A meme is another name for an idea, style, or behavior, that in Dawkins’ telling is analogous to a gene in biology in that it is self-replicating and subject to selective pressures.ĭaniel Dennett is a philosopher of science who is an advocate of the patient victory of reason over religion. Richard Dawkins is perhaps most famous for his ideas regarding cultural evolution, namely his concept of a “meme”. These problems are clearly on display in a talk last spring by two of the giants of The New Atheism, the sociobiologist, Richard Dawkins, and the philosopher, Daniel Dennett, at Oxford University.
Yet with all that said, The New Atheism has some problems. Productive conversations cannot be had unless the world shown to us by science is taken to be closest version of the truth we have yet come up with- the assumptions we need to share are we not to become unmoored from reality itself. This truthful view of the world which science has given us is the basis of our modern society, its technological prowess and the vastly better standard of living it has engendered compared to any civilization that came before. Especially in the realm of science education, the New Atheists promote a common understanding of reality- that evolution is a scientific truth and not some secular humanist conspiracy, that the universe really is billions of years old rather than, as the Bible suggests, hundreds of thousands. The movement has fostered the ability of people to speak openly about their personal beliefs or lack of them, and spoken in the defense of the principle of the separation of church and state. In my view, there are plenty of things to like about the New Atheism. The late Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins being the most famous examples of such polemicists. The intellectuals at the heart of the New Atheism are often firebrands directly challenging what they see as the absurdities of religious belief. New Atheists often take an openly confrontational stance towards religion pushing back not only at the social conformity behind much of religious belief, but at what they see as threats to the scientific basis of the truth found in movements such as creationism. New Atheists take a stance of critical honesty openly professing their unbelief where previously they might have been unwilling to publicly admit their views regarding religion.
In addition to being a philosophical movement, The New Atheism is a social phenomenon, a decline of the hold of traditional religion and a seeming growth in irreligiosity, especially in the United States, a place that had been an outlier of religious life among other advanced societies that have long since secularized. The New Atheism is a movement that has emerged in the last two-decades that seeks to challenge the hold of religion on the consciousness of human beings and the impact of religion on political, intellectual and social life.
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