Last Updated on 2022-07-08 by Joop Beris
Back in June of this year, I wrote an article about a book entitled “The Leprechaun Delusion.” The book argues that “New Atheism” is a harmful sociological and religious cult in its own right. Much to my surprise, one of the authors of the book, Idav Kelly, responded to my article by commenting on it. We subsequently had a short discussion in the comment section about the conclusion and why I feel it doesn’t fly. The exchange was quite pleasant and I hope I was able to illustrate why the book’s conclusion is wrong.
An off the cuff remark I made in one of my comments, was that ““New Atheism” is itself fairly loosely defined […], making your characterisation shaky at best”. Mr. Kelly argued that “New Atheism” is something new and different from original or classical atheism, that it is an actual movement, something of which I was not convinced.
Fast forward to today, I see a new article posted on the blog of Michael Sherlock, entitled “‘Classical Atheism’ vs ‘New Atheism’ – Dispelling the Myth of ‘New Atheism’“, which does a good analysis of why “New Atheism” isn’t actually new at all. It was a very interesting read to me and confirmed me in my assumption that there is nothing really new about “New Atheism”.