unison to the song and the guitar, a beat scarcely missed; here, people came and went, some armed with chip bags and sodas from the vending machine down the hallway. This cluster of peoplehad a carelessness in demeanor and clothing (most sported faded band and pop culture t-shirts, old jeans, and varying degrees of deteriorating shoes), while the clothing I had momentarily seen of the Christian meeting next door favored bright collared shirts. Unlike my past experiences with attending the Christian Church, the Secular Club seemed to have little to no agenda to follow for the meeting, outside of a PowerPoint featuring internet jokes about religion and atheism. However, in their overall offhand demeanor, there was a certain consistency in their behavior and familiarity with each other that hinted at a unity of thought. By way of controlling the ceaseless banter of Internet jokes and sarcastic humor that appeared to bounce from the mouths of the attendees unencumbered, tossed around was a little brown monkey doll, the ceremonial baton that granted whoever held it the sovereignty to speak.
This organization is far from any sense of a traditional religion. However, the Secular Club, despite its lack of formal structure and a belief in a deity, contained the “social, cultural, and also political nature” (1) that religions foster. All of the attendees shared a common belief in scientific theories, a more libertarian tendency when a topic of politics or social injustice arose, and a kinship of wry humor.
For instance, during the meetings there was a commoncriticism of theological belief that could easily be described as “uncritically espousing anti-religious beliefs” that according to Talmont-Kaminski is an “actual aim of communicating that they belong to a particular group, much as football fans will sing their team song in order not to be mistaken for the other team's supporters” (2). In an example that directly comes from one of the organization’s meetings, plans were discussed to put gravestones around campus depicting the many gods from less popular religions the day before the Christian holiday, Easter Sunday. While one of the coordinators of this club described their organization’s discussion as “just having a good time”, it is difficult not to see the contempt theology is regarded with in these meetings, a contempt that is similar to the rivalry football fans feel against an opposing team. As LeDrew states, “the idea that an atheist identity involves a scientific worldview does not follow directly from a rejection of religion, but rather, it is a product of ideology” (1). While in attendance of the club meetings, the theological arguments that would be briefly displayed through the projector were met with scientific reasoning in a way to disprove theology. Science was held above any belief in a God, despite the club’s initial insistence on being open to all faiths.
New Atheism contains many of the main aspects of religion, with science as its doctrine in place of a religious text. While it may not conform to the traditional ideals of what a religion is, the New Atheism movement is a social, political, and cultural group dedicated to advocating for the dominance of science in lieu of religious deities. As a coordinator of the club states, “Believing differently is one of the best parts of our species. It is like we have these diverse beliefs and if they are something that we’re trying to figure out then I think it is really important to have these different beliefs. If we’re going to find the truth, then I think we have to go in believing different things.” New ideologies are constantly arising and progressing, and New Atheism isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.
Works Cited
LeDrew, Stephen. “Reply: Toward a critical sociology of atheism: Identity, politics, ideology.”Sociology of Religion,vol. 74, no. 4, 2013, Accessed 10 November 2016.
Robertson, Daniel. Personal Interview. 9 November 2016.
Yancey, George. “Atheists, Agnostics, Spirituals, and Christians: Assessing Confirmation Bias within a Measure of Cognitive.” Sociology of Religion, vol. 25, 2014, Accessed 10 November 2016.