Pigliucci M. New Atheism and the Scientistic Turn in the Atheism Movement. Midwest Studies In Philosophy 2013;37(1):142-53. New Atheism and the Scientistic Turn in the Atheism Movement - Pigliucci - 2013 - Midwest Studies In Philosophy - Wiley Online Library / http://philpapers.org/archive/PIGNAA.pdf
The so-called “New Atheism” is a relatively well-defined, very recent, still unfolding cultural phenomenon with import for public understanding of both science and philosophy. Arguably, the opening salvo of the New Atheists was The End of Faith by Sam Harris, published in 2004, followed in rapid succession by a number of other titles penned by Harris himself, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Victor Stenger, and Christopher Hitchens.1
After this initial burst, which was triggered (according to Harris himself) by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, a number of other authors have been associated with the New Atheism, even though their contributions sometimes were in the form of newspapers and magazine articles or blog posts, perhaps most prominent among them evolutionary biologists and bloggers Jerry Coyne and P. Z. Myers. Still others have published and continue to publish books on atheism, some of which have had reasonable success, probably because of the interest generated by the first wave.This second wave, however, often includes authors that explicitly distance themselves from the tone and some of the specific arguments of the New Atheists, most prominently Alain De Botton and A. C. Grayling.2 Finally, we have follow up entries in the literature by some of the original New Atheists, especially Harris, but also Hitchens.3
My goal in this paper is to analyze the new Atheist “movement” from a particular angle: what I see as a clear, and truly novel, though not at all positive, “scientistic” turn that it marks for atheism in general. To do so, I will begin in the next section with a brief discussion of what I think constitutes New Atheism broadly construed, as well as what counts as scientism. I will then present a brief historical overview of atheism in the Western world (to which the impact of the New Atheism seems to be largely confined), to make clear how classical Atheism differs from the new variety.The following section will then explore some examples of what I term the “scientistic turn” that has characterized some (but not all) New Atheist writers (and most of their supporters, from what one can glean from the relevant social networks).The next to the last section will summarize the problems with scientism, and I will then conclude by proposing a new middle way between classical and New Atheism as more sound from both the scientific and philosophical standpoints.
1. Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion,Terror, and the Future of Reason (NewYork:W.W. Norton, 2004); Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Vintage, 2006); Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006); Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking Press, 2006); Victor J. Stenger, God:The Failed Hypothesis:How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2007); Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve Books, 2007).
2. Alain De Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion (New York: Vintage Books, 2012); Anthony C. Grayling, The God Argument: The Case against Religion and for Humanism (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).
3. Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape:How Science Can Determine HumanValues (NewYork: Free Press, 2010); Sam Harris, FreeWill (New York: Free Press, 2012); Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2009).
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